Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Hayley, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the conference call of Fraport AG. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. And I would now like to turn the conference over to Christoph Nanke, SVP, Head of Finance and IR. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Hayley. It's an extraordinary time still. I have with me at the table our CEO, Dr. Stefan Schulte, and our CFO, Dr. Matthias Zieschang. Just to let you know, we all have been tested negative just ahead of the meeting. So I think we are well prepared, probably something we will get more and more used to these days. I think we are ready to take off. Dr. Schulte, please.
Yeah, thanks very much. And a good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Warm welcome also from my side. The last time we spoke, back in November, we were just before the second lockdown period. The situation today, unfortunately, hasn't changed very much. We still are in regional lockdowns and are confronted with high travel restrictions across our group airports. So compared to last November, however, the situation has clearly improved so far that the long-awaited vaccine has finally been approved and is being rolled out. As a consequence, we expect a continued improvement of the situation with the global aviation market from here on, or more precisely, latest as of summer. I stay optimistic that from summer onwards, we will see much better numbers than these days. So that's why we want to split the presentation in two parts.
First, a review on traffic and financial performance in the past year, and second, and more important, what is ahead of us, so what's our outlook section and how do we prepare for the future? If we start on the traffic review, slide five, I think we don't have to go too much or too many details here, but we face record lows around April and May last year, handling only about 5% of our usual traffic in Frankfurt during the first lockdown period. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, that's the reason we just shared this traffic development with you. I'm glad that we can provide you some good news today about the compensation of the operating losses that incurred during the Q2 lockdown, so the first lockdown period from mid of March to end of June.
This February, the German Ministers of Transport and Finance agreed to satisfy the claims from the German airports for compensation of the operating losses that incurred because we needed to keep the airports open to supply the German population and economy with so needed goods. Financially, it would have been more reasonable to close down the airports to preserve cash, but we kept them open as wished. Our share in this claim is about EUR 160 million for Frankfurt Airport. To be clear, there hasn't been a commitment on the final amount, but there are positive signals that around this amount, we will be compensated at the end somewhere over the next four to eight weeks, I would assume, as best guess at the moment.
One other, there is some visibility on how the compensation will take place, probably with only a few conditions such as no dividends or bonuses for managers to be paid for the past year. Regarding the financials, I'm on slide six. The traffic results and the traffic decrease, of course, affected the financials very much. There's no major surprise. The total revenue suffered due to the strong traffic reductions recorded over the course of the year, as close to EUR 1.6 billion total revenues recorded, is a steep drop of more than EUR 1.7 billion or - 53%. As we were not able to influence the traffic performances, our number one priority was to control controllable items in the past year. As a consequence, we focused on all cost items and also enhanced revenue streams wherever possible, like in retail and real estate business.
Thanks to our cost management, we were able to offset large parts of the revenue shortfall and achieved a positive adjusted group EBITDA, so an underlying EBITDA without the EUR 300 million staff provision in the area of EUR 50 million. Before reviewing our cost-saving measures in more detail, let me focus on the rest of our P&L first. Bottom line, we saw only slightly decreasing depreciation charges of about EUR 460 million, as well as a negative development in our financial result. The latter one was more or less exclusively attributable to our minority investments, and here mainly Antalya, which recorded lower results of about EUR 100 million in the past year. Our group result after taxes and minority therefore was down by more than EUR 1 billion to about EUR -660 million.
As a consequence of our negative financial performance, it's quite clear that we won't propose any dividend payments to our AGM this year. A closer look at our saving programs and cost-saving targets is shown on chart seven. You'll see that we launched the biggest staff and non-staff cost-saving program in our group history. With regard to staff costs, I can confirm today that we achieved our target, or probably better, that all contracts are signed to reduce our Frankfurt labor force by about 4,000 people. This number also excludes natural fluctuation, which will come on top. By year-end 2020, we are already more than 2,000 people leaner when compared to year-end 2019. A further 1,200 employees will leave the company by end of Q1 this year, latest end of Q2 this year, due to our voluntary programs.
By end of this year, we therefore will be a minimum 3,500 employees leaner company. Our 4,000 employee target we expect to achieve over the course of the next year. In addition to staff reduction target, we continue with the short-time working scheme for large parts of our Frankfurt staff. Moreover, we signed an annex to the collective bargaining agreement for our parent company staff, which will postpone wage adjustments. As a result of the measures taken, we were able to reduce our Frankfurt staff costs by about EUR 270 million between Q2 and Q4 last year. For the current year, due to the short-time work and lower staff number, we expect staff cost savings to exceed EUR 300 million compared to the base year 2019. Our staff cost target of EUR 250 million staff cost savings we expect to achieve next year.
Our second priority is and was to take out non-staff costs. Here, we focus to bring down all non-imminently needed cost positions as much as possible. Moreover, we close down infrastructure wherever reasonable. In total, we therefore saved about EUR 100 million non-staff costs between Q2 and Q4 last year. Hence, we are well on track to achieve our EUR 100 million-EUR 150 million non-staff cost target this year. Our third pillar of countermeasures is to take out CapEx. Slide eight provides you an overview on our achievements last year. In March 2020, we still guided you for a CapEx figure of about EUR 1.5 billion-EUR 1.6 billion. At the end of the year, we invested only about EUR 1.5 billion or EUR 400 million less when compared to the midpoint of our guidance. The biggest savings here we were able to achieve in international activities.
We, for example, deferred all non-starter investment programs, mainly in Lima, or we reduced non-essential CapEx. Adding our cost savings on chart seven and eight together leads to a cash preservation of just under EUR 800 million in the past year. On top, we also reduced OpEx in international activities by more than EUR 250 million thanks to saving programs, but also due to lower turnover-related concession fees. So we saved OpEx and CapEx on group level of more than EUR 1 billion in the past year. Taking also the canceled dividend into account, so for that means a total cash preservation of roughly EUR 1.2 billion in past year. More details you will get later on on financials and balance sheet from Matthias. Leaving our review part behind, moving on to my next topic, our outlook or how do we see the future and how do we position ourselves. I'm on chart nine.
Our best assumption and clear conviction is that once free air traffic or the possibility to fly without limitations is being restored, we are going to see an immediate acceleration of our business development. Where do we stand in this progress today? These days, governments around the globe are preparing plans on how to reopen the markets and ease the current lockdown restrictions. While in Europe, it will firstly be the opening up of retail stores, cultural facilities, and so on, it's clear the freedom of travel will follow close behind. First indications we are getting point to an easing of air travel around in May, as this is the case for the U.K. or for the summer season in general. The question of the precise timing however will be linked to data rather than dates.
Most important here are the infection rates, but also the number of severe cases from large parts of the decision taking. Thanks to the continued rollout of vaccines and more vaccines being licensed and available, our expectation is to reach a high level of immunity in Germany over the course of this summer. Maybe late summer, that's a little bit open, latest by autumn. Certain countries like the U.S. or U.K., which are key markets for us in Frankfurt, but also for our Greek, Turkish, and Bulgarian investments, will front run and reach herd immunity before Germany and the rest of Europe. In addition to the global passive immunity, we also expect the introduction of so-called health or green digital passports that will allow for air traveling once people got the vaccine or got tested negatively via PCR or antigen test.
So our clear expectation therefore is that we will regain lost passengers and expect a full recovery of our group airports between 2023 and 2026, subject to the airports' passenger mix. Here we continue to expect that short-haul traffic will recover before long-haul traffic and that leisure traffic will recover before business traffic. In addition, we expect that main airports or hub airports are better positioned than secondary airports, driven by the high focus of airlines on cash and high-yield routes. Here, hub airports like Frankfurt have a clear advantage over other airports because of the strong catchment area, the strong cargo business, the high number of direct flights offers as connecting possibilities, but also because of the concept of intermodality. What does this mean for us, the Fraport Group? I'm on slide 10.
We launched numerous cost savings and restructuring programs in this past year and have continued several steps that we already started in the past. As the world is steadily progressing on its way to the new normal, we are also progressing on our way to the new Fraport. There are three main points: operational excellence, cost control, and to be greener. What is behind these topics, and I'm now on chart 11. Fraport always used to be a service-providing company. We are rethinking our services and processes offered along the needs and along the customer needs, and we'll follow more of the approaches benchmarking, digitization, and sustainability. Here, one of the biggest pain points in the past was the situation along the security checks in Frankfurt. These days, we are close to finalizing agreement to finally restructure the security check business in Frankfurt.
More precisely, we have in general agreed with the ministry on federal level to come back into the management position, which used to be the Federal Police in the past. Going forward, we therefore will take the decision on the following major points: how many security lanes will be opened, at which day, which time, how will we be in charge for carrying out the security checks, and how is the procurement process of the security equipment carried out. The Federal Police will continue to supervise our actions, but we expect a clear improvement of the security check situation thanks to the restructuring and thanks to the contracts we hopefully can sign over the next weeks. Our best assumption is to come back into the management position by 2023, following a transition period of two and a half years.
Moreover, with our operational excellence approach, we will continue to focus on future concepts such as biometrics or remote business operations to offer our processes leaner, faster, and more convenient for our customers. Another big step ahead here, we agreed yesterday, as our supervisory board approved a further restructuring of our ground handling business in Frankfurt. Within the ground handling business, I'm on slide 12. You are aware that competitive pressure has increased for many years. So most European airports have either withdrawn or organized that ground handling business already in a subsidiary. That's the way we also want to go, and that's really necessary. In order to strengthen our competitiveness in ground handling, especially in the ramp handling, we will bundle the business services in a new subsidiary and therefore form a new sustainable structure.
The new subsidiary will run the ground handling business entirely in the future and will concentrate solely on ground handling. This will enable the subsidiary to act much more flexibly and focus on market requirements with better cost positions than the current global handling structure with its embedded independent company up to now. As a result, we will secure the high quality of ground handling services at Frankfurt Airport and the number of staff in the long term. The start of the new subsidiary is expected on 1st of January next year, but further negotiations with Workers' Council and so have to follow now. The details will be worked out as mentioned. Along with operational excellence and the restructuring of our business, we continue our focus on strict cost control. As already mentioned on previous charts, we have a clear target to be a leaner and more agile company.
The focus therefore will remain on staff and non-staff cost items, which do not serve our day-to-day business needs. Out of our total 4,000 employee reduction program and the 1/3, 2/3 split in between operating administrative staff, we clearly expect to reduce our labor force by more than 3,000 employees also in the long run, even when traffic recovers. Moreover, we continue with our review of our CapEx program. The target is to return to a clear free cash flow positive area and to delever our group. The deleverage is also needed to regain financial flexibility and to take advantage of distressed assets and valuations as they are in the market these days. A topic that was less in focus last year, but we expect to regain interest going forward.
So third pillar on our way to the new Fraport, chart 14, focus on us becoming greener, also focus on ESG in broader terms. Already with our full year presentation last year, we showed you a slide about CO2 emissions here in Frankfurt, emphasizing the importance of reducing emissions. The same chart is also shown in the appendix of this presentation, pointing to a further sharp CO2 reduction in the past year. Here we also need to be fair that most of the CO2 reductions last year were driven by the low traffic volumes and the closure of infrastructure. But nevertheless, we are going ahead with our targets, and as a consequence, we want to reduce our group-wide CO2 emissions to a level of 125,000 tons by 2030. As a comparison, today we disclosed 170,000 tons for the past year.
For Frankfurt Airport specifically, we want to reduce our emissions from 130,000 tons today to 80,000 tons by the year 2030. By 2050, we finally want to be CO2-free in Frankfurt. How do we achieve those targets? Firstly, by reducing our own emissions as much as possible. Here we want to make use of environmentally friendly products with a lower CO2 consumption. Secondly, by generating our own CO2-free green energy. Here measures contain the use of further rollout of photovoltaic plants here on the airport, but we are also in advanced talks to partner with a wind farm provider. The latter one will serve as a big lever to generate large parts of the electricity we need on a sustainable basis. Let's move from here on to the international activities to our international airports, and I'm on slide 15.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are somewhat honest to be quite open. We are really proud of our team in Greece. What they achieved is really great. If I take our time, it took our team less than four years to fix all 14 airports and to fulfill all contractually agreed CapEx obligations. From a logistics point of view, the constructions were in so far complex as the airports are scattered over 11 islands and the Greek mainland. In total, we constructed five new terminals, refurbished and expanded existing terminals, created new apron and retail areas, plus affiliated land and airside infrastructure. The Greek airports are now ready for future growth and are on their way to become an important financial driver to the group. For this year, we expect the Greek airports to also see a quicker traffic recovery compared to Frankfurt.
Greece, on the one side, has a more seasonal business than Frankfurt. Here, the high season is Q3, and we also expect the market to be partly opened again in Europe. On the other side, Greece has a clear leisure and short-haul focus, which leaves the airports well positioned for a quicker recovery. Financially, thanks to the completion of the CapEx program, we will also see higher charges at all airports as of this summer. So everything is set for a good traffic and financial recovery. Regarding our plans to compensate the force majeure event, we are also well on track to have a positive outcome here. Once we have a final result, we will communicate this accordingly. Our Brazilian airports are shown on chart 16, comparable to Fraport Greece. Also, Fraport Brazil is on its way to become an important financial driver of our group.
This year, we expect the final element of the Brazilian CapEx program, the runway extension in Porto Alegre, to be completed. As a consequence, we expect Fraport Brazil to be free cash flow accretive as of next year. Traffic-wise, we are also seeing a quick recovery in Brazil. The country itself is simply too big to avoid for air traveling. Also, the high share of domestic traffic points to a quick recovery for the Brazilian airports, we already see this today. Financially, the contractual framework in Brazil has also proven to be very investor-friendly. The airports in Porto Alegre and Fortaleza were among the first airports to be compensated for the losses incurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, airport charges at Porto Alegre were clearly raised, and concession payments across the airport are being canceled until the rebalance amount of about EUR 30 million is achieved.
An update on our second platinum investment, Lima Airport , is provided on chart 17. In Lima, we started to construct the second runway and the new tower last year. Compared to our forecast amount of about $500 million, we were able to save some 10% and now expect an investment volume of about $450 million. The investment will be finalized in 2022, so in less than two years from now. In addition to the airside expansion, we will also need to go for a new terminal in Lima. Here, the tender process has meanwhile started, and we expect to take a decision on the project in the second half this year. So simultaneously, we continue with our claims to extend the terminal construction timeline and to further defer concession charges. A positive rebalance, we were already able to announce our Turkish investment in Antalya in February.
To compensate for the financial losses from the pandemic, the concession was extended by two more years until the year end of 2026. The financial terms of the additional two years are unchanged to the existing contractual framework and come without conditions. Financially, also positive is the deferral of the 2022 concession charge into the year 2024, so no charges next year, but EUR 200 million then in the year 2024. Ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude my part of the presentation with our outlook chart on page 19. As mentioned already, I stay optimistic that the vaccination process will go ahead in Germany, but also in Europe, and the number of COVID incidences will come down, so less people will die, and therefore markets will reopen somewhere during the course of early summer or around summer then, and we will see much better traffic numbers.
That's the reason that in a good case scenario, we therefore expect a recovery of up to 25 million passengers. To compare the 25 million passengers with the 18.8 million passengers, the year 2020 just looks like only + 6 million passengers, but you have to take into account that we had two and a half very good months the year 2020 before COVID occurred. So at the end, it's more than 10, 12 million passengers increase compared to the year 2020, and that means we need for this already a strong summer business, a strong increase in summer business on the European traffic.
That's the reason that depending on how the vaccination process is going ahead and at what time markets are opening up, our guide at the moment is somewhere in between below 20 up to 25 million passengers because we need for this a strong recovery of the European traffic somewhere in summer. The intercontinental traffic will recover a little bit later, at least from today's point of view, and will be first on the main routes. For subsequent years, so from 2022 onwards, we remain much more confident and much more optimistic to see a stronger quick traffic recovery. This year, it's not the question of recovery. This year is the question of the timing of the recovery, which is a little bit more difficult and which forces us to be much more flexible than the next years.
For Frankfurt, we continue to expect a traffic recovery to the 2019 levels by around 2025, 2026. Financially, thanks to a better traffic performance expected for our international activities, we expect a clear improvement already this year. EBITDA shall therefore amount to about EUR 300 million-EUR 450 million, bringing operating cash flow back into a positive area. Due to the continuous high depreciation and amortization and the negative interest result, we expect EBIT and EPS, so earnings per share, to remain negative this year. So far, thank you very much for your attention, and now Matthias will come with more financials.
Yeah, thank you, Stefan. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome also from my side. Let me begin my presentation today with one of the most important financial topics in the past year. On the slide 21, you see our liquidity chart.
While our group cash burn was probably the most frequently asked question, the impacts on liquidity and the ability to refinance ourselves ranked closely behind at second place. On slide 21, you see that in the past year, we were able to assume significant amounts of fresh money to our group. Despite the negative free cash flow of EUR 1.4 billion and repayments of debt, our available cash reserves increased by more than EUR 1.4 billion to EUR 3.1 billion. We therefore took on some EUR 2.9 billion or more than 50% of our current market cap. In addition to the significant demand for Fraport debt, we were also pleased to see that our average group interest rate dropped by about 40 basis points to 2% in the past year. Thus, we clearly saw and continue to see very good appetite for Fraport debt in the market.
The favorable conditions were also a major reason to continue with our funding activities. In the first two months of the current year, we therefore signed another EUR 500 million of fresh money to Frankfurt. Up next, we also plan to issue a new bond, presumably over the next few weeks. The target is not just to cover our current negative free cash flow, but to fully finance our future expansion CapEx needs and to increase our financial flexibility again. How do these funding activities fit into our repayment profile? Now I am on slide 22. You can see that the repayment chart remains well balanced with annual repayments in the area of EUR 400 million-EUR 800 million. From today's perspective, the biggest annual repayment is due in 2027 due to our last year's bond issuance.
Already before, we will be through with our Terminal 3 project and also expect traffic levels to have well recovered. Our free cash flow reconciliation and our group indebtedness are shown on chart number 23. Due to the reduced traffic levels, our operating cash flow was negative in the past year. Despite our CapEx saving measures, which Stefan previously mentioned, we faced continued high CapEx due to our expansion activities. As a result, our free cash flow ended the period under review clearly negative at EUR -1.4 billion. Hence, our group net debt reached a level of EUR 5.5 billion as we guided you for with our interim results last year. Due to our negative group result, our group equity declined to EUR 3.8 billion, and our gearing ratio correspondingly increased to 150%. Our CapEx and net debt outlook for this year is presented on chart 24.
While other CapEx in Frankfurt is expected to go down towards our sustainable maintenance level of about EUR 200 million-EUR 250 million, the completion of the CapEx programs in Greece as well as in Brazil will also lead to lower CapEx spending this year. In Greece, we are paying the final bills these days, and also our Brazilian expansion CapEx will come to an end this year. As a result, we expect Greece to be free cash flow positive this year and Brazil as of next year. On group level, the CapEx reduction in Frankfurt, Greece, and Brazil will be nearly equalized by the expansion CapEx in Lima this year. As a reminder, maintenance levels in Lima are only about EUR 10 million per annum. Due to the expansion CapEx, we expect an increase in Lima CapEx to EUR 200 million-EUR 300 million this year.
Due to this increase, our group CapEx will remain broadly unchanged, so between EUR 1.1 billion and maximum EUR 1.2 billion. Let me highlight here that this level is clearly below our old pre-COVID guidance. Taking the cash out for the severance payments and our operating cash flow into account will mean that our group net debt will grow grosso modo by another EUR 1 billion this year. Moving on to our segment performances last year, starting with aviation on slide number 25. Revenue of the segment was clearly impacted by the reduced passenger traffic in Frankfurt at EUR 441 million respectively -57%. Revenues of the segment, however, performed slightly better than the pure passenger development of -73% in Frankfurt. The key drivers for the better revenue performance were non-directly passenger-linked services such as landing and takeoff charges, but also security services.
Still, revenues declined by more than 50% or EUR 586 million in total. Thanks to our countermeasures, we were able to offset about EUR 130 million of this amount. Here, it is also worth to point out that all of the cost savings occurred in the second to fourth quarter of the past year because in Q1, everybody expected again a new passenger record in 2020, and we have been fully on the gas pedal. At EUR -184 million, EBITDA nonetheless was clearly negative. Likewise, our return on invested capital dropped into the negative area. While our financial outlook for this year is more optimistic, we continue to expect negative EBIT and therefore also a negative return on invested capital.
As this situation is not acceptable in a regulated business where fees need to immediately go down upon an outperformance of the allowed return, we also need to address this significant under-earning situation, so our airline partners will go for a reasonable charge increase next year. At this point in time, we are still in the process to prepare our final consultation documents. Therefore, we will need to communicate our pricing expectations to our customers. First, our commercial segment, retail and real estate, is shown on slide number 26. Despite the strong passenger decline in Frankfurt, the segment revenues, especially within our real estate subdivision, performed very resilient. At EUR 295 million, segment revenues were only down by about 42%. Here, the real estate revenues remained almost flat at EUR 163 million.
Within the pure retail business, revenues were down by 64% and therefore still better than the pure passenger development of -7 3%. As with the previous quarters, retail revenues were supported by more stable advertising revenues, which recorded only a decline of about 50% to EUR 22 million. Excluding for advertising revenues, also our shopping and services revenues performed slightly better than the passenger numbers. At EUR 57 million, the two revenue streams recorded a drop of 68% compared to - 73% passengers at Frankfurt Airport. Shopping and services revenues, again, were positively impacted by the application of minimum annual guaranteed rents. Due to the more stable revenue streams, also our retail per passenger key indicator grew sharply to EUR 4.73 or + 44%.
Looking at the Q2 - Q4 period exclusively, retail revenues per passenger even exceeded the level of EUR 6 and therefore almost doubled compared to the same period last year. Thanks to the resilient revenue performance and good cost management, the segment was able to post a clearly positive adjusted EBITDA in the area of about EUR 230 million. Also this year, we expect the segment to contribute positively to the group performance. Now coming to our final Frankfurt segment ground handling, which is shown on slide 27. Comparable to aviation and retail and real estate, segment revenues and ground handling performed slightly better than the pure passenger business in Frankfurt. At EUR 319 million, segment revenues were only down by 55%. Key drivers for the better revenue performance were again non-directly passenger-linked charges such as maximum takeoff weights and movements. Still, revenues declined by almost EUR 390 million.
From this amount, we were able to offset about EUR 200 million by lower OpEx, mainly between Q2 and Q4. At - EUR 126 million, adjusted EBITDA nonetheless was clearly negative. Despite the strong savings measures and higher charges for the usage of the central infrastructure this year, we need to further restructure the business in order to maintain the future of ground handling inside the group. Here, discussions with the Workers' Council have already started, and we will keep you updated on the progress. For the past year, we therefore achieved total Frankfurt savings between Q2 and Q4 in the amount of EUR 368 million. The corresponding chart is shown on slide number 28. Annualizing these cost savings will mean a reduced OpEx level in Frankfurt of just under EUR 500 million.
Here, large parts are attributable to the application of short-time work and the already realized reduction of employees in 2020 with an annualized amount of more than EUR 300 million. This figure will be replaced as of next year by our sustainable structural cost saving targets of about EUR 250 million when we have 4,000 full-time equivalents less on our payroll. Thanks to the cost saving measures initiated in the past year, the continued use of short-time work this year and the ongoing reduction of employees, we are also able to lower Frankfurt EBITDA break-even point to a level of 18 million passengers or 25% of our full year 2019 traffic. This means passenger numbers. On the slide number 29, you see the corresponding chart of Frankfurt EBITDA levels without considering, of course, the staff provisions. In Q1, we still ran the business at a regular cost base.
As described before, our cost countermeasures largely began as of the second quarter. In August, finally, we were able to post break-even again, handling about 1.5 million passengers or equivalent to 50,000 passengers per day. Extrapolating these results to a full year will mean an EBITDA break-even at roughly 18 million passengers in Frankfurt. As with our Frankfurt operations, we also took comprehensive countermeasures for our international activities. I'm now on chart number 30. Here, we focused on three main pillars, like in Frankfurt, OpEx, CapEx, and on top of this, compensation. Thanks to the lean asset management models, we were able to take out OpEx at international activities on a very large scale. OpEx reductions were also supported by lower variable concession payments. Regarding CapEx, Stefan already covered the main points. We will also continue to work on these items in the future.
On compensation, similar to Frankfurt, we also filed claims to compensate the losses incurred due to COVID-19. As Stefan already mentioned, we meanwhile received the approvals for our Brazilian and Turkish claims. Also for Lima, we received a first approval to defer fixed concession payments. In addition to Brazil, Turkey, and Lima, also our Bulgarian and Slovenian investments received compensation payments in the amount of EUR 4 million-EUR 6 million. At Fraport USA, we also received the approval to cancel some of the minimum lease payments in the past year. On the next slide, number 31, you can see that thanks to the countermeasures taken, all international holdings, except for Fraport Slovenia, generated a positive EBITDA. Despite the low traffic numbers handled, the international holdings contributed in total some EUR 100 million to group EBITDA. Slide 32 shows you the segment overview of international activities and services.
On the one side, you see the clear revenue reduction, while on the other side, you also see the significant reduction in underlying OpEx. At EUR 326 million, OpEx was well below the previous year figure of roughly EUR 580 million. In total, the segment therefore achieved an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 128 million and was, besides retail and real estate, the major driver for the positive adjusted group EBITDA of EUR 48 million. Bearing our countermeasures in mind also means new EBITDA break-even levels for our international activities, and I'm now on my last slide 33. As you were already able to see on slide 31, Twin Star turns EBITDA positive at about 1 million passengers, while Ljubljana and Slovenia need some 0.5 million passengers to generate a broadly break-even EBITDA.
Greece, which was EBITDA positive in the past fiscal year, needs only about 7.5 million passengers or 25% of the 2019 traffic numbers. Fraport Brazil needs about 5.5 million passengers or 35%. When comparing this guidance with the figures on slide 31, please bear in mind that Fraport Brazil was positively impacted by the rebalance of COVID-19 losses in the past year, which led to a EUR 30 million higher EBITDA, which we also expect now in this year, so this compensation payment. The lowest break-even point has Lima at about 10%, which is really extraordinary of the traffic we recorded in the fiscal year 2019. On the right-hand side of the chart, you also see our passenger expectation for the current year. You see that we expect all international activities to exceed the needed passenger levels to generate a positive EBITDA number.
Hence, we are very confident to achieve the target ranges for our group EBITDA outlook of EUR 300 million-EUR 450 million, depending on the progress of vaccination and the lifting of travel restrictions. Having said this, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to conclude my presentation, and I'm now looking forward to your questions. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. And one moment for the first question, please.
The first question comes from the line of Ruxandra Haradau-Döser of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Please go ahead with your question.
Hello, can you hear me now?
Yep.
Okay. Hello, good afternoon. Three questions, please. First, my initial understanding was that the employees leaving the group break down in 50% administrative staff and 50% ground handling staff. Has this changed? I'm asking because you mentioned on slide 13 that 3,000 from the 4,000 FTEs leaving will be sustainable, and I would expect employees in the ground handling division to be hired back at a lower cost subsidiary once traffic recovers. Second, considering the planned cost savings, what tariff increase would be required in order to earn the cost of capital in the regulated business once traffic recovers to pre-crisis level?
Finally, some airports like Stuttgart are currently working on implementing social distancing technology in the terminals. What is your view on social distancing and crowd management requirements post-COVID? Related to this, do you expect airports to be able to operate above nominal terminal capacity post-COVID, as it was the case in Frankfurt pre-COVID? Thank you very m uch.
Thanks very much for those questions. First, let's get through the crisis, and let's see that we get 2021 and then 2022 done, and thereafter, maybe 2023, we could come to a point where social distancing technology post-COVID could be a real topic. Beforehand, I don't see this really as necessary. There's still the discussion ongoing. What will be the processes to organize? What are the requirements for airports? Do we need to have some protection, no protection, and so on or not?
Do we have to cover our faces and all those topics, or do we have to have a social distancing technology in place? From today's point of view, I would say no. There's no requirement to have a social distancing technology in place. But what exactly the new standard will be in the future, we have to see. And we cannot discuss this just on airports. Then you would have to have a much broader discussion. Take concerts, take other cultural events, take the underground system and so on, take the fast speed train section, so the railway. So this discussion will be in front of us, but I don't believe that we will come to social distancing technology as a requirement.
Regarding your first question, ground handling and administration, so the question on the 4,000 employees, I don't know exactly whether we have a mismatch, but I thought we will be more on one-third ground handling and two-thirds administrative and logistic and so on and so on. So that's the reason that from our point of view, minimum 3,000 employees reduction will be sustainable because also on ground handling, we will see some efficiencies. They are working on several topics there, and productivity increases. Regarding the second point, planned increase of aviation, that's right, or which one? Yeah. When do we meet the allowed return on the cost base? And, Mrs. Haradau-Döser, we are now driving on site, so we are just under-earning in the moment. We have a negative return on assets, and we have one unknown variable. This is a recovery of the number of passengers.
And one thing is for sure, we need a combination of higher passenger numbers on one side. We also will go for a reasonable increase of the tariffs in the next couple of years, and we have to see when we are going to fully cover the return on assets. But in the moment, this is not our problem. Now we have to ramp up as soon as possible. We have to come back into the black numbers. And whether we achieve full coverage of our WEC in 2025 or 2026, I think this is not, let me say, the key topic in the moment for us. But again, we control just the item fee increase. On the other side, we have to find a well-balanced combination between passenger recovery on one side and the fee level on the other side.
Thank you very much. Maybe one more question, please.
Over recent years, low-cost carriers have increased capacities at primary airports like Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, and so on. How do you expect this trend to develop in the short to medium term, and what share of low-cost traffic do you target at Frankfurt Airport over the next five years? Thank you very much.
Thanks a lot. We don't have those target numbers in place these days because first, it's really our topic to recover and to bring up the numbers or to recover the process and to recover the traffic and to be prepared for that one, and our focus for this year, to be quite honest, is really to control costs, to control CapEx, to have the right flexibility in place because nobody knows exactly at what time the recovery on traffic will happen, the vaccination process, and so on.
And then we can do a lot right, we can do something wrong, and there we have to be very careful. So for us, it's a nominal academic discussion whether the low-cost shares are 2 percent points higher or lower. Let's see who is surviving out of that crisis, which airline. That's more important for us these days.
Thank you.
The next question is from Elodie Rall at JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Can I ask first on the dividend? So you're not paying a dividend in 2021, unsurprisingly, but when do you expect to return to a progressive dividend policy? Is it from 2022 in your view? Second, we've seen some delays, unfortunately, on vaccine with the suspension of the AstraZeneca in Europe here and there. So how would that affect your estimates for the recovery this year?
And lastly, on tariffs, how can we think? I mean, just if you could give us an update on tariffs. When should we expect to see some increase in tariffs, some compensation for maybe COVID here, given what we're seeing elsewhere is some increases in other airports at the moment? Thanks a lot.
Thanks very much . That was the third question. Yes, we should expect that we will have the discussion already this year on the agenda. And over the course of this year, we will keep you informed there what's going on and which way we are going ahead. But as Matthias mentioned, at the end, it's for us much more important, and we have to balance these two points that we get more traffic in because you can increase the fees by 10% or whatever.
It's not helping at all if you don't have the traffic at the end. So we have to find the right approach on both sides. Traffic recovery, traffic growth on the one side, and on the other side, a tariff increase on the other side and to find the right mix there with the right way how to go ahead there. Regarding vaccine estimates for 2021, I think our outlook and the range is broad enough for that to cover this one, even with AstraZeneca now. Yes, we know that a lot of things are very difficult if you see the daily news and so on, but if you take it a little bit broader, it's really a big progress and a big success for all of us that science is so positive and that they have developed such a lot of vaccine already.
And at the end, in two, three months from now, nobody will discuss any longer why the process was in spring this year in Europe a little bit slow. Everything can take now one month longer, maybe, but at the end, it's not the question that everybody got his vaccine. It's probably more the point at what time the number of dead people are coming down because the number of incidents can even go up. It's really not an issue if we have no problems with hospitals and if we don't have problems with too high number of dead people. And that's, I think, in my opinion, the topic, and that can change relatively quickly. And that's the reason I'm more optimistic for summer. People want to fly. Whenever you discuss with people, want to go abroad for vacation.
I think we will see a good summer season in Europe, not intercontinental. That's too early. That's probably next year then. Regarding dividends, there's no discussion on this. At the moment, it's a clear point that with losses in 2021, we will not propose a dividend payment for the year 2021 in 2022. There hasn't been any discussion on 2022. The general policy you know is in place that we want to pay out 40%-60% of our net earnings. But what does that mean regarding the level of indebtedness, net and gross? And that's all too early. It depends how we get out of the crisis.
Okay. Thanks very much.
The next question is from a line of Cristian Nedelcu of UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Three, if I may.
First of all, on the international business, on the EBITDA 2023, 2024, could you give us some color? How should that look like versus 2019 levels? And in particular, do you see structural cost savings there, benefits from increased retail space in Brazil or Greece, or any deferral of rents as part of the compensation agreements? If you can elaborate a bit on that. The second one, I think in your annual report, you're targeting net debt to EBITDA of five turns on a midterm. Now, on my calculations, I'm getting somewhere around six turns in 2023. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but could you give us a bit of color how you define midterm? So what is the timeline of getting that five turns net debt to EBITDA? And the last one is very useful to see the CapEx guidance for 2021. Thank you for that.
Could you give us a bit of color on 2022 and 2023 for Lima and for Frankfurt? What are the expectations of CapEx expenditure there? Yeah. I think these are the questions. Thank you.
Regarding the international business, the guidance that we want to achieve, the three crisis levels that we believe that on the international business, we are able to do this somewhere in between 2023, 2024. That's a gross number, a gross estimate, well, not a gross, sorry, a rough estimate. That way, so we wanted to give you the idea and the message that from our side, how we see the markets, we will recover on the leisure traffic airports, but also on the South American airports in a much faster way and a quicker way than on such complicated or complex hub structure like Frankfurt.
We're not prepared today to give more details how the concession business with retailers in Brazil will develop. This we can do if we are in a more stable development. That's not the topic for today. But the message, in principle, is we expect a faster recovery on the leisure traffic in general and on the continental traffic. And in the second stage, more the intercontinental traffic, and in the second or third stage, also more the business traffic. So the recovery on the business side will take longer than on the leisure side. And our main subsidiaries, the international airports, are more or less more on the leisure traffic. That's the reason we should participate on that much more and earlier than on the business side. South America is a little bit different from that. We mentioned that Brazil is much too big. You have to fly.
You see it also during the pandemic. Now, they are on 55% or something like this of the traffic, or 50% of the traffic. Even the infection numbers are really high, but you have to fly there somewhere. There's no other chance. And that's the reason that they will have a little bit different traffic structure and recovery structure than other airports. What's for us very positive and which probably not reflected in the numbers up to now is the very good progress on the vaccine strategy in North America, especially USA, which could mean that Europe and Germany to North America, that this traffic stream is opened up earlier, but there's no political discussion on this. We are working on this. That's right.
We set corridors, as we call it, with testing and so on, but it's completely unclear whether we have a chance to be successful on that side, yes or no. Matthias, come to you.
Yeah. I take over. First of all, question number three, CapEx expectation and development in the next couple of years. You got from us the guidance for 2021, about EUR 1.1 billion CapEx on the group level. And when you think back on our chart in the presentation, it's about EUR 800 million, which we are going to invest at Frankfurt Airport and the rest outside primarily for Lima. And now looking forward, forward means looking to 2022, 2023, 2024, you can continue with the same level of CapEx on the group, so EUR 1.1 billion until 2024.
And also, the allocation between Fraport on one side and the rest of the group on the other side is more or less the same. So, EUR 800 million for Frankfurt also for the next three years, so 2022, 2023, 2024, and EUR 300 million outside. And from the EUR 300 million, it's on average about EUR 250 million for Lima. And then we have a sharp decline up from 2025. Why? Because in 2025 itself, we are through with our CapEx Lima. So we have then inaugurated the second runway as well as a new terminal. And also looking at Frankfurt with T3, we are more or less through in 2025 ready and have realized the construction. So that up from 2025 onward, we have substantially lower CapEx level for the group.
If you can directly translate into your second question, the ratio net debt to EBITDA, which is, of course, linked on one side on the escalation of the indebtedness, on the other side of the recovery of the EBITDA numbers, and based on the CapEx projection, which I gave to you, and the assumed EBITDA ramp-up, which, of course, is directly linked to the passenger recovery as of today, assuming that at Frankfurt we will be back on a 70 million level, passenger level in 2025, 2026. Also having in mind that then our cost level is substantially lower than in 2019 due to our sustainable cost measures, we should go down to five times in 2025, 2026. But everything is linked to the passenger recovery.
Understood. Thank you very much. Very helpful.
The next question is from Andrew Lobbenberg of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi there.
Can I stay on that matter of deleveraging? Is there any need or is there any benefit to deleveraging quicker? And slightly related to it is that in your presentation, you spoke about being keen to deleverage to be able to take advantage of opportunities in the market for undervalued assets. I mean, is there any reason that you would want to take other action other than just deleveraging through cash flow to get your leverage down to be able to play? Would you want to sell some assets to be able to buy other assets? Or would you want to raise capital to buy other assets? And then just a simple one on the compensation that you're hoping to get from the German government. Would that go through the P&L? Would that contribute to the EBITDA?
I guess it's excluded from your guidance, but yeah, just how would it be accounted?
Thanks very much. Yes. So the compensation would go through the EBITDA. It's not included in our guidance, so it would be an extraordinary item. We would flag it out separately, so it's not included. Regarding leveraging and what you are discussing at the end is do we need equity yes or no? You asked me.
Or do you want to sell assets?
Both ways, yes. We have to monitor the markets, and we have to see and to have a close look on the development of the markets, how the markets see the leverage and indebtedness. So we cannot exclude from today's point of view whether we go for additional authorized capital somewhere over the next years or conditioned capital for the next years, which would be a quite normal thing.
All companies have. We haven't had that in the past, but we should have the flexibility at least somewhere in the future that we have those instruments authorized by the annual meetings. Further plans, there are no further plans on that. I would not confirm it, but I also would not exclude it for the long term. I can't just tell it. It depends how the markets are developing, and then we have all the options. We have also the options, yes, you mentioned this one, that we would have, if necessary, to look whether we could get proceeds in by selling assets, but we would never sell an asset just because of liquidity if there's a good asset on the table, and then the fire sale makes no sense.
So that depends very much how the market is in general developing and how the traffic recovery is going ahead and how then the markets are seeing our indebtedness structure and so on.
Okay. Thanks.
That's the answer. No yes, no no. And I can never see options. Sorry for that.
You're driving on site.
The next question is from Jenny Ping, Citi. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi. Good afternoon. A couple of questions from me, please. Just going back to your 71 million passengers by 2026, you have previously talked about potentially sort of seeing 10 million or so business-related passengers to be at least sort of disappearing to a large extent. Has anything changed which changes your view on that? It doesn't seem, based on what you're saying today, that's your base case anymore. Just wondering what has changed there.
Just going back to the EUR 160 million of compensation, you mentioned there's a few conditions, including no dividends. I just wondered how long that no dividend clause is in there for, and also no bonuses, how long they're applicable for. Is it just 2021 or a more extended period of time? Lastly, to clarify on the cost savings, you talk about the EUR 500 million of annualized cost on page 28, but am I right in saying that's got some cost associated with closure in there, which obviously, if traffic comes back, will bounce back? What we're really looking at is the EUR 300 million of employee-related costs and the EUR 100 million- EUR 150 million of non-employee costs. Let's call it EUR 450 million annualized cost savings on an ongoing permanent basis. Thank you.
To answer your question, service standard was the first one on the 71 million passengers 2026. It's the best estimate from today's point of view that we should have recovered on that level by the year 2026. As I mentioned already, on leisure traffic, we believe that we will see a full recovery and much earlier on that side. You know that on Frankfurt Airport, we have 2/3 of our traffic is leisure traffic, 1/3 is business traffic. So on the 2/3, we should be even earlier be recovered, and then we will see further growth from there on. On business, yes, there will be some traffic missing, but on the other side, we are more and more getting optimistic on that side. We see that the international global activities of companies are continuing. There's no nationalism on that.
We see that more mid-sized companies are more and more active on the international markets. Even more service companies are active on that market. And it could be that we see their new segments flying around the world compared to those in the past and that they are compensating the one or the other business flights, which we will not see in the future for example, internal meetings or something like this, and which they could compensate on that side. So we are a little bit more optimistic on that side than we have been one year ago because you get more and more from industrial leaders and from surveys.
You get more and more the point that as efficient those virtual formats are, at the end, they really need also for internal meetings and personal contact, and they have to fly to the markets, and they have to meet politicians and other important people. For this, it will come back, and I'm quite optimistic on that. Regarding the conditions on the EUR 160 million, as it's drafted these days, and we haven't seen the final draft, but as it's drafted these days, it would be just the condition, no dividend and no tantieme, so no variable payment for the year 2020. Nothing else up to now, but let's see what the final draft is saying at the end. We had the question about the sustainable cost savings. I have to go back what we realized last year. On an annual basis, EUR 500 million.
We are striving to realize the same number in this year, but it's clear in the very long run, we cannot continue with EUR 500 million because at the moment, we are also benefiting from the instrument of short-time work. But it's a clear ambition to continue with a lower cost base in the company. So we already phased out EUR 250 million personnel cost à la longue, plus EUR 100 million-EUR 150 million on the material expense side. So you can expect up to EUR 400 million cost savings à la longue. Yeah. That's the answer.
Perfect. Thank you.
Welcome.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. And the next question comes from the line of Johannes Braun of Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Thanks for taking my questions.
First one would be a rather technical one on the compensation that you received in Brazil. I mean, on EBITDA level, the compensation more or less compensates your losses, but I can see that on the net profit level in Brazil, the result is still steeply down. So I was wondering if there's anything in the financial result or how that compensation actually works here. Second question, what do you expect regarding the potential compensation increase in Lima? Will those be as generous as the one in Brazil? Then third question, the Terminal project in Lima, I think last time you indicated this will be postponed. Now you're talking only about the downsizing, no longer postponement. So why is this and how much will it be downsized? I think in the past, you said the Terminal would cost $1 billion.
And then based on what you told us in terms of CapEx over the next years, when do you expect free cash flow to turn positive? Now, I think in the past, you said 2023, 2024, but I guess that would be now rather 2025, 2026 or so, depending on the Lima terminal, I guess. That's all. Thanks.
Okay. That goes through. And the different questions, Johannes, thanks very much for them. Brazil, we can have a look on more details, but I think it's because we finished the first part of investments on CapEx, and they went into depreciation. And that's the reason that probably the depreciation and the interest costs are now up directly on the balance sheet because it's not linked with the compensation. That's not the reason, but we can give you also here.
Folks can give you more details later on if my answer would be incorrect now, but I think that's the way. Regarding potential compensation increase in Lima, the easiest thing is Lima because there is not a big compensation. Lima is very difficult. You said, yes, there's some compensation on the payment structure and how we have to pay payments, variable payments by we can delay the payments over, I think it was 10 quarters, something like this. We can shift them through. But it's not a direct compensation profit-wise. It would not be positive or it's not positive on the P&L, it's just on the cash flow side. And it's difficult to get there more because they have no government or they have a government, but just in between governments, there will be elections, and that's been a very, very difficult political situation.
It's not very stable these days on those things. On Greece, there we get or we are still in good discussions. There are different approaches to make the compensation possible. It would be really a compensation in a three million digit area to compensate the losses on the EBITDA side, partly on state aid, partly on direct cost recovery, or not cost recovery, but on cost compensation with different instruments. That's under discussion with the government. The first thing seems to be the state aid, which has to be approved by the European Commission, and that process is started. The other things are under discussion and would have to be drafted and then agreed by the parliament. So that will take, in my opinion, at least another six months.
On Lima, on the Terminal project, yes, due to the situation with the government, they are not willing at all, besides one or two or three months, but they are not willing at all to give us a bigger postponement. We haven't been successful on that side. So we just react now in creating the new terminal more modular with a first step much smaller than originally planned in a way that we also use the old terminal and the new terminal, which is not so easy because we cannot use then the full capacity of the old terminal because with the inauguration of the new terminal, we get new requirements on the full terminal location, so on both terminals, which would use then the capacity of the old terminal.
That's not a distancing topic, but it's a topic how many gates we have to have and how many people are allowed on the gate and so on. So that's the reason we cannot go with the first modular of the first module of the new terminal. We cannot go so small as we would have liked, but we are still discussing an amount of EUR -300 million - EUR -400 million, something like this for the first step of investments in Lima. That's the actual situation. On free cash flow or Matthias?
Yeah. Free cash flow, as you mentioned, Mr. Braun. So it depends what is the recovery of passenger numbers in the second half of 2023. So if this is more on the positive side, we can achieve free cash flow positive numbers end of 2023. If recovery is not so good, it will be finally in 2024.
In this region, we will achieve on a group level the free cash flow break-even point at the end, depending on the fast or not so fast recovery of the passenger numbers.
Okay. And that would also include the Lima terminal, the CapEx for Lima terminal.
Sure.
Okay.
Of course, in Lima, because in Lima itself, as I mentioned, we are now going on average for EUR 250 million. So for this year, we guided a range between EUR 200 million- EUR 300 million and also for the next four years, so 2022, 2023, 2024, on average, another EUR 250 million CapEx amount in Lima. So it's in total about EUR 1 billion. And therefore, as long as we are realizing this CapEx program in Lima itself, we will not achieve a positive free cash flow number.
But at this point of time, when then later, the new midfield terminal is ready, then we are automatically overnight achieving huge positive free cash flow numbers. But in the meantime, all other assets in our portfolio are still generating relatively high free cash flow numbers.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Understood. Thanks.
The next question is from Arthur Truslove of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Mr. Truslove, is your line open?
Can you hear me okay?
Yep.
Thank you. So a couple for me, if I may. So the first one, I just wonder what your latest view on the sort of requirements for people to actually travel in terms of sort of what vaccination status they're likely to need to have in particular for intra-Europe travel in the summer of 2021. And my second question was just in terms of costs for this year.
You obviously mentioned that in Frankfurt, you took out around EUR 500 million on an annualized basis in 2020. Clearly, this year, you've got a combination of some part-time work and some sort of permanent cost savings coming in. So are you expecting the sort of total cost saved in the course of 2021 to be higher than the total cost saved in 2020 or about the same? And can you give us any color on what you're expecting numbers-wise?
So first on your first question, thanks very much for that. It's not decided, to be quite honest, especially on the entire Europe travel, what the conditions are, what the restrictions are, what the requirements are. It's a big debate among the leaders of the different European countries. There are some who would like to see a health pass or vaccination pass or something like this.
Others are out saying, "No, not at all." It's a test regime or something like that. It's open, and probably it's also the reason that, well, the reason is maybe on the different speed of vaccination in the different countries here in Europe that for politicians, it's too difficult to have a clear position on that these days. I'm quite optimistic. I'm quite sure that in May, the picture will look completely different. So our best estimate is it will be a mixture of, yes, if we have the vaccination already, it's fine. Otherwise, there will be an antigen test, a fast test or something like this. So it will not always be a PCR test. And depending where the numbers are, maybe even without a test. But it's open at the moment.
And your question regarding the cost target in 2021, it's the same like last year.
We are striving for EUR 500 million less compared to the 2019 numbers.
Just to follow up on that one, so what you're saying there is that you're expecting that sort of short-term work to last across the full year despite the fact that traffic is likely to improve through the year.
Of course, from the central government in Berlin, it's guaranteed that till end of December, we can make use of this short-term work instrument. And so we are using it as long as possible. On top of this, we have the reduced number of employees. So it's a combination of both. We are also continuing with a high pressure on the material expense side. So that, let me say, based on this annualized calculation for 2019, where we have a proven track record for three quarters, we assume more or less the same amount.
This means about EUR 300 million on the personnel cost side or even a little bit more, and the rest on the material expense side.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
A final reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. The next question is from the line of Dario Maglione of Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for sharing so much detail. First question on borders. What is your most likely scenario, in your view, for border controls outside of Europe? So let's say a German person is vaccinated this summer, wants to travel South America, and maybe there are still high infection rates, low vaccination. Can he go there and then return to Germany without a quarantine, do you think, even if he's vaccinated? Second question on ground handling.
The board you mentioned approved a restructuring program. Can you give us a bit more detail in terms of whether there will be some people leaving and whether the current employees will move there with the same wage or reduced wage? And final question on OpEx. You mentioned over the long term, your target to retain most of the OpEx savings that you will be achieving. But will that mean also lower tariffs in the future because, of course, you have lower OpEx? Thanks.
Thanks very much. Your first question, if I got it correct, on intercontinental traffic, what we expect there. It will be much more difficult to give you any clear expectation on that. We see these days already that those countries are somewhere some countries are even open. You can fly. You can fly from Frankfurt to Brazil. So that's possible.
It's more difficult to fly to North America. And if you fly as a business customer, you even don't have to go in Germany as far as I know on quarantine , as long as you haven't been away for more than three days, something like this. But I'm not really aware on detail on those. We know some regimes like China and so on, and that's very difficult to go there, but you can go there. But it's very difficult. I would expect that some first routes will be opened in the probably more fourth quarter, maybe end of the third quarter, first intercontinental routes. And that will be on a base that you have to have a vaccination or PCR test, but not on quarantine. But that would be my best estimate at the moment. And then it depends on the different countries.
If the number of incidents is very high, then this will not be enough. Then, of course, you also have to go on quarantine. But then we have to see. It will be an opening up country by country. So it will take time. That's the best estimate I have for you from today's point of view. It's difficult to discuss with politicians, to be quite honest, because they are very much focused on their nation, on Germany in our case. And so they don't have an open mind for those topics. On ground handling, a few questions were also how we restructure that one, what are the transfer processes.
In principle, the thing is that we will bundle the business and the daughter company and the structure of daughter companies, including the management of that business, the support functions, the logistics, the disposition functions, and so on, and that the people are going from the mother company or staying with their contract in the mother company with their mother company contract, but that they are transferred into the daughter company. So on those people who are already now with Fraport, we are not calculating any savings. That's not our topic. The topic is to come to more flexible structures, to have new hirings in that daughter company to build up the business over there with the tariff regime and with processes and structures and so on, which are really market benchmark.
Regarding OpEx, I understood your question that you asked whether we are going for lower tariffs.
I think you mean tariffs on the passenger side. And the answer is, of course, no, because in the moment, the return on assets is negative. So we have to ramp up. We are far away from the full coverage of our cost of capital. And let me say, as long as we are far away from these return levels, we don't think about fee decreases. We are working on reasonable fee increases.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Charles Maynadier of Kempen . Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. I just have one follow-up on the international activities. Given that traffic will still be down quite a bit this year and also next year, how much more compensation do you expect to claim on your different assets in the medium term? Thanks.
That's very difficult.
I can't give you a clear answer on that. On Greece, we try to get most of this as a direct approach under the contract and not as state aid because then we want to have the chance also to claim something for next year. But the discussion is still open. And that's the reason I'm a little bit careful on that one to elaborate much more on that. Because if you go on state aid, then it's a one-time. If you find another way, and that's the discussion, then you could even go for a second time. On Brazil, in principle, the same. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that we can go a second time, but we will go for a second time. We will try at least to get it. And these are the two big topics. In Antalya, that's already covered.
Even a difficult year, 2021, difficult year, maybe 2022, whatever, there's no further approach and no further chance. And that's it at the end because the other smaller payments we mentioned are more on a, in brackets, voluntary base, very, very difficult from the contractual point of view.
And on Lima?
On Lima, there is no real compensation. The contractual basis in a way that we can try to get anything in front of court, but the position is not so strong. So we will keep it on. We will follow that one. But I'm not saying from today's point of view that we go in front of the court because we have to have a closer look on the contract and we have further topics there. The contract is not so clear on that, that you can get a compensation on that one.
All right. That's clear. Thank you.
The next question is from a line of Christian Cohrs of Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Just two left for me. First, coming back to ground handling. So if I understood you correctly, the transfer of people, this will not be linked with additional restructuring costs. Is this correct?
That's correct.
And maybe then looking ahead into the four to five years once traffic is coming back. In the past, even when Frankfurt Airport was fully utilized, the division failed to earn adequate return on capital. Do you think with the new structure, you will be capable then in 2025, 2026, once traffic is back at normal levels? Do you think that the ground handling division will then be value-accretive according to your valuation scheme?
Yes. In principle, yes.
I don't give you a guarantee on the exact number 2025, 2026, but that's exactly the point why we are doing this and what the target is for the management to go this way, and it's a little bit more complicated because the savings we are getting on the one side are on a more flexibility in the company regarding working hours and then shift systems and so on, and this has to be negotiated first on a new tariff system for new employee people, but third, also because ground handling has to put pressure on all our internal service departments here, IT, and other things to come to cost structure and services levels in the future, which are market-driven.
So I would also expect and I hope also that we get some pressure on other divisions in our mother company, if I may say it this way, where we are challenged, to be quite honest. And savings have to go into the daughter company, of course, or partly the savings.
Yeah. Okay. No, understood. And then just the second question relates to your retail business or to the prospects of your retail business. Many retailers are running out of cash and go bust. Have you faced any bad debt? Is your retail space still fully rented out? And do you face, yeah, empty space? Or do you face a deterioration in terms and conditions and lower demand from the retailer side? Also, with regards to advertisement, for instance, I mean, you make quite a decent portion of money also with advertisement.
We have to see.
We have a lot of chains and tenants in our terminals, and these are strong companies. They can also bridge different times, and so some tenants left, that's for sure. But on the other side, we have a short list of interested parties to replace them so that we do not expect any troubles on this side.
So 5% of the areas are empty at the moment, but that's the normal rate. That's nothing specific. At the moment, it's difficult to find somebody new. We have a short list, but that takes more time than normal. That's clear. But there's no bad debt.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you.
Thanks very much.
No more questions at this time. I hand back to Christoph Nanke for closing comments.
Okay. Thank you, everybody, for participating today. I think we answered a lot of questions.
But if you still have, give us a call in IR later today or tomorrow. Anyway, I cross fingers for the development of this year for everybody of us, also with regards to health. Have a good afternoon, and yeah, hope to hear from you soon. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.