Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gaye, your course call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the TAV Airports Investor Day live webcast to present and discuss the 2025 nine-month financial results. All participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Serkan Kaptan, CEO, and Mr. Karim Ben Salem, CFO. Mr. Kaptan, you may now proceed.
Thank you, Gaye. Hello everybody. Thank you for all of you joining us, and welcome to our 2025 nine-month results webcast presentation. I would like to start by giving you an update on traffic first. 2025 was a challenging year in terms of traffic. Our Middle Eastern traffic was affected by geopolitical developments. We estimate that for the full year, we have lost around 1.9 million international passengers due to these effects during the year. We were also affected by the strong lira, which makes Turkish destinations more pricey for tourists. Bodrum was also affected by the strong lira. Antalya traffic, on the other hand, is dominated by all-inclusive package tourism. This moderates the total price to be paid for the tourists, so Antalya was more resilient and finished the year with flat international traffic. Izmir and Ankara traffic is more concentrated towards outbound Turkish travelers.
There is a lot of diaspora traffic too, of course. This is in contrast with Antalya and Bodrum, which are mostly inbound foreign travelers to Turkey. The strong Turkish lira worked in the opposite direction in Izmir and Ankara, with Izmir growing by 6% and Ankara growing by 9% in terms of international traffic. Strong lira is making foreign destinations cheaper for Turkish travelers, and they are currently taking advantage of the situation. We have a lot of Turkish travelers going out of Turkey for tourism purposes. Also, Asia based two additional aircraft in Ankara by July, which boosted the traffic after July in Ankara. We will have the five months of effect in Ankara, but next year, hopefully, we'll have the full effect of the year. Asia is growing in Ankara as part of its hubbing strategy.
They are hubbing domestic flights from Turkey into Ankara and connecting them to international routes with a strategy that works very well. Initially, it was Sabiha Gökçen as a connecting hub for Asia when it was Anadolu Jet. Now, Ankara became the second hub, and Ankara serves mainly flights coming to Ankara from domestic destinations and dispatching them to international routes via Ankara. We are very happy about the fleet growth plans of the other low-cost carriers, of course. Pegasus and SunExpress are also growing their fleets as well, which adds more supply to both Ankara and Izmir. As you know, SunExpress is based in Antalya, but their secondary base is Izmir. Pegasus, though it is based in Sabiha Gökçen, has plenty of flights via Ankara as well. Almaty International traffic grew 8% so far in 2025, but the potential of the airport is, of course, much above this number.
If the carriers can get more aircraft deliveries, the demand is definitely there. We suffered a bit with Air Astana and FlyArystan because of their A321 aircraft, which had engine problems like many other carriers around the globe. We understand that it will be fixed in 2026. Kazakhstan has similar GDP per capita to Turkey, with half the number of flights per person. The demand is already there, but the sector is really undersupplied at this point. The situation is expected to normalize in the midterm. As we have been adding more infrastructure capacity in Almaty International Airport and airlines have been adding more aircraft supply, traffic should continue to grow strongly in the midterm under normal circumstances. When we also look at the aircraft orders and delivery plan of the major carriers based in Almaty, we see that strong demand coming.
While we are discussing Almaty, it would be a good idea to give you a brief update on our investment plan. As you may remember, we have started the investments in the third quarter of this year. We expect these investments, which are mostly airside infrastructure, which means aprons, runways, taxiways, deicing, and so forth, to be in the range of EUR 315 million. We expect nearly most of this investment to be completed by year 2027, with very little to be left to be completed by 2028. Just for you to know, in the last quarter of this year, we already initiated the works. Till the heavy winter season, we try to do the maximum in Almaty International Airport. We have secured notable tariff increases, aligned with these additional investments because to do the investments, we have required to balance the economics via some tariff adjustments.
These tariffs are expected to ramp up through 2030, which will rebalance the airport's EBITDA mix from fuel sales towards aviation-related revenues. Our aviation-related revenues were much cheaper compared to the region. That's what we are rebalancing, and we are making Almaty attractive by reducing the fuel prices as well. If I come to Georgia, Georgia is great with 15% international growth. Travel demand to Georgia has been exceptionally strong. It's not only the Turkish or Israeli-Russian traffic, but we also have a lot of traffic coming from the Middle East. We see this significant growth in 2025. We are also in advanced discussion with the local authorities, with the government of Georgia, to extend our contract till the end of 2031. It's another five years of extension. This is in discussion.
This discussion includes an investment to increase the current capacity to 10 million passengers and update to the commercial terms. We are also very happy to see that North Macedonian Airport, Skopje and Ohrid, are growing after being affected by Wizz Air's engine problems in 2024. We understand that Wizz Air will base additional aircraft, and we already have around 10% growth, and it will grow further in the coming year. We are also seeing a double-digit growth in Tunisia and Zagreb, and also a mid-single-digit growth in Medina. You know, Medina is predominantly Hajjan Umrah traffic. It's a robust one with strong international demand. If you look at the total international passenger growth, it has been 4% year to date, end of September.
The effects I mentioned in the beginning of my presentation, which are mainly the geopolitical developments and the strong Turkish lira, were very, very important, which affected this growth factor as well. Without these effects, we believe that traffic would have been much better. I will go to page two, the slide number two, which is the growth of source markets in the first nine months of the year. On this slide, you can see the historical change in our passenger breakdown. The passenger composition has changed a bit since the pandemic. Compared to 2019, the most notable change is in Russian and Ukrainian passengers. Because of the sanctions, Russians can only travel to Turkey with Russian aircraft. As you can see on this chart, we had served 11.5 million Russian tourists in the first nine months of 2019, whereas this year we served 7.9 million.
We are missing like 3.6 million Russian passengers for the first nine months of the year. The full year number of missing Russian passengers due to sanctions is almost the same. It's around 3.5 million. From Ukraine, historically, in the highest year at 2019, the first nine months we had 2.3 million passengers. Full year was 2.5. This is lost due to the tragic war. We don't have that passenger. Our all-in-all loss from the Russian and the Ukrainian market totals to 6 million passengers. We have had a strong growth in Polish travelers compared to 2019, which also includes the Ukrainian passengers flying via Poland to Türkiye. That shows the positive effect in the Polish numbers. The Turkish travel to other airports in our portfolio has increased significantly since the pandemic compared to 2019.
We can also see the traffic from the U.K., which doubled, and there had been a 31% increase in the German traffic to Türkiye. Compared to last year, Russia and the U.K. continued to grow, but Türkiye and Northern Cyprus were among the fastest growers, helped by the strong lira. You can also see strong Israeli travel to Georgia, to our Georgian airports, both of them, affecting a 29% growth [Foreign language] last year. UAE traffic, as expected, was down by 4%, which is also affected by the geopolitical developments. I move on to slide number three, which is the TAV International Passenger Breakdown by Destination. On this slide, you can see our last full year passenger breakdown.
If you look at the totality of our portfolio, Russians used to be the number one source market, but Germans have now become number one with the sanctions, and U.K. traffic is just behind Russian traffic. Historically, Russians were number one always as a source market. Because of the sanctions, the last few years, Germans took over this position, and U.K. traffic also boosted, and it's just behind the Russian traffic. If the sanctions are lifted, the Russians could again become number one, travelers to Türkiye as well. With that, I will now hand over the presentation to Karim, who recently joined us, to the TAV Airports Group as our CFO. Karim, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Serkan. Hello, and welcome again to all. My name is Karim Ben Salem. I am TAV Airports Chief Financial Officer since September 1, and I am delighted to be here with all of you, including investors and analysts who have been following TAV, and I'm definitely looking forward to meeting you in person as well in the upcoming months. Serkan just explained traffic growth in detail with 4% international and 5% total growth. It is obviously of utmost importance for our results, but the correlation to revenue is not one-to-one anymore. As you can see, we had 13% revenue growth in nine months, which is well above traffic growth. There are many reasons for that, but the most important reason is the traffic in Antalya, which growth was barely 2% year- on- year, but with no effect on our consolidated revenue.
Indeed, Antalya is not fully consolidated as it is an equity accounted investment, and I will talk more about Antalya in later slides. There are also other reasons which explain why revenue growth came out strong and above traffic growth. If we start with aviation revenue, first of all, as you may know, the State Airports Authority updates charges in Turkey every year to take into account both Turkish lira and euro inflation, which positively impacts our revenue. We have also been getting increases in aviation-related charges in Almaty. We started operating Ankara under the new concession since May, and the new concession came with higher passenger and security charges. All in all, these developments, which come on top of traffic growth, supported aviation's plus 5% revenue growth during the first nine months of the year. In ground handling, a significant portion of our expenses is in Turkish lira.
The high inflation in Turkey during the first nine months of the year increased our costs significantly and created a pressure and a need for us to increase prices, which we have been able to do. This is one of the main reasons why ground handling revenue increase came out at + 11%, which is much higher than Havas-related traffic growth, which reached + 4%. Our consolidated ground handling revenue includes non-Turkish airports as well, which have all been strong in ground handling revenue. Our catering operations enjoyed a very high revenue growth as it reached + 27%. The most important factor of explanation here is, of course, the start of BTA operations in Antalya, which effects can also be seen in area allocation, subsidies, and advertising revenue as well, with a +45% growth for this activity.
During the first nine months of the year, we also had a strong performance from our U.S. and Kazakh lounges, and even though we closed some unprofitable Spanish lounges, our lounge operations were still able to achieve an overall +14% growth. Concerning duty-free, the like-for-like spend per passenger without Antalya and Almaty grew +9% year- on- year. Antalya is still in a ramp-up phase, while Almaty was open just before the third quarter last year. We are just seeing the first full year effect in 2025. All these effects led to +18% growth in duty-free revenue. Finally, IT revenue grew +15% under the impulsion of TAV Technologies projects in Qatar. Car park revenue growth was muted because the Oman car park business was discontinued this year, while our EUR 11 million bus activity was impacted by Havas closure of its Adana station in Turkey.
When we look at operating expenses before EBITDA, which we usually refer to as cash OpEx, we can see that the increase was more moderate than revenue increase, +12% for cash OpEx versus +13% for revenue, which means that we have been able to achieve some operating leverage during the first nine months. Several factors helped in, starting with more favorable fuel trading conditions in Almaty, which was important. In addition to that, the start of the new concession in Ankara came with higher tariffs and made the airport more profitable without changing the cost base, which helped. The start of BTA's Antalya operations was helpful in margin expansion too during the third quarter. Generally speaking, a lot of assets delivered strong operating leverage during the third quarter, which I will discuss more in depth in the next page.
As we had guided in the beginning of the year, in 2025, we had higher depreciation and amortization expenses due to a higher number of passengers, the new terminal in Almaty, both the ends of the old concession and the start of the new concession in Ankara, as well as the start of BTA in Antalya and TAV operation services activities in New York. If we move on to the next page, you can see that we overall enjoyed very strong operating leverage in the third quarter, meaning that EBITDA growth was significantly higher than revenue growth and that we were able to improve our EBITDA margin year- on- year. The consolidated revenue grew 13% again, while consolidated EBITDA grew 18% in the third quarter, which you can see on the table to the left in light blue.
On the table to the right, you can see, again in light blue, the assets with EBITDA growth higher than revenue, namely Ankara, Gazi Pasha, North Macedonia, Almaty, Havas, and BTA. They all enjoyed operating leverage in the third quarter, but the most positive evolutions came from Ankara, + 58% EBITDA growth in connection with the new concession started in May, and BTA + 130% EBITDA growth, with again a clear positive effect from the start of operations in Antalya earlier this year. In our equity accounted investments, the real cash picture is much better than what the numbers suggest, but it needs to be explained by getting into, let's say, financial technicalities. In Antalya One, the amount we show in our P&L, it's net income after purchase price amortization. 2026, so basically next year.
We are amortizing this purchase price before Antalya's net profit comes over to the consolidated TAV P&L, so Antalya's accounting contribution to TAV net income is lower than its actual cash net income due to this non-cash accounting effect. The amount left to amortize is EUR 74 million until the end of 2026. In Antalya One, PPA amortization, which is completely non-cash, of course, was EUR 12 million higher compared to last year, and we had EUR 10 million higher deferred tax losses compared to last year. On the other hand, if we look at the cash picture, the dividend that we got so far from Antalya One this year is almost the same amount, EUR 54 million, that we had gotten last year. The cash generation capacity of the airport basically continues to be very strong.
New Antalya is providing duty-free and other commercial services in the new terminal and has started to make some real operational EBITDA, which is to that EUR 18 million in the third quarter. Therefore, if you look at the third quarter net income of New Antalya, which is EUR 3.3 million, it's mostly operational. We had a deferred tax gain of EUR 3.7 million in the third quarter. If we adjust for this, operationally, we were almost break-even in the third quarter with a fraction of the operations that we will enjoy in 2027. New Antalya also had EUR 21 million higher deferred tax losses this year compared to last year, mostly because of the spread between appreciation of euro TL and the movement of PPI inflation. This is again fully non-cash.
If we take a step back and look at the combined EBITDA of Antalya One and New Antalya together in the third quarter, it reached EUR 81 million, which is almost unchanged from last year, which was EUR 81.6 million. Overall, the operations in Antalya are actually pretty strong when considering a year that has been marked by flat international passenger traffic, as previously said by Serkan , and increased TL costs. On the slide, you can also see a sizable EUR 6 million surge in ATU's profitability in the third quarter. This is mostly due to ATU's Antalya operations, which helped in nearly doubling the net income in the third quarter and making it reach EUR 12.1 million. Last message here is about TGS, as the negative evolution of its contribution vs last year reflects the effects of less third-party sales, as well as the end of the COVID-19 related compensation.
When it comes to detailing the main reasons for the net income evolution during these first nine months of 2025, first, we have had a very strong double-digit EBITDA growth gain with operating leverage kicking in in the third and the second quarters specifically. We had higher D&A in connection with previously discussed reasons, and the equity accounted investments had EUR 33 million more deferred tax losses compared to last year and EUR 12 million more of purchase price amortization in Antalya. The operations here, as we discussed earlier, are actually organically very strong. We have suffered from EUR 26 million additional FX losses vs last year, which are mostly due to the appreciation of euros and which are also non-cash. Getting down to tax expense, deferred tax losses were EUR 36 million higher in 2025 than in 2024, when they were actually a gain.
These losses are non-cash and they are mostly associated with the widening of the spread between euro TL and inflation, the impact of a stronger euro on investment incentives, and the tax treatment of property, plants, and equipment in Almaty International Airport. Net-net, we can say that we had EUR 103 million more non-cash negative one-offs in nine months 2025 versus 2024, but most of this was already in the half-year P&L picture. If adjusted for the increase in non-negative non-cash one-offs, the net income for 2025 would have reached EUR 178 million, which is actually only 4% below last year. This point is actually reflected in the evolution of our free cash flow during the first nine months of the year, which reaches EUR 183 million for nine months 2025, and which is only 9% lower vs 2024. The next page is actually a good visual summary of the four discussed topics.
I'm seizing the opportunity of this page to follow up on net income trends. As you can see on the upper right side of the page, our third quarter net income after minority grew 21% vs the third quarter of last year. The one-off non-cash effects, which had a significantly negative impact during the first six months of the year, were EUR 8 million positive during the sole third quarter. Even adjusting for those, we enjoyed a very strong 12% year-on-year net income growth during the third quarter of 2025. Concerning our debt structure, you may remember that back in February 2022, while we were coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had communicated then a 2025 net debt to EBITDA guidance between 2.5 and 3.0.
I'm really happy to share as a first message that we are finally getting there at the tail end of a period of massive investments as our net debt as of September 30th accounts now for exactly 3.0 x our last 12 months EBITDA. The second information we wanted to share here is that we have maintained our net debt to EBITDA guidance, which is still to stand between 2.5 and 3.0 at the end of the year. The last message refers to cash generation, which was very strong across all assets in the third quarter. The only notable exception to this was Ankara. In Ankara, on one hand, we made some additional investments in the third quarter.
On the other hand, we generated higher revenue due to higher fees as part of the new concession, but we still have to collect this revenue, and all in all, this resulted in a ramp-up to a slightly higher new level of working capital in Ankara in the third quarter. Of course, this effect is a temporary one.
Okay, so now a bit about the investments. Page 11, Ankara Istanbul Airport. The investments have been completed. Ankara is, of course, a great asset, and we have invested in the air side of the airport to enable the long-term growth of the airport because the terminal capacity is good enough. There was a need for a new air traffic control tower and the second runway to accommodate the future growth of Ankara. As you may remember, the company was granted an additional concession of 25 years, which is ending by 2051. For that purpose, the tender also included investments mainly on the air side and navigation-related investments, which are completed. The terminal capacity of the airport is already sufficient for 30 million passengers. With the second runway and the other improvements we have made, the air side capacity is now much more above this number of 30 million.
We have been guiding our investors about Ankara's increased profitability due to the new concession. For a while, the metrics in the new concession changed, so we have a higher passenger fee collected from the tickets automatically, and we don't have a cap on this collection. That creates increased profitability for the new concession. We had a 9% year-over-year international growth in Ankara, but as you can see, due to the new concession, we now expect an EBITDA of EUR 45 million in Ankara for the full year, which is 67% higher than 2024 EBITDA. This is only the half-year effect of the new concession, which started in late May 2025. You'll see a bigger effect, hopefully, next year. I should add that the IFRS EBITDA in the new concession is before rent, but even adjusting for it, the growth is still excellent.
I move on to the next slide, which is related to ATU. On this slide, you can see several things that are taking place. Firstly, you can see a nice bump in ATU's EBITDA, which Karim also referred to. This is due to ATU's Antalya operations. ATU had EUR 17 million of EBITDA in the third quarter, which is 83% above the third quarter of last year. If we make the third quarter's comparison with last year, ATU's EBITDA is 83% above last year. The ramp-up in Antalya is not fully completed yet because ATU is now still doing the construction of the fashion stores and other various stores, which will have a full-year effect, hopefully, next year with the summer season. In the spent per passenger calculation, we added the effect of Almaty and Antalya, which you can see in the chart to the right.
The SPP is lower in these airports compared to typical TAV average. Their addition diluted our total number a bit. If we hadn't added the new operations to the calculation, the like-for-like SPP would actually be around EUR 10.3, which is 9% higher compared to last year. I move on to BTA. On this slide, you can again see the Antalya effect on BTA. There is also a very nice boost to EBITDA in the third quarter that you can see on the chart to the left. BTA's EBITDA increased by 130% year- over- year in the third quarter and reached EUR 18 million. On the right, again, you can see some dilution in SPP due to the addition of Antalya in the calculation. BTA's ramp-up in the airport is also continuing, and new restaurants will keep on opening as the 2027 summer season.
Again, just to remind, BTA currently operates almost in half of the terminals because the previous FMB concession will be leaving end of next year. It's not a full-year effect of BTA as well. I hand over to Karim for the guidance for 2025.
Thank you, Serkan. Before that, we open the Q&A session of the webcast. I would like to make an update about 2025 guidances. We are overall confirming our previous guidances for this year, exception made for the CapEx guidance, which we have transformed in order to reflect the progression of our works and analysis related to the Almaty Investment Plan. We now anticipate total 2025 CapEx to stand between EUR 220 million and EUR 240 million, precision being made that Almaty Investment Plan is expected to total around EUR 315 million, including around EUR 70 million in 2025, and to be mostly completed by the end of 2027.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session with questions submitted and received only in written format via the webcast main page. For your written questions, please visit the main page of the webcast link provided in your invitation. Mr. Ben Salem, please proceed with the questions received.
Yeah, let me take over first. I see a question coming from Melis Poçar, OYAK YATIRIM. I repeat the question, t aking into the importance of Georgia for the consolidated EBITDA, when do you expect the extension of concession talks to finalize? As you know, we had proposed the Georgian government an investment of approximately $150 million in Tbilisi Airport to increase the passenger capacity to 10 million passengers per year, and in exchange to extend the concession expiry date to at least 2031. Our concession in Tbilisi ends by January 2027, so we are talking about an additional five years of concession vs $150 million of investment in Tbilisi Airport. We are currently in advanced discussions with the local authority on this proposal. Commercial terms of the extension are also being negotiated.
We will be informing our investors if and when these negotiations become settled and the contract can be signed by both sides.
Another couple of questions from Melis Poçar that I can take. First one is the following. Given the high CapEx period you are in, do you plan to pay a dividend out of 2025 net income? The answer is yes. We had disclosed in April that TAV 's balance sheet is ready now for dividend payments, and the board intends to propose a dividend payment out of 2025 earnings to be paid in 2026. This is obviously a very important milestone for us, as you know. We are coming to the tail end of our ambitious investment program, and this is again a very important milestone for us to start to distribute dividends again. I have a second question from Melis Poçar , which is the following. With inflation accounting and investments made, estimation of equity pickup income and effective tax rate became extremely hard.
Can you elaborate on that? We have two major moving parts here. One refers to deferred tax losses. Large property, plant, and equipment balances on tax financials cause this movement. Due to inflation accounting, these balances are revalued with PPI, so it's actually beneficial for us. If the euro/TL exchange rate moves very fast compared to the movement of PPI, the euro value of these balances falls, which implies less depreciation and more tax in the future, and hence deferred tax losses and vice versa. These effects moved in our favor a bit, actually, in the third quarter. The other effect is a fixed loss, and it's based on USD assets of companies with non-USD functional currencies. It mostly refers to TGS and USD bank balances and receivables that we can have in Georgia, Tbilisi and Batumi.
The euro bond is a USD liability, and the swap is a USD asset, but the results of this movement in this are recorded under equity, so all in all, they do not have a P&L implication. The TL losses, they come from the currency projected deposits, tax receivables, and a very small balance of TL receivables because billing is made in Turkish lira in Turkey. The TL fixed losses cannot be actually larger than the interest income in these deposits, which is how they work. I have now a question from Erdem Kaylı from BNP Paribas TEB. Following your updated CapEx guidance, could you give us more color on your indebtedness metrics? What is your net debt target? As I said, for 2025, we have not changed the net debt to EBITDA guidance, so again, it's still 2.5- 3.
For 2026, sorry, we're still working on 2026 figures, so 2026 budget, basically. We're in the budget month, and the numbers are very dependent on what happens as a result of Georgian negotiations. I mean, it's more reasonable, it's better to wait and see the results of those discussions and actually to be more comfortable on other parameters as well before we start talking about 2026 net debts more specifically. This will be definitely a topic in the weeks to come. Another question that I have from Aytunç Uz from Ak Yatırım, which is, what is the reason of high EBITDA margin in BTA in the third quarter? On that one, this movement primarily reflects the commencement of our operations in Antalya in 2025.
BTA generated around EUR 80 million in revenue, around EUR 18 million in EBITDA during the third quarter of 2025, compared to EUR 48 million in revenue and EUR 8 million in EBITDA, if I remember well, during the same period of 2024. That's a big increase. BTA's ramp-up phase is ongoing in Antalya. It's expected to continue through 2027 with more stores being opened next year and, of course, in 2027, and we hope more contribution from that.
Okay, so I take over the next question, a question from Cenk Orcan, HSBC. Why is TGS EBITDA margin declining consistently over the years? Is it a single-digit margin operation going forward? Any change to contract terms with TK? This is primarily attributable to the conclusion of pandemic-related compensation at TGS and the loss of certain third-party clients. The current margin level could be considered normally a more, let's say, normalized baseline. Any potential onboarding of new third-party clients would have a positive impact, of course, on the EBITDA margin. The second question, again from Cenk Orcan, HSBC, why is new Antalya operation dilutive to per pack spend in F&B and duty-free? Is the dilution effect temporary or permanent due to Antalya passenger profile? SPP was impacted by the inclusion of Almaty duty-free and the ramp-up of ATU operations in Antalya.
On a like-for-like basis, if we exclude Almaty and Antalya, SPP for the first nine months of 2025 stood at EUR 10.3/ pack, which is a 9% year-on-year increase. Although the new international terminal in Antalya became operational in April, the opening of the new duty-free and the F&B outlets was a bit phased and with some completed as late as August this year. The number of duty-free outlets will continue to increase in Antalya. We hope to have the full-year effect next year. It's also worth noting that SPP in Antalya remains slightly below the portfolio average. It is primarily due to the limited presence of outbound traffic, which largely consists of Turkish passengers. Conversely, the Turkish passenger traffic continues to support higher SPP levels in Izmir and Bodrum.
In Antalya, the percentage of the Russian in the passenger mix is also an important factor in overall spend per pack because Russians are one of the stronger spenders among the non-Turkish Antalya passengers. As I presented in the main presentation set, we are lacking almost 5 million Russian and Ukrainian passengers at Antalya due to the ongoing war. Next question, again from Cenk Orcan, HSBC, are there any new projects you are chasing, assessing for potential bids? Yes, we do. The most important new project for us is, of course, the discussions for the Georgia extension. It's a major one, it's a big EBITDA contributor, as you know. The tender process in Kuwait Terminal 4 is still ongoing, and that's something that we are also following up. For Montenegro, we didn't submit a bid, and the preferred bidder is still not announced.
We are following the developments very closely in case the tender is canceled or the tender will be in. Other than those, we do not have any projects further down the pipeline that are in bidding stage or qualification stage, but we have projects that we are following, mainly in Central Asia, in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. Additionally, in Egypt, we expect the touristic airports like Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada to come up on the concession model, and we are following these projects as well.
We have another question from Julius Nickelsen , Bank of America, that I can take. What is the reason the Almaty Investment Plan was front-loaded to 2025-2027 vs 2025-2021 previously, and what tariff increase can we expect with these investments? Concerning the Almaty Investment Plan, if you remember well, we first guided on it last year in October 2024, and at that time, we were expecting it to be completed between, let's say, 2025 and 2028. The plan involves many stakeholders, many counterparts, many moving parts, as you can imagine, and we have been therefore fine-tuning, actualizing since then along with these stakeholders. Also, we are talking about Almaty, so harsh winter conditions, which make a constraint.
At the time, we took this into consideration and believed that part of the plan may spill over to 2029, sorry, but the way we see it now is that it would finish mostly in 2027 with some limited spillover in 2028. We have been updating the market on this as plans crystallize further and further, but as I said, it's a complex plan with many moving parts and parties, counterparts, moving parts, and it's also constrained by a very cold winter season, which can affect the progression of the plan. We have secured notable tariff increases aligned with our additional investments. These tariffs are expected to ramp up through 2030, rebalancing the airport's EBITDA mix from fuel sales towards a more, let's say, aviation-centric revenue airport.
Another question from Julius is, going forward, would you be open to adjust your dividend payout policy to make it less exposed to volatility in net income through non-cash FX impacts we have seen this year? This brings us to Turkish legislation. Turkish legislation has two dividend ceilings. Your current CMB financial net income and tax financial net income are the two most important dividend ceilings. You are also allowed to distribute retained earnings in the tax financials. The current dividend policy balances an approach between growth and income. On the other hand, obviously, the cash capacity of TAV Airports is stronger than what the net income suggests due to these non-cash effects. We are looking at all these moving parts carefully presently to understand our options that we may have going forward.
Okay, let me take Ashish Khetan' s question from Citi. In Almaty, traffic growth has slowed in the last 2-3 months. What are the main reasons behind it? Almaty International Airport's growth, of course, would have been much stronger if airlines weren't facing ongoing aircraft delivery challenges, and a lot of aircraft have engine problems, and they are grounded. As you may know from the industry, the majority of Air Astana flights are A321, Airbus 321, A321neo engines, which are Pratt & Whitney engines, which have a huge problem globally. Almost 10% of the aircraft globally of all airlines are grounded, and Air Astana is having the same problem as well. This is for us the main moving part right now in Almaty's traffic. We'll have new orders coming in this year and 2026.
Currently, airlines do not have enough aircraft that they can deploy due to these engine problems, and deliveries are not able to replace the lost capacity because of the grounded aircraft. In Almaty, currently, there are 11 grounded aircraft, which is quite a large number compared to the scale of Almaty. If you look at the international traffic growth, it was 6% in the first quarter, 10% in the second, and 7% in the third quarter. It's fluctuating depending on the aircraft's availability. Also, bear in mind that Air Astana and its subsidiary FlyArystan have British investors in the company, and they are also subject to sanctions. They don't fly to Russia; they don't fly over Russian territory, hoping that the war will be over. We will have a secondary boost other than this replacement of the aircraft with the release of the sanctions.
Air Astana is also expanding its fleet rapidly and has recently announced their plans for growth. They will grow their fleet from 63 aircraft in 2025 to 84 by 2029. Additionally, Kazakhstan air travel's propensity to fly is expected to triple by 2030. Demand is definitely there, but we have a supply bottleneck in the short run. Another question from Ashish is for Antalya. Traffic has seen some momentum in the last two months. Do we expect the same to continue for Q4? Good points. The beginning of the season was not so good, especially with the Israel-Gaza conflict escalating and also the Israel-Iranian conflicts in mid-June. However, because of the geopolitical context, hotel prices declined in July, which, as you rightly noted, led to a modest increase in traffic starting from August.
Also, September and October are becoming more and more a part of the longer summer season in Antalya. We have an extended season, so we have some deep peaking effect there as well. While this momentum may continue, it will not impact our assumptions as the fourth quarter is typically a low season. I think that concludes our Q&A session too. Thank you all for joining us for our webcast today, and we hope to see you in our events or in Istanbul very soon. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling and have a pleasant evening.