Manston is a poor investment
No quarter? Manston's impending doom
Infratil's sale of Fullers ferries is part of a retreat from under-performing businesses to repay debt.
The infrastructure investor yesterday announced that subsidiary NZ Bus is selling its interest in Fullers for $40 million to Souter Holdings, majority owned by Stagecoach co-founder Brian Souter. Infratil will retain its NZ Bus operations in Wellington, Hutt Valley, Auckland and Whangarei.
Infratil says the deal was part of a programme of divestments which would realise more than $100 million in this financial year. The money would be used to repay debt of about $1.2 billion including infrastructure bonds, perpetual bonds and bank debt. Infratil executive Tim Brown said the $100 million also included exercising the right to sell Lubeck Airport in Germany, worth about $60 million, and the sale of some bus depot properties in Auckland.
"In this environment we do have to look at recycling some capital and cut back on where you can't see them generating strong returns. The short term for us is going to be debt repayment but in the medium term there are various opportunities."
He would not comment directly on one analyst's suggestion that Infratil's other under-performing European airports could be next but said it was hard to run with a loss on a low-return asset in the current environment. Around 75% of Infratil's investments, including Wellington Airport and TrustPower, were performing well, Brown said. "You have to say to yourself, can you have 25% of the business not generating a return? In this type of environment you can't." New Zealand Herald, 7th April 2009
I suspect that our local kerfuffle may soon be academic: Infratil withdraw, TDC look daft, and we all wonder what to do with 2.75km of runway. Out of curiosity, do any of my better informed readers have any idea what the current market value of Manston would be, either as a 'working' airport or as a generic light industrial site.
Future, Investment
Reader Comments (5)
And here's a follow up question. If Manston does go on the market soon (you can bet it isn't in the 75% of Infratil's solid performers) it'll go on at a cheap price. How do we persuade KCC to summon up the money and the balls to buy it for development as a solar panel farm; a wind farm; sustainable eco-housing (thus getting the Government off their back re housing targets); anything but an airport? In public hands, we've got a better chance of checking that, whatever use that the land is put to, it's done with more care for the local environemnt.
In these post-Kyoto eco-aware, planet-friendly times, isn't every national and continental purse spilling cash in the general direction of anything even slightly green and renewable? If KCC don't have all the necessary readies, perhaps Westminster, Brussels (even Camelot!) could help them out.
Wind Farm? I can see the Acol, Manston, Minster and Monkton NIMBYs registering their blogs already!
A wind farm would be just the ticket!
What is a solar panel farm? Everyone knows you can only grow cauliflowers in Thanet.