Heathrow owners, reportedly including the Caisse de depot, sell down

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A handful of investors — including Spain’s Ferrovial SE and reportedly Canada’s Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec — have sold down their holdings in the company that controls London’s Heathrow Airport in a transaction valued at £3.3 billion.

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The two buyers are French private equity firm Ardian, which picked up 22.6 per cent of Heathrow’s holding company FGP TopCo Ltd., and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which took a 15 per cent stake in TopCo.

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Ferrovial initially struck a deal in November 2023 to sell a 25 per cent stake to Ardian and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), but a handful of Heathrow’s institutional investors exercised tag-along rights to the sale. These included Quebec’s Caisse de dépôt, according to a Financial Times story in June. A revised agreement in June bumped up the sale to nearly 38 per cent of Heathrow’s holding company and saw those tag-along investors agree to sell into the transaction on a pro-rata basis.

A spokesperson for the Caisse declined to comment Thursday.

The Caisse acquired its stake in Heathrow in 2006 as part of a consortium of institutional investors that paid $24.7 billion for the world’s largest airport operator, BAA. Since then, the Caisse has gradually sold down its position in the prized airport, but retained a 12 per cent stake valued at more than $1.5 billion as of last December.

In a statement in June, Ardian said the Heathrow sellers would retain shares representing 10 per cent of the issued share capital of TopCo, the holding company, in pro rata proportions, following completion of the transaction. In a separate statement at the time, Ferrovial said it would retain a 5.3 per cent stake.

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In a news release Thursday, Ardian called Heathrow “an iconic global infrastructure asset,” adding that the acquisition will bolster the private equity firm’s airport holdings. Ardian specializes in certain sectors including transportation and aviation and has stakes in six airports in Italy.

The travel industry was rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic and many airports had to take on additional debt as passenger numbers cratered. But Ardian executive Alexis Ballif, managing director of infrastructure and transport, said in an interview Thursday that Heathrow now has more passengers than it had pre-pandemic. He added that the balance sheet has been shored up following additional cash demands during the pandemic.

Still, the conditions have made it an opportune time to invest, said Mathias Burghardt, head of infrastructure at Ardian.

“The timing was good,” Burghardt said in an interview. “We see a growth because we are convinced that we can improve the business.”

Burghardt said Ardian is keen to invest further in areas where the private equity firm specializes, including in select transport assets and digital infrastructure. He said Canada is a priority for the firm’s American fund and investments have been made in battery and storage companies.

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“Canada is certainly a target. Obviously there is not as many opportunities to invest in infrastructure (as) most of them are publicly owned,” he said.

Her directions in the spring budget specifically mentioned airports, most of which operate through private, not-for-profit airport authorities with the federal government acting as landlord.

In an indication of the still-rocky valuations for airports in the aftermath of the pandemic, the renegotiated deal with the tag-along shareholders values Heathrow at less than the price implied by the initial 25 per cent purchase agreement for £2.4 billion a year ago.

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But airport activity has picked up in recent months, with Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) a buyer of airports in a recent transaction that also involved Ferrovial. PSP’s wholly-owned airports platform AviAlliance acquired AGS Airports from Ferrovial and Macquarie in a transaction with an enterprise value of £1.5 billion. AGS operates airports in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton.

• Email: bshecter@nationalpost.com

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