A massive rally in its shares this year pushed the market value of Türkiye’s national carrier above that of the German flag carrier Lufthansa as of Monday, just days after its chairperson said gains were expected to continue.
Shares of Turkish Airlines (THY) skyrocketed by more than 592% this year, a rally that saw the market value of the carrier reach TL 191.4 billion ($10.26 billion), exceeding that of Lufthansa that stands at 9.28 billion euros ($9.73 billion).
The Turkish Airlines stock hit as much as TL 138.6 on Monday, up from some TL 20 at the beginning of the year. It traded at TL 134.2 as of 3 p.m. on Tuesday. The dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was at 13 at the end of last year and 18.63 on Tuesday.
On the other hand, the share price of Lufthansa soared by 25.7% from the beginning of this year.
Turkish Airlines aims for its shares to rise to $10 (around TL 186), its Chairperson Ahmet Bolat told reporters earlier this month, without giving a timeframe for the goal.
Backed by a boom in the freight business, the carrier managed to quickly overcome the COVID-19 fallout, boosted its profits and is inching closer to capacity levels seen before the pandemic.
It carried more than 60 million passengers in the first 10 months of this year, versus 36.2 million in 2021 and 63.1 million in 2019. The 6.6 million passengers in October alone came in parallel to that of 2019 before the pandemic halted travel.
Turkish Airlines reported a net profit of TL 38.5 billion for the January-September period, an increase of about 517% from some TL 6.2 billion in 2021. The same figure stood at TL 2.5 billion in 2019.
As of the third quarter of the year, its total revenues came in at $6.1 billion, exceeding that from 2019 by 52%, while air cargo revenues surged by 110% to approximately $880 million.
The carrier’s net profit was $1.5 billion in the July-September quarter.
In contrast, Lufthansa’s post-pandemic recovery was not easy as it struggled to stay afloat.
While the pandemic caused a major crisis for the global aviation industry, the Lufthansa Group, which also owns Eurowings, Swiss, Brussels and Austrian Airlines, came to the point of bankruptcy.
The governments of Switzerland, Austria and Belgium, and especially the German government, saved the company from bankruptcy by providing a 9-billion-euro lifeline in public funding in 2020.
Due to the decline in passenger demand during the pandemic, it was difficult for airline companies to raise funds through a capital increase.
With passenger demand recovering, Lufthansa Group raised 2.14 billion euros in October 2020 to pay back a part of the public rescue package.
On the other hand, Lufthansa Group announced an operating profit for the first time since the pandemic crisis in the third quarter of 2021, as flight demand increased following the lifting of global travel restrictions.
