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year to link Istanbul in the northwest to the western port city of Izmir. It has been promoted as a milestone project in the joint delivery of infrastructure by the government and private sector in Turkey.
Construction consortium Otoyol said in late January last year that it had started seeking international advisers to value the project ahead of a possible stake sale.
The total value of the sale would depend on interest from potential buyers, according to a source spoken to by Reuters.
Italian contractor Astaldi has a stake of just under 19% in the project. However, it has been badly impacted by a downturn in Italy’s construction industry and is under a creditor protection scheme. It has already agreed to sell its 33% stake in the third Bosphorus Bridge to its Turkish partner, a move that will help it in a rescue plan.
Turkish firms Nurol Insaat, Ozaltin and Makyol each hold a 26.98% stake in the motorway consortium. Gocay, another Turkish company, has a 0.2% share.
The joint venture was awarded a 22-year and four month build, operate, transfer contract by the government in 2009. Total investment in the project was $7.3bn, including $5bn from debt, $1.5bn from equity and $800m from operational revenues.
Struggling Turkish budget carrier Atlasjet, among airlines that less than a year ago moved to Turkey’s new mega airport, has filed for bankruptcy. The airline halted all of its flights in November last year, stating that the switching of its services to Turkey’s new mega airport outside Istanbul earlier that year had caused it cash flow problems.
“With the transfer of flights to the new Istanbul airport from April 2019, there has been a sharp rise in logistics and operational costs, making it impossible to make up for our losses recorded in the 2016-17 period,” the company explained at that time.
The airline resumed operations in late December but suspended its flights to Europe until March.
The latest data from the airports authority DHMI underlined the difficulties local operators are facing. In the first month of 2020, the number of domestic air passengers plunged more than 9% on an annual basis to 7.8mn.
In the whole of 2019, the decline was 11.3% from the previous year to 100mn.
Logistics firm Netlog is targeting a 13% increase in revenues in real terms this year, Sahap Cak, its board chairman, has said. The company’s revenues stood at around $1bn last year. Cak noted that Netlog operates a total of 72 warehouses in Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands, the US, Britain and Dubai, employing more than 12,000 people. The company plans at least Turkish lira (TRY) 500mn (€75mn) worth of investments this year to expand its operations, Cak added. “This figure does not include possible acquisitions in Turkey or abroad,” he said. The company spends some TRY30mn each year on information technologies, Cak said, adding that it was investing $5mn to develop an electric delivery car.
9.2.3 Retail corporate news
62 TURKEY Country Report March 2020 www.intellinews.com
According to Deloitte’s annual Global Powers of Retailing 2020 report, A101’s revenue CAGR (compound annual growth rate) was 43.6%
