Shares of Sydney Airport Holdings Ltd (ASX: SYD) are soaring more than 2.4% higher today following the release of its February traffic performance.
The latest figures were impressively strong across the board and today's result continues to underpin the growth Sydney Airport has delivered over recent years.
The airport witnessed 3.29 million passengers transit through its doors during February – an increase of 10% over the previous month. For the year-to-date, passenger numbers have increased by 8.7% compared to the previous corresponding period in 2015.
International arrivals were particularly strong, driven by inbound tourists from China, USA, Korea, Japan and the UK. International departures also grew strongly with additional seat capacity helping to fly more passengers to Indonesia, Japan, Chile and China. Overall, monthly international passenger growth over the past 12 months has been increasing at 6.1% – a figure well above the historical long-term trend of the airport.
Additional seat capacity also helped to boost domestic passenger growth by 8.5% over the previous month and by 7.3% over the year to date.
While these numbers appear exceptionally strong on face value, investors need to factor in the additional day for the Leap year and that Lunar New Year celebrations occurred earlier this year, compared to last year. This obviously has helped to inflate the February figures, but nevertheless, they still appear fairly robust even once these factors are taken into account.
It is clear from these figures that the lower Australian dollar is helping to drive inbound tourists and this should be good news for other tourism related companies like Mantra Group Ltd (ASX: MTR), Crown Resorts Ltd (ASX: CWN), Sealink Travel Group Ltd (ASX: SLK) and Qantas Airways Limited (ASX: QAN).
Sydney Airport's recent growth in outbound travellers also provides further evidence that Australians will continue to travel domestically and internationally irrespective of movements in the currency. This should provide confidence to investors of Flight Centre Travel Group Ltd (ASX: FLT) and Webjet Limited (ASX: WEB), both of which are talked down when the Australian dollar depreciates.
Foolish takeaway
Today's figures from Sydney Airport further strengthens the case that it is probably the leading infrastructure stock on the ASX. Shareholders of Transurban Group (ASX: TCL) may argue this point, but I believe Sydney Airport has a slightly better growth outlook and additional levers it can pull to generate further growth over the medium term.
The shares have performed extremely well over the past five years, delivering shareholders an average annual return of 23%. Despite this, the shares look fully valued at current levels and I would wait for a dip in the share price before buying.
