Lufthansa is selling its payment service provider Airplus to the Swedish bank SEB for 450 million euros. “Following the agreements that have already been reached – on the sale of the LSG Group in April and most recently on a stake in ITA – the sale of AirPlus is the next major step in the Lufthansa Group’s strategy of concentrating on its core business in the future,” said Lufthansa -CFO Remco Steenbergen on Wednesday. The completion of the sale, which is targeted for the first half of 2024, will have a positive impact on Lufthansa’s operating margin and return on investment.
According to insiders, Lufthansa had originally hoped for proceeds of one billion euros when the sale was considered around two years ago. But the service provider for travel expense management, which has around 53,000 corporate customers in 55 countries, suffered from the slump in air traffic in the corona pandemic. Business travel is recovering from the crisis more slowly than tourism. Last year, Airplus halved its operating loss to 74 million euros.
Before the 2019 pandemic, the company, based in Neu-Isenburg near Frankfurt, earned two million euros with sales of 300 million euros. The separation from the marginal business is to be welcomed from the point of view of investors, explained Alex Irving, analyst at Bernstein Research. The aviation experts at Barclays had expected sales proceeds of only 50 million euros due to the weak earnings.
Strategically, Lufthansa is making progress in transforming itself from an aviation group into a pure airline group. SEB sees good opportunities for its subsidiary SEB Kort to benefit from economies of scale through the purchase of Airplus, said SEB boss Johan Torgeby. The company wants to take advantage of growth opportunities in the rapidly changing market and promote the development of a secure digital payment market in Europe.