Queenstown Airport Corporation's end-of-year financial result was described as ''not spectacular but solid'' by chief executive Scott Paterson yesterday.
The financial statement for the year ended June 30 showed a net tax-paid profit of $5.27 million, compared with a profit of $5.17 million the previous year, with a year end dividend of $3.63 million, up slightly from $3.58 million in 2012.
Revenue grew 7.7% from $18.2 million to $19.6 million, underpinned by an overall increase in passenger numbers - up 14.5% to 1,198,918 for the financial year.
Mr Paterson said the challenges facing the airport came down to passenger volume.
Although the financial statement showed domestic passengers had increased overall, by 12.4% to 957,204, in the past three months they had declined.
''The cause of that is Jetstar's withdrawal from Christchurch.
''From the beginning of September, Jetstar has withdrawn from Wellington - we'll start to see the implications of that immediately.''
Mr Paterson said the airport and Destination Queenstown were ''pushing Air New Zealand for more capacity'', but the flip side of the decline was the growth in international visitors.
More volume had come via Jetstar's transtasman services, which last month rose almost 20%.
''For July, Queenstown was the second largest region of Australian visitors in the country, behind Auckland.
''We expect that will probably continue through August.''
However, the issue for the airport was how to handle the growth, and looking at if it needed to build, and if so where and most importantly when.
''We think domestic volume, year on year, could fall and we think international volume will grow ... they'll cancel each other out.
''We will be working on plans for addressing both increasing international volume and trying to stimulate domestic capacity.''
Total capital expenditure for the year was $5.7 million ($8.6 million in 2012), primarily comprising an extension of the international departure facilities, a new and enhanced Koru lounge and completion of a new rental car facility.
While the completion of the projects allowed QAC to manage growth in passenger numbers, they also resulted in increases in both depreciation and amortisation, up $0.9 million, and funding costs, up $0.3 million, which reflected a ''timing lag'' between project completion and an uplift in earnings.
The consequence was a net profit after tax of 2.1%.
''We would like to have had some more, but extra depreciation in assets will result in better performance in this current year.
''We're starting to see that improved performance coming through already.''
