An increase in the number of passengers passing through its gates has caused the Sydney Airport Holdings Pty Ltd (ASX: SYD) share price to rise. At the time of writing, the Sydney Airport share price is $5.80 – 3.48% higher than yesterday's closing price.
The take-off followed the release of the airport's traffic performance report for April 2021 which found domestic travel is only down 34.8% compared to April 2019.
Let's take a look at how many travellers passed through what is normally Australia's busiest airport last month.
Taking to the sky
Sydney Airport noticed an increase in traffic in both its international and domestic terminals last month.
53,000 people travelled through Sydney's international terminal last month, which is 21.7% more than in April 2020.
For comparison, the airport only saw 33,000 international travellers in March 2021.
This increase in movement could be down to the travel agreement between Australia and New Zealand. The two-way quarantine-free travel bubble began on 19 April. It meant that, for the first time since COVID-19 closed many international borders, Australians and New Zealanders could freely travel out of their countries.
While the number of international passengers seems to be improving, it's still 96.2% fewer than that of April 2019.
Sydney Airport stated that the number of international travellers is unlikely to improve again until the Federal Government eases international travel restrictions.
The airport's total passenger traffic was down 58.1% compared to April 2019. That's an improvement on both March (down 68%) and February (down 79%).
When it came to domestic travel, slightly less than two thirds of the airport's normal operations have resumed.
Last month, 1.48 million people passed through Sydney Airport while travelling within Australia.
Sydney Airport share price snapshot
So far, 2021 hasn't been good to the Sydney Airport share price on the ASX.
Currently, it's down 10.45% year to date. Though, it's gained 3.89% since this time last year.
After the travel restrictions brought on by COVID-19, the airport has an eye-watering price-to-earning (P/E) ratio of 92.59. It also has a market capitalisation of around $15 billion, with approximately 2.7 billion shares outstanding.
