PETALING JAYA: Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) has enough cash to take it through for more than a year if its recovery gets derailed by the possibility of a resurgence in Covid-19 cases in Sabah and Sarawak.

       In a report yesterday, TA Research noted that Sabah and Sarawak contributed about 13.1% and 11.5% of passenger movements, respectively, in 2019.

       Should the pandemic in Sabah and Sarawak get out of hand, this could pose a threat to the recovery in passenger movements this year.

       Nonetheless, the positive development in vaccinations has enabled the Klang Valley to move into phase two of the National Recovery Plan.

       The drop in daily Covid cases in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur suggests that more economic sectors will be reopened soon and this bodes well for air travel, particularly if international borders are re-opened.

       MAHB continued to struggle with the pandemic and border closures in August, recording only 296,000 passenger movements for the month.

       For the first eight months of the year, the decline in passenger movements was little changed at 84.1%, compared to 84.4% a month ago, to 3.5 million.

       The research house still believes its 2021 traffic projections are achievable, as Malaysia is set to open more domestic travel bubbles if the Langkawi travel bubble is declared a success in September.

       It made no changes to its traffic forecast and maintained its financial year 2021 (FY21)-FY23 earnings projections. It also kept its “buy’’ recommendation on MAHB with an unchanged target price of RM7.49 a share.