For two months now, the FBK editorial team has been analysing the financial statements of Kazakhstan's largest airports. We started with Astana airport, and we are finishing the series with it too. At the time, we did not suspect that the capital's airport would turn out to be the most difficult interviewee, and that its 2025 statements would become the best illustration of the main conclusion of the whole series: the bottom-line figure in a report sometimes says more about the accounting than about the business itself.
HOW ASTANA AIRPORT REFUSED TO ANSWER FBK'S QUESTIONS
When in August FBK published its analysis of the statements of JSC "Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport" for 2023-2024, our editorial team had questions about a dispute the airport lost over KZT 395.4 million. We sent official requests to the airport itself and to the Committee for Internal State Audit (CISA) of the Ministry of Finance. The committee responded to the request in detail, while the airport refused to respond at all. According to its version, the request signed by the editor-in-chief was not accompanied by a document confirming that the signatory's authority was valid on the date of the request.
The Ministry of Culture and Information (MCI), at FBK's request, clarified to Astana airport that the list of grounds for refusal in Article 36 of the Law "On Mass Media", which the company itself had so persistently cited, is exhaustive and contains no such requirement, and sent the airport a letter of recommendation. The airport, however, held its ground. A response came only after the transport prosecutor's office had already forwarded to the airport the very document that had allegedly been missing. But even then the company continued to insist that FBK's request did not comply with paragraph 1 of Article 36, even though that paragraph says nothing at all about how requests should be formatted.
Incidentally, at the other end of the openness scale was Atyrau airport. Having received our questions about a recurring error in the calculation of earnings per share, it openly acknowledged a technical error for 2022–2023 and an incorrect disclosure of interest expense on leases, and promised to correct both items in its next statements. Acknowledging an error is not easy for a state company, so against that backdrop the silence of the capital's airport looked especially conspicuous.
WHAT DID NOT ADD UP IN ASTANA AIRPORT'S 2024 STATEMENTS
Astana airport apparently had reasons for caution. The auditor, Finex-Standart LLP, did not give assurance on the company's inventories and property, plant and equipment — that is, roughly 80% of assets. Revenue of the fuel supply complex (FSC) fell over the year from KZT 39.2 billion to KZT 22 billion, and the statements did not explain why. An instalment plan under a CISA order turned into accounting income: the difference between the amount of the debt and its present value, about KZT 64.9 million, was booked to profit.
Behind the dry wording about a violation of the Budget Code, as CISA explained, lay the purchase of four sweeper-blower machines. The approved project justification assumed KZT 234 million per unit, while the airport paid KZT 340.6 million. According to customs declarations, two of the four machines cost about KZT 154–156 million. The court's ruling stated that the equipment had been purchased at an excessively inflated price. The airport lost in three instances, the last of which put an end to the matter on 10 January 2025. The court of first instance issued a private ruling and referred the circumstances of the case to the transport prosecutor and to the Anti-Corruption Agency for review.
WHAT ASTANA AIRPORT'S 2025 STATEMENTS SHOWED
Now for 2025. Astana airport's revenue grew by 28.7%, from KZT 52.2 billion to KZT 67.2 billion, and almost 44% of it was brought in by the FSC (KZT 29.3 billion, although it still has not reached its 2023 level). Expenses grew faster than income. Cost of sales added 30.8%, administrative expenses rose by 54.1%. Operating profit fell by 12.3%, to KZT 3.4 billion, and the share of gross profit in revenue declined from 12.3% to 10.9%.
The dynamics of salaries are also noticeable. Labour costs and related payments within cost of sales and administrative expenses rose by 47.6%, to KZT 21 billion, while headcount grew by only 1.1% (2,351 people versus 2,326 at the end of the year).
The loss before tax amounted to KZT 5.2 billion, and after tax it rose to KZT 6.9 billion. The tax expense of KZT 1.7 billion relates to deferred tax; current tax is shown as a dash in the note. To understand where the loss came from, one has to look at the notes. As at 31 December 2025, the airport revalued its property, plant and equipment using Asset Valuation Centre LLP, mainly by the cost method: the valuer calculated how much it would cost to build or buy the same asset today, net of depreciation. Accumulated depreciation of KZT 71.1 billion was written off, and the carrying amount of property, plant and equipment rose by 4.7%, to KZT 90.8 billion.
Under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), an increase in the value of an asset is recorded in equity, while an impairment in excess of the previous reserve goes to profit or loss. Therefore KZT 10.9 billion of positive revaluation ended up in equity, while the income statement showed an impairment of KZT 10.5 billion and a partially offsetting reversal of KZT 4.2 billion. The net effect was about KZT 6.3 billion, and without it the result before tax would have been positive, at about KZT 1 billion. That is why total comprehensive income, that is, the result including the revaluation, came out positive at KZT 4 billion.
Within the "buildings and structures" group there is simultaneously an upward revaluation of KZT 4.8 billion and an increase in impairment from KZT 3.4 billion to KZT 7.4 billion. This happens when some assets have risen in value and others have not, but the notes do not explain which ones.
There also remain questions that the statements do not answer. The notes on events after the reporting date state that, by a decision of the board of directors dated 29 April 2026, an interest-free repayable loan of KZT 2 billion was provided in connection with a transaction with JSC "Bus Fleet No. 1", repayable by 31 December 2026. That is about 15% of the airport's cash at the end of 2025, and the text does not state directly who provided the funds to whom. The provision for legal claims rose from KZT 131.8 million to KZT 931.7 million without any explanation of what those claims are. And dividends of KZT 823.1 million were paid in a year of loss, and it is not stated either out of which profit.
WHAT THIS MEANS
If you put these several years together, a picture emerges in which the operating business is working and generating money: cash flow from operating activities amounted to KZT 6.1 billion, debts are being repaid, and the debt-to-equity ratio fell from 0.44 to 0.38. But the bottom-line result is increasingly dependent on valuations and accounting judgements, while expenses are meanwhile growing faster than revenue. If the valuation of assets based on unobservable inputs continues to change, Astana's bottom line will again be affected by revaluation and impairment, regardless of the number of flights.
WHAT NINE KAZAKHSTANI AIRPORTS SHOWED
Astana was only the first of the nine stories studied by FBK. We analysed the statements of the airports of Astana, Almaty, Shymkent, Atyrau, Aktobe, Karaganda, Aktau, Pavlodar and Ust-Kamenogorsk, and noticed several recurring patterns.
The most persistent of them is that the bottom-line figure in a report often does not equal money. In Aktau, the net profit of 2023 and 2024 (KZT 39.3 million and KZT 616.5 million) was provided by a tax saving, and when that effect disappeared, in 2025 the airport posted a loss of KZT 315.7 million. In Karaganda, equity in 2024 turned positive not because of profit but because of the accounting treatment of a bond discount of KZT 6.1 billion, and in 2025 it went back into the red, to −KZT 528 million. In Shymkent, the record profit of 2023 was provided by the sale of a land plot for KZT 900 million, while in Pavlodar the loss was held at KZT 39.5 million by other income of KZT 484.2 million, the composition of which the statements do not disclose.
The second pattern relates to the fact that revenue growth does not guarantee growth in the result, especially when revenue is driven by fuel resale. Shymkent's revenue grew almost fivefold, from KZT 3.3 billion to KZT 15.5 billion, but more than 70% of it came from fuel, and the net margin fell from 6.7% to 0.86%. Karaganda increased revenue from KZT 7.5 billion to KZT 9.9 billion, but a profit of KZT 373 million was replaced by a loss of KZT 1 billion. Almaty increased revenue from KZT 200.9 billion to KZT 285.6 billion, while net profit stayed almost flat: KZT 36.2 billion in 2023 and KZT 35.5 billion in 2025. Ust-Kamenogorsk turned out to be a rare exception: revenue grew by 37.4%, to KZT 3.2 billion, the 2024 loss was replaced by a profit of KZT 208.6 million, and cash in accounts almost doubled, from KZT 302 million to KZT 600 million.
The third pattern concerns how airports calculate and present their own figures. In Atyrau, earnings per share were calculated from comprehensive income for years, and in 2024 the deviation reached 31.5%. In Almaty, the amount of the liability under the terminal contract, KZT 33.9 billion, turned out to be identical in the reports for two different years. In Shymkent, accounts payable in one note equals KZT 946 million, and in another KZT 1.7 billion. In Karaganda, the 2025 loss in the primary statements is KZT 1.051 billion, while in the note it is KZT 1.083 billion.
Different airports, different owners and different scale led us to one conclusion: between "formatted to the required form" and "clear and verifiable" there lies a distance that so far has to be covered by journalists rather than by the reports themselves. It is worth recalling, however, that airports often live on tariffs and budget money, so their statements should be readable without detective work, and questions about them should still receive answers.
