There are errors that happen only once – owing to an accountant's rush at the end of the year. And there are errors that repeat for three consecutive reporting periods, pass through three different audit inspections, and receive an unqualified positive opinion three times. It is precisely the second scenario that is discovered in the financial statements of JSC "Khiuaz Dospanova International Airport" – a natural monopoly entity in the Atyrau region, 100% owned by the state, where questions arise both regarding the calculation of earnings per share and regarding certain inter-form reconciliations and disclosures.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE BASIC EARNINGS PER SHARE CALCULATION
The internal arithmetic of each of the main forms – the balance sheet, the income statement, and the cash flow statement – reconciles across all three periods. The figures within the balance sheet itself or within the income statement itself are not contradictory. The problems begin where data from one form should match data from another or from the notes.
The key finding is the basic earnings per share (EPS) calculation. For 2022, 325.96 tenge is declared; for 2023, 274.9 tenge; and for 2024, 257.39 tenge. When dividing net profit by 857,698 shares, these figures simply do not result: for example, for 2023, net profit of KZT 188.9 million yields KZT 220.3 per share, not the stated 274.9. However, if instead of net profit one divides total comprehensive income (that is, profit plus revaluation of fixed assets) by the number of shares, the match is absolutely exact – to the nearest hundredth. The same calculation method, it appears, was also applied in the 2025 reporting. This is a direct divergence from the methodology of International Accounting Standard (IAS) 33 "Earnings per Share", which requires using, in the calculation of basic earnings per share, precisely the profit attributable to holders of ordinary shares of the parent entity, not comprehensive income. In 2024, the published EPS is 31.5% higher than the figure obtained when calculating from the profit for the year.
The recurrence of the violation is a far more alarming signal than the mere fact of the error. A one-off inaccuracy in a form could be explained by human factors. But an EPS calculation methodology using comprehensive rather than net income, reproduced for at least four consecutive years (2022–2025) and confirmed by three audit inspections, points to a systemic rather than a random cause: either the calculation template in the company's accounting system was initially configured incorrectly and has never been reviewed by anyone, or the auditor year after year fails to focus on this methodological detail when issuing an unmodified opinion.
WHAT ELSE THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS REVEAL
Beyond EPS, the financial statements reveal individual discrepancies and technical inconsistencies. In 2023, the movement on loans does not reconcile with the change in their carrying amount: the difference between these figures amounts to KZT 31.1 million and is not explained directly by the data presented in the financial statements. In the leasing component for 2023, by contrast, the figures presented in note 12 are themselves arithmetically consistent: depreciation expense on the right-of-use asset amounts to KZT 530 thousand, interest expense on lease liabilities is KZT 2.4 million, and their total is KZT 2.9 million. The problem here, however, is not in the addition but in the very figure of the interest expense: KZT 2.4 million coincides exactly with the amount of accumulated depreciation of the right-of-use asset from the same note and is almost three times the amount of finance costs on leases – KZT 793 thousand. Such a coincidence looks more like the wrong figure having been copied into the interest expense cell by mistake than like two independently calculated and simply different indicators.
The financial dynamics here are also of interest. Revenue grew by 14.5% in 2024, but net profit simultaneously declined by 11.2%, since cost of sales was growing faster than revenue, and short-term borrowings over the same year increased 2.5 times – from KZT 142.9 to KZT 362 million. Such a combination (growing debt burden against a backdrop of shrinking margins) is not in itself a violation, but it creates a context in which the accuracy and completeness of information disclosure acquire heightened importance for all those assessing the financial position of the monopoly operator.
Moreover, Atyrau airport is not an ordinary private enterprise but a natural monopoly entity with a state owner. Until the end of 2023, 100% of the shares were registered to the Atyrau region finance department; subsequently, the function of representing the shareholder's interests passed to the passenger transport and highways department, although the 2024 financial statements did not fully reflect this change – the note on the shareholder continued to refer to the 2019 deed of gift without explaining how ownership rights and management rights relate to one another.
HOW THIS COMPARES AGAINST ASTANA AND ALMATY
It is worth recalling that regarding Astana airport, the state audit recorded 27 items of violations, the key one being the procurement of equipment bypassing the approved financial and economic feasibility study for KZT 395.4 million, and part of the episodes reached court instances at all levels, which the airport consistently lost, right up to the cassation panel of the Supreme Court. The court even sent the case materials to the transport prosecutor in the anti-corruption agency to check for signs of a criminal offence.
Regarding Almaty airport, the issue was not one-off procurements but the quality of information disclosure amid a generally growing business. In all three reports – for 2023, 2024 and 2025 – the wording about the licence that had already expired on 27 June 2025 is repeated verbatim, and the amount of liabilities under the new terminal construction contract remained unchanged between the 2023 and 2024 reports, even though the terminal itself was commissioned in May 2024. Separately, an escalation was recorded there, when in 2025 the company breached both bank covenants instead of just one a year earlier, and the internal state audit committee in 2023 ordered the return of KZT 6.78 billion in dividends paid in 2021–2022 from profits of 2015 and 2017.
Against this backdrop, the picture for Atyrau airport is qualitatively different. Here there are neither court decisions, nor state audit orders, nor prosecutorial signals. The very nature of the discrepancies identified is also different – these are questions concerning the EPS calculation methodology and individual inconsistencies between indicators in various forms and notes to the financial statements.
