FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Despite a growing appetite for travel in the wake of the Corona crisis, the share price of tourism group Tui is going downhill. In the wake of a long-announced capital increase to repay state aid, the securities went down to a record low of 5.836 euros on Tuesday. The fresh money from investors was practically pulverized in recent weeks.

By issuing around 329 million new shares, Tui raised 1.8 billion euros as planned, according to a spokesman. The travel company got rid of the last nine percent of these shares on Tuesday with a so-called short placement - at 5.60 euros per share. On the stock exchange, the old shares were last traded above the 6 euro mark in the afternoon at 6.41 euros. By way of comparison, five years ago the price was more than 60 euros, adjusted for the various capital measures, according to Bloomberg.

Adding up the value of the shares, which will in future total slightly more than half a billion, the Tui Group is now valued on the stock exchange at a total of just under 3.3 billion euros. This is practically the same as at the beginning of December, before Tui announced the capital increase that has now been completed. This was also preceded by a consolidation of the previous shares at a ratio of ten to one: Those who previously held ten shares now only had one. Five years ago, the Group was worth just under twelve billion euros; before the Corona pandemic at the end of 2019, it was worth around seven billion euros.

Capital increases are now nothing new for Tui shareholders. After all, the current one was already the fourth since the beginning of the Corona crisis. At that time, travel restrictions as a result of the pandemic had temporarily brought the travel business to a complete standstill, and the German state saved the travel giant from going under with financial injections worth billions.

In the meantime, the vacation business is up and running again, and Tui intends to use the money from the current capital increase to repay the last of the aid money. This should significantly shrink the company's mountain of debt and thus its future interest burden.

However, industry expert Jamie Rollo of investment bank Morgan Stanley advised investors last week to continue avoiding Tui shares. His colleague Oliver Wojahn of Alsterresearch, on the other hand, saw the recent drop in the share price as an opportunity to enter the market. He attributes a price target of 18 euros to the papers. To achieve this, the price would have to roughly triple from the current perspective.

One crux of the capital raising this time was the exclusion of Tui's long-time major shareholder Alexei Mordashov, who before the capital increase still held slightly more than 30 percent of Tui shares. The Russian oligarch had played a major role in previous capital measures, helping to save the Group during the pandemic.

However, as a result of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, he is no longer allowed to invest in Tui. This is because the EU had placed Mordashov on its sanctions list at the end of February 2022. According to voting rights notifications, he transferred the lion's share of his shares to his wife Marina Mordashova via an investment company.

According to Tui, however, this transfer is "pending invalid" - because the German Federal Ministry of Economics initiated an investigation under the Foreign Trade and Payments Act just over a year ago. The capital increase significantly reduces the share of the Russian investor.

Tui's management tried to allay investors' concerns at the beginning of April with the news that it would itself participate in the capital increase. Accordingly, the members of the Executive Board have exercised their subscription rights in full. Supervisory Board Chairman Dieter Zetsche reportedly subscribed to 8600 new shares, and with around 28,800 shares he is already the largest shareholder of all members of the Executive Board and Supervisory Board./stw/zb/he