InfraBridge has put its planned sale of a minority stake in Newcastle Airport on hold, three sources familiar with the situation said.

The decision to shelve the sale of the 49% stake comes after offers received from potential buyers failed to meet expectations, the sources said.

A team led by Vision Invest, the Saudi Arabian investment group, had been in advanced talks about acquiring the stake but withdrew from the process, the sources said.

Mid-market infrastructure investor InfraBridge, a division of digital infrastructure-focused investor DigitalBridge, last year appointed JPMorgan to advise on the sale of the stake in the airport, which is majority-owned by seven local authorities, including the City of Newcastle.

InfraBridge, which DigitalBridge formed following its 2023 acquisition of AMP Capital’s infrastructure business to hold the non-digital assets as well as some digital ones, and Vision Invest did not respond to requests for comment.

Newcastle Airport, in its most recent available accounts for 2023, reported EBITDA of GBP 45.8m on revenue of GBP 79.1m. Newcastle Airport had 5.2 million passengers in 2024 and recently said this could rise to 9 million.

Aside from its Newcastle Airport stake, InfraBridge also owns Leeds-Bradford Airport and had previously been planning to sell the asset following the sale of Newcastle Airport, the sources said.

InfraBridge also co-owns the concession to the much larger London Luton Airport with Spanish airports group Aena, which had also been circling the recent Newcastle Airport stake sale. A sale process for the Luton stake would be complicated by the fact that the concession expires in 2032, sources said.

While the Newcastle Airport stake sale is on hold, there has been a flurry of other deals in the UK sector lately. Valuations have ranged from a low double digit EBITDA multiple that ICG Infrastructure recently agreed to pay for Regional & City Airports (RCA), the operator of Bournemouth, Exeter and Norwich Airport, to the 21x EBITDA that AviAlliance last year paid Ferrovial and Macquarie for the operator of Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton Airports.