Good morning, and welcome to the Qantas Half Year 2022 Investor and Analyst briefing. Can I first of all acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. My name is Filip Kidon, and I am the Head of Investor Relations for the Qantas Group. I would like to welcome Alan Joyce, our Group Chief Executive Officer, and Vanessa Hudson, our Group Chief Financial Officer. I will now hand over to Alan for opening remarks.
Thanks, Phil, and thanks for joining us today on the Qantas Group Half Year 2020 Investor and Analyst briefing. As Phil said, I'm joined by Vanessa Hudson, the Group Chief Financial Officer, who will help me combing through with the questions and with the numbers. We're also joined by every member of the GMC, and I'm going to introduce them here today. There's Andrew McGinnes, who's in charge of government and corporate affairs. We have Rob Marcolina, who's in charge of strategy, technology, and people. Gareth Evans, who's Group Chief Executive of the Jetstar Group. We've got Andrew David, who's CEO of Qantas Domestic and International. We've got John Gissing, who's CEO of QantasLink and also airline supporting services, including safety. Andrew Finch, who's the Legal Counsel, Company Secretary, and Head of the Office of the CEO.
We've got Olivia Wirth, who's the CEO of Qantas Loyalty. Steph Tully, who's the Chief Customer Officer, and Andrew Parker, who's the Chief Sustainability Officer. All of the GMC will be helping us with questions when we get to that stage. Now, if we only waited until tomorrow, we wouldn't be having to wear masks. Hopefully over the weekend and into next week we'll see a lot more people coming back into the offices, when masks are no longer required. I think there's real values in these sessions, that we get is in the discussion that we have together. Our format for this session is very different to how we've done it in the past.
Rather than turn every slide, we'll take the presentation that has been lodged on the ASX as read, and I'll provide some brief opening remarks before we move to Q&A. That will mean that this session is a lot shorter than it has been in the past, and there's a lot more time for Q&A. Today the Qantas Group has announced an underlying loss before tax of AUD 1.28 billion and a statutory loss before tax of AUD 622 million. At the underlying EBITDA level, our loss was AUD 245 million, slightly better than the guidance range that we provided in December. It is our fourth statutory loss, half-year loss in a row. As we've continued to deal with the twists and turns of COVID, it's clear that no two halves have been the same, and that also makes the comparison to previous halves difficult.
This takes our total statutory losses since the start of the crisis to well over AUD 6 billion. I want to pause for a moment to put that in context. It would be hard to find a company in Australia that has been impacted by the pandemic as much as we have. The fact we've been able to mitigate the AUD 22 billion in revenue losses down to a statutory loss of AUD 6 billion is quite simply remarkable. A lot has happened in the past six months covered by these results, even by COVID standards. Just as domestic travel was returning to pre-pandemic levels, the Delta outbreak in July cut the majority of Australians off from each other for months. In those months, people came out in droves to get vaccinated in world-leading numbers, which meant lockdowns could end and international borders could open much earlier than we expected.
Just as demand was building again from the peak at Christmas, the Omicron variant emerged, putting another dent in consumer confidence. In all honesty, it has been a roller coaster, and it's required patience from our customers, for our employees, and of course, from our shareholders. As we've navigated these emerging challenges, we've maintained our broader focus and our recovery plan is on track. Throughout the half, the Qantas Group made a series of decisions that meant we finished the half in better shape than the circumstances and our level of flying would suggest. We were quick to adjust capacity as events unfolded. Our ability to do this was underpinned by the decision to bring the business out of hibernation. While some of this came at a cost in the half, the benefit was the flexibility it created.
Some of these ramp-up costs will continue into the second half, and further details are in the outlook slides. Across the half, domestic flying averaged just 42% of pre-COVID levels. International was nearly nonexistent. While agility was key, the speed of border closures, especially in quarter one, meant stranded costs were inevitable. This has particularly impacted our group domestic performance. Qantas and Jetstar launched 15 new routes in the half, with city pairs like Adelaide to Cairns or Brisbane to Albury performing well when borders allowed. This takes the number of new routes we've announced since the beginning of COVID to 48%. A good example of us capturing opportunities where we could. When international borders opened early in November, we were one of the first carriers ready to go on sale, and we captured a lot of pent-up demand, including on our new flights to India.
In the past week, as more border restrictions have dropped, we've seen international bookings strengthening even further. In mid-February, we had our best week for international ticket sales since before COVID, going back to February 2020. We're seeing more positive momentum since the announcement of Western Australia opening in March. On Western Australia, Qantas certainly wasn't the only business cut short when the border opening was delayed by a month. We had relied on the date in early February, and we've lost more than AUD 60 million as a result of that delay. Despite all the uncertainty in the half, our focus on cash generation continued with over 90% of our passenger flights being cash positive. Across all of our flying businesses, we earned close to AUD 700 million more in revenue compared to the prior first half.
This includes another record result from Qantas Freight, which has been a natural hedge in our portfolio against the downturn in international passenger flights and the cargo capacity that has disappeared with them. Another key decision we made was the sale of the surplus land in Mascot. That sale of AUD 802 million, which took advantage of a surging property market, is the main reason we're back within our targeted debt range well ahead of our schedule. We've also continued to grow Qantas Loyalty. We expanded our program partners, which has helped drive earnings. We've reinvested in more reward seats on flights and reduced the points required for a holiday or a hotel by at least 30%. That has kept our members in the program highly engaged, which is core to the program's success.
Cash generation shows with AUD 550 million of gross cash receipts in the first half. Our COVID recovery program pressed on with AUD 840 million of benefits delivered to date, which is tracking still ahead of schedule. We have now taken more than AUD 400 million of costs out of Qantas Domestic and over AUD 300 million out of Qantas International. These savings are a combination of us being more efficient, taking costs out of our head office, and restructuring our operations, and we provided more detail in the presentation we launched this morning. We've also maintained a dual focus on other costs, wages and inflation and remain committed to delivering AUD 1 billion of annual savings by financial year 2023 based on pre-COVID activity levels. This half, we also made a significant investment in our people.
At the start of December, we made the decision to stand up all of our Australian-based employees. For some international crew, that came six months before ahead of the schedule when they were planning to work. The impact of Omicron means we didn't have the level of flying we expected, but we have continued to pay our people regardless, and we're using the time for training where we can. The higher labor costs, without all the revenue that supports it, will have a material impact on the third quarter, and further details of this and the financial impact of Omicron are provided in the outlook slides. The labor inefficiency is expected to equalize by the end of the fourth quarter. We believe the decision to end the uncertainty of standdowns for our people was the right one to take.
The clear highlight of the half has been our balance sheet recovery. The sale of surplus land underpinned this, but so did strong cash contributions from Qantas Loyalty, Qantas Freight, and the rebuild of our passenger bookings as services restarted. Our net debt of AUD 5.5 billion is now within our target range a lot sooner than we have predicted. This gives us flexibility to consider important investment decisions like Project Winton in months ahead. Importantly, we will remain committed to continuing to deleverage our balance sheet to the bottom half of our range. We know the strength of our balance sheet has been a key factor in our success and has ensured our investment-grade rating has been maintained. The debt we took on during the height of the pandemic enabled us to keep Qantas alive when many other airlines did not survive.
We continue to focus on proactively refinancing debt with good prepayment flexibility in all of our facilities. Our liquidity remains strong with AUD 4.3 billion of cash and undrawn facilities as of the 31st of December. COVID has forced us to focus on the near term for much of the past two years. Let me wrap up by briefly talking about two things we're focused on for the longer term. The first is sustainability. We know the importance of mapping out a clear path to net zero emissions by 2050. A lot of work is already happening, including the shift to sustainable aviation fuel, which cuts emissions by up to 80%. In the coming months, we'll be releasing more details on our broader sustainability strategy, including our interim 2030 emissions target and the steps we will need to do to get there.
The second item is fleet renewal. Subject to board approval and discussions with key work groups, we expect to finalize the order for our domestic fleet renewal with Airbus by mid-calendar year. This decade-long program known as Project Winton will be the backbone of Qantas Domestic, delivering a significant reduction in emissions and representing a huge part of our future. Work has also resumed on Project Sunrise. Our latest customer research shows that demand for direct long-haul flights is even stronger than it was pre-COVID. Our focus on delivering nonstop services from Sydney and Melbourne to New York, London, Paris, Chicago remains. We know the road to recovery still has some way to go, but as Australia completes its shift to truly living with COVID, we can see things are stabilizing.
In the past month alone, I've been to Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne and Darwin, and the airports are getting busier and busier and busier. Our forward bookings in the past few months have been very encouraging and keep trending up. The Qantas Group is in a strong position to keep serving Australia well into the future. Thank you. Vanessa and the rest of the GMC will be here to answer your questions. Filip, I go to you to facilitate the questions. We have one question online, I think. First question.
Thank you. Your first question comes from Jakob Cakarnis from Jarden Australia. Please go ahead.
Morning, Alan. Morning, Vanessa.
Good morning.
Can I just focus on the commentary just around the cash breakeven flying? Can you just let us know how that looks in potentially a higher fuel price environment and how you balance things like the capacity recovery, but also some of the yield stimulation that you might need to do to get people back flying again?
Thanks, Jake. I'll take that. We are absolutely committed to cash positive flying, both in the first half, but also going forward. That is evident by Qantas International has been 95% and the group domestic airlines 92%. If we look at the impact of fuel price, the spike that we've seen recently, we do believe that that is actually driven by this geopolitical instability that we're seeing in Ukraine at the moment. We have, as we've said over the last number of updates, that we've been continuing to be very proactive with hedging despite the impact of the pandemic. We are in a position in the second half where we do have 90% of our estimated flying to be fully hedged.
That is in outright options and collars, and at the moment, they're all effective. We feel in this half in that recovery phase that we are still in well-protected. If we look beyond that, and heading into the following years, the rules that we've applied in the past, I think apply ongoing, is that capacity will be our biggest lever to be able to manage through that process and be able to actually generate sufficient fare increases to cover that fuel impact.
Next question.
The next question comes from Matt Ryan from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hey, Matt.
Oh, hi, Alan. Hi, Vanessa. Just got a question on that improving booking trend that you just highlighted. Obviously, the end of December and January was pretty tough, but what have you sort of seen since then?
Yeah, I might get Andrew David and Gareth to talk about the booking trends for each of the segments of the market. Andrew, do you want to come up? Then Gareth.
Yeah. Thanks, Alan. Good morning. Matt, just on your question, let me start with domestic. If you go back to quarter four 2021, what we saw then was our SME traffic peaked at 88% of the pre-COVID levels. Corporate was at 74%, and our leisure demand was over 100%. What we're seeing right now is those forward bookings are ahead of what we saw this time last year. Staring into quarter four of FY 2022, we are quite encouraged with our domestic bookings. We expect that to get another boost. As Alan said, when everybody in New South Wales and Victoria don't have to wear masks anymore, we're gonna see more people back in the office. We would expect to then see a further boost in corporate and SME bookings.
There's no doubt the current demand is very much leisure-led, but that's the current outlook on the domestic front. On the international front, what we're seeing is where countries are open and have limited or no travel restrictions, we are seeing very, very good bookings, both inbound and outbound. Examples being the U.S., the U.K., Canada, India, South Africa. Countries that still have restrictions like Singapore and Fiji are doing okay. We're expecting that the Philippines will open up soon without restrictions. Indonesia as well. We're monitoring other countries that currently still have restrictions, like New Zealand, like Hong Kong and China, examples, Japan. We will monitor and be flexible with our capacity in response to those borders either opening or remaining closed, overall, very encouraging on both an international and domestic front.
I might now hand over to Gareth, Matt.
Look, yeah. Hi, Matt. I think Andrew's covered it very, very well. I think in a very changing environment that we've been through in the last couple of years, the one thing that's remained sort of steady is that when customers have got certainty, they absolutely will book, and clearly they're getting increasing certainty around the domestic environment and around certain parts of the international environment. From a leisure Jetstar point of view domestically, over the last, you know, four weeks or so, we've seen increasingly strengthening bookings, particularly for the final quarter of the year, where now we are well above the pre-COVID level of bookings for that April to June quarter.
We are definitely seeing that ramp up taking place and, if things stay the way they are, we should be looking at a very, very strong final quarter of the year.
Thanks. Next question.
Your next question comes from Anthony Longo from JP Morgan.
Hey.
Please go ahead.
Hey Anthony.
Good day, Alan. Good day, Vanessa and team. Look, just a quick one from me. Look, international borders and domestically for that matter are finally open, so that's great news. Perhaps just a bit more clarity as to how we should be thinking about, you know, the domestic ASK recovery and to what extent internationals within Australia, how many domestic flights they roughly take, to, I guess, you know, prop up that capacity?
Yeah. I might get the guys again. Do you want to do that?
I'm back. Okay. In terms of domestic capacity from a Jetstar point of view, I think it says in the documents, we're looking to be well over 100% of pre-COVID levels in that final quarter, 100%-117%. That range is that wide because we're depending on exactly how the demand comes through. From where we're looking at the moment, it looks to be very much at the strong end of that. We said for a long time, we anticipate Jetstar to operate at 120% + of its pre-COVID levels as the market, the domestic market returns to normal, and we're absolutely on course to achieve that.
Partly that's because we are now the only true low-cost carrier in the market, and Tiger has exited the market. We have the right to replace some of their flying and the right to grow into a market that is absolutely ours. With the low-cost base that we've got and significantly lower than our competitors, we very much have the right to play in that space. We're seeing very strong demand for our low fares when we put them out there. Internationally, we will be returning our 11 787s to international markets as those markets open up. Clearly, Bali and Japan are the big markets for us, and there's still a little more clarity needed about exactly when restriction-free travel is gonna be allowed into those markets.
We are planning our first Bali flight on the 14th of March. With NEOs arriving from the middle of the year onwards, they allow us then the opportunity with real cost-effective growth beyond that, not just in the domestic market, but also in the international market as well, given that these aircraft can fly from the east coast of Australia to markets like Bali. Andrew?
Your next question
No, no, we're still going. Sorry, one sec.
I'll just answer from the Qantas front. The current plans are about 85%-86% to 90% for quarter four for Qantas Domestic. What we are seeing now with WA open is Perth demand coming back both inbound and outbound. We've added more capacity, so it is quite possible that if demand continues as it is, we will have more than 90% in Qantas by quarter four. The plan is by quarter one, FY 2023, we'll be over 100%. On the international front, as borders open, remain open, and these travel restrictions get lifted, we are planning by the end of financial year to be in the high 60s for capacity for Qantas International.
By the end of the calendar year, we plan to be at about 85%, and by the middle of 2023, we'd be back to 100% as we bring the other three 787-9s into the fleet and start to return our A380s back into the air.
Thank you.
I should say that when it comes to that capacity on international going into 2023, a lot of the employees related to the A380s have to be recruited. There's not an overhang of employees that goes well into that period of time, the way it's constructed. Just to clarify one thing Andrew said, because I think it's an important forecast and indicator of where we are. At the moment, we're roughly seeing intakes around 33% of pre-COVID levels for corporate, 50% for SME, and close to 100% for leisure.
What Andrew was saying, which if you look at the projection last year and what happened, where we had a run up to June before Delta hit, we got to those 70% and 80% of the corporate market by the time we got to June. We're running ahead of that, so our expectations are we will get to those levels, and that's really important for Qantas 'cause Jetstar clearly has the demand for the leisure market. It's already the intakes over Easter, as Gareth said, are already well over 100%. The big thing is getting the corporate and the SME market back, and I think the removal of masks will make that big difference with people getting back to the office.
We have every confidence we'll get to at least the levels we saw back in 2021 by the time we get to the middle of the year. That will be fantastic for us. We also think we're gonna be taking share. We absolutely no doubt with the model changes in the domestic market that we'll pick up more of the corporate market in terms of share, and we'll start seeing that coming through when the market is fully up and running at the middle of the year. Next question.
Your next question comes from Justin Barratt from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, Alan. Hi, Vanessa. Thanks very much for your time. Just across this reporting season, we've seen many other companies across a number of industries note that they're seeing some cost inflation come through. I was just wondering if you could provide any commentary on what you're seeing in your business in terms of your operating costs ex fuel?
Yeah. Okay, Vanessa to do this one.
Yeah. As you said, we've spoken about fuel, so I won't speak about that again. The two other categories of inflation that we typically see, one is in labor. We've been pretty clear with our labor policy, which is a two-year wage freeze and then a 2% wage policy after that. We've been able to close a number of agreements with those conditions already in place. Given that we are very committed to closing all EBAs on the same basis. We think that that's the fairest thing, and we also think that that is actually fundamental to our recovery from COVID. We also know in the corporate environment that most executives and staff in the corporate environment have already delivered against that.
That is one component of inflation. The other component of inflation would be what would occur through normal contracted arrangements we have with suppliers. I suppose I find it surprising that I can now say that the work that we have actually done through COVID has probably ensured that our inflation through those contracts is relatively low because we have undertaken an enormous amount of restructuring, renegotiation through COVID to deliver against our transformation. We are not seeing that there is any spike through that other channel. Having said that, there will be some CPI that we have in contracts. Like we have in the past, we have started our BAU transformation program that is designed to offset the cost of underlying inflation that runs within our business.
We'll be focused, as we have in the past, on identifying revenue opportunities to offset that, but also our further cost initiatives. That is going to be a key feature of our transformation, and that is in addition to the AUD 1 billion of the cost program that we've been running as part of our recovery.
Thanks, Vanessa. Next question.
Your next question comes from Andre Fromyhr from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Just following up on the question before about sort of the pace of capacity ramp up across the different businesses. I guess looking at international and maybe India is a good example, to what extent will that sort of international network and frequencies, routes, et cetera, look different to what it did before COVID? Even if the overall ASKs are about in line, like what are you changing about that business, and do you have more flexibility to make sort of further changes going forward and adapt to demand conditions?
Andrew, do you want to do that?
Yeah, sure. Andre, examples obviously of where we've responded quickly to borders opening and demand coming back is both Canada and India. India bookings are very, very strong inbound and outbound, and Canada is also performing very well. We've increased the range of some of our A330, A330s, so we can use those on routes that we couldn't use before. Obviously with more 787-9s coming into the fleet, that gives us greater flexibility as well. There's no doubt we're in a very volatile period, and we've got to be flexible, and that's why we've had the message that we have to our cabin crew, our long-haul cabin crew to say, "You've got to work with us on rostering," because we've got to respond as conditions change.
There's a good possibility that China and Hong Kong don't open as we're currently planning in July. That's about 4% of our ASKs pre-COVID in our international flying.
We'll respond by moving traffic elsewhere where the demand is, whether it's in Singapore or the Philippines or South Africa, wherever it is, we'll move our traffic accordingly. We have demonstrated to date that we've been very, very flexible and quick to respond to both upside in demand and indeed where there's been downside because borders are taking longer to open and those travel restrictions need to be removed. Because there's no doubt that if you've got to go into isolation, you've got to do multiple tests. That is a suppressor of demand. But hopefully, as Alan said, we're increasingly post-Omicron, post-COVID across all these markets, and we'll respond accordingly.
It's worthwhile mentioning that the big markets for Qantas are just massive, and they're open. I think over 30% of our international ASKs are dedicated to the United States. I think nearly 15% to the U.K. and they're fully open. That's half of our operation. Then it's. There's a long tail. Even New Zealand, which has high volume in ASKs, it's relatively small. It's down at the low. It's double digits or yeah, it's relatively small compared to it. The flexibility we have and the big uncertainty is when China will open up, as Andrew mentioned. The flexibility we have is we're starting Rome, which we didn't have before, to utilize capacity.
There are other Asian destinations which we think will open, so there's plenty of options for us to leverage that capacity. It does take us a little bit of time to get back to 100% of pre-COVID ASKs. We're in a very good position. I'd rather be where we are at the moment with the very big markets completely open to give us more flexibility of grabbing share even in those markets. One last thing I'll point out about the U.S. is that we will have less competition on the U.S. because Virgin are not going to be there. Some of the American carriers have pulled back on services on it. That gives us the opportunity to grow even further on that market as the demand recovers. Next question.
Your next question comes from Niraj Shah from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Just firstly, a question on cost really. I think you've noted 9,800 exits since July 2021. From memory, originally, the AUD 1 billion cost that was underpinned by 8,500 exits. I guess, how should we think about sort of that gap going forward through the recovery phase?
Yes. As you pointed out, the AUD 1 billion is the cost target based on an FY 2019 baseline. We are tracking well to that, if not ahead of that, with AUD 900 million on track or over AUD 900 million on track to be delivered by the end of this year. 60% of the AUD 1 billion is labor-related initiatives, of which we've seen 9,800 staff leave the business to date. You will have seen in our cash flow that all of those redundancies now associated with that program have been paid, with AUD 40 million paid in the first half. We're feeling really confident. 97% of the initiatives that unlock that AUD 1 billion have been either initiated or completed.
The business is well on track to deliver against that target.
Next question.
Your next question comes from Paul Butler from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hey, Paul.
Good morning. I was just wondering if I could just follow up on your comments on inflation. I think, you know, pre-COVID, the guidance we used to get was for underlying cost inflation of the business of around AUD 150 million a year. With the changes you've made to the business and what you're seeing in, you know, sort of market conditions for contracts and so forth, is that sort of a good number to think about or higher or lower?
Actually, Paul, on the pre-COVID run rate of inflation, 'cause remember we had a 3% wages policy as well at that time, we had an underlying inflation of around AUD 250 million in the business and a transformation program that targeted approximately AUD 400 million per annum. We were, through that program, driving EBIT improvement. If we look forward, with the wages policy, the reset that we've done, which is a two-year wage freeze and then a 2% wages uplift after that, and also what we've got running within our business, I think a more appropriate estimate's about AUD 150 million per annum over the next three years.
Okay. I think just to comment on it, I mean, we're making good progress through the EBAs. Obviously, it takes a while to go through them all, but we have 56 of them. We have nine of the EBAs have already signed up for the wage freeze and the 2%, including some important pilots in the QantasLink operation. We're well on track to implement that, and we are confident we'll get it. Like we did last time, 2013, we employed the exact same process with a wage freeze across the organization, given the significant losses that we had back then and given the losses we've had in the last few years that are worse than that. We think that's the appropriate thing to do in the recovery. Next question.
Your next question comes from Anthony Moulder from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hey, Anthony.
Good afternoon, all. I guess I only get one. For Qantas Domestic, you're gonna have a stronger position in corporate given the change in the competitors' focus. Is the need for 70% capacity market share for those corporates a greater network or frequency, or is the focus more about achieving a higher share of the SME market?
A couple of things that I might get Andrew and Gareth to maybe come in as well on this. When we do passenger shares that we've done quite a bit over the last few years since COVID and since the administration of Virgin, our passenger share has gone above 70%. That says that's the natural market share that the Qantas Group should get in the marketplace. We do think, given the two levels of product, service and cost that we have, the two amazing brands that we have, when we look at segmenting it that way, we also come close to a 70%.
That tells us that all things being equal, when the market equalizes, that's where we're going to end up, because the market usually dictates which product, which brands it actually drifts to, and that's what the research is telling us. We're very confident where we are with both of them. In terms of the Qantas brand, we've added nearly 50 new routes, so the network is a lot better than it was pre-COVID. We have 35 staff lounges domestically. We have free Wi-Fi that we've reactivated on all the aircraft. We've got a free product on board the aircraft. You know exactly what you're going to get with Qantas, there's no uncertainty about what that product is.
We could see with the corporate accounts that we're winning through this period of time, the market moving to us in that segment. The great work that Steph, Andrew and Liv have done on the Qantas Business Rewards, we're seeing a significant amount of SMEs move to us as well, and we think then Qantas will do really well on that. We've been very, very happy with the deal we've done with Alliance Airlines, actually agreeing to up to 80 Embraer aircraft. John Gissing and the team have worked with that. That's opened up a huge network for us that we couldn't have done before COVID. More frequency on key markets like Adelaide to Darwin. New routes like Darwin to Dili. New routes domestically that we didn't do before, like Darwin to Townsville and Cairns.
It's dramatically increased our network 'cause of that partnership with Alliance that again, I don't think anybody can replicate. Then on the Jetstar side, Jetstar has 60 domestic routes. Jetstar's got such a presence in people's perceptions of low airfares. Gareth launched an AUD 22 airfare sale on the 22nd of the second 2022. Very good marketing, Gareth. I don't know how long it took to do that. I believe, and he tells me this is a true fact, the 22,000 fares sold out in 22 hours. That's not made up. So Jetstar just is got an amazing brand in the low fares market. It has the price guarantee that I don't think anybody can match. Then what we're seeing, Anthony, is that the other trade carriers are fighting in the middle.
They're in the same territory. They're sort of killing each other. That's something we're just watching. That's really up to them of how it develops. It's really not in the markets that we're operating in. We get impacted by it. Jetstar will be competitive on the one market Bonza's come on to, and we'll be competitive against the carriers on those other routes. But we're really out of the fight. It's a fight between those three. Guys, do you want to add anything?
You've covered most of it there. The one other thing I'd add is Tiger. I mentioned it earlier. Tiger exiting the market means that we have the right to grow into that. So the fact that Jetstar has grown to be 120% of its pre-COVID capacity is really just us taking space that has been exited by the other low-cost carrier that was in the market, because, as I said earlier, we are the only true low-cost carrier that now operates in the market. So that represents a sizable proportion, not all of it, but it's a sizable proportion of the growth in market share across the group.
Andrew?
I will be very quick 'cause that was a very comprehensive answer, Alan. In essence, what's happened, Virgin shrunk, and they're no longer a full-service carrier. We have a better network and a better product. We had 80% + of the corporate market before. We're seeing that grow. We have 50% + of the SME market before. We're also seeing that grow because of the investment we've made in our loyalty product, our Qantas Business Rewards product. All of those assets are coming to play for the Qantas business.
Next question.
Your next question comes from Cameron McDonald from E&P. Please go ahead.
Hey, Cameron.
Good afternoon. Can I just ask, looking at the, and again, it goes back to cost. You've got AUD 2.798 billion worth of operating expenses ex-fuel. How do we think about that breakdown between fixed and variable to think about either the positive leverage as you return further flying or downside if, you know, we see further reductions in capacity?
I think one of the things that we have seen as a result of our transformation is that our variability has improved through that. I think some key examples of that is the ground handling decision that we took essentially transformed that cost item from almost fully fixed to 100% variable. And that is actually variable only if we fly is the cost that we incur. So I think that that's a key example. If you think about pre-COVID, we had a 30% variable cost base pre-COVID in aggregate. Now if you look forward, we are definitely better. In my view, I think we're heading into 40% + variability across the group from the work that we have done.
Thanks, Vanessa. We've got two questions left, so second last question.
Your next question comes from Scott Ryall from Rimor Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Thanks very much. Alan, I was hoping you could just look a little bit longer term as you did towards the end of your prepared remarks. Just talk to whether or not the incentive scheme aligned with post-pandemic success that might replace your STIP scheme for this year has been progressed at all. I guess it goes towards your staff comments before, which I think are, you know, great that you've retained your crew earlier than your operations dictate. This will be more aligned with non-crew staff, I imagine.
Yeah. There's a couple of parts to it. You're absolutely right that we did invest in our people by standing everybody up in December. I think at the time when we did our outlook, I said it was gonna cost potentially AUD 100 million, and has cost, as you'd expect, more than that with Omicron, but that was an investment we thought we need to make. We had to stand people up and get them ready. Some people were standing up six months before. Even at that stage, we thought the international flying will be activated. We were very conscious that we wanted the skills back, we wanted the people back. Pleasingly on pilots, on engineers, and a lot of our international cabin crew, we've gotten people back. They haven't been lost.
We've had an issue with Jetstar cabin crew, where people have gone on to other professions, and we've been retraining and recruiting in that space. Our biggest issue has been on head office staff, where we've gotten big turnovers of people in some areas like the technology area. We've gotten people in senior management positions that have been offered massive salary increases. Because we haven't paid STIP, we haven't paid in three years bonuses, and we've had no pay increases, and for periods of time we've stood down people, that's made us ripe for other corporates around Australia coming to what I think is the best management team of any airline in the world. Probably one of the best management teams of any company here in Australia.
They have been rightly coming in and trying to grab some of that team. We felt, the board felt that it was important to have a retention recovery scheme in for the management, important to have it for our employees to thank them. We are doing it. We're issuing new shares. We are doing it on the basis that we hit some key targets for 2023, including being back in profit, including getting the debt into the range, and including being in a position where we delivered AUD 1 billion. I think it's great that 20,000 of our employees are incentivized by the share price, 'cause they'll get 1,000 shares. If that goes from the AUD 5 odd that it is today to a lot more than that, they get a huge upside.
I was talking to some of the employees just after the announcement today. They're really excited about that. They think that's great. I think it will motivate our people and engage our people. It wasn't expected. They think the company's doing the right thing by its people, which we've always done. In good times, we've always paid bonuses outside of the EBAs. We've gone through a tough period where unfortunately 10,000 people have had to leave the company for it to survive. People that we all know here, people in head office, people around the company, that has not been easy for anybody.
Putting these two schemes back into place to make sure we retain our people, we thank our people, and help them from the tough times they've gone through, we think is key to the future success of the business. Shareholders should be really focused on that, 'cause maintaining that talent is really critical for future shareholder returns in Qantas, and I think this is a very focused effort in order to do that. Next question. We have one last one.
Your next question comes from Sam Seow from Citi. Please go ahead.
Sam.
Lucky last. Thanks, guys. Just an easy one for me, just on the strength of the domestic ASK outlook. Obviously, a part of that is expectations of a higher market share. Just wondering if there's a view in there about domestic travel being stronger this year, I guess, as you downgrade kind of international ASKs or new routes. I guess I'm just trying to unpack what percentage might revert in the future.
I might get the guys to talk to that. Andrew, to Gareth.
I think for all consumers, it comes down to one thing. These border restrictions need to lift, the travel restrictions need to come off, and where we're seeing that certainty, we're seeing demand come back. The demand is domestic and international. We do have expectations both businesses will grow. I mean, certainly if you go back to quarter four FY 2021, we were seeing more growth focused on domestic because state and territory borders were open, but national country borders remained closed. That's changed now and is changing, as it unfolds. Where there's certainty, where the travel restrictions are removed, we are seeing demand come back and all the research is pointing to that.
Okay. Is there any part of that ASK outlook that might revert in the future? Like, are you gonna fly the same, I guess, new routes and the same capacity going forward?
Yep.
Yes. I was just gonna sort of add to what Andrew was saying. This is the new size of the airlines for the reasons that Alan outlined earlier, the reasons that I outlined earlier, and we will then look to grow beyond that. This isn't about a temporary increase in capacity. This is a resizing or a rightsizing of the airlines to match the market conditions that we're operating in now. Then we will look to grow with market as we move forward. Particularly, we will look to grow with super efficient new technology aircraft under Project Winton and with the NEOs arriving in Jetstar from the middle of next year.
I kinda say, I think it's just backing up what guys said. We do think with the removal of Tiger from the market, the shrinking of Virgin, the changing of the business model, this is where we will end up and it's our natural market share. We have not backed off on our 24 targets within that. We're saying that we do believe that all things being equal on the marketplace and the recovery continuing, that we can get back to an 18% margin for Qantas and 22% for Jetstar, giving those strategic positions. With a market share that's a lot bigger than we had going into COVID. I think strategically we're gonna come out of this stronger than we went into COVID. We have a lower cost base.
We have a better defined position in both segments of the market. We think that the path there is very clear, and we're still confident that we can get there. One last question, I believe, from Phil. Go on, next question.
Alan, this is Owen Birrell from RBC. Can you hear me?
Hello. Yeah, go ahead.
Oh, hi, Alan. This is Owen Birrell from RBC. Look, I just had a quick question, probably more for Gareth. I'm just wondering if you can provide a little bit of color about what you're seeing in the Asian market, particularly with respect to Jetstar. You know, are there any sort of countries that you're finding particularly closed or challenging or any sort of new opportunities that are emerging? Just what's the competitive response like in that Asian region at the moment?
Obviously Asia is a lot of different countries and things are moving at varying paces. Opening up in Singapore, I'm going to Singapore next week, so it'll be great to see all the guys up there. It's been a long time. We've resized the airline up there and actually got a lot of benefit from moving aircraft out of Singapore, moving them back to Australia to support some of the growth we just talked about, not just in Jetstar, but also in QantasLink in Western Australia. That shows the power of the group. We're seeing as I said before, where markets are open and where there is certainty for customers, whether it's in Australia or New Zealand or different parts of Asia, people are booking with confidence and booking strongly.
We're seeing that in Singapore where markets are open. In Japan, for Jetstar Japan's COVID journey is sort of two months behind Australia, so they're sort of coming off the height of the Omicron wave right now. But again, as they come off that, we will see a strong rebound domestically, initially, and we're extremely well placed to capture that with Jetstar Japan being the largest domestic low-cost carrier in Japan. Then when international borders open in Japan, we'll be able to capture some of that as well. I think finally, as Andrew touched on, we will constantly look at our sort of Pan Asia network or our to Australia to Asia network and look at where demand pools change.
If there are new opportunities to fly, to redeploy aircraft, onto those routes, we will absolutely look to do that. That's something we've always done, something we've done through COVID and something we will continue to do. As the NEOs come in, that will give us more opportunities to do that because of the range that those aircraft can achieve.
Thanks, Gareth. That's all the questions I think we have. Thanks everybody from the questions. We didn't get any questions on loyalty again, Liv. I think people are missing a big opportunity there on sustainability. Hopefully over the next few weeks, we can get people. I encourage you to think of your questions well in advance as we go out and do the roadshow around Melbourne and Sydney. Thank you everybody for joining us. This is hopefully the last time because of the masks that we will be here without our guests in the room. Then when we get to the full year results, we can have people here in person and be able to talk to them and see you around the network. Thanks for your questions.
Thanks for the interest, and we'll see you on the roadshow over the next few weeks. Thank you.