I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Dave Emerson, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Virgin Australia's FY 2025 Results Market Briefing. I'm delighted to be presenting Virgin Australia's inaugural results following our listing on the ASX on the 24th of June this year. Joining me today is Race Strauss, our CFO, and we also have members of our executive leadership team in the room available to respond to questions as appropriate. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we live, work, and fly, and pay my respects to elders past and present. I'd also like to extend my acknowledgement and respects to any Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples joining today's call. This morning, I'll start by providing a recap of Virgin Australia's investment strategy and our ambition, followed by an overview of FY 2025 results.
Race will then walk through the financial results in more detail before I finish with the FY 2026 outlook. After that, we'll move to Q&A. Moving to slide 4, I'll start with our ambition, which is to be the most loved airline in Australia by our people, our guests, and our owners. Our delivery against this ambition is built on our four key strategic pillars. First, having a simple focused business. What do I mean by that? We operate a simplified fleet of Boeing 737s at the core of our domestic and short-haul international operation. In our Western Australia-based far regional operation, we are also further simplifying our fleet as we begin our evolution to our new Embraer E190-E2s, primarily serving its charter customers starting in October.
This fleet simplification will drive significant further cost efficiencies while also providing customers with a more consistent experience each and every time they fly with Virgin Australia. In addition to a simplified fleet, we fly a targeted route network that best serves our customers' core travel needs, including both their own domestic and short-haul flying, as well as having a broad group of best-in-class long-haul partnerships, including with Qatar Airways. As part of this pillar, Virgin Australia also targets fleet utilization, load factor, and productivity above full-service carrier levels and targets a cost base closer to low-cost carrier levels, with a decision to increase the cost base only where customers are prepared to pay. This is core to our value and choice model. Our second pillar is creating an experience our guests love. Since founding in 2000, Virgin Australia has always had customers at our core.
We provide value and choice to our core customers, being premium leisure, small business, and value-conscious corporates, and this value includes delivering the award-winning Velocity loyalty program. Our commitment to customer service has been recognized with Virgin Australia winning the world's best cabin crew for the past seven years, as well as delivering NPS scores in line with our full-service competitor. Our third strategic pillar is operational excellence. We have a strong, uncompromising safety culture. Safety is our number one priority. We also put an emphasis on strong operational performance. In FY 2025, we put significant focus on improving our on-time performance, completion rates, and disruption management. The results of these efforts saw 76.8% of Virgin Australia's flights departing on time, up over seven points on FY 2024, while our completion rate improved 2.5 percentage points to 98.4%. Our fourth strategic pillar is exceptional financial performance.
First and foremost, Virgin Australia is focused on only investing where we can get a return on our shareholders' capital, applying a disciplined capital allocation framework, which Race will talk about later. Beyond this, we're committed to delivering strong financial returns to our shareholders. We target sustainable underlying EBIT margin growth with a balance between service levels and cost, supported by our ongoing transformation initiatives. Of course, these four pillars are delivered through our 8,000+ team members who bring our signature Virgin flair, which is a key source of our competitive advantage. Our strong performance is only possible thanks to our wonderful team who live our values and bring our ambition to be Australia's most loved airline to life every day. As a newly listed company, I also want to take a moment to share our investment thesis.
We're Australia's second-largest airline operating group operating in the structurally attractive Australian aviation market. We've had a comprehensive strategy reset, refocusing our target customer segments and becoming a simpler, resilient, and more focused airline with a disciplined approach. I've already outlined our ambition, and this is supported by a refreshed, focused customer value proposition. We continue to see significant room for growth through our award-winning loyalty program, Velocity Frequent Flyer, and also see growth opportunities in our WA-based charter business, VARA, recently recognized as the world's best regional airline by airlineratings.com. We have a broad network of world-class international partners, which is strengthened by Qatar Airways Group's equity investment and its integrated alliance with Virgin Australia.
We have a conservative balance sheet with financial discipline applied throughout the business, and we're in the midst of a significant transformation program that will continue to drive EBIT margin through revenue, cost, and velocity initiatives. On that basis, we have a clear path to deliver continued earnings and margin growth. On to our FY 2025 results. In FY 2025, Virgin Australia delivered continued underlying earning growth, relaunched long-haul flying, advanced our transformation agenda, and improved our operational performance, all while creating wonderful flying experiences for our guests. Our focused value strategy is now embedded across the company, and all our key financial metrics in the prospectus were met or exceeded. Revenue was up 10 basis points on the prospectus and 8.5 points on FY 2024. Pro forma underlying EBIT was up 0.9 of a point on the prospectus.
These are strong financial outcomes, and our pro forma underlying NPAT of $331 million was in line with our prospectus and up 28% on FY 2024. Statutory NPAT was $479 million, down 12.3% on FY 2024, primarily due to the transaction costs related to the IPO and Qatar Group investment and the benefits of future flight credits recognized in FY 2024, which was not repeated in FY 2025. We maintained a conservative balance sheet with net debt to pro forma underlying EBITDA at 1.1, and it remains at the lower end of our 1 - 2 net debt to underlying EBITDA target range. We also progressed our fleet renewal program with a further 47 Boeing 737s undergoing interior refurbishment in FY 2025, including increasing and standardizing our seat configuration across our 737 and 737 MAX 8 aircraft. This brings the number of aircraft with refreshed interiors to 61.
We also announced the acquisition of eight Embraer E190-E2s for our VARA business in Western Australia. The first of these will arrive next month. Moving on to our segment performance. The Airlines segment performed strongly, recording underlying EBIT of $535 million, an increase of $143 million on FY 2024, driven by strong load factors, growth in ancillary revenue, and improved passenger mix through increased SME and corporate share, combined with strong RAS growth, contributing to strong RAS growth of 4% in FY 2025. At the same time, we further improved our on-time performance and achieved the highest average on-time performance for a mainline Australian domestic airline in FY 2025. Whilst the business did incur higher than inflationary headwinds in both airports and maintenance costs, the benefits of our transformation initiatives and lower fuel costs more than offset these headwinds to deliver underlying EBIT margin increase of 2 percentage points to 9.6%.
Our customer satisfaction scores also continue to strengthen, with Virgin Australia's strategic NPS increasing four points on FY 2024-FY 20 27, reflecting the group's commitment to delivering exceptional guest experience. Moving on to our award-winning Velocity Frequent Flyer program, the Velocity segment performed strongly in the period, delivering double-digit revenue growth, resulting in underlying EBIT of $127 million, up 10.5% on FY 2024. External billings increased 14%, and the active member base grew 12%, both key measures of performance. Velocity also continued to grow its partner base and new financial service products. Finally, we saw international redemptions increase with our partner airlines led by Qatar Airways. Now on to our transformation initiatives, which are a key driver to delivering sustainable EBIT margin improvement in FY 2026 and beyond.
Beyond growth across our core segments, we have a number of high-value revenue initiatives, including increasing Virgin Australia's share of high-value customers across corporate and SME, and improving our ancillary products to drive increased ancillary revenue. On the cost side, we have continued upside through productivity improvements, through ongoing fleet transformation, including our WA simplification, as well as improved seat densification, which is partly completed. We also have opportunities in optimizing the cost of sales, cost to serve, and overheads. Finally, on Velocity, we continue to see value through driving active member growth, deepening engagement with data and personalization analytics, and expanding our partner network and partner reach, including in financial services. We delivered more than $450 million in gross transformation benefits in FY 2025, and we're nowhere near done. As we look into FY 2026, we expect to see another $400+ million of gross transformation benefits ahead.
I'll now hand you over to Race to take you through the financials in more detail.
Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to provide more details on our financial results for FY 2025. The key points to take away from this result are that they are in line with or slightly ahead of the prospectus. Our underlying EBIT at $664 million has increased by 170 basis points and $145 million versus the prior year. Velocity has continued to show double-digit growth, and we have a conservative balance sheet. Let me first talk about our results compared to the prospectus. The prospectus included the full-year costs that would be associated with being a public company, which is predominantly the revised remuneration framework and an adjustment to show the tax that would usually be paid on an ongoing basis.
Therefore, to ensure a like-for-like comparison, a $14.8 million pro forma reduction to EBIT needs to be applied to the FY 2025 result and a $300 million adjustment to the tax line, removing the benefit we receive from the deferred tax asset. The resulting underlying pro forma NPAT was in line with the prospectus at $331 million. In terms of the top-line growth, our revenue is $5.8 billion, up $456 million, or 8.5% from FY 2024, marginally ahead of the prospectus. Costs were in line with the prospectus, with slightly higher maintenance provision costs offset by slightly better fuel burn. As the U.S. dollar exchange rates strengthened on the last day of June, above what was anticipated in the prospectus, we did benefit from a one-off non-cash restatement of our leases, which resulted in a statutory net profit of $479 million, being $50 million ahead of the prospectus.
As Dave already alluded to, our statutory net profit was behind the prior year by $67 million. This is a result of last financial year having a one-off non-cash benefit of $278 million, being the future flight credits that expired that were issued during administration. FY 2025 also included the $116 million of transaction costs linked to the IPO and the Qatar Airways deal. Detailed reconciliations outlining the pro forma adjustments for the prospectus and the significant items, being the difference between underlying and the statutory result, are in the appendix of this presentation. Moving to the EBIT drivers for the year, the group performed strongly and delivered $664 million in underlying EBIT, an increase of $145 million. This is an 11.4% underlying EBIT margin, which is a 170 basis point improvement on FY 2024, of which the airline delivered a 200 basis point increase to be 9.6%.
Domestic ASK growth was 7.3% as a result of strong demand, improvements in operational performance, thereby lowering the rate of cancellations, and the execution of our cabin refurbishment program, which, as David Emerson mentioned, includes increasing the seat count configuration across the Boeing fleet, with 47 of our 737 aircraft refurbished in FY 2025. Short-haul international had a 10% reduction in ASKs due to the exit of Hernada during the year. We had strong RAS performance at 4%, with 1.9% higher load factors at 84.9%, partly due to the tailwind of the Rex exit and improved mix of SMEs and corporates driving up yields and the benefit of the transformation program. EBIT also benefited from a lower fuel cost environment. I will discuss the increase in non-fuel costs in the next slide.
Velocity continued to deliver double-digit growth with an underlying EBIT of $127 million, $12 million higher than prior year, driven by growth in active members, additional partners, and growth in financial services. We are now also starting to leverage the benefits of the new technology investments. Margin was stable, allowing for reinvestment into growth of the business. FY 2025 was a high inflationary period for the business, with a 6.6% increase in CASK ex-fuel. There are a number of drivers behind this. As outlined in our prospectus, airport costs were materially ahead of inflation as all airports continued to invest in construction projects post-COVID. This is lifting the cost base across the entire industry. Maintenance costs were also higher than inflation.
This is a result of delays from both the major aircraft manufacturers in delivering aircraft, which has required us, along with a number of airlines globally, to extend leases and maintain older aircraft. This means we have more maintenance events and has caused an imbalance of demand and supply at the maintenance providers, raising prices. As our Boeing MAX 8 deliveries come on stream in FY 2026, this cost increase is not expected to continue. The fuel reduction of 8.8% reflects participation to lower fuel prices through the hedging program, net of a 4.2% increase in flying activity. The step up in the labor and staff-related costs reflects the four-year impact of the new EBAs that are now in place, offset by productivity gains. The majority of our EBAs had a higher first-year cost to catch up wages post-COVID. Going forward, we are expecting to be in line with inflation.
Other costs include the higher cost of technology, and we have invested significantly in upgrading our technology and our cyber defenses. The uplift in depreciation and amortization is the annualized impact of the new MAX aircraft. We now have eight in service, as well as the higher capitalized maintenance due to the lease extensions linked to the Boeing delays. The new aircraft bring cost benefits from lower fuel burn and forward maintenance holidays. The delivery of approximately $450 million of gross transformation benefits in FY 2025 was a key offset to these additional costs, which together with the benefits of fuel allowed the business to deliver a further 170 basis point improvement in underlying EBIT margin. We expect this margin accretion to continue. The group generated $113 million net cash flow, net of a dividend payment of $109 million, which was paid to the original shareholders in the first half.
We had strong operating cash flows of $1.1 billion, a $244 million improvement on FY 2024 due to the improved results. Capital investments in the year was $496 million, an increase of $171 million from the prior year. This investment was primarily on maintenance of our existing aircraft fleet and pre-delivery payments of future aircraft and spare engines. Proceeds from borrowings of $128 million related to the refinancing of three existing Boeing 737-800s and the financing of a MAX LEAP spare engine, which was purchased to support growth in the MAX fleet. There was $304 million of principal and interest paid on debt facilities, which is inclusive of the existing loans outstanding for the refinancing of the three 737-800s. We also had $306 million of scheduled lease repayments for aircraft, property, and other leases.
Our debt and lease liability levels were relatively stable from FY 2024 - FY 2025, with the group holding $1.3 billion of debt, predominantly secured, and we have almost $1 billion of leases on the balance sheet. Growth in the cash balance resulted in a reduction in FY 2025 closing net debt from $1.3 billion - $1.2 billion. Our net leverage ratio improved from 1.6 times in FY 2024 to 1.1 times in FY 2025, which is at the lower end of our target range of 1-2 times net debt to underlying EBITDA. In June 2025, the group entered a $500 million Australian revolving cash facility. The group has liquidity of $1.4 billion at June 30th, 2025, which is inclusive of this undrawn corporate facility.
We will continue to apply the discipline of our capital allocation framework, designed to ensure the resilience of the business for the long term, whilst maintaining the flexibility to allow us to invest in value-accretive growth opportunities, including the transformation program. We aim to make investments that return in excess of the group's cost of capital, with surplus funds returned to shareholders. Moving to our fleet, we have continued our focus on a simplified narrowbody fleet with our fleet renewal program. We already have a young fleet with an average age of 13 years. This will reduce to a little over 11 years as we introduce the new Embraer E190-E2 aircraft into the VARA business, along with additional MAX 8 deliveries, whilst we retire our older Fokker F100 and A320 aircraft.
We added five new 737s to our fleet during the year, which included one MAX 8 and two former Rex aircraft. We exited two A320s from VARA. We are now expecting to take delivery of 13 MAX 8 aircraft in FY 2026 and four E190s, whilst returning or exiting from service 14 aircraft and three wet leases. We retain the flexibility to adjust this schedule. Currently, 70% of our fleet is leased. Of the 17 aircraft expected in FY 2026, seven are a direct lease, six are committed to sale and leaseback, and we will use our capital allocation framework to determine the best way forward in terms of leasing or buying the remaining four aircraft. To conclude, it has been a significant year for Virgin Australia, which culminated in successfully relisting it as a public company in June and securing Qatar Airways as an equity investor with an integrated alliance.
In FY 2025, Virgin Australia achieved strong underlying earnings growth, relaunched the long-haul services, advanced our transformation program, and lifted operational performance, all while delivering exceptional experiences for our guests. I will now hand back to Dave for the FY 2026 outlook.
Thanks, Race. Moving to slide 20, you'll see this slide is essentially a copy and paste of the FY 2026 outlook we provided at the time of the IPO. We're reaffirming that guidance with updates on the fleet and fuel hedging provided on the next page. The bottom line is that we can expect continued growth in both revenue and underlying profit in FY 2026, driven by continued growth in air travel demand, the impact of our transformation program, and continued Velocity growth. Moving to the next page, we've also taken the opportunity to provide some additional commentary related to the FY 2026 outlook. First, demand remains strong and market capacity increases in the first half of FY 2026 have been broadly in line with our expectations.
On the supply side, we expect to grow domestic capacity in the first half by about 4%, weighted by the first quarter of 5% growth, which is supported by strong events activity, including the British Lions Tour, and a 3% increase in the second quarter. For the second half of the year, we broadly expect to grow capacity with demand. We retain fleet flexibility in the second half to flex growth up or down in line with market conditions. With regards to the proposed changes announced by the RBA on credit card surcharges and interchange fees, we're not expecting any material adverse impact at the group level in FY 2026, and the longer-term impacts will be determined as those rules are finalized. Before we move to Q&A, I'd like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the incredible Virgin Australia team. This strong result is a testament to their hard work.
Our people are what make Virgin Australia different. They're the secret sauce, and our success is all due to them. This weekend, we celebrate 25 years of Virgin Australia. We've come a long way since our days as an irreverent startup that shook up Australian aviation, but one thing remains the same: our people, their care, their passion, their Virgin flair. With their support, we look forward to continuing to lift Virgin's performance in FY 2026 and beyond. Thank you, operator. We'll now take questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speaker phone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Andre Fromyhr from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. I was wondering if we could just first talk about the demand environment. In particular, if you think about the capacity and RAS guidance that you've given, what's really driving that? If you could talk about specific routes or business versus leisure or demographics, are you seeing new customers to Virgin Australia versus existing ones traveling more? Just great to get a bit more color about the demand.
Yeah, sure. This is Dave . I'll start with that, and then maybe I'll hand over to Paul Jones, our Chief Customer and Commercial Officer, to comment. In general, the thing I'd start with is you'll see that we reiterated our RAS guidance that we'd given a few months previously. The revenue environment, by and large, is in line with what we had expected. We had anticipated that there would be a robust environment, and I think that there is, and we're pleased with that. With that, maybe I'll hand over to Paul for elaboration.
Thanks, Dave. Good morning, Andre. As Dave outlined, demand has remained strong, and we have seen that demand remain strong even with capacity growth that we've seen in the market. Also, our intent to travel data that we have, which looks at both leisure and business in terms of their intent to travel over the coming months, also remains strong. In July and August, we've seen some really strong intakes. Dave already mentioned the British Lions Tour, but we're also seeing strong intakes for the upcoming AFL finals. I will just say that in FY 2025, we particularly had strong SME PACS growth. The SME PACS growth was over 20%, and we expect in half one, we'll continue to see double-digit SME PACS growth on the Virgin Australia network. The B2B market has bounced back very strongly following the election and the cyclone earlier this year.
For half one, we feel confident and on track, and it's why we've reconfirmed our RAS guidance at + 3% to + 5% that we outlined in the prospectus.
Great. I was just hoping I could ask another one specifically on costs, and I guess the message we're getting, as much as it's consistent with the prospectus, is one of inflation across most of your cost categories, but then, you know, strong efforts on transformation. Can you talk through for transformation, you know, how much is that going to be spread across revenue, you know, non-fuel costs? Maybe there's some fuel benefits in there, but then, you know, how much of that gets reinvested in, you know, initiatives that you're trying to pursue?
Yeah, thanks, Andre. We've been very clear that we expect that our transformation program next year, we expect to get about $400 million gross benefits. Our costs, as I'd mentioned, we are seeing quite some increase in airport costs, some maintenance costs, and some labor costs. The transformation is a major part of mitigating those costs and allowing us to deliver an earnings accretion. To give you a flavor, the sort of things still to come, of that $400 million, roughly about half of it will be cost, and the rest will be predominantly revenue with a bit in Velocity. To give you that flavor, we've still got things like the density of the aircraft. We're adding an additional row of seats on our Boeing 737 aircraft. We're putting simplification of the fleet in VARA, moving to the Embraer E190-E2s.
We're getting tremendous productivity benefits from our technology investments and from the EBAs. We're getting benefits in optimization in the revenue from the new technology. We are expecting this to continue. It's deeply embedded in the program, in the business. We expect to get continual earnings accretion, and I do expect it, as I said, to be about half cost, half revenue. It won't flow one for one through to the bottom line because, of course, we have to invest in the transformation program. There's inflation that comes, and some of it gets competed away.
Okay. If you don't mind me just asking one technical question, probably again for you, Race, just the tax position. Where are you as of 30th of June on tax assets? Or asking another way, how long should we expect it to take before cash tax starts to mimic what we see on the P&L?
For FY 2026, we will be paying tax. We just had the monumental occasion of paying our first tax bill last week because it's obviously provisional tax. This is the success of delivering successful profit. We've now used up our tax losses, therefore, you should assume for your planning for FY 2026, we will be paying tax.
Great, thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Justin Barratt from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the opportunity. I just wanted to, given the fact that this is your first call, see if you could talk a little bit more to your maybe your medium-term revenue growth opportunities. How should we think about what Virgin Australia may look like in 3-5 years' time?
Yeah. Thanks, Justin. Let me take that. You know, when we think about where we're headed, I think one of the features of our new business and our new business model is that we are sort of focused. We know who we serve. We know how we serve them. I think that as you roll our business forward for the next three years, we'll certainly be a bigger business. We'll continue to grow with the market as we've discussed. You know, when we look at our target segments of small business, value corporate, and premium leisure, we think that pursuing those target customers gives us a footprint that's about a third of the market. We expect to stay roughly in that range. I think that we'll continue to add flights and add capacity to serve those customers across our network.
I think that fundamentally, the network will look larger but won't look dramatically different three years from now than it looks now.
Fantastic. Maybe just one more bit more nuanced one. In terms of your CapEx guidance, it's net $900 million for FY 2026, but I think, Race, you mentioned that there's potentially four aircraft that you haven't determined yet exactly how to fund. In terms of that $900 million CapEx, how should we be thinking about those four additional aircraft? Could that see further upside to that CapEx bill depending on, I guess, your capital position at that point?
Yeah, Justin, you're spot on. We have 17 aircraft coming in in FY 2026. Of these, 13 are committed to leasing already. Four, as part of that guidance that I've given, the $900 million, we are assuming we are debt funding them from a planning assumption. What we will actually do is once we get the final numbers in terms of potential lease rates, we will apply our capital allocation framework and determine what is the best use of our funds. If indeed we do lease those aircraft, then that CapEx number may well decline.
Fantastic. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Matt Ryan from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I might just follow on there, Race. You've given some really good disclosure around your fleet plans going back to the prospectus. Are we sort of thinking that all of those aircraft are going to be delivered, and I guess the funding is the question, or what's your sort of scope to bring aircraft forward like you've done today or maybe delay some of those deliveries depending on where you see the demand environment at the time?
Hey, this is Dave. Maybe I'll take that for a second. I think the flexibility we have around capacity is not so much the expectation that we'll change our new aircraft delivery schedule. I think we expect that to largely land as it is. It's rather the flexibility we have about accelerating or delaying the aircraft we'll be retiring. That's really where the flexibility lies with that and with our wet lease partners who we can, you know, ramp up or down as demand goes.
There are presumably some contingency plans around the max deliveries depending on which you can get.
Yeah, so I was actually in Seattle last week. We've already received 4 of the 13. We are very confident in getting the 13 aircraft. To Dave's point, we have flexibility in that we are planning to exit 6 of the 800 leases. We can always change that decision if we need to. We can always flex on our wet leasing if we need to. We're confident on the delivery of the 13 MAX 8s.
Okay, great. I was just going to ask you about ancillary revenue that was up 18%, which is a pretty strong outcome. Just interested in what drove that and, you know, I guess looking forward, presumably that's a big feature of your growth plans. Just anything you can point to in terms of initiatives that we might need to think about.
Hi, thanks for the question, Matt. It's Paul. Yes, we had very strong growth in ancillaries. With our repositioned business model, it is, as you say, a really important part of our earnings growth moving forward. It's a very focused part of our business. We are expecting double-digit growth in this space moving forward because it is an important part of our business model. To your question about examples, we still have a long way to go around seats. For example, neighbor-free seating, you may well see in the near future as an ancillary product. Obviously, pets in cabin is another strong ancillary product that we'll be launching during this half of the year.
That's really helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Sam Seow from Citi. Please go ahead.
Morning all, and thanks for taking the question. Just on your EBIT margin guide, just quickly wanted to clarify, is that an improvement off the underlying or the pro forma EBIT margin, with or without that $14 million adjustment? Thank you.
Yeah, hey Sam, you should work everything off our underlying numbers. In terms of our actual result, we've delivered an underlying result of 11.4% EBIT margin. We would expect that to grow in FY 2026.
Got it. That's helpful. When we look at these results, how do we think about Qatar? I mean, they started flying, I think, in late June. When we look at your op metrics, like ASKs, as we think about FY 2026, where does the revenue and the cost come through? Is your EBIT margin or RAS guide inclusive or excluding, you know, Qatar? Thanks.
None of the ASKs or the margin is included in these underlying numbers. Remember that we have no P&L or balance sheet exposure. We do earn a commission, and of course, we do pay for the Velocity points where, of course, the benefit goes through the Velocity P&L. The RAS numbers we're giving, the ASK numbers we're giving, they are excluding anything to do with Qatar Airways.
Maybe I'll just build on that for a second. I think the place where we do see value accruing to the Virgin Australia P&L from the Qatar Airways partnership is really through Velocity and through our domestic network. The partnership with Qatar Airways and relaunching our long-haul flying really improves the attractiveness of our overall loyalty proposition. We have many more ways to earn and redeem, including, you know, Q Suites, world's best business class product. That really incents and draws customers to us and makes them fly our domestic network more and is an important underlying driver of our continued growth in the B2B space. That's really how it flows through to our P&L.
Got it. Maybe just a segue there while we're on loyalty. When I look at the point, you know, you're earning probably a little bit faster than some of your peers. Can you highlight some of the factors there? I mean, are you gaining share or just how we should think about that number?
Let me have Nick Rohrlach, our CEO of Velocity, answer.
Hi Sam, good morning. Yeah, it looks like the 2025 result obviously includes a few things, particularly new growth in new active members. You see a strong number there for growth in members. We've really tried to, as we've rebuilt the airline, really try to target also new segments and really focus segments around who we're bringing as Velocity members. We put a lot of money into obviously growing the outreach there. The other thing that's really helped in 2025 is a lot of new partnerships. That includes some 2024 partnerships like our partnership with DiDi, for example, a full year annualization of that. In 2025, we added some new partnerships. We also relaunched some existing ones too. We've now got, for example, what I think is the best credit card in market now with the Velocity Amex card that was relaunched during the year.
Of course, that will then also help our 2026 growth as well, as those things that were done in 2025 annualize through.
Okay, thanks again. Appreciate the color, though.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Cameron McDonald from E&P. Please go ahead.
Good morning. A couple of questions if I can. Just in terms of the hedging around fuel, can you give us some more color around the sort of the pricing of that given it's so heavily hedged at 93% for the first half and what the structure of those hedges actually is? You've indicated that it's a mix, but you know, is there any sort of ceiling or floor on any of those hedges that we need to be aware of?
Yeah, no problem, Cam. Thanks for the question. We use, as I've mentioned previously, a combination of swaps and forwards. We are pretty much capped at about $70 per barrel. Therefore, I would expect, based on our percentage of swaps, we would participate more than 50% to any downside. As you correctly said, we've got 93% hedged for the first half. We're 85% in the second half. Think of it as a $70 cap, and then we'll participate 50% to the downside.
Okay, great. That's good color. Thank you. In terms of, you know, with the new fleet orders of the MAXs coming in, is there anything we should be thinking around, you know, entry into service costs, additional training, things like that as those new aircraft get delivered?
Yeah, the main cost is not so much with the Boeing s because that's, you know, in a way quite straightforward. We've got just the normal costs that are built in. The key cost is actually with VARA, with the Embraer s. I had mentioned, and it's in the forward statement, that we would expect that our below-the-line costs for restructuring is around $50 million. Within that is the cost of all the VARA entry into service cost.
Okay, thank you. While we're on below-the-line costs, the $70 million of transformation costs that you're talking about, how do we think about that in terms of an ongoing, you know, obviously you've got transformation as an ongoing program. Is that the sort of number that we should be thinking of that you will continue to incur each year and that we need to put through from a cash flow perspective? Would you ever consider putting it above the line given that it's an ongoing cost?
Yeah, we are expecting our significant items to materially decline as we go forward. The items that go there are these big transformational items. For example, if we're putting the new Embraer s in, we've still got some big systems such as our new payroll system, the sort of things that you only do every 10 - 15 years. For 2026, I've said I expect around $50 million of restructuring. IT will be about $25 million. That is half of what it was in 2025. When you look forward, I expect that both to decline even more as we get more into continuous improvement opportunities rather than these transformational big changes.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Owen Birrell from RBC. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. I just wanted to extend on the discussion around the capacity flexibility, and I know you mentioned you've got that flexibility through the timing of your retiring aircraft. What I wanted to get a sense of is what are the key metrics that you're focused on in terms of making that timing decision? I know that your load factors have risen from 83% up to 84.9%. Is there a range that you're targeting around those load factors? Just as another question around load factors, for your current network, what do you think the peak level is of load factors before you start to get operating inefficiencies?
Yeah, look, maybe I'll start with the broader point of view about how we think about flexing capacity. As mentioned, we've given first half capacity guidance of 4%. We don't have a, we haven't landed a firm second half capacity yet. Obviously, the domestic market actually is quite a late booking market. Most of the bookings come in in the last 2-3 months. We're constantly monitoring demand in our core target segments. We want to best match our capacity to the demand that we are seeing in the market. That's the way we make those decisions. Of course, you do have to make these fleet decisions roughly six months out. We'll be looking at the second half now. We do have a little bit of flexibility closer in as well. That's the way I would think about it.
As far as the optimum load factor where we go, maybe I'll just let Paul comment on that for a second.
Thanks, Dave. As you've rightly said, Owen, we saw an increase in load factor between FY 2024 and FY 2025 to that mid-80% level of load factor. I think that's a reasonable place in terms of the assumption moving forward is that sort of area of load factor, which is optimal. We may see a little bit more growth in that, but not substantive, I don't think, based on what we can see as the outlook.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Niraj Shah from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I guess the first one, in terms of the first half, second half earnings skew, would you consider fiscal 2025 broadly normal, or are there any callouts that we should be thinking about when thinking about fiscal 2026?
FY 2025 was about 66% first half. That's a little high, and part of that was because there was a little bit of an impact on the cyclone. Going forward for FY 2026, I would expect us to be in the lower 60% for the first half.
Got it. Thank you. My second one, I understand you guys are quite confident on the delivery timetable of the new aircraft through the year, but given, I guess, how much risk is there to that $400+ million of transformation savings gross if there is some slippage for the planes yet to be delivered?
Yeah, so look, I think it's definitely correct that a portion of the cost savings that we're expecting in our transformation plan are attributed to the fleet delivery. I don't think we haven't broken out a specific number. My guidance would be that even if there was some sort of slippage in the delivery, we wouldn't expect it to be material. You know, these planes are coming in through the year. The benefits of these planes are annualized. As we get through the first half or the first three quarters of the year, we'll have banked nearly all the actual benefits that we'll see in FY 2026.
Yeah, I think just to build on that.
Thank you.
Just to build on that for you, the MAX 8s, as I said, we're quite confident. Where there's probably more risk and perhaps where you're referring is the MAX 10s. We're not expecting the MAX 10s till FY 2028, and we do have mitigation because we are able to convert those to 8s. We don't see significant risk in lift ability from the Boeings.
That's clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from Sam Seow from Citi. Please go ahead.
Oh, hey guys, thanks for the follow-up. Just quickly, thanks for the domestic capacity growth guidance. Could you perhaps talk to short haul international and where you expect that might end up in first half 2026? Thanks.
Yeah, look, I don't think we've given specific guidance on the short haul. You know, short haul is only about 10% of our capacity, so it's not a big swing factor. As Race mentioned, it did go backwards in the last fiscal year based off our Haneda exit. I think we expect that to return to growth this year, but we haven't given a specific number.
Okay, thanks for that, Dave.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Anthony Moulder from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning all. If I can look at the delivery profile that you've got, obviously, as Race said, that you've spotted the MAX 10s to MAX 8s. Is there any flexibility to go back to some of the MAX 10s given the capacity growth that that gives relative to the MAX 8s?
Sorry, Anthony, when you say go back to the MAX 10s, we have.
Slot back.
Slot back. I'm trying to understand your question because we've got those MAX 10s coming in 2028 and 2029. Is your question, can we bring them to 2027?
No, obviously the certification of them is being pushed out to next year, but is there any option for you to convert any of the MAX 8s to MAX 10s? It will go back the other way is the question, I guess, given the MAX 10s are larger aircraft. It gives you growth in that CapEx as opposed to just a like-for-like swap out with the MAX 8s to the 737-800.
I think the answer to the question is no, the earliest we expect to get the 10s are in that 2028 timeframe. We do have additional options past the sort of the confirmed deliveries that could allow us to continue to add those aircraft over time, but it wouldn't be earlier.
If we do swap out the 10s for the 8s, we will use that slot that the 10 was when we get the 8. We won't lose getting an aircraft in that particular time. If it's not a 10, it'll be an 8.
Understood. On lease backward, leases are still a large part. How do you determine the benefits of leases relative to owned aircraft in the current marketplace?
We do quite some detailed analysis in terms of what is the cash impact, what's the best return on our capital using the capital allocation framework. Obviously, when you have leases, you are paying an inherent lease interest cost. You have to take the lease return impacts, which means we have to build the maintenance provisions. We also look at the flexibility we get between owned and leased. We also look at the equity that we would have in an owned aircraft. There's quite a detailed calculation that we go through, but the key variable will really be what will the lease rates be when those aircraft are basically finalized. It's quite a detailed calculation that we go through.
Still more attractive to lease than own, is the point.
It depends from a cash, obviously, if you're buying it, you've got to lay out a bit more cash, but then you can get the debt financing. There's very attractive debt financing coming out of Japan, for example. You have to consider the cash impact. You know, the lease environment is fairly tight because of the obvious deliveries of the OEMs. We will make sure that we take the right decision for the use of shareholder funds.
I'll just make a comment to sort of, if you think about our position coming out of administration, we were heavily using leasing to acquire aircraft because of where we were as a company. I think as a public company now with a very conservative capital structure, the way the numbers come out on lease versus own is different. Whether that pushes us to buy planes versus lease them, we still haven't made a final determination, but we'll be testing the market to see which will give us the best outcome.
Very good. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to David Emerson for closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone. I just would probably close with saying that we're very proud of our results that we've delivered, that we met or exceeded all the things that we committed to in the prospectus, and that not only did we deliver a great financial result, but we also delivered great results for our customers with high NPS, increased operational resilience, great on-time performance, and low cancellation rates. I'm really proud of that. That, of course, as I mentioned, is really delivered through our people who are our key differentiator. I'll just close by saying we're very excited that this evening we'll be celebrating our 25th anniversary. We have been an innovator shaking up Australian aviation as a beginning, and we continue to drive this business to greater and greater heights as we go forward.
With that, I appreciate everybody's time and attention, and look forward to talking to you next time.