Good morning, everyone. With us today, Jacques Gounon, Chairman of the Board, Yann Leriche, Chief Executive Officer, Géraldine, Chief Financial Officer, and Virginie Rousseau, Capital Markets Director. I hand over to Jacques.
Thank you, Anne-Sophie. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's always a pleasure to comment our 2023 results, which is not too difficult today. You have seen that we are in line with the consensus. We are announcing an EBITDA which is close to EUR 1 billion, so I think it's something which is at least historical results and exceptional results. This is, of course, and Yann will explain, Géraldine will explain. This is related to the very strong results we got from ElecLink. ElecLink, it is the first year where we have a full exercise, full results. Of course, we are still discovering this specific growing electricity market, and of course, we had strong benefit from the energy crisis, this will be commented later.
What is important, of course, is that we have now serious, real pile of cash, and the best use of this cash, of course, is to serve dividends, and we will propose at the next AGM on the seventh of May an increase of 10% of the dividend, up to EUR 0.55 per share. I would like to apologize for the 2023 guidance, which is, of course, nine-10 below both consensus and the results, EUR 979 million, because we are always cautious. Once again, I repeat that it is the first year of full completion of the ElecLink operations, so we are very... We were very cautious. We are used to be very cautious, to be very conservative, and I think we are in the same mood for 2024.
Yann will comment the guidance, but, we do prefer to announce something which is, more reasonable due to the, change in the electricity market, which is really the driver, of the, change we are proposing. Keeping in mind that, we, we prefer to, deliver than to, promise. So, all in all, I must say that for this year, where we will celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Channel, we have some outstanding results, and I, I do think that you will share our optimism for the future. Yann, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Jacques. Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here with you today, along with our team that was presented. And so I will speak about our 2023 full year results, which are the best ever for Getlink. So I will start by explaining how we are able to achieve this performance. Then Géraldine will present the detailed financial results, and I will finish with the outlook. I am on page four. In 2023, we reached an EBITDA of EUR 979 million, the highest level ever achieved by the group. This unprecedented performance was obtained thanks to the exceptional contribution from ElecLink, but also by the strong resilience of Eurotunnel and Europorte in a challenging market environment.
To achieve these results, we stuck to our strategy, providing attractive services to our customers in all our businesses and capturing their willingness to pay. To be able to continue on this successful path in 2023, we also worked hard to prepare our group for the future. This means reinforcing our competitive advantages, for example, by implementing an efficient plan for EES, in order to stretch the channel crossing time gap with the ferries, or by unlocking high-speed passenger rail services from London to European capitals to increase tunnel usage. Our main 2023 figures are on page five. Our EBITDA reached EUR 979 million in 2023, representing an 11% increase compared to the 2022 level.
The main EBITDA growth driver was ElecLink, which was operational for the whole of 2023, compared with just seven months in 2022, as operations started at the end of May of that year. In 2023, ElecLink generated an EBITDA of EUR 368 million, after deducting a EUR 156 million provision for the profit-sharing mechanism. We will come back on the PSM later on today. EUR 582 million were generated by the Eurotunnel, and EUR 29 million by Europorte. This record EBITDA translated into an outstanding cash generation, with free cash flow after debt service reaching EUR 638 million. On page six, you can see Eurotunnel traffic. In 2023, our truck shuttle volumes were under pressure, mostly because of the intense competition from ferry companies.
Two of them are deviating from the social models applicable in France and in the U.K., and hence, reducing their staff costs by approximately 60%. Despite that, we confirm our market leader status on the short freight. Our Le Shuttle Pax traffic was up 6% versus 2022, with a market share of 58% above pre-crisis levels. Eurostar performed very well in 2023. Traffic is back close to historical levels, with 10.7 million passengers transported, up 29% compared to 2022. We will now go into more detail about the main highlights and our main initiatives in each of our segments. So let's start with our passenger shuttle business on slide seven. As you know, our passenger shuttle traffic remains below pre-crisis.
However, our mix of customers has changed, with a drop in day trip and overnight tickets, while longer stay tickets are already 3% above 2019 level. To better serve those customers who have needs, which in certain areas are different from what they were before, we continued to enhance our service offerings with the full rebrand of our commercial service, a new booking app, and the refresh of our U.K. passenger terminal buildings. This had a direct impact on our Net Promoter Score, which improved nicely in 2023 from 34 to 41. Slide eight. As you know, our truck shuttle business has evolved in adverse context in 2023, with competition having reached a peak.
Indeed, in 2023, because of our high electricity costs, we had to charge our customers a high EVA, while the low oil price was favorable to ferries. This penalizing energy mix in 2023 was not offset by the carbon tax, which only became applicable in the maritime sector on January 1, 2024. In addition, while anti-social dumping laws were voted both in France and in the U.K. in 2023, we are still waiting for them to come into force. This means that these two laws have not yet brought a level playing field back to the cross-Channel market. In this context, we continue to fight to strengthen our competitive advantages. We want to be always faster, safer, greener, more reliable, and improve the services we offer to our customers, whether hauliers or our truck drivers.
Like for passenger shuttles, this work had a direct impact on our NPS, which improved by 20 points in 2023, a great achievement, so from 23 to 43. On slide nine, you can see that our shuttle yield increased by 5% in 2023. This is mainly driven by the increase of our energy surcharge for our truck customers, that we call EVA, but is also underpinned by our successful and ever more efficient marketing strategy. Slide 10. Yield optimization was absolutely key to limit the impact of inflation. In 2023, inflation remained high, with Eurotunnel energy charges at a record level. In this context, we also continued our strict cost discipline, for instance, by accelerating our action plan to improve our energy efficiency. Page 11. 2023 was a remarkable year for our railway business.
Remarkable in terms of traffic performance at +29%, but also in terms of news flows, with the announcements of new players willing to launch new high-speed rail service between London and continental Europe. These projects confirm the high potential for growth of the cross-channel passenger rail market. I will come back to this later on. Moving now to ElecLink on page 12. In 2023, ElecLink continued to post an outstanding operating performance with an impressive availability of the asset, above 98%. ElecLink benefited last year from a very favorable electricity market, which enabled the group to reach EUR 558 million sales and EUR 368 million EBITDA, after having booked a 156 provision for the profit-sharing mechanism.
We continue to discuss the application of this profit-sharing mechanism with the authorities, and Géraldine Périchon, our CFO, will provide you more details on this provision in a minute. Page 13. Europorte posted a 9% revenue growth in 2022, with an EBITDA flat at EUR 29 million, penalized by energy costs and many strikes at SNCF Réseau, the French rail network operator. Page 14. 2023 was a remarkable year in terms of financial and performance, but also a year during which we continued to invest in our future. We spent EUR 159 million on CapEx, with two major programs: Our passenger shuttle refurbishment, a structuring program that will last several years and which serves multiple objectives, lowering our maintenance costs, increasing capacities, but also improving our customer experience. The second main 2023 CapEx program is related to EES, the European Entry/Exit System.
To preserve our traffic fluidity, we are investing in our terminals to create a dedicated EES zone. We also built digital twins of our terminals to model the EES impact and ensure that we preserve our throughput... and the quality of service for our customers. Our ambition is to turn EES into an opportunity to increase our competitive edge versus the ferries. Slide 15. Before leaving the floor to Géraldine on financial results, I will finish with our ESG performance. In 2023, we reduced our greenhouse gas emission by 10.5% compared with 2022, confirming the group's solid trajectory towards achieving a minus 30% reduction in its emissions in 2025 compared to 2019. Our alignment with European taxonomy remains at a record high of 93% of our sales.
On the social front, we are also improving our metrics, with 28% of the top three management levels being women, exceeding our target of 25%. This clearly reflects the impact of initiatives implemented on the ground and relates through management to promote gender-equal access to technical careers. On, so next page. On ESG, we are not satisfied with just being good performance. We also want to share a few convictions. This one--this was one of the objectives of the creation of the decarbonized margin last year, linking financial and climate performance. The decarbonized margin is the EBITDA margin, including a new charge, still virtual at this stage, corresponding to a carbon bill, should we have to pay for CO2 emissions.
In 2023, even with the carbon cost at EUR 201 per ton, our decarbonized margin would only be 3% lower than our actual EBITDA. This pioneering indicator generated a lot of positive reactions. For example, it is now mentioned in the 2024 edition of the Vernimmen, which is a leading academic finance book in finance. I will stop here for the first part, and now Géraldine Périchon will present our financial results. Géraldine?
Thank you, Yann. Now let's talk about financial performance, starting with Eurotunnel on page 18. Revenues are up by 8%, thanks in particular to the 26% growth on our railway network segment. EBITDA is slightly down by 1%, reflecting the inflation pressure on our cost that we are detailing on slide 19. As already mentioned by Yann, inflation was still strong in 2023. Our energy bill increased by EUR 57 million in 2023, nearly doubling compared to the 2022 figure. As a reminder, we buy most of our energy in advance. The rest of our costs were also under inflation pressure, adding an extra EUR 23 million. We remain focused on discipline to mitigate that pressure. We actively piloted our Electricity Value Adjustment, which is our energy cost pass-through mechanism for trucks.
We also enhanced our yield management strategy and above all, remained focused on our productivity measures and cost management. Moving to ElecLink on page 20. ElecLink, for its first full year of operation, benefited from exceptional market conditions. Revenues reached EUR 558 million, and EBITDA, EUR 368 million. This number includes the profit-sharing provision. This provision has been, as expected, at each year-end, reassessed to reflect the latest market conditions. On page 21, you can see that Europorte has demonstrated its resilience in 2023, with a stable EBITDA at EUR 29 million, despite the impact of the SNCF strikes in H1 and also the energy inflation. On a consolidated basis, page 22, our total revenue stands at EUR 1.8 million, up by 14% compared to last year.
EBITDA reaches EUR 979 million, up by 11%, while EBIT is up by 9% at EUR 728 million. The net consolidated result grows by 30% at EUR 326 million. Taxes are up by EUR 73 million, and that reflects ElecLink profitability, while net finance costs are significantly down, as explained on the next page. The EUR 87 million decrease in our net finance cost is mainly driven by a lower level of inflation on the index-linked tranches of the Eurotunnel debt. There is also the impact of the higher income generated by our cash management. The remarkable EBITDA generation translated into an outstanding free cash flow level, reaching EUR 638 million after debt service, and that includes a EUR 76 million debt repayment, as you can see on page 24.
You will notice that our operating cash flow is EUR 90 million down compared to last year. This is related to the ElecLink working capital requirement change. With a commercial launch in May 2022 and successful long-term 2023 capacity auctions closed in 2022 and partially cashed in at that time, ElecLink benefited last year from a strong cash inflow, and that result in 2024, in a mechanical decrease in the deferred income change.... Our net CapEx in 2023 reached EUR 144 million for the group, and this comes after a EUR 21 million public subsidy received at the end of 2023. This was for Brexit-related expenses and in particular, to finance our EES CapEx.
On page 25, you can see that the group continues its strong cash generation, because after the dividend paid in June 2023 of EUR 271 million, our net debt is down by 7% at EUR 3.6 million. Our cash position remains particularly strong, reaching a record level of EUR 1.6 billion. That's all for 2023 numbers. Back to Yann for the outlook.
Thank you, Géraldine. I will now continue this presentation with the outlook. I am on page 27. In 2024, the cross-market, the cross-Channel market will remain very competitive, including now on the pax segments, until the anti-social dumping laws enter into force, which should happen before the summer, even if I want to stay cautious about the dates. Again, this backdrop will continue to reinforce our competitiveness, this pursuing our operational excellence program, systematically attacking our cost base, being very agile in our marketing actions, and deploying our CapEx plans. In 2024, we will also continue to enhance our customer offerings. We have launched several initiatives, both for our passengers and our truck customers. We are, for example, developing several new partnerships with hotels, car brands, and so on. We are also continuing to deploy our yield management strategy for both our truck and pax.
On trucks, we are adopting a more sophisticated approach to pricing. On packs, we are entering into phase two of our yield strategy with further segmentation, but also, by unbundling our offer to provide more flexibility to our customers. Page 28, as mentioned on the previous page, our Le Shuttle market is currently very competitive. However, our fundamentals remain very strong. We have a unique value proposition, as we are very differentiated from our competitors, efficient and green. We will also benefit in the coming months and years from several very positive developments. We already spoke about the willingness of our government to stop social dumping on the short straits. There is also the international terminal in Amsterdam Station, which will accommodate more traffic after its refurbishment. I will come back to it.
The EES implementation that we manage better than our competitors, and the E.U. ETS applicable to the ferries, which will penalize their cost structure. Actually, it started on January first, 40% of their emissions in Europe, and will increase to 100% of their emission in two years. ElecLink, now on Slide 29. Since the start of its operation in May 2022, electricity market conditions have been exceptional. As expected, the market is currently normalizing. The positive news is that the electricity spreads are currently normalizing at a level which is above our initial investment case, which forecasted a normative EBITDA at EUR 80 million per year, as communicated during our 2018 capital market day.
As of February the eighteenth, so last week, we sold 71% of the 2024 cable capacity at an average carrying price of 31 EUR per MWh. With the addition of the capacity market income, we have already secured a revenue of EUR 292 million. Slide 30. 2024 is also an important year for our passenger high-speed rail business. Since its opening in twenty eighteen, the London-Amsterdam high speed line has been a great success with very strong demand. However, the development of this traffic has been capped by the boarding capacity constraints at Amsterdam Station, and is currently limited to 250 persons per train. The good news is that the rebuild of Amsterdam International Terminal will start mid-2024.
For six months, the direct service from Amsterdam to London will be closed, but then when it reopens, this refurbishment will unlock the full potential of this line, which is estimated at three million passengers per year, which is two million additional passengers compared to 2023. Slide thirty-one. Looking a bit beyond 2024, there is a great potential for new high-speed rail destinations through the tunnel. The market share that rail can take from aviation obviously depends on journey time. The studies were recently carried out, proved that Germany and Switzerland can each capture two million passengers. We have worked hard to transform this opportunity into real services and a real business. We have done this by reducing the time to market by 50% for all rail undertakings willing to develop these services.
We achieve that by simplifying and simplifying access to the tunnel with the relevant authorities, by working with rolling stock manufacturers to integrate the tunnel standard into their product design, by working with the other infrastructure managers in the U.K., in France, in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in Germany, and in Switzerland, to work on the network and stations. This work, plus the financial aid that we propose to rail operators with our program called ETICA, makes us very confident that the passenger high-speed traffic will increase in the tunnel, connecting London to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, and also new destinations. Slide 32. Coming back to 2024, we are expecting an EBITDA of between EUR 780 million and EUR 830 million.
The normalization of the electric contribution will lead, as expected, to normalization of the group's results, which will, however, remain well above our historical results. Our group fundamentals are very solid, and we are well positioned to capture the forthcoming economic and social evolutions. This confidence in our future enables us to propose to our AGM a 10% increase in our dividend to bring it to EUR 0.55. 2024 is also an anniversary year. The group is turning 30 years old on May sixth. In 1994, we were pioneers. In 2024, our assets remain unique and harbors more potential than ever. We have many opportunities to celebrate that over the year ahead, but for now, we'll take your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a telephone question, please press star one one on your keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Alternatively, use the Ask a Question tab on the webcast. Please stand by for your first question. Your first question comes from Cristian Nedelcu at UBS. Christian, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. The first one on the truck shuttle, you reduced the peak days from around 90 to 25 in 2024. This is suggesting to me that you're trying to use a bit your, your yields to counter the market share losses. So I guess my question is: How should we think about your shuttle yields in 2024? The second one, it's on the car shuttle. The ferry operators have announced capacity sharing on cars will be fully implemented from the summer. Do you believe that that could lead to a decrease in your market share on cars as a consequence? And the last one, again, coming to the truck shuttle.
We have these new rules and checks on U.K. imports for meat and plants that are implemented already from the end of January and then in April. Can you tell us what percentage of your truck volumes are in this segment? And how do you think about potential headwinds to volumes here? Thank you.
Okay, so I will take your question in the order you asked them. So first on trucks, yes, you're correct. We reduced our peak days. As I mentioned, you know, during the presentation, we want to be even more tactical in the way we manage our prices. And clearly, the peak days is a way, you know, to do a yield management. And in the context that, you know, is tough competition, it was a requirement to be even better than what we were in the past, and we continue to invest heavily in our capabilities regarding yield management, to be at the forefront of what is achievable. One key element is that we don't try to optimize yield.
I mean, meaning we don't try to have the, highest yield possible, and we don't try to have the highest volume possible. We try to optimize yield and volume, and actually, to be more precise, we try to optimize to find the, the best optimum for yield, volumes, and cost. Because, you know, sometimes, even if you optimize yield and, and volume, you might have to put more resources to, to operate, a train, so to add capacity, which in the end is not optimum. So, if we did that change, it is clearly because, we saw that it was better for us.
The optimum between yield, volume, and cost was better with that change, and will continue in 2024, based on the market conditions which are evolving, to always refine our marketing approach to be always as efficient as we can. You mentioned then the car shuttle and what the ferries are doing. They want to replicate what they did on the freight market, on the packs. It has been announced. We have seen that. It's not into application anymore. I will be very cautious in what I say, because you know that the French antitrust authorities are working on the case. So as a good practice, we don't comment you know a case which is in front of such an authority.
I encourage you to ask them directly what they think of that agreement, and you might learn a lot. Then, yeah, the new checks for the SPS products. So we don't communicate, as you know, also, you know, what kind of goods do we transport, so I will not give you the full detail. But what is for sure is that those new checks will be, you know, a new formalities that our customers will have to undertake. As for Brexit in the packs, we help them, we support them a lot. It was also already, at that time, a differentiating service that we offer that some of our competitors were not offering. We help them to get prepared.
You might have seen that we do not have yet the full information about how the physical checks as of April will be managed. It has been announced, the date has been confirmed, but we still don't know exactly how it will be managed and how much it is going to cost, which is the point that we track carefully. And we discuss, as you can imagine, a lot with the U.K. authorities to ensure that additional cost will be as limited as possible, to ensure that the trade will not suffer from it.
Thank you very much.
Please stand by while we prepare your next question. Your next question comes from Elodie Rall at J.P. Morgan. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. My first question is on guidance. That range that you provided, if we take the uplift from the provision on ElecLink, which is around EUR 15 million, I computed a back out that the guidance for your internal EBITDA at the midpoint is around EUR 580 million. So basically, broadly flat versus what you've delivered in 2023. So it sounds overly conservative, given, I guess we should expect cost to decrease, and you talked about new year strategy. And I know you're cautious, but also why putting a cap at the same time on this guidance again, given, as you said last year, your guidance proved conservative. So that's my first question, please.
Second question is actually on energy and labor costs that you ought to know as well, just to confirm indeed that we should expect lower energy costs, and to get your view on how we should think about costs generally for 2024. If you have actually hedged portions of electricity costs, and if you negotiated further tariff increases for the year and what we could expect for labor costs in 2024. Thank you.
Okay. I will take the first one on the guidance. Yes, we announced today EUR 780 million-EUR 830 million, so a EUR 50 million range. Why do we have that range this year? It's because as I mentioned during you know the presentation on the outlook section, the price war has started on the short straits for the packs, which was not that much the case you know so far. And that will evolve positively at some point when the anti-social dumping regulation are going to enter into force. But here, I want to be very cautious on that precise date. Will it happen before or after the summer? You know, that will be a key trigger for this year.
We lobby and we push, and we are quite successful so far, because, you know, in the two countries, both in France and in the U.K., to have basically one year after, you know, March 2022, when P&O, during the same day, they fired all their staff, you know, the 800 seafarers, by a conference call. So, which triggered a lot of emotion, including at political level. That, plus our clear actions enabled to have one year after two new laws, both in France and in the U.K. I mean, it's a remarkable time. Usually it takes, you know, years to have new regulation in our countries. But, after this key achievement, now we are waiting for the decree in France and its equivalent in the U.K.
They are announced for the coming weeks and months, hopefully before the summer, not sure 100%, so that's why you want to stay cautious and not to give you a number which is, too optimistic and then not being able to deliver on it. Géraldine, please, go into the details about the energy costs.
Yes. So regarding energy, yes, we are still buying mostly one year in advance our electricity. We retain some exposure to the spots, but most of it is bought well in advance. So what does it mean for 2024? It means that we should see a decrease compared to 2023, indeed, but you will have seen that prices have been, and still are above pre-crisis level. Therefore, we expect a level between 2022 and 2023 numbers for 2024. Regarding the rest of the cost, again, we are not going to go into too much details, but you know that we have a social policy that is steady and that works to maintain the purchasing power of our employees. So we continue on our usual policy on that front.
The inflation level has been lower at the end of 2023 compared to the year before, of course, so the cost increase will follow that curve as well.
... Okay, thanks very much. Please stand by for your next question. Your next question comes from Nicolò Pessina at Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, all. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one on the ElecLink, profit sharing provisions. We see a lower level compared to 2022, at 31% of revenues. So I'm wondering if this is your new best estimate going forward, and maybe if you can give us an update on the talks with the regulators for this profit sharing mechanism. Second question is follow up on the energy cost. Maybe you can provide us an indication of which portion is hedged for 2024, 2025, or which portion is supplied at the ARENH tariff.
And finally, if I may have an update on the EVA, this was cut, if I remember well, last summer, but then I lost track, and I'm wondering if it's still in place, and what we should expect in 2024, whether at some point it will be fully eliminated. Thank you.
Géraldine?
Okay. So regarding the ElecLink profit-sharing mechanism, as I was saying before, we update this number every year, looking at the full stock of the provision, because we are computing basically based on long-term assumptions and other parameters the anticipated level of contribution over the life of the asset. So that's why there was a slight decrease in the percentage of that overall contribution in the total stock of the provision. Regarding energy cost, I'm not going to give you all the details on the different types of buying that we can make. I'm just going to say that ARENH represented more than half of our buying electricity so far.
We are still significantly hedged as well on the rest of the electricity consumption, but we retain a part exposed to the spot. The EVA was indeed decreased last summer because we got some anticipated good news on some subsidies that we transferred to the EVA evolution. It's also important for our clients to see that we indeed pass through energy evolution in one way or in the other as well. So that's how we decreased the level of EVA last year. Right now, the EVA is lower than what we had in 2023, but it's still there because we are still well above in terms of energy cost the pre-crisis level.
This is what we communicate and what we work with, with our track client, in a very transparent manner.
Thank you.
Please stand by for your next question. Your next question comes from Sven Edelfelt at Oddo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much for taking my question, and good morning. So two for me. Firstly, you mention your cash situation is very sound, even after paying dividend. So can you perhaps tell us if there has been any discussion regarding a potential buyback at board level, on what are your thoughts about a potential ElecLink two? So that would be my first question. And then the second one would be about the profit sharing. When do you expect to cash out the money, and can you update us on the negotiation, please?
Okay. So first point, yes, our cash in hand is quite sound. We do not plan currently to buy back some of our shares. It has been discussed and decided so at this stage at board level. ElecLink two, yeah, you've seen that ElecLink one is a success, so we are actively working in that field. We are, you know, in France, for example, there are only two TSOs and RTE and ourselves, so this is something that puts us in a very positive, you know, position on the transmission energy market. And so we'll continue to work on it. And yes, ElecLink two and other services that we could develop in the energy market is something that we work on.
Nothing more to say at this stage, but hopefully, we'll be able to discuss more about this kind of topic during the year. PSM, PSM, we do not have today a final agreement with the authorities. Not that we are not willing to, you know, to finalize the open point. Basically, it should have been done already last year, but they are not in a hurry to finalize that discussion because they have a lot on their plate, and obviously it's not their first priority. For the moment, we don't pay them cash. We don't owe them cash, so they don't see that as something urgent.
So that's why, on that one, we continue with our own assumption and calculate, and we discuss that with our auditors to set the PSM at a level which seems, you know, to us, the best reflecting, you know, what we would have to to share in the future. At this stage, I can't say more. We push. I hope that this year, 2024, will be the year with a final agreement with them, because, obviously it will be better for everyone to have more visibility on this. But here also, working with authorities, I don't want to commit on any date, just commit on our efforts, which are, you know, very active, but we are not the only one to decide.
Thank you very much. Please stand by for your next question. Your next question comes from Eric Lemarié at CIC. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I got two, actually. The first, on the slide number 31, you mentioned this potential, you know, from your destination. So you explain the two million additional passenger for Germany, but you don't give any explanation from the two million for Switzerland. Maybe you can share with us how you obtain these figures. And maybe you can tell us when do you think we can expect this new destination to be implemented? And you mentioned as well, some potential new operator, new high-speed rail operator in the tunnel. When do you think this new operator can start working with you? And I got a second question.
You mentioned this entry/exit system to be implemented in October, and you mentioned you have already started to work on it, and I was wondering what should be the impact at the end of the day of this EES on your business and on your results in 2024? Thank you.
Okay. So page 39-31, indeed, you know, we are working on those two destinations. And I will make you a short answer. You can find a lot of information about that, more detail than what I'm going to say here on our website. We had organized a press conference in December of last year, so two months ago. We had a full deck about it, and you will find a lot of information. And then, should you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact Virginie Rousseau, she will be happy to further inform you. So what do we do? Basically, the first element is to calculate what is the market potential, the market size.
To do that, because there are already services, so you were mentioning Switzerland. So here, for example, we take, you know, the Swiss destinations, the Swiss stations, and we look, you know, what is the current traffic between the main cities in Switzerland and the U.K., mostly towards London. And then what we know is that depending on the duration of the trip between, let's say, London and Zurich, we know that if the train lasts more than 4 hours, for example, we are going to capture a ballpark more than 50% of market share. If it is above four hours, it will be lower than 50%.
There is a nice curve that we have not put in those charts, but again, that you will find in the slide deck, which is on our website, that will show you, you know, the potential of each city's, basically, depending on the trip duration from London to those cities. We start with that, with the existing market. We know that by adding options or by adding train to airlines, we will increase the market size. We took a very conservative approach of plus 20% of induced passengers. If you look at what happened recently, for example, in both Italy and Spain, you will see that it is very conservative.
And based on that, you know, we calculate, you know, the market potential for rail, and that's how we end with two million passenger potential for Switzerland. The date, so it's not us who should, you know, answer that question. It's whether Eurostar, the legacy operator or new entrants. Those new entrants, two of them have declared that they want to enter the London to Europe market. One of them- so the two of them are named Heuro. It's a company from the Netherlands, and the other one is Evolyn, which is based in Spain. And you know that Evolyn is owned by the Cosmen family, which the main shareholder of National Express, now called Mobico.
So they're experts in that business. They expressed that they wanted to start those international rail services, and that they wanted to expand the destinations. They also announced last year that they were willing to start as of 2025. My personal opinion is that 2025 is probably a bit ambitious. Nevertheless, clearly, it will not last 10 years, based on the work that we have done, which is a real one. Today, if you want to buy your high-speed train from Alstom, I mention Alstom because Evolyn said that they wanted to work with Alstom, but there are others.
We have done the work ourself with Alstom and others to ensure that in their design, they already made, you know, to the right decision to have rolling stock available to go without almost no modification in the tunnel. This is a great advantage because as you know, when the design is ready to go in the tunnel, it's the cost of those adaptation are very limited. If you add up the train after its production, the adaptation costs are very high. So that's why all of this makes us very optimistic that in a few years, and I remain on purpose a bit vague, because again, we are not, you know, those new entrants.
We are just supporting and enabling those new rail services to happen quite fast. But it should be a matter of a few years and much less than 10, because as we have communicated, we have reduced the time to market from 10 years to five years. And Evolyn, for example, has already started, so they have less than five years in front of them to get ready to operate. Then EES. Yeah, so EES is a new control for all, you know, so third party passenger, so third country passenger. So basically, all travelers that are not from the Schengen zone, when they will enter and leave the Schengen zone, they will have to have to go through new checks, new biometric checks. We could spend a lot of time on it.
The first time, you know, you cross, you will have both facial recognition and fingerprints to, to be given. And then after, when you will become a subsequent traveler for the next three years, it will be only one of the two biometrics checks or, or fingerprints. This clearly will add, some complexity to, to the border crossing, and we have decided, as we did for, for Brexit, to turn that, those new controls into a competitive advantage. So that's why we are very mobilized, we have invested. And so it will, you know, take a bit more time to cross the channel on our terminals. We have calculated that per car, depending on the number of passengers and so on, it will add five-seven minutes to cross, okay?
So if you compare that with, you know, our 35 minutes of, you know, being in our train, plus with the formalities on the two ends, you cross in one hour or a bit more. It's not a massive change. We have developed some innovation that we don't disclose for the moment, but we are very confident that we do it better than our competitors, and hence, be much more attractive. Some of them are not fully ready. We are ready. We have even done, you know, a full modeling, as I said, of our terminals, thanks to a lot of IT new calculations.
So that one, we are very confident that it's, it's positive news for Eurotunnel compared to, to its competitors.
All right. Thank you very much. Please stand by for your next question. Your next question comes from Marcin Wojtal at Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you so much. Good morning. So firstly, could you provide a quick update on where we are in terms of CapEx that is related to the refurbishment and upgrade of your shuttle train fleet? How much CapEx there is left, and when do you think you will finalize all these upgrades, please? And secondly, well, I just want to follow up on some of the previous questions on Eurotunnel operating expenses in 2024. So I understand that there will be savings on electricity, but overall, do you expect operating expenses to be up or down in 2024 in Eurotunnel? Thank you.
Okay, Géraldine?
Okay. So regarding CapEx, we have started, I mean, since the 2022 main programs, and in particular, the midlife one. We are working on the first shuttle refurbishment. This program is going to last a couple of years, as you all know, because, as you know, we have nine trains. So of course, we schedule their refurbishment very closely. And this is why, year on year, there might be differences in the planning of that program. But overall, we are happy with the way this program is unfolding.
We are anxious to get them done as soon as we can, because of course, in terms of quality of service, reliability and capacity upgrade, that would be a great achievement.
... Regarding the rest of the cost, yes, we expect to see the electricity cost to decrease in 2024 for Eurotunnel. For the rest, we are constantly working to try to contain and do some productivity measures. Nonetheless, even if the inflation has receded compared to 2023, we are still in an environment with elevated level of inflation, especially on salaries. As you know, we have 1/3 of our staff costs that are in the U.K. and 2/3 in France. In both countries, inflation is still higher than what we had in the past, and the long-term target of the central banks. So that will be an increase as well on that front that we are trying to partially compensate with productivity measures elsewhere.
Next.
Please stand by for your next question. Your next question comes from Nicolas Mora at Morgan Stanley. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, all. First, can we come back on the new price war in car shuttle? You know, how—I mean, a year ago, we started talking about the truck price war. Now we're talking about cars. I mean, how bad is it in terms of the price cuts offered by Irish Ferries, P&O, and so on, beyond just offering free booze to customers? On pricing again, and looking at trucks, where do you think the price gap is today, between the shuttle and the ferry? That'll be second one. Third one, on yield management for cars, you're talking about switching to phase two. What is it?
I mean, what does it entail in terms of your ability to well, further push prices higher? And last one on the OpEx, and sorry, Géraldine, I need to come back to it. So in 2023, we had EUR 14 million of savings from certificates on electricity costs. Will this come back again in 2024? And on the rest of costs, where do you see, I mean, beyond wages, that, what, that we understand well, I mean, where do you see the ability to deliver a bit of productivity? Where are costs going to be contained and grow below inflation? Thank you.
Okay, I will start with the price war. Here, of course, we are not going to disclose, you know, our marketing policies and strategies. If you just go, you know, on the website of our competitors, you will see basically that they are reducing their prices by about 20%. I mean, they, there are a lot of promotion in that range. I mentioned one number, but there are others. But yeah, currently, that's what they are doing. So, two things. So, then after that, you were asking what kind of yield phase two strategy we are implementing.
So here also, I won't unfortunately say a lot, because I don't want to disclose to our competitors, which are also listening indirectly to this call, what we are going to do this year and over the next years. But we know that we still have room for improvement to increase our yield. The goal is always to capture the full willingness to pay of our customers. This is the key element. What we target is the segment of one, meaning that we would like to be able basically to price based on the precise, you know, willingness to pay of each of our customers. And we know that our segmentations today are still a bit, you know, gross here in French, not refined enough.
And so we have the potential to go into a further refinement without adding capacity, complexity when people book. And that's why we are speaking about phase two. That will basically change the way we charge. I was mentioning just before a few elements. We will, for example, unbundle a few of our offers to give more flexibility and some possibility to rearrange our service offering, to better capture that willingness to pay. And we did that in two phases, because the first phase of our yield improvement was made with our current tools and systems. The phase two triggers a full change of all our booking systems, so that's why it's taking a bit more time.
We cannot afford to make some mistakes in our booking system and not being able, because of IT rush, to be able to sell in the correct manner. So this is underway. We are quite optimistic. Of course, we did already a lot, but there is more to come. Trucks, I will not mention the price gap, and some of you, by the way, track that in a very accurate manner, so basically, I will not answer, but you know, you know what is the reality.
This price gap increased, you know, obviously last year, and you know that two main triggers to that increase was, one, the fact that we introduced our EVA, and as we had high energy cost at the tunnel last year in 2023, and that electricity that we mostly bought, you know, a few months before, and including in 2022, has a quite high prices, while the ferries saw their fuel cost decrease. So this was unfavorable to us in 2023. And you also know that thanks to the social dumping, they reduced their staff cost by 60%, which of course, also helped them reduce their cost basis and be able to offer lower tickets.
So all of that is evolving positively for us, currently, even if, as mentioned, we want to stay cautious because the regulation, I mean, the decrease, for the anti-social dumping, regulation are still awaited, and, and as long as they won't be, you know, signed and, and enforced, I will stay cautious. Géraldine, OpEx?
Yes. So, regarding the energy saving certificates, as a reminder, those are related to the fact that we replaced part of our truck shuttle fleet. It's a program that lasted over a couple of years, and we have received this year, the last two and a half shuttles that are constituting that replacement. So we will still have some positive effect from energy certificate savings in 2024, but in a lower dimension compared to what we had in 2023, we'll be in the single digit mode to answer your questions. Regarding the rest of the productivity, as you know, we went through a very heavy process of energy cost savings during the COVID year. We are capitalizing on that strong review of all our cost base.
Now, we are in the process of trying to refine and improve and continue working on a day-to-day basis on productivity measures. The avenue that we are looking at, for example, is fine-tuning our capacity to ensure that we have the missions at the right moment in the day for the different type of services, to ensure that we have a maximized NPS and at the same time, a load factor. So this is a very, I would say, it's something that is really in a lot of details to ensure that we save as many missions as we can, without endangering our quality of service.
Another avenue is, of course, to go through, procurement efforts and efficiency, to ensure that we have the most competitive RFPs that we can have, but also improving the performance of our maintenance programs that are ongoing and that are a significant part of, our focus this year, to ensure that we have our trains at the right time with the right cost of parts.
Okay. If I may just a follow-up on new entrants in high speed rail. So you've talked especially about Evolyn, which seems to be the most advanced. These guys need to book slots at least two years in advance. Most likely, there needs to be changes at some point, of course, in London, and most likely in Paris as well. I mean, how realistic is this service in even, you know, two-three years' time? Just trying to gauge a little bit where- how advanced these guys are, and whether they've been actually contacting you to even secure capacity in the tunnel. Thank you.
Well, yes, I mean, they contacted us, but not only us, the other infrastructure managers, HS1, SNCF Réseau, and so on. Because as you know, in the rail sector, when you go through different infrastructure managers, you absolutely need to have a full coordination of the path that you want to book. So it's a common work which has started already months ago. So at this stage, they have already mentioned the fact that they wanted some slots. We are not at a stage where those slots are very precisely defined because it's too early. But there is no difficulty at all here, because as you know, we have capacity in the tunnel.
HS1 has capacity, SNCF Réseau has capacity to at least go to Paris and somewhere to go to other places. So this is work underway, and to your question, two, three years, that seems to be optimistic, or is it realistic? I will give you here something that, again, is only my personal opinion, doesn't you know as a right expert and not more than this for that one, two years is probably a bit short, three years start to be fully possible, depending, you know, on their speed.
You know, it's really hard to speak about a third party, but when you look at what they have already communicated, and if you ask them the question, I mean, they are serious, they work, and they are very credible. I don't see any real roadblock for them to be, you know, on the market in a very competitive timing.
Please stand by for your next question. Your next question comes from Robert Joynson at BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everybody. It's actually Hugo standing in for Rob. Just a couple of questions. Just to follow on from a previous question, could you provide more color about your expectations for CapEx, even if only just directionally, in terms of whether you expect Eurotunnel CapEx to go up or down this year? And then secondly, on disclosure, I believe there was some discussion about separately disclosing the revenue of trucks and passenger vehicles. Could you talk about whether that is still the case? Thank you.
Géraldine?
Yes, so regarding CapEx, as previously said, we are in a phase in the life of Eurotunnel, where we are in a more elevated mode. We have in particular this mid-life of Pax shuttles that is going on. We have a few other projects. As previously explained, we believe that we will be in a range between EUR 150 million-EUR 200 million on some years over the next five-seven years. That year-on-year change will be driven by the life of the different projects and the management of the capacity needs of the business to adapt it as efficiently as possible.
Regarding the disclosure, and the split between our revenues of passenger and trucks, no, it's not on the agenda, and I believe that it was not last year either.
Thank you.
Please stand by for your next question. The next question comes from Cristian Nedelcu at UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for allowing me to follow up. Could I just check, if I calculate well, in 2023, the provision on ElecLink was around 29.7, call it 30%. Is this the correct sort of provision we should use in 2024, so 30% provision on ElecLink? And secondly, I guess, if I take a 30% provision on the ElecLink revenues on my estimate, this is telling me, you know, if I take a low end of the guidance, the EUR 780 million, I take out EUR 200 million of EBITDA for ElecLink, I'm left with EUR 580 million. So I'm trying to challenge a bit your argument that you are conservative on the guidance, because at EUR 580 million, your shuttle EBITDA is pretty much flat year-over-year.
I guess we talked today on the phone about the car price, a new price war emerging in cars recently. You talked about the subsidies on electricity being roughly EUR 15 million lower year-over-year. The peak days, if you do the math on it, you're losing probably around EUR 6-7 million of revenues, due to a lower number of peak days. And then we have EES, we have meat and plant checks. So I guess a lot of headwinds year-over-year. So maybe my question, apologies, it was a very long one, but could you actually tell us which are the tailwinds for the shuttle EBITDA growth year-over-year? Thank you.
Okay. I will start on the guidance. The key message for the guidance and the spread is that we want to be cautious. Cautious, because, yes, there are certain factors, and the main one is the date at which, you know, the anti-social dumping regulation is going to enter into force. And this one, as I said beforehand, will it be before the summer, as expected or not, the Amsterdam station and the other element that you mentioned. So if it happens early on, you know, if we have the decree next week, which is very possible, that will be a very positive element for us. We do not do that yet.
I was speaking about the antitrust authority in France, which is looking closely at the agreements between two of our competitors, and that one also could trigger a very positive news in the months to come. So yes, they are, they are positive, and I said, we are much better prepared than our competitors from the changes in regulation. If I take, for example, the new checks on the SPS product, we are launching with Sherpass, you know, services that will ease all that for our customers. For EES, as mentioned, also, you know, we are better prepared than them. So there are a few question about the timing, the fact that we are well prepared and that all those new regulation are favorable to Getlink, there is no doubt about that. Provision about ElecLink?
Yes. So you should look at the provision as the total provision, so 2022 and 2023. We don't have a different assumption year-on-year. The assumptions might change every year, but the reassessment is for the full stock of the provision. So this is important to have in mind. So when we reassess at each year, and the contribution level we believe should be taken into account over the life of the asset, we apply that for the full life of the asset, including the past years.
Thank you very much.
Please stand by for your next question. Your final telephone question comes from Nicolò Pessina at Mediobanca. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Just a very quick follow-up on the dividend of EUR 0.55 announced today. Would you say this is the floor for the future?
... Okay, we never, you know, give a long-term guidance or information about the dividends. But you know us, for a while, we have always tried to improve year-over-year. So clearly, the goal is to continue to serve well our investors who are trusting us. So it's not a real answer, but it's a hint regarding our willingness.
Jacques Gounon speaking. I do agree with what Yann is saying. Yes, we want, of course, to increase year after year the dividend, which is a continuous trend since the beginning of such distribution.
Thank you.
Please stand by for another telephone question. This comes from Achal Kumar at HSBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks. Sorry, I guess there was a problem in my line, so kindly excuse me if you already answered the questions I have. I mean, my first question was about the truck shuttle volumes. I guess you mentioned that you are doing a lot of activities to attract the truck volumes, including your loyalty programs, new booking sites, you know. So here, what confuses me or I'm not clear about is that I think generally because it's a highly competitive market, and trucks go with ferry because they charge a significantly lower amount, and whatever is the perishable items or the time-sensitive items, any which ways comes to you. So what I'm trying to understand here is that you're spending to attract these truck volumes.
Do you really get the returns? Because any which way, those volumes were coming to you. So are you getting some returns? Are you getting some people coming to you, away, away from ferry operators? So, is it really worth spending on those volumes, which are anyway coming to you? So, that is my first question, please.
Okay. So two things. On the volume on truck. So as mentioned, what we optimize is yield multiplied by volumes. We maximize the revenue, and actually, as also mentioned, it's yield multiplied by volume minus the costs, which are also a key element to the equation, because sometimes you are adding volumes, but there is no real return on it because the capacity that you must add is too high. And here also, even if we, you know, if we segment today much less than in our passenger shuttles, because it's a B2B business, so in a B2B business, it's never as easy as in a B2C business to fully segment and capture the full willingness to pay of our customers.
We start to do it more and more, and we'll continue to do it more and more. The goal is to ensure that we provide the best service to each customer segment, and that, from that, we capture their best willingness to to pay. I will give you one example, because, as you can imagine, all our customers are not the same. For example, the one from the Netherlands that are in the flower business that I visited two weeks ago in detail, we spent a lot of time with them. You know, time is the essence for them.
When you transport flowers, if you are one day late, because you miss, you know, the deadline to feed the supermarket and the market in the U.K., your flowers will be on the shelves only the day after, and as they last two, three, four, five days, depending on the type of flowers, you will lose 10%, 20%, 30% of the value of the goods if you arrive late. So here, the willingness to pay is much higher than from other goods that are coming from China to Amsterdam, and then transported by truck from Amsterdam to the U.K. through the channel. And this is why, for example, we have introduced last year our F irst service. It's a way to segment and to differentiate.
So it's a dedicated line for those customers that are willing to pay more to ensure that whatever the traffic in our terminal, whatever the conditions, they will be treated first. And for that, we charge them EUR 50 per direction more than, you know, the best price. And we have today a ballpark 7% of our customers that are using that service, so you see it's quite successful. We don't want to push it too much, because if we push it too much, we are going to deteriorate the real advantage that we offer. So we didn't have that before. You know, it was a new introduction.
We optimized our yield, and at the same time, we optimized the satisfaction of the hauler, so win-win.
Right. My second question was around the sports events, which France is hosting this year, including Olympics and, you know, Summer Olympics. So what are your thoughts around that? I mean, are you expecting some acceleration in car shuttle volumes? And then obviously, you know, then obviously that could have a significantly positive impact on your duty-free at your terminals. So what are your thoughts around that, please?
... Yeah, we expect a slight positive impact. When we looked, of course, at what happened, you know, when the Olympics happened in the U.K.. The real positive impact would happen on Eurostar more than on the shuttle. People who will be willing to attend the Olympics from the U.K.. You know, as most of the events will happen in Paris or in the Paris region, they will take a train more than their cars, from what we see today. Even if it's a bit early to say, because we are only in February, and we are still at a remote date from the Olympics, but clearly, that's where we expect the most increase in traffic.
I will add one element, which is a very nice one, which is the Paralympics flame will travel through the tunnel on the 25th of August. So that will be a new occasion to, yeah, to promote the tunnel and ensure that we can speak positively about us, and continue to improve our branding, our, you know, recognition as the leader on the short flights that we are.
Right. Right. Sorry, I have two final questions, if I may please. And I'm again, maybe you already answered. First of all, on the pricing, I mean, if you could—could you please guide about the pricing in the car shuttle segment? How do you see the pricing in car shuttle in 2024? And then finally, just a clarification, the guidance on your EBITDA, that implies a year-on-year decline. Is that most on the ElecLink side, or do you expect some decline in other businesses, other segments also, please?
Okay, I will answer the first one, Géraldine, the second one. Pricing, unfortunately, you know, we are in a competitive business, so, I will only tell you that, we are actively engaged in, improving our, yield, strategy and techniques and tools. That is the phase two that I mentioned beforehand. After phase one of yield optimization, we're entering, phase two, which is a slower one, because we have to change all our system to be able to implement it. But we know, that we have, some good opportunities to, further refine our approach and to, further, you know, capture value from our customers. We are very optimistic about that.
But as you can imagine, I would not disclose any price for 2024, not to avoid to give any confidential information to our competitors. Plus our market evolving quite fast. You know, we mentioned regulation and so on. That will, of course, change the competitive landscape, and we continue to be very, very active, very agile. Each time there is a change on the market, we adapt. We don't have a pricing level which is defined for all our product and which is stable over the year. It is not at all the way it is working on our end. It's changing all the time with sophisticated algorithm and approaches that we further develop year after year. Géraldine, please tell us about the-
Yeah, the year-on-year guidance. So we don't give, we don't detail the guidance per business, so I'm not going to go into too much detail. Obviously, when you look at the spread in the electricity market and the secured auctions that we've already closed for 2024, ElecLink revenue trends is obviously decreasing in 2024, but that's expected. That's the normalization of the market. For the rest of the business, we aim to optimize value creation. As already mentioned, there is a lot of uncertainty in our environment, economically speaking, but also in terms of competition. There are several events that are, can be, at the same time, great opportunities, but also could have negative impacts, so we are cautious.
That's all I'm going to say on that.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay, so I see that we have two last questions that we got through the chat. Can you please quantify the cost impact of the traffic disruption around Christmas 2023? So, yeah, we had two disruptions. We had a six-hour strike on our end, which has a limited impact because that was only six hours. We were able to accommodate the traffic at the end of the day. Eurostar was a bit more complicated, but the day after, they were able to manage it. Eurostar suffered a bit more with the flooding of a tunnel. And I want to be very clear, that was not our tunnel, even if some press articles misunderstood what was happening. That was a tunnel in London that was flooded a day and a half.
So all in all, a limited impact on our accounts. And then second question, can you explain the implications of revised ETICA program for new entrants? What discount will be granted on new destination over 25, 30? So, our full ETICA program, you know, you can find it on our website. I cannot make a short answer about that one because it's a program which is organized to really, you know, trigger new destination, new services. And there is a financial support, you know, based on the distance for those new services, for the increase of service, for the frequency, and so on.
So it cannot be a plain answer like this, but basically, we are increasing our unit support by 20% in the new ETICA phase, phase two, 2025-2030, compared to the previous program. So it's a real increase, 20%, one. And second, we had disclosed in December that we expect that with this increased support and with the new destination, that should be open, new frequency, thanks to the simplification that we organized on that market. We expect to provide EUR 50 million support over the five-year period, 2025-2030. Okay, that was the last question. So we thank all of you for your attention to this call, for your wise questions, and we'll speak next time in July. Thank you.
Thank you. Have a nice day. Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Have a good day.
Bye.