Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to our Q1 2025 analyst presentation. I am happy to guide you through the presentation this Tuesday morning already for the first time. Later today at 2:00 P.M., we have our conference call, as usual, to answer all your questions. On my first slide for today, I would like to start with the traffic performance at our group airports in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 and the recent development in April. On slide number three, you see our reported passenger numbers for January to March as the white bars and the April traffic performance displayed as blue bars. The gray and green numbers in the bar above the graph show you that we had a mixed start to the year within our portfolio. However, when looking at the recent numbers, we see a positive trend for nearly all group airports.
Let us look at the airports one by one, starting with Frankfurt. The slight reduction in passengers of 0.9% in Q1 basically results from the start of the Easter holidays in Germany in March 2024, which this year only started in April. A second reason are the aircraft-driven capacity constraints of our main customer, Lufthansa. Besides that, the strikes this year were not impacting us as heavily as in the previous year, but 2025 did not have a leap day in February. With the start of the summer flight schedule in April and the Easter holiday season, April traffic numbers were strong with a plus of 4.8% year-on-year, in line with our expectations. Looking forward, we are confident to see further growth over the summer season, with capacities growing on short-haul routes and outside of the Lufthansa group.
Therefore, we remain confident to see growth over 2024 on a full-year basis and stick to our guidance of up to 64 million passengers in Frankfurt in 2025, as given with our full-year publication in March. Looking at the development of our international portfolio now, you see that Lima outperformed all other airports in Q1 due to capacity additions by the airlines. Of course, it's a pity that the new terminal is not operational yet. However, the good thing is that the old infrastructure still accommodates for the volume growth which we also saw in April. Of course, I will give you an update on the terminal opening in my presentation today. Fraport Greece also printed good growth rates in the off-season and strong numbers in April of + 4.9% due to the Easter holiday season.
Antalya lost around 7% in the first three months of the year but was able to catch up strongly in April, though year-to-date passenger numbers are just down by 1%. When looking at Brazil and the reduction in volumes, this is quite a good result bearing in mind that Porto Alegre Airport has only been fully reopened in December, and the airlines had to plan their capacities in advance. The recovery runs very well, and we expect that the rest of the year will outperform 2024 by far due to the long closure of the airport in Porto Alegre last year after the flooding. In April, both our Brazilian airports saw passenger growth with Porto Alegre at + 2.6% and Fortaleza at a strong rate of + 13.7%.
Ljubljana still misses a national flag carrier, which could notably impact capacities and traffic volumes, and the passenger numbers at the Fraport Twin Star Airports in Bulgaria were flattish in the off-season and a clear uptick in April. Like this, the Fraport group as a whole, and excluding Frankfurt, printed a slightly positive traffic result in Q1. The April numbers for the group were primarily driven by the Easter holiday season, as well as further capacity recovery in Brazil and capacity additions in the Frankfurt summer flight schedule. On slide four of my presentation, I would like to give you an update on our major expansion programs, and I would like to start with Antalya. I'm very happy to say that on April 12th this year, after three years of construction works, the terminal expansion at Antalya Airport has been officially inaugurated.
The opening of the additional terminal areas is a milestone for us in strengthening Antalya's position as a leading holiday airport in the Mediterranean region. The infrastructure is now able to handle up to 65 million passengers, which is necessary to meet the rapidly increasing demand for air travel to the Turkish Riviera. With this, the first construction phase, according to the concession agreement, which incurred an investment amount of EUR 850 million, has been successfully concluded. When looking at Lima Airport, now on the upper right picture of my slide, I'm glad to say that we have set a new date for the terminal opening. This is a very important milestone in this project that the team has worked for with a huge effort. Now we are all waiting for the official opening of the terminal on June the 1st, so in two and a half weeks from now.
A soft opening is even scheduled for Thursday this week, so in two days, and the festive inauguration with the president will take place on the 30th of May. Having completed the construction works at Antalya and Lima Airports now, we only have Terminal 3 in Frankfurt left. We are making good progress here as well with all milestones according to the plan. We are well on track to complete the construction in 2025 and to open the terminal in around one year. Coming from CapEx now, let me switch to some OpEx-related news on slide five. In early April, after having gone through an arbitration process, a new wage agreement has been approved by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the unions. This agreement is effective as of the 1st of January 2025 and has a duration of 27 months, so negotiations have been settled until March 27th.
This is very good. The content of the agreement is quite complex, so we have to explain it. On slide number five, we summarize the most relevant factors that will define our financial impact. What is key, of course, and the basis of our calculations is a pure wage increase that has been agreed upon. This is a two-stage approach with a wage increase of 3% as of the 1st of April 2025 and a second step up of 2.8% as of the 1st of May 2026. For this year, the 3% is defined further as there is a minimum step up of EUR 100 per month per employee. In other words, this will be an increase of about 4% for lower-paid employees. In addition to that, also shift allowances increase materially, which is, of course, a relevant factor with regards to our business.
Starting from 2026, the annual special payment or bonus will increase to 85% of a three-month average monthly salary for all employees, which is an increase of up to 35 percentage points. Also new is that parts of the payments can be exchanged for additional days off. On top of that, employees have the possibility to increase their working hours from 39- 42 per week if both parties agree. To conclude, there will be an additional day off from 2027 onwards, which, of course, is also impacting us not so much in the admin functions, but in the operations where we have shift plans, etc. All in all, a very complex structure. On a rounded basis, we expect the new labor agreement will cost us about EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million this year for our Frankfurt operations.
Now coming to our financials, starting with the main results of the past quarter on slide number six. While total revenues of EUR 869 million were down by around 2%, revenues excluding for IFRIC 12 effects were up 6% over Q1 2024, driven by increasing airport charges and other prices. Regarding the EBITDA, we faced two extraordinary effects. First, the dropout of the EUR 28 million COVID-related compensation at Fraport Greece in the previous year. Adjusted for this effect, EBITDA was mildly down by EUR 7 million compared to Q1 2024. Second, the reduction in EBITDA can solely be attributed to a change reimbursement system for the passenger screening in the aviation segment in Frankfurt. Last year, we were reimbursed by the Federal Police and the airlines. This year, we are just reimbursed by the airlines. The change reimbursement system leads to an increased seasonality in the aviation security revenues.
As a result, Q1 revenues are reduced, while Q2 and Q3 revenues are higher this year compared to the previous year. The change reimbursement system led to a - EUR 10 million EBITDA effect in the first quarter. Adjusted for both effects, EBITDA in Q1 was broadly flat compared to the previous year. EBIT was equally impacted by the Fraport Greece one-time effect and the change security reimbursement. Adjusted for these about EUR 38 million effects, EBIT was up by around EUR 8 million compared to the previous year. Main driver within the financial result was a much more negative result from Antalya driven by lower traffic numbers as explained and an exchange rate-driven deferred tax effect. Therefore, the financial result stood at - EUR 88 million and therefore EUR 22 million below Q1 2024. Correspondingly, our group result in the first quarter turned negative with - EUR 26 million.
With this, I come to our cash flow performance and net debt development on slide number seven. First of all, I would like to stress that the operational cash flow and investments in the first quarter developed in line with our expectations. Having paid the full variable concession fee in Greece in the amount of more than EUR 100 million for the first time and having incurred higher interest payments due to a higher indebtedness, the operational cash flow decreased to EUR 12 million in the first quarter. Therefore, also the free cash flow dropped to - EUR 353 million from - EUR 226 million in 2024, despite a 20% lower brick-and-mortar CapEx.
The stake sale in Delhi did not have a direct impact on our free cash flow but decreased the net debt at the end of the first quarter by around EUR 104 million after deducting the withholding tax. Nevertheless, as a result of all these effects, our group net debt increased to more than EUR 8.6 billion, which is, according to and in line with our expectation, the peak for this year. Correspondingly, also our leverage ratios will improve from here. Moving on to our repayment profile at the end of Q1, I'm now on slide number eight.
Looking at the development of our liquidity position, you see that we have come down from a very high level of more than EUR 4 billion or EUR 5 billion, respectively, including for unused project finance and committed credit lines to around EUR 3.6 billion or EUR 4.2 billion, including the unused credit lines. As part of this, the credit lines in Lima alone decreased by EUR 270 million, driven by the progress in construction works. Gross debt is more or less on the same level as last year at around EUR 12.2 billion. Despite regular refinancing activities and drawdowns from the project financing, our average cost of debt remained on the full year 2024 level of 3.2% and increased only by 0.1% over Q1 last year. Coming to our segment reporting now, starting with aviation on slide number nine.
As you know, effective as of the 1st of January this year, we increased the regulated aviation charges by around 6% according to the four-year agreement with EAA Airlines. This helped us to compensate for the traffic shortfall in Frankfurt of 0.9%, as discussed before, and led to aviation charges of EUR 202 million, a plus of around 4%. In total, the revenues added up to EUR 270 million. As described before, we recorded a change reimbursement system in the security business. Therefore, in the off-season, the security business had a negative EBITDA contribution of around EUR 10 million, while this turns around in the high season, especially in Q2 and Q3. On an annual basis, the security business is earnings neutral.
In addition to that, annualizing wage effects from the previous labor agreement that came into effect in March 2024 increased the operational cost not only in aviation but in the other segments as well as we will see in a minute. Therefore, as expected, the EBITDA was below previous year's level at EUR 43 million. Also, despite slightly lower D&A, the segment EBIT came down to EUR 6 million but remained positive. For the full year, we expect the segment performance to benefit from the price increase in aviation charges in combination with traffic growth despite higher costs, primarily from the agreed wage increase starting from Q2 2025. Now I come to our retail and real estate segment on slide number 10. Revenues also increased in this segment to EUR 123 million.
Out of that, the retail business performed at the previous year's level but at a lower passenger numbers, which means that the retail spend per passenger increased. Our main KPI in this segment increased by EUR 0.06- EUR 3.41. Looking a bit more into the details, services revenues and advertising revenues were higher on a per passenger basis if compared to Q1 2024. Especially, the advertising revenues were driving the overall positive performance. In absolute terms, advertising revenues grew by more than EUR 1 million compared to last year or by 20%. The negative development of shopping revenues on a per passenger basis of some 3% can be explained by a reduced number of Chinese passengers as Lufthansa took out the Beijing service for the winter season. While the real estate business was quite stable, parking revenues grew by some 8% driven by price increases.
Due to higher wages and costs in general, the segment's EBITDA was flat in Q1 over last year. Slightly lower D&A led to a mild increase in EBIT. Looking ahead, the changing traffic momentum will help the absolute performance over the summer flight schedule. Also, new cost items will kick in as discussed. The per passenger development may be under pressure due to short-haul additions, while no major intercontinental growth is expected. Moving on to our ground handling segment on slide number 12. As mentioned in recent publications, we keep on working on our pricing strategy in ground handling. Price increases in both central infrastructure and services, as well as temporary market share gains due to capacity constraints at Swissport, led to a 13% increase in revenues despite lower traffic volumes. Our labor-intense business segment is most exposed to wage adjustments.
Therefore, the annualizing effect from last year, starting in August 2024 for ground handling, puts pressure on the operational result. Despite this fact and a higher staff amount, ground handling showed a slight improvement in segment EBITDA to - EUR 18 million. Looking ahead, we expect a better cost coverage from the increase in passenger numbers, especially over the peak summer season, as well as from further reduction of temporary staff from external contractors. On slide 13, I conclude our segment reporting with our international activities and services. First of all, you see in our revenue reporting that the Lima construction is coming to an end. If compared to last year, IFRIC 12 revenues decreased strongly from EUR 127 million to EUR 57 million. This is in line with our expectation and will also hold true for the remainder of the year.
Looking at the underlying revenues, the segment recorded a solid growth of 8% in the off-peak season for our touristic airports, in particular driven by strong dynamics in Lima. Within other income, you see that Q1 2024 was positively impacted by a EUR 28 million one-off item, which also improved the EBITDA in 2024. If adjusted for this special item, underlying EBITDA and EBIT recorded some 4% and 14% growth, respectively. This is somewhat remarkable, bearing in mind that Porto Alegre is still recovering from the flooding. All in all, we are satisfied with the performance of the segment at the beginning of the year and are very confident with regards to the development over the remainder of the year, with April and the Easter season as a positive indicator. On slide 14, my last slide for today's presentation, I share our outlook with you again.
We reconfirm our guidance and leave it unchanged compared to our full year publication. For Frankfurt Airport, we expect to grow this year up to 64 million, which represents a growth rate of below 4%. On the financial KPIs, and here the EBITDA, we expect a moderate EBITDA increase in the single-digit percentage area. With the outcome of the wage negotiations, we feel quite comfortable with this. Consequently, also the guidance for the group net result remains unchanged. We expect this is to be flat to down this year, mainly due to extra gains in the context of the disposal of our shares in St. Petersburg last year. Going on to our leverage, the net debt to EBITDA ratio will slightly improve due to the positive EBITDA development and stable net debt. For the time being, no dividend payment for 2025 financial year is planned to be distributed in 2026. Having said this, I'd like to thank you for your attention. Have a nice day and goodbye.