Chairman of the meeting and the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Dr. Karl-Ludwig Kley, will be speaking to you.
Sehr geehrte Aktionäre.
Dear shareholders. Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby open the 77th Annual General Meeting of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, and I would like to cordially welcome you to it.
Eben diesen schönen Flug.
When I watched this beautiful video, it occurred to me whether we shouldn't have an annual general meeting, if it is virtual, from a plane on a nice or beautiful flight with us to New York or Los Angeles. Perhaps we should check this.
Überlegt dieses Jahr.
Of course. With the exception of Mrs. Bettina, Dr. Enders, and Ms. Wagernand, who are having very urgent appointments abroad, the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board are fully represented. As I said, because of the urgent appointments, these persons who are missing today cannot attend the meeting. Next to me, two places from here, we have the notary public, Dr. Carsten Angersbach, who will be taking the minutes of the Annual General Meeting, as he has always done very reliably.
Die Einberufung der Hauptversammlung wurde am 7.
The notice convening the annual general meeting was published on the 27th of March 2025 in the German Federal Gazette. The full annual general meeting will be streamed via our online service for the benefit of shareholders completely, and the first part, comprising the speech of the CEO, will also be available to the general public.
Das Auskunfts- und Rederecht der Aktionäre.
The right to information and speaking of the shareholders can be executed only by means of video communication because of the virtual nature of this meeting today, and contributions may also be announced via our service. An application or proposal for an election may also be submitted in the online service under the heading "Proposal," and it will be effective only when it has been presented verbally. If you want to make a proposal, please also register your spoken contribution, and I will later explain to you in detail how you are supposed to do this. Information and all these things, and also the voting procedure, can also be viewed now in the online service or if you refer to the invitation to this meeting.
Contradictions to resolutions of the Annual General Meeting or complaints about non-answering a question may also be submitted via the online service until the end of the Annual General Meeting. The agenda of today's annual meeting comprises nine items, and we are starting with item one, which will hardly surprise you: the presentation of the 2024 financial statement and the report about the current situation. The consolidated account and the management report have been provided by the management, have also been checked and approved by the Supervisory Board, and thus the 2024 financial statements have been adopted. Our auditor, Ernst & Young, has also issued an unqualified audit report for all items of the audit, and I would now like to ask Mr. Spohr to present the report of the management about the 2024 financial year and the current situation of the company.
Meine sehr geehrten Damen und Herren.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, a warm welcome to you to the 72nd Ordinary AGM of Deutsche Lufthansa AG. I would also like to welcome you on behalf of my colleagues from the Board, Grazia Vittadini, Till Streichert, and Dieter Vranckx, who are joining us today for the first time, but also on behalf of my longstanding colleague, Michael Niggemann. Our Management Board has had a new composition since last summer, so this is a first for this new team, and therefore we are looking forward to talking to you because a lot is happening in your company right now. There is a momentum that does not only reflect the importance of aviation in the global economy, but also the role that we, as the biggest airline group of the world outside the U.S., are playing in this context.
At a time when there is a global realignment of our political and economic set of values and global market conditions are changing at a rapid pace, this volatility sometimes unsettles people, but thanks to our clear course, there are new opportunities. Short-term and unforeseen developments have always challenged airlines more directly than other businesses. That is why we have some practice in acting flexibly and with foresight, even in troubled times. What we do is more important than ever: connecting people, cultures, and national economies sustainably. Aviation enables global understanding and strengthens economic prosperity. Aviation is and will remain an industry of the future with excellent growth prospects. For the first time ever, the International Air Transport Association IATA expects more than 5 billion passengers worldwide this year and an industry revenue that is supposed to exceed the threshold of $1 trillion also for the first time.
These growth prospects of our global industry are the best foundation for a continued positive development of Lufthansa Group, from which you, as our shareholders, will also benefit. Before I report on the business development in 2024, I would just like to briefly highlight our good start into the year 2025 because, let's be honest, we could not always be happy with our operational performance during the summer peaks of the post-pandemic years. There were various reasons for this, some of which were homegrown, but others were caused by our partners and service providers. The bottom line is that too often our guests did not experience the regularity and punctuality that they rightly expect of us. Often, we at Lufthansa, including myself, had no choice but to offer an apology to our customers.
That is why we have tirelessly worked on making Lufthansa again, from 2025, the embodiment of reliable and punctual flight operations. After four months of this year have passed, I can clearly say that this has been successful. In operational terms, we are looking back at the best start since 10 years. All employees in our 13 airlines have made their contribution: our crews in cockpit and cabin, our technicians in the hangars, and our colleagues at the global stations and in the administration. 103,000 employees, a strong team that has done a great job managing the first peak travel season of the year, the Easter holidays. Thus, we are well prepared for another summer of high traffic and high passenger numbers. This brings me to the review of the year 2024, in which we also had a busy season with record load factors of up to 90%.
However, 2024 was an ambivalent year for us, with ups and downs. The first half year was marked by strikes and other irregularities. The second half year was marked by record load factors. In total, it was a successful year. In view of the high demand for air travel, our passenger airlines were able to welcome more than 130 million guests on board of almost 1 million flights. Our revenue grew by 6% to a new record of EUR 37.6 billion. Never before in our corporate history did we have higher annual sales. At the same time, 2024 was also a year in which we were not able to fully develop our potential, especially because our core business, Lufthansa Airline, was not able to contribute to the financial success of our company. All other group entities, however, achieved good results, partly even records.
As encouraging as these successes are, they cannot satisfy us if we focus on the total group because Lufthansa Airlines is and will remain by far our most important, largest, and highest revenue airline. Lufthansa alone provides 40% of total revenue. It is, however, also severely affected by disproportionately high location-related costs in Germany and also affected by the high labor costs in Germany, which have gone up enormously. In 2024, it also had to absorb high costs related to strikes and collective bargaining conflicts. These strikes were not only a triple-digit million burden for our financial results in the first half year, but they also clearly hurt customer satisfaction. The persistent delivery problems of aircraft manufacturers also hit our core brand disproportionately because, more than other airlines, it has to compensate missing new deliveries by continuing to operate older aircraft.
This drives up, on the one hand, maintenance and fuel costs. On the other hand, it reduces the productivity of the fleet because more reserve capacity has to be set aside, and it lowers the productivity of crews, some of whom have already been trained on new aircraft types and can therefore only be scheduled for fewer flights. At the end of the year, Lufthansa Airlines had to post a loss of minus EUR 94 million. The results of all other airlines of our group and of Lufthansa Technik present a clear contrast to this. In total, for the first time, they achieved our EBIT target margin of 8%. SWISS almost achieved its record result from the previous year. In terms of the adjusted EBIT, our SWISS subsidiary for the second time exceeded its target of EUR 800 million.
Eurowings repeated its excellent previous year's result and ended up at an adjusted EBIT of more than EUR 200 million. At EUR 60 million, Brussels Airlines achieved the highest profit of its history, while Austrian Airlines concluded the year with an adjusted EBIT of EUR 76 million. Lufthansa Technik raised its operational income from the previous year again to EUR 635 million. For Lufthansa Cargo, 2024 was also a good year. At the end, it registered an adjusted EBIT of EUR 251 million, of which EUR 199 million were generated in the fourth quarter alone. The bottom line is we were able to conclude the past year with an operational income of EUR 1.6 billion. Even if this result is clearly below the previous year's value, we still propose a dividend of EUR 0.30 per share like last year.
Our dividend yield thereby is going up to almost 5% related to the year-end closing price of our share. However, we cannot, and you probably will not, be happy with the development of our share price. Neither can the upward trend that we initially saw for the first quarter of this year until the higher tariffs were announced in the U.S. can hide this disappointing performance. This makes the success of our turnaround program all the more important. It is designed to get our core business back on track and make it profitable. We launched it last spring and have systematically pushed it ahead, a detailed improvement plan with 700 individual actions, a plan that is very ambitious.
By the end of next year, we want to achieve a gross income effect of EUR 1.5 billion and by the end of 2028, even EUR 2.5 billion, coming two-thirds from cost efficiency measures and another third from increased earnings. Now, the basis for the success of this program are the clearly improved operational metrics I mentioned before because in aviation, stable operational performance is a prerequisite for subsequent sustainably positive economic development. Thanks to the continued high demand, we were able to post revenue growth of 10% in the first quarter of 2025, and we expect another strong summer with another high load factor of our fleet. Despite all political and economic uncertainties, we can confirm our guidance for corporate income for the current year with significantly above previous year.
However, even 2025 is another year of transformation because we are still missing important preconditions for business success of Lufthansa Airlines, that is, new long-haul aircraft. The most prominent example for the persistent delivery problems of aircraft manufacturers is our order for long-haul aircraft at Boeing. As early as 12 years ago, so in 2013, we ordered 20 777X and on top of that, 21 Boeing 787. We are waiting for a total of 41 aircraft that should actually be flying today but have not been delivered yet. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, however, can already be detected. The first Boeing 787 aircraft will be delivered in a few months and will already be commissioned for scheduled flights at Lufthansa in the third quarter. The renewal of our fleet is at the heart of our transformation.
A total of 240 aircraft have been ordered, of which 100 are long-haul aircraft. This has never happened in our history before. Each individual new aircraft makes our controllers happy because it lowers our fuel costs by 25%-30%. It also lowers maintenance costs and at the same time produces higher earnings. It makes our passengers and crews even happier because in our new long-haul aircraft, we offer our customers a much improved travel experience in all classes, whether at Lufthansa with Allegris or the identical SWISS Senses seats. With this cabin equipment, we are setting new standards in our industry, especially in the new first class that we have only recently launched and that has already been installed this summer in 10 aircraft. Our customers and also the trade media agree it is difficult to experience a more comfortable and pleasant long-haul flight.
These premium offers remain one of the key elements of our strategy in order to create value for you, our shareholders. The core element of this clear and holistic premium positioning are and will remain people, our people, our employees that make Lufthansa unique, employees who work tirelessly for our guests day- by- day with passion and team spirit. Let me move on to another key element of our strategy, our positioning as a European airline group. Ladies and gentlemen, we grew up in a federal structure. Lufthansa never had a catchment area that could be compared to London or Paris. This competitive disadvantage already forced us to come up with innovative solutions in flight operations 70 years ago when aviation started in order to be a part of the global growth of our industry despite the infrastructure bottlenecks at German airports.
With our multi-hub, multi-airline, multi-brand strategy, we have found the perfect response. Only thanks to this growth strategy have we been able to become the worldwide biggest airline group outside the U.S., judged by revenue and fleet. The former disadvantage has turned into an advantage because by now we have the competence, the culture, and the processes in order to integrate airlines from different countries with their hubs and brands into our network and while doing so, make ever better use of the resulting synergies. Today, five national airlines operating from six hubs are part of our group, apart from the core brand Lufthansa. This is SWISS, Austrian, and Brussels Airlines, and since January of this year, finally, ITA Airways as well. With the integration of ITA, we're implementing the biggest airline acquisition of our history.
For the Lufthansa Group, Italy is already, after the US, the second most important foreign market, which is now becoming our home market. We are adding the five-star hub, Rome Fiumicino, to our hub system, and with Milan Linate, we are getting access to the second largest catchment area of the European Union. Within only 100 days, we have made good progress in integrating ITA into the Lufthansa Group. At the end of February, we started the first joint co-chair flights, and until today, we have already sold 84,000 tickets for these flights. We successfully managed ITA's relocation to our terminals in Frankfurt and Munich so that transfer passengers since late March can benefit from short distances and direct connections. In terms of air freight, the cooperation with Lufthansa Cargo has already started and has been initiated, as well as the integration into the Star Alliance.
The next step will be the further integration of our flight schedules for the coming winter and the merging of IT systems. Within only 18 months, we want to have concluded the essential steps for integrating ITA. This is not just the fastest integration in our history, but it is a major step regarding a core element of our strategy of safeguarding the future, the further internationalization of our group. This year, for the first time, more aircraft will be stationed at our foreign hubs than in Frankfurt and Munich. Now, against the backdrop of high costs in Germany, this is a logical step. Ladies and gentlemen, the cost competition is also gaining more importance because the demand structure in aviation has changed.
For a number of years now, we have seen a continuous growth in leisure travel, not just in the economy class, but also in higher value premium classes. We prepared for this trend early on, following the example of our airline Edelweiss, which is in addition to the Swiss flight program at the Zurich hub. We founded Discover Airlines four years ago, and we have by now profitably established it at our Frankfurt and Munich hubs. Already, Discover is operating 30 aircraft. It will grow this year to 2,000 employees and is flying to 80 destinations in 26 countries. Due to clearly lower operating costs, Edelweiss and Discover can now fly to destinations that we otherwise could not serve profitably. A growing share of leisure travel also applies to connections away from our hubs.
They have, due to the federal structure that I mentioned in our home market, a disproportionately high importance compared to our competitors. In these markets, Eurowings has by now profitably established itself as a leisure airline, operating 100 short and medium-haul aircraft stationed at 13 international bases. In order to get back to competitiveness on short-haul routes from our German hubs, we established a new airline for Finland and onward flights from Frankfurt and Munich, Lufthansa City Airlines. The establishment of these three airlines in the last few years has been crucial strategic steps in order to achieve necessary profitability in Germany as well. Because as encouraging as the profits are of all of our foreign companies and of Lufthansa Technik and Cargo, we want and need to secure sufficient added value from our hub traffic in Germany as well.
Apart from this strategic logic, the diversity of our passenger airlines can also be directly translated into added benefit for our customers. Due to the broad range of our services, network quality, and frequency density in the home market, Europe, we already sell 75% of our tickets outside Germany. Roughly half of all transfer passengers use more than one airline of our group when traveling. Our guests benefit from the complementary services of our airlines. Of course, they benefit from clearly more connections, but they also benefit from access to the Lufthansa Group lounges and also to the central service centers or our by now best-in-class app.
As the number of touchpoints at which our customers can use the benefits of the group is going to grow, we want to make the benefits of our group even more tangible for our customers by positioning additional services under the umbrella brand Lufthansa Group. In addition, we are also integrating the interaction of our airlines even beyond the shared features that are visible to our customers in order to create further synergies, lower costs, and boost our profitability. Dear shareholders, you are not just owners of our airlines. Also, the global leader in maintenance, repair, and overhaul of aircraft, Lufthansa Technik, is part of your company. The LHT is an indispensable pillar of the Lufthansa Group. Its technological excellence and innovative power benefit the entire group. It is opening up additional growth prospects currently in the defense sector.
The stable income development of this division provides economic continuity for us and additional resilience, especially in volatile times. This also applies to Lufthansa Cargo. Air freight already played an important role even when the first Lufthansa was founded 99 years ago. What was true then is still true today. The more turbulent the development of the global economy, the higher the demand for short-term intercontinental transport services by air. With a total of 22 cargo aircraft plus the cargo holds of all passenger aircraft in our group, we can offer as much capacity to our cargo customers as never before. We can offer 350 destinations in 100 countries, also an unprecedented number. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, our strategic alignment and the quality of our portfolio contain an enormous potential for profitable growth in the future.
Passenger airlines, air cargo, and Lufthansa Technik, in all three business lines in which we operate, we have reached the necessary critical size because, especially in our industry, economies of scale are the foundation for economic success. For this reason, we have systematically divested business lines where we did not reach this critical size or where there were too few synergies with our core business, for example, at the LSG Group or the payment service provider Air Plus. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, while we are meeting here in Frankfurt for our AGM, a new federal chancellor is being elected in Berlin. For about a month now, we have known the plans of the new federal government for the transport sector and for aviation. The planned financial relief is overdue, and now we urgently need a speedy implementation of the actions that have been announced.
We also need additional steps going beyond those mentioned in order to get aviation in Germany back to the path of success. We need a reduction not just of the aviation tax, but also for costs for ATM and aviation security, which are actually state-controlled functions, because it cannot be in our interest and also not in the interest of the German government that Lufthansa Group can only grow outside Germany.
We especially welcome the coalition agreement's commitment to competitive neutrality for European airlines that must not be disadvantaged in the global competition because the EU program Fit for 55 in its current form has failed, at least for the aviation part, because it will not lead to a reduction of carbon emissions and it will not lead to more climate protection, but it will only lead to a distortion of competition and a mere shifting of emissions outside Europe. Let us hope that the EU Commission will also actively address the urgent need for reform and will also take into account the positions of the member countries, including Germany, because Europe needs a positive vision again, a vision that highlights competitiveness and economic strength. As Europe's number one, we are making our contribution by connecting our continent of Europe to the world and the world to Europe.
That's what we stand for. Thanks to your trust, dear shareholders, thanks to the enormous loyalty of our customers, and thanks to the major commitment and the tireless dedication of our more than 100,000 employees. Together with you, we are already looking forward to the next year in which we will celebrate 100 years of Lufthansa and will open the next chapter of our company's history together with you. We count on you. Thank you very much.