Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the TUI AG Conference Call regarding the FY 2022 Q2, H1 Results. At this time, all participants are being placed on a listen only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. For those on the phone lines, this can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad at any time.
Let me now turn the floor over to your hosts, Mr. Friedrich Joussen and Mr. Sebastian Ebel. Thank you.
Thank you. I hope I can still do these presentations in person. It is a long time since we met and it's great to be back. I have also talked to some of you before, and not only we are happy that we can do these road shows again, but also we are happy that the business is back again. We have always assumed it would come back, but you only are certain when you really see it. Q2 has been strong and we will be talking about Q2. Even more important is what now happens in summer. As you know, you can lose a year in winter, but you can not win it in winter, you can lose it in winter.
We have not lost it in winter, but the summer bookings are in a way so important for us because all profitability is in the last quarter, as you know, and therefore, you know, we will particularly focus also in my part of the presentation looking forward. Now that said, let's focus anyway on Q2 first. We have been operating at 71% of capacity. 1.9 million customers traveled with us. Our load factor was 84%. 84% is of course very high when you think about that all our capacity was operating. Of course, you see it is not where it was before the crisis. I mean, you would have seen something 90%+ before the crisis.
You know, I will show you on the next slide. You know, we had some bumps, particularly in the beginning of the quarter, where Omicron was still present. We had restrictions everywhere, you know, because of Omicron hitting in December and late November. The bookings for particularly January were not so strong. Over the quarter, I mean, we saw that actually fading away. Now, no restrictions are there. 84% is good, but it's on its way. It is good for the environment. Now, that said, we have the losses. That's very important. If you had asked me just a month ago, I would have said, minus EUR 400 million is maybe the right number.
You know the outturn of the quarter became stronger and stronger and stronger. In some of my charts, I have now some April numbers in to show you know the trajectory and what we think about it. What we are proud about is actually the business which is now the most resilient in the crisis, has been the most resilient. Hotels & Resorts, third quarter in a row positive results. Amazing demand when you look at, for example, the Caribbean, but also Cape Verde, is very strong. These are the destinations. Canary is also strong, but you know, remarkably strong is Cape Verde and Caribbean, and we over-index there with our offers, have good, very good market shares. That has helped.
Strong cash flow. EUR 1.2 billion operational cash flow. You will see the cash report of Sebastian. Of course, we paid back EUR 700 million, and we will pay back soon more. Of course, that is all that needs to be negotiated. I mean, our liquidity position more than EUR 3.8 billion. Again here, enormous effects also because not only customers come back, but the prices are 20% higher. I mean, when you look at the summer quarter right now, 85% book position, you will see it in a minute. With 100%-120% prices multiply the two, you know that already the revenue for the summer prognosis is on pre-crisis levels, and we are just catching up now.
It's almost impossible to assume on the revenue front that it will be not the strongest quarter in company history. It, you know, it's coming. We see the business being back. That's great. Summer 2022, we will look, you know, in a couple of minutes, we will look into the separate countries to give you some detail here as well. Cumulated catching up last six weeks were all weeks consistently above pre-crisis, so 115% last week. Everything above 100% cumulated, we are now 85%. Half the summer customers, almost half still to come. That actually indicates how the summer could be.
Particularly also in the U.K., we are already and still have always been above pre-crisis cumulative, and that's also important because half our risk capacity when it comes to aircraft is in the U.K. In the U.K., we are starting right now to really yield. The systems come to grips. We actually try not to over-manage demand. We have in the growth 98%-100% because we just increased prices. I mean, it's clear, you know, we don't wanna underprice and overshoot on demand. You know, when the summer has finished. In the U.K. it's a little bit of a different tune.
Here we increase prices and start to yield up because there will be scarcity everywhere. That's our view. We are one of the few at least tour operators right now and airlines who already say this year will be significantly underlying EBIT profit on accumulated basis. After two years of misery, we will be profitable this year again. Now, I have a chart which is not very meaningful, but is nice and colorful. It actually says it was more red bubbles on the left and more green bubbles on the right, and that means, you know, less restrictions. It was influenced with restrictions. You see also Ukraine, which is of course. I mean, I cannot say how much, you know, we have Ukrainian people working in our company.
It is enormous stress and the invasion is awful. At the same time, you know, for the business, it is not so material right now. We have a little bit less in Bulgaria, and we have a little bit less Russian guests and Ukrainian guests in Turkey, but the other markets are so strong that they make up for it. Yeah. Now let's have a look at the booking numbers, hotels we source. You see here on that slide that actually hotels have always been in terms of capacity over the last months. The dark blue are Jan, Feb, March. Gray, I put you know, as an outlook more or less, and to show the trend.
You see that hotels have been already remarkably stable. We operate at 90% of capacity, and that's almost a full program. You know, the profitability in the quarter is actually a result of that. More interesting, I think, is now cruising. That was in January, 59%, 70%, 81%. It is now in April 90%. We have all ships in operation. I mean, now it's just a matter of occupancy and yield, for some of the bookings are very strong. We had a little bit more difficulty with the ships than we had last year.
You will see that also in the comparison when you look at the quarters, because we had operated last year all ships, and now we actually had to take out four ships or so because of COVID. You know, particularly January, February was a little bit more difficult on the cruise front. Now going forward, the bookings are strong as well, and April was already 90%. You see Musement. Musement is TUI's activities business. It's our star, if you like. It is already in April 105%. That means we are stronger operationally, not only in bookings, but also in revenues, despite the fact that actually we have only 80% of customers, right? You'll see a detailed slide later.
This is very strong. Markets & Airlines are catching up, and you see the 80% in April departed. We want it to be close to 100% when it comes to volume for summer, and that is in reach. Now let's have a look onto the bookings, and I think now the interesting picture comes, or the interesting pictures come. Net weekly bookings, left side. The light blue bars are accumulated. The dark blue bars are the weekly net bookings. When we talked the last time online, end of January, beginning of February, we were at 72% cumulative, so -28% pre-crisis. Now you see the blue bars, they are all above 72%, so by nature you know they go up on average then.
The last six weeks are the last six bars here above 100%. That means above 100% is above pre-crisis. Last week, 150%, right? You can imagine that maybe even, you know, the 115% will be 117% and so on. You know, just look at the trend. You can make up your own mind. Cumulative, we are now at 85%. This is, I think very strong. When you look at the right side, you see these 85% are with 20% higher prices. Therefore, if you multiply 85% with 120%, it's above 100%. The booked in revenue for summer is already today better than pre-crisis. You also see Ukraine. This is a little dip in the middle here.
We would have expected that this dip wouldn't have happened if we didn't have the Ukraine. Then you would have, you know, a steady increase in the booking numbers here. Now one thing is important and that's clear, you know, revenue is not equal to margin. The question is what will happen to margin in light of the inflation, of course, particularly fuel. Now the 20% higher prices can very well cover, it's more than the coverage of the fuel at today's level, right? Therefore, I mean, whatever it will develop to, but today the 20% are well covering the inflation risk. 5 million customers have booked since we met last time.
Just to give you an idea, I think another 7 million customers to come for summer. Yeah, therefore, you see if you have something 7 million customers in booking base 84% at 85%. Just if it stayed 115%, another 7 million automatically would take it to 100%, right? If then the prices stayed at 20% or 15% or whatever, you know. Anyway, okay, we dream a little bit. Now country levels. U.K., how do you read this busy slide? The U.K. is at 41% of the booked position. That's the blue line under the U.K. So it is actually the biggest market with that. Yeah, 41% of our global book position is in the U.K. Cumulative, they are above pre-crisis, 11%.
In excess, net bookings, April was 98%. It will dilute the 11%-- 111% will dilute down as we speak a little bit. This is on purpose because that's what I said, because we increased prices, right? We don't wanna be at 111% or 115% at end of season because it would be too much for our capacity. Our operational sweet spot is something, let's say 105% or so, where actually we maximize the price to get to this 105%, right? That's a little bit different than in the other markets. Yeah. Germany is now 28% of the booked position. That's top right. It's the second biggest market.
I have not included the cumulative number, but it is between 70%-75%. It needs some catch up. The net booking position, you know, for the net adds is now 135%. These are big numbers. Yeah, therefore, it's increasing fast. Netherlands. Netherlands is 127%. 9% of booked position, 127% in excess, and it's cumulative 14% negative. Here you will see that, you know. I mean, you can feel that prices will go up. I mean, the prices are already very good in the Netherlands. This is also true with scarcity and Schiphol Airport and so on. It's the gateways are narrow.
You can feel that the prices go up because we don't wanna be at 127%, in the passengers to go. There is an enormous potential to create profitability. You know, as I said, in the last years, we always had overcapacity, and we could not fill the capacity. The aircraft were on the ground, and now we are. You know, our systems, that's how it works. When you remember, you know, first the volume, then the price, right? That's how it works. Demand yield system. The systems go tuk, tuk, tuk and actually increase prices until, you know, the demand is to create to cover the risk capacity. In Netherlands, we are at a good point.
Belgium is a mix a little bit. You know, the package business is very strong. It's more like the Netherlands. We have flight only business, which is more short-term. That's the reason why you have the 98% here, but it is in principle the same model. You have the Nordics. The Nordics is only 3% of booked position. You see it's small, but you see the Nordics is a little bit the problem child. It's a migration of different markets. Denmark is pretty much like Germany. Sweden and Norway are lagging behind. Okay, we need to work a little bit. Now, as you see here, April, I think when we ended April, we were more at 80%-something. We started April at lower numbers.
Also there you see a catch up, but it's a little bit late. Yeah. Fortunately, it's the smallest market which is a little bit late. This gives you a little bit of flavor. I thought you were interested in that. Now one thing which chart I like, it's not direct, it's not a financial slide, so hopefully it doesn't bore you. You see the web visits on U.K. and Germany, right? And the percentage, the market shares on the web visit. In the U.K., that's how you read it. We have 45% as web visits. The second competitor has actually 28%. You might guess who that is, right? Now in the U.K., we are already 70% online. Okay, fine.
Tick in the box. It actually grows online, grows a little bit faster. Retail, we have taken down. We talked about that. The interesting thing is now Germany, because in Germany, we are 59% of web visits, right? Our market share average is 30%. We are over-indexing on web visits almost a factor two. Now in Germany, we have much more retail, but the growth of online is enormous, right? The growth of online is much better. We talked about the digitalization and the effects. One of the digitalization effects that I think we will be doing pretty good when actually more and more traffic comes online. We are the only people with a meaningful web visit and web page in Germany.
The second and third and fourth are more going independent travel portals, so CHECK24 and the like. These are independent portals. With us it's almost all TUI.com, right?
Yes.
And also the hotel brand. Online this is all our websites and app. That means mobile. Mobile is increasing. That's also important because their distribution costs are zero. That's a good point, Sebastian, yeah. This is good. It's a view into the future. A couple of remarks on the current trading environment. As I said, hotels are very strong, particularly Greece is enormous, now when it comes to summer. There will be scarcity everywhere. We expect strong yields, and the catch up, nothing will be empty, I would say. I mean, Spain is lagging a little bit behind, but you see also now catching up because Greece is so full. Cruises, we have now all ships in operation, and the bookings are building steadily. The rates are high and very healthy.
I think particularly for Q4, it will be a very good business. Musement, you know, I have a separate slide and maybe I explain that on a separate slide. Now when it comes to vertical integration, is that still something which is important? I mean, in the crisis, we have been directing traffic to our own hotels. Now also in summer, you know, we are building the business our own hotels first. Therefore, you know, vertical integration is important. I want to say that in some of the destinations we already started to do shared hotels first because scarcity means you can go out of stock at a certain point in time, and therefore we start to reserve, particularly when you look at Greece, we keep some of the exclusive capacity in order to be able to sell at high prices in summer.
You know, this is really the business is. It's good that the business is normal. It is good that the business is normal. I have actually included a slide to talk about occupancy, average room rate, but also RevPAR, so RevPAR, revenue per available room. You see the three columns, 2019, 2020, 2022 or 2021 Q4. 2022 not Q4. 2021 Q4. Here you can see in the crisis that actually we are getting out of the crisis. Q4 2021 was the first profitable quarter in our hotels and you'll see why. Because the light shade is actually competitor benchmark in the respective destinations. The room rates, the occupancy as well as RevPAR is over-indexing. You see also the curve out of the crisis, how it started to work. That's Q4 2021, so this is already a little bit of history.
Now what actually encouraged us to actually say asset light. We have actually, you know, launched TUI BLUE Horizon, the plan to operate 300 TUI BLUE hotels. We are now at 100 TUI BLUE hotels and the interest is very high. Investment vehicles through the hotel funds. The first one launched very high interest, good interest. You know, the global spread of the hotel program, we want to become the biggest leisure hotel operator in the world. That is a plan. The reason for that is actually this, right? When you are part of it, then, you know, you are better off than actually if you are independent. That's the idea. Because channeling demand and so on.
Okay, now, this one is not the future. This one is reality. Total EATs, so excursions, activities, tours sold, yeah, before the crisis and now. You see, H1, so comparatives. H1, we did growth of 25%. Large part of it is that 30% of, you know, the excursions sold are third party right now. That's the fastest growing. It is the bookings and the like, right? We are everywhere, you know, in the booking sites. When you book a hotel, book an activity, you book us, right? White label sometimes, original.
Also, you know, the 70% of the 1.7 is today higher than the 95% of the 1.2 before the crisis. That is because of the digital distribution channel. That is despite the fact that in the first half year, only 70% or even less than 70% of customers traveled, right? We have more excursions sold on an absolute basis despite the fact that actually only 70% of customers travel. That shows the dynamic. That is the reason why we believe that this business will be the fastest-growing business in our company.
Good. That said, you know, I would like to leave it for a moment. I come back with a summary slide, but, you know, the serious stuff, which is actually the numbers, Sebastian will tell you.
Thank you, Fritz, and a warm welcome also from my side. I'm really happy to be here. It's the second time back to London after the pandemic started. We were here in November and now here, and it's good to be back more in a normal rhythm. We are very glad about the results. Revenue increased to EUR 2.1 billion in the second quarter 2022. I think the comparison to quarter two 2021 is not so meaningful. I always like to look against 2019, and we were in the second quarter around 70% of 2019 revenues. That I think gives a good indication how to interpret our result.
Underlying EBIT are minus EUR 123 million depreciation, amortization, EUR 200 million, slightly going down, which is the result of a very rigid investment policy, which we want to keep and will keep for the future. As Fritz said, if we do invest, we do it through vehicles like the hotel fund, which leads us to an underlying EBIT of minus EUR 330 million, which is almost half of what we had seen last year's comparable quarter. It's just EUR 100 million worse than the Q2 of 2019. Adjustment, small part. Half is the purchase price allocation, half is SDI. The realignment program goes very well.
We will achieve 80% of the benefits this year and it shows that this cost reduction really supports the bottom line, the P&L. EBIT EUR 343 million net interest expenses around EUR 123 million. We had given a guidance of for interest EUR 380 million - EUR 380 million and EUR 420 million . We are in line with what we had predicted, so this fits very well into what we think will be the outcome of this year, which brings us to minus EUR 467 million EBIT. There is an income tax benefit of EUR 145 million that takes into account the improved economic situation of TUI, which brings the group result to minus EUR 321 million , which is less than half of what we had the quarter before.
This is an EPS of minus EUR 0.21. If we look into the different segments, we, as Fritz said, the Hotels & Resorts area, the third quarter, third consecutive quarter profitable with an occupancy rate of 65%. I think that shows quite nicely what we can achieve if the occupancy, which normally would be around 88% up to 90% in winter. We were able to achieve a positive result with the 65% occupancy, which will grow now very steadily in the coming month through the excellent booking development and steering into our own asset. Cruises, as Fritz said, has been more difficult.
You probably remember that there was the fourth wave, which for the first time led to the situation that we had to cancel cruises in January till the middle of February. That had two impacts. One, people couldn't travel, and second, bookings were slow. Luckily, this is now over. All the ships are in operation, and we have seen since, I would say three to four weeks, a very strong booking because people have again trust in the product. What is also quite interesting, prices are very stable, and they're not stable. They can be stable because the cost situation is stable because what we don't see that's a little bit different to Markets & Airlines, strong cost stability.
That's why we think that we will catch up and be on normal levels in the fourth quarter. It has been a tough quarter. Therefore, the losses had increased by EUR 20 million to EUR 74 million. TUI Musement of the app is very high. 80% of all 90% of all customers and through this, they get additional sales. We get additional sales opportunities which people take. What is also good that the third-party business, which means new customers for TUI, to whom we can later on also sell other products, is doing extremely well with very strong growth. Markets & Airlines, still a difficult quarter, but strong improvements in all three major markets.
The U.K., where we have the biggest fleet, the build up of the fleet was effective and we reduced the losses from EUR 221 million to EUR 281 million. Germany, significantly better from EUR 123 million to minus EUR 21 million. This includes a EUR 50 million cost compensation by the state program of the German State. Western region. Also if I would add this, which was quite interesting, central region, we would have been better than the 2019 results in Q2. Western region also improving. As said, as Fritz showed, month by month, there were significantly improvements. As January had been difficult, February became better and March had become really better, although Eastern was not in March, but in April.
This altogether led from a minus EUR 633 million loss to EUR 330 million. As said, the biggest contributors were Hotels & Resorts, Markets & Airlines with a small downside in Cruises. Cash flow. We had very strong working capital intake, and this actually has two reasons. One is prepayments of customers. Getting more and more customers helped the balance, but also the other working capital measures we have taken to optimize cash out and cash in worked very well, and I think that's something we are really proud of. We still see some opportunities there. On the working capital, we are on the customer prepayments. On the customer prepayments, we are on the same level as 2019, although we only had 70% of the business.
We are looking forward for the future month. This leaves us with other impacts like interest EUR 78 million outflow, pension contribution EUR 39 million outflow to operating cash flow of EUR 1.325 billion. Net investment minus EUR 83 million. As said, we are very cautious in taking investments. We are, of course, doing all what is necessary for safety, health and safety. We invest into IT, which is really necessary to transform further our business. RIU is also taking the opportunities when there are good opportunities. They are not part of our cash pool, so that's why these investments will be in this number, but it will not impact TUI cash.
Which leads us to a free cash flow of EUR 1.242 billion, which we used to reduce our financial debt and to slightly reduce the finance lease liability. I think a very good picture also if you compare it with 2019. At the moment, we have EUR 3.8 billion. This last number was EUR 3.3 billion. We were able, as shown, cash inflow of EUR 1.2 billion. We handed back credit lines to the German government of EUR 0.7 billion, which brings us to EUR 3.8 billion facilities, cash and facilities.
The EUR 700 million we paid back, the EUR 170 million secured RCF, the EUR 91 million, the bond portion of the EUR 150 million WSF bond, and the remaining EUR 414 million KfW unsecured RCF. What is also now quite promising, we reduce almost on a weekly basis the remaining part of the debt we have with the private banks. I would estimate that within the next couple of very few weeks, we will also be in a position where we haven't drawn anything from the private bank revolver.
Of course, after summer, October, probably later in November, because I think we will come very well through the summer, we will need some of this facility again, but in a small order of magnitude. If we look at our balance sheets, we were able to reduce the net debt by EUR 1.1 billion-EUR 3.9 billion. In the half year, we had the capital increase and we had the working capital inflow, which led to this strong free cash flow. If you look at the situation today, of course, the two silent participations of the German state are fully drawn. The EUR 420 million silent participation, one that can be converted into equity by the German state.
The EUR 671 million we have to pay back. We want to pay back as early as sensible, and both are accounted as equity. The KfW RCF now is not utilized anymore at all, and the cash RCF as at 31 March was used with EUR 900 million. At the moment, this is reduced now to EUR 700 million and the remaining part will be reduced within a very short timeframe. Lease liabilities reduced by EUR 100 million. Although these are only lease liabilities, it's very clear that we want to optimize this as well, and we did that by EUR 100 million in the last quarter, despite that we are renewing our fleet, which helps us to reduce fuel consumption.
Hotel leases are in the same order of magnitude, slight reduction, and ships also very small reduction to it. What are the main tasks? Of course, to drive operating effectiveness to further improve the profitability. I think this is very clear. To look and to oversee the cost reducing realignment program. As said, it works well, very well. We have put all measures into action, and this will give us 80% benefit this year and the remaining part beginning of next fiscal year. The digitalization is very important. Fritz mentioned the app.
The more we can book through the app, and that's a very clear trend, the more reduce distribution cost because it comes along with no distribution cost, maybe 2% or 3% IT and customer service cost compared to 15%, 16% if you sell it through other means. Generate cash flow. I think that is something we have done well, but there's more to come. It's a continuous work, and it's a very good alignment between the operating units and the finance department. Otherwise, it would not have worked. Discipline CapEx management, that is very clear. If we want to invest like the TUI BLUE concept, the investments are done through the hotel fund or within RIU to make sure that we further reduce our debt, because that's the first prerequisite for a healthy balance sheet.
We are constantly looking at opportunities. You know that we got authorizations at the last February AGM, and there we look opportunistic, what could be sensible and what we would do. At the end, if we reduce the credit rating, that would have another strong impact on a lot of things, also on collaterals, which we have managed quite well. With the overall beneficial improvement of TUI, this would be also a significant step forward. We are really in a good flow, very optimistic when it comes to summer, but a lot of things to do to support this good development. We are cautious in what we do.
Thanks, Sebastian. I think you said it very well. I mean, you know, sometimes when there are other times when the things go bad, and then everything goes bad. You know, you have no prepayments, you have high collaterals, you have a bad credit rating, and it goes like this. You see now the spiral actually different. I don't know any week where we don't overachieve what we expect, you know, and we have now, you know, through the high prices and I mean, working capital in which we, you know, as Sebastian said, I mean, we have 70% of customers and already the working capital as if we had 100% of business back. It is interesting to see the spiral now in the other way.
Let's keep the ball rolling. What have we done? Nobody wanted to have the crisis. But, as a management team, we said, "Let's save the company." That's what we did the first phase. We said, "What kind of transformation can we do in order to take advantage of the crisis once it's over?" We actually based that on the four pillars, you know. I don't want to repeat it too much, but it's a mix of cost and growth. Growth, for example, you know, tours, activities, but also digitalization being more relevant to more people, sell more stuff to more people, and so on and so on. Be better in yield, you know, one-to-one marketing, mass individualization, and so on. I talked about also decouple growth with direct investment.
That's what actually the third box is, right? That we want to do 300 hotels. Of course, we cannot invest 300 hotels. You know, in respect to Blue. Also just cost saving. I mean, realignment. Cost saving without negative effects on quality and growth. That was, again, you know, you could say the realignment is not only a restructuring, it's realignment because it's going in line with digitalization, right? The process is more automated and so on and so on. We have done these things and actually they produce results today. The dark blue box on the right, that was what I said last time. I said, you know, de-leverage 3x, you know, that's our target and not too far in the distant future.
You see a net debt coming down right now. The first effects are there. Still work to do. That's clear. You know, I think it's in reach. Then also sustainable, the profitability will be in our company higher than it was pre-crisis because, you know, you know, the four actions taken will produce these results, and we see that. I mean, when I just look at Germany was always a market with relative profitability, below 1%, and we see all the restructuring, digitalization, the effects it takes already now. Of course, you know, you know, I think it is clear.
You know, on top, we have now said, based on the summer bookings and how the summer bookings came in and the EUR 5 billion additional bookings between end of January and now, we can definitely say that we will be already profitable this year, significantly EBIT profit, this year when you take the full year. That is also something I would say, It needs a strong summer, but we will see that we will see a strong summer. Yeah. That's something we more or less left the crisis behind, and now we see the bookings and the spark of hope going this way.
Okay. That's it from our side for the time being. Now I think we will do the questions in the room first and then I think all right we will have questions from the web, but the room is first. Okay. Jamie, you have the tradition of three questions and being first. Why don't we take you first? Yes, of course. We have the microphones.
Thanks. Jamie Rollo from Morgan Stanley. Three questions, please. First, in terms of the sort of guidance for significant profits, you talked about record revenues in your fourth quarter, which sort of makes sense mathematically. Are you also expecting record profits over the summer? And should we factor in any of the additional German support and the hedging and effectiveness? I think together, EUR 90 million in the second quarter.
Second question. Are you seeing any signs of any consumer slowdown? I've seen some comments in the U.K. from some agents talking about deferrals or final payments. Obviously, your U.K. booking numbers weakened, albeit that's partly mathematical. Finally, you're still talking about using the capital authorization received at the AGM, which I think is essentially additional shares. Could you talk a bit about that, and also any update on the potential for the German state to convert? Thanks.
We don't do guidance. I mean, that we said, should we do guidance? I mean, what we did right now is more or less write down what mathematically will be easy to guess yourself. I mean, when you have 85%, when the customers to come are now 100%, when prices are today 120%, I mean, it's mathematically easy to just do a calculation and say a spreadsheet, okay, what will it be? On the profits, we don't do now guidance on a per quarter basis, but one thing is clear, the prices in summer are very strong. I mean, the prices in Q3, you know, are not so strong in our industry because it's not peak seasons. The prices in summer are very strong.
We also said, you know, they will cover. They are more than necessary to cover the fuel cost inflation. The scarcity will actually provide a basis of an environment where we don't need a strong yield down in prices in the leisure business. Because, I mean, the prices come because people mainly go a day longer on average. Instead of 8.5 days, 9.5 days. That means 85% of customers burn 95% of beds. You know? That actually says something about, in reality, 85% is not 85%. 85% is already 95% when it comes to capacity. That's an environment where I would expect that the prices are strong. Now, on top of that, we have the fuel price volatility.
I also-- I mean, we have the discussion in the executive committee. I mean, could the fuel price be $130? In reality, what we saw now last days, from $110 to $100, yeah, it could be also $90. And, you know, we are covering now $ 105 to $ 110, well, dollars per barrel. So let's see where we end up. Now, on customer demand, we have the only significant point I can-- I mean, long term or midterm or longer term, when it comes to next year and the customers have paid the first electricity or energy bill in the winter, you know, we will be there. There will be a correlation to the general inflation and the perception in the market and so on.
At the same time, we have very low unemployment today everywhere. I mean, we have scarcity of people working and so on. I mean, we have a good elasticity in our societies. I think also, at least from the only market where we have opened the winter business right now and where we have a decent booking is U.K., and it's very strong.
The winter business, the bookings are very good. You know, maybe, you know, there was a discussion maybe that is also, at least from the volume perspective, the Thomas Cook is now coming in. I mean, the Thomas Cook effect, which we had not seen in the pre-crisis numbers, because then Thomas Cook was still around in 2019. Somewhere the 20%-25% market share needs to go, right? The volume is good. You know, based on the risk capacity, the prices are good. At least from today's perspective, I don't see a lack of demand or, you know, something falling off the cliff. Sebastian?
Welcome, Jamie. On the governmental support, there are still some small programs available related to the Ukrainian situation. But if that will come into place, it will be a small one-digit million EUR number. So we don't expect something really big. The more difficult a question is or to find an answer, the question is easy, but to find an answer is the hedging ineffectiveness, because it so much depends on the actual fuel rate. The only good thing in this, I mean, I've learned so much about IFRS 17, which is commercially not fully understandable, but it is as it is. If you have a high fuel price, you tend to have a positive impact here and a negative impact on the business or the other way round.
That's why the impact is a little bit balanced out. That's only we have modeled different scenarios, but it's very difficult. On the capital outstanding authorizations, as we say, we look at opportunities. If opportunities would come up, we will consider. It's a little volatile market environment at the moment. Like I said, if there are opportunities, we will look at it. Conversion of the silent participation one, it is completely the decision of the German state. We have no information if and when this could happen. We can't. Unfortunately, we cannot say more.
It will happen.
It's politics.
The benefits are so high. I mean, to the state, they have not monetized EUR 280 million of interest and charges. You know, if they convert it, I mean, 420x 1, and then compare whatever share price is right now. I mean, they need to convert. We have indications that they don't want to stay a long-term shareholder. I mean, that's also very clear.
Now it's a question of timing. We will see. Not in our hands. Please.
Hi, [Pranav Gundlapalle] from Bernstein. Thanks for taking my question. Three as well, please. The first one, summer 2020 bookings still 15% below 2019. I know the last six weeks have been a lot stronger, but that still lags peers. You know, we've posted some really strong numbers. Booking.com said April was 30% above 2019. On the Beach said that their sales in February were 50% above 2019. Why do you think that, you know, TUI is lagging here, and what do they need to do to really accelerate into the summer to be able to kind of match that euphoria that peers are also reporting?
On my second question on Musement, you said this is the fastest-growing business. Kind of what are your long-term thoughts on profitability for Musement? Also, Tripadvisor have said that they are thinking of doing a sub-IPO of Viator. Is this something that you've considered or something, you know, that we can expect an announcement on at some point? On my third question, there was a big working capital inflow in Q2. How much of that can we kind of expect to be brought forward into Q3? Kind of how to think about free cash flow for the rest of the year. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. I'll leave the last one definitely for Sebastian because that's heavy lifting. But the first ones are clear. Now we have a yield business, right? We don't have a trading business. That's important to be understood. Yield businesses don't want to have $ 120, $130, and so on. Yield business, you have a risk capacity, and then you yield out the risk. If you have a trading business, you sell everything you have, and then you say, "More hotels." Right? If you have a yield business and you have a risk capacity, and you start to overachieve targets, you start to increase prices. I mean, if you have one hotel or one airline and so on, you don't say, "I want to sell more." You start to increase prices.
It's a very different business. Therefore, it's good if independent traders have higher numbers because that shows demand is there. We start on our own business, our own hotels to increase profitability. I hope that makes sense. Right? Yield businesses are not trading businesses, despite the fact that it is city and whatnot. The second point I wanna make, we are very happy with our tours and activities business. It's not lacking investment. We have an upstream consolidation. We have an upstream consolidation strategy. We don't strive for enormous growth in the independent market. I think it needs to be proven in the independent market that when once you have reach you get it into recurring reach, right?
Because it is, you know, none of these businesses are particularly profitable. We are profitable because we have a native reach. Yeah, because we have 21 million customers who all come to our platform. But in a downstream business, so from platform to customers, it remains to be seen. You know, our strategy is 1 million things to do, the consolidator of activities around. You know, it also remains to be seen how much of TUI in the future will be actually activities led. Maybe, you know, I mean, it would be one strategy to make it independent. It could be one strategy to transform the company into activities-led business. In five years, maybe tours is even more important part.
Particularly as in the marketing, you'll see that more and more customers buy activities first and then complement it with whatever they buy on top. You know, activities is the new luxury, how they say, right? It's more important what you do than what you own. It might be that the new TUI, at a certain point in time, is even more an activities-led business. Therefore, you know, I'm far off to consider IPO-ing that business. I mean, we will grow that business now fast, and you have seen that, and it's not a lack of funding. We don't need other investors. Viator is not profitable.
I mean, in Tripadvisor, I think, you know, in IPO-ing it is now to try to separate the business and make it somehow to unleash, you know, conglomerate discount and so on. I mean, I've not talked to the guys, but when I look from the outside, I understand what they do. That is not our strategy, right.
Sebastian, you wanted to say something?
Yeah. Two things. One on the Musement thing. Customer acquisition costs are high. The good thing is that we can supply our own products to it, and we can sell other products. What you normally see, you have to invest in any new customers, and then you lose the customer, you have to invest. It's a little bit very different to us, and that's why the profitability of Musement is doing so well, despite we are putting a lot of money into growth. On the growth numbers, the 115% is a blended number. This is important to see. If we'd only look at the package growth, we would have a by far better one.
What we did, we reduced significantly the seat only part of our business to optimize profitability. We look very stringently at market shares every week, we can see that we are doing very well on these core products where we see strong profitability. On the free cash flow, we don't give any guidance. We just can say that this is the main focus of the finance team. We look at this every day to optimize it, and not by delaying something which comes back the day after tomorrow, but by structural changes. If we do well, we will see some further benefits.
Yep.
Hi. Morning. James Rowland Clark from Barclays. I was interested in your comment earlier about ASPs and capacity, just banging the ASP figure, times it by capacity and your revenue, potentially. You said before that there's a mix in that ASPs between package U.K. and underlying. Could you outline the underlying pricing growth there, please? And whether you're able to cover inflation with that pricing growth.
Secondly, just on bookings, you're running at about 10% ahead in the last six weeks. By when would you expect to catch up with the typical bookings curve? So you're in line with 2019 levels. Would you expect by early August that you'd be caught up? And then finally on the cash inflow, EUR 400 million in the last five weeks, is there any EBIT positive in that number? Is that all working capital? Thank you.
On the average sales price, you know, all of that is today or not all, but most of it, by far, the most of it is actually the longer stays. Not related to price or cost. Yeah. Also the mix, more five-star than four-star, more long-haul than short-haul. You know, you have these. Now, that said, this has anyway a good margin impact because the incremental cost on these incremental revenues are of course much lower than the relative than the total cost position, right? It has the benefit that today you don't see the price effects, but in future you'll see the price effects.
Because again, in the yield system, when you are running ahead, you know, you burn more beds than you have, so then the system is more full. Then, of course, the yield system says, "Don't decrease prices," right? So the yield system actually keeps prices at a higher level. I would expect that in the late bookings. The closer we get to actually now the point of departure, the less we need to reduce prices, right? So the less we will have scarce supply, and therefore the pricing quality, I would expect, for the full summer season, will be very high, or very good. That said, you know, for future seasons might be different.
I mean, we had, Sebastian might want to talk, in a minute on, you know, maybe also the contracting with the hotels and so on, because right now we have fixed contracts, and so we don't see the price inflation. Who knows, in the future, you know, that's one of the things we spend our time on. Now, one thing I want to, you know, on the booking curve itself. The bookings in the last six weeks have been above 100%. They need to be above our accumulated status in order to move the accumulated status up, right? Even if it was 90%, it would move up. Now, we are now in the privileged situation that we have 115%.
115%, when 50% of the customers still come, and you have 85% in base and 115% in net adds, at the end of the season, you will be at 100%, right? Now, the 115% have not been 150% in the last weeks. They have been 110% and, you know, they're coming from 90% and so on. There's no science around it, but it's imaginable in the short-term booking environment we are in right now, that the closer we come, the 150% will be 120% or will be 125%. When we closed the winter, we had sometimes weeks with 200%. Now, the volumes are still now net bookings 300,000 per week or or even higher.
Of course, you know, the relative booking advances in a short-term booking environment will increase the closer you get to the main booking months and the main booking months in our system are July and August. There you have the highest prices, the highest yields, and here we are also very well-booked. Already today, and therefore, I think, you know, the closer we come, the more you will see maybe 120% or also. Then automatically the cumulative position will build. I hope that explains it.
On net adds we are, you know, since six weeks, bookings coming in, we are above 2019 levels, right? The activities when you look into the store, when you look into our websites, we have higher traffic than we had pre-crisis. We have more conversion, we have more bookings since six weeks.
Yeah. Sebastian, maybe you wanna take?
Yeah, because you were asking profitability. Cash flow. I think if you look at the 2019 numbers, just to help you a little bit to do the calculation. We had EUR 200 million in the third quarter plus EUR 1.2 billion in the fourth quarter. The E UR 200 million would mean that there is more profits in the June month than in April. The profitable part of the cash flow will start in the next weeks and then really go up in e nd of or middle of June.
Virtually all profits. But that is normal at Q4.
Cost inflation, that is a very important subject. We look at it every week because there is normally a correlation between cost or currency changes and booking pattern. I mean, fuel you can calculate what today's prices mean compared to when the barrel price was $65 or $17. That may add up to 1 or 2 percentage points higher prices for the package. Similar, we have seen for the hotel. The hotels really have been very cautious in increasing the prices. It hasn't impacted this year, but we normally go for three-year contract. The interesting thing is when I now look at London hotel prices, I mean, double. We were in Miami last week, they tripled. It's unbelievable.
Hopefully it will go into profitability of the hotel, yes. The good thing is we have 30% of our own capacity are our own hotels. There we would directly benefit from higher prices. With the other remaining ones, we try to have such a relationship that we can make sure that they get the maximum occupancy rate, so that their profitability comes through having 90% with TUI and only 80% or 75% if they do it on their own. The last point is, of course, the realignment program has been very successful and to be even more cost-conscious, especially on the distribution side, is something that we have to do because there is still a lot to get to offset this.
Sorry. Yeah. You go ahead. Everybody will be able to ask.
Thanks very much. It's Alex Brignall from Redburn. The first one on your summer capacity. I think there's a bit of confusion between volume and price. I think bookings + 10 on volume, so don't worry about that being behind. I think On the Beach also was a sales number, not a volume number. I think it's broadly in line. Just in terms of your summer capacity, I think it's gonna be about 14 million. Is that right? Against 16 in 2019. That would imply that full for what you're currently planning would probably be 88%, give or take. Should we expect the cumulative to get to 88% in order to hit what you currently have scheduled? Or will you just add capacity to get to 100% a s you do? That's the first rather long question. Sorry for that.
The second on the asset light hotels, it's obviously quite a big statement to say that you expect, you know, to be the biggest asset light leisure hotel business. Could you just talk about the timeframe on that? Obviously, you alluded to conversions and independence, so they obviously are quicker to convert. Maybe the economics of what kind of fees you could get on a single hotel. I don't know if you can help at all on that. Would be fantastic. I think you slightly talked about it there, Fritz, on hotel purchasing economics. Obviously, what we've seen this time versus 2019 is we don't have Thomas Cook, and they were probably the most aggressive buyer of inventory back then.
How is it working with your partner hotels in terms of the pricing that you're getting and the prices that you're able to buy your inventory at, and therefore the margin that you then make on that? Thank you very much.
Okay. Maybe I start. I mean, particularly I think, on the economics of our hotel fund. You know, these are, you know, something Sebastian and I would like to give to you not to make mistakes. The economics are very good. I mean, we earn different sources of revenue. We are scouting the hotels, we are contracting the hotels, we are committing, we are distributing, we deliver the brand and so on and so on, and it's different revenue flows. It's quite a profitability for non-investment activities, right? In summer, you know, summer is already starting now. That's the reason why, you know, Q3 will be not 100%, right?
In Q4 we will be 100%. We might be even more than 100%. I mean, that's, you know, when it comes to volume. When it comes to volume. Why? Because, you know, Thomas Cook is not around. We are talking about the summer capacity 100%. We always talk Markets & Airlines, and therefore, you know that it might be above 100%. That's what Sebastian always said, we might be conservative, and I think we are seeing we potentially are conservative when it comes to Q4. You are right, you know, we are talking when, you know, that's a very good point. Volume versus value, you know.
You know, when we have 100%, we are already, you know, we are $150, and then you need to multiply by $120 because, you know, pax times price equals the $130, whatever. I mean, if that's the confusion, I don't know. Who cares? At the end of the day, it's all good. Now, with the capacity, you know, when do we add capacity? We are now in the process of firming up our capacity. Particularly when it comes to airlines, we are now particularly on the U.K., we think we will be more than 100%, and therefore we are firming up capacity.
That said, we, you know, on the risk reward anyway, we are a little bit more careful than we potentially would be because profitability is, for Q4, the name of the game. I mean, even if we lost a couple of market share percentage points, I mean, we wanna be profitable. This comes back to something with the hotels. As Sebastian said, the hotel prices will go up. Now we have contracts, yes, they will go up. I mean, at the same time, my experience, since I'm now more focusing on the hotel business, TUI BLUE and so on and so on, one of the bigger levers in the hotel business is actually pricing.
There is a bias in the hotel business and maybe in all risk businesses that you, for quite a while, shy away from the risk to increase prices because you want to create occupancy first, right? The businesses have now lived with empty hotels for such a long time that this bias is actually, if at all, is actually bigger, right? Hoteliers, when we talk to hoteliers, are incredibly happy that their hotels are full. We are bringing guests, yeah. I don't know too many who actually say right now to us we have to increase prices. Quite to the contrary, many of them are extremely happy that we bring a lot of customers and therefore there is this kind of bias.
No, this will not. Part of the bias will disappear, but part of the bias will be there. When we talk about leisure hotel, and when we talk about TUI BLUE to come to the question you have, a bigger part of the benefits we bring and the benefits we have is that we have IT systems and structures in place which actually allow hoteliers, independent hoteliers, to monetize their inventories better. Now, the Marriotts and the Hiltons and whatnot, I mean, they have these systems, and they don't need our know-how. The leisure hotel businesses usually are family businesses or small chains who don't have.
They do prices walking up and down the strip and see how other hotels have priced, and then but sometimes they just have summer season, and they have winter season prices, which is, of course, not very professional. We see right now with our own TUI BLUE hotels that the profitability we can generate by optimizing the yield equations, by optimizing the pricing, is actually very good. And therefore, you know, we have said our ambition is 300. We think this is a foreseeable future, let's say three-five years. It really depends on how fast it will be. It took us, what was it? Two years, 2.5 years to do the first 1 00 .
I mean, with that, you know, TUI BLUE is now on, in terms of awareness, brand awareness on a level like RIU, for example. It's not nothing. And therefore, you know, we believe it will be good. And as we have now also the investment vehicles, we can actually grow with our own investment or with investing in different vehicles, using the different part of equity, if you like, which is real estate. We believe it's a good strategy.
Sebastian, do you wanna take on?
Yes. Yes. I was just looking for an English word. I mean, I've been through all the phases in the last 25 years, the relationship between the tour operator and the hoteliers. There have been good times, and there had been bad times. Bad times when Thomas Cook collapsed, the question is the tour operator still the good model and so on. Are the payment terms acceptable and so on. There was a lot of question we faced. I mean, one of the very few benefits of the crisis was that we could prove that we are a very reliable partner with bringing guests into our hotels so that the hoteliers could open. That's why.
I had been with David Burling, our Markets & Airlines CEO, to three major events, especially at Turkey and Spain. The relationship has never been better. I also know, like the Greek hoteliers now having a boom, they will try quite significantly to increase the prices. Therefore, it's important to have a strong footprint and to make sure that there is full transparency because there's a very strong competition between the destinations. When I was in Turkey six weeks ago, they were really desperate because they just lost 50% of their business, the Russian and the Ukrainian part.
We said, "Yes, out of the 50 percentage points, we can probably bring incremental 25 percentage points if the prices are good." You have the devaluation of the lira, which came from 12 to 19. This is a decrease of cost which is higher than the inflation in the country. The Spanish hoteliers had to learn that they cannot raise the prices by 10%. To have full transparency, but to deliver what we promise, to be a really reliable partner and to help and to make sure that with our brands, with our partnership, they get up to 10% higher load factor.
Which means that they may lose EUR 5 per room night with us, but having the guest and the TUI guest, which is normally a very quality-wise a guest who buys by far more than other guests, compensated. I think we have now together educated ourselves that this benefit can be shown. That's why I'm pretty optimistic that we can limit the inflation to cost inflation and not to demand inflation. On the TUI BLUE, I mean, when we say we want to build 200, I sometimes would be more aggressive. It's a mixture of own hotels, which we finance through the hotel fund, where we have now a quite interesting pipeline. Hotels which we manage or franchise.
If the property is bought or built by the hotel fund, where we are having 10% share in it, these funds normally go to a return of 4%-6%, sometimes with, sometimes without the terminal value. Because for them, the terminal value is a big thing. For us, it was always difficult to say, maybe we had the terminal value when we sold the RIU hotels, but this is not something investors are so much interested in the terminal value. If it comes to management, I mean, if you look at the publications, the annual reports of our competitors, you will find numbers, 10% of the profit, 3% of the revenue goes to the management partner.
I think this is a quite good normal standard. Maybe at sometimes we get a royalty which is slightly higher. Maybe sometimes it is the strong competition, we will get less. Franchise is 1% or 1%-2%. At the end, it's important that the hotelier, the investor, and we are happy and that we get our incremental margin through selling it. Therefore things like app where we are a real fan of or the websites are so important because we should accommodate not only our own capacity, but the incremental capacity of these partners.
Okay. On the right side. Has been waiting long and very patient.
Thanks. Thank you very much. Cristian Nedelcu from UBS. Your second half EBIT in 2019 was around EUR 1.2 billion. Can you tell us what average selling price you need for the summer to get there? You need 15%, 20%, or can you give us a bit of color? Because it seems within reach. Secondly on working capital, now it sounded that a few quarters ago, you showed us a chart in the presentation saying there's still EUR 1.5 billion-EUR 2 billion of cash inflows from working capital as demand normalizes. It seems that's pretty much done if I look at the movements in the last quarters. But I guess you have this average selling price, which is higher. Could you give us a feel, how do you see working capital cash inflows over Q3 and Q4 this year?
The last one, you said earlier you're thinking potentially soon to further reduce the KfW RCF. Can you give us a bit more granularity there? Do you believe you can do it from your own current liquidity? I don't know, could you give us a reference point, what sort of minimum liquidity you would look for at September year-end? I'm trying to understand, do you need to sell more assets or do you need to take any other actions in order to pay down or to reduce this KfW RCF? Thank you.
I mean, first of all, we have done a lot of, you know, restructuring of our balance sheet, and I think, you know, that was largely liquidity related. Now we have an operational business which is very good. Now we are looking more balance sheet, I mean, and there it's more the question of how much equity, if we needed equity, how much equity would we need and so on. But for the reduction of the facilities, we have enough liquidity, of course. You know, we have EUR 3.8 billion, it's a lot. Yeah. Actually, it's too much right now, or it's good that it's so much.
Now, on the working capital, you know, one thing is very clear, I mean, if you have 20% higher prices, so revenues go up 20%. If the revenues go up 20%, then the prepayments go up 20%, and if the prepayments and total payments go up 20%, that actually, that's, that is actually direct proportionate to the envelope of prepayments. I'm not sure if you wanna talk about numbers. Actually, I'm pretty sure when I look at Sebastian, we don't wanna talk about numbers. The same is true for profit.
I mean, the same is true for profitability. I mean, that we have on purpose not given the guidance because it will be a good year, I'm pretty sure. You know, the uncertainties on the cost, particularly when you look at fuel and when you look at the dollar, but particularly fuel, and dollar is not so much, I mean, are so huge that the guidance would be, how do you say, more disturbing and distorting pictures, you know. You know, one thing is clear. Revenue-wise, I mean, it's already mathematically not possible, I would say, to undershoot pre-crisis levels.
We have now covered, as when you heard, you know, what I said, we have covered with the prices, all fuel increases which we see right now. Therefore, there's good potential that the profitability, particularly in Q4, will be very reasonable.
Yeah. I mean, it's an extraordinary market situation because I can only remember one year when we had such a strong short-term buying with good margins. Normally, it's that the margins short-term are not as good as the early booking, and that's what is very different to years before or to centuries, not centuries, but for the last 20 years I've been in the business. The second, the fuel price and the cost. So the range between a very good summer, the numbers you mentioned were right, and a moderate summer is huge. Therefore, we said we need some more knowledge.
You were talking about asking about working capital and minimum liquidity. For the time being, we want to have more liquidity on hand as we normally had. I mean, you could say we are overcautious. Maybe we are, but in today's time, it's better to be overcautious than to be not so cautious. Maybe in a year or two year, we are back to liquidity lines which we had before, where we feel safer. On the other hand, to have these lines available doesn't cost a lot. We're talking about 1.5%, so very different to the cost we would have if we withdraw.
It's a kind of insurance premium we pay at the moment, and we happily pay, because it's worth doing it. Therefore, we want to have more liquidity. As you rightly said, on the working capital, there is also mathematically some good reason why this is not the end of short-term. It's also quite clear this is not something which then fades away again.
I think one of the things which has been discussed, at least, we do know the business with much less prepayments. I mean, that is also something which--
Hotel prepayments.
Hotel prepayments, right? When you look at the hotel prepayments, we have actually taken out enormous amount of prepayments for the volume we generate right now.
EUR 500 million.
EUR 500 million. I didn't know that we were talking about this, but it is significant. You know, the hoteliers have found also, for the time being, other means of financing. Therefore, you know, we have all the volume in with less prepayment, which is in terms of working capital.
On the critical dates. When we have more liquidity, we can be more generous. It's bringing intelligence into the system.
Yeah. For the liquidity low point.
Yeah. Where it's important.
Yeah. Okay. Yes, please.
Sorry, two hopefully quick ones, please. It's Mark Irvine-Fortescue from Stifel. For one on market share, one on hedging. The page 10 slide on web traffic was interesting. Quite a striking sort of share gap between you and your comps. Can you just confirm, is that just your Markets & Airlines business, or is it the whole TUI Group? Because most of those comps don't have cruises or hotels.
Markets & Airlines business.
You talked a bit about the second question around hedging. You talked a lot about fuel price and the sensitivity to guidance. Can you just give us a couple of numbers? On hedging, please? How hedged are you? What's the blended average range?
We have the policy that we hedge early and that we at least hedge. What has been booked. This we couldn't follow, not because we were stupid, because we haven't had the hedging lines with the bank. That actually now has changed with the good numbers we could provide so that we can follow the policy in future. On the currency, which is more important than the fuel, we are well hedged 2/3. And where we are not hedged, for example, some of the Turkish lira, we did it on purpose because you could see the devaluation, and this is something which worked well. The risk on the currency is not really there.
Unfortunately, we're only able to hedge very lightly the fuel, so that we at the moment have hedged 35%-40% on the summer. We have calculated today's fuel price into our calculation, and it seems to be that the customer is at least making this up. What you also have to have in mind, we were not able to buy options which others do, which are normally not part of the numbers they give, but these options are in cost. Today it doesn't make sense to buy options because for whatever reasons, the premium is $150.
I mean, in the past it was $20, $30, but a couple of years ago, it's $150. We now close the gap every week, but unfortunately on a level which is not the same. I mean, it's a difference between $1,050 per metric ton to $1,100 compared to maybe $750, $800. Luckily, only on the portion, and luckily, we could put that onto the prices. Interestingly, look, the forwards of the fuel is significant lower, so that's why we hedge more the autumn months because that saves $150 .
I mean, that's also an indication of what the market assumes the fuel price will develop to, right? I mean, therefore, I think first of all, I think it will be moderate. Secondly, I mean, let's see. I mean, this is a little bit of history. Now we can hedge again, so since quite some time, but there was times where we had, I mean, with our position, I mean, nobody would have given us hedging line just a couple of months ago.
I mean, as a CFO, this is one of the things you never like. You know what you should do, but we couldn't. Luckily now with the--
Yeah. No, of course.
The banks who hedge fuel are by far less than the ones who hedge the foreign exchange. That's why it was so difficult. We have overcome that now.
Yeah. Now is the time. Is it right? Okay. From the people from the web, if there are people. No questions?
We currently have no questions via the telephone line. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. That's star one on your telephone keypad. We currently have no questions from the telephone lines. I'll hand back over to your host.
Okay. Thank you very much, operator. Thank you very much for all of you being here. We were happy to come despite the fact that our hotels actually cost a fortune. It is good, you know, when the hotels are priced high. You know, our hotels are priced high and good, and good prices are a good basis for profitability. You know, we are happy to pay, and we are happy to come here. Yeah, Sebastian. Actually, this is interesting. Sebastian said, you know, when Nicola said, you know, "This is a price for the hotel." He said, "It's too expensive. You go back and negotiate." Then she came back, and the price has increased by GBP 100 .
Within a day.
Within a day. That said, we were happy to be here. We are happy now that the business is actually kicking off. I see Christoph there. You know, he was actually on site. When was it? Sixth day of March or whatever, 2020. Interesting times. It seems to be that the crisis is now coming to an end. The booking numbers look good. The results look increasingly good. I think that we'll get there.
Thank you very much for coming today and also for keeping the trust in our company.
Yeah, we're really grateful for it.
Okay. Thanks. Thanks a lot.