Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the TUI AG conference call regarding the financial year results in 2021. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentations. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Mr. Friedrich Joussen and Mr. Sebastian Ebel.
Thank you very much and good morning, everybody. I'm here in Düsseldorf, and the team is in Hannover, and we welcome you for our analyst call. I may ask that actually we turn the page to page number four. When you look at last financial year, we have been actually bringing 5.4 million guests in vacation. The main part of that, and you will see that in the consecutive slides, is 3.8 million, of which, you know, have been in the Q4 of the year, so in the restarted quarter. Q4 was almost break even, so underlying EBIT was slightly negative. If you take accounted or reported EBIT, slightly positive. It's largely break even, and particularly Hotels & Resorts, Central and Western Region delivered positive EBIT.
Hotels & Resorts almost on pre-crisis level when it comes to profitability. Particularly positive, I think, was the free cash flow generation before financing. Driven by working capital, EUR 1.4 billion free cash flow additional in the system. When you look at the Global Realignment Program, we realized cost savings of EUR 240 million of our envisaged plan to realize EUR 400 million yearly cost savings in 2023. Also in digital transformation we have done significant progress, and you will see that in the later slides. Now, for next year or for this year, we have a strong pipeline of 4.1 million bookings which are building, and these are of course for winter 2021, 2022 and summer 2022.
Particularly now, I think the focus on Q1, we are on a level which is close to 70% of pre-crisis levels, 93% sold, and you will see that in the later slides. Even the Omicron news will not actually harm this quarter significantly because we are so strongly. Now, summer 2022 well booked with average sales price strongly up 33%. Now, when I look at the financial situation of the company, we have achieved last year a lot. I mean, a year ago the company in a very different situation. We achieved refinancing of EUR 2.2 billion RCF tranches being prolonged, asset-right strategy being executed and you see the example of the sale of the real estate portfolio to the Riu family.
Particularly, I think important credit rating upgrades from both Moody's and Standard & Poor's. I believe you know with the liquidity position of EUR 3.5 billion now, as of 6th December, just three weeks or four weeks before the cash flow point in our business. I think a very good liquidity position at this point in time. Now, turning to the next page, you see on page number seven , you see the developments over the years and this is. I mean, When I just wanna mention Markets & Airlines departed pax. I mean, Q1 was virtually closed down and Q4 was already 3.8 million customers.
92% of our hotels in operation, 14 of 16 cruise ships in operation. You see, you know, that the business actually is coming back. It's also clear not all pockets of the businesses are back, and I come to that in due course. Now, as we are now mature on liquidity or certain on liquidity, it's important to manage the business again, and that actually means profitability, eventually also debt. Profitability is now the next focus of our business. When you look at page eight, you see that we have good occupancies and really good load factors in our business. You see on page eight , on the upper table, Hotels & Resorts, on the lower table, Markets & Airlines. Now let's look at Markets & Airlines first.
I mean, you know, you see quite some volumes. The capacity is high. Q4 and also October. By the way, Q4, you will see later that it is around about 50% of a normal year. In October that has been actually improved. It has been improving. When you look at the total, Q1 of this financial year, we are at the time, for the time being at 69% of a normal year. In that respect, the load factor of 84% in Germany and 82% in Netherlands and Belgium is already very good. U.K, of course, you know, in Q4 and October was still influenced by 60 countries on the red list.
This actually now is building as the program builds, but even in that difficult situation, we had an occupancy, a load factor of 73%. When you look at the hotels, the occupancies are really good. I mean, Canary is 84%, very strong. Mexico, so the Caribbean cluster, 76%, very strong. Of course, Balearics, Turkey and Greece have been strong in Q4. Of course, now in October season are a little bit down, but still on a comparative basis, are very good and on a competitive basis also very good. Reason for that is, of course, the vertical integration, so we steer traffic into our hotels. That said, turning the pages to nine, you see online bookings up.
Germany particularly promising 33% right now, up 11 percentage points. TUI.com strongest sales channel right now in the German market. Also the direct hotel sites, so robinson.com, TUI BLUE and magiclife.com, strong. The app usage and the app uptake, we reported last time when we talked to you a value between 60 and 70, and now we are at 72. Again, up 72%. Three-quarters of our customers use the app. They get their documents, their advice, COVID advice, bus transfers and so on. Also, it is the point of sale which actually is growing strongest in terms of cross-selling. You see that with the TUI Musement sales in-app, which is up by a factor of three, so up 226%.
Whereas the total number of sales of excursions and activities actually has been a level of 60%. What actually, you know, the level of customers actually reflects the level of excursions sold. But within that, you know, a tripling of the sales in-app, which is the strongest growing and potentially will become the most significant sales channel for our activities and excursions. That said, I'm turning the pages. Looking at the booking development. Winter up from 146 - 190.8. Almost a doubling of winter bookings since October 3. Summer also nicely up. Both of the seasons average sale price very promising.
Winter 2021-2022, you see on the table top, right, up 15%. Summer up 23%. Now when you look at the next slide, I think it's very helpful that we can disaggregate now the quarters in order to give you a flavor of the risk and the flavor of the certainty we have in our plans. Now in Q1, that is the quarter between October and ending December, we are down from 2019, 31%. So our booking is 69% of pre-crisis levels, right? And we said between 60% and 80%, so we are spot on. Without Omicron, we would have expected to trend now to the 80%. So to trend up because of the short-term booking cycle. That is something which is questionable.
The bookings we see last week, it's only five, six days of Omicron and the respective regulatory actions in the U.K. This is actually now a little bit more uncertain, but it is 69% today and 93% sold. It's almost everything in the bank at 69%. Nothing severe should be happening. Average sales price up 11%. The Q1 will be very solid. Q2, it's 62% sold, so -38%. 62% bookings of pre-crisis level at 27% sold. 62%. In the normal year, in the normal pattern, we would have expected now, you know, to also trend up to the 60%-80%.
That is the uncertain piece because, you know, if Omicron, you know, is now hitting severely, then this could be actually also lower. That said, also average sales price is up 21%, so the today position is very strong as well. Interestingly enough, the first peak season, you know, these are all relative numbers. Relative numbers are of course have the problem that you don't see the absolute numbers. The absolute numbers of April, so Easter is the first peak season which we really will see in this year. Here we are on a 90% booking level of pre-crisis and 12% sold, 18% average sales price up.
I would say here we see actually a very strong pre-booking for actually the Easter season. That said, as I say, Q1 is now in the bag. We will see what the British government will be doing in two and a half weeks and how Omicron will actually pan out. That is the situation as you see here. When I look to the next slide, maybe it is a little bit of a lot of text and anecdotal evidence. I want to highlight just TUI Cruises and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises. This is actually in the middle of the chart, and particularly the third white bullet. Yeah? It says incoming H1 2022 slightly behind comparable 2019. That means it's slightly behind pre-crisis levels.
H2 of 2022 and 2023 are at pre-COVID levels at higher rates. That says something about the future of that business. Now, H1 is not surprising because the ships are usually in long-haul destinations. That's what they are not today because long-haul was largely not open from, particularly from the U.K. and also from rest of Europe. They are largely now in Caribbean and so on, and therefore in the Canaries and so on. Therefore, H1 is still weaker, but the H2 of 2022 is very promising. Now, with that said, I would like to hand over to Sebastian to guide you through the numbers a little bit more in detail. Sebastian?
I'm terribly sorry. We have a short technical difficulty. We will be with you in a moment.
Okay.
Dear participants, dear hosts, thank you for bearing with us. Mr. Ebel will start his part. Thank you.
Thank you, Friedrich, and a very warm welcome to everyone who has joined on the webcast today. I look forward to hopefully updating you in person in the next new financial year. In the meantime, please let me guide you through the quarter four results of the financial year 2021 from the following pages. I would like to start with recapping on our financing achievements during the last 12 months, and I'm pleased to say that we have made significant steps towards returning to a gross leverage ratio of around three. Post the completion of the third support package, including a EUR 500 million capital increase in January, we managed to successfully further enhance our financing structure with the following instruments.
We used the favorable capital markets environment at the beginning of the calendar year to issue convertible bonds with a total volume of EUR 590 million. This includes the upsizing of our original EUR 400 million bonds in April with a tap issue of around EUR 190 million in June. We delivered on our asset-right strategy by disposing of a real estate portfolio of 21 properties to the RIU family, generating cash proceeds of EUR 541 million. This excludes an earn-out element in the amount of EUR 130 million, which is payable upon RIU's hotels delivering its full year 2022 and full year 2023 operating budgets. Strategically, allow me to mention once more that the 21 hotels will be operated under our core entity, RIU, too, and thus remain exclusively available to our customers.
Only the ownership structure of the property has changed. We successfully agreed with our 19 RCF banks and KfW the extension of our EUR 4.5 billion RCFs to July 2024, and therefore we have no major maturities until then. Another important fact to remember in this context, covenant testing will only resume in September 2022, with higher ratio limits set for testing in September 2022 and March 2023. For these testing dates, net leverage has been agreed at 4.5x and interest cover at 2.25. Normalized limits have been agreed to resume from September 2023 onwards. To remind all, the ratios for net leverage is 3x and interest cover is 2.5. Last but not least, we successfully issued post-balance sheet date EUR 1.1 billion of new equity to further strengthen our balance sheet.
This capital increase enables the reduction in drawings under our RCF facilities and will consequently lead to an improvement in our future interest costs. Following the successful transaction, our rating agency, S&P and Moody's, upgraded their ratings to B- and B3 respectively, along with a stable outlook. In total, EUR 2.2 billion of refinancing has been achieved in less than 12 months. I'm sure you will agree it has been a busy and very efficient year for refinancing for TUI. In summary, with the current liquidity position of EUR 3.5 billion, we are fully financed through the winter and well prepared to weather any change in the booking environment.
We will continue to focus on our financial priorities, and let me confirm here again that we will work hard to return to a solid and healthy balance sheet and our target of a gross leverage of less than 3x. Let me now come to our quarter four results, and I will start with some highlights. We are pleased to report a return to positive EBITDA and the first almost break-even underlying EBIT since the start of the pandemic. The ongoing effects of the coronavirus crisis are still putting pressure on our business performance overall. However, clear signs of recovery started to emerge in the third quarter, and as expected, we saw strong improvements in Q4, driven by increased operations, benefits from the Global Realignment Program, the non-repeat of one-offs, and most importantly, a strong positive free cash flow generation.
Q4 group revenue of EUR 3.4 billion was up EUR 2.1 billion versus prior Q4, an improvement of 170%. The improvement reflects the success of vaccination programs and the wider return to leisure travel, particularly across continental Europe this summer. As already mentioned, we are very pleased to report a return to positive EBITDA of EUR 160 million and an underlying EBIT of almost break even, including EUR 60 million of one-offs in the final quarter. This positive quarterly development was driven by Hotels & Resorts, Central and Western regions, demonstrating the swift return of profitable contribution when we are permitted to operate more substantively. As you may recall, U.K. opened later at the end of the quarter.
Consequently, Q4 free cash flow before financing developed strongly at EUR 1.4 billion, being the second consecutive positive free cash flow quarter since start of the pandemic. To summarize Q4, the Markets & Airlines segment took 3.8 million customers on a TUI holiday and achieved sector-leading load factors of 82%, which underscores the rebound of leisure travel and how well TUI is strategically placed to exploit and lead in the market recovery. With this, I like to move to the next chart, the income statement. As per my prior slide, Q4 revenue was driven by increased levels of operations in our continental European markets and Hotels & Resorts. Markets & Airlines achieved two million additional passengers in the quarter, an increase of over 100%, and our Hotels & Resorts sold four million more bed nights, an increase of 120%.
Q4 underlying EBIT of -97, almost break even, excluding impairment and net hedging ineffectiveness one-offs amounting to EUR 60 million. Adjustments this quarter include the real estate book gain of EUR 197 million, partly offset by costs relating to the global realignment program. As always, at this stage, I would like to share with you our current assumptions for adjustment next year. For full year 2022, we expect charges of between EUR 90 million and EUR 110 million, including around EUR 60 million relating to the global realignment program. I hope you will find this early indication helpful. Q4 net interest expenses saw a slight improvement versus last Q4 due to the reduced KfW RCF drawings, resulting from increased Q4 operations and other financing measures.
Our full year net interest expense developed in line with guidance, which was driven by the full 12-month impact of additional debt facilities versus the prior year. Based on our expectations of a more normalized operations next summer, we also expect lower drawings of our facilities and thus expect a lower net interest charge for full year 2022 of between EUR 380 million and EUR 425 million. I like to finalize my comments on the P&L with the group results after minorities, which was a loss of EUR 458 million in Q4, a clear improvement of EUR 748 million year-on-year. On my next slide, I want to share with you some segmental highlights, especially on the good performance of our Hotels & Resorts, Central and Western Region, which returned to positive results. Let me start with Hotels & Resorts.
Our diversified and integrated model has been a clear advantage in the current environment, with differing regional restrictions enabling an earlier reopening of some of our destinations, such as Mexico, which was able to host both domestic and U.S. customers, helping to deliver a good occupancy rate of 76% in Q4. Our integration enabled us to distribute customers to our own content first with key destinations such as the Canary Islands and Greece, also delivering good occupancies of 76% and 75% respectively in the final quarter. These advantages resulted in a EUR 203 million improvement in Q4, returning the segment to positive quarterly underlying EBIT of EUR 160 million since the start of the pandemic. This improvement includes an EUR 80 million non-repeat benefit from impairment charges in Q4 of the prior year.
Overall, Q4 occupancy rate increased by 19%- 68%. Average rate per bed increased by 15% to EUR 73 due to mix and normalization in pricing as volumes recovered. Moving on to cruise, I'm pleased to report that Q4 was the first quarter with all three cruise brands in operation since the start of the pandemic. The cruise segment reported a Q4 underlying EBIT loss of EUR 43 million. The improvement of EUR 82 million year-on-year reflects the fuller return of all three cruise brands with both TUI Cruises and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises resuming original itineraries to the Mediterranean in the final quarter and Marella resuming its operations in Q4 after a near 15-month hit, offering itineraries around the British Isles and to the Mediterranean. Q4 occupancy rate ranged between 39% and 53% across our cruise brands, with an element of capped occupancy requirements still in place by some destinations.
The shorter lead time to market itineraries, particularly in the U.K., were limiting the opportunity here. TUI Musement saw a higher number of customers traveling this summer versus prior year as travel restrictions and social distancing requirements eased, with much of the volume driven by our Markets and Airlines business. This helped to deliver a Q4 underlying EBIT loss of EUR 9 million and EUR 39 million improvement on prior year, with more than 1 million excursions sold in the final quarter, reflecting the improved environment for travel and clear benefits of our integrated model. Moving on to our Markets and Airlines division. As already mentioned, Central and Western Region returns to a positive underlying EBIT result, their first positive quarter since start of the pandemic.
Overall, the segment delivered a EUR 592 million improvement in Q4 versus prior year, with EUR 56 million of this improvement from the non-repeat benefit of impairment charge in Q4 of the prior year, as well as benefits delivered by our Global Realignment Program. The earlier easing of travel restrictions by the EU enabled both Central Region and Western Region in Q4 to return to a positive underlying EBIT since the start of the pandemic, generating positive EUR 49 million and EUR 71 million respectively. This demonstrates not only the clear demand for leisure travel when permitted with limited restrictions, but the continued appetite for TUI holidays as well as our advantaged position to quickly restart our business due to our integration. A total of 3.8 million customers departed for their holidays during Q4, with 82% departing from our Central Region and Western Region markets.
As I said, the U.K. opened at the end of the quarter. Overall volume in the final quarter improved by 103% year-on-year, reflecting the wider lifting of travel restrictions supported by the successful rollout of vaccination programs. This brings me to our usual underlying EBIT bridge. As in the prior quarters, and as you have seen in our numbers, we continue to focus on cost discipline as we have successfully done so since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, as well as capturing margin opportunities where possible. Our almost break-even result being a demonstration of this and the late opening of the U.K. clearly being the biggest disappointment. As you can see, all segments contributed to the year-on-year improved results. Holiday Experiences contributed an improvement of EUR 289 million quarter on quarter, while Markets & Airlines delivered EUR 530 million.
I already commented on the main drivers on my prior chart. Additionally, the result benefited EUR 100 million from a reduction in one-off year-on-year, comprising the impacts from net hedging and impairment. Moving to our cash flow slide for Q4. We are very pleased to have generated a positive free cash flow for the second time since the start of the pandemic. The positive development was driven by the better result from operations, positive adjustments and as expected, positive inflow from working capital. Even when excluding working capital, Q4 delivered a positive free cash flow from operations. Coming back to the working capital, the Q4 working capital inflow of EUR 737 million is mainly reflecting the increase in supplier payments from Q4 operations.
Full year 2021 working capital inflow of EUR 823 million represents the first step of a refueling working capital after the depletion in full year 2020 induced by the pandemic. Coming to various other cash items, Q4 was impacted by the reversal of EUR 197 million Riu disposal booking and as you will remember, prior year reflected the reversal of the Hapag-Lloyd Cruises booking. The slight increase in cash interest was driven by the full year impact of additional indebtedness. In line with our initiatives to support liquidity, net investments were an inflow of EUR 576 million, while we managed to reduce Q4 CapEx further. The main driver of the positive development was the execution of our asset-right strategy through disposing a real estate portfolio to the Riu family, which generated proceeds of EUR 541 million.
Overall, full year 2021 net investments amounted to an inflow of around EUR 700 million, which is exceeding our net investment assumptions of an inflow of EUR 600 million- EUR 600 million for 2021. Also, for the net investment position, I would like to share our current assumption for full year 2022. Here we expect an overall cash outflow of between EUR 120 million- EUR 280 million. Breaking this down, we expect cash CapEx outflow to be in the range of between EUR 300 million- EUR 350 million. We expect the outflow to be mitigated by positive inflows of between EUR 70 million-E UR 100 million through smaller divestments and positive net pre-delivery payments for aircraft.
You will find a modeling assumption table included in the appendix of this presentation to save you scribbling these figures down. That brings me to a positive free cash flow before financing of EUR 4 billion, which was mainly used for reducing the KfW RCF drawings. Onto the liquidity position, let me run through our cash and available facilities as of December 6. We are pleased to report a strong liquidity position of EUR 3.5 billion, reflecting the lower working capital swing due to the reduced summer 2021 volumes as anticipated. The outflow of the month of October and November and up to December 6 were offset by the proceeds from our EUR 1.1 billion capital increase. With this strong liquidity position, we are well prepared for the remainder of the winter season and to weather any change in the booking environment.
I would like to confirm once more that we will continue with our strict cash discipline and our strong focus on generating free cash flow. Onto our net financial position, which improved by EUR 1.4 billion quarter-over-quarter and stood at EUR 5 billion on September 30. The improvement in net debt predominantly reflects the positive cash flow, which we use to reduce our liabilities to banks. The positive development was driven, as already mentioned, by improved operations, positive working capital development and the Riu real estate disposal. To assist you, we have provided further details on this chart regarding the drawings of the silent participations as well as under the RCF as of both September 30 and post-balance sheet date on December 6.
As last time, on the right-hand side of the slide, we have included for your convenience the split of our financial liabilities with the full details on lease liabilities and liabilities to banks. On my next slide, I will recap on our pro forma net debt and gross debt position post our successful capital increase in October. The capital increase improved the full year 2021 Q4 balance sheet by EUR 1.1 billion on a pro forma basis, which is of course pre-seasonal swing, winter swing. Thus, pro forma net debt on September 30 would reduce from EUR 5 billion- EUR 3.9 billion, and pro forma gross debt including pension liabilities would reduce from EUR 7.3 billion- EUR 6.2 billion. With the issue on balance, we have made major progress towards returning to a gross leverage ratio of around three.
We continued to work hard on achieving our target, and the current pandemic environment is underlining once more that it's key for TUI to be always prepared and to utilize available windows of opportunity for refinancing when possible. As a reminder of our commitment, I would like to finalize my section with the ongoing priorities I have on my agenda. Generate cash flow, which means to continue with our strict cash and CapEx discipline, manage the working capital flow back and further execute on the asset-right strategy. Driving operating effectiveness with a focus on optimizing fixed capacities, on delivering the remainder of our global realignment program, as well as driving our digitalization initiatives and growth aspirations through dynamic packaging. Finally, it will remain of utmost importance to optimize financing by maximizing further deleverage opportunities, including possible capital market options.
We will continue debt reduction using both organic cash and any generated proceeds and target further improvements of our credit ratings. We have made good progress over the last 12- months, but recent pandemic developments underline once more that we need to pursue our target rigorously using all opportunities. To conclude, the corona pandemic has been the biggest challenge for the industry and our company. As a team, we acted quickly and managed the situation we were presented with, taking important and necessary actions at the right time, and we will continue to do so. In parallel, we are preparing TUI to be even stronger and more resilient in the future. With this, I will hand over back to Friedrich for his closing remarks.
Thank you, Sebastian. Before we come to your questions, let me convey a couple of messages. First of all, we believe that leisure travel will see a strong rebound over the next time. There are two major reasons for that. Travel is and stays a mega trend. Demographic change has actually driven the growth of leisure tourism and leisure travel over the last 15 years to be way above GDP growth in Northern Europe, and this is our core source market. The demographic change, you know, will not change. Quite to the contrary, the baby boomers will go into retirement. They will have the time, they will have the money to spend, they will be more healthy, they will live after their retirement 20-25 years.
This trend is actually unbroken, will stay intact. Also the new trend, which is the experience over luxury. Experience is more important than ownership. Coming from the youth, from the younger people spreading on to the older generation, is something which all market research, consumer research indicates. These are, you know, major trends. The second point is that we believe and it's true that tourism is a force for good. Without tourism, in most of our destinations, I could say in all of our destinations, situations would worsen. We saw that, right? Less investment, less transport worth, less spending of our customers.
As tourism in most of the countries is the major source of wealth, there's an enormous interest to boost tourism again. Let me spend one word on sustainability as well. If you don't have an economic sustainable situation, if your social environment is bad, so if you are missing economic sustainability and social sustainability, usually the ecological sustainability is also hit. Because then people actually start chopping forest and do monocultures. Because they don't have anything to eat today, and then they don't care about their future. Therefore tourism in general is actually a very good basis for ecological sustainability destination.
Here, TUI has been a pioneer in sustainable tourism and is committed to lead the transformation, and sustainable future and destinations as well. Travel is a mega trend. Tourism is a force for good. These are the basis, these are the mega trends that actually didn't disappear in the crisis. Quite to the contrary, the crisis caused that development, but it didn't change it. Now, when I go to the next slide, therefore we assume that actually the tourist travel, the leisure travel will rebound by the way, much quicker than the business travel. You see the projected numbers. The last item I would like to close, why actually TUI should be a beneficiary of the crisis eventually.
Because we have actually used the opportunity, used the crisis to transform our company. We did four major activities in order to achieve that. First of all, we invested into TUI Musement integration into the app as you saw all of it. Third biggest touristic market. Strongest growing touristic market. Third biggest behind flights and hotels, but bigger than cruises. So highly fragmented, no digitalization, hundreds of thousands of providers now through our app to 26 million customers. That's what we did in the crisis, and you saw the effect in my earlier slide. Second, we drove digitalization. We started digitalization and we drove digitalization. Lower cost, equal quality.
At the same time, mass individualization, so each and every customer individually addressed through mainly the app, because that is how you address each and every customer. Also being available to enter new markets. Dynamic packaging, accom-only, where actually the pricing mechanisms, the yield mechanisms are very different. Our new systems are capable of doing that. We used the crisis in order to transform our company on the IT side in the absence of the customer. That's clear. Growth through asset-right financing structures. Sebastian highlighted it. You know, the major cruise company. Cruise companies are off-balance. Marella will go off-balance. Everything is prepared as soon as possible. Hotels, selling properties, selling real estate, but keeping operations, marketing and sales.
Hotel funds we talked about, you know, is in the works, will be done in due course. Asset-light structures in order to grow without direct investment on balance sheet. Of course, cost saving and global realignment. You know, cost saving, asset without sacrifice on growth, without sacrifice on quality. EUR 240 million yearly savings achieved of EUR 400 million. It is a very ambitious program and [indiscernible]. These four components make me believe that we will be a beneficiary and make me confident to promise to you a resounding return to a gross leverage ratio of less than three. That's what we promised since quarters.
Also a promise to you, and that's new and a midterm ambition of underlying EBITA significantly built on financial year 2019, driven by top-line growth as well as the cost benefits. We are confident to tell you that our midterm ambition, up to three years, you know, we will be in the order of magnitude in EBIT, which is significantly above financial year 2019. With that, I would like to close, and we are available for your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine star on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press nine star again. The first questioner is Mr. Jamie Rollo of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Three questions, please. First, on the change in liquidity suggests a EUR 1 billion cash burn in about two months. Could you please break that down between the operating losses and the working capital outflow, just to give us a feeling for the sort of Q1 loss run rate? Secondly, there's no sort of big picture guidance on 2022, understandably. If we take the 2021 reported numbers and compare those to 2019, it suggests that you're seeing about a 20% drop-through, so a 20% change in profit for a change in revenue. You know, should we think about that figure for 2022, about a 20% conversion or flow-through rate, or could it be better than that?
I'm just thinking about the big drop in revenue in the first half of the year that you're talking about. Finally, on just delivering, you mentioned capital market options. Sorry, you said any capital market options. Friedrich, I think, did an interview this morning, possibly hinting at equity. Is further equity a possibility? Also, you said, Marella is going to happen quite quickly, I think, in disposing that. Could you give us a feeling for timing or value, please? Thank you.
Sebastian, do you wanna start and I add on, or the other way around? Okay.
I mean, we don't want to divide the Q1 into the result and the working capital number. What you can quickly do is you can look at the working capital outflow in 2019. When you look at the amount of business we have, that gives you a good indication where the working capital outflow could be. The number is till the sixth of December. We assume an under proportional outflow for the next three weeks. That could give you some good indication that the outflow will be lower than what we had in 2019. On the capital market options, maybe the easier question, I think we explained that Marella would be good to have Marella in the joint venture.
On the other hand, also TUI Cruises has to resume profitability again. We always said it's a timeframe of 18- months we envisaged. This is still valid that so that TUI Cruises is able to support that or any other options which we also look at to realize the best value we can achieve. Capital market options, for the time being, we focus very much on improving profitability and cash flow. Yes, of course, we also look at the options, but that is not the number one priority for the next coming month. There we clearly focus on the performance of the company. The second question, I must admit, I haven't fully unders-
Now maybe I can take that. I mean, add to that, right? I mean, the interesting thing here is that you know, all of our profitability is actually in more or less in Q4, right? So before actually you just restrict losses and therefore you know, if it's a little bit more business or less business in H1, it is not moving really the needle, right? Therefore H2 is actually the more important issue. Here you know, I have a couple of cornerstones which I want to highlight. First of all, H2 or Q4 in 2021 was in hotels in Western Region and Central Region already okay, right? It was already okay. It was not at pre-crisis level, but it was okay.
It was profitable, despite the fact that we had no vaccinations. We had relatively only a fraction of customers we brought, still much better than the year before, but a fraction of customers. The biggest influence we had, a negative one, was the U.K. When you see the numbers, you know, in the chart of Sebastian Ebel, the U.K. was -EUR 250 million. Even if it had performed like Belgium or Germany, so not pre-crisis levels, you could have expected that it maybe would have been EUR 400 million better than this, right? Now, the interesting thing here is the EBITDA, and the interesting thing here is that for next year, the U.K. is the market which is more than 30%, I think almost 35% pre-booked at higher prices than pre-crisis.
Therefore, you know, the main profit contributor and the region which has been lowest performing in 2021 is actually the one which is most certain, you know? Also when you look at the cruise booking levels, as said, you know, the absolute numbers of bookings are on the same level as pre-crisis, plus on higher yields. Therefore, you know, we see quite some certainty on Q4, which is, as I said, all profitability for the year. That said, you know, I want to also mention one thing. We always compare 90%-100% to pre-crisis market levels. To pre-crisis TUI levels. Meaning we say 90%-100% of our EBIT, of our business before crisis.
You should note that, of course, Thomas Cook was in 2019, pre-crisis, still part of the market and now is not part of the market. In practice, you know, if it was 90%-100% of market levels, we potentially would see 110% of TUI, right? There is some moderation of expectation in the 90%-100% which we referred to already. Therefore, you know, the confidence that we actually hit our numbers in the very important H2 is quite good. I hope that helps.
Yeah, that's really helpful. Thank you for clarifying. I appreciate you make all the profit in the fourth quarter, but you can still make bigger losses in the first or second quarter and in-
Yeah, yeah, sure.
In 2021, your losses were EUR 1 billion higher than in 2019. I'm sure it's gonna be nothing like that this year, but that's the main question, really. I assume-
Yeah, when you look, yeah.
a small loss. Yeah.
You look, for example, now. I mean, we have shown you the number for the very important October, right? October is good volumes. It's higher than the 50. You know, 50 was summer. We said, you know, for Q1, we were booking 69% of pre-crisis level. 69%, of course, the absolute volume, the biggest chunk of it is October. October was very good load factors and very good occupancies. October is by far the biggest month in Q1, for example. When you look at April or when you look at the Easter business, it's on 90% of 2019 levels, right?
Of course, we have bigger room, and we actually have minimized our costs. We have 20% less aircraft fleet than we had in 2019. This is an enormous cost reduction as well.
Maybe if I could add. We said we would expect 60%-80% capacity. With today's bookings, it's probably more to the lower end. That of course has impact on the profitability. It of course will see a significantly improvement what we had seen before.
Yeah. It's moderate. In the winter, it's really moderate. In these boundaries, it's moderate. The influence is moderate.
Okay. Sort of losses in between the normal 2019 losses and nothing as bad as the losses last year.
Yeah, sure.
Okay. Thank you very much.
We have some more questions that came in, and the next questioner is Mr. Cristian Nedelcu of UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Could you speak a bit about the March quarter, please? I think last year you burned EUR 889 million of cash on very depressed volumes, with half of that cash outflow being from the working capital. I guess my question is more do you believe you will have a positive working capital contribution in this March quarter? Then if you can comment on that. Secondly, if I could please ask you, it's very useful you gave us the forecast in the appendix for this year for different cost lines and CapEx and so on.
If I add everything together and I also add the operating leases, I add the cash contribution to the pension, I calculate a cash outflow of more than EUR 1.5 billion just from, you know, everything that's under the EBIT line and investments and so on. I guess on top of that, we're gonna add the H1 losses that you just commented on. Could you give us a range of outcomes in terms of cash generation for this full year, having in mind the capacity expectation, the capacity guidance you have in place? The last one, if I may, at the end of September, your unrestricted cash is much lower than what it used to be.
In pre-COVID, you were always running at EUR 1.8 billion-EUR 2.5 billion of unrestricted cash and then another EUR 1.5 billion of undrawn RCF. This time around, if my calculations are right, you're running at EUR 800 million-EUR 900 million of unrestricted cash with a much, much larger portion of RCF. Now, my question is this sustainable? Is this the way you're gonna run the business going forward? Always you're gonna tap into the RCF for the winter months, and you'll always need a larger RCF than before, higher interest costs, and all that. Or is one of your targets, once you de-lever the balance sheet, you also need to increase this cash position, this unrestricted cash position that you hold in the business. Can you provide any comments there, please?
Maybe I take the question. First one, do you believe that positive working capital contribution in Q2? We are working towards that we have a positive working capital contribution, even if summer bookings would be delayed.
The restricted cash, I don't know where you have the number from, as I'm not so long in this position here. I can just say that we worked very hard on the restricted cash number around EUR 500 million, and we think this is sustainable. We even work on it to further reduce this number, and we are on a good way forward. Your second question, range of cash generation for the full year.
If you would assume for the time being that we have still a difficult first half year and a normal second half year, then we will be generating cash, not only from profitability, but also from still bringing working capital to a normalized basis, which is also a quite significant number. Therefore, and of course, keeping CapEx as low as possible. We just spent CapEx for health and safety maintenance and these things. For the next years, we anticipate the CapEx number where it has been last year.
Thank you. Thank you.
We have a couple of more questions. The next questioner is Mr. James Rowland of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. Just regarding your comments around EBIT significantly building on FY 2019 levels, driven by the top line and the global realignment program. Which of those two would you lean on as offering the greatest upside on EBIT? And does your EBIT outlook include capacity gains from Thomas Cook? And if so, how much? And then finally on that, what does that sort of rebound EBIT assume for the tour op margin? And then another area of questions, I just wondered if you would update us on forward bookings and pricing in TUI Cruises. I think back in the Q3 update, you said TUI Cruises was sort of on 2022 bookings within a historical range at slightly higher rates.
If you could just update us on that and also on Marella as well. Thank you.
In TUI, in TUI Cruises, I think in TUI Cruises, I said in my section, right? That H2, we are on historic levels and at higher prices. That stays the same, right? It's my chart with a little bit of a lot more text, right? On our ambition, I mean, one thing is very clear. When you take out cost, right? We take out, we took out or we take out cost, you know, of EUR 400, in the effect of EUR 400 million, almost 10,000 people, FTE, which actually we get to less duplication and so on. This all is 100% certainty it falls to the bottom line.
Now, of course, you can say this is, but others will have similar things and so on. Here we are just playing our scale, which actually we had inefficiency in the system and we just took out inefficiencies. So this is there to stick. That is my view. One effect we have not encountered in our profitability EBIT numbers is the healthy effect of less risk capacity. Because if you have less backups than you present, then your yields are automatically better, yeah? Because you have to fill less risk capacity. Now, the only issue could be if you need more capacity because the market's growing stronger and you don't have enough capacity to fly your customers.
With overcapacity in the online market, we will be a beneficiary of low prices in that respect. With the growth of course, that is something particularly in the source markets where we, you know, are striving to also participate in particularly dynamic packaging because, you know, we have independent hotels and flights which we actually package. Yeah. Here you ask for margins and you know, I've said in the past, and I'm still convinced that a good tour operator should have, you know, in the pre-crisis levels, the ambition to do something like 5% in the order of magnitude of 5% margins, right? In the U.K. we had above, in Belgium we had above.
In Germany for example we were significantly below. In Germany we have now reduced risk capacity in the airlines to a level which is almost a little bit more than half of what it has been before. Before that, you know, because of that, because of our high risk capacity, you know, our risk and price or volume price escalation was actually heavily tilted towards volume with the respective deep, you know, bad implications on price. Yeah. Therefore I think Germany was a 1% EBIT margin business and here I would definitely see also, expect to see good effects.
Thank you. Does your significant EBIT build include Thomas Cook capacity gains?
I mean, one thing is clear. When we do our five-year plan, of course, we assume that we participate in the market in a fair way. It doesn't include that we will get more capacity than fair, yeah? It just said, you know, but until end of year three, yes, it includes that the market is consolidated.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Next we have Mr. Alex Brignall of Redburn. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thanks so much guys for taking questions. Just two, if I could. You talked about the impact of COVID, I guess pre-Omicron and then post-Omicron on bookings, and then Fritz, you talked about Q1 being sort of in the bag, I think were your words. Could you just talk a little bit about cancellations? Obviously the risk is if travel restrictions get worse on actual cancellations of bookings that are already in the bag. If you can just talk a little bit about that, and the terms and conditions around who can cancel or can't cancel, just so that we know how certain-
Sure, sure.
What the bookings you currently have are, that would be fantastic.
Sure.
The second question is on hotel rates, and the pricing that you're seeing into next summer, and what impact that could have on margins, because obviously pre-COVID hotel prices were very strong and kind of helpful to margins. How that's progressing. Thank you.
Yeah. Maybe I start. First of all, we have seen a couple of days, yeah, with net negative movements, but now in Europe or total, we are not net negative, right? Yes, the U.K. is hit more, but we are not net negative, right? Therefore, you know, I wouldn't be worried too much. Then, you know, the question of cancellations. Most of the cancellations are now, at least in the first days, amendments into the future, right? We are talking 2/3, 3/4 are amendments into the future. And the only real effect we are seeing now are actually in the U.K. Of course, the sentiment has been better a week ago. That's clear. Yeah.
In all markets, a little bit softer than in a couple of weeks. This is purely winter. When you look at summer, the summer is largely unaffected. Yeah. Now on the hotel rates, you know, the hotel rates are heavily influenced by perception of scarcity and also local demand, right? Here, the rates are healthy. Therefore, like also in the packages in summer 2022, I would say good prices, right? Good prices at this point in time.
Brilliant. Thanks very much.
Maybe Sebastian? Yeah. Okay. Good. Thank you.
We have a couple more questions. Next questioner is Mr. James Ainley of Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Two questions, please. First, I wanted to drill into summer 2022 bookings a bit more. Last time you spoke, you had 1.65 million bookings for next summer. Now you have 2.2. So for 515,000 gain. If I'm right, looks like you had about 1.2 million bookings, incremental bookings over that, equivalent period between October and December, in 2019. So quite a sharp slowdown in recent months in terms of the pace of bookings. Could you talk to kind of why that's happened? Was there an element of people maybe using credit vouchers early on to rebook? Was there very high discounting early on to sort of brought forward some of those bookings? And some color on that, please.
The second question is just coming back to this debate about the Thomas Cook capacity. I acknowledge that, but also I guess we've seen there's some pretty significant competitive challenges. People like Jet2 adding more capacity, easyJet ramping up their holiday product. When you sort of net that all out, do you think TUI going forward is gonna be in a position to take more than its sort of 21 million passengers a year on holiday? Or is that really still the kind of number we should be anchoring around?
Yeah. Okay. First of all, when you look at the slowdown, yeah, this reflects the short-term booking trend which we have also seen in the past, right? We had the amendments with a very good price. Liquidity is in for these amendments, but profitability for that price and these margins will be only accounted like the revenues in summer, right? Therefore it's very positive to have these. Particularly these are around the U.K. market, which is the most important market we have. Half of our profitability in this first market usually is in the U.K. More than 35% of bookings are in the bag, like let's say for the summer next year, at better prices than 2019.
Now we are convinced that the slowdown we see right now is mainly based on uncertainty, right? People say, "Yeah, maybe I shouldn't book," and so on. Now this will be only really changed if we get not uncertainty, the prevailing motivation, but perception of scarcity. The interesting thing here is that at least for the peak seasons, and you saw that in April. In April we are 90% pre-crisis levels booked, right? Therefore, you know, the perception, the peak season, I'm pretty sure at a certain point in time will toggle away from I'm not certain if I should book right now to the perception if I don't book right now, I don't have a decent holiday, right?
Therefore, you know, we. It will be not black and white. It will be a little bit later. You know, the summer bookings will be a little bit later than in pre-crisis levels, at least for the next year, but for the coming year. It will be a migration year, as we always say, right? Part of the customers will still have uncertainty. Part of the customers will start seeing scarcity. Now, in both cases, price movements, hectic price movements are not good idea because price elasticity is not the main driver, right? That's the reason why we stick to good prices, very healthy prices. The bookings we get in are very good margin bookings. And we assume, and we are absolutely certain in the short-term business, you know, the capacity will be filled.
At least what you can see in summer 2021, capacity was well filled. Our load factors, our occupancy were good, right? That's my first answer. My second answer is Thomas Cook. Thomas Cook actually had 20% market share or 15% market share, let's say, right? And in 2020, January and February, our revenue, booking revenue was 17% or above 17% for the summer up, right? That was strategy. Strategy is we get our fair market share, yeah? That's what we assumed, and that's how we priced, and that's how we planned capacity. I would say in ballpark, let's say, this is of course different countries have different Thomas Cook participation.
Thomas Cook in different countries had different, sometimes it was more low class, sometimes more upmarket and so on. In the mix is maybe not a wrong assumption to assume that we will participate, yeah. Not overly aggressive, but participate. Does that help?
Yeah. No, thank you. Just going back to your first answer. Do you have any credit vouchers outstanding now, or are those pretty much all been burnt through?
No, we allocated most of them. Non-allocated, I think Sebastian or Matthias, is it EUR a couple of hundred million or so?
It has been reduced significantly to around EUR 200 million.
EUR 200 million.
Which is not yet the normal base, but close to the normal base. They are normally for the initial payment. When the customer then travels, he still has to pay another 70%. It still looks big, but it's a quite normal amount.
It's normal. 100 or so.
Okay. Yes.
Yeah.
Okay. All right.
It's in light of liquidity of EUR 3.5 billion, it's not a big deal.
Yes.
We have one final question from Mr. Stefan Binder of Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello. Thanks for taking my question. I actually have two, one by one. The first one was just losing a little bit track of your authorized capital. You mentioned obviously raising equity is not on the immediate agenda, but you know, if the situation is to get worse and you would need to raise equity, how much authorized capital do you have available now? Are you gonna go for a new or bigger authorization for the next AGM? Just wondering what is the strategy there. Then I have another question.
One question only?
Well, I have another question, but maybe after that.
Okay.
The second question would.
At the moment we have no authorized capital, but we have the next AGM in February. It's normal standard that you ask for authorization, which doesn't mean that you use it, but it's very normal that you go to the limits to ask. That gives you the potential possibility to do capital measures. This is pure technique, and we will do so in the next AGM.
How much will you do? The next AGM is in May or when is that?
February.
February. How much are you gonna ask for?
We're not asking for something. It will be the authorization to-
Yeah. No, I understand the authorization. What numbers of share would you like to authorize?
standard authorizations, 10% conditional and
Okay.
10% authorized. This as said.
Okay.
It's not that we do something, it's just what I think all companies, at least in Germany, would do so to ask for authorization.
Okay. No, I understand. Certainly the right way. The second question was, if I understand that right, in the summer, you wanna be at 90%-100% capacity and your ASP is up 22%. Splitting the question into two parts. Do you expect the ASP to decline the more closer you get to bookings? That short-term booking behavior you described? Or is it maybe if you can tell me anything around expectations, how you would expect that number to change, if you could so. Then secondly, if I take that together, you having, you know, close to 100% capacity and your sales prices are significantly up, should we expect a significantly higher profitability in your Q4 then?
is there anything that we need to consider in addition to that, like input prices or other factors?
Maybe I give the first one. You know, we have increased our summer prices. You know, last time we talked to you know, our summer prices I think were 17% or 18% or what % up, you know, for the bookings we had in. In our trading environment, you always think about when you start really yielding. At a certain point in time you will start yielding, right? Because you will start to lower prices in order to fill your fixed capacity, right? But for the time being, we believe that healthy pricing is in the best interest because we don't expect a lot of price elasticity now.
Because now it's uncertain, and now the volumes will not go up even if you lower the prices, because now price is not the main motivation, but certainty is the main motivation. Now, you know, comes closer, so short-term booking, we will use capacity. Here it's difficult to say how the prices will develop. There are two scenarios. The one scenario is, maybe the more likely scenario, you know, all destinations are open, you have plenty capacity everywhere, yeah. Then the average, then scarcity is not an issue. Then the average will go down. I mean, yeah. The alternative scenario is that still significant destinations are not bookable or are not advisable to travel to.
Then the remainder of destinations are scarce, and then the prices will stick up, and maybe then it's closer to the 90%, right? You know, of bookings. It really, really depends on. We have some wriggle room. We will only finalize the volumes or fix the volumes for next summer, let's say, in most of the parts in February, March. Until then, more or less, we are, you know, we tactically operate the business in a way that we. Now, for the bookings we take in right now, you know, we optimize the commercial position. It is a little bit of.
I mean, today we believe elasticity would not be big enough in order to be smart in order to lower the prices.
Okay. I mean that makes a lot of sense. The kinda like the overall, the overarching question. Like, if you are at 90% and your price levels are higher, should we expect same EBITA level? Is there like something to consider on the input factors and other things that
It was very helpful in the last, what was it, week or two, that the fuel has come down 15, whatever, 18% and we could do our hedging lines and improve our position there. Yeah, that is maybe the main input cost to consider, right? I mean, fuel and dollar.
Mm.
Here usually, you know, the policy usually is to be hedged, yeah. Otherwise the risk we would be, you know, on a currency or commodity business instead of a holiday business, right?
Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
Mr. Joussen, Mr. Ebel, there are no further questions in the queue.
Thank you very much to all of you. The good thing is underlying trends are intact. We have made our homework. We believe that we will be a company more lean, more agile, more digital, and of course with higher profitability and cash conversion, eventually when the crisis is over. It will be a little bit of a bumpy road in Omicron and so on, but the positions we are in today is very different than the position we have been in a year ago, where no vaccination and no booster available and no medicine in front of us. Even this summer was not a disaster in the countries where we could travel and in the hotels and resorts.
We are very optimistic and look forward to actually a next summer season as well. With that, I would like to close. Thank you a lot, and wish you all a great day.