Okay, well, thank you, Lavinia and Rebecca, for your presentations. We'll now open the floor to questions. If you would like to ask a question, kindly raise your hand. I'll call on you, and one of our colleagues will hand you a microphone. Please state your name and your organization before asking the questions. Let me open the floor. The gentleman on the left.
Hi, thank you. Thank you, Rebecca and Lavinia. I'm Parash Jain from HSBC. I have 2 questions, if I may. First of all, maybe, Lavinia, if you can talk a bit about passenger yield going into, going into the summer of this year and probably for the latter half of the year. Given, given the tighter demand and supply, given the rise in the fuel costs, would you see the passenger yield also will likely to settle at a pretty elevated level versus the pre-COVID on an ongoing basis? Secondly, maybe for Rebecca, in, in terms of hedging, can you remind me, has this hedging happened at a Brent level? Like the recent surge in the jet spread with respect to jet fuel prices, is there any hedging mechanism for you to protect from that, or you remain open for that?
Thank you.
Okay, thanks for the question. I think, well, high use, yes, that's a reflection of currently the airfares are still quite high. I believe there are two factors behind the current high fares. The first factor is because of... It's a, it's a global phenomenon. It's not just in Hong Kong, and not just Cathay Pacific. Everywhere, if you ask passengers, they will say that, "Oh, fares are high." That is really a matter of... Well, we have to acknowledge that post-pandemic, the whole airline industry is facing a lot of, or the whole supply chain is facing a lot of challenges, including, well, people shortage, supply chain, material shortage, and then there's also cost inflation across the globe.
All these actually add to the cost pressure for airlines operating, and these cost pressure are being reflected in the air ticket fares. That is one explanation of why ticket fares are high. The other obviously contributing factor is supply and demand imbalance. I think we are still seeing a good pent-up demand in the market. Again, that's sort of globally. We are also seeing pent-up demand continue to be there. At this point, demand outstrips supply, so that also contributes to higher airfares. To the question whether we can sustain our high use, so that also is dependent on whether these high fares will continue down the road.
I guess, on the, the first part of it, the first part of the equation, global, inflation and supply chain challenges, I think that will, that will continue for, for quite some period. For the second factor, yes, as long as, as, as long as we continue to introduce capacity, other airlines will also be doing the same. When supply starts to continue to build, obviously, I think, fare will, will normalize a bit for us there. Obviously there are two factors which affect airfares, hence, our use at this point.
Hi, Paras. In terms of the fuel hedging, we do continue with our fuel hedging policy that we believe is quite prudent, where we're hedging based on the fuel price and the consumption we project out for 2 years. I'm not sure whether we disclose exactly whether we do it based on Brent or jet. I won't go there. All I can say is that, as you saw in the chart earlier, the sort of amount we have, we're doing it on an ongoing basis, so whatever the price is of the fuel at the point in time, we will be hedging progressively out for up to 2 years. Typically, the nearer term will be a larger proportion, and the further out will be lower.
Okay. Thank you. Next question, gentleman.
Thank you. Thanks, Lavinia and Rebecca, for the presentation. Cathy Pacific Airways . Would you mind just sharing a little bit more around the circumstances that led to the reversal of the three impaired aircraft that you mentioned? Would we expect to see any more sort of meaningful reversals in the reserves over the coming sort of year?
Sure, I can share a little bit more on that. When we do the assessment, originally, we're looking at, will they be operating in the next 12, 24 months? Therefore, at that juncture, we didn't believe they would. In terms of the aircraft that we were looking at, it is aircraft that are, I think it's typically around 23 years old, so sort of getting close to the end of the, the life that they typically have with us and the depreciation period that we're using. In terms of being able to operate these aircraft and bring them back earlier than we thought, effectively, that's what we're doing now with these 3. They will continue to operate for a while. In terms of commenting on others, not something that we've put in the public domain.
I mean, it's something we keep under review based on our fleet plan, and the deliveries of new aircraft as to whether we need to reactivate some or all of them or not. I can't really comment on the specifics of whether there will be others at this point, I'm afraid.
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Hi, Rebecca, Lavinia. It's Tim Bacchus from Bloomberg Intelligence. I wanted to talk a little bit more about the yield and what happened in the first half versus last year. It was down 32%, but obviously, this is quite elevated still versus 2019. It's quite interesting when I look at the numbers. Usually, you know, when passenger stage length goes down, the yields will go up, right? Yields on long haul are lower than they are for short haul. Same with unit costs. When I look at the numbers, it looks like stage length declined from 5,400 kilometers to around 4,100 kilometers, yet yields went down. Maybe you could just elaborate a little bit on what you're seeing in terms of, you know, why the yields was down 32%.
... The second question would be just on cargo. Further to what you got in your slides, can you talk about what you're seeing in terms of the typical peak seasonal cargo demand for this year? In other words, shippers are locking in contracts already. Are we beginning to see that there will be a peak this year? Some other peers in the region are saying, no, they don't think there will be the typical peak this year. Thanks.
Thank you. I'll probably leave Lavinia for both of those.
Okay. For the first question, it's about the passenger yield, right? Again, I guess, not just for cargo. I think in the past year, in last year, actually, the passenger yields are very skewed as well, because at that time, we were operating... Well, in the first half, a lot of months, actually, we were operating at only around 3-5% of our capacity. You can imagine that given the very limited seats at that point, and demand was pretty inelastic, only those who really need to travel will travel, and they will pay whatever price to just to get a seat. I think those are, again, very skewed yields. I think this year is more like seeing more normal normal fares.
Obviously, as we continue to normalize and build, rebuild our, our network, then I guess, in terms of the different freedom mix, we are also starting to see more normalization. I guess, last year we might still not be carrying a lot of connecting traffic. Like now, this year, obviously, as we continue to rebuild, Hong Kong as a hub, we'll start to see more connecting traffic, and so that will also affect the, the yield mix somewhat. To the second question, so cargo, yes, I think we are expecting there will still be a peak this year. Maybe obviously different from the historical highs, but yes, we are preparing for a peak.
I think, one advantage that, that we have now in Hong Kong is, although the, the general cargo, out- globally, general cargo demand has been a little bit softer this year compared to last year, actually, e-commerce is actually the, the star, and especially out of GBA. We, we saw really very, very good demand out of GBA for e-commerce cargo, and we are in, in the right spot to capture that. I think that actually, give us some confidence about that, about this peak.
I'd also echo Lavinia's comment. I think last year's numbers on the passenger side are really hard to use as a sort of basis to then calculate onto 2023. I think, yes, they're, they're too skewed.
Mm.
Question.
Hi, Rebecca. Hi, Lavinia. This is Harry from UBS. I also have a question related to the passenger yield. Not sure if you can give us some color in terms of the sequential trend of the passenger yield, i.e., from Q1 to Q2. We sort of are interested to gauge the trend in terms of the normalization. Secondly, related to the cost, you mentioned the experienced underlying cost per ATK has declined by 51%, which is impressive, and it is close to 2019 level, despite that the passenger capacity remains pretty low. I'm interested in terms of how many percentage of the cost reduction is sort of permanent. I guess that's all from me. Thanks.
Probably just on the yield, we don't report that on a quarterly basis, so I, I don't know whether unless Lavinia's got any high-level indication to share, but it's not something that we report. We just do it by the half year.
Mm.
On the cost per ATK, again, I think we've got a number of different elements here. We've got. As Lavinia was alluding to earlier, you have got prices increase globally. The aviation industry is seeing price increases, supply chain challenges, resource challenges, increase in employee costs, et cetera. You've got that dimension, that's sort of with us and, and ahead of us, I'm sure. You've also got, you remember back in 2020 when we did the restructuring, and we restructured the contracts for our cabin crew and our pilots, that was a sort of permanent change, if you like. With the closure or cessation of operations of Cathay Dragon, that also changed our cost base.
We have made some sort of permanent structural changes and changes on other aspects that we were working on through the pandemic, which I do think will see permanent reductions. Equally, you've got the sort of offsetting of the changing world and supply chain, cost increases, finance cost increases, et cetera, coming along. As to sort of a specific % on what's permanent, what's not, hard to judge at this stage. I think until we're operating at sort of back to the 100% capacity, it's gonna be hard to estimate what is permanent and what is a sort of temporary in nature.
Thank you. We leave some time for to address some of the questions we are seeing online. We have a question from JP Morgan. With respect to the Cathay's announcement on the 32 Airbus orders, do we have an estimate on the consideration, and how will we be financing those purchases? Do we need to tap the capital markets for financing, and are we considering more aircraft orders? Thank you.
Maybe I answer that for now. Today's announcement is an intention to purchase, so we haven't decided exactly how they will be financed, and we don't disclose consideration at this stage.
Okay. Any further orders? No. No more, no more-
Uh,
No more comments we can...
Well, as I think Ronald has mentioned earlier in the year, we are obviously looking at different opportunities for, for growth. The narrow body is, is one, one fleet that we, we have been looking at. I think Ronald mentioned earlier in the year also that we are looking at freighters and, and other regional aircraft. Yes, we are continuing to studying various opportunities.
Okay, thank you. Next question, from DBS Bank. Can you shed some light on the performance of the premium segment compared to the non-premium segment? Specifically, has there been a shift in the ratio of corporate to premium leisure travel? Thank you.
I would say that actually this is a little nice surprise to us. I think originally, we, a lot of us believed that post-pandemic, there might be less corporate travel, but actually, it's like I mentioned, it's a quite nice surprise. We do see that corporate traffic is rebounding quite quickly, since the Hong Kong borders reopened. I guess there's also a lot, similar to pent-up demand on the leisure side, there's also a lot of pent-up demand on the corporate side. especially seeing a lot of strong demand going into Chinese mainland. I, I think that's one bright spot for us. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you. Next question on CapEx. What's the outlook for CapEx, especially on the maintenance CapEx, for the remaining of 2023?
I, I can't remember the capital commitments number off the top of my head. I'm, I'm sorry, it is in the report. There will be, as we normally disclose in our interim report, the capital commitments for the rest of this year and beyond. Obviously, the largest part of our capital commitment is the... I think it was 42 aircraft that we had on order at 30th of June. Our intention to purchase these additional 32 will come a bit later. In terms of maintenance, CapEx in particular, you'd need to refer to the interim report, I'm afraid.
Okay. Thank you. I think final question on a commercial question as well. Can you tell us, are there a shifting pattern in terms of the transit traffic, for 2023 and going forward? What's your estimate? Thank you.
Well, as I mentioned before, as we continue to add back capacity and destinations, we will see an increase in sixth freedom traffic, so more like back to our previous pre-pandemic levels. Currently, I think it's still not there yet, but yes, I think it will continue to, to normalize. Of course, well, once we normalize, then Hong Kong will be competing with other hubs as well for the same traffic. Yeah, I think that's what the normalized picture will look like.
Okay. Thank you, Lavinia. Well, thank you. That's, that's all the time we have. Thank you for to the speakers, and thank you for all your questions. This concludes the briefing for today. A copy of the presentation slides has been sent to you, via emails, and those of you attending in person can get a copy from our team. Also it can be downloaded from our website. If you have further questions, please email them to ir@cathaypacific.com. Thank you very much for joining us. Have a good day.