Good afternoon. Welcome to Cathay Group's 2023 Interim Results Analyst Briefing. My name is Andy Wong, the General Manager, Corporate Affairs for Cathay. Whether you are attending here in person or via webcast, it's a pleasure to see you all, and thank you for joining us. Introducing our speakers for today, we have Chief Customer and Commercial Officer, Ms. Lavinia Lau. Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Rebecca Sharpe. We'll begin with presentations by Lavinia and Rebecca, after which we'll open the floor to the questions. All of you will have received a copy of the presentation slides via email. Those of you attending in person can also pick up a copy from reception. Without further ado, let me invite Lavinia to start the presentation. Lavinia, thank you.
Thanks, Andy. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us, whether it's physical or online. Actually, we just had our last analyst briefing on the 30th of June, so that's not very long ago, and I'm very sure that some of you have attended that one as well. For the first section, where we talk about first half achievements, I'll just keep it brief because I'm sure quite some of you have heard it already in our last briefing. This is basically our agenda. We'll talk a little bit about, yes, the first half achievements, and then I'll pass the time to Rebecca to talk about what is the most important part of today, which is to share our 2023 interim results highlights and also business performance highlights.
At the, at the end, it'll come back to me again, where I'll talk a little bit about our outlook, then we'll finish with Q&A. In terms of rebuilding Cathay in the first half, I think this is really a summary, if you just want to have it on one page. In essence, I think it's still pretty much a rebuilding story. In the first half, in the media briefing just now, we actually mentioned that on the passenger side, we are, for the group, so Cathay Pacific and HK Express, we are close to reaching 60% of passenger capacity this month already. There's a breakdown of the, the path that we had gone through.
In terms of the trajectory, we are still on track to reaching our targets, which is on the passenger side, is 70% of pre-pandemic capacity, on the cargo side, 85%. Next year, by the end of next year, our target is due to reach full 100% of pre-pandemic capacity. As we have talked about it for a few times already now, within Cathay, we have four different lines of business. We have the Premium Travel, Cathay Pacific, we have Cathay Cargo, we have the low-cost arm, HK Express, and we have Lifestyle. Just very briefly, on Premium Travel, Cathay Pacific, in the first half, we continued to take delivery of new aircraft. We had taken delivery of actually 5 A321neos in the first half.
In the years coming to come, obviously, we, we still have our new flagship fleet, 777-9. We still have 4 more A321neo, and then we actually have 2 A350 to be delivered in the second half of this year. We are really delighted in the first half because we received a couple of recognitions in some of the world's most renowned airline rankings programs, including Skytrax and Airline Ratings. In Skytrax, we are back to number eight, Airline Ratings, back to number nine. Very, very happy to be receiving these recognitions, which is also a very good motivation for the team going forward.
Of course, we continued to invest in our customer experience, so as to deliver more value to our customers, in all aspects of the experience, whether it's in-flight or on the ground. Especially in-flight, there are a lot of dining investments and IFE investments. Maybe let me just show you a little video of our dining aspirations. Where should I be looking at for that video? Okay. As the home carrier of Hong Kong, we will continue to spread the culinary heritage of Hong Kong and share more, more of our special delights to customers from all over the world. In turn, turning on to the next line of business, Cathay Cargo.
Well, what we are focusing on in, in the first half of this year is to continue to invest in, in our, in our brand and in invest in our expert solutions. Not sure whether you have seen our cargo branding campaign earlier, I think a, a couple of months or, or the month before. In Hong Kong Station, we have, we have big posters and, and showcasing our expertise. Our slogan is actually, "We know how." This refers to our expertise and professionalism in handling different, different cargos from all over the world, including pharmaceuticals, including live animals, fresh produce, and, and all that.
We'll continue to invest in both the customer experience or not customer, customer experience, cargo customers experience in interacting with us, and also continue to provide them with more expert solutions down the road. Low-cost carrier, HK Express, they are also continuing to build up very quickly. They have a smaller base than Cathay Pacific, obviously. So that's why their growth path has been much steeper. Back in April, they have already reached 100% of their 2019 frequencies already, and they also just took delivery of their first A321neo, with 15 more to come. Last but not least, Lifestyle. This is the new area that we are investing in.
Apart from continuing to build the Cathay membership base, well, which is powered by, particularly, by, by our currency, Asia Miles, we'll continue to work towards, yeah, making the currency and the program more bringing more satisfaction and utility to our members. Whether it's through more earning opportunities through credit card or other partners, or more burning opportunities through, like, shops. Previously, in our Cathay Shop, you can only use miles to redeem for goods, but now we have been also expanding so that you can actually use either cash or miles to buy whatever you like. Last slide, before I pass to Rebecca, sustainability. This is a very big theme in Cathay right now.
If you recall, what we have targeted to achieve is net zero carbon by 2050, and in 2030, we want to use 10% SAF in our overall fuel consumption. We have made different good inroads on that, especially some of experimentation with uplifting ourselves. Last month, we have successfully uplifted SAF out of Singapore Changi Airport to fill 4 of our cargo flights to Hong Kong. In the top bottom right-hand corner, you can see that we are really honored to be recognized by the S&P Sustainability Yearbook China as one of the members.
Out of the 160, out of the 1,600 companies, which are headquartered in either Hong Kong, GB, or Chinese mainland, only 88 companies got recognized to be included as a member in this index based on our strengths in corporate sustainability. We'll continue to contribute towards this very important area. With that, may I pass to Rebecca?
Thank you, Lavinia. Good afternoon, everyone. I think as Lavinia shared, we are well on track with our rebuilding journey, and the results I'm going to take you through this afternoon are a reflection of that. I have to say, on a personal level, talking about a profit for the first time since being at Cathay Pacific, it's a great thing to be able to do. I'll share the background and detail behind that through the next 20 minutes or so. Starting with some headline numbers for the first half of 2023 compared to the first half of 2022.
If I begin with revenue, you can see here that for the first half of this year, our revenue that we generated was HKD 43.6 billion, a dramatic increase compared to the first half of last year when we were operating far, far less capacity. The mix is a little bit different, you'll see in the size of it later. On the passenger side, the numbers are a dramatic increase. On the cargo side, it's still a good number, but it has reduced a little bit from what we saw in the first half of 2022. In terms of profit numbers, we share two profit numbers here. The first number is the airline, Cathay Pacific, and all its subsidiaries, before any exceptional items, which I will also touch on later, and before associates.
At that level, we generated a profit of HKD 4.8 billion, and that compares to the loss of HKD 2.5 billion we made last year for the same period. Bringing it right the way down to the very bottom line, our group attributable profit for the first half was HKD 4.3 billion, and that compared to the loss of HKD 5 billion that we made last year. On the balance sheet-related side, our unrestricted liquidity was HKD 28.9 billion at the end of June, comparing to the HKD 26.7 billion we had one year ago. Gearing at 0.5, dramatic reduction compared to where we were a year ago at 0.74. This just gives you a bit of a flavor of some of the headline numbers.
If we drill down a bit more into those profit numbers, we've got the table on the left, which sets them out, sort of with the different line items. Here we're sharing them for the last five years, so the first half, of each of the last five years. You can see that for the first time, as I guess I alluded to, 2023's first half is profitable again. This is the first time since 2019. Then the chart on the right is showing the attributable loss and losses and profit, adjusted for exceptional items.
You can see the quite strong trajectory that we've been on from the first half of 2020, in arguably some of the worst times of the COVID pandemic, and how that's progressively increased to the profit we see in the first half of this year. The exceptional items that we I mentioned earlier, just to give you a little bit more information on those, 'cause that's obviously been a net HKD 2.1 billion impact, favorable impact to our results for the first half. We've touched on this before in the June analyst briefing that Lavinia referred to, the gain on the change in shareholding for Air China. You may remember that in January of this year, Air China distributed some A shares.
We didn't participate in this distribution, therefore, our shareholding that we had in December 2022, of 18.13%, was reduced to 16.26%. The way that you account for this, the value of that shareholding changed as a result of that, because you're comparing a different timing of the cost of those shares, and as a result, we had a gain. Something I've seen in the press that people talking about we sold shares, we didn't actually sell shares. This was a distribution to other investors that we didn't participate in. The other item on here is a good news story, if you like, is impairment.
The last analyst briefings, I've always been talking about impairment provisions that we've been making, but this time we're talking about a small reversal, and this is from an accounting perspective. If the assets that you previously impaired do come back into use again, for us, we've got three aircraft, 777-300s, that come back into use in the first half of this year, then we need to reinstate the value of those assets as if they hadn't been impaired. We've reinstated those in our balance sheet as at 30th of June of this year. This then adjusts for the exceptional favorable items to get to our group attributable result of $4.3 billion for the first half, compared to that $5 billion loss of last year.
Then, if we map between that HKD 5 billion loss that we incurred in the first half of 2022, to the HKD 4.3 billion profit we've made in the first half of this year, you can see it's, it's the passenger story. It's all about that increasing capacity as we've moved along that journey to increase the capacity progressively throughout the first half of this year and towards the end of last year. You can see the big green bar, which is a positive number, shall we say, is the pass-- all driven by the passenger revenue. You can see the slight red, which is a negative number, for the cargo revenue next to the passenger one. Then, the big red bars are operating cost related, fuel and our other operating costs. This is all driven by capacity.
As we're increasing the capacity, the revenue is increasing, but the costs increase too as we service that capacity. You can see that that is the main story of the sort of movement from the loss position we were in last year to the profit that we've made in the first half of this year. If I turn to the balance sheet, this chart, we're setting out the debt figures, the adjusted net debt figures, across the periods since 2019. You can see that has gradually moved down. I think this time last year, we were around HKD 50 billion. Quite a dramatic reduction to HKD 32 at the 30th of June. The other number on here is the gearing or net debt to equity ratio. You can see again that that's progressively come down over the time period.
Everything heading sort of in the right direction in support of our rebuilding journey that we are on track for. I've shared this slide many times. You've seen the sort of snake or whatever you want to call it, in terms of the story of our liquidity position. At 30th of June, this was HKD 28.9 billion, and that consists of both liquid funds and our undrawn, but committed facilities. You can see the split there under the HKD 28.9 billion figure. Now, there's a couple of things that are a little bit different in this June number. You can see the undrawn facilities number has come down somewhat from that, that we had previously. The main reason for that is around, is in connection with the bridging loan that we had from the government.
You remember that we had HKD 7.8 billion of a facility provided to us by the Hong Kong government as part of the recapitalization back in 2020. Through the pandemic, it was really helpful to have that in support of our flexibility around liquidity. However, we didn't need to draw on it during the period, and therefore, when it expired on the 8th of June, we didn't extend or anything this time. That then has reduced the funds that we have available to us, and that undrawn facilities line is reduced as a result. You can also see here, in terms of liquid funds, the HKD 24.1 billion that we have here is actually the highest liquid funds we've had throughout this period.
Again, another sort of proof point on our rebuild journey, as we move away from the challenging time of the pandemic. This chart shows the comparison of the balance we had at the end of 2022, in terms of our unrestricted liquidity of HKD 27.2 billion, and we map it to the number we had at 30th of June. Again, the green bars are representing inflows, the red bars representing outflows. This sort of depicts the story of our cash movements through the first six months of this year. The strong operating cash performance is what's supporting the liquidity position. You can see there, the cash generated from operations. The other large green bar, in HKD 8.1 billion, is relating to working capital. You're...
I'm sure you're all aware that the airlines typically will have a negative working capital. By that, I mean that because the passengers will buy our tickets in advance, we tend to carry that in our balance sheet as an airline. You, those of you who were following us at the time in 2020, you'll have seen for the same sort of category, there was a big red bar, because that was us repaying or paying refunds to customers who'd bought their tickets in advance. This is another demonstration of the rebuild happening as customers are booking more tickets in order to fly as we build the capacity. Other elements to point out on this chart, you see a small amount of investing outflows. As Lavinia mentioned, we have had a few aircraft delivered, so they are captured there.
The new financing that we've raised, a very small number this time, but it relates to typically, if we buy an aircraft. We'll secure financing on that aircraft for a long period of time. That's what that will relate to. Our loan and lease repayments, obviously a large number. They're regular loan and lease repayments in the main, so you'll have seen those in previous years' sets of information. Of course, the new item that we've included here is the HKD 1.5 billion that we paid to the government in June. This was paying the deferred dividends on the preference shares. You'll recall, since having the investment from the government in 2020, the dividends that were due on those preference shares were not paid whilst we were in a loss-making situation.
In June, we brought that up to date, and we paid HKD 1.5 billion to the government. The 4.1 negative there is, as I touched on this last slide, a reflection of the HKD 7.8 billion bridge loan being removed or expiring, and the net being some other committed facilities we've put in place. All in all, quite a number of moving parts, if you like, within that analysis, but brings us to the HKD 28.9 billion that we had at the end of June. If I move on to the business performance highlights in a little bit more detail. I've shared this slide many times. I have to say, it's nice to see it with more green again.
Just to remind you, this slide depicts the passenger numbers here at Hong Kong International Aviation Hub. The dark green is Cathay passengers, the lighter green is everybody else. You can see this just depicting the story, as we saw the adjustments of the quarantine requirements in late September 2022, how the passenger numbers have started to recover over that period. On this slide, we can see the Cathay Pacific specific numbers. There you can see that 7.8 million passengers were carried compared to the much, much smaller number for the first half of 2022. I'd say the other thing to point out on this slide is the very large percentages.
They're all a little bit dramatic, but that is a true reflection of the situation we were in in 2022 compared to the situation we've been in in 2023 for the first six months. Yes, normal times wouldn't be expecting to be seeing quite such dramatic percentage increases. You can also see there, the slight, the % decrease on the yield side. You'll see that in a bit more detail on the next slide. This is depicting the story of our progressive increase in capacity on our passenger or travel business during the first half of 2023, and that's been a combination of increasing destinations, but the bigger increase has been in the frequencies and the flights we're operating per week, progressively over the first half of this year.
This chart sets out by six, every six months since 2019, our capacity, load factor, and yield numbers. Each of these bars represents six months, and you can see the furthest bar on the right is the six-month period we're talking about here. On the capacity, again, you can see that big jump in the first half of 2023. Actually, just for your reference, in terms of capacity, our first half equated to 85% more than the whole of 2022. It, it has been a dramatic change for us as an operation. In terms of load factors, I hope you've all been flying with Cathay Pacific and seen that the load factors are quite high on our planes, some of the routes higher than others.
Yes, you can see that here at 87.2% for the first half. That's an average. Some of the routes are even higher than that, in the 90%. Some are a bit lower. These are load factors that do exceed the load factors we saw back in 2019. The yield story. You can see we are lower yield, HKD 0.774, in the first half of this year. It's a lot less than it has been, but it is still high, higher than pre-pandemic levels. If I turn to cargo, something I just wanted to draw attention to here, because a number of people have anecdotally talked about this. Everybody talks about cargo softening, and it is softening, don't get me wrong.
I don't know whether we've all got a bit of recency bias, in as much as 2021 and 2022 were exceptional years in the cargo industry, and the revenue that part of the business generated was very strong. We are seeing it's coming off. The market is softening, as we say here on this slide, but it's still at better levels than it was pre-pandemic. We've been increasing capacity as we mount more passenger flights. Of course, the capacity on our, in our bellies of our passenger planes is enabling us to carry more cargo, so you can see on this slide, 23.8% higher in terms of the cargo that we've carried, compared to last year, first half.
In terms of some of the other factors, well, there's a bit more detail on the next slide. Another thing we just wanted to highlight, you may remember back in March when Ronald talked about our strategy and growing in the Greater Bay Area. One of the things that we've done in the first half of this year is set up a facility in Dongguan, and we were the first cargo airline and Cathay Cargo Terminal to have cargo shipments accepted in the Dongguan facility and transported to Hong Kong International Airport for outbound freight. Trying to help grow our footprint and create that seamless transfer of goods and potentially passengers in future through the Hong Kong airport and out. Similar chart to the one I showed for passengers with capacity load factor and yield, but this time for cargo.
You can see there the slightly higher capacity. We're still some way off the 2019 capacity, but it is the slightly highest first half we've had during the period. In terms of load factors, I'd say they're normalizing, so back down at 63.8% here for the first half of this year. It's slightly higher than 2019, but within a very small margin. The yield, again, and this is sort of to my point about exceptional levels in 2021 and 2022. At $2.76, it's still a higher yield than the 2019 figures you can see, but of course, dramatically less than those real highs we saw in 2021 and 2022. I move on to look at a bit on the costs.
These are the costs for Cathay Pacific, the airline. The story here, again, does tie to the capacity. It's driving the per unit cost downwards. We spent in the first half, excluding, this is excluding fuel, $24.6 billion in providing the capacity and operations that we did. One thing I suppose to note here, is you can see a bit of a variation between the percentage variances that we show on this slide, and I think that's reflective of the fixed and variable nature of the costs that we incur as a business. Some of the costs that are more fixed, the change won't be that dramatic.
Some of the costs that are far less fixed, far more variable, the change will be much more dramatic, as we are comparing a capacity on the passenger side, in particular, of just 4%, whereas much higher in 2023. You can see the variable/fixed nature of those costs coming through in those percentage variances. The big step change that you can see at the very bottom of this page is the underlying cost per ATK, which is dramatic reduction from the $5.19 that we saw for the first half of last year, down to $2.56. I think from memory, for the first half in 2019, that was around $2.19. We've still got a little bit of way to go, but we're doing this on a much smaller capacity than in 2019.
Definitely, again, another sort of proof point in the rebuild journey that Cathay is going through. Fuel, everybody's favorite topic. always get asked about this, so I'd like to assure you that we continue to follow our fuel hedging policy. There's been no change. and you can see on here that there was a step change in this money we spent on fuel, HKD 10.6 billion, and that is capacity. Of course, we're flying more, we're consuming far more fuel than we were in the first half of last year. As in past presentations, the chart on the right-hand side of the page shows the hedging that we had in place at the end of June 2023. You can see for the rest of this year, we've got somewhere between 25%-31% already hedged.
As we've said before, we do this in order to reduce the volatility of the fuel price for our operation across up to a two-year period. Financing and interest. We introduced this slide maybe a couple, one year ago, a bit more than that now, as the interest rates started to increase just to share the total spend in terms of financing. The net, net number for the first half of this year, very similar to the first half of 2022. Part of that is around our policy that we have in terms of keeping a proportion of our borrowings on fixed rate. We tend to keep some fixed and some on variable in order to, again, prevent some volatility around the cost of our financing charge.
You can see that at the end of June, we had approximately 44% of our borrowings fixed. If I turn now to our low-cost carrier, HK Express, a similar story to the Cathay story, in some ways more dramatic. You can see that their total revenue changed from a mere HKD 34 million in the first half of 2022 to HKD 2.6 billion in the first half of this year, and they were profitable for the first half of this year. This was a real achievement for our HK Express business. You can see that the factors or the operating statistics that we show here, the movement's not so different from the story with Cathay.
You can see, as Lavinia referenced earlier, the because they're a much smaller operating base with smaller numbers of aircraft and destinations, et cetera, they have been able to recover more quickly than the Cathay story, sort of in terms of percentages. At the end of June, they were operating to 20 destinations and operating more than 470 flights per week. On the statistics, you can see that aircraft utilization, for instance, dramatically increased as they build back their capacity. In terms of the other subsidiaries, as has been the case through the pandemic, in many ways, the story is either the passenger story or the cargo story, depending on which of our subsidiaries you're referring to. Air Hong Kong were profitable in the first half. That's our all-cargo freighter operator.
They have been consistently stable through the pandemic. In terms of the service subsidiaries, as we talk about them, the Vogue, HASA or Hong Kong Airport Services, and our catering business have all benefited from that improvement in the passenger traffic that we've seen. In terms of the cargo terminal, with the increase in the passenger flights and the belly space, the amount of cargo they've been handling has increased in the first half of this year. If I turn to our major associates, being Air China and Air China Cargo, we note on this slide, for your reference, the specific details around the distribution that I mentioned earlier that they did back in January.
Just a reminder that the Air China and Air China Cargo numbers that we capture in our first half are actually their results from the 1st of October 2022 through to the 31st of March, 2023. We capture them three months in arrears. You'll recall, our first half is including Q4 in 2022 for Air China, and you'll remember the COVID situation towards the end of 2022 was difficult, and therefore, a large part of their losses that we've captured in the first half of this year relate to that Q4 in 2022. If I move on to outlook, and I'm going to just talk a little bit about the financial dimension of outlook, and then I'll pass back to Lavinia to share a bit on our travel and cargo businesses.
We've announced a few things today on the financial. obviously, the results, but we've also talked about preference shares, capital reduction, et cetera. Maybe if I just try and sort of summarize some of the thinking behind this. As I mentioned at the start of my presentation, our rebuilding journey is on the right track. We've been operating cash generative the first half of this year. Our liquidity balance is HKD 28.9 billion at 30th of June, and we made a profit for the first time since 2019, in terms of the first half, in the amount of HKD 4.3 billion.
We are extremely grateful for the support we had from our shareholders from the Hong Kong SAR government, particularly around the time of the recapitalization, and therefore, we think now is the right time to start thinking about how we repay that support. You'll recall, as part of that recapitalization, the government invested HKD 19.5 billion in preference shares. That was in addition to the HKD 7.8 billion loan facility they made available. In terms of the preference shares, they provided us with HKD 19.5 billion, and as we announced a couple of weeks ago, we do intend to repay that in full, where by July, end of July next year. You'll remember that the dividends are due on these preference shares, and currently, they accrue at 3%.
From next week, they will step up to 5%, from August 2024 up to 7%, and August 2025 up to 9%. As I mentioned, we repaid the money that we owed, the arrears, the deferred dividends back in June. We plan to pay the future dividends all on time. That's sort of the dividend angle, if you like. The other element is actually repaying the principal. We've announced today that we do intend to pay, repay 50% of the principal, which is $9.75 billion, before the end of the year, and then the balance through to July 2024.
One thing I just wanted to mention in connection with this, you'll have seen in the announcements, the mechanism by which we plan to do this is through, or proposing to do it through a capital reduction. That will be a capital reduction of HKD 19.5 billion. That needs shareholder approval. We will be announcing an extraordinary general meeting in order to get shareholders' approval to do that. What that does is then, for those of you who are more familiar with the accounts, in our share capital account, we have ordinary share capital and preference share capital.
The preference share capital of HKD 19.5 billion, by doing the capital reduction, it'll allow us to reduce that share capital account down to zero and create a distributable reserve of HKD 19.5 billion. It's from that reserve that then we will start making the repayments. Sort of in a very quick nutshell, I'm happy to take questions, that's the sort of approach that we plan to take in order to start repaying the support that we're very grateful for, that we've received through the pandemic. That's the sort of financial, key financial things that we're going to be doing over the next few months. I'll hand back to Lavinia to talk about travel and cargo.
Okay, outlook for travel and cargo in specific. On travel, obviously, we'll continue our rebuilding efforts, but rather than mentioning those 2 key figures on capacity again, I'm sure everyone can memorize them by now. Well, we'll continue to expand and continue to rebuild. In terms of destinations, if you follow our news closely, we have just resumed Johannesburg, and next on the list will be Chicago and then Christchurch later this year. We'll continue to rebuild our network. In terms of investment, whilst rebuilding is important, now that we are in better financial health, of course, we need to start investing into the future again. Earlier today, we have announced our intention to purchase up to 32 aircraft. Actually, they are Airbus narrow body aircraft, A320neo and A321neo, for delivery by 2029.
That's very, very exciting news indeed. We are still delivering our current order of 32 A321neo, and we are placing another order for additional 32 already, and this is on top of the other aircraft on our delivery list. All in all, I think the group, including these, this, this intention, will have over 70 aircraft for delivery in, in the coming years. Also, earlier this week, we have announced that we'll be introducing an all-new business class suite on our long-haul Boeing triple seven three hundred ER fleet. It's called the Aria Suite. Not sure whether you have all seen the teaser already. If not, let me show it for the benefit of everyone. Well, exciting, isn't it? This is really just meant to be a teaser.
Like a movie, months ahead, you got a teaser, then closer to time, you've got a trailer with more things revealed, and then eventually you've got the new, new product available. The Aria Suite will be coming on, like I mentioned, on our 777-300ER fleet in Q2 of next year, and we will be announcing more of the actual, the design and all the product features closer to time. I guess from that teaser, you can actually catch a glimpse of some of the important features, like having a door and some of the technology, like wireless charging and things like that. Hope this will be something that all our customers will be look forward to, because it will actually mean a, a really elevated experience for them.
Also today, in the media briefing, Ronald has announced that apart from the Aria Suite. First class, a lot of people have been asking us, "What about first class?" We are now officially saying that our new first class, which we expect to be a world-leading one, will also be coming on our 777-9 fleet, which will, the first one will be delivered in 2025. Again, something really exciting to look forward to. Other than investing into our fleet, our cabin, of course, we need to continue to invest in our people.
Pleased to say that we are on track with all training and recruitment, and we do have the, the right amount of resources to, to help us to achieve our targeted capacity of 70% by end of this year. In terms of our recruitment efforts, we actually recruited 2,000 last year, and we aim to recruit 3,000 this year. Another key step that we have taken this year is to start our recruitment in the Chinese mainland. Firstly, starting with cadet pilots and lately with cabin crew as well. We have started advertising for cabin crew last month, and we are now in the receiving application process. Very, very good response.
We target to recruit around 200-300 cabin crew from the Chinese mainland this year, and this will then be an ongoing effort to increase the mix of Putonghua-speaking crew in our total crew mix. Moving into cargo, as Rebecca has mentioned, everyone has been asking, "What's the cargo outlook?" Again, yes, last two years were exceptional. This year, some softening, but I would say that that's really more like normalizing. Summer has been, well, as expected, a bit quiet, but we are now actually preparing for the peak cargo peak season, which will come very soon. All hands are on deck.
I think in response to some of the slightly softening market, what we have been doing is, like I mentioned earlier, we continue to invest in our special solutions. Again, like pharmaceuticals, live animals, fresh produce. I think these solutions really showcase our competitive edge in the industry, which is our professionalism, our know-how. Actually, these cargo are in general, higher yield. If we can capture more of the, the share of these cargo, then actually it will, it will help our overall revenue maximization or optimization as well. We'll continue to prepare and continue to invest in these solutions. Then, obviously, as our passenger fleet continue to build, we are also offering more capacity and, and more destination choices to our cargo customers as well.
That is a good thing, so we'll continue to work on those. This is really just a summary of what I've just mentioned. I guess all in all, I'll say that we are very on track in terms of our rebuilding. We are committed and will continue to invest in, in the overall customer proposition and experience, and we, as a group, are very confident about the future of Hong Kong as an international aviation hub, and we continue to play our role in that. Thank you.