Good afternoon. Welcome to Cathay Group's 2024 Annual Results Analyst Briefing. My name is Andy Wong, General Manager, Corporate Affairs for Cathay. Whether you're attending here in person or online, it's a pleasure to see you all, and thank you for joining us. Introducing our speakers for today: Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Ronald Lam; Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Rebecca Sharpe. We'll begin the presentations by Ronald and Rebecca, after which we'll open the floor to questions. In case you haven't scanned the QR code at the reception for an electronic copy of the slides, a copy of the presentation slides and a video of today's briefing will be available for download on the Investor Relations page on our website later on today. Without further ado, let me invite Ronald to start the presentations. Ronald, please.
Good afternoon, everyone. Very happy to see all of you here. I will start today's briefing by giving you a brief introduction on our review as a group, as well as our outlook into the future. I will pass on to Rebecca to give you more details on our performance and outlook moving forward. Overall, I'm very happy to report, since I saw you last year here in the analyst briefing, we've been making steady and positive progress according to our strategy, which all of you can find in our annual report. Our strategy has four parts: our purpose, vision, culture, and strategy. It helps to align everyone within the group towards the same goal and same direction.
Overall, as I will share with you some of the progress update in a minute, I will say that we are getting closer to our vision of becoming one of the world's greatest service brands, and within which we have the four lines of business that we've been explaining to you, and within which we really want to be the world's best, in simple terms. With Cathay Pacific, our goal is to be the world's best premium airline. HK Express, our low-cost carrier arm, we want to be the best LCC in Asia. Lifestyle business, we want to be the world's best travel lifestyle business. Our air cargo business, we also aim to be the world's best. Two years have gone by very quickly, 2024 and 2023, where we focused our efforts on rebuilding from the pandemic and also investing in the future.
We are in 2025. We are in a different era. I'm glad to share that we have successfully completed our rebuild and invest phase, which I will share in more detail with you in a minute. We are aiming higher. Our goal is to move Cathay to new heights from 2025 onwards and beyond. Therefore, my presentation, I will split into two parts. The first part on 2023 and 2024, and then I'll share a bit more about 2025 and beyond. In Cathay, we believe happy employees lead to happy customers. This is where our strategy starts. We really focus back on our people to make sure that we listen to them, address their concern, to make sure that they're motivated to provide excellent service to our customers.
We also take care of our customers by listening to their concerns and making solid improvements to address their concerns so that each time they travel on us or they buy cargo services or lifestyle products from us, they're more satisfied each time. We believe that with happy employees and then happy customers, we'll have profitable business, i.e., happy shareholders. Over the last two years, we have done a huge amount of work in addressing our employee sentiment. Our employees have suffered a lot during the pandemic. We went through the toughest time in our history. The rebuild work was also very challenging. There are a lot of new challenges that we've never seen before in the last two years when we had to rebuild within a very short time. A lot has been done to take care of our employees.
To sum up, we measure our employee sentiment through a KPI, what we so-called Team Net Promoter Score. Basically, we ask our employees to rate whether they are willing to recommend Cathay as a good place to work to their friends. If they rate us nine and 10, then they are promoters. If they rate us 0-6 , then they are detractors. The NPS is basically promoters minus detractors. As you can see, at the end of 2023, we were still in the negative zone, negative 15. I would say it's already a big improvement from the year before, back in 2022. What's more important, in 2024, we made huge progress when it comes to employee sentiment. At the end of last year, our team NPS stood at + 41.6, as you can see here. A huge turnaround.
Of course, we don't just measure by the numbers. We talk to our employees all the time, our frontline employees, back office employees, and you can feel the sentiment certainly has turned very, very positively within Cathay. With that, we've also seen an uptake when it comes to customer satisfaction. The key KPI we use to measure customer satisfaction is Customer NPS. It works exactly the same way as our team NPS. We ask our customers whether they are willing to recommend Cathay as a brand to their friends. Again, nine and 10 are promoters, 0- 6 are detractors. The NPS is basically the difference between the two. In 2023, we were already in the positive zone, very encouragingly. In 2024, we have moved further along. In fact, this is the full year result for both years.
If you look at 2024, actually, we've been making progress from the beginning of the year towards the end of the year. In fact, I got the latest number for the first two months of the year. We're now in the plus 30 zone already. I think we continue to get more positive feedback, more promoters, fewer detractors. Still, there's more work to do because our target is to exceed plus 40 within 2025. We are getting close, but still more work to be done. With both employee sentiment as well as customer sentiment improving, it has led to two very solid years of financial performance. I'm very glad to share that for two consecutive years now, we have a very solid financial performance. This hasn't come easy. If among you, I'm sure you are pretty familiar with our history.
If you look back the last decade or the last two decades, you will not find two consecutive years of this kind of performance. It means a lot to our team that we have managed to achieve these kind of results in the last two years. As you have seen in our announcement, 2024, we made HKD 9.9 billion at the consolidated group level, which is slightly more than HKD 9.8 billion the year prior. I would say it is similar from an overall angle. A golden measure we use to measure our financial performance, of course, is return on capital employed. For both years, I am so glad to see that we have exceeded double digits for both years.
Also, for both years, we have the ROCE exceeding the weighted average cost of capital, which is another indicator that I think we are making good progress from a financial angle. Moving forward, the last two years were already history. I think our eyes are now firmly on this year and beyond. For the last two months of the year, we get more and more awards, recognition by the industry. Just to share a few, for our premium travel line of business, i.e., Cathay Pacific, this year, we have been rated by AirlineRatings, and then last year by Skytrax to be among the top five world's best premium airlines consistently. For HK Express, according to AirlineRatings, latest result, they are also among the top five best low-cost carriers of the world. Our lifestyle business has won numerous awards as well.
One of them I've mentioned here is the best frequent flyer program according to Business Traveller Asia Pacific. Hot off the press last week, we are very glad to have heard from Air Transport World, one of the very reputable media for the industry, that Cathay Cargo has been named Cargo Operator of the Year for 2025. This is the second time we have won this title within three years, the last time being in 2023. This basically means that Cathay Cargo is the best air cargo carrier of the world, two times within three years. Congratulations to all my teams for their fantastic achievement. Thank you for our customers' support and voting so that we can get these awards. It's very encouraging to see that. We won't stop here.
As I mentioned, we still have a lot to improve, and we still have a lot of room to grow as well. In 2025, our journey continues. Although it is only mid-March right now, we have already announced 11 new destinations that are to be launched in 2025, six of them on the premium travel side under Cathay Pacific, as you can see. It covers different parts of the world. It is very encouraging that we have coverage in India, in Chinese mainland, in the US, and Europe. You can see a very balanced growth of our network. HK Express also so far announced five new destinations for this year. More will be announced. I think we will not stop here. 11 new destinations is only the beginning. We plan to announce more destinations. Stay tuned on that.
Apart from expanding our connectivity, we will also spend a lot of focus on further elevating our premium travel experience. As I mentioned, we are now in the plus 30 zone when it comes to Net Promoter Score. That means we still have a proportion of so-called detractors who have rated us 0-6. Our goal this year is to reduce the percentage of detractors by listening to our detractors, what are their concerns, and then have targeted actions to make improvement, tangible improvement for them. It boils down to four main areas that we need to further uplift our experience: cabin conditions and cleanliness, in-flight dining, in-flight service, and disruption handling. We will continue to invest into the future.
As we mentioned already last year, since the opening of the Three-runway System at Hong Kong International Airport, we have committed more than HKD 100 million investment into the future. A large chunk of that investment is about bringing in new aircraft. We have been bringing in more than HKD 100 million from last year for both the travel business as well as our cargo business. We have already finished taking the order of our narrowbody aircraft, apart from four for HK Express. Now, from next year onwards, we will start to take order of the second batch of 32 narrowbody aircraft, A320neo and A321neo, to be split between Cathay Pacific as well as HK Express. We will take delivery starting from 2026. 777-9, long awaited new generation long-haul aircraft, we will start to take delivery of them. The latest news is that we're going to start from 2027.
In 2028, we will take delivery of our new generation freighter, A350 freighter. In the same year, we will take order of our mid-size widebody aircraft, A330-900, that we placed the order last year. Many new aircraft to come in the coming few years. Another large part of our HKD 100 million investment is into our products in the air and on the ground on the premium travel side. Firstly, for cabin products in the air, we'll continue to launch new products starting from last year, this year, into the next few years. The 777-300ER, as you all know, we already got our new products flying on these planes with the new business class, Aria Suite, as well as our premium economy, new one, and refreshed economy class. Currently, we are flying daily frequency using this newly retrofitted aircraft on our London route.
Very soon, as we get more aircraft delivered, we'll expand into other routes. Look out for that. We have received very positive feedback from many of our customers. We've seen very positive reviews from many of the professional industry players as well. On the regional flight next year, it is very exciting that we will have retrofitted A330 coming in with lie-flat business class product. Even for regional flying, we'll have lie-flat business class product. We'll also refresh the economy class cabin for this aircraft, which will start to be introduced from 2026. In 2027, when the new 777-9 arrives, we'll be ready to unveil our new generation first-class cabin as well. We have a very strong lineup of products in the coming few years.
Also, on the ground, we will continue to make investment into our award-winning flagship lounges as well. We are making a number of strategic moves to enhance our lounge roadmap across the world, starting with Beijing. The Beijing Lounge is being renovated to bring it to the highest and latest standards of our Cathay lounges. We will open the new Beijing Lounge around middle of this year. Towards early 2026, we will open our own lounge in New York in one of the new terminals at JFK Airport as well.
Back in Hong Kong, we have a multi-year roadmap to uplift our lounge presence at the Hong Kong International Airport, starting with reopening up the Bridge around mid-year, which will allow us to start the renovation of the Wing, starting with first-class lounge and then followed by business class lounge, and then to be opened in 2026 with a new look for our customers. That is my very quick summary about the last two years and what we can look forward to in this year and beyond. In Cathay, we believe every move counts. We mobilize every of us, 30,000 people, to contribute their effort, whether they are working at the front line or at the back office. All of us here are united to contribute our part to provide a better and better experience for our customers across all the four lines of business.
Thank you for listening.
May I now invite Rebecca to continue the presentation? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ronald. Good afternoon, everyone. It's great to see you here. It's great to be talking about a second consecutive profitable year compared to some of the others I've talked about. My next presentation, or my presentation over the next 20 minutes-ish, I'll talk through some of the group highlights financially. Then we'll deep dive a little bit into some of the lines of business. Lastly, I'll talk a little bit about outlook. As in previous presentations, there are more slides here than I will talk about. I know for people, when you're looking online or when you're doing research, et cetera, later, it's useful to have this all gathered together. The pack is for you to use as you wish.
If I start with our financial highlights, Ronald's already touched on a couple of these, and I will talk about some of them in more detail later. I just want to draw your attention to a couple here. Our revenue at HKD 104.4 billion was 10.5% more than last year. It was the first time we've exceeded HKD 100 billion since 2019. In fact, actually, it was the third time in this past decade we've exceeded HKD 100 billion. A bit of a milestone for us on our revenue levels in 2024. The other one I was going to draw your attention to is our dividend. I'm sure you'll have read in the announcements. Today, we announced a second interim dividend for the full year of 2024 in the amount of HKD 0.49.
That takes the dividend for the full year 2024, if I combine it with the first interim dividend, to HKD 0.69. Again, a bit of a milestone in that it is the highest we have paid since 2010. A couple of milestones in the key numbers for us this year. Moving on to profitability. This slide, if you followed us, you will have seen these slides before. Here, we are splitting the numbers between the first half and the second half and at the different levels of profitability. With associates, without associates, et cetera, for your easy reference. Perhaps a couple of things to point out here in terms of the first half versus the second half. The second half was quite a bit stronger than the first half, which typically is the pattern for our business historically.
Whilst this first half was lower than the first half in 2023, if you remember, as we came sort of roaring out of the pandemic, as it were, the second half this year was actually stronger than the second half last year. That is mainly driven by the strong cargo demand that we saw. Lower fuel prices in the second half as well were more impactful in the second half. Yes, overall, we generated HKD 9.9 billion at the consolidated level compared to the HKD 9.8 billion the prior year. This chart maps the result from 2023 through to 2024 and shows you the differences that we can see. Of course, the big standout numbers here are in connection with the passenger volumes. You can see the revenue on the passenger part of our business, a big step change driven by that volume.
Of course, that increase in capacity driving the volume has an impact on the cost side. Equally, you see that our costs in terms of fuel and other operating costs have also gone up significantly. The other significant element on here is in terms of the passenger yield. You remember when we talked previously about expecting passenger yields to normalize. Here, you do see the impact of that. We would say that on the regional yields, they are back to normal. They have normalized. Possibly on the long haul, still a bit further to go. Yes, those are the big changes in this slide. Probably the other thing to mention here, associates. You remember in 2023, our associates was a loss, significant loss. This year, our associates collectively generated a profit. Therefore, you can see the positive variance for associates as well.
We had a number of non-recurring items this year as well in 2024, not as significant as they were in 2023, but similar in nature. I talked some of these with the interim results, albeit smaller numbers. The main one there is the gain on deemed partial disposal of Air China shares. They did an A-share issuance in December, which we did not participate in. Therefore, our shareholding got diluted. From an accounting perspective, you treat that as a gain. That is the major number there, obviously not quite so significant as they were in 2023. Fuel prices, of course, we always talk about fuel prices. This is our largest cost item in our P&L. You can see here that, of course, overall, fuel costs went up for the year. If you look a bit lower on the slide, the interplane cost went down.
I talked earlier about fuel prices in the second half. You can see that HKD 9.3 positive variance in terms of the cost of fuel to us as an organization. For those of you who remember my presentation for the interim results, you'll remember there was not that much change in the first half. In the second half of the year, yes, fuel prices were in our favor. The chart on the right, again, we show this usually, is our fuel hedging position at 31 December. You can see, if you look at that, that for 2025, we have between 25%-30% of our fuel hedged for this year. The other question that I always get asked, so I'll tackle it here, is our fuel hedging policy has not changed.
We're still taking a prudent approach to hedge a portion of our fuel consumption that we expect. You can see what that position was in the chart on the right. This solid financial performance for the year in terms of our P&L obviously generated a large amount of cash. You can see there the cash generated from operations at HKD 24.7 billion. Also on this chart, we're showing what we then did with that money. We had a very busy year in 2024 as we started to unwind from a financial perspective all the different elements that we put in place during the COVID pandemic. We bought back the remainder of the preference shares, the warrants, et cetera. On the next slide, I have a bit more detail about those different transactions.
The other thing you can see a number starting to increase a little is our investing activities. During the COVID pandemic, obviously, that was quite low. In 2023, it was relatively low, but starting to increase in this year. If I move on to those financing activities, we really do see 2024 as closing our financial rebuild chapter. Whilst this is quite a busy slide, we have tried to set out all the different elements that we tackled last year. That began in terms of the funding that we got from the Hong Kong SAR Government. In December 2023, you'll remember we bought back the first 50% of the preference shares. That was HKD 9.75 billion. Scroll forward to July, we bought back the remaining 50% of those preference shares. In total, therefore, we bought back across that period HKD 19.5 billion.
We'd obviously paid preference shares dividends to the government. That was over the sort of total holding period HKD 2.4 billion. The other aspect in connection with the Hong Kong government was the warrants that they'd issued as part of the recapitalization back in 2020. We bought those back as well. Sincerely appreciative of all the support we got from the government and our shareholders during the pandemic, great to be able to start paying them back or finish paying them back. Of course, that's the government who's helped us during the pandemic, but our shareholders also helped us. We were very happy to be able to pay our first interim dividend in 2023, or in respect of the 2023 year, paid it in May. That was, if you remember, based on approximately 30% of our distributable profit.
The dividend that we've announced today in conjunction with the dividend we paid in October is roughly 50% of our distributable profit for 2024. I remember somebody asking me last time, what are you going to do about dividends? We have a policy that we will try and distribute about 50% of our distributable profits, obviously subject to the environment at the time, different macroeconomic situation, our balance sheet. Yes, for the 2024 year, we are trying to follow that policy and distribute approximately 50%. The other thing that we did at the very end of 2024, and it actually closed on the 2nd of January, 2025, was to buy back a significant portion of our convertible bonds. You may remember back in early 2021, just around the time I joined Cathay, actually, we issued a convertible bond.
That was also part of the financing we were putting in place for the COVID pandemic. Because we're confident in our future performance, we decided we would look to buy back some of that. Yes, we bought 68% of that back during the last part of last year and completed early this year. Definitely, for the team, for the organization, this really does close that financial rebuild chapter for us, having cleared off all of these and being able to do that through the results that we're generating. What does that mean in terms of liquidity and gearing? What we've tried to show here is the last 10 years' numbers to put it in a bit of historical context for you. In terms of liquidity, we had HKD 19.1 billion at the end of last year.
You remember that's all the cash we have on hand, plus the committed facilities we have in place. Yes, that was HKD 19.1 billion, which is back to similar levels to those that we used to operate with pre-pandemic. Gearing and debt, of course, as we were buying preference shares back, buying bonds, et cetera, we had cash to be generated, but we did also borrow a bit more. Our debt at the end of 2024 was higher than the prior year at HKD 47 billion, but again, still somewhat lower than the majority of the past decade, although gearing levels, debt to equity, are back at similar levels to pre-pandemic. That's what the outcome of all those different capital transactions we did last year have meant in terms of our liquidity and gearing and debt. Financing charges went up a bit.
The increased debt driving slightly higher financing charges and the interest rate profile slightly different, slightly less in fixed borrowings at the end of last year. If I move on to a little bit about each of our lines of business, Ronald has alluded to these. Maybe I just talk about some of the operational figures in conjunction with them, starting with premium travel. We saw a significant capacity increase of over 30% in this part of our business. Our revenue at HKD 62.6 billion had gone up by approximately 12%. That is roughly 60% of the total Cathay Group revenue for the year. You can see that revenue's gone up by less than the capacity's gone up.
You see that come through in the passenger yield variances you see there with a negative 11.8% in terms of yield as ticket prices started to come down. We have added a lot more passenger flights and destinations to the network during the course of 2024 in order to deliver these higher numbers. We carried nearly 23 million passengers during the course of the year, which, of course, for those of you who remember COVID times is a significant number. This chart we have started using regularly. It shows the first half, second half numbers for each of capacity, load factor, and yield for our business. You can see there that load factors reduced a little bit from 2023 when that demand was so incredibly strong as we opened up. They have remained strong load factor levels compared to history.
You can see here the normalization happening as we expected in the yields. We would say that regional yields have now normalized and long haul yields are continuing. Our second line of business, Cathay Cargo, a solid performance from them again this year, HKD 24 billion. It is around 23% of our total revenue for the group. We carried 1.5 million tons of cargo. For them, it was the second half that was the strong story. The growth in capacity for cargo, of course, very much driven by the increase in our passenger network because we are carrying a large proportion of our cargo in the bellies of our passenger plane. The capacity naturally increases as we are increasing the flights that we are doing on the passenger side of the business. You can see the yield overall slightly higher for the year in total.
On the next slide, you can see the difference based on the first half, second half from each of these metrics as well. In terms of capacity, load factor, and yield, you can see that our load factor remained pretty static since the second half of 2023 right through to the second half of 2024. You can see that increase that I mentioned in capacity. You can see that elevated cargo demand coming through in the yields in the second half of 2024. Lifestyle, I'm conscious of time. We're not spending too much time here, but it was our 25th anniversary for Asia Miles. I'm not sure if we've got anybody in the audience or online who's been a member for 25 years, but if you have, thank you very much for your loyalty. Yes, it was a celebration for us in 2024. Moving on to costs.
Again, this was something I remember being asked about last year. The main thing you can see here is that the increasing capacity is driving that reduction in our unit costs. As we're incurring more sort of direct costs, if you like, we're spreading our fixed costs over a wider base. Therefore, we're seeing an underlying costs without fuel of 4.5% reduction year on year. You may remember back in 2022, this number was over $3. We have come a significant way from those times and still continue to reduce as we rebuild the capacity. Our sustainability, I was going to touch on this briefly. Our sustainability report will be issued at the same time as our annual report. Lots of information in there for those of you wanting to understand more about our sustainability journey.
I thought it was worth very briefly highlighting here the topic that, of course, is the most significant environmental sustainability-related matter for any airline globally. Of course, a very significant challenge. Our fuel usage is, of course, what drives our carbon footprint. We need to tackle this if we are going to get to our net zero objective as all airlines globally. Just to share briefly, and as I say, there is more information on this in the sustainability report, but we look at this across five different dimensions. Some slightly longer term, new technology, whether there can be planes developed using fuels other than jet fuel that will be more environmentally appropriate. That is a longer term objective.
Our aircraft, new aircraft, of course, our continuous fleet modernization, Ronald mentioned earlier, our commitment to invest more than HKD 100 billion is a large part for new aircraft. Each new aircraft will drive more fuel efficiency. That is part of our plan. The main one that we have been spending quite a lot of time on at the moment is sustainable aviation fuel. This, of course, is, for those of you who are familiar with it, an evolving, challenging, difficult topic. It needs all of us, all our stakeholders to get together if we really want to make a difference in this space.
In that vein, we co-initiated the SAF Coalition here in Hong Kong with other important stakeholders with the objective of trying to drive this policy development further forward such that we can start making more of a difference and see some traction in this space. For those of you, I know some of you here have participated in our corporate SAF program. I very much appreciate those of you who are doing that. This is where corporates can pay the premium that you have to pay for SAF because SAF Dubai currently is three or four times what you'd pay for jet fuel. Somehow we've got to tackle that premium. Our corporate scheme provides the opportunity for companies to pay an amount to cover that premium such that we can use SAF and thereby the corporate can offset in terms of their Scope 3 emissions.
Again, we're looking at this from different angles, but it's not easy and it does need all of us to get involved, all the different stakeholders. Last, but definitely not least, HK Express, which of course is our low-cost carrier here in Hong Kong. They grew dramatically in 2024. Their available seat kilometers, ASK, grew by 46%. As Ronald has already mentioned, they actually were named the world's fastest growing airline last year. They added nine new destinations, operating to 29 different destinations at the end of 2024. They were operating a fleet of 41 aircraft. In terms of some of their key numbers, their year was challenging both from a competitive angle and from an operational angle. You can see that their revenue grew by 12.9%. As we talked in the first half of this year, they were loss-making.
They were loss-making the first half and generated a loss of HKD 400 million in the second half. Now, this was a number of factors. They operate A320neo aircraft with the Pratt & Whitney engine. On average, about five of those new efficient aircraft were grounded because of this industry-wide issue with this particular engine. That will take time to fix. It is not just affecting us, but it is something that obviously impacts their efficiencies as an operation and affects the utilization of aircraft. It is not good for your bottom line if you have got aircraft parked because of an issue. That is something that will work its way out of the system, but is a challenge for them at the moment. The other issue is the yield pressure. There is rapid normalization of ticket prices in the region.
You can see that coming through in their significant yield reduction, nearly 23% down. That is, as I say, sort of the high competition in this part of the world putting pressure on that. The combination of those two has rather affected HK Express. I have to say, as a Cathay Group, we take a long-term view of this. We do see a path to a profitable business. We see the low-cost carrier model as something that can be successful. As they continue to grow and drive efficiencies, as they spread their costs over a wider cost base, we can see a path to them becoming profitable. Other subsidiaries and major associates, not that much to say here other than, as I said, there was a significant improvement in the associates' results between 2023 and 2024. Finally, if I turn to Outlook, travel.
Here in Hong Kong, of course, we have the Three-runway System in operation, which is an important and exciting part or change to the dynamics here in Hong Kong. Our destinations, Ronald had them up on the screen, that we are adding, 11 announced, still more to come. We will as a group, that is Cathay Pacific as the premium airline and HK Express as low-cost carrier, operate to more than 100 destinations globally within this year, which again will be a milestone for us as an organization. The regional yields, as I touched on, HK Express has seen regional yields have normalized. Long haul supply is likely to increase in 2025, so a bit more continuation of normalization on that side. The other thing that we have been talking about ever since COVID is the supply chain. We still continue to see challenges in the supply chain.
The original equipment manufacturers have order books and delivery challenges in terms of new aircraft. Also for maintenance, getting hold of parts can be challenging as well. The supply chain challenges continue and they are affecting the aviation industry globally, not just Cathay Cargo. I'm sure there'll be questions from you about this, but the one word I'd talk about cargo at the moment is uncertainty. With the tariff increases that are being talked about, the uncertainty around the de minimis exemption being taken away and then coming back on, it means our cargo team, who are now the cargo operator of the year, are very, very closely monitoring these developments. We have the ability to adapt our network and cargo mix as and when we need to.
Yes, this is an area of very much focus on the sort of demand side of our cargo business. On the capacity side, as we continue to grow the passenger side of the business, that will increase the capacity in belly space available to our cargo business. As the A350 freighters start to deliver, that will increase capacity as well. To summarize before we open for questions, I would say 2024 was a second consecutive profitable year, great to see, driven by the strong cargo part of the business, the increasing passenger numbers, the lower fuel prices, and the efficiencies that operating on a bigger scale has brought to us.
That has then enabled us to do some financial rebuild in terms of repaying all the preference shares, in terms of repaying or buying back the warrants, a large portion, nearly 70% of the convertible bond, and to pay dividends for our shareholders and to reward our people and to enable us to be able to commit to making investments for the future, which will deliver benefit not just for our customers, but also for Hong Kong. Adding more flights this year and destinations. We will have delivery of more aircraft this year, which is part of the investment, the HKD 100 billion that we have made, the flagship lounges. That is all part of our journey for 2024. Of course, very happy to be talking about a second interim dividend in respect of 2024.
In conclusion, I guess what I'd like to say, it's great to be closing the financial rebuild chapter and seeing that definitely behind us. It's exciting to be here in Hong Kong as we've got the expansion of the Hong Kong International Airport. It opens up a new era, not just for Cathay Pacific and the Cathay Group, but an exciting time as we sort of move forward. Very much as we do all these improvements and development, we're very much underpinning that with our desire to be a positive force, both here in Hong Kong, Chinese mainland, and for the rest of the world. On that, I'll close. Thank you.
We'll now open the floor to questions. If you would like to ask a question, kindly raise your hand and I'll call on you, and one of our colleagues will bring you a microphone. Please state your name and the organization you work for before asking the question. The Q&A session commences. The gentleman on the left.
Hello, I'm Parash Jain from HSBC, and thanks for the presentation. I have two questions. First, with respect to the aircraft deliveries this year, are you hearing any further delay from Boeing or Airbus? With that respect, what sort of capacity expansion shall we think in terms of ASK or in terms of number of flights? My second question is on the cargo, Hong Kong being one of the largest hubs, if you can share some color on the mix of B2B volume versus the e-commerce parcels that Cathay has been handling. With that respect, just wanted to understand the potential impact of de minimis. Thank you.
Yeah, maybe i take this.
Yeah, you can do it.
Okay. First question on the fleet delivery. As you will see from our latest fleet table, we are only scheduled to take four narrowbody aircraft into HK Express this year. Those are so far on schedule. I do not see any capacity ASK impact this year because of aircraft delivery. Next year, we are scheduled to take quite a few more narrowbody aircraft, eight of them, according to our report. Our original schedule was to take the 777-9 at the back end of 2026. The latest projection we have is that we would only have the 777-9 aircraft in 2027. There is a delay. We do not think that will cause a major impact to our ASK because we have built in some flexibility on our aircraft retirement and lease extension, which we can make up for the shortfall.
The second question regarding cargo, yes, Hong Kong is the busiest air cargo hub of the world. We carry all different kinds of cargo. Some cargo is more through the traditional trade manufacturing. Other cargo is coming from e-commerce. Then a long tail, many other different things. I do not have a, it is very hard to tell which shipment is e-commerce, which one is trade and traditional. E-commerce definitely makes up a good proportion of our export out of Hong Kong nowadays. Some people say it is probably close to half, if not more. I think e-commerce is a key driver for Hong Kong as an air cargo hub, as well as Cathay Cargo as one of the key players in the air cargo world. As Rebecca mentioned, the cargo outlook is very uncertain. If you look at the news every day, I mean, there is different information.
It's really hard to predict at this point. So far, we haven't seen any, well, structural impact, I would say. We've seen different movement changes, but it's too early to tell. I think within the first quarter of this year, we haven't seen any huge structural impact yet. The news is still developing every day. I think we'll closely watch and make sure that we have flexibility in our network deployment, our product mix, etc., so that we can maximize our mitigation of any impact moving forward. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question. The lady on the right.
Congratulations on the robust results. Regarding the passenger yield, management shared that the passenger yield will be normalized going forward. Do we have any colors on what kind of yield you are projecting in 2025? The next question is on any thoughts regarding the percentage on the potential removal of the Russian airspace restrictions. Thank you.
I'll let you do this one.
Okay. On the passenger yield, right, as you have seen in our 2024 results for both Cathay Pacific and HK Express, we have seen a continuous normalization of the passenger yield as expected. On the Cathay Pacific side, it was a 12% year-on-year reduction. On HK Express side, which only focused on regional flights, the decline in yield was even more acute at 23%. This yield normalization is nothing unexpected. I think we planned for it. We expected it. The trend is in line with our expectation. Overall last year, between HK Express and Cathay Pacific, we have added a lot of capacity, more than 30% passenger carry. The capacity is increasing. Yield will continue to normalize.
We see the same for this year. I think the trend will continue. I would say the regional flights, the yield has pretty much normalized already. If you look at the fares of traveling to the regional destination from Hong Kong, it is fully normalized already. For the long-haul flights, the normalization continued. The ticket fares in general have gone down by 10%-20% in 2024 versus 2023. As more and more long-haul capacity is added by us, as well as other carriers, this process of normalization will continue in 2025. Can you remind me about the second question?
Russia overflight, right? Yeah.
Okay. Just like the cargo outlook, it is very uncertain. I think no one can predict the changes, if any, in the Russia overflying situation. As of now, as we mentioned before, we overfly Russia for our flights in the East Coast of North America. When they come back to Hong Kong, we overfly Russia's airspace because that is the most cost-efficient, fuel-efficient, and fastest route. The alternative is that we cannot fly direct. We have to stop over somewhere, which will not be convenient for our customers. We have been doing that over the last few years already, and that will continue. Elsewhere, currently, we are not overflying Russia, including flights to and from Europe. When the circumstances change, we will reconsider it, and we can change our routing within short notice, I believe. We will continue to watch the situation.
Thank you, Ronald. Next question.
Thank you for taking my question. This is Chen Li from Morgan Stanley. Congratulations on the very robust results for the full year. I have two questions. The first question is about engines. It seems like you mentioned the problems related with the PW engines, and it seems like it has a negative impact on Hong Kong Express. We have also heard from other global airlines that right now, there are also some problems related with the LEAP engines. I'd like to understand going forward into 2025, what's the potential impacts from potential engine issues, particularly on one, effective capacity impacts, and two, on the maintenance cost. My second question is about unit cost. I think Paras just asked about the ASK increase. I mean, what percentage of ASK increase for next year are we expecting? On that ASK increase, excluding fuel, how should we forecast the unit cost dynamics?
Also, we have noticed that the fuel efficiency seems to be a little bit lower in 2024 on a year-on-year perspective. What's the reason for that, and what's the outlook? Thank you.
Okay. I would let Rebecca take the cost questions, and then I would answer the engine question. First of all, the current situation is that within the HK Express fleet, currently, they have around 41 aircraft, and 10 of those aircraft are A320neo aircraft. These 10 aircraft are equipped with the Pratt & Whitney engine in question. Throughout last year, five of those aircraft on average were grounded because of the engine issue. The engine had to go into the shop, and therefore, we had to ground half of that fleet on average, if you like.
A similar situation will continue into 2025 because we need to send all the engines into the shop and then wait for them to come out before we can fly all the aircraft. That is already expected in our plan. The same similar impact will appear. Regarding the LEAP engine, so far, we have not seen any material impact to our operation, both at Cathay Pacific narrowbody fleet as well as HK Express. We have not seen any similar impact yet. Yes, it would have an impact on aircraft utilization given these grounded aircraft. We cannot fly, and aircraft utilization is a key measure for LCC best practice. Having said that, despite these challenges, HK Express fundamentals have been improving. Last year, they have improved their aircraft utilization by around 10% despite the grounding of those five aircraft on average.
They've also improved their unit cost, which is measured by cost per ASK without fuel, by more than double digit, more than 10%. There are a lot of other initiatives that we have implemented, which we'll see more benefits in the coming years when it comes to aircraft utilization as well as unit cost moving forward. Despite the fact that HK Express makes a loss in 2024, we are very confident about the future of HK Express because their fundamentals actually are improving. We truly believe in our dual-brand strategy with Cathay Pacific focusing on the premium travel side and HK Express focusing on the low-cost travel side. We believe the low-cost travel model still has a lot of potential for this market in Hong Kong and in the Greater Bay Area.
We are very confident, and we can see a path to profitability for HK Express given time. Thank you.
In terms of fuel efficiency and costs, fuel efficiency, you're right. If you look at the metric that we showed on the slides and in our reports, it's gone up slightly in 2024 compared to 2023. What's interesting about that metric is it's affected by many different dynamics. The proportion of long-haul flights versus short-haul flights, the different aircraft types that we're using on different routes. As a general principle, I guess at the moment, we started the rebuild focusing on the most fuel-efficient aircraft that we have, the A350s, for example. Gradually, as we're adding more capacity, there's more flying on the less efficient aircraft. That is having a bit of an impact.
It is also affected very much by the routes you are operating and whether they be shorter or longer. Yes, it has gone up a little bit. In terms of costs, as you alluded to, the unit cost came down in 2024. We are expecting capacity to continue to grow as we go forward. I cannot give you a specific number of ASK that we will do in 2025. My crystal ball is not quite working. It will obviously grow, and therefore, there will be an impact on our costs because we will be spreading them on our unit costs, rather. We will be spreading them across a broader base. Now, the sort of percentage improvement, again, I cannot be specific, but I suppose it is the law of diminishing returns to some degree as you are spreading it over a bigger base and then a bigger base.
I can say that we would expect that it should come down a bit further.
Thank you all. Allow us to turn our attention to online. We have a question coming from UBS. The question is, the company is now guiding to only receive four aircraft in 2025. With further delays in the delivery of the 777-9, is the company seeing the supply constraint industry-wide to put passenger yield to stay at a relatively elevated level? Do you expect the deceleration of yield normalization, so slowing down in terms of how yields are coming down?
I have already partly answered that question, right, when I answered the earlier question. For 2025 and 2026, in fact, we are not taking a lot of aircraft apart from some narrowbody aircraft.
Any adjustment in aircraft delivery schedule is not going to have a significant impact to our capacity. Regarding the industry, yes, I think the industry continues to face a supply chain issue affecting our product retrofit, aircraft maintenance, and aircraft delivery. I think this is a known industry issue that is here to stay for a while. I can't comment on the overall global yield and market supply because it's a very complicated market. I think airlines can choose to deploy their aircraft to different markets based on supply and demand within very short notice. It's really hard to tell. For ourselves, we expect, right, the process of yield normalization will continue as we add more capacity into the market this year and in coming years. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. I think that's all the time we have. Than you to our speakers, and thank you for all of you and for all your questions. If you have any further questions, please email them to ir@cathaypacific.com. Thank you very much for joining us. Have a good day.