Okay, so good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Ryanair Q3 profits presentation. I'm joined, as usual, by Neil Sorahan, our Group CEO or Group CFO even. This morning, as you'll see, we reported a nine-month profit, profits up 39% to EUR 2.19 billion. We reported a profit in Q3 of EUR 15 million. It was significantly down on the Q3 profit in the prior year, for the reasons we'll set out in our presentation this morning. Highlights in the third quarter: traffic grew 7% to 41 million passengers, average fares were up 13% in the quarter, and ancillary revenues were up 2%, per passenger. We're pleased to say that MSCI has raised our ESG rating from BBB to an A in the December quarter.
The big challenge for us on a cost front was that fuel bill rose by EUR 300 million in the quarter to EUR 1.2 billion. The quarter-end fleet was 136 737 Gamechangers. We're still at a total fleet of 574 aircraft. Most notably, we've extended fuel hedging. We now have 65% of our FY March 2025 fuel covered at $79 a barrel. We're hedged in the current year at $89 a barrel, so we've already banked a saving of EUR 450 million into next year's numbers. And shareholders will be aware we have intend to pay our first interim dividend of EUR 0.175 per share, which will be payable to shareholders on the 28th of February.
Looking into just a couple of themes in the quarter. Aircraft deliveries, we expect to have 174 aircraft, Gamechanger aircraft in the fleet by late June. However, Boeing are running behind on deliveries. We were originally expected to have 57 aircraft deliveries. We think we'll be at 50, and we've already therefore announced a bumper Summer 2024 schedule on sale. We have 169 new routes, including our first 11 domestic routes in Morocco and our first summer in Tirana, in Albania with 23 routes.
While we're growing strongly in Europe, even despite the fact we're being held back slightly by Boeing delivery delays, I think the challenges being faced by our competitors, particularly with the A320 and the Pratt & Whitney engine related groundings, means that capacity will be challenged again in Europe this summer, and we would hope and expect that that will result in marginally higher airfares through the summer period. We continue to work closely with Boeing to minimize these delivery delays. We're pushing very hard with the entire Boeing team to ensure we get at least 50 aircraft by the end of June. The recent MAX 9 groundings was a disappointing setback in the work that Boeing and we have been doing in both Seattle and Wichita.
It does highlight the need for Boeing to improve its quality control, both on oversight of Spirit in Wichita and its production quality in Seattle. Ryanair is investing heavily with Boeing. Neil was in Seattle in mid-January, going through these issues, addressing these issues with them. Boeing have committed to additional engineers on the shop floor in Seattle and Wichita to improve quality, and we're putting additional engineers in Seattle and Wichita to oversee those quality improvements. Although, and I think it's an important point to make, the last 12 aircraft we received before Christmas, we have noted significantly improved quality on those delivery aircraft. We put these aircraft through two days of checks, and there has been a meaningful improvement in quality.
I want today, on behalf of Ryanair, to extend my support to Dave Calhoun and Brian West, the CEO and CFO of Boeing. I know they're under attack from certain quarters. They are doing a good job. They are turning that company around. I think safety is their number one byword, and I have a lot of confidence, both personally and professionally, in David Calhoun and in Brian West, and I hope they will see through the continuing turnaround of the quality in Boeing, quality production in Boeing, and they certainly have Ryanair's support.
I would also like to add, by the way, if I thought the comments from United Airlines last week weren't helpful, but if United Airlines wants to delay or cancel any of their MAX 7 Boeing 737 orders, Ryanair would be very happy to take them. This is a great aircraft. It has 20% more seats. It burns 20% less fuel. Customers are going to love not just the operating efficiencies of these aircraft, but also the environmental efficiency of these aircraft. And if United don't wanna take them, Ryanair certainly will. One other big challenge for us in the December quarter, and something that did hit our short-term profits, was the fact that our ongoing dispute with the OTA pirates. By...
So we were taken by surprise in the first week of December, when many of these OTA pirates, who have been illegally scraping our website for many years, which we consider to be digital piracy, and then reselling and overcharging and scamming consumers with hidden add-ons or overcharges for Ryanair fares or ancillaries. They took us off sale in the first week of December. We decided in December not to respond with aggressive pricing because Christmas was coming. As we entered into the first or second week of January, though, we have opened up more cheap seats. We want to bring more and more of their customers directly to Ryanair so they can benefit from the lowest airfares. We've seen a marked change, though, in the attitude of some of these OTA pirates.
We were approached by a number of the bigger ones, and already, in the, in early January, we've signed a new approved OTA agreement with loveholidays, one of the biggest OTAs in the UK. This is a momentous agreement for Ryanair and for our customers. We give loveholidays direct access to Ryanair website. They, they, in return, agreed they won't overcharge for our airfares. They won't overcharge for our ancillary services. The bookings will be made directly in ryanair.com, and Ryanair working with loveholidays now ensures that passengers are not going to be ripped off, not going to be overcharged, and not going to be scammed. And, we're talking to a number of other, OTAs currently, and expect to be signing similar, agreements over the coming weeks.
I think the key thing with these partnership OTA partnership agreements is, one, the customers are making their bookings directly in Ryanair.com, which is what we've always wanted, and we're guaranteeing that those customers are not going to be overcharged for airfares or for ancillary services. We are pleased to have re-agreed that OTA partnership with loveholidays. We, on Friday evening, signed one with Kiwi.com as well, who would be the largest OTA seller of seats, and we look forward to announcing more in the coming weeks and days. We're gonna go through the detailed presentation here, so I won't go through it here. Just a couple of quick things in terms of outlook. For the full year, we expect to carry about 183.5 million passengers.
That is down from 185 million, primarily because of Boeing delivery delays and the disruption to our schedules from since November through the cancellation of the small number of flights we operate to Tel Aviv, Jordan, and the Middle East. We will have slightly lower Q3 load factors as a result of the dispute with the OTAs in both December and in January. However, as a result of lower load factors and higher productivity pay, we recently agreed productivity pay deals with pilot unions in Belgium, Italy, and the UK to improve operational resilience. We now expect our FY 2024 ex-fuel unit cost to rise by approximately EUR 2.50. However, despite that rise, the gap between us and our unit cost between us and our main EU competitor airlines will widen significantly.
Looking forward into the Q4, Q4 is going to be strong because of the first half of Easter is at the end of March. However, the stronger Easter, the benefit of having Easter in the first half is not going to offset higher oil prices or the unwinding of free ETS credits in Q4, and therefore, our full-year profit after tax guidance is going to narrow to the lower end of our current range, between EUR 1.85 billion-EUR 1.95 billion. It was previously EUR 1.85 billion-EUR 2.05 billion. However, this guidance and the full-year result, as you know, remains heavily dependent on avoiding unforeseen events in Q4, such as any adverse developments in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas conflict, or further unforeseen Boeing delivery delays in Q4. And with that, Neil, maybe we'd you take us through the slide presentation, please.
Great. Thanks, Michael. Well, of course. Good morning, everybody. Ryanair has the lowest fares and the lowest costs of any airline in Europe. We're targeting 183.5 million passengers this year, a 9% increase on last year, making us again the number one carrier for traffic, number one for on-time performance and reliability, and we're continuing to see improvements in our ESG ratings. Not only are we number one with Sustainalytics in Europe for ESG, but we're now rated an A by MSCI. With 300 MAX 10s on order, which is gonna underpin a decade of growth, 300 million passengers by FY 2034, and our ongoing and continuing financial strength, coupled with our lowest costs, makes us the long-term winner. We now will have 94 bases operating this summer.
We're at 3,680 flights, and this platform will facilitate our growth to 800 aircraft and 300 million passengers by FY 2034. A unique network that nobody else has been able to replicate. This is probably one of the most important slides in the entire presentation. It shows that not only are we significantly lower on unit cost ex-fuel than our European competitors, but we're significantly lower than any of the airlines on the other side of the Atlantic as well. I think interestingly, it's important to focus on the point that we have come out of COVID with very low costs.
The gap between ourselves and everybody else has widened, but we're also now, thanks to the strength of the balance sheet, the net cash that we have in the business, we're generating EUR 0.30 per passenger in interest income. And this is at a time when we can see our competitors and other airlines refinancing themselves at very expensive levels, and taking on very expensive leases. So that further widens the gap between ourselves and everybody else for the coming years. On the results themselves, we saw a 7% increase in traffic to just over 41.4 million at a 92% load factor. Revenue was up 17% to EUR 2.7 billion, where we saw traffic up 7%, but also a 13% increase in average fares, and ancillary revenue of EUR 23 per passenger. Fuel, however, was up quite significantly.
We had a EUR 6 per passenger headwind on fuel compared to last year, so we saw operating costs up 26% to just over EUR 2.7 billion. But we recorded a profitable outcome in Q3 of EUR 15 million, albeit the comps in the prior year were very tough, given the low fuel and the bumper Christmas, with everyone traveling for the first time post-COVID. But I think the real number here to focus on is the really strong nine months we've had of the year, with a strong summer, positive contribution for Q3, and we're now seeing profits up 39% to just under EUR 2.2 billion in the first nine months of the year. Balance sheet, industry-leading BBB rating. We had just over EUR 2.9 billion gross cash at the end of December.
To put that in context, that was after EUR 1.9 billion of CapEx and EUR 1.1 billion of debt repayments, including a big bond repayment, back in the summer. Uniquely, 546, all of our Boeing 737 fleet, is unencumbered, which gives us huge flexibility, and we retained our net cash position at the end of the quarter with just over EUR 150 million, although this was flattered slightly, by the, late delivery of aircraft into Q4. Focusing a little bit more on the balance sheet, as you can see, we've no debt maturities this side of 2025. We have an EUR 850 million bond. We've a very manageable profile, and in fact, we expect to be debt-free, by 2026 when we pay off that final bond.
CapEx, which is guided at EUR 2.8 billion this year, will fall quite significantly next year to EUR 1.3 billion. It'll then drop down to about EUR 1 billion the year after that, and there's a couple of years before we start to see meaningful PDP and delivery payments coming through on the MAX 10. So our rising cash flows will enable us to fund our CapEx and our maturing debt. We will have a couple of years holiday, as I've already indicated, on CapEx, and we'll start selling NGs from 2027 onwards as we get the MAX 10s into the fleet.
I think this helps widen the competitive advantage that we have over everybody else, and of course, and Michael will elaborate on this more, we're now in a position where we're returning cash to our shareholders with an interim dividend coming next month. With that, Michael, I might ask you to take us through current developments, please.
Yeah. Thanks, Neil. I think the most significant developments currently was the sudden removal of the OTA pirates or Ryanair from the OTA pirates websites in December. We welcome that removal. It's something we have so fought for many years. We believe it protects consumers. They're not getting overcharged and scammed by these pirates who are digitally scraping our, illegally scraping our website. However, I think the new agreements recently signed up with loveholidays, Kiwi.com, now allows us to get those bookings directly in the Ryanair.com website. We have the customer emails, we have the payment details, so we can communicate directly with customers, but critically, both we and the OTAs agree that customers will not be overcharged or scammed, when they're purchasing Ryanair flights or ancillary services.
We've hedged 65% of our FY 2025 fuel, already banked a EUR 450 million saving into next year's budget. We continue to see summer 2024 EU capacity being constrained. Eurocontrol believe that summer 2023 was about 93% of pre-COVID. We think summer 2024 will be a little bit less than that, maybe 91%-92%. And I would hope that we'll see more of the recovery in the Asia into Europe market, which will fill up capacity. I think that leaves us reasonably optimistic for summer 2024 pricing. I don't think the prices will increase as strongly as they did in summer 2023, but nevertheless, we expect to see slightly higher airfares being charged by passengers in a constrained environment in summer 2024. Boeing delivery delays continue to be a real challenge.
We welcome the ungrounding of the MAX 9s late last week. We think the sooner everybody gets back in the air and gets back to working, the better. Boeing are still making great aircraft, and but they do have to improve quality control and the quality of what they're delivering to their airline customers, and we support the efforts of Dave Calhoun and Brian West in that regard. We're looking forward to a record summer 2024 schedule. We see seat capacity up 9%, we're going to operate about 2,600 routes, including our first 11 domestic routes in Morocco and our first summer with 23 routes in Albania, where we're growing very strongly and huge demand for Ryanair services. We continue with our environmental mission. We welcome the ESG rating upgrade from MSCI, who now rate us an A.
And we're pleased with the interim dividend of EUR 0.175 per share, which will be payable to shareholders in February, and we would expect a similar payment to them in September, around the time of the AGM. Again, I won't spend any more on the OTA pirate sites. It's been well aired, but what we've been campaigning for many years is to block the overcharging and prevent consumers being overcharged. We think the new agreements, partner OTA partner agreements now with loveholidays and with Kiwi.com, sorry, are the way forward because they prevent or they ensure that our customers are not going to be overcharged or scammed when they're buying Ryanair flights or ancillary services.
I'll give you an example there of some of the kind of scam overcharges we continue to oppose, and we're calling on eDreams, Opodo, On the Beach, Lastminute.com and Booking.com to stop this scamming and overcharging of passengers. If you really want to sell, offer your customers Ryanair's low prices, you now have a mechanism to do so. And we would call on regulators to now intervene and stop this blatant overcharging and scamming of customers. Capacity will remain constrained into summer 2024. The Boeing delivery delays remain a challenge. We are still hopeful but not confident that we'll get 50 of the 57 deliveries by the end of June. We won't take aircraft into July, so whatever we get by the end of June, that will be it for the summer. The...
These delays have reduced our FY 25 traffic forecast. We've come down from 205 million to about 200. It could be 201, but we're somewhere in that territory. There's no certainty over further delays, but we hope there won't be any more issues there. But we, we are investing heavily in improving the quality in Seattle, and we believe Boeing are, too. ESG update I've now covered. The MAX 10 order is vital to Ryanair's growth, and if United or any other airline don't want to take their MAX 10 orders, we'll be happy to step in, talk to Boeing, and take some of, our MAX 10 air, deliveries earlier. This is a great aircraft. It is going to transform, the cost of flying for consumers, and Boeing continue to make great aircraft.
They make safe aircraft, and we would hope that what the learning that will come from the Alaska MAX 9 event will be that Boeing need to ensure that quality control at all stages of production becomes or returns to becoming their number one objective, which I believe it is under Dave Calhoun and Brian West. Neil, you want to take us through the outlook?
... I will. We're despite the lower Q3 load factors on the Boeing delivery delays, we're sticking with our 183.5 million passenger target for this year, which is a 9% increase on last year, but down on the 185 that we'd hoped to have earlier on in the year. Due to the lower load factors and investment in resilience, we recently agreed some productivity pay increases with pilots in some of our major markets. We're now guiding a slightly higher ex-fuel unit cost on a full-year basis, so approximately EUR 2.50 increase. But the gap between ourselves is gonna continue to remain very wide, and offsetting that, of course, is the interest income coming through on the other side.
While we have Easter, half of Easter in March, we don't think that the extra revenue for that will be sufficient to offset the lower load factors and slightly softer fares that we had in Q3. So we're now narrowing the profit after tax guidance range to a new range of EUR 1.85 billion-EUR 1.95 billion euro PAT, which is in excess of our long-term target of EUR 10 per passengers, but down from the previous range of EUR 1.85 billion-EUR 2.05 billion. As Michael has already said, we expect the capacity will be significantly constrained this summer. The OEMs are already running behind, but now we have the Pratt & Whitney engine issue, which is gonna take significant swathes of A320 short-haul aircraft out of Europe.
So we think capacity will actually be marginally down year-on-year in the summer of 2024, which will, we think, be positive from a pricing perspective. With only 50 additional Gamechangers in the fleet this summer instead of the 57 that we had previously hoped to receive, we're now bringing down our FY25 traffic targets marginally from 205 million to 200 million passengers next year. And of course, we've got EUR 450 million worth of fuel savings locked in for FY25. So I think our rock-solid balance sheet, the order book that we have, will enable us to grow market shares and grow strongly over the next decade to 300 million passengers by FY34.
Thanks, Neil. Well done. Okay, now we'll do our... We'll open up for Q&A.
Michael, Neill, good morning. What are Ryanair's Q3 ESG highlights?
I think the highlights continue to be that Sustainalytics ranks us the number one in terms of European airlines ESG performance. We're very pleased with the MSCI ESG upgrade from a BBB to an A-rated company. We took deliveries of 12 more Gamechangers during the quarter. Fleet is up at 136 aircraft. These aircraft carry 4% more passengers but burn 16% less fuel. We continue to roll out the retrofitting of the Scimitar winglets on the NG fleet, which delivers or yield us a 1.5% fuel saving for every one of the NGs that are retrofitted.
Looking ahead at your growth plans, Ryanair will operate a record summer 2024 schedule. What are the key call-outs?
Yeah, we're planning a very strong summer this year. We hope to have another 50 Gamechangers in the fleet, which will bring us up to 174 aircraft for the peak summer period, albeit 7 shy of what we'd originally hoped. But that translates into a schedule which is 9% larger than it was last year. We've never had more choice. We've 169 new routes this summer, so 2,600 routes in the network, including exciting opportunities on domestic Morocco, where we have 11 new routes, and of course, in Albania, where we're growing for the first time in the summer in that market. We think demand is gonna be very, very strong.
We're seeing that in the bookings at the moment, but capacity is gonna be constrained across European aviation this summer, and that is likely to be positive from a pricing perspective, and we clearly encourage our customers to book as early as possible so they don't get disappointed.
What's your view on intra-European capacity over the next few years?
Well, I think for starting with summer 2024, we think European capacity is still going to be constrained at 92%-93% of pre-COVID, maybe 1% or 2% less than that. You've seen the COVID-19 failures, fleet cuts, consolidation continues. Lufthansa's trying to buy ITA, IAG buying Air Europa, and TAP is for sale, although that sale has been postponed. I think the big move on capacity in Europe this year will be the Pratt & Whitney engine issue, which will ground about 10% of A320 capacity, most notably on some of our competitor airlines. And there remains a large backlog. The OEM delivery delays, which affect both Airbus and Boeing, means there's no way really of fixing this, of Europe returning to its pre-COVID short-haul capacity.
I think certainly for 2024, 2025, it may be 2026 or 2027 before Europe gets back to its pre-COVID capacity. And that will, I believe, underpin strong passenger demand, but also rising prices for the next couple of years.
What's the latest update on your Gamechanger deliveries?
Oh, we had 136 aircraft in the fleet at the end of December. And as I said a little while ago, we expect to have another 50 in the fleet, so 174 for peak summer this year. We then work on the basis that we take the balance of the 210 aircraft over the winter and into the spring of next year so that we have all 210 available to us for the summer of 2025.
What impact will the recent MAX 9 grounding have?
None in Europe. I mean, there's no MAX 9s in Europe. We at Ryanair don't operate the MAX 9 aircraft. But it's another disappointment and a setback for Boeing. We welcome the fact that the FAA ungrounded the MAX 9 last Thursday, and the aircraft went back into service on Friday. I think what it shows is that Boeing clearly have more work to do to improve quality and reduce delivery delays. We support the initiatives being taken by Dave Calhoun and Brian West in particular, to improve Boeing's performance, production, and deliveries. But we don't expect that it will affect any of our deliveries, this summer, or there'll be any material impact on our deliveries this summer, which we hope will still be at about 50 Gamechangers by the end of June this year.
When do you expect the MAX 10 to be certified?
... Again, I spoke to Boeing as recently as late last week. They still expect the MAX 10 to be certified in the fourth quarter of 2024, first deliveries taking place to some of the American airlines in quarter one of 2025. We have told them if some of these American airlines don't want to take the MAX 10 aircraft, Ryanair will take those aircraft. We're very keen and very excited by the operational performance of those aircraft: 20% more seats, but burning 20% less fuel. We think they're going to be transformational. Boeing are still making great aircraft. They always have, and they always will, but quality does need to be improved.
Neil, looking at your results, you reported a Q3 PAT of EUR 15 million. What were the highlights?
Yeah, we had a bumper prior year comp, but we did come in with, as you said, with a EUR 15 million profit after tax. We had a big headwind on fuel, where we did additional EUR 6 per passenger that we had to cover. And while fares were up 13% in the quarter, and ancillaries performed well, up 10% to EUR 950 million or EUR 23 per passenger, that wasn't sufficient to offset fully the fuel bill that we had. We also had the unexpected but not unwelcome removal of Ryanair from any OTA pirate websites back in early December.
That meant that we brought the load factor down by about one point in Q3, but we also had to stimulate close-in Christmas and New Year bookings, which meant fares came in slightly lower than we'd anticipated. As I said, costs up, primarily to do with higher fuel, a 35% increase in our fuel bill. But we also have some staff costs going up in relation to investments in resilience, higher crewing ratios, higher productivity pay, and some realigns with the market. And then there's a timing issue in there as well, with some of our maintenance that we would typically do in Q4 move back into Q3 of this year. So that'll unwind into the next quarter.
But I think the key thing here is that the unit cost advantage between Ryanair and everybody else remains supreme and brought down further by the positive interest income thanks to the strong balance sheet.
What happened with the OTAs in early December?
There was a wide number of the larger OTA pirates took us off sale in early December. We're not quite sure why. It could have been pressure, increasing pressure from consumer protection agencies across Europe. It could also have been that Ireland, Ryanair won a permanent injunction in the Irish High Court in late November against Flightbox, who are one of the illegal screen-scraping service providers that allow this digital piracy to take place. Or it may have been that Ryanair, the know-your-passenger customer initiatives, such as customer verification and credit card payments, have made it more difficult for many of these pirates to make payment using fake credit cards or using fake email addresses.
How did this affect Ryanair?
Well, it cost us about one percentage point on the load factor in Q3, and on close-in bookings, where we're softer over Christmas and the new year. Seen that continue a little bit into the start of Q4, but starting to unwind itself now.
Do you have any relationship with the OTAs?
I mean, I think it's important. We've always had a very good relationship with a number of the, what I would call the honest or transparent OTAs, like Google Flights. They show what Ryanair did display Ryanair prices for price comparison purposes, but they send the customer. If a customer wants to buy a Ryanair, they click through, and they send the customer directly to Ryanair. Customer makes the booking in Ryanair at the Ryanair fares and prices.
What we have a problem with was these OTA pirates, who digitally scrape our website in an act of digital piracy, which the Irish courts have now ruled to be unlawful, and then turn that around, claim to be kind of honest Joe transparent price comparison websites, but then use it to overcharge and scam customers for inflated airfares, inflated ancillaries, and increasingly are inventing new charges, such as a flexible fare fee or a refund fee, none of which are possible on Ryanair. And so they're just inventing ways of scamming customers. I think that's why I think, as Neil said, we welcome the removal of Ryanair from these OTA pirate websites in early December.
Quite suddenly, over December and January, we've been approached by a number of these, what were previously the OTA pirates, looking to reach similar agreements with Ryanair as we have with Google Flights. We're very pleased to have announced the first two of these agreements, last week and again this morning, with loveholidays in the UK and now with Kiwi.com, a very large Czech online travel agent. In both of those cases, we'll give those two OTAs a direct feed into the Ryanair website. Customers will see the Ryanair airfares, but they'll make the bookings directly in the Ryanair website.
As part of that agreement, these OTA partners now agree that they will not overcharge for Ryanair airfares, they will not overcharge for Ryanair ancillaries, and no mythical or invented fees will be levied. So we're protecting Ryanair's business model by always having the lowest airfares, but we're also protecting consumers. We're happy to work with these OTAs, or these partner OTAs, like loveholidays, like Kiwi, who now, like Google Flights, are going to provide an open and transparent price comparison service to their customers. We call on the regulators to take action to outlaw the overcharging and scamming that is still being perpetrated on unsuspecting consumers by these, or by other OTA pirates, who we will continue to pursue until we stop this anti-consumer overcharging and scamming.
You might have addressed this, but what are the longer-term benefits of removing OTAs?
I think Michael covered it very well. It's pro-consumer. It means that people now get access to Ryanair's low fares when traveling across Europe, and importantly, because we're not getting fake emails with details, payments, et cetera. In the rare event when things go wrong, we'll now be able to look after the customer better than we were able to do before. It's good for our brand, it's good for the customer, and I think long term, it's good for the industry.
Back to the results, Michael, how is the group performing year to date?
... I think very strongly, as you can see, the nine-month results, profit after tax is up 39% to just under EUR 2.2 billion. We've had a very strong summer in 2023. We've had unlike many of our competitors, we've reported a profit, albeit a small profit, in Q3. That number would have been bigger in Q3 if it wasn't for the short-term impact of the Israeli-Hamas conflict, which significantly disrupted our Israeli flights, and also the impact of the OTA going off sale in early December, which caused us to suffer a slightly lower load factor and slightly lower airfares in December and again in January. But we believe and are confident that's very short term. Looking forward into Q4 and summer 2024, we see strong forward bookings, strong pricing, although at reasonably low numbers to date.
I would look forward to this summer with some degree of optimism.
What's your current fuel hedging position?
Oh, we're well-hedged. When we look at the current financial quarter, Q4 FY24, we're about 94% hedged at approximately $89 a barrel, combination of jet swaps and options. But more importantly, we've now extended our FY25 fuel hedging out to 65% at a significantly reduced cost per barrel of about $79 dollars per barrel. So to put that in context, we're locking in EUR 450 million worth of savings on our fuel bill on the hedged fuel alone for next year.
What about your OpEx currency hedging?
Yeah, similar to the jet, very well hedged. So in Q4, we're just over 90% hedged at about 109 on the euro-dollar, and improvement into next year, where we're hedged 70% at 111, again, helping on the, on the savings.
Is your carbon hedged?
Yeah, very well hedged on carbon, as we always are. We're 100% hedged for the current financial year at about EUR 81 in EUA, and we're seeing an improvement coming into next year, where we're also 100% hedged, but at a lower rate now of EUR 76 in EUA, so some savings coming through on that side.
Just looking at your balance sheet, Neil, Ryanair obviously has a very strong balance sheet. What are the Q3 highlights?
Yeah, industry-leading balance sheet. We finished the quarter at 31st December with just over EUR 2.9 billion in gross cash, which was after EUR 1.9 billion of capital expenditure and EUR 1.1 billion of debt repayments, including a big bond back in the summer. That meant that we finished up with net cash of about just under EUR 150 million, although that was slightly flattered by the delayed timing of aircraft deliveries. Uniquely, we have all of our Boeing 737s unencumbered on the balance sheet, 546 of them, and that's why we're the most highly rated airline in the world, BBB+ rating from both S&P and Fitch, which gives us huge flexibility.
You know, at a time when competitor airlines are refinancing themselves at expensive levels, taking on expensive leases, we've got the ability to use a very low-cost form of financing in using our own cash and indeed generating interest income in the meantime as well.
What is your CapEx guidance for the next two or three years?
Yeah, we expect gross total CapEx for FY25 to fall to about EUR 1.3 billion, which is a very significant reduction on what we've been spending on CapEx in recent years. Then for FY26, the number will fall to just under EUR 1 billion, which, if profitability continues at current rates, means we will be generating very significant free cash flow, which we will be using, obviously, to significantly fund our aircraft, future aircraft orders.
You kind of addressed it there, but how will you fund the Gamechanger and MAX 10 aircraft CapEx?
Well, similar to the last couple of years, the cheapest form of financing for us at the moment is the cash flow that we're generating in the business. So the working assumption is that we'll continue to do that, to not only fund our CapEx through repaying maturing debt, but thanks to the strong ratings that we have and the unencumbered fleet, we'll remain opportunistic. So if lower-cost opportunities arise in the bond market, and sale and lease-back, JOLCO, or indeed the bank market, we can look at that as well. It ultimately boils down to: What's the lowest source of financing for us?
Michael, the board recently approved a new dividend policy. When is the first payment?
The first interim dividend of $0.175 per share will be paid at the end of February. The second, the final dividend of again $0.175 per share, will be paid in September, around the time of the AGM. As you know, the board has committed, going forward, that we'll return about 25% of our annual profit after tax to shareholders in the form of ordinary dividends.
Will the board consider other distributions?
I think the board has a policy over many years of returning surplus cash to shareholders. We have a proud record of special dividends and/or share buybacks, but only when we're certain that we have spare funding. We still have two large bonds coming out, as I appreciate, they're in 2026 and 2027, but we do have significant CapEx and debt repayments. I think the board is conscious that we need to keep a prudent level of cash in the business. That's one of the reasons we've emerged out of the COVID experience so much stronger than every other airline. But if and when there's surplus cash, it will be returned to shareholders, either in the form of special dividends or share buybacks.
Neil, looking forward, what's the group's FY 2024 outlook?
Yeah, well, on traffic, we continue to target about 183.5 million passengers this year, which would be a 9% increase on last year, although a little bit lower than we'd originally hoped to. We had an original target of 185 million. When I look at the likes of the load factors, that was impacted in Q3 due to the OTA removal of flights. And so that lower load factor, coupled with recent productivity pay increases to improve the resilience of the business as we move into a busy summer 2024, now means that we're looking at slightly higher cost per passenger ex-fuel of about EUR 2.50. But the gap between ourselves continues to remain significantly wider than everybody else. Ancillary is more or less in line with what we've guided before.
We will have half of Easter in the second half of March. This, however, we think will not be sufficient to offset the slightly lower fares and lower load factors that we had in Q3. So as a result, at this stage, we're now narrowing the profit guidance range to a new range of EUR 1.85 billion-EUR 1.95 billion PAT. Which, as I said in the presentation, is ahead of our long-term target of EUR 10 per passenger, but below the previous range of EUR 1.85 billion-EUR 2.05 billion. And I suppose I have to strike a cautionary note that this is all very much dependent on no unexpected and adverse events this side of the 31st of March.
Lastly, any update on FY25?
I think it's still too early to give any guidance for profit after tax for FY25. Neil and the team are still finalizing budgets. However, I think there's a couple of clear themes emerging. Firstly, our traffic growth will be a little bit less than we had originally predicted because of Boeing delivery delays. We expect, I think, in 2025, to carry 200 million passengers, down from an original plan of 205 million. I think pricing is likely to be stronger, certainly through summer 2024, primarily because of the impact of A320 groundings. Europe is essentially an A320 marketplace, while they address the Pratt & Whitney engine issue. And the OEMs, Airbus and Boeing, remain challenged in terms of deliveries.
We would and therefore encourage passengers to book early, particularly for school breaks, for summer holidays in 2024, because we think demand will be strong and prices will be slightly higher than 2023. On costs, we've already banked about EUR 450 million in fuel savings, thanks to our very strong hedging platform and the excellent deal that the fuel team have done and put in place. But there will be some counterbalancing cost increases. We are negotiating pay increases, productivity pay increases with most of our pilots and cabin crew through this year. So that EUR 430 million in fuel savings won't all fall through to the bottom line. However, longer term, we believe we have a very strong platform for growth.
As long as Boeing can deliver us all of the aircraft that we're scheduled to take, and those aircraft come to us with improved quality, then we believe we're set forward for a decade of strong, profitable growth in a marketplace in Europe where competitors are either cost-challenged or are capacity-constrained. And we believe, therefore, that there's a high likelihood that Ryanair will be able to deliver on our medium or longer-term forecasts of growing to 300 million passengers by 2034, 2035. And I see no real reason why profitability won't rise in line with that traffic growth over that period of time.
Michael, Neil, thank you.
Thank you very much.