All right, so good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Ryanair full-year results. I'm Michael O'Leary, the Group CEO, and I'm joined this morning by Neil Sorahan, the Group CFO. Earlier this morning, we published the full-year results for the last 12 months, ending 31 March 2024. In that, we recorded a full-year profit after tax growth of 34% to an after-tax profit of EUR 1.92 billion, as traffic grew 9% to 184 million passengers, which is 20%-23% more than our pre-COVID traffic. The highlights for the last 12 months start off with the traffic growth of 9% to 184 million passengers. It would've been slightly higher but for the Boeing delivery delays.
The biggest challenge was our fuel bill rose by 32%, an increase of EUR 1.25 billion, to just over EUR 5 billion, and yet we were still able to report an increase in profitability. Our ESG ratings were upgraded. We're an MSCI A-rated performance. Carbon Disclosure Project was rated as an A minus, and we have a very strong 85% customer satisfaction score achieved over the last 12 months. We've taken delivery of 146 new Boeing 737 Gamechanger aircraft. It brings the fleet to just under 600 aircraft at the end of March. It would, again, have been slightly higher, but we're still so struggling with Boeing delivery delays. With these new aircraft, we've opened five new bases and over 200 new routes for summer 2024 as we continue to stimulate significant growth across Europe.
The big news on cost is that for the full year, March 2025, fuel is over 70% hedged at just under $80 per barrel, locking in a saving thus far on hedged fuel of EUR 450 million for the full year. We declared a maiden interim dividend of EUR 400 million, payable in calendar 2024, and we would expect to do something similar again in 2025. Again, we point back to the key, which is our 300 Boeing 737 MAX 10 aircraft orders, the first of which we believe will deliver in the spring of 2027, underpins our growth strategy to 300 million passengers by the early 2030s. Just to touch briefly on fleet, Boeing delivery delays have been one of the bigger challenges this year.
We expect to be operating about 158 Gamechangers by the end of July. That will be about 23 aircraft short of our contracted deliveries. There remains a risk that those Boeing deliveries could slip further, but we think it's unlikely. We're in close contact with the management team led by Stephanie Pope in Seattle, who we believe is doing a good job. But these delays will mean that more of the traffic growth in FY 2025 will occur in the lower-yielding second half of the year than we'd originally planned. In order to maximize the deliveries, we're gonna continue to take deliveries of these Gamechanger aircraft through the peak months of July, August, and September, but we won't be able to put those aircraft on sale because we've no certainty on the delivery dates.
Lauda has also recently extended 3 of its A320 leases from 2024 out to 2028, but without any increase in the lease cost, which is important. Travel demand across Europe in summer 2024 is strong. Despite Boeing delivery delays, we will still operate our largest-ever summer schedule, as I said, with over 200 new routes, 5 new bases. We still see, in summer 2024, short-haul EU capacity is constrained as competitor airlines ground A320 aircraft for Pratt & Whitney engine repairs. The OEMs are continuing to struggle to recover their delivery backlogs, and therefore, we urge all passengers to book early for summer 2024 because we think close-in seats and fares will be higher than in 2023. We expect European airline consolidation to continue with the takeover of ITA and Air Europa in Spain progressing and the likely sale of TAP in Portugal next.
These. This consolidation, in addition to the A320 fleet groundings, which we think will constrain capacity for the next 2-3 years, means that Ryanair is growing in a marketplace for the foreseeable future, where we should have reasonably benign trading conditions and competitors' capacity constraint. That should underpin reasonable fare momentum for the next 2-3 summers. We'll deal with the detail of the results. Neil will deal with detail of the results. Just want to push on to shareholder returns. You'll remember we set out a strategy recovering out of COVID that we would shepherd our cash resources very carefully.
We, the board established a number of priorities, one of which was to restore our people's pay and agreed pay increases with all of our, union partners and people. That's now been done. We also said that we would, prioritize the paydown of debt, particularly in a rising interest rate environment. We're halfway through that program to repay all of our bond debt. We have two more, bond repayments, one in 2025 and one in 2026, and then the group will be entirely debt-free. We would also use internally generated cash funds to fund aircraft CapEx. Again, we think that's been done. Thereafter, our policy is to, maintain a strong balance sheet, but where we think we have spare cash, to return that to shareholders.
I'm pleased at this point to announce that the board has decided, given the current surplus cash position, they've approved a EUR 700 million share buyback now. It will formally launch later this week, and this buyback, when completed, will have increased the funds that Ryanair has returned to shareholders since 2008 to just under EUR 8 billion. In terms of our outlook, Ryanair expects to grow in FY March the year, full year of March 2025 by 8%. We're in a range of between 198 and 200 million passengers. Originally, that target was 205 million passengers, but with Boeing delivery delays, we've had to cut that back.
Our cost advantage over all airline competitors in Europe continues to widen, even though we expect in FY 2025, a very modest rise in unit costs, ex-fuel unit costs, due to annualized pay increases, higher handling and ATC fees, and the impact of the Gamechanger delivery delays on crewing ratios and unit costs. Although much of that would be substantially offset by our fuel hedge savings and our rising interest rate income. With the EU short-haul capacity constrained, we see summer 2024 demand in positive territory. Forward bookings are strong. Bookings are trending ahead of last year, although the pricing has been a little soft than we had expected.
Some of that in Q1 is due to the move of the first half of Easter, moved into March, which was Q4 of last year, and so we only have half of April in Q1. But nevertheless, in recent weeks, we've seen other airlines and Ryanair respond to slightly weaker demand by increasing the amount of promotional fares we sell in order to hit our volume and our load factor objectives, and that will continue. We still see reasonable strength in July and August bookings, the peak summer months, but April, May, and June are a little bit weaker than we had originally expected. We remain cautiously optimistic that peak summer 2024, therefore, will be, fares will be flat to modestly ahead of summer 2023. Q4 2025 will not benefit from an early Easter as it did in FY 2024. It's therefore far too early to be able to provide any sensible or accurate full year 2025 profit after tax guidance. All we can say at this stage is the final outcome will be heavily dependent upon avoiding adverse events during 2025, such as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, extensive ATC disruptions as we suffered this time last year, or further Boeing delivery delays. And with that, I'll hand over to Neil to take us through the slide presentation. Neil?
Thank you very much, Michael. Ryanair, as we all know, has the lowest fares and lowest costs of any airline in Europe. We're targeting up to 200 million passengers this year, so an 8% increase, subject to Boeing delays. We continue to be number one for on-time performance and reliability. Sustainalytics have retained Ryanair as their number one airline for ESG in Europe. Our growth over the next 10 years will be underpinned by our 300 MAX 10 order, and our financial strength and our lowest cost will facilitate us to fund this and to be the long-term winner in our market. We're number one in Europe for coverage and choice this summer, operating our largest-ever summer schedule, over 95 bases, 230+ airports with a fleet of 600 aircraft.
And this, coupled with our order book, sees us grow to 300 million passengers by FY 2034. This is a very important slide. It shows that the cost advantage that Ryanair has in place over everybody else continues to grow and to continue to widen, as we supplement this further with our increasing interest income. At a time when our competitors are raising expensive bonds in the market, taking on expensive new leases due to capacity constraints, Ryanair is seeing huge cost discipline, and I think this is a key advantage that we enjoy over everybody else within our market. On the full year itself, very pleased with a 9% increase in traffic to just under 184 million passengers, at a slightly higher load factor of 94%.
Revenues increased strongly by 25% to EUR 13.44 billion, driven by a 21% increase in average fare and a solid performance on ancillary revenue. We saw a 24% increase in our operating costs to just over EUR 11.3 billion, primarily due to a 32% increase in our fuel bill, so an extra EUR 1.25 billion on our fuel bill this year. Investment in resilience and in our people, so pay restoration, pay increases, and the impact of the delayed Boeing aircraft coming in there. So the end result is that we're reporting a 34% increase in profit after tax to EUR 1.92 billion in the full year for FY 2024. Our industry-leading balance sheet, with its BBB+ rating, is one of the strongest out there.
I would point to our very strong EUR 4.1 billion gross cash at the end of the year, despite significant CapEx and debt repayments. And we're very pleased to see our net debt position improve from just under EUR 600 million euro last year to EUR 1.4 billion this year. This fortress balance sheet, as Michael has already said, will be further enhanced over the next couple of years as we pay down our maturing bonds. And we've got a unique advantage in that all of our Boeing 737 aircraft, 556 of them at the end of March, are unencumbered and on our balance sheet, which gives us massive flexibility at a time when competitors, as I already said, are raising expensive debt in the market and taking on expensive leases. As part of our capital allocation policy, we've now restored pay for our people. We're paying down our debt, we're funding our CapEx from our internal resources, and we're returning funds to our shareholders through ordinary dividends and other forms of distributions. With that, Michael, maybe you'll take us through current developments, please.
Yeah. Thanks, Neil. So as I've already said, summer 2024 demand is positive. We're running our largest-ever summer schedule, and we expect to deliver 8% traffic growth through the peak summer months in a market where the EU capacity is constrained due to Pratt & Whitney engine repairs, OEM delivery delays, and consolidation. That does give us. It has been a little bit surprising that pricing hasn't been stronger, and we're not quite sure whether that's just consumer kind of sentiment or, you know, recessionary feel around Europe. But we still see peak travel demand, certainly through July and August, being strong. And if we have to discount or cut fares to fill to 94% load factor in April, May, and June, then so be it.
We're continuing to work with Boeing to improve quality and accelerate our 737 deliveries. There is an outside possibility we might – the backlog, instead of being 23, might be 20 by the end of July, but it won't significantly alter the traffic growth figures for this year. I think the key message this morning, though, is we've already hedged 70% of our FY 2025 fuel at $79 a barrel. We've locked in a EUR 450 million saving. And I think one of the big developments over the last three months has been the number of approved OTA deals we've signed, converting OTA pirates from scamming consumers into protecting consumers, and ensuring that consumers get the Ryanair lowest fares.
As Neil has reported, there's another, a final dividend of EUR 200 million, and this morning, the board has signed off on a EUR 700 million share buyback. Just to touch briefly on some of those, again, short-haul capacity in Europe is constrained. While we're operating at about, in the month of April, for example, 30% more seat capacity than in pre-COVID, others, our competitors are struggling to return to pre-COVID capacity. Wizz are flat year-on-year because of their... They announced they've grounded about 45 A320s. IAG, Lufthansa, and Air France are all meaningfully down in terms of their short-haul capacity recovery in summer 2024 compared to summer 2019.
And into that marketplace, Ryanair's operating a record schedule, capacity up 35% on 2019 pre-COVID, which means we will expect to take significant market share from our competitor airlines across Europe again this year. Touching briefly on Boeing, we have 146 Gamechangers in the fleet at the end of March. We're likely to be about 20 aircraft short by the end of July on our scheduled deliveries. We do expect to get those deliveries at... Boeing to catch up those deliveries by the end of October, which will give us at least 20 new aircraft growth for summer 2025. Boeing are also contracted to deliver us another 29 aircraft between January and April of 2025, so we may well be looking at a summer in 2025 where we've another 50 aircraft worth of growth.
The growth will have slowed in summer 2024, but we expect to pick that up again in summer 2025. We will keep taking deliveries during the peak months, August, September, October, just so we ensure we get those aircraft in. We welcome the management changes in Seattle. We support the work that Stephanie Pope and her team are doing. Already, we're seeing improved quality on our aircraft deliveries, but sadly, not yet enough progress in terms of accelerating those deliveries. We'll continue to work with Stephanie Pope, with Brian West, with Dave Calhoun, to improve quality and accelerate deliveries. As I said earlier, we've extended 3 of Lauda's A320 leases by 4 years out to 2028 without any increase in the lease rates, which I think is critical at the moment, where lease rates are rising, significantly.
We still expect MAX cert, the MAX 7 certification late 2024, early 2025. We would then be hopeful that that will roll out MAX 10 certification mid to late 2025. The first deliveries on the for Ryanair of the MAX 10s are due in the spring of 2027. So as long as it gets certified in mid 2025, we see no reason for those aircraft being delayed. Just to touch briefly on the OTA issue, we're now working with a number of OTAs. Critical to that, the row with the OTAs has been that the OTAs agree that they won't overcharge our customers. They're free to charge our passengers a separate fee for their travel agency services, but then at least the customer knows what they're paying. But there's no overcharging on Ryanair airfares, no markups on Ryanair ancillary products.
There's no screen scraping or digital piracy of Ryanair's, ryanair.com website. And Ryanair benefits because we get the real customer email and payment details, which means we can communicate with customers pre-flight information, safety information, disruption information. All of that is critical. But by working together with some of these, the largest, online travel agencies, On the Beach, eSky, TUI, Loveh olidays, El Corte Inglés, and Kiwi, we believe that together we can offer, a wider range of products and services to consumers, but ensuring that those consumers get Ryanair's fares, not inflated airfares. Sadly, there's a couple of, OTAs who want to keep scamming consumers and keep overcharging them. eDreams in Spain is the most, egregious example of it.
Not only are they still overcharging passengers for Ryanair airfares, they're inflating Ryanair's ancillary fees, and they've also started scamming their subscribers for this Prime subscriber base, where they charge passengers EUR 65 a year for Prime services. They promise them 100% discount on 100% of flights. But in the case of Ryanair, they're still inflating the underlying price of Ryanair flights, and they're inflating the cost of the ancillary services. eDreams is a scam. eDreams Prime is a scam. And we believe that the CEO of eDreams, Dana, Dan, or whatever his name is, should come out and explain how they justify scamming consumers, overcharging consumers, and why they won't sign up to Ryanair's OTA when all they have to do is agree not to overcharge consumers.
He won't, because eDreams is a scam. There's an example of the kind of overcharges that eDreams are engaged in, for both an overcharge on ancillary products. They've even invented a cancellation fee of EUR 60 when Ryanair flights are non-cancellable. So they're charging their consumers for a fee for a service they know they can't deliver. It should be ended. We call on the consumer authorities, particularly in Spain and across the EU, to outlaw this kind of egregious overcharging and scamming of consumers. In terms of the shareholder returns, good news today is the board have approved our first... or our, our latest EUR 700 million share buyback. They approved the policy in November, and we expect to roll that out now.
The plan would be to balance that about 50/50 among the EU shareholders and non-EU shareholders. We will, if we can secure, blocks of non-EU shareholders or blocks of non-EU-held shares, obviously, that's more attractive to us, although there's a significant premium in the ADRs. But we'll try to balance those share buybacks so that we continue to migrate towards an EU majority-owned company. We've made significant progress in that over the last 12 months, rising from 46%-48% EU-owned at the year-end. And I would point out that if you remember the board's policy, which is we will dividend about 25% of profit after tax each year. This morning, we reported a profit after tax of EUR 1.392 billion. That should lead to a dividend of about EUR 480 million being paid in 2025 to shareholders. Maybe, Neil, I'll hand you back. You can take us through the outlook and the summary.
Sure. Thank you very much, Michael. So we're expecting the traffic this year will grow by over 8%, a range of between 198 million and 200 million passengers, which is heavily dependent on Boeing not having any further delivery delays. We expect that the cost advantage that we have over everybody else is going to continue to widen. While we will have a modest unit cost increases this year, most of our non-fuel inflation will be offset by the positive hedging that we have in place and the ever-increasing net interest income in the business. Demand remains strong, and capacity is constrained in Europe due to the OEM delivery delays, the Pratt & Whitney GTF engine issues.
We have, however, as Michael said, noted some softening in pricing, particularly in Q1 of this year. So we continue to be load active, yield passive. We're stimulating fares to hit the load factors and the traffic target in the business. It's too early to give meaningful or accurate FY25 PAX guidance, but it will be very heavily dependent on peak close-in summer bookings, where we would still be somewhat cautiously optimistic that fares will be flat to modestly up this summer, even though we're growing capacity into the summer season. Outside of that, we have our, our very strong balance sheet, which, coupled with our industry-leading, lowest cost, is gonna drive, our fleet and market growth over the next years, which is underpinned, by our Boeing 737 MAX 10 order, which will see us grow over the next decade, to 300 million passengers. And with that, maybe we, we'll take some-
Michael, Neil, good morning. Can we begin by discussing Ryanair's FY2024 ESG highlights?
Yeah. I mean, it was a great year on the ESG side. We saw significant rating increases. The likes of MSCI increased Ryanair's rating to an A from a triple B. The Carbon Disclosure Project increased our rating to A minus, which is something that we've been trying to achieve for the last number of years. And Sustainalytics kept us as the number-one-rated airline in Europe for our ESG. On the technology side, we saw another 48 Gamechanger aircraft enter into the fleet this year. These aircraft, to put it in context, 4% more seats, but 16% more fuel efficient, 40% more noise efficient. And we also invested heavily in the retrofit of Scimitar Winglets onto our NG fleet, we. where we now have 25% of that fleet retrofitted for this summer, delivering 1.5% fuel and CO2 savings, 6% quieter, and we'd hope to have the whole program rolled out to our 409 NGs over the course of the next couple of years. Then the final progress that I'd like to report is in relation to sustainable aviation fuels, where we've continued to partner with key fuel companies in big markets all across Europe. So while we have an aggressive target of fueling 12.5% of our flights with SAF by 2030, we now have secured 10% of that volume, which I think is a great achievement at this stage.
What's your latest EU ownership figure?
Yeah, I'm pleased to report that over the last 12 months, we've seen EU ownership rise from 46% to 48%, as at the end of March 2024. We're getting very close to the 50% threshold, and I think that's important because what we plan to do is to reinstate voting rights for all shareholders once we get the EU ownership back over that 50% threshold, and I hope that will be shortly.
Moving to your fleet, what's the latest update on Gamechanger deliveries?
Well, we had 146 Game changers in the fleet at the end of March. We'd hope to grow the assets somewhere close to between 158-160 by the end of July, leaving us, you know, plus or minus 20 aircraft short for the peak summer period. But we're working very closely with the Boeing team, Stephanie Pope, Brian West, Dave Calhoun, and we'll take deliveries throughout the summer period all the way through to the end of October, where we hope to have about 180-181 aircraft in the fleet. And then at that stage, we'll focus very much on the final 29 deliveries into the spring of next year. So we've got 210 Game changers for next summer. We've also supplemented our traffic into next year by extending four Lauda—or sorry, three Lauda leases, which would otherwise have been handed back to lessors this winter. We did so on attractive lease terms.
Will you receive compensation for the Boeing delivery delays?
We will, but the compensation is modest, and clearly subject to confidentiality. It doesn't reflect the quantum of the losses that we will suffer this year as a result of having to cut back our traffic growth from 205 million to 198-200 million passengers. Our focus, though, and that of Boeing, is on accelerating those aircraft deliveries, recovering the delivery delays, getting the 59 aircraft deliveries in here by the end of October, end of November, and then moving straightaway on to ensuring that Boeing deliver the 29 contracted deliveries between January and April of 2025, so that we underpin strong traffic growth through summer 2025 into financial year 2026.
When do you expect the MAX 10 to be certified?
Well, we need to first see the MAX 7 certified, and then the 10 will come a few months after that. So the way things are tracking at the moment, we understand that the 7 should hopefully be certified, if not at the back end of calendar 2024, then into early 2025. That would then mean that the MAX 10 could be certified somewhere hopefully in the first half of calendar 2025. I think the launch customers in the U.S. would then fly both aircraft next year, which will put us well on track to receive our first MAX 10 into the first half, so the spring of 2027.
Michael, looking at your summer 2024 schedule, what are the key call-outs?
Very exciting growth plan all summer long. We're opening over 200 new routes this summer. We're opening five new bases in Copenhagen, Dubrovnik, Reggio Calabria, Trieste, and Tangier in Morocco. That growth is strong. Forward bookings are strong, although the pricing is a little bit weaker than we had thought. We think that growth will be underpinned by continued intra-EU capacity constraints for the reasons we've already set out, and we see positive demand into summer 2024. Pricing at this stage a little bit weak, weaker than we expected into April, May, and June, but at the moment, forward bookings and pricing look strong, well ahead of 2023 for the peak months of July and August.
What's your view on intra-European capacity over the next few years?
Oh, I think it's gonna continue to be constrained. You know, we saw a structural change in capacity throughout COVID. A lot of capacity came out over the past few years. The M&A story is starting to play out in Europe as well, with the likes of the ITA, Lufthansa, and the IAG, Air Europa deal going through competition approval at the moment. TAP likes to be up for sale in the next number of months as well. Closer in, and that... You know, this summer we're gonna see a lot of A320 capacity grounded due to the Pratt & Whitney GTF engine issues. That's not gonna go away quickly. That's likely to roll out to at least 2026.
And then we've got the ongoing OEM delivery delays, both Boeing and Airbus behind on their deliveries and not likely to catch up this side of the 2030s. And at the same time, we're taking delivery of Game changers. We'd hope to have 210 Game changers in our fleet for next summer, and then we've got our 300 MAX 10 order between 2027 and 2034, which is gonna enable us to grow to 300 million passengers over the next decade.
Moving to current trading, how are summer 2024 bookings and fares tracking?
As we've already said, we see, demand is positive into summer 2024. Pricing in Q1 is a little bit weaker than we had expected. Pricing at this early stage for Q2 looks to be a little bit stronger, but the visibility is limited, and therefore the outcome depends entirely on the close-in fares for bookings through the three peak summer months of July, August, and September. I, I think at this stage we're cautiously optimistic that summer 2024 fares will be flat to modestly up on summer 2023, despite almost 9% capacity growth in Ryanair.
Neil, switching to your results, you reported a PAT of EUR 1.92 billion. What were the key drivers?
Yeah, we saw a 9% increase in our traffic to just under 184 million passengers this year. It was a very strong performance despite the Boeing delivery delays. Average fares put in a good performance, up 21%, driven by a record H1 last summer. We also had a very strong March just gone, where we enjoyed most of Easter in that. That was offset somewhat by the OTAs taking Ryanair flights off sale in December of last year, so in Q3, which impacted fares and loads in that quarter. Ancillaries put in a very solid performance, up 3% per passenger to just over EUR 23.40 in the year. So we had a strong revenue performance on costs. We saw a 24% increase in costs, driven primarily by a 32% increase in our fuel bill, so an extra EUR 1.25 billion onto our fuel bill in the year just gone. We also saw staff cost increases that we had a full year of pay restoration. We'd increased investment in crew resilience and crewing ratios, some of that down to the late delivery of Boeing, and then we saw some handling increases. But I think the key thing is that the cost advantage between Ryanair and everyone else is supreme. We continue to widen the cost gap, and this is being further supplemented by the strong net interest income in the group, and we would expect that to continue for some time to come.
What's your current fuel hedging position?
Yeah, we're 70% hedged for the full year out to March 2025 at about $79 a barrel. That's about a EUR 450 million saving over last year's hedged fuel rate, which was $89 a barrel. And it's interesting, in recent months, we've seen some weakness into FY26, and we're now 10% hedged into FY26 at about $79 a barrel as well.
What about your OPEX currency hedging?
Yeah, on the fuel OpEx, we're well hedged, just over 80% at this point in time, at 1.11 on the euro/dollar.
Is carbon hedged?
Yes, the full year 2025 carbon exposure is fully hedged at €70-€76 per credit.
Switching to your balance sheet, what are the highlights?
Yeah, it's an industry-leading balance sheet with a very strong investment grade rating, triple B plus from both Fitch and S&P. I'd point towards our strong gross cash at year-end, EUR 4.1 billion, despite the fact that we EUR 2.4 billion in CapEx and well over EUR 1 billion in debt repayments. Net debt, very strong, so up from EUR 600 million last year to EUR 1.4 billion at the end of this year. Although it was somewhat flattered by delivery delays, which will now time into FY25. I think importantly and uniquely, however, Ryanair owns all of its aircraft. We've got 556 Boeing 737s, fully unencumbered on our balance sheet at the end of the last financial year, in March. This is a unique advantage because it means at a time when our competitors are out there taking on very expensive leases due to a shortage of capacity and raising very expensive bonds, as we've seen over the past couple of weeks, Ryanair is able to fund itself out of its own cash resources and has huge flexibility due to the unencumbered fleet.
What is your CapEx guidance for FY2025 and FY2026?
Yeah, due to the Boeing delivery delays, gross CapEx for FY25 will be about EUR 2.3 billion, with no aircraft deliveries then scheduled in 2025 and 2026. We expect FY26 CapEx to fall to approximately EUR 1 billion. So significant CapEx savings for the next two years, with no aircraft deliveries.
How will you fund the aircraft CapEx?
Well, with the strong cash balances that we have, and in a rising interest rate environment, it makes sense to use our own cash. But we can be flexible, and we will be opportunistic in what we do. I mean, it'll ultimately boil down to what's the lowest form of financing at any given time. And thanks to our strong investment grade ratings and our unencumbered fleet, we can choose from everything, whether it's bank debt, bonds, JOLCOs. But at the moment, cash is the way to go.
Michael, moving to the OTAs, what's the latest update here?
Well, I think the relationship with the OTAs has been transformed in the last four or five months. We've signed up probably 8 of the 11 or 12 largest OTAs, online travel agents, to our approved OTA distribution. This gives those OTAs direct access into the ryanair.com website. They no longer have to pay intermediaries to scrape our website. That's a significant saving for them. They also guarantee that they'll give the consumers the real Ryanair prices for airfares and for ancillaries. They're free if they wanted to charge a separate fee for that service, that's a matter between them and their customer. But what's critical for us is we protect consumers by ensuring they get real Ryanair prices for fares and ancillaries, and Ryanair gets the real customer payment details and the real customer information details.
So if we need to communicate with those passengers, flight information, safety information, disruption information, we can do so without having some intermediary in the middle. Regrettably, the only large OTA, online travel agency pirate still in existence is eDreams in Spain, who will continue to scam their... our customers for inflated airfares, inflated ancillary services, and they've also introduced this new eDreams Prime service, where they persuade people to subscribe for EUR 65 a year and then deliver them no benefits whatsoever if they're booking Ryanair flights or ancillaries. It's a scam. We've reported to the Spanish Consumer Ministry, to the EU consumer agencies, and we expect and hope that they'll take action to outlaw, the consumer overcharging and scamming, which is at the heart of what, in my mind, is the broken, eDreams OTA pirate model.
What are the longer-term benefits of removing unapproved OTAs?
Well, as Michael already said, the real winner from this is the consumer. They're no longer being overcharged. They've got full transparency in what's happening. And then more on the day-to-day operational side of things, because we're not getting fake email addresses, because we're not getting fake payment details, it means that if there is a schedule change, if there's a cancellation, if somebody needs a refund, we're now able to deal with the customer directly and process things in a very efficient manner, and they're not missing flights that they should otherwise have been informed about.
Switching to shareholder returns, the Board approved a dividend policy in November. Any further update?
No, we've gone ahead with that. You know, the policy is to pay out about 20%-25% of net after-tax profits in the following calendar year. In calendar 2024, we're paying about EUR 400 million in dividends. EUR 200 million was paid in February. We expect the balance of EUR 200 million to be paid in September after the AGM. Based on this year's profitability, I think it's reasonable for shareholders to assume and expect that we will declare, the board will declare a dividend of EUR 480 million, payable in calendar 2025, again, half in February and half in November. So we're living up to our commitment that once we can secure or we can generate additional spare cash, we will return that to shareholders, but only after, first, we've looked after our people, secondly, we've paid down our debt, and thirdly, we have funded what our ambitious CapEx programs.
You announced a EUR 700 million share buyback this morning. What are the details?
Yeah, in line with our capital allocation policy, we feel we've hit a number of the key targets that we have in mind: debt repayment, CapEx funding, and restoration of pay, and then pay increases for our people. So the board, we're pleased this morning to announce that we're gonna launch a EUR 700 million share buyback. That will formally launch later this week in the open period. It'll run for a number of months, probably out towards the half year in November, and when that's complete, we'll have returned just under EUR 8 billion to our shareholders since 2008.
Could you give more color on how the buyback will be deployed between ORs and ADRs?
I mean, it makes sense for us. You know, we'll split it between EU shareholders and non-EU shareholders. That will also include the ADRs, despite the fact that the premium is about 30% at the moment. We do plan to try to secure blocks of ADRs. We do need to balance the share buybacks so that we can continue to maintain a growing EU share ownership. We want to get from 48% up to 50% over the next 12 months. But as part of that buyback, we will consider blocks of ordinaries that are held by non-EU holders, particularly pre-Brexit U.K. holders, and also holders of the ADRs, within the confines of the AGM buyback authority to enhance our EU share ownership.
Lastly, what is the group's FY25 outlook?
Yeah, just to sum up, we would target traffic growing by at least 8%, so somewhere between 98 and 200 million passengers this year, subject to Boeing delivery delays. Unit costs will remain in good shape. So we expect the cost advantage between ourselves and everybody else to widen with modest unit cost ex-fuel inflation offset more or less by our positive fuel hedging and our net interest income increases. On fares, we'll remain load active, yield passive, so we'll hit the passenger target and price accordingly. We have noticed softer pricing, despite the capacity constraint in the market at the moment. And we've been simulating into Q1. At this stage, with limited visibility, however, we do think that peak summer fares will be somewhere between flat and modestly up, despite the growth this year. So look, it's too early to give meaningful or accurate PAT guidance. We'll update as the year goes on. But I think the key is that we've got a very strong balance sheet. We've got a very low-cost base. We've got an order book that's gonna enable us to grow to 300 million passengers over the next number of years, and we're returning funds to our shareholders.
Michael, Neil, thank you.
Thanks, Peter. Thank you, Neil. And by the way, ladies and gentlemen, we have an extensive roadshow, underway this week. We have 12 teams of the management, touring through Ireland, the U.K., Continental Europe, and also both the East and West Coast of America. If anybody would like a meeting, please contact us either through Citigroup, through our brokers, Davy or Goodbody here in Dublin, or through our, investor relations function, headed by Peter Larkin. We'd be happy to meet you, wherever you are, and brief you on the Ryanair story. I think it's one of exciting growth, certainly exciting delivery, widening cost gap over our competitors, and we stand on the threshold of taking 300 Boeing 737 MAX 10 aircraft that will transform our operating economics, will widen the cost advantage leadership over every other EU airline, and we think will generate profitable growth for us out to the mid-2030s. Thank you very much. Look forward to meeting you later on this week.