Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ryanair Q3 results conference. I'm Michael O'Leary, the Group CEO. I'm joined again this morning by our Group CFO, Neil Sorahan. This morning, we were pleased to report a Q3 profit after tax of EUR 149 million. This compares well to the prior year Q3 comp PAT of just EUR 15 million, although in the prior year it was badly affected by the OTA dispute. This year in Q3, traffic grew 9% to 45 million passengers, at marginally higher airfares due to stronger close-in bookings during Christmas and the New Year holiday. I would caution, however, though the cumulative for the nine months, our profits are down 12% from EUR 2.19 billion for the nine months of FY 2024 to EUR 1.94 billion this morning for the first nine months of FY 2025.
Highlights of Q3 include traffic growing 9% to 45 million despite repeated and prolonged and frustrating Boeing delays. Revenue per passenger rose just 1%. Q3 average fares and ancillary revenues per passenger were both up 1%. We had 172 Gamechangers in the fleet at the 31st of December. The approved OTA partnerships are almost fully integrated, and that is one of the reasons why this year's Q3 numbers look strong compared to a much weaker prior year Q3. Over 50% of the EUR 800 million buyback has been completed at the quarter end, and the board recently declared a 22% interim dividend per share, which we paid at the end of February. So we've had a reasonably strong quarter. We're looking forward at the moment, though, into 2026.
Again, frustratingly, Boeing delivery delays have forced us to revise our next year's traffic target, down from EUR 210 million to EUR 206 million, which would be just 3% growth. We're hopeful that the remaining 29 of the 39 Gamechangers will be delivered to us in advance of summer 2025, and the remaining 29 aircraft in our order book will be delivered in time for summer 2026, which should enable us to recover some of this delayed traffic growth in summer 2026 instead of in summer 2025. Boeing and we, Neil and myself, were in Seattle in January, still expect the MAX 7 to be certified in or about the first half of 2025. That should pave the way for the MAX 10 to be certified in the second half of 2025, which we hope will facilitate a timely delivery of our first 15 MAX 10 aircraft for spring 2027.
Over the coming year, however, though, we'll allocate this scarce aircraft capacity growth to those regions and the airports who are investing in growth by cutting or abolishing aviation taxes, as they are in Poland, in Sweden, and in Italy, and those airports who are working with us to incentivize traffic growth. We expect European short-haul capacity to remain heavily constrained in 2025, as many of Europe's Airbus operators continue to work through the Pratt & Whitney engine repairs, both major aircraft manufacturers struggle with delivery backlogs, and the EU airline consolidation continues. Last September, the board confirmed that over 49% of Ryanair's issued share capital was held by EU nationals.
We expect to get that number back up to over 50% sometime in the first half of 2025, and in advance of that milestone, the board deemed it appropriate to engage in review of our potential variation of the ownership and control restrictions. We continue to consult widely with shareholders, with regulators, and with the European Commission on this issue, and the board will, I believe, make a decision on this, but only once we've crossed over the 50.1% threshold sometime later this year. In terms of outlook, we expect FY 2025 traffic to reach almost 200 million. We'll probably fall just short of the 200 million, but that's subject to no further adverse news on Boeing delivery delays. Our unit costs are performing very well, in line with our ambitious expectations, and the cost gap between Ryanair and all our EU airline competitors widens.
We expect that our unit costs will be broadly flat for the full year. Our fuel hedge savings, strong interest income, and some modest, very modest aircraft delay compensation will largely offset the ex-fuel cost inflation, particularly crew and productivity increases. Flight Q3 fares were marginally stronger than the prior year. This year's Q4 will not benefit from it. We have a much tougher prior year comp because the first half of Easter was in last year's Q4. We'll have none of Easter in this year's Q4, and that makes our Q4 prior year comp very challenging. At this stage, we're cautiously guiding that full year 2025 PAT will be in a range of about EUR 1.55 billion-EUR 1.61 billion.
The final outcome of PAT will, however, be subject to avoiding external developments between now and the end of March, including the risk of conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, further Boeing delivery delays, and ATC mismanagement and short-staffing here in Europe. And with that, I'll hand you over to Neil to take us through the slide presentation.
Michael, thank you very much, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Ryanair Q3 results presentation. Ryanair has the lowest fares and the lowest costs with any EU airline. We're number one for traffic, and as Michael said, we'll be close to 200 million passengers this year, which is a 9% increase on last year. We're number one for on-time performance and reliability, and have high ratings on all ESG metrics across Europe. We have a 300 MAX 10 order book, which will underpin a decade of growth to 300 million passengers, and this, coupled with our financial strength and lowest cost, makes Ryanair the long-term winner. As I said, lots of choice and coverage all across Europe. We operate over 230 airports in 37 countries with 94 bases.
We have 610 aircraft, and with the 340 aircraft on order, the MAX 10s and the remainder of the Gamechangers, that will enable us to grow from 200 million passengers this year to 300 million passengers over the next 10 years. Importantly, the cost gap between Ryanair and everybody else continues to widen, and we expect that to continue to be the case over the coming years as we take in more low-cost Gamechanger aircraft, and importantly, as we benefit from paying down our debt out of our own cash resources, becoming debt-free at a time when our competitors are taking on expensive leases, many of them dollar-denominated and expensive financing costs, so this competitive advantage, I believe, will continue well into the future. On the quarter itself, we saw traffic grow to just under 45 million passengers, a 9% increase and a 92% load factor.
Total revenue was up 10% to EUR 2.96 billion, driven not only by the traffic but by a marginally higher average fare in Q3, helped, of course, by the absence of an OTA boycott, which was in the prior year comp, but also by strong close-in Christmas and New Year bookings. We saw a 1% increase in average fare in the quarter, ancillaries up 1% per passenger as well. Unit costs continue to perform strongly as our fuel hedging offsets labor inflation and Boeing delivery delay costs, so up 8% to EUR 2.93 billion. As a result, we reported a profit of EUR 149 million in the quarter, up from the EUR 15 million that we had in the prior year. Our balance sheet boasts an industry-leading balance sheet with a high investment-grade rating of BBB plus from both Fitch and S&P.
We're unique in the industry in that we own our own Boeing 737s, 582 of these aircraft unencumbered on our balance sheet. Cash remained very strong. We came in with just under EUR 2.8 billion gross cash, and importantly, while modest, a EUR 75 million net cash balance at the end of the quarter, and this was after EUR 1.1 billion in aircraft CapEx in the first nine months of the year, EUR 1.1 billion in share buyback, and a EUR 200 million dividend last September. Michael, will you take us through current developments, please?
I will, Neil. Thanks very much for that.
Current developments, so with the approved OTA deals, are almost fully integrated.
Complement OTA volumes. There are ongoing Boeing delivery delays, which have forced about a 2026 passenger figure down to 206 from 210 million. Growth of just 3%, which for us will be one of, is probably the lowest year of growth on record. We are reallocating that spare capacity to those airports and those regions who are cutting taxes or stimulating growth with growth incentive schemes, airports in Poland, in Sweden, and in Italy. All of our summer 2025 capacity is now on sale, and that includes 64 new routes, a total of 2,600 routes this summer. The shareholder returns continue. We're over halfway through the EUR 800 million buyback, and an interim dividend will be a small interim dividend, EUR 0.22 per share will be paid at the end of February.
The consultation on varying the ownership and control restrictions is ongoing, and we hope the board makes a decision on that towards the middle of the year. These are the approved OTA deals, and I think the important thing here is that they protect our passengers from overcharges, both on airfares and on other services. Critical to this, and I think this is one of the reasons why our Q3 numbers are strong. The OTA boycott started in November of 2023. It badly impacted Q3 prior year, and it ran into Q4. We are kind of lapping that now, so we have weak prior year comparables and strong current trading. The numbers are good, but it's slightly distorted by weak prior year comps. The Boeing delays continue to frustrate our growth.
As I said, we have 172 Gamechangers in the fleet at the end of December. That leaves us another 38 to take delivery. We expect to get nine before summer 2025. We're confident that we'll get all those. They're either in production in Seattle or the hulls have already been on rail or being shipped by rail from Wichita to Seattle. That still leaves us with 29 aircraft to get before summer 2026, and we're reasonably optimistic that Boeing will deliver all of those in a timely manner before March 2026, so we'll have a full run at the summer 2026 schedule. However, that forces us to revise down this year's traffic figure to 206 million, and then I think we'll recover most of that in summer 2026, when we'd probably expect to be carrying about 215 million in the following year.
As we've said, we expect the MAX certification to take place towards the end of 2025, subject to Boeing successfully certifying the MAX 7 in the first half of the year. Shareholder returns continue. We're halfway through the EUR 800 million buyback. Expect to finish that sometime in the middle of 2025. When we do, we'll have bought back over 36%. We'll have bought back and canceled over 36% of the issued share capital since 2008. The interim dividend will be paid at the end of February. We are committed to continue to return surplus cash to shareholders, but this will be subject to CapEx, and we have very large debt repayment obligations in the next two years. We have over EUR 2 billion of bond debts to repay in September of 2025 and in May 2026, and that will be our first priority.
But as long as we can get over those, fund those bond repayments from internally generated funds, and we're able to fund the CapEx, which delays is probably moving a little bit to the right, where we have spare funds, we are committed to returning this to shareholders. In terms of outlook, therefore, FY 2025 traffic will be up about 9%, probably finished just short of 200 million passengers as a result of these ongoing Boeing delivery delays. FY 2025 unit costs are flat. We have increasing labor and aircraft delays, offset by fuel savings and some very modest compensation being received from Boeing. The Q4 prior year comps are very challenging because this year's Q4 will have no Easter in it. However, the Q1 of FY 2026 will have easier prior year comps, and we should do well in Q1.
For FY 2025, we're cautiously guiding full year profits in a range of EUR 1.55 billion-EUR 1.61 billion. More Boeing delays will impact our summer 2025 growth, which is why we've reduced the traffic target for FY 2026 and 210 to 206 million passengers. But the core fundamentals continue. Our cost advantage over all of our competitors. Ryanair's very strong balance sheet. Our continuing, albeit delayed, 800 deliveries, plus the MAX 300 aircraft, MAX 10 deliveries, will facilitate Ryanair's low fare growth out to 300 million by FY 2024, and we believe we'll be able to deliver that growth in a low cost, low fare, but profitable manner for the benefit of our shareholders, our passengers, and our people.
Michael, Neil, good morning. Just starting with your Q3 results, you reported a Q3 PAT of EUR 149 million compared to a prior year PAT of EUR 15 million. What were the key drivers of this?
The biggest driver was the fact that last year's prior year comp was badly impacted by the OTA boycott in November, December 2023, so we've now fixed the OTA dispute, and therefore this year's Q3 is a more normal figure. Nevertheless, we're pleased to report that traffic is up 9% despite repeated Boeing aircraft delivery delays. Fares are modestly up 1% in the third quarter, which was helped by strong close-in Christmas and New Year bookings and marginally easier prior year comps. Operating costs were up 8% as fuel hedge savings offset higher staff and Boeing delivery costs. Including fuel costs per passenger were down 1% in the quarter.
What's your latest fuel hedging position?
Oh, we're well hedged, Ryan. That's important in the current volatile fuel market that we're in at the moment. So if we look at the final quarter of FY 2025 to the end of March, we're about 85% hedged at $80 a barrel, locking in modest savings on the jet fuel into next year, where we've got about 75%, just over that, hedged at $77 a barrel. And I think importantly, the other side of the coin for us is the euro/dollar. We're over 80% hedged now on the euro/dollar at 111 into next year as well.
Looking at your balance sheet, as strong as ever, what are the key callouts?
I think the key one is obviously we're still industry-leading rate BBB rated investment grade for both S&P and Fitch, despite the fact that we're paying down all of our debt over the next two years. We don't need access to cash because we're generating significant cash internally. At the end of December, we had EUR 2.8 billion of gross cash. We had EUR 70 million positive net cash, despite over EUR 1.1 billion in CapEx last year, over EUR 1.1 billion in share buybacks, and a EUR 200 million dividend that was paid in September. We have 582 Boeing 737s, fully unencumbered, and I think that's critical because it widens the gap.
Most of our competitors in Europe are operating fleets of aircraft that are heavily financed with operating leases, and as aircraft lease costs and financing costs are rising, Ryanair's costs and the gap between them and Ryanair widens.
We do plan to repay EUR 2 billion of bond debt in September 2025 and in May 2026, and that will make Ryanair debt-free over the next 18 months, further strengthening the balance sheet.
What's your FY 2025 CapEx guide?
As we said, at the half year, depending on aircraft deliveries, we talk some of the CapEx have moved to the right into next year. That's where we're at the moment now, so we're guiding a slightly lower CapEx of EUR 1.7 billion-EUR 1.8 billion for the full year.
Looking ahead, how will you fund the MAX 10 CapEx?
I think we expect to continue to fund them from internally generated cash flow, particularly as we're operating in a higher interest rate environment, and certainly where lease rates have escalated significantly in recent years. But we will remain opportunistic. If we can target lower cost financing, we'll take up those opportunities. And I think with a zero debt on the balance sheet in 18 months' time, Ryanair will have unique access to financing markets, bonds, JOLCOs, SLBs, and bank debt, and lowest cost will win.
How is your share buyback progressing?
Yeah, it's going well. At the end of December, we were over halfway through it. We're now just under 60% of the way through it. We've been buying back shares at just over EUR 19 per share. And I think if we keep going at the pace we're going at, we'll finish it somewhere in the first half of this year. Interestingly, when we get there, we'll have returned over EUR 9 billion between various buybacks and other distributions to shareholders since 2008. And I think the core statistic here is that we'll have canceled 36% of our issued share capital.
Can we expect more buybacks?
I think it's reasonably expected, but there'll be more muted for the next year or two while we are repaying EUR 2 billion in debt. We are focused on repaying all of the two big bond repayments over the next 16 months, but over and above that, any surplus cash after debt repayment and CapEx, we will continue to return to our shareholders.
Shifting to your fleet, what's the latest update in Gamechanger deliveries?
Yeah, we had 172 of them in the fleet at the end of December, so that included an additional two aircraft delivered during the Boeing strike in Q3. Having visited Seattle in the last couple of weeks, myself and Michael, we now think we're looking at about nine more aircraft ahead of summer 2025, so leaving us short some aircraft, so as a result of that, we're slowing down the traffic growth into next year. We'd originally thought we'd be close to about 210 million. We're going to grow by 3% to about 206 million, but we have reasonable confidence that the remaining 29 aircraft are going to come in well before the back end of March next year, which leaves us in a good place to catch up that traffic into summer 2026, so FY 2027 traffic somewhere in the region of about 215 million.
Any update on the MAX 10 certification?
Yeah, in our latest discussions, with no change in our discussions with Boeing, they expect to certify the MAX 7 in the first half of 2025 and then follow on and certify the MAX 10 in the second half of 2025. We have no further update on that. We are working closely with Boeing and with EASA here in Europe, and certainly the feedback from the regulators, I think both the FAA and EASA, is that Boeing are doing a reasonably good job on the certification process, but we hope and expect that the 10 will be certified in 2025 and that as Boeing catch up with their production, with their delivery delays, we will then get the first 15 MAX 10s on time in the spring of 2027 to allow us to continue to grow into summer 2027.
What's your view on inter-European capacity over the next few years?
Oh, I think it's going to remain hugely constrained. We had the air finance leasing conference here in Dublin a couple of weeks ago, and it's very clear today, 320 operators in Europe are going to continue to be impacted by the Pratt & Whitney engine issues for at least another couple of years. Boeing and Airbus are way behind on deliveries with no sign of catching up in the short to medium term, and at the same time, consolidation is happening across Europe, which will take more capacity out. As recently as last week, we saw Lufthansa take their 41% stake in ITA Airways, and they've made no secret of the fact that they hope to get that up to 100% over the next couple of years. Air France-KLM have a 20% stake in SAS, which has got room to grow.
There's a big expectation that TAP in Portugal will be up for sale soon. All of these will take capacity out, and we at the same time will be growing by another 340 aircraft to 300 million passengers in a capacity-constrained market. Growing properly over the next decade.
Any update on the O&C review and engagement exercise?
No, the engagement exercise continues. I think we've now consulted with more than 80% of our shareholders, but we said we won't, the board won't review it until we get back up over 50.1% EU ownership. We're very close to that number today. We expect to go back up over 50.1% before the end of June or in the first half of calendar 2025. We do continue to consult, therefore, with our regulators in Ireland, in Malta, in Poland, and in the U.K., and also with the European Commission. But no decisions will be made by the board until we get back up over 50.1%.
Moving to ESG, what are Ryanair's Q3 highlights?
Yeah, we continue to score very highly with the rating agencies, with a number of them reconfirming our ratings in Q3. We saw MSCI reconfirm the leadership A rating for Ryanair. We saw the Sustainalytics again for the third year in a row rank Ryanair as the number one large cap airline in the world for ESG. And importantly, SBTi Science Based Targets initiative verified our medium-term targets to 2031, where we plan to reduce CO2 per passenger kilometer by about 27% to 50 grams. And underpinning all of this is clearly the Gamechanger order book. We took another two Gamechangers in the quarter. These aircraft, as we all know, 16% more fuel efficient, 40% quieter than traditional aircraft. And the retrofit of our older NGs continues to roll out with Scimitar winglets, which again reduce fuel and noise.
Michael, is EU OTC still performing poorly?
Yes, it is. Sadly, we suffered record air traffic control delays through summer 2024 due to repeated staff shortages, rostering failures, and equipment failures. We see no significant improvement. We continue, as do all of the airlines in Europe and our passengers, to demand that the EU Commission delivers urgent reform of our failed and antiquated ATC. I think we took heart from the Monti report, which highlighted the inefficient delivery and both the cost savings and the environmental benefits that would accrue from a radical reform of Europe's ATC. We continue to call for two initiatives. One, mandate that ATC providers must be fully staffed for the first wave of flights every morning of every day. It is because if we start on time, we've a reasonable prospect of keeping the flights going on time. And secondly, protect overflights during national ATC strikes.
It is absurd that certain countries will protect their domestic flights and cancel all the overflights. It should be the other way around. Protect the overflights. It's the single European sky. It's the single European market, and overflights should be protected.
Looking ahead, what's the group's FY 2025 outlook?
As Michael said, we expect traffic now to be close, probably just under 200 million passengers this year, which is 9% growth. Not a bad performance given the ongoing delays that we've had from Boeing throughout this year and indeed rolling into next year. Unit costs continue to perform in line with expectations, so we're sticking to our prior guidance of broadly flat unit costs on a full year basis. While Q3 fares were marginally up, I think we have to call out the fact that we don't have an Easter in Q4, so the comps are going to be very difficult on Q4 on a year-on-year basis. So taking all of that into account, we're now cautiously guiding full year profit after tax in a range of EUR 1.55 billion-EUR 1.61 billion.
Any update on FY 2026?
No, it's still too early to give any guidance. I mean, there's a couple of things we know. Firstly, capacity is going to be constrained across Europe, including our own. That should be helpful for fares. We think Q1 should start off strong because we have the two halves of Easter in Q1. We only had one half of Easter in the Q1 prior year, so there should be a good start to the summer. We are disappointed that we're forced to reduce our traffic target from 210 million to 206 million, just 3% growth as a direct result of the Boeing delivery delays. But we're hopeful that we catch that up in the summer of 2026 when Boeing should deliver the final 29 8200 aircraft to us. Fuel is very well hedged into next year at about $77 a barrel.
That's about $2 per barrel less than this year's hedge, which was hedged at $79. So I think we'll be given an update at the full year results in May. But I look back to the core fundamentals. Traffic demand is reasonably strong. It's too early yet to say what it will be like for the full summer period. Capacity is constrained across Europe. We are now, however, lapping the OTA dispute, and I think we're seeing strong bookings coming through the OTA channels as people are booking well in advance into summer 2026, booking holidays, and so reasonably strong traffic growth, a widening cost gap between Ryanair and all of our airline competitors across Europe, a very strong balance sheet, taking delivery of another nine very competitively priced Boeing 737-8200s this year, another 29 for the summer of 2026.
And we believe we're well on track, therefore, to deliver profitable, controlled growth to 300 million passengers by FY 2024. And with that, I think that's the end of the Q&A. Thank you very much. As you got to the Q3, we're not doing a roadshow. However, Neil is doing some meetings in London and Paris today and tomorrow. Peter Larkin and his team here in the IR function are available for calls and for any questions. And if anybody wants to come visit us here in Dublin over the coming weeks to discuss the summer, we'd be happy to welcome you. With that, thank you very much, Neil.
No, that's it. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you.