Okay, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. You're welcome to the Ryanair Q3 Results Conference Call. I'm Michael O'Leary, the Group CEO, and I'm joined this morning by Neil Sorahan, the Group CFO. With the normal format, I'll take you through a couple of themes, as Neil then is going to do a presentation of the slide presentation, and then we'll do a quick Q&A. As you have seen this morning, we reported a strong set of Q3 results. Profit after tax was up to EUR 211 million, compared to a pre-COVID PAT in FY20 of EUR 88 million. Most of this was due to very strong demand over primarily the Christmas and New Year holiday period.
Demand that thankfully wasn't disrupted by any late or adverse news flow coming from COVID or the war in Ukraine. During the third quarter, we saw traffic has jumped 7% over the pre-COVID Q3 and FY20. Q3 fares were up 14% on Q3 levels because of that very strong Christmas and New Year period. We have successfully restored the pay cuts by agreement with over 95% of our pilots and cabin crew. That is attached to four and five year pay agreements that will see their earnings continue to rise over the next four or five years. Year-to-date unit costs, ex-fuel, are just EUR 30 per passenger, which is a tremendous performance. It is, we're keeping our unit costs at or where they were before COVID.
During the third quarter, the number of Gamechangers rose to 84 aircraft, although that's less than we had originally expected to take delivery of from Boeing. I think the key theme here is we're seeing very strong market share gains in most of our major markets, like Italy, Poland, Ireland and Spain, where competitors have removed significant capacity or are retreating from competition with us. We've had a very strong quarter on our environmental initiatives. As I said, we've added more greener, more Gamechanger aircraft. We began to retrofit the Split Scimitar winglets on the existing 737 NG fleet. That's a $200 million investment, it will reduce fuel burn by 1.5%.
We continue to accelerate our supply of sustainable aviation fuel. We signed an MOU with Shell in the third quarter to supply over 360,000 tons of SAFs between 2025 and 2030. In December, we hosted a very successful sustainability day with our environmental partner, Trinity College Dublin. We look forward to doing more of those in the future. It's critical that we keep to pushing the message that passengers who switch to Ryanair, particularly from high-fare legacy EU airlines, can reduce their emissions by up to 50% per flight. Flying Ryanair is the sustainable way to fly around Europe. We've made significant progress in the quarter on our social commitments. Again, I think central to that has been the agreements on pay restoration, which are also run into multi-year pay deals.
Our customer service has continued to improve. We continue to deliver industry-leading service for customers. I think this is reflected in the fact that Q3 CSAT score rose to 86%. It was 83% for the first half of the year. In particular, our crew friendliness was the top-scoring indicator, rated 95%. Overall, I think the theme of today's Q3's and looking into the summer of 2023, we're seeing very strong market share gains in almost all key markets as we restored or operated 112% of our pre-COVID capacity in for the first nine months of FY23. The most notable gains were in those markets where competitors have significantly retrenched or have withdrawn capacity from competing with us.
In Italy, for example, where ITA and Wizz Air are in significant retreat, we've seen our market share rise from 26% to just over 40%. In Poland, we've grown from 27% to 40% as well. We expect to maintain those gains and continue to grow market share as we add and allocate more capacity this summer. Already this summer is looking strong. In particular, we believe that the return of Asian traffic to Europe and a particularly strong transatlantic marketplace driven by a very strong dollar will see robust demand both through the Easter and into the summer of 2023 for short-haul flights across Europe.
We do not believe that. We still believe that structurally, short-haul capacity in Europe in the summer of 2020 will be less than it was pre-COVID, mainly due to those airlines who've gone bust or airlines who have withdrawn capacity from markets where they can't compete with us. We think that will underpin strong traffic flows through the, certainly the peak period of Easter and the summer, hopefully at higher fares. Although we'll discuss that further in the Q&A. Just to touch briefly on the Q3 business. As I said, Q3 scheduled revenues increased 85% to EUR 1.45 billion, mainly driven by strong higher fares over the Christmas New Year period, ancillary revenue delivered another strong performance.
What we're most pleased with is the ex-fuel operating cost rose by only 26%, and that for the 9 months year to date are running at just EUR 30 per passenger. We have seen a very significant widening of the unit cost gap between us and every other airline in Europe during the first 9 months of this year. Our jet fuel requirements are 88% hedged for the remainder of FY23 at around $71 per barrel. We've recently taken advantage of weakness in the market to increase our H1 FY24 cover has jumped from 50%-60% at an average cost of around $90 per barrel.
Forex is also well hedged. We continue to emphasize the fact that our entire Boeing order book, which runs out to 2025, is fully hedged at 1.24 dollars to the euro. Just touch on balance sheet. We remain and have one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry. We're BBB rated credit rating with S&P and Fitch. At the quarter end, we had just over EUR 4.07 billion in cash. Obviously we have big challenges. We have a number of significant bond repayments this year and continuing heavy CapEx program of new aircraft deliveries.
It remains our intention to get to zero net debt by the end of March 2024, at the end of next fiscal year, having spent probably something of the order of up to EUR 2 billion in CapEx over that 12-month period. In terms of outlook at the moment, we updated the market on the 4th of January. We've raised the full year guidance from a previous range of EUR 1.0 billion-EUR 1.2 billion. We now think we're operating in a range of EUR 1.325 billion-EUR 1.425 billion.
Most of that is based on strong traffic recovery, strong pricing, particularly over the Christmas and New Year period. It remains very heavily exposed and subject to any adverse news flows that may arise on COVID-19 or Ukraine between now and the end of March. Hopefully, we won't see any adverse news flows, I think we would be reasonably comfortable with that full-year guidance. We expect full-year traffic to rise to 168 million. We're working on our budgets for next year, I think it's safe to say that we're on track, subject only to Boeing aircraft deliveries to grow to possibly 185 million passengers through the summer of 2023 and into FY24.
With that, Neil, why don't you take us through the slide presentation for our shareholders on the third quarter?
Thank you, Michael. Good morning all. Ryanair has the lowest fares and the lowest costs of any airline in Europe. This year, we'll carry 168 million passengers, which is a 13% increase on pre-COVID capacity. We're number one for customer service and reliability, and this is underpinned by our number one placement when it comes to ESG ratings across Europe. We also have a very strong balance sheet. It's our financial strength and our lowest cost that makes us the long-term winner. We have the platform in place with our choice and growth to get to 225 million passengers by FY26. As you can see, we'll be operating over 2,450 routes this summer on 3,200 daily flights.
The cost gap between Ryanair and everybody else has widened significantly over the past nine months, as Michael just said, we were very pleased with the fact that our unit cost, ex-fuel, is just EUR 30 for the first 9 months of the year. We would expect this cost advantage to continue to widen between ourselves and everybody else as time goes on. On the quarter itself, we saw a strong rebound in traffic, a 24% increase to over 38.4 million passengers at a 93% load factor. Revenues had a big jump, just under 60%, thanks to a 14% higher fares and higher traffic to EUR 2.31 billion in the quarter.
Costs rose at a slower pace despite the fact that we saw a 52% increase in fuel and pay restoration in the quarter. They rose by just 36% to EUR 2.15 billion. As a result, we had a strong profit of EUR 211 million, an earning per share of EUR 0.18 per share. Balance sheet continues to improve, and you can see net debt has dropped significantly from EUR 1.45 billion at the end of last year to just EUR 960 million at the end of the quarter. Just focusing a little bit more on the balance sheet in the quarter, we saw our strong investment-grade rating.
The outlook was improved from stable to positive by both Fitch and the S&P, making us one of the most strongly rated airlines in the world. Liquidity is strong at just under EUR 4.1 billion, and indeed, with record bookings over the past couple of weeks, we've seen that figure improve further to well in excess of EUR 4.4 billion at the moment. Net debt at the end of the quarter, as I said, well down, despite EUR 1.3 billion in CapEx. We've got a lot of demands on the cash over the next 12 to 15 months, so we're gonna repay EUR 1.6 billion in maturing bonds between March and August of this calendar year. Of course, we've got peak CapEx trailing out at the end of FY24.
Our plan is to finance all of that out of our cash resources and, at the same time, target a net debt zero position by the back end of FY24. On current developments, while bookings still remain somewhat closer in than they were in spring of 2020 pre-COVID, we're comfortable with the visibility that we have that we'll deliver 168 million passengers this year. Q4, however, as is often the case at this time of year, particularly when there is no Easter in March, will be loss-making. That said, in recent weeks, we've seen strong demand and pricing into Easter and the summer of 2023.
As Michael already said, we believe that the strong American presence in Europe this summer with lots of dollars to spend will continue to drive demand for traffic. Equally, Asians, after having had a lockdown for 3 years, are starting to return in numbers. We have a very strong unit cost advantage over everybody else, and we believe that with our Gamechanger order, which saw us with 84 aircraft in the fleet and hopefully just under 100 at the back end of this financial year, will enable us, with our strong hedge book, to grow strongly into the summer of 2023. Market gains have increased significantly over the past couple of years, and we're well on track to deliver 225 million customers by FY26.
Just dwelling a little bit more on those market share gains. You can see, for example, in Italy, a market in which we were already a clear leader, we now have over 40% market share, 14 points increase on where we previously were. Poland, again, just under 40% market share, head and shoulders above everybody else. Ireland, 60%, an almost 10 percentage point increase. Even in Spain, we were already the market share leader.
We've grown from 21% to 23%, we believe there's an awful lot more of this to do over the next few years as we grow from 168 million customers by another 10% this year to 185 million and then up to 225 million customers, which is a 50% increase on our pre-COVID. Just to summarize, we're well on track to deliver 168 million passengers in the current financial year, a 13% increase on pre-COVID. There will be a loss in Q4 with no Easter. Easter is now in Q1 of FY24.
As we guided, on the fourth of January, we now expect profit after tax pre-exceptionals to be in a range of EUR 1.325 billion-EUR 1.425 billion. That, of course, is very much reliant on there being no adverse COVID, or war in Ukraine issues between now and then. Bookings remain robust, into the summer of 2023, where we're targeting 185 million passengers next year. As we said, with the market shares that we have, with the long-term deals that we're doing, we expect to hit 225 million passengers by FY26. Our strong balance sheet and our cost advantage will continue to make us the long-term winner, in the European aviation market.
With that, I think we maybe move to questions and answers, please.
Michael, can we begin by discussing Ryanair's ESG performance? What are the Q3 highlights?
I think the things we'd point to in Q3 is firstly, the Gamechanger fleet has risen to 84 aircraft. We've signed up our third SAF supply deal with Shell, which is very significant. 360,000 tons of SAFs in Dublin and Stansted between 2025 and 2030. We started the retrofit of the winglets on the NG fleet. That's an investment program over $200 million, but that will reduce fuel consumption by a further 1.5%. I think we're proud that we continue to be the number 1 rated European ESG airline by Sustainalytics.
What is Ryanair's job creation plan for the next few years?
Significant, but I think if we look closer in this summer, as we grow by another 10%, to 185 million passengers next year, we're already very well-resourced. We've got over 1,000 cadets in our training schools, and we've got lots of cabin crew either coming out of courses or going into courses, well ahead of next summer. When we look beyond that, we plan to create about 6,000 new jobs as we grow to 225 million customers. That'll be focused on the likes of cadets, apprentice engineers, new IT developers for our labs, all across Europe.
Indeed, we've been investing heavily in maintenance over the past year, where we've already announced new hangar facilities in the likes of Shannon in the west of Ireland, Kaunas in Lithuania, and Malta, and we would expect to have more of these over the next number of weeks and months.
What's the latest update from your CSAT scores?
yeah, the CSAT scores continue to improve. We averaged 83% for the first half of the year. Those figures went up to 86% in the third quarter. We're particularly pleased with the highest figure that was recorded was in respect to crew friendliness on board our aircraft, which is now running at 95% of customer satisfaction. Very strong numbers, very strong performance.
Shifting focus slightly, Ryanair's market shares are rising. Where are the notable gains?
Well, all across Europe, but if I was to pick a few markets, as, particularly I'd point to Italy, where we now have over 40% market share, 14 points increase from where we were. Poland now standing at 40% market share, well ahead of everybody else. Dublin, 60%. Spain, as I said during the presentation, up at 23% from 21. We continue to grow all across Europe.
Do you expect the ATC disruptions from last year to continue into next year?
We expect ATC to continue to be difficult during the summer peak. We think the airports will be okay. In particular, we point to German and French ATC. We had the first French ATC strike last week, caused the cancellation of 40 flights, delays, we took about 10% of our flights were delayed. We think French ATC will continue to be a problem this year. There will be pressure on German airspace, we're not confident the German ATC provider will be able to resource that. I think the solution to this in the short and near term is for the EU to take charge or to protect overflights during period of ATC strikes.
Protecting overflights would lay the burden of disruption on that country who has the ATC strikes and would protect the single market and protect those passengers who have nothing to do with the country where the ATC strike is taking place. We'll keep campaigning both ourselves and as A4E for protection of the overflights.
Neil, where are you focusing your summer 2023 growth?
Well, significant growth this summer. We'll be operating at about 125% of pre-COVID capacity. We've already announced 230 new routes, which brings us up to 2,450 routes in total for this summer. We've got 3 new bases in Belfast, Lanzarote, and in Tenerife. Believe, you know, you'll see more of Ryanair all across Europe, in the U.K., in Ireland, in Portugal, Poland, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, and elsewhere.
You referenced weakness in U.K. outbound and Ireland provincial U.K. bookings in your market update on the fourth of January. Has this continued?
No, thankfully, we weren't sure whether it would or not. Over the last 2 weekends where we've seen record bookings, we've done our first weekend where we've taken 2 million bookings, for over 1 weekend. The strongest performing market for the last 2 weekends was UK outbound and Irish-UK provincial flights. We think the disruption in the first week or 2 of January may have been somewhat related to the widespread strikes that they were having in the UK with trains, bus drivers, nurses, et cetera. Hopefully, the strength that we've seen on UK outbound over the last 2 weeks or over the last 2 weekends will continue.
How are Easter and Summer 2023 bookings and fares tracking
Well, as Michael just said, we've been taking record bookings, so demand is robust into both Easter and the summer period. We expect that this will continue. It's underpinned by the capacity reductions in Europe. While we're growing strongly, a lot of capacity still hasn't come back to pre-COVID levels. We'd be hopeful that fares will continue to increase into FY24.
Would you consider M&A as part of your growth plans?
It's not a fundamental part of our growth plan. We don't expect to be involved in any M&A. With our aircraft orders from Boeing, we expect to deliver very strong organic growth out to 225 million passengers annually over the next, three or four years.
How will you achieve that 225 million pax target by FY26?
Underpinning that's gonna be our 210 Gamechanger order book, of which we had 84 of those aircraft in the fleet at the end of December. We continue to see huge opportunities. There's been a structural change in capacity across Europe. We're putting lots of traffic restoration, traffic growth deals in place all across Europe. We've already talked about the market share gains that we've made. We would anticipate all of that coupled with the very strong balance sheet, the hedging book that we have, and the cost advantage that we're in a very strong position to deploy traffic all across Europe and grow profitably to EUR 225 million by FY26.
Shifting onto your fleet, Michael, do you have any concerns about Boeing's ability to deliver aircraft ahead of peak summer?
Yes, we do. I mean, Boeing have recently improved at the rate and flow of deliveries, but we still think they're facing challenges. We're not sure we'll get the 100. We're supposed to get 124 aircraft by the end of April. At the moment, we're planning for about 114 aircraft through the peak summer months. If we can get more of those aircraft from Boeing before the end of May, we'll take them. If they dribble into or they get delayed into June or July, we won't take those deliveries. We'll postpone them to the Easter or to the winter.
Any update on discussions with Boeing about a follow-on order?
No, there's been no real change in what we previously said to you. Discussions ended in 2021. We remain available if the price is right. In the meantime, Boeing have gone on and lost key orders in Europe with the likes of Air France, Transavia, over in Australia with Qantas and a number of the Chinese airlines. As things stand, we're under absolutely no pressure. We've got more than enough aircraft in the order book, and indeed, we've extended the A320 leases out to 2028. We have no difficulty delivering our growth over the next few years, but remain available at the right price.
Focusing on the Q3 results, Ryanair reported a profit after tax of EUR 211 million. What were the highlights?
I think the strong traffic recovery. We saw traffic in Q3 up 24% on Q3 of FY2022, that was affected by Omicron over that Christmas period. Fares were 14% ahead of where they were pre-COVID. Strong traffic recovery, strong pricing. Ancillary revenue continues to perform well, and we're, you know, averaging around €22.50 per passenger in the third quarter. Operating costs are well under control. I think the fact that we have for the first nine months of the year, we're delivering a unit cost per pax ex-fuel of €30 is a very strong signal of our the cost discipline here. Operating costs were, however, up 36%, and that was driven by 52% higher fuel bill, the restoration of cabin crew of our crew pay cuts in December, and 24% traffic growth.
Again, I go back though that we take considerable comfort in the fact that year to date, unit cost ex-fuel are just €30 per passenger, way ahead of any other airline in Europe. We think that's why in so many markets, competitors are withdrawing capacity from markets where they're trying to compete with us in the past.
Neil, what are the key drivers of ancillary revenue performance?
Continues to be the kind of things we've seen for the first nine months of the year. Strong demand for the likes of priority boarding, reserved seating, and onboard spend, and duty free have rebounded as traffic has recovered over the past nine months. Hopefully we'll continue to see that for the coming months.
What's your current fuel hedging position?
As we said, we're 88% hedged for the remainder of FY23 at approximately $71 per barrel. We recently increased our H1 FY24 hedging from 50% to 60%, but lowering the price from $92 to about an average of $90 per barrel. We think this gives Ryanair a huge cost advantage over our EU competitor airlines, both for the remainder of this winter and into the summer of FY2024, where jet fuel, spot jet fuel is currently a high $90 per barrel.
Is your aircraft CapEx hedged?
Yeah, it's very well hedged. We've locked that in at 124 on the euro dollar, which gives a significant value to the order book. Indeed that will be seen over the life of the aircraft.
Let's turn to your balance sheet. Is net debt reducing?
We've seen very strong liquidity. Gross cash, which was EUR 4.1 billion at the 31st of December, with strong bookings over recent weeks, that's now risen to EUR 4.4 billion. Net debt has fallen in the third or the third quarter. We finished the 31st of December at just under EUR 1 billion of net debt. That's down from EUR 1.45 billion at the 31st of March 2022. That's despite spending over EUR 1.3 billion in CapEx. Nearly all of you know nearly all of our 737 fleet is owned and is debt-free, which means we've a widening aircraft ownership cost advantage over many of our competitors who have high exposure to operating leases and rising interest rate costs.
Our focus overall though at the cash generation is to repay EUR 1.6 billion in maturing bonds in March and in August of 2023, fund this year's CapEx, and then try to reduce net debt to 0 by March 2024.
Any update on your CapEx guidance?
Yes, changed a little bit from the last time, I was presenting on one of these calls. We will have slightly lower CapEx now for FY23, EUR 2 billion instead of EUR 2.3 billion. That's all to do with just the timing of aircraft CapEx from Q4 into the first half of next year. As a result, peak up, peak CapEx will now be next year where we have EUR 2.5 billion instead of EUR 2.2 billion.
How are your finances CapEx in the maturing bonds you referenced?
Well, I mean, mostly with from our internally generated cash flows. The plan is to repay those 2 bonds in March and April with from our internal cash balances. As regards aircraft financing, again, we think we'll do most of it through internally generated strong cash flows. We remain a solid BBB investment grade rating. We have a largely unencumbered fleet of existing aircraft that gives us tremendous access to financing markets, bonds, JOLCOs, et cetera. We'll continue to opportunistically look at the lowest cost option so that we widen the aircraft ownership and financing advantage we have over all of our competitors in Europe over the next 4 or 5 years.
Are there plans to distribute funds to shareholders in the near term?
No. As Michael just alluded to there, the plans for the next 12 to 15 months at the back end of FY24 is to finance CapEx and maturing bonds. We will see what happens after that.
Finally, Michael, what's the group's FY23 outlook?
Well, as we updated the market on the 4th of January. We've raised the full year PAT pre-exceptional. It now operates in a range of between EUR 1.325 billion and EUR 1.425 billion. I would, however, caution that remains hugely subject to adverse news flows such as COVID-19 or the war in Ukraine. That is because bookings remain slightly closer in than they were in the spring of 2020. However, we're well on track, and I think we have good visibility now for our full year traffic rising to 168 million passengers. That's 13% up on our pre-COVID traffic. We're the only major airline in Europe that has delivered strong growth.
In fact, most of them continue are operating at significantly less than their pre-COVID capacity. I would remind everybody that quarter four will be loss-making. There's no Easter in March. We continue to be wary of any exposure to short-term adverse news flows, presumably on COVID or Ukraine, but also on any other curveball that might emerge out of left field over the coming between now and the end of March.
Any update on FY24?
Look, I think it's a little bit too early to get into guiding for FY24, but what I will say is that we would expect traffic to be up another 10% to 185 million into next year. Bookings have been robust into Easter and the summer to date, so we'd be hopeful that we will see fares increase. Obviously subject to no adverse events in relation to COVID and the war in Ukraine. At this stage, as I said, too early to give you more color, and we'll update you on the full year results in May.
Michael, Neil, thank you.
Thank you very much. We look forward to speaking to you all on this morning's conference call, which I think is scheduled for 10:00. 10:00 Irish time. Look forward to speaking with you then. Thank you very much.