Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ryanair 2026 full year results conference call. I'm Michael O'Leary, Group CEO. I'm joined this morning by Neil Sorahan, the Group CFO. As you've seen earlier this morning, we published our full year results for FY March 2026, reporting a full year profit of EUR 2.26 billion, up 40% over the prior year profit after tax of EUR 1.16 billion. Highlights of the past 12 months have included traffic growth of 4% to 208 million despite delivery delays on 29 Boeing aircraft. Revenue per passenger was up 7%. Unit cost rose only 1%. The good news is that we've hedged 80% of our jet fuel out to March 2027 at about $67 per barrel. We have now taken delivery this summer of all 210 of the Boeing 737 Gamechangers.
We have 647 aircraft in the fleet at the year-end. We've recently done a deal with CFM to purchase 30 spare LEAP-1B engines, and we have declared a final dividend of EUR 0.195 per share. This will be payable in September subject to AGM approval. I want to touch on a couple of themes over the last 12 months as follows. Scheduled revenues increased 14% as traffic grew 4% with 10% higher fares. That means we recovered the 7% decline in fares we suffered in the prior year. Over the last two years, average fares are up just about 3%. Ancillary revenues rose 6%. Operating costs rose 6%, but they're up just 1% per passenger, again emphasizing the extraordinary cost discipline that Ryanair delivers year after year.
Just prior to the year-end, we received notification from the Italian Competition Authority, the AGCM, of a bizarre fine in the amount of EUR 256 million. This fine makes very little sense as it comes less than 12 months after the Milan Court of Appeal had ruled that Ryanair's direct distribution undoubtedly benefits consumers and leads to lower air fares. We believe there is no basis to this AGCM ruling, which somehow contradicts the precedent court case. That's why we've only provided 33% of that fine as an exceptional item in this year's numbers. Clearly the big issue confronting our industry at the moment is the conflict in the Middle East. That has created enormous economic uncertainty, not least of which, much higher oil prices.
While we're 80% hedged at about $67 per barrel, our unhedged 20%, that price has doubled from March to April and May. Europe remains, however, relatively well-supplied with jet fuel. Europe is getting most of its supplies from West Africa, Americas, and Norway, and we don't believe, and in fact, our suppliers have confirmed, at the moment they're pretty comfortable and confident that there'll be no disruption to jet fuel supplies in Europe up to the end of June, middle of July, and we would expect that to roll forward. However, the big issue confronting us is global jet fuel spot prices have spiked up to above $150 per barrel. If they remain elevated at those levels for the remainder of the year, that will have an impact on our earnings.
As I said, we are very well-placed to deal with this. Ryanair is the best-hedged EU airline. We have 80% of our jet fuel hedged out to March 2027 at $67 a barrel, and that will, we believe, insulate most of our earnings for the next 12 months in what are very volatile oil markets and will widen our cost advantage over our EU competitors who are less well-hedged. The balance sheet remains strong. We have a BBB credit rating. We've an unencumbered fleet of 620 aircraft. At the end of March, our gross cash was EUR 3.6 billion, despite spending EUR 1.9 billion last year on capital expenditure, EUR 1.2 billion on debt repayments, and over EUR 900 million in shareholder returns. Liquidity is further boosted by the group's RCF revolving credit facility, which has just over EUR 1 billion undrawn.
Net cash was EUR 2.1 billion at the year-end, which leaves the group well-positioned to repay our final bond in the next 10 days of EUR 1.2 billion, and that will leave the group effectively debt-free. Over the last 12 months, we have purchased and canceled some 2% of the issued share capital, just over 20 million shares. When we finish this buyback program around the time of the AGM in September, we will have retired 38% of Ryanair's issued share capital since 2008.
Over the coming year, however, our priorities will be, one, to fund this May final bond repayment of EUR 1.2 billion, fund the MAX, the MAX-10 aircraft CapEx, also fund our dividends and the balance of the buyback program from our internal cash flows while we rebuild our gross cash balances back to EUR 4 billion, which is what we had roughly at the time when we entered COVID. Touching briefly on fleet, our year-end fleet of 640 aircraft now includes 210 Gamechangers, and that will facilitate about 4% traffic growth to approximately 216 million this year to March 2027.
Boeing now expect the MAX-10 certification to take place in late summer 2026, and they've given us written confirmation that they now expect to deliver Ryanair's first 15 MAX-10 aircraft in the spring in 2027, in line with the contract delivery dates which run from January to about the end of April 2027. With 300 of these incredibly fuel-efficient aircraft on order between now and 2034, these aircraft offer us 20% more seats but burn 20% less fuel. They will transform Ryanair's cost advantage and our operating economics for the next decade. Demand, despite the current conflict in the Middle East, remains robust. Volumes are strong, although the booking window in the last two months has moved closer in than it was this time last year. Ryanair is operating 130 new routes this summer, and three new bases in Rabat, Tirana, and Trapani.
Our scarce FY 2027 capacity growth is being allocated to those countries and regions and airports who are cutting aviation taxes and are incentivizing traffic growth. Places like Albania, Bratislava in Slovakia, regional Italy, Morocco, and Sweden. We're switching flights away from uncompetitive high tax markets like Austria, Belgium, Germany, and regional Spain. We believe near term fuel prices are likely to remain high and therefore we'd encourage all passengers, if you're thinking of traveling this summer, book early and book quickly because we think prices will rise as we move through the summer. Should briefly mention that the board and myself have been engaged in discussions on extending my employment contract from 2028 out to 2032. We have reached outline terms on that extension. Under that contract extension, I would have the right to purchase 10 million share options.
These will be struck at market prices back in February before the recent decline, the recent Iran war related decline. These options will only vest if we deliver some very ambitious profit and share price growth over the next six years. Which will create, if we hit them, very substantial value for all shareholders. The board will be consulting with our major shareholders on these outline terms, and we will provide a further update in due course. Touching briefly on outlook, we expect FY 2027 traffic to grow 4% to 260 million passengers. We do not expect to be cutting flights or schedules because of higher oil prices. With 80% of our 2027 jet fuel already hedged at $67 per barrel, the price of our unhedged 20% has spiked due to the Middle East conflict.
Our EU enviro taxes will rise again by another EUR 300 million this year to a bill of approximately EUR 1.4 billion, which makes EU air travel even less competitive than it was before. We continue to call on Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission to actually start delivering on making EU air travel more competitive, the best place to start would be abolishing ETS and reforming ATC. However, some maintenance costs are rising this year. We have the aging NG fleet and the midlife hospital visits on the LEAP engines. There will be some crew pay increases agreed this year. We have our first successes.
We've concluded an agreement with the Italian pilots and their union on a five-year CLA, and we expect that would be the benchmark for a number of other follow-on agreements with both pilots and cabin crew across Europe. However, if unhedged fuel prices remain at current elevated levels through the remainder of FY 2027, then we think our unit cost this year could rise by a mid-single- digit percentage. Thus far into summer 2026, travel demand remains robust, although bookings are closer in than last year, and this reduces our visibility. Pricing in recent weeks through the summer has eased slightly in response to the economic uncertainty caused by higher oil prices. There's been some media coverage fear of fuel shortages and the risk of inflation adversely impacting consumer spending.
As always, Ryanair will use our considerable unit cost leadership, our considerable fuel hedging advantage to be load factor active, yield passive strategy, therefore we will drive that traffic growth Ancillary revenue with our lower unit costs. With the first week of Easter falling into March, which benefited Q4 of FY 2026, we now expect Q1 fares will be behind by about a mid-single-digit percentage, Q1 FY 2026, which had the benefit of the full Easter in it. With constrained EU short-haul capacity, we had originally expected summer fares, [S] 2026 fares, to rise modestly ahead of last year. We now think with Q2 pricing, well, is now trending broadly flat, the final outcome will therefore be totally dependent on the pricing of close-in peak summer 2026 bookings and fares.
With zero H2 visibility at this stage and significant risk of higher fuel prices on our unhedged 20%, it's far too early to provide meaningful FY 2027 profit guidance at this time. Neil, do you wanna take us through the slide presentation?
I will. Thank you, Michael, good morning, everybody. Ryanair, as we all know, has the lowest fare and the lowest costs, indeed that cost gap between ourselves and our competitors continues to widen. This year we will grow traffic by 4% to 216 million passengers. We're very proud of our customer satisfaction score of 89% in the past year, which is a 3-point increase on where we were the year before. As Michael already said, we've got 300 MAX- 10s on order. The first of those start to come in 2027. These will now drive a decade of growth. That, coupled with our financial strength and our lowest cost, continues to make Ryanair the long-term winner in our industry. As you can see, this summer we have 95 bases.
That includes our three new bases in Rabat, Tirana, and Trapani. We're operating a fleet of just under 650 aircraft and delivering 216 million passengers. 4% traffic growth in the current financial year. I think we spent a little bit of time on this cost slide. I mean, this is obviously the secret sauce for Ryanair. As you can see, since before COVID, we've seen the gap between ourselves and our competitors widen significantly. We focus in on our two closest competitors. They've gone from a gap of 26% and 71% higher cost than Ryanair to today, well in the 70%s and over 150%.
And I expect that gap to continue to widen into FY 2027 and beyond, continuing to widen Ryanair's competitive advantage in Europe. On the results themselves, a strong set of numbers. We saw traffic increase by 4%, just over 208 million passengers at a flat 94% load factor. As Michael already said, we more than recovered all of the fare decline from last year with a 10% fare increase to EUR 51. Total revenue grew by 11% to just over EUR 15.54 billion, and that included a 6% increase in our Ancillary revenue, which put in another strong performance growing to almost EUR 5 billion. Costs performed well, up just 6% to EUR 13.09 billion or just 1% on a passenger basis.
As a result of all of that, we reported record profitability of EUR 2.26 billion, a 40% increase on last year. The balance sheet, as always, is rock solid, a fortress balance sheet. We enjoy very strong investor ratings from Fitch and S&P, BBB+. We've got 620 fully unencumbered Boeing 737s on our balance sheet and lots of liquidity. We finished last year with EUR 2.1 billion net cash, and that places us in a very strong position to repay our last remaining EUR 1.2 billion bond Monday of next week, the 25th of May. We're looking forward to becoming effectively debt-free at that point in time. Michael, you might take us through current developments.
Sure. Thanks, Neil. As we said already, FY 2027 traffic up 4% to EUR 216 million. We don't see any risk to that apart from fuel disruptions. A constrained capacity enables us to engage in much more active churn discussions with airports. We're switching capacity away from high-cost airports or governments who are raising taxes to those states, regions, and airports who are abolishing taxes and cutting fees to stimulate growth. FY 2027 jet fuel is 80% hedged at about $67 per barrel. That unhedged 20%, however, has doubled in price from $70 to $140 per barrel in April and May due to the Middle East conflict, and like everybody else, we hope that conflict will end sooner rather than later. We repaid the final EUR 1.2 billion bond on the 25th of May in 10 days' time.
We're now planning for the delivery of the first 15 MAX- 10s in the spring of 2027. We think those aircraft will transform our economics for the next decade. As Neil said, we've recently agreed a multi-year engine parts deal with CFM to support the development of two in-house MRO engine shops. The location of first will be announced later on this year. We believe that the MAX -10s and taking the engineering in-house will set us on a decade of low-fare profitable growth to 300 million passengers by FY 2034. Neil, do you want to take us through hedging?
I will, I think this again is very important in the volatile oil markets that we're operating in at the moment. As you can see, we're particularly well-hedged across FY 2027. We've got jet fuel, what we put into the tanks, so fully effective hedges in place, at a rate of $668 a metric tonne or, if you wanna put it into barrels, $67 a barrel. That's down from the $760 we were paying last year. The other side of the coin when it comes to fuel is the euro/dollar. Again, well hedged there. We've locked in 80% of the current year at EUR 1.15, and indeed, we've put a floor in place for the first half of FY 2028, almost 30% at EUR 1.20. I would also draw your attention to our CapEx hedging.
We've got 150 firm aircraft in our 300 order book for the MAX -10s with Boeing, and I'm delighted to say we've now increased the hedging on that keenly priced order book to 60% at rates just over EUR 1.23. We're locking in significant cash flow and P&L savings with that. Moving on to Boeing. Again, at the end of the year, we had all of the 210 game changers in the fleet, so a fleet of almost 650 aircraft. Boeing, having left the shore 29 aircraft last summer, recovered that well over the winter and ensured that we had all of those very important 16% more fuel efficient game changers in the fleet at the end of the year.
We're now very much, as Michael said, working on the basis that the first MAX- 10s will be joining our fleet in the spring of next year, having been certified by the FAA and the EASA most likely towards the back end of this summer or into the early fall. Those aircraft are gonna underpin a decade of growth for Ryanair to 300 million passengers by FY 2034. You can see the growth coming through here. It's fairly constrained growth. We're growing by 4% in the current year to 216 million passengers.
Slightly slower growth than we'd previously indicated out to about FY 2032, and then we close in the gap to get to 300 million passengers by FY 2034 with a very fuel efficient and larger aircraft. We've recently done a deal with CFM in relation to our engine shops. We're moving forward well with that project. We now have a multi-year deal in relation to spare parts, not only for the LEAP engines, but for the 7B engines as well. This will enable us to bring all of our maintenance on engines, the only maintenance that we don't currently do in-house. We plan to build two engine shops, the first of which should be operational in early 2029. The second hopefully operational somewhere in 2030 or soon thereafter.
This again, thanks to the strong balance sheet that Ryanair has, means that we can reduce costs, cost creep in the industry, and get a significant competitive advantage over all of our competitor airlines in Europe. With that, Michael, maybe you'll take us through outlook, please.
Sure. Outlook as, again, as I've kind of summarized previously, traffic up 4% to 216 million passengers. We now expect costs will rise, mainly due to the unhedged 20% of fuel, a EUR 300 million increase in enviro taxes, then some forwarding or up-fronting of maintenance and new five-year crew pay deals. Again, we think that will be something of the order of mid-single -digits unless the war finishes early and oil prices soften. Summer 2026 demand is robust. Bookings are moving closer in. We're seeing stronger bookings and the yields closer in, a little bit of weakness further out through June, July, August. We think that's passenger hesitancy at the moment, we think that will come through in strong close-in bookings. We will remain load factor active, yield passive.
We do expect more competitor failures in Europe this year, particularly if oil prices remain higher for longer. We now expect Q1 fares to be down mid-single -digit, again, partly the move of the first half of Easter into March and a bit of passenger hesitancy making bookings. Q2 fares trends are broadly flat. Again, the final outcome will depend heavily on close-in peak summer 2026 bookings. Far too early to give any full-year profit after tax guidance. But we believe over the medium term, per the MAX -10 order will facilitate very strong growth at EUR 300 million by FY 2034. With that, Jamie, we're going to hand over to the Q&A.
Michael, Neil, good morning. Starting with your results, Ryanair reported full-year profits up 40% to EUR 2.26 billion. What were the key drivers?
Very pleased. Record profitability in the year just ended. Key drivers would be the 4% increase in traffic to over 208 million passengers at a 10% higher fare. We recovered all of the 7% fare decline in the prior year. I'm particularly happy with the cost performance where we saw unit costs up just 1%. Ancillaries put in another very solid performance, increasing by 6%, almost EUR 5 billion. That's EUR 24 per passenger.
Does Ryanair hedge crude or jet fuel, and what's your current hedging?
As you know, we hedge just jet fuel into plane, and we've 80% of our FY 2027 jet fuel hedged at about $67 per barrel. The FY 2027 OpEx is 80% hedged at about EUR 1.15 to the euro, and H1 FY 2028, that's in next year, is almost 30% hedged at a EUR 1.10 to a EUR 1.20, sorry, to the euro.
Moving to the balance sheet. Ryanair has a strong balance sheet. What are the key call outs?
Yeah. Fortress balance sheet. I refer clearly to the S&P and Fitch BBB+ ratings. Very strong investment grade and our 620 fully unencumbered Boeing 737s on the balance sheet. We finished the prior year, 31 March, with a very strong cash position of EUR 3.6 billion gross cash and indeed, EUR 2.1 billion net cash. That puts us in a very strong position now to repay our final bond, EUR 1.2 billion, on the 25th of May, so next week. You know, supplementing our liquidity on top of that is the EUR 1 billion undrawn under our revolving credit facility. We're in a unique position where we're using our own cash to pay down our debt and not taking on expensive debt or leases as a result of that.
What are your balance sheet priorities for the next 12 months?
I think, as we've said, one, repay the EUR 1.2 billion bond in May. Two, continue to fund or complete the share buyback program, which will run up to about the September AGM, pay the second dividend in September. Three, fund the PDPs for the MAX- 10 CapEx, fund CapEx for the two engine MROs. We're ordering spares and tooling. Rebuild gross cash back to EUR 4 billion, so that we're ready and able to confront any surprises that will occur as they inevitably do in this industry. Thereafter, any additional surplus cash, we will continue to return to shareholders via dividends and buybacks.
Looking out longer term, how will you finance the MAX- 10s and engine shops?
Well, as always, lowest cost wins. In Ryanair, we always look for the lowest source of finance. This year, it's cash. Thereafter, I think we'll probably use a combination of cash, possibly go back to the bond markets when the pricing is right and tap our friends in the banking market. We can, thanks to the strength of our balance sheet, be completely opportunistic. We'll leverage that to make sure we get the lowest costs.
What's FY 2027 CapEx guidance?
Roughly about EUR 2 billion, but that's subject to the timing of the engine shop CapEx.
Is the MAX -10 order book hedged?
Yeah, it's well hedged. We've now hedged about 60% of the firm orders. That's 150 of the 300 order book that we have with Boeing. We've locked that in at euro/dollar rates of better than EUR 1.23. This is a very keenly priced order book, and we're now locking in in EUR terms even cheaper aircraft and reducing clearly our CapEx as a result of that as well.
Shifting to shareholder returns, when's the next dividend payable?
There's a final dividend of EUR 0.195 per ordinary share. That'll be payable in September, subject to AGM approval in September.
How is the EUR 750 million buyback progressing?
It's going very well. We're about 80% of the way through the buyback at this point in time. That's almost 23 million shares at a price of just under EUR 26.50. As Michael said, that'll probably take us out somewhere into September to finish that off. When we finish that, we'll have, you know, returned nearly 40% of issued share capital to our shareholders since 2008. You know, pretty good return.
On fleet and growth, what's the latest on the MAX- 10 certification?
Boeing expect the MAX- 10 to be certified later this year. Certainly, either at the end of the third quarter or early fourth quarter. Boeing have already confirmed in writing they expect to deliver us our first 15 MAX- 10 aircraft between January and May of 2027. That will enable us to grow our traffic from 216 million in the current year to about 223 million in FY 2028, and over the next decade to grow to 300 million passengers by 2034.
What's your views on European short-haul capacity?
Oh, I think it remains constrained for some significant time to come, definitely out to 2030 if not beyond that. We see the two large OEMs, Boeing and Airbus, continue to be behind on their order books, and it's gonna take some time to catch up. The Pratt & Whitney GTF engine issue is gonna bubble on for at least two or three more years. Consolidation is continuing in Europe. We've got the TAP acquisition underway at this point in time. The recent spike in fuel is putting a lot of weaker carriers into a very precarious situation. We've seen in the U.S., Spirit go out of business in the recent past.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some failures, over this winter as the high fuel costs hit our unhedged and unprofitable competitors in Europe.
Where is Ryanair most focused on growing?
I mean, I you know, we have scarce capacity growth ourselves, and we're allocating that through these churn negotiations to those regions and airports who are abolishing taxes or cutting airport fees to stimulate growth. This year you've seen us switch aircraft away from Vienna in Austria. We're closing a seven aircraft base in Berlin. We've announced the closure of a two aircraft base in Thessaloniki this autumn. We're switching aircraft out of Belgium and regional Spain. Where are they going? They're going to much more strongly growing markets. Albania, where the government has abolished an, it's a aviation tax. The airport has introduced a very exciting growth incentive scheme. Regional Italy, where they're abolishing the municipal tax. Slovakia, where they've new government has done a remarkable job.
They have abolished their aviation taxes, cut ATC fees, and the airport has introduced a very innovative growth incentive scheme. That's one of the reasons why Bratislava in April has reported 170% traffic growth while nearby Vienna has reported 8% traffic decline. We intend to continue to switch capacity away from high tax, high cost airports like Dublin to low tax or zero tax low cost airports elsewhere in Europe. This summer we're operating 130 new routes and also three new bases. Rabat in Morocco, Tirana in Albania and Trapani in Southern Italy, I'm pleased to report they're all booking very well this summer.
Moving to some other areas, what's the latest on your engine shop project?
Yeah. This project's going very well. As we announced in Q4, we now have a multi-year spares agreement with CFM. This is not only for the LEAP engines, but for the 7B engines as well. We would hope to announce the first of our two engine shop locations over the next few months. When that's announced, we will hopefully be breaking ground sometime in 2027 with the first engine shop becoming operational early 2029, the second one in the early 2030s. Moving along nicely.
Do you expect a shortage of jet fuel this summer due to the Middle East war?
No, we don't. We don't know how long the Straits of Hormuz will be closed either. Most of Europe's jet fuel comes from West Africa, the U.S.A. and Norway. Our fuel suppliers have recently as this week confirmed no supply disruption right out to the middle of July, and the situation continues to improve. We're 80% hedged this year at $67 a barrel. Those hedges are worth more than EUR 2 billion to us at current prices. As a result of that, we don't expect to change our traffic growth projections this summer. While many of our competitors are reducing capacity to limit their exposure to unhedged fuel, we won't. We expect to continue to grow 4% to 216 million passengers this year.
Will Ryanair's cost advantage over competitor airlines widen in FY 2027?
Yeah, I'd expect that cost gap to widen as it has done for some time. I mean, you only have to look at slide four in our investor presentation, which we had up there a little while ago, to see how that gap has widened between before COVID and where we are today. If I look into FY 2027, Michael talked just there about our 80% hedged fuel. I mean, that's a huge competitive advantage that we have where we're locking in cheaper fuel on our 80% on 80% of the volume this year. I would also reference the fact that we now have another 29 Gamechangers and 210 in total in our fleet this summer. These are 16% more fuel efficient aircraft, 4% more seats, so driving saving opportunities for the group.
We've also seen taxes reduced in places like regional Italy, over in Sweden and Slovakia, and elsewhere. That's giving us benefits on the cost side coupled with the very good deals that our commercial team are doing thanks to the airport churn negotiations. There are some headwinds coming at us as well. You know, 20% of our fuel is unhedged. If it were to remain at the current elevated levels, that would obviously have a very adverse impact on our costs into the current financial year. We're also seeing some labor inflation coming through.
On top of the extra head count that we're hiring for the MAX- 10s coming in, we've also got ahead of some of the CLA negotiations, done some new multi-year deals with a bit of front loading. Although there's more modest inflation on the back end, which will be offset by MAX- 10 productivity. I think just talking about the MAX-1 0, I mean, the first of these aircraft start to come in in the spring of next year. They're 228 seats compared to 189 seats. That's 20% larger aircraft driving more efficiencies on a per passenger basis across airports, across maintenance. They have warranties. Across crewing. And at the same time, generating more ancillary revenue opportunities.
We're very much looking forward to getting these aircraft into the fleet, which will drive further cost savings over the next number of years.
On ESG, what's Ryanair's FY 2026 ESG highlights?
I mean, we continue to be the leading, industry-leading ESG ratings, and we're improving our performance. CDP recently upgraded Ryanair's climate score from an A- to an A. MSCI have rated us A, and we're ranked the number one large Cap airline for ESG performance by Sustainalytics. We're not content with that, so we'll continue to invest in improving our ESG performance. As I said, in the last 12 months we've taken delivery of 34 game-changer aircraft, 4% more seats, burn 16% less fuel. We have now retrofitted winglets to about 75% of the NG fleet. They reduce fuel by nearly 2% and reduce noise by 6%.
Most of all, we're very pleased that we delivered, in the last 12 months, our record customer satisfaction scores up 3% from 86% to 89%, and we've set ourselves an ambitious target to get to 90% customer approval ratings in the current 12 months.
Lastly, on outlook, what's the group's FY 2027 outlook?
As we already said, we expect traffic now to grow by 4%, 216 million passengers. Probably see about 6% growth into the summer, 2% into the second half of the year. Costs, due to the 20% unhedged fuel, we'll probably see a little bit of an increase. We also have higher environmental costs coming through this year, an extra EUR 300 million increasing our environmental bill to EUR 1.4 billion. Be a little bit of maintenance on the aging NG fleet and some hospital visits on the LEAP engines, and then of course those crew pay increases that we talked about. Looking towards demand, summer 2026 demand continues to be robust. You know, we're happy with how bookings are coming in on a daily basis.
That said, the booking curve is somewhat closer in than it typically would be at this time of year, so visibility isn't as good as usual. Ryanair, however, as is always the case, will continue to operate our load factor active, yield passive strategy, which will drive cost savings, will drive ancillary revenue opportunities and grow traffic. I also wouldn't be surprised as I previously said, to see some capacity coming out of the market, particularly into the winter period. Looking into the quarters themselves, Q1 at this point in time, which didn't have a full Easter in it, looks like fares will be down potentially mid-single digits.
A big element of that is due to the fact that we saw the first key travel week of Easter slip into the fourth quarter of last year, where you've seen fares were up 8% in that quarter. There's also a little bit of a consumer hesitancy in there. Looking towards Q2, when we were setting our budgets earlier on this year based on where we thought capacity was gonna go, we originally thought fares would be up maybe a couple of points into the peak summer. They're actually trending broadly flat at the moment. Now, while we don't have full visibility, you know, I think it's fair to say that they won't be up at this point in time. All totally depends on the close-in summer bookings.
We've no visibility into H2, I think it would be unwise to provide profit guidance at this point in time. Beyond that, we're getting very excited about the first MAX- 10s coming into the fleet in the spring of next year. These aircraft with 20% lower fuel, 20% more seats, are gonna drive our sustained profitable growth to 300 million passengers by FY 2034.
Thank you, Neil. Ladies and gentlemen, we've delivered a record year, record traffic, record profits. Clearly at the moment we're going through significant uncertainty given the war in the Middle East and the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. The key fundamentals in Ryanair, which is, one, our fuel is 80% hedged for the next 12 months at $67 a barrel, gives us a huge competitive advantage over our competitors. Two, we are about to repay our final EUR 1.2 billion bonds, leaving the Ryanair Group entirely debt-free, sitting on a fleet of 600 and almost 650 aircraft, completely unencumbered. This is an opportunity. The share price has been falling significantly in the last couple of months in response to the Middle East.
We're continuing with our share buyback, and I think these provide a very attractive entry-level opportunity for people who want to invest in a, you know, what I believe is the fastest-growing, best-run airline in Europe. We have an extensive road show on the across Ireland, the U.K., Europe and North America for the next 12 months next week. If you'd like to have a meeting, please contact us either through the brokers at Davy, Goodbody and Citi or through our IR function here headed by Jamie Donovan. Look forward to seeing you all over the next week, and look forward to delivering another year of exceptional results in the next 12 months. Thank you.