Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Maria, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the TAV Airports Investor Day live webcast to present and discuss the 2025 full year financial results. All participants will be in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Should anyone need assistance during this conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Serkan Kaptan, CEO, and Mr. Karim Ben Salem, CFO. Mr. Kaptan, you may now proceed.
Thank you, Maria. Hello, and welcome to all. Thank you for joining our 2025 full-year webcast presentation. I would like to start by giving you the highlights of the year's traffic first. The year was unfortunately marked by many geopolitical developments. These, of course, have affected, especially the Middle Eastern traffic, negatively. We have lost about 3% of our international traffic due to the geopolitical developments during the year. Strong lira was also a headwind during the year because it makes a Turkish holiday more expensive in euros or dollars. Bodrum, especially Bodrum, felt these effects the most during the year. Antalya, however, is more dominated by all-inclusive packaged tourism, coupled with competitive ticket prices, this makes the destination more affordable.
A shorter and milder winter season also supported the traffic in Antalya, so the international traffic still managed to grow slightly at 1%. You may recall that at the beginning of the year, we had a shifted season where we had cold spring days and were suffering from a decreased traffic. In summertime, due to the unexpected Iran-Israel clash, we suffered some traffic, but because of the milder winter season and delayed winter season, we managed to increase the traffic in September, October, and till mid-November, and managed to grow slightly around 1% for Antalya. In İzmir, which has mostly outbound Turkish traffic or visiting diaspora traffic, we see a strong lira working in our favor. The same goes for Ankara.
Ankara is also being supported by the growth of AJet, which has recently based two new aircraft in Ankara, where we will realize strong growth in Ankara for 2026. AJet is growing in Ankara as part of its hubbing strategy. As you know, they are based in Sabiha Gökçen in Istanbul, the secondary airport, but established their second base in Ankara, connecting almost all central Anatolian traffic via Ankara to international destinations. This strategy is working well. We have seen the output last year in 2025 with 14% international growth. And this year we see that this growth continues very robust. The fleet growth of the other two low-cost carriers, the Turkish low-cost carriers, such as Pegasus and SunExpress, is also supporting both Ankara and İzmir.
SunExpress mainly grows in İzmir, and Pegasus continue growing in Ankara. Almaty international traffic also grew by 7%. This is because of the grounded A321neos in the airport. They continued suffering the Pratt & Whitney engine failure for the A321, and growth was limited to 7%. Normally, we would expect it to grow much more than the 7%. This is because of the high GDP per capita of the country compared to the size of the aviation sector. This year, we believe that we will realize much higher percentages on international growth in Almaty. Georgia. Georgia is also very popular with Turkish, Israeli, and Russian tourists, and their traffic has increased a lot this year.
In 2025, in Georgia, we had a growth of 16%, and we believe that this robust growth will continue in 2026 as well. We see a boom in Georgia, both in terms of tourism and also becoming a regional gateway to other destinations. We have high single-digit growth for the rest of the portfolio, which is a great performance compared to the peer airports as well. When we look at the January results of 2026, we see that the traffic came in very strong in most of our assets. All the international assets grew very high percentages. We see the effects we talked for 2025 in the Turkish airports. The strong Turkish lira is affecting Antalya and Bodrum negatively and İzmir and Ankara positively. We have a strong winter, I would say, for Antalya.
That's why the demand was low in January, but we hope the recovery to be very quick soon. And the growth of low-cost airlines is also affecting İzmir and Ankara in a positive way. Almaty made a strong start to the year with domestic aircraft diverted to international routes. The 15% international growth is closer to the real potential of the airport. Because of, again, the engine problems of A320 in Almaty, Air Astana and the other local carriers diverted their flights more to international. You will see a decreasing trend in domestic, whereas we have an increasing traffic trend in international. That's how we made the 15% growth in January.
There is also a very strong travel demand between China and Almaty, which doubled, when we compare the traffic to the last year, and became the largest source market for the airport in January. So Chinese traffic is coming. Georgia's spectacular growth continued in January, too. In Georgia, in January, we had a growth of 19%. We believe that we will have this continued trend as well. We had 31% growth in Macedonia, because as we reported last year, we were missing almost half of Wizz Air's fleet due to the neo engines. And now we have new A320, A321s based in the airport as of November, which has a 30% higher seat capacity because the A320s are replaced by A321neos, which brings this 30% higher seat capacity.
All in all, 12% international growth was for January, is a strong start for the year. But of course, January is a low, low month, it's a low season. These are off-season numbers and do not carry a lot of weight when we compare the 12 months. We have a more conservative passenger guidance than the numbers on this table, which we'll talk about on our guidance slide as well. So when we looked at the growth of source market slide, it shows how our passenger mix has shifted over time, especially since the pandemic. One big difference is the drop in visitors coming from Russia and Ukraine. With the sanctions in place, Russians have to fly in Russian aircraft to Turkey.
Earlier, you may recall that, mostly Western aircraft were used for Russian aircraft flying to Turkey, but due to their lack of aircraft, they also started, they decreased their flights to Turkey, and we have lost 3.7 million Russian passengers due to the sanction. On the Ukrainian side, we had 2.7 million passengers before the tragic war, but because of the war, there is no civil aviation in Ukraine presently. We don't have any flights between Ukraine and Turkey, but we have, of course, some Ukrainian passengers flying via Poland. We believe that we have made up for some of the loss in Ukrainian traffic with Polish traffic, which has increased significantly. You can see the growth of Poland on the chart, which also includes Ukrainian travelers flying through Poland, as I stated before.
Russians used to be the number one source market for our airports, so if the sanctions are lifted, Russians could again become number one. Bear in mind that in our forecast, in our guidance, we didn't include any sanction to be lifted. It is the status quo continuing on as per our disclosures. Compared to the last year, the best performing markets were Turkey and North Cyprus, due mostly to the strong lira. UAE, Netherlands, and Kazakhstan underperformed the most, unfortunately, again, mostly due to the same reason and due to the geopolitical developments. With that, I will now hand over the presentation to Karim to go over our financials.
Thank you, Serkan. Coming to the financials in euros and starting with revenue, it continued to be above traffic growth for the full year, and it is the continuation of the trend in previous quarters. One of the reasons for that is that, as you may know, we do not consolidate Antalya. The consequence of it is that it is in our passenger numbers and, actually, it pulls traffic growth downwards, but it is not in our reported consolidated revenue. We only consolidate the net income after purchase price amortization. So when it comes to commenting the main highlights by category and starting with catering, we had significant growth in catering revenue this year related to BTA new Antalya operations. So BTA Antalya operations also boosted the area allocation revenue, which contributed to revenue growth being above passenger.
Coming to ground handling, where 73% roughly of our revenue is in Turkish lira. Our OpEx continues to increase with TL inflation, and thanks to the great management team that we have at Havaş, we have been able to reflect these costs to our prices. Ground handling as a segment was also strong in our foreign airports, so ground handling was overall another factor in revenue surpassing the passenger growth. The new concession in Ankara was also strong, with an additional EUR 90 million in terms of year-over-year revenue growth. In 2025, we have two quarters of Ankara operations under the new concession terms, but we will operate the full year 2026 under the new concession, which brings an even better perspective for 2026 regarding Ankara. Sorry. The non-fuel aviation revenue growth was in low teens.
The jet fuel business is also in aviation revenue that was affected by fuel market volatility and a weak U.S. dollar. Lounges continued to grow, especially in the U.S. and in Kazakhstan, and despite the closure of some unprofitable Spanish lounges, which we discussed earlier this year, we had strong growth there as well.... Looking at the like-for-like duty-free spend per pax, excluding Antalya and Almaty, it is up 9% from last year. Almaty kicked off right before Q3 last year, so we are feeling the full year impact kicking in for 2025. And all in all, our duty-free revenue went up by a solid 17% for year 2025. Finally, we have car park revenue that didn't grow this year because we shut down the Oman parking operations.
One last point regarding Havaş related to bus operations, Havaş closed down the Adana station this year, which is the reason why you are seeing a small dip in the bus services revenue. Coming to OpEx, if we look into the operating expenses before EBITDA, these expenses continued to stay below revenue and we continued to expand our EBITDA margin. We had a drop in jet fuel costs and a flat cost of services rendered. Maintenance and utility expense growth was muted, and we had flat other operating expenses. Operationally, BTA's new Antalya operations and the new Ankara concession supported margin expansion. Just as in the third quarter, in the fourth quarter too, a lot of assets delivered strong operating leverage.
If we adjust for the impairment expenses made in the last quarter of 2024, we had higher depreciation expenses compared to last year, which was due to the first full year of the new terminal in Almaty, and the end of the old concession in Ankara, as well as Ankara's rent expenses for the new concession, BTA Antalya's rent expenses, and TAV Operation Services lounge rent expenses in New York. In equity accounted investments, the cash picture is much better than what the numbers in equity accounted investments suggest. From Antalya 1, we got a dividend of EUR 72 million this year versus a dividend of EUR 68 million last year. So in terms of free cash flow, the performance is actually better than last year. The combined EBITDA of Antalya 1 and new Antalya is EUR 135 million this year.
It has to be compared to an EBITDA of EUR 127 million last year. Nevertheless, due to the amortization of the purchase price in Antalya 1, higher deferred taxes in both, and higher depreciation and finance expenses in new Antalya, due to the opening of the new terminal, we were not able to show it this year under the equity accounted investment line. Coming to ATÜ, it had higher EBITDA this year, mostly because of Antalya, but it made a lot of investments, so its finance expenses increased. And for TGS, we see the effect of less third-party sales and the end of the pandemic compensation that we already evoked in the past. Getting down the P&L and, reaching the net income line at the end, we continued to have overall strong EBITDA growth with margin expansion in the fourth quarter, as well.
We had higher D&A, which we discussed earlier. Equity accounted investment had EUR 54 million more deferred tax losses compared to last year, and EUR 12 million more of purchase price amortization in Antalya. The operations in Antalya, as we discussed, they are actually very strong. We have EUR 36 million more FX losses this year, which are mostly due to the appreciation of the euro and which are non-cash. With the canceling of inflation accounting in tax accounts, we approved deferred tax losses due to the appreciation of euro versus Turkish lira. Most of this effect was actually in new Antalya and in Ankara, due to the new investments made in these two assets. The canceling of inflation accounting increased the tax loss carryforward of these two assets, which had a somewhat neutralizing positive effect on deferred tax.
We used the legal revaluation right in Ankara, which was a benefit of EUR 11 million. Pretty sophisticated technical topics, but all in all, for the year, we had EUR 119 million of total non-cash effect on the bottom line. If you adjust for the increase in negative non-cash one-offs, the net income for 2025 becomes even EUR 170 million, which is only 7% below last year. We can see this large clearly in our free cash flow, which is standing at EUR 223 million for 2025, with strong 44% growth over 2024. There are many moving parts in our financials, but definitely, free cash flow is the number which shows the clearest picture. We are generating a significant amount of cash for the year 2025.
Coming to debt, you know that this has been an indicator that we have definitely been following over the past couple of years, and especially in 2025, in connection with our guidances. With very strong cash generation throughout the year, we reached our long-term net debt- to- EBITDA guidance with an amount that finally comes out at 2.89 x EBITDA for year 2025. In the fourth quarter, we had the currency-protected deposits mature and turn into cash. We had working capital improvements in many assets and the revaluation of the Almaty put, which was before standing at EUR 54 million, and which is now coming out at EUR 91 million. All in all, our consolidated net debt dropped versus both last year and the last quarter.
Normally, the fourth quarter is and should be seasonally weak, so the net debt drop over the previous quarter is quite a strong performance from our side. Coming to the next page, on dividend, the main highlight there is that as we have guided the market in 2025, we are restarting the distribution of dividends this year. We are planning to distribute TRY 1.3 billion, which corresponds to 50% of our IFRS net income, converted to Turkish lira amount as of yesterday's exchange rate. We have invested heavily this year, and we will continue to invest at the service of our growth and our development next year as well. Against this backdrop, the decreasing of net debt and the reception of dividend shows the strength of our balance sheet and our high capacity for cash generation.
So, I switch to page number 10. As many of you have followed, we were able to extend our Tbilisi concession until the end of 2031 in January. We pay fees to the state. We eliminate this, and we pay a flat 30% of our passenger fees as the new lease for that five years period. The airport grew with a passenger CAGR of 13% during the last 20 years, and EBITDA CAGR was 21. It's a very high-growth market and a very robust operation. We are very happy to continue to serve Georgia with Tbilisi Airport for another five years beyond 2027. So, if I go to slide 11, Ankara Esenboğa Airport, we were always guiding you that Ankara's profitability will jump with the new concession, and its EBITDA would reach to EUR 45 million.
On 24th of May, 2025, last year, the new concession of Ankara started, where we have enriched passenger fees and no cap in the collection of the international passenger fees. This is the first year of the new concession, and we have reached EUR 45 million of EBITDA, with a 67% growth over the last year. This made with only a 14% year-on-year international passenger growth, due to the new concession, which is much more profitable compared to the first concession. We have only seen the half-year effect this year because of the new concession. As I said, it started as of 24th of May, 2025. In 2026, we will see the full-year effect.
In the beginning of the call, I also talked about AJet's two new aircraft to be based in Ankara, which grew January traffic by 30%. So everything is looking good for Ankara for 2026. On the next slide, this is related to ATÜ. ATÜ is in Antalya now. Antalya, as you know, is a 40 million passenger airport, involved with 32 million international passengers. You see the effects of ATÜ's Antalya operations. ATÜ operation also started end of April. The full operation with all terminals started mid-September, so we don't have the full year effect of ATÜ. It started end of first quarter. There is very high revenue growth versus next year, which is mostly due to Antalya. Year-over-year, EBITDA growth was also very strong in the third quarter.
EBITDA growth was not as strong in the fourth quarter because of some start-up costs and continued ramp up, which, as I said, we took over late September, the existing facility, and we didn't have the chance to furnish and redo the shops or change the look or bring in new merchandise for the stores. But this year, in 2026, it will be a full year effect, you will see this. Opening of the new stores, stores and the refurbishment of existing spaces will continue until the summer. It started, but it takes time. So next year's offering, 2026 offering, both in terms of area and the number of products offered, will be better than 2025.
The spend per passenger in Antalya increased from EUR 6.5 per passenger to EUR 7.9 throughout the year, as we continue to open more and more shops throughout 2025, and this will continue in 2026 as well. On the chart to the right, you see the spend per passenger over there. Almaty's first full year of operations and additional Antalya decreased our overall spend per pax. For Antalya, you see that the per pax spending increased, but when we add up Almaty full year effect and so, if you look at the overall one, the spend per pax seems to decrease because in Almaty, we have departures and arrivals, duty-free, but at arrivals, we have limited sales that drags the overall spend per pax to a lower amount.
But if we had not added these new operations to the calculation, the like-for-like SPP would actually be EUR 10.3 . So we can say that the duty-free spend per pax of the existing operations grew by 13% in 2025. You can see this growth also in our consolidated duty-free commission revenues, which grew by 17% in 2025. So I would like to talk about the guidance, the realization of 2025 guidance and the expectation for the guidance. Karim discussed already about our financial results in detail. Here you can see the results against the guidance that we had provided in the beginning of 2025.
I won't go over the items one by one, but we can say that in all items, except for the CapEx, we were able to achieve our guidance targets. In CapEx items, we are slightly below our guidance, which is good, which resulted in less cash outflow from the company. In Almaty, due to the harsh winter conditions, we were behind schedule in terms of investments, in terms of CapEx, for the second phase, and due to the market conditions, we postponed some investments of Havaş to 2026 and 2027. So it again makes us very happy to have achieved our targets for another year. For 2026, in this table, you also see our new guidance. We are looking for another great year. Growth will continue.
Our base case is for the passenger traffic to be in between 116-123 million passengers, whereas we expect international traffic to be between 78-83 million passengers. So revenue, in accordance with this traffic numbers, should be between EUR 1.088 billion-EUR 1.98 billion. EBITDA should be between EUR 590 million-EUR 650 million. In 2026, we will be the second year of Almaty, second phase investments and the first year of Georgia expansion investment.
Due to these heavy CapEx, the second phase of Almaty and the new investment for Georgia, we estimate that the CapEx to be spent will be maximum of EUR 330 million or less for 2026. I think that's all for the presentation.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session with questions submitted and received only in a written format via the webcast main page. For your written questions, please visit the main page of the webcast link provided in your invitation.
So I will start with the first questions received, and I'm starting with questions received from Melis Pocar from Oyak Securities. The question being,
First question being regarding guided 2026 CapEx, could you please briefly quantify on an airport basis?
Well, on that question, if the question is about, let's say, breakdown of CapEx by activity airport, what I can say is that, we can say that roughly 30% of the CapEx is allotted for the second phase of investment in Almaty. Then you have another 20%-25%, let's say, of the CapEx, which should correspond to the investments in Georgia, and as part of the extension of the concession, as was evoked, presented, I mean, in mid-January and re-evoked a couple of minutes ago by Serkan.
For the rest of the CapEx, we are planning a solar panel investment for Ankara. We should have both CapEx for BTA, but also for other service companies, and the rest should be maintenance CapEx. I have another question, still from Melis Pocar.
What is the reason behind 25% year-on-year decline in cost of services rendered in Q4, 2025?
For that question related to the specific line of cost of services rendered, I can say that the decline is related to, I would say, several topics. Main one is, I would say, corresponding to TAV IT projects. Actually, they classify some of their costs here in the cost of services rendered, and it has decreased.
We also have an effect of the closing of Spanish lounges here as well, and it was already there earlier in the year. We also have decreases in other companies too, with different reasons for each company. I mean, we have, I mean, apart from TAV IT projects and Spanish lounges. We have many reasons, actually, it's very split.
So, again, a question from Melis Pocar, Oyak Securities:
What are the tenders in your radar right now? Will you attend alone, and what are the airports current and targeted KPIs?
We are always looking for growth opportunities in our core geography, as we always say. Our main criteria are growth prospects and sound legal infrastructure when selecting the opportunities. You know that we were pre-qualified for Montenegrin airports, but we did not bid in the tender, although it was a project that we looked at extensively. The preferred bidders in the tender were announced, but the results were contested, so we are following further developments there. Egypt has started its privatization, and the first project on the privatization pipeline is Hurghada touristic airport, in the range of 10 million passengers. And this project started with pre-qualification process.
We are submitting our pre-qualification, and naturally, we are evaluating the pros and cons of this project as well. Of course, there are many other projects that we are evaluating, but the business development pipeline in our business sometimes takes years, so it's best not to put too much weight on possible new tenders unless we officially disclose that we are participating in certain tender.
I'm moving with a question from Julius Nickelsen from Bank of America. Thank you, Julius. The question is the following:
Could you please provide any indication on where net income should go in 2026? And should we assume that the EUR 120 million of non-cash one-offs to reverse during 2026?
Well, that is, I mean, the one of the most important questions, of course, for 2026, and we cannot provide net income guidance because, I mean, first of all, this is the very bottom line of the PNL, and therefore it includes, let's say, the most important level of volatilities. It includes every flows, everything that flows in our PNL. And on top of this, there are many moving parts, generally speaking, below EBITDA.
I can also add that the legislative framework also shifts very quickly, especially in connection with our Turkish activities. Having said that, I think that that can quickly elaborate on the fundamentals of this movement would be useful, but I'll be very quick about two fundamentals that could make things move on one side or the other in 2026 regarding our net income. First one is inflation accounting measures, and second one is FX variations. Inflation accounting measure is related to the fact of taking into account, let's say, Turkish lira inflation in the way our balance sheet is reevaluated, and FX variation relate to the way we operate in various currencies, and mainly in euro, USD, and TL, versus the way we report, so in euros.
So for these two fundamentals, we are definitely lacking long-term visibility, but just like many institutions, I would say, and for 2026 as well, even though I would say that the situation is improving, especially from the outlooks in terms of inflation for the full year of 2026. But it is still hard to give, let's say, guidance on this topic for 2026. Then another question from Julius.
Any reason why EBITDA from Almaty was down 35% in Q4 2025? Is there any impact from the investment?
Well, this topic has been addressed in a way during the presentation.
One of the main reasons actually why it was down was the movement in FX, Euro USD FX, because you know that the main currency in which Almaty Airport operates is USD, and it went up 10% year-on-year, meaning that when meaning that when you are comparing Q4 2025 to Q4 2024, there was an appreciation of euro by 10%. And the other reason is volatility, generally speaking, in the fuel market, again, on a year-on-year basis, Q4 2025 compared to Q4 2024, and it led to lower volumes. We identified the matter Q4 2025.
I mean, going beyond this topic, we had disclosed previously that we would be shifting the revenue and EBITDA mix of the Almaty Airport from fuel to aviation through tariff increases over the next couple of years, and this process is going as planned. Of course, I mean, this downward trends we have followed it again, but the most important is that we're having a path forward with moving from a fuel-centric airport to an aviation-centric airport.
Thank you. So another question from Julius Nickelsen, Bank of America.
How should we think about the relatively wide range of your guidance? What scenario represents the lower end of the guide on traffic and EBITDA? What needs to happen for the upper end of the guide?
So we are located in a fast-growing region, but this growth unfortunately comes with risks as well. The main of these risks being geopolitical developments. As everybody has followed, there were numerous geopolitical events throughout the year, and we lost 3% of our international passengers in 2025 due to these developments. We are still being affected by the grounded A321s with the Pratt & Whitney engines, especially in Almaty. The guidance were provided, we provided balances our base case for strong, uninterrupted growth with these kind of numerous exogenous risks in the region. I switch to the questions of Cenk Orcan from HSBC.
The traffic outlook within your 75-83 international passenger guidance, 4-11% year-on-year growth, how do you expect your Turkish airports and Antalya, in particular, to perform? What is your Turkish tourism, the foreign visitors outlook this year?
We talked about this a bit during the presentation. Last year, we had several factors affecting traffic, one of which was the real value of the Turkish lira. This especially affected Bodrum and Gazipaşa the most, and Antalya the less. Strong TL and the growth of low-cost carriers had positive effect on İzmir and Ankara, and Ankara was especially strong with the growth of AJet. Most of these trends have not changed in 2026, but we hear of some renewed low-cost interest in Bodrum.
So Bodrum could have a better 2026 compared to 2025. The foreign airports would probably continue to outperform Turkish airports in 2026 as well, and North Macedonia could be outperformer, because there are new A321s based with 30% higher capacity versus the previous A320s.
The second question is also about the traffic outlook. 2025 was strong domestic passenger growth at key airports in Turkey, and your traffic guidance implies 0-5% growth in 2026. Any specific factors for normalization this year?
For the domestic passenger figures, they improved due to higher ticket price caps implemented in 2025, and the increase appeared substantial because of the base year effect and the cost increase in 2026, the price cap loses its attraction for the airlines.
For this reason, our base case is for domestic traffic, not to be as strong as last year in 2026. Of course, material increase in price caps could change that picture. What we try to mean is that in Turkey, as you know, we have a price cap for domestic fares. When it is low, the airline's tendency is to utilize the aircraft more in international routes or leave the aircraft outside. If the price cap is favorable to the airline, if it's higher, they rather use it in domestic routes because there is a demand, and we have an immediate effect in the growth of the domestic passengers.
One more question, about Almaty tariffs. So the question is the following:
2025 presentation shows a lower blended average international PAX fee than the 2024 presentation, $10.7 versus $13.8 for non-Kazakh airlines. Is that because $10.7 for 2025 now includes local airlines?
This question connects to previous presentations, and we only had provided back then the tariff for non-Kazakh airlines, and indeed, it was $13.8, as you correctly noted. However, now starting from 2025, to make a more comprehensive picture, let's say, we have now included local airlines in the calculation, thereby presenting a blended passenger fee for both Kazakh and non-Kazakh carriers. And this is the number that can be used with the departing international passenger members, so it's a much more useful number for everybody, actually.
As you can see, it increased from 10.3 in nine months to 10.7 in full year, so it's getting along with the tariff increases that we are getting. We also got security fees, which are $5.41 for non-Kazakh and KZT 2.815 for Kazakh international passengers as part of our tariff increase process, which is, as I said previously, continuing. So now, I have question from Ashish Khetan from Citi.
It relates to Ankara, sorry. Ankara EBITDA has increased significantly in 2025. Do we expect further improvement in 2026, or the full benefit of increased fee and end of guarantee structure has been materialized in 2025?
Well, the answer is a yes.
We only have the effect of the new concession for two quarters in 2025, so definitely in 2026, we will have it for the full year. W hat we call full-year effect, and this will definitely be a boost to our profitability, the profitability of the Ankara Airport. Another point is that the AJet airline, formerly AnadoluJet, is continuing to grow in the airport and providing a very important traffic growth driver at international level, especially. So all in all, we have we feel very good tailwinds at Ankara level, and it, it should continue for the full year of 2026. Other question from Ashish regarding personnel costs:
How do you see personnel costs increasing in 2026 with inflation easing out?
Well, I guess the question mainly relates to Turkish staff costs for 2026, since we are talking about inflation. For staff costs in Turkey, the main moving parts will definitely be in 2026.
First of all, the Turkish minimum wage rate, increase rates, and then, we will have a second factor, which is the average number of employees.
Okay, question from Görkem Göker , Yapı Kredi Yatırım.
In what ways and how any potential end of Russia-Ukraine war would impact your operations on aggregate in light of last couple of years realizations?
Due to the sanctions imposed on Russia and the ongoing war in Ukraine, our airports are experiencing a loss of 27% of Russian traffic and 100% of Ukrainian traffic compared to 2019. Any potential resolution in this situation, coupled with the lifting of the sanctions, would be beneficial for passenger numbers across all our airports, particularly in Antalya. If Ukrainian civil aviation comes back, that would also be a positive, but that could take more time. In Antalya, the proportion of Russian passengers is a key driver of overall spend per passenger, as Russians are among the highest spenders within the non-Turkish passenger mix.
Additionally, our ground handling company, Havaş, used to serve a higher number of Russian charter flights, which carry higher service charges compared to the scheduled flights by nature. The absence of these charter flights has affected Havaş EBITDA margin. Therefore, any potential end to the Russian-Ukrainian war would also positively impact Havaş margins. I think that concludes our Q&A session, too. Thank you for joining us. Thank you all for our webcast, and we hope to see you in events or in Istanbul physically soon. Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant evening.