Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. The results we announced yesterday reaffirm our position in one of the leading global airlines with sustained profitability despite regional volatilities. By leveraging our structural advantages and agile execution, our growth trajectory remains robust, with our 10-year strategy progressing effectively. As we present our first quarter results for 2024, it's important to recognize the challenges that shaped our operating landscape. Throughout this period, Turkish Airlines navigated a series of significant market disruptions, including the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and escalating tensions in the Middle East. These headwinds were compounded by persistent supply chain difficulties that impacted aircraft deliveries and maintenance schedules. Before going into the details of our results, I want to underscore the outperformance of our return on invested capital relative to the industry. Turkish Airlines continues to achieve materially higher returns through strategic capital allocation and operational efficiency.
Our strategic initiatives and prudent financial management were pivotal in steering through uncertainties and consistently delivering value to our stakeholders. In addition to operations, our finance team greatly contributed to our performance, as evidenced by notable returns from the investment portfolio and innovative leasing structures that reduced our aircraft funding costs to about 2.7% levels. Turkish Airlines' expertise in aircraft financing was globally acknowledged over the years, and most recently, at the Airline Economics Aviation Awards in Dublin. At this event, we were honored with the Global Lease Deal of the Year, JOLCO Deal of the Year, and Supported Finance Deal of the Year awards. Another key development last quarter was the successful launch of AJet, which officially began its operation on March 31. AJet is actively implementing a number of initiatives.
One of these initiatives is fleet renewal to decrease unit costs with more efficient and high-density new generation aircraft. An important second one is digital transformation, aimed at generating ancillary revenue and online ticket sales. Through these projects, we aim to increase our unit revenues by 20% and reduce our unit expenses by 20% within the next 4-5 years. In March, we expanded our international footprint by launching flights to Melbourne, our first destination in Australia. Starting with 3 weekly flights, this route not only extends our operations to 6 continents, but also establishes Turkish Airlines as the sole European carrier currently flying to the city. With this addition, Turkish Airlines now flies to 130 countries around the world, covering more than 90% of the global population and GDP. Let's now delve into our first quarter, quarter results.
Our passenger capacity experienced a substantial increase of 13% annually on this quarter, driven by international operations. On the cargo front, a 35% higher volume placed Turkish Cargo in the third place globally in terms of freight ton kilometers, according to IATA. In the same period, number of passengers increased by 8% to 18.5 million, 65% of which was formed of international passengers. Total revenues for the quarter reached almost $4.8 billion, up 10% from the previous year's $4.4 billion. This increase is primarily attributed to the strength in our passenger segment, supported by surging cargo performance. Profit from main operations was impacted by rising operational costs, particularly due to the recently signed collective bargaining agreement, and declined by around 60% year-over-year. These factors were partially offset by lower jet fuel prices.
In the January to March period, we recorded an EBITDA of $780 million, with a margin of 16.3%. Next, net income was realized at $226 million, marking our 11th consecutive profitable quarter. As you may recall, in the last two years, shortcomings related to airport operations and air navigation services significantly impacted on-time performance of many airlines. While our operations at Istanbul Airport outperformed our peers, we weren't immune to these issues and experienced delayed inbound flights from Europe. For the upcoming busy summer season, we are preparing for these challenges by increasing the number of backup aircraft, introducing additional buffer times to our schedule, and oversee the readiness of our third-party service providers. We hope these measures will enable us to improve our on-time performance, while minimizing passenger discomfort and system inefficiency.
Looking ahead, issues on aircraft and engine availability will continue to constrain industry growth, particularly in the long-haul segment. Additionally, we anticipate global competition to intensify, as the industry has now fully recovered to the pre-pandemic capacity level. Despite these obstacles, our April traffic results and current forward bookings indicate healthy demand for the rest of the year. We believe our diversified network, attractiveness of Turkey, combined with dynamic capacity management, will serve us well to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. I will now pass the call over to Fatih Bey to elaborate on our results and provide additional insights.
Thank you, Murat Bey, and good afternoon, everyone. We now delve into the details of our operational and financial performance for the first quarter. We continued to increase our passenger capacity in response to strong demand environment. However, the impact of heightened competition resulted in a percentage point decrease in our load factor. As a proportion of the pre-pandemic levels, our international passenger capacity was 42% higher, representing a sharp contrast to the rest of the industry. Our transfer traffic at Istanbul Airport continued to gain momentum. From January to March, the number of international transfer passengers increased by 10% compared to last year, reaching 40% above pre-COVID levels. Similarly, our total international passenger numbers rose by almost 7% year-over-year.
Including domestic operations, we served over 18.5 million passengers in the first quarter, achieving our highest passenger volume on record. The joint growth narrative between Turkish Airlines and the Turkish tourism industry became increasingly evident in the post-pandemic era. As Turkey climbs the rankings of the world's most visited countries, our passenger numbers also continued to grow. During the first three months of the year, the number of visitors traveling to Turkey increased by 10% to 9 million, mirroring, mirroring our 8% higher passenger numbers. In the first three months of 2024, the Far East and Americas remained our top-performing regions. As we expanded our capacity in the Far East by over 27% in line with the competitors, our load factor and yield decreased by around 1 percentage point.
Additionally, following the launch of our Osaka route last December, we introduced our inaugural flight to Melbourne, further diversifying our network. In North America, sustained demand strength encouraged us to increase our capacity in the region by around 16%. Despite the suspension of Tel Aviv route, we successfully generated more traffic from India and Southern Europe. As a result, the region's load factor was almost on par with last year. In South America, we quickly addressed the load factor weakness by stimulating more demand from Southern Europe and Asia, as evidenced by our April traffic results. While we anticipate some continued challenges in the region, they are expected to lessen in the coming months. Looking ahead, we plan to expand our presence in the Americas by initiating flights to Denver in the U.S. this June and to Santiago in Chile during the winter season.
In Europe, there was a mixed picture. Seasonal uplift, uplift during Easter helped us to balance competitive pressures in the first quarter. Although Eastern Europe showed some weakness driven by decreased local traffic, Southern Europe contributed positively to our results. Our new Melbourne route supported our load factors, especially in Italy, Greece, and Macedonia. At the same time, passenger flow from the Americas to Italy and Greece rose materially by around 60%. In the Middle East, we responded to the negative impact of ongoing conflicts on demand by reducing capacity by 2% year-over-year. On a brighter note, the introduction of new tourist visa regulations in Saudi Arabia positively impacted Umrah travel, especially from European destinations and Turkey. Consequently, we improved our load factors by 2 percentage points quarter-on-quarter basis.
The previously implemented visa on arrival policy for Turkish citizens traveling to Egypt continued to support our traffic in Africa. As of the first quarter, demand stabilized in Morocco following the tragic earthquake. In North Africa, significant capacity increases by Saudi Airlines and aggressive pricing had a negative impact on traffic. Our passenger revenues in the January-March period rose by 5%, even though last year's unusually high base resulted in a 6% decrease in passenger yields. Cargo revenues surged by 27%, driven by a 35% increase in volumes. This was mainly due to elevated e-commerce demand, relatively strong global trade, and last year's low base due to the earthquakes in Turkey. Recent signals show continued strength in air cargo demand, especially for deliveries originating from Asia.
While disruptions in the Red Sea initially boosted air cargo, the impact has stabilized as the use of alternative routes became more significant. Increased sea freight costs due to these changes makes air cargo more competitive. Additionally, signs of inventory restocking suggest a potential contribution to cargo traffic. Although uncertainties remain due to the elevated interest rates, we are optimistic for the remainder of the year and revising our projections upwards. As of the end of the first quarter, our on-hand liquidity stands at $6.2 billion. Operational cash inflow reduced our net debt by around $750 million to $6.6 billion. Consequently, our leverage decreased to 1.2 times by the end of this quarter. Our strong liquidity position and lower average funding cost will continue to positively affect our bottom line.
As macroeconomic indicators suggest that interest rates will remain elevated for some time, we anticipate our full-year net income to be at a comparable level with last year. Increasing Cargo and Technic contribution led to more than 9% higher revenues in the first quarter compared to the same period last year. Operational performance translated into around $780 million of EBITDA, up slightly versus last year. Even though profit from main operations were impacted negatively by the cost pressures, net income was almost on par with last year as a result of strong financial income. Since the beginning of 2023, we have been gradually increasing our fuel hedging positions, considering the price levels, volatility, macro picture, and the developments in the airline industry. Currently, our hedge level stands at 47%, up from previous level of 37%.
We recorded around around a 0.5 percentage point increase in total cost per available seat kilometers during the first quarter. Looking at the unit expense breakdown, around 8% increase in fuel unit cost was driven by lower annual prices and largely offset the 5% increase in ex-fuel CASK. The main contributor to the unit cost growth was the personnel expenses, with a 25% increase year-over-year, following the inflation adjustment and the new collective bargaining agreement. On the positive side, cost control in marketing and maintenance items decreased unit expenses by around 9% and 6% respectively. In the first quarter, AJet and AnadoluJet's combined passenger capacity rose by around 12% year-over-year, and its number of aircraft reached 98.
By the end of this year, 40% of AJet's fleets will consist of new generation aircraft, aligning with our strategy. This will allow us to benefit from having lower unit costs through increased efficiency and seat count per aircraft. Looking ahead, AJet plans to expand its network in Europe, Middle East, and Central Asia. Thanks to our flexible operating structure, we adjusted the passenger capacity dynamically and profitably throughout the last year and the first quarter. Currently, global travel appetite remains constructive, even though geopolitical issues continue to pose a downside risk to the demand environment and competition to the yields. Our April traffic results and forward bookings reveal confidence about the demand strength for the upcoming summer season. As a result, our 2024 guidance of 10% higher passenger capacity, accompanied by a low single-digit decline in yields, remains unchanged.
For the remaining quarters, we expect our ex-fuel unit cost increase to normalize from the levels seen in the first quarter. Accordingly, we anticipate that this year's ex-fuel CASK to be up by low single percentage point compared to last year. For 2024, we expect our gross CapEx to be around $4.3 billion-$4.7 billion, with 41 net aircraft additions, which was revised downwards according to the recent developments in delivery schedules. With this, we conclude our presentation and can now continue with the Q&A session.
Thank you, speakers. Thank you very much. Yes, as was mentioned, we now have our question and answer session. So just a reminder, no audio questions, and written questions only. If you wish to ask a question, please, now is the opportunity. Click the Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom screen and submit your question. Speakers, over to you for those written question answers.
Welcome back, Murat Bey. Following to our results yesterday, our analysts focused on the material increase in personnel expenses, obviously. We got a number of questions on that front, but I believe it would be better to provide a broader overview at the beginning of the Q&A session. We are starting with the first quarter performance. What were the main drivers?
Sure. Well, there were definitely positive and negative developments on the quarter. On the positive side, the passenger demand regarding in terms of the volumes, especially in the Far East and Americas, was strong in the first quarter, and this helped the overall yield to be still, significantly higher than 2019 level, in like around 20% levels. But compared to last year's first quarter, 2023's first quarter, which was an extraordinary year, the yields came down. Nevertheless, it's fair to say that the demand continued to be strong in the first quarter.
And not only, not only on the passenger side, also on the cargo side, due to the continuing strong demand on e-commerce and the disruptions we observe in sea freight, cargo revenues, which we also showed in the presentation, increased by 27%, and the volume was up by about 25%. And yields in cargo front, despite coming back significantly last year, were still about 40% higher than their 2019 levels. And another positive front was, of course, the jet fuel, which was 10% lower than the level of last year. Both the Brent and the Crack Spread mutually acted downward, and this helped us to gain that advantage on the fuel CASK.
On the negative side, again, as we kind of shed some light in the presentation, the personal expenses, which was a result of the high inflation in Turkey and globally, being reflected a little bit lately, though being reflected in the personal expenses. We had, in the first half of the year, according to our union agreement, 64% increase in salaries at the beginning of the year. And in the second half of this year, the 1st of July, we will have another inflation adjustment that will compensate the inflation effect in the first half of 2024. So we are projecting somewhere around 27%-30% increase in salaries, in Turkish lira terms, in, in July 1st, and that's hopefully will be the, overall impact on, the salaries.
A final important point is the continuing tension in the Middle East and continuation of the war conflict in the Russia-Ukraine region also affected the bottom line.
Murat, how many aircraft were grounded due to the Pratt & Whitney GTF engine issues?
So these numbers definitely changing depending on the news we get from the producer. With the most updated information, and our current projection is, currently, we have around 20-25 aircrafts grounded. This will go up to 40 towards the end of this year, and it will be around those levels for the remainder of 2024 and part of the 2025. It will be around 40-45 aircraft. However, we try to mitigate this capacity loss with leasing additional aircrafts. Last year and this year, we added about 15-20. Still some of them, for some of these aircraft contracts are being negotiated. 15-20 narrow-body aircrafts are being added to the fleet with lease contracts to compensate this capacity loss.
Continuing with the outlook, what are your expectations for this year's passenger demand? And accordingly, what are your capacity and yield guidance?
Look, currently, we see a strong demand environment for summer, and the tourism numbers projected for this year also supportive of this statement. Although there will be some pressure on the yields because there is more competition and more capacity is being presented in the market. Asia will continue to be a major driver for global air travel. Long haul, in general, seems quite robust, especially due to limited number of wide-body aircraft deliveries to the airlines. On the other hand, higher interest rates and geopolitical conflicts are posing somewhat risks on the travel appetite. However, our diversified network can easily mitigate these potential risks, as we have done successfully many times in the past. So we believe changing the market dynamics present new opportunities, considering the diverging performance across regions, as it was presented during the slides.
Despite of the fact that we are facing some Middle Eastern crisis, we're also seeing positive developments, like the Saudis providing visa services much more easily, Egypt introducing new visa policies to attract more Turkish tourists. These are the positive developments. So overall, we expect our capacity to grow by about 10%, and the passenger yields will be declining in low single-digit margins. And, as a result, with 10% ASK growth, we are expecting about 7%-8% passenger growth, and part of this capacity growth, of course, is going to come through the increase in the stage length.
... Murat, we got questions from Erdem Kaynar from TEB, and Hanzade Kılıçkıran from J.P. Morgan about our forward bookings. Particularly, what is your view about current forward bookings for different regions?
Forward bookings for the summer, even though on the big picture, broadly speaking, look promising, there are definitely regional disparities. In Middle East, as I said just earlier, we started to, because of the conflict affecting not just, Israel, but also the neighboring countries, we cut some capacity. But, from last quarter, last quarter of 2023, but, looking into the second and third quarter of this year, we see some recovery, especially in Jordan and Lebanon. So some of the capacity could be, recovered in these two countries. In Europe, considering the aggressive capacity increase of the peers, we expect further pressure on the yields, but our large network in the region will help us again to mitigate these risks.
So like in this region, for example, in the second and third quarter, the capacity will be around roughly 7-8% increasing. In the Far East, our capacity increase will be much higher than the other regions. Part of it is due to its low base of production, and we are quite optimistic on the load factors, too. I mean, as I said earlier, unit revenues, yields will be on slight pressure due to higher competition, but we'll be able to mitigate that. To put those in some numbers, in the Middle East, we can have around 25% increase in the next two quarters on increasing capacity. Americas, again, around like 8-9% levels. Africa, around 10% levels.
Middle East will still see some decline compared to last year, but it won't be as drastic as we were initially anticipating.
Murat, we got questions from Yunus Kalaycı, Hanzade Kılıçkıran about the tourism season in Turkey for the upcoming tourism season. What are your views on that?
So last year, as you would remember, as we also mentioned in our year-end results, we had a record number of tourists to Turkey. 57 million, almost 57 million tourists came to Turkey, and it was already significantly above 2019 levels. And this year, the Ministry of Tourism's projections, which we feel can be, they can be comfortably achieved, is to increase this number to 60 million, which corresponds to something around like 6% increase in the number of incoming tourists to Turkey. And in the first quarter of this year, we saw already a 10% increase. So, 1 million is already there, additional tourists came to Turkey in the first quarter of this year. And, this definitely will help our direct, direct operation from international to Turkey.
But not only that, actually, the transit demand, the tickets sold on the transit network are also looking strong for the summer travel season for this year.
Is it possible to elaborate on the impact of recent increase in domestic price caps?
Well, it's too recent, though. The price cap increase took place in April, and the cap was increased by about 20%, and towards the end of summer, we will be seeing an additional 25% increase on the cap. Well, the contribution of domestic network to our overall revenue is limited. It's around 7-8% levels. So even though this price increase, this cap increase, is going to have a positive impact, well, it will be limited. We are anticipating that it will have a 0.5 percentage point increase contribution to our passenger revenue for the full year.
Continuing with cargo, could you please comment on cargo unit revenues in the last quarter and your forward expectations?
Well, the last quarter of 2023, annual cargo revenue increased swiftly on the back of the significant higher volumes and low base. And we recorded a double-digit volume growth in almost all regions, most notably in Asia, which was around 60% in the first quarter. Of course, the earthquake effect had an impact on having a relatively lower base, and thus putting us a huge increase in the first quarter. But looking, going forward, we expect this positive trend on air cargo to continue into second and third quarter. The disruptions in sea freight is still ongoing, though in a lesser extent compared to the previous quarter. But according to our yield evolution, we are projecting that the cargo yields-...
Cargo revenue per ton, cargo yield is going to be above 5% levels and, year on year, and the total amount of cargo to go up by more than 10% this year. So this hopefully will be able to help us generate a cargo revenue around $3 billion.
We are heading to cost questions. Could you discuss the cost expectation for 2024? What are the main challenges, and what is the projected ex-fuel CASK?
Well, the biggest cost challenge was personal expenses, which we already alluded. And, the other cost items, especially on the aircraft maintenance related with the GTF issue, the handling and catering, because of the inflationary pressure, not just in Turkey, but globally, are going to be important items for us to monitor. But given that we are increasing the capacity significantly by about, as I said, 10% levels, is helping us a little bit to mitigate these costs or to spread them around our operations. Considering this, ex-fuel CASK is expected to be up and around low single digits for 2024.
Murat, you highlighted the reasons for the increase in personnel expenses, but can you quantify its impact for the full year?
So the personal cost is expected to rise by about 15%-20% annually. Of course, I mean, we know how much salary increase will take place, but we are projecting how much Turkish lira is gonna depreciate towards the end of the year. So based on our estimates, 15%-20% in personal CASK, in unit cost terms, is what we are, what we think is gonna be achieved by the end of this year. Of course, by trying to increase the personal utilization, labor productivity, we are trying to level this increase up a little bit.
What are your expectations for fuel CASK, on what assumptions, and can you also share the details of your hedging ratios?
On fuel CASK, in 2024, we expect low single-digit increase in fuel CASK compared to last year, assuming our assumption is the Brent is going to be around $85-$90. Our hedging ratio has been increasing since the beginning of the year, and currently is around 47% level, and the break-even price is around $81. We keep adding new positions significantly, and we expect by the end of this year, our hedge ratio will be around 55% levels. Yeah, we are expecting, because our break-even price is still below the current price, we might end up writing some hedge gains by the end of this year.
Is it possible to talk about revenue and margin forecast? Also, we got questions from Erdem, TEB Yatırım. Is there any EBITDA margin threshold to have triggered to initiate cost-cutting measures, and how do you envisage the normalization?
Well, given our current projections on the capacity and passenger evolution and the yield environment, we expect to increase our total revenues by about 8%-10% levels by the end of this year. In the last two years, EBITDA margin was extraordinarily high, which we had somewhere around 28%-29% EBITDA margin. We knew that it was quite high, and we were expecting some normalization. And when we were working on our 10-year strategy for our long-term projections, an EBITDA margin of somewhere between 22%-25% is comfortable for our long-term projections to cover our investments, CapEx needs, and to support our projections with leaving us sufficient amount of liquidity and with good leverage. So our target is to be around 22%-25% EBITDA margin levels.
And this is, with our current projections of this year, we are quite comfortably able to achieve this target. So, I don't think it's we're in a position to start aggressively cost-cutting, strategies, but it is always in our minds. We know that this year is gonna be different than the last two years, where the yield environment was extra comfortable. We know that the competition is back, and we have to we have to be prepared for it, so, we start working on some cost-cutting initiatives to increase our efficiencies, to increase the, or to increase the contribution of our digital transformation, and to see how much efficiency it's going to bring to us using the robotics, using the new NDC channels to increase our sales, to decrease our sales cost, to increase our efficiencies in operations.
So we will be working on those to keep our cost control intact. And accordingly, this year, we anticipate our EBITDA margin to be somewhere around 23%-26% levels, which was roughly the number we announced in our year-end presentation.
What is the projected year-end fleet size in 2024, and could you provide further details?
This year, we are expecting to include around 60 deliveries, and there will be around 20 retiring aircraft from the fleet, so it will be a net growth of 40 aircraft. Of the deliveries, we will have about 37 aircraft for Turkish Airlines, around 22 for AJet, and one delivery for cargo.
What are the estimated CapEx and pre-delivery payment for this year, according to the current fleet plans?
Gross CapEx is going to be around $4.7-$4.3 to $4.7 billion. There are going to be some delays in the deliveries of especially the narrow-body aircrafts that would come in the last quarter of the year. Because of those delays into 2025, we decreased our CapEx projection for about, like, a $400-$500 million. And, yeah, this CapEx mostly will be because of the 40 aircraft additions to the fleet.
Accordingly, what is your expected net debt position for the year-end?
For this year-end, we revised down our year-end net debt expectation by $500 million for the same reason I just mentioned, to $9-$9.5 billion levels. Relatedly, our net debt EBITDA multiple will be somewhere between 1.6x-2.1x. This is for 2024. For our midterm leverage target, is still around 2x-2.5x levels, because in the coming years, more aircraft deliveries will be, will be seen.
Murat Bey, can you comment on the AJet's current operational and financial performance, along with the transfer process?
Well, the transfer process is completed. Ticket sales started on the mid of March, and the scheduled flight successfully launched at the end of March. We have not seen any material issue, system-wise or operation-wise. And since the first flight, AJet carried, with its new name and with its new brand, almost 3 million passengers, and together with AnadoluJet, AJet is expected to carry around 24 million passengers in this year, which will bring an addition of around 10% compared to last year. Aircraft and slot transfers from AnadoluJet to AJet continue. It will be a gradual process to address potential inefficiencies due to the dual operation, as the revenue generation trajectory is promising. Before, we did not have this kind of a revenue stream. Now, we have introduced in AJet onboard catering and Wi-Fi for sale as additional services for our passengers.
We are, of course, continuing to work on projects to increase the profitability, to increase its network operation, to optimize its two hub operation in Sabiha Gökçen and Esenboğa Airports in Ankara.
About inflation accounting, is it possible to provide us any guidance for the deferred tax asset item or asset, deferred asset item, to be potentially booked in 2024?
Well, the main reason behind the deferred tax expense in the previous year was the increase of dollar Turkish lira exchange rate. And as inflation accounting is now implemented on our tax financial statements, increase in the exchange rate could be compensated by the increase in PPI, where we use PPI for the inflation in accounting. So this was the case in the first quarter, and due to this, we recorded around $48 million deferred tax assets, as PPI change was higher than the change in the exchange rate. Considering the current macro outlook, we might expect similar impact on our financials, depending on the relationship between the exchange rate and then the PPI change in the upcoming quarters.
Murak Bey, could you give us an update on the negotiations with Boeing about the prospective large orders, and when are you planning to finalize the deal?
... Unfortunately, we got this question last quarter, too, so we continue our close communication with Boeing regarding to this order. We have not been able to finalize it yet. I'm repeating myself, but the same issues are still there. It's not just a negotiation between Turkish Airlines and Boeing, it includes the engine manufacturers, too. This is a combined effort among the three major parties. So but we are making progress, and continuing to understand each other needs and the timing, especially when we can get the deliveries, and how they fit in our strategic development goals, but we have not been able to finalize this deal yet.
Recently, there was some news in the media about our subsidiaries. Also, we got a number of questions about potential IPO or strategic partnerships. Hüseyin Sert also asked this question. So what are your thoughts on that?
We definitely, as Turkish Airlines Group, have very valuable subsidiaries that could be worth for an IPO, that are worth for an IPO. It's not within our considerations at the moment. The prominent ones, and the ones on the news, was about for AnadoluJet. We just launched AnadoluJet as a separate subsidiary. We need to give it some time to have its operation. The fleet even has not been transferred into AnadoluJet yet completely, so they are wet leasing some of the aircraft from Turkish Airlines, and they are still registering for new flight rights.
So it's going to take some time before we start considering these kind of proposals, but, as I said, Turkish Technic, Turkish Cargo, AnadoluJet, these are very valuable assets for Turkish Airlines Group that can be, considered in the future for potential IPOs, but not at the moment. We don't have anything, any concrete thinking of such, in such a way yet.
Thank you, Murat Bey. With this question, we conclude our first quarter earnings call. We would like to thank all of our participants for their participation, and hope to be with them next quarter. Thank you.
Thank you very much, speakers. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, thank you for your participation in the conference call. You may now disconnect. Thank you.