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Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Turkish Airlines' second quarter 2024 earnings call. We will have a question and answer session following the presentation. Please note, there will be no audio questions, only written submitted questions will be answered. If you'd like to submit your questions, you can send them at any time by clicking the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. You'll find it down there in the middle. With that, I will now hand you over to your host for this presentation, Associate Professor Murat Şeker, member of the board and executive committee, as well as the Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Mehmet Fatih Korkmaz, Head of Investor Relations. Gentlemen, it's over to you.
Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everyone, and thanks again for joining us today. The results we announced yesterday underline our industry-leading position with sustained profitability, despite an increasingly challenging operating environment. In addition to geopolitical tensions, the bottlenecks in aircraft production and global engine problems, intensifying competition led us to navigate diligently in the current market environment. Against this backdrop, our second quarter performance demonstrates our adaptability. We remain dedicated to our ten-year strategy and growth trajectory. Before discussing our quarterly results in detail, I would like to highlight some of our recent achievements. In June, Turkish Airlines was honored as the best airline in Europe at the prestigious Skytrax Awards for the ninth time. Also, securing awards for Best Airline in Southern Europe and World's Best Business Class Catering.
In sustainability, we are proud to receive the Most Sustainable Flag Carrier Airline award from World Finance for the third consecutive year, underscoring our initiatives from sustainable aviation fuel usage to comprehensive waste management practices. Furthermore, our hub, Istanbul Airport, was named best airport in the world by Travel and Leisure readers, recognizing our mutual efforts to provide a seamless travel experience to our guests. Istanbul Airport also ranked first in Europe for direct connectivity, according to the Airports Council International, as a direct result of our network investments over the years. Most recently, Denver and Turin routes expanded our global presence to 349 destinations across 130 countries. At the beginning of last month, we successfully concluded negotiations with Pratt & Whitney regarding aircraft groundings due to the engine issues.
This settlement will compensate for our commercial losses, and its positive impact will be realized starting from the third quarter. Now, I would like to turn your attention to our results. In the second quarter, Turkish Airlines' total passenger capacity increased by 7.7% annually, mainly driven by international segment. Robust e-commerce demand and the growing preference for air freight over sea transport continued to provide significant momentum for our cargo operations. Capitalizing on these trends, Turkish Cargo carried 30% higher volumes year-over-year and maintained its third place globally in terms of freight ton kilometers, according to IATA. During the April-June period, total revenues rose by 10% annually, reaching $5.7 billion. Throughout the quarter, we successfully managed the headwinds through active capacity management and showed resilience. As a result, passenger revenues rose 4% over last year's strong base.
Materially, higher volumes and yields led cargo revenues to surge by nearly 50%. In the second quarter, EBITDA was recorded as $1.4 billion with 24% margin. A sizable contribution from our investment portfolio raised net income 49% higher to more than $940 million, marking our 12th consecutive profitable quarter. $2.9 billion free cash flow generation in the first half also provided us the flexibility to strategically pay down our high cost borrowings. Accordingly, our commercial debt reduced from $1.1 billion to $460 million since the beginning of this year. As our growth converts towards industry trends, utilizing the levers we identify in the ten-year strategy becomes more crucial for maintaining our competitive cost base.
With a clear focus on free cash flow generation, we have been working on the structural changes in our revenue streams and cost base, targeting short- to mid-term opportunities... grouped under four pillars, we aim to achieve sustainable productivity gains through improvements in our hard product, along with holistically embedding digitalization across our operations. Apart from increasing number of new generation aircraft, one of our primary initiatives is cabin renewal, which involves improving seat density and reducing the weight of the aircraft. This results in lower fuel consumption and emissions, contributing to both cost savings and environmental sustainability. Digitalization is crucial to all our initiatives, serving as the backbone that enhances customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. AI implementation will target optimization in a wide array of functions, from flight to ground operations. We also believe there is significant savings potential through automated irregular operations management.
Simplifying organization-wide business processes and centralized back office functions will also provide efficiency gains. In customer engagement, our new distribution capability platform, TK Connect, will give us the ability to decrease indirect distribution expenses through lower customer acquisition costs. At the same time, TK Connect will present customized offers and promote ancillary services. Together with Miles&Smiles, TK Holidays, and dynamic pricing, we are aiming to gradually increase our ancillary revenue share from 6% to the industry average of 15%. Our teams have been working on these projects since the planning of our 2023 strategy, and we remain committed to delivering results. For the third quarter, our forward bookings are healthy, and we expect passenger revenues to be the highest on record, as the strong cargo outlook also provides an important support.
Looking further ahead, we observe that passengers are becoming increasingly selective with their flights and look for higher value for money options as airlines add capacity to the market. Within this context, we expect Turkish Airlines to continue to be the preferred choice of customers with our high quality products and affordable fares as a result of our prudent cost management. In closing, while operating environment poses new challenges, we are confident that our productivity prospects, agility, and diversified network will continue to generate significant value. I will now pass the call over to Fatih Korkmaz to elaborate on our results and provide additional insights.
Thank you, Murat Şeker, and good afternoon, everyone. Let's delve into the details of our operational and financial performance for the second quarter. Passenger capacity surpassed the same period last year by 7.7%, slowing down from a 13% increase in the first quarter, mainly due to the shifts in holiday timings. Our international capacity as a proportion of the pre-pandemic level remains substantially higher than global averages. Between March and July, our transfer traffic at Istanbul Airport was strong, converging towards historical trends, with constituting 55% of international traffic. Including domestic operations, we served over 22 million passengers throughout the quarter. As we open more routes with longer flight distances, the increase in revenue passenger kilometers, RPK in short, has become a more important measure compared to the number of passengers.
This was evident in our second quarter results, in which 28% RPK increase in Far East drove the network growth. With our targeted efforts to accelerate growth in key regions, Turkish Airlines and the Turkish tourism industry continue to grow in tandem. Turkey's historical heritage, rich culture, and diverse tourism offerings, combined with Turkish Airlines connection power, create a unique platform. Our initiatives towards the top tourism spenders, such as China and the US, are the most recent examples. Since the beginning of the year, the number of visitors traveling to Turkey from the US and China rose by 23% year-over-year, corresponding to a more than 55% increase compared to 2019 levels.
Our new routes to Denver and Detroit, the code share partnership with Air China, along with the tourism cooperation agreement between Turkey and China, are expected to be significant catalysts. In the second quarter of 2024, the impact of intensifying competition became more apparent. Although revenue erosion was slowed down by contributions from Europe and to some extent, Middle East, Far East presented challenges. Since this region has been a significant driver of the industry growth, airlines continue to expand capacity aggressively. While Vietnam, India, and South Korea performed well during the quarter, China, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka lagged behind. Accordingly, region's load factor and yield decreased by around 3% and 8%, respectively. In North America, sustained demand strength encouraged us to increase our capacity in the region by 5%. The region's load factor increased by around half percentage points.
In June, we also launched our new route, Denver, and increased our number of destinations within the U.S. to 14%. This new route will contribute to our load factors, especially for Southeast Asia and Middle East. In South America, challenges remain, especially in Brazil. We adjusted our capacity dynamically to the European destinations. Touristic inflow to southern parts, combined with the touristic outflow from the north, balanced competitive pressures. Easter timing and softness in Eastern Europe, on the other hand, were among the negative factors. Reducing annual capacity by 11% in response to the geopolitical situation in the Middle East yielded positive results, reversing the unit revenue declines. Favorable visa regulations in Saudi Arabia supported the demand towards the region. On the domestic side, strong demand, increased price ceiling, and stable currency were the contributing factors to the 24% increase in unit revenues.
Our passenger revenues in the second quarter rose by 4%, despite 2% lower yields and a percentage point decline in load factor. Cargo performance was robust, with revenues surging by almost 50% on the back of a 30% increase in volumes, with 14% higher yields. Similar to the last quarter, elevated e-commerce demand, growth in global trade, and disruptions in Suez Canal were the main drivers. Recent signals show continued strength in air cargo demand, especially for deliveries originating from Asia. Longer distances, along with decreasing punctuality and security concerns in sea freight, make air cargo more competitive. Additionally, signs of inventory stocking suggest a potential contribution to cargo traffic in the coming quarters. We expect strong momentum continue for the remainder of the year, with our cargo volumes growing by around 15%-20% annually.
In April to June period, AJet's passenger capacity and number of passengers rose by 2% and 4% annually. Towards the end of the quarter, we encountered several extraordinary circumstances that led to a decline in on-time performance. Aircraft delivery delays negatively affected our plan to renew the fleet before the busy summer season, resulting in longer and unanticipated maintenance events that disrupted our schedule. The situation worsened by GTF engine issues, which required five new engine aircraft to be grounded earlier than scheduled. To resolve these issues, AJet increased the number of backup aircraft from four to 12 and introduced additional buffer times to its schedule. Our colleagues are also working on to address ATC and airport-related constraints to optimize operations.
In the second quarter, increasing cargo and technical contribution led to more than 10% higher revenues compared to the same period last year. On the other hand, financial performance was negatively impacted by the GTF groundings and inflationary pressures. As a result, profit from main operations declined by around 25%. In contrast, net income was up by almost 50% to $940 million due to a strong financial income. We recorded around 8% increase in total cost per ASK during the second quarter. Even though annual increase in Brent prices partly compensated by lower crack spread, increased cargo operations resulted in 7% higher ex-fuel cost. On the ex-fuel side, the main contributor was personnel expenses with a 21% increase year-over-year.
On a granular level, $100 million of one-off personnel bonus payment and subsidiary salary adjustments amounting to $40 million impacted ex-fuel costs 4 percentage points negatively. Grounded new aircraft due to GTF engine issues also created a 1.5 percentage point drag. Excluding these items, ex-fuel costs in the second quarter would have increased by just 2% annually. As of the end of the first quarter, the second quarter, our on-hand liquidity stands at $6.4 billion. Operational cash inflow reduced our net debt by $1.5 billion to $5.8 billion. Consequently, our leverage decreased to 1.1 times by the end of this quarter. Our strong liquidity positions and low average funding costs will continue to positively affect our bottom line.
As a result, we anticipate our full-year net financial income to be higher than last year's figure. Currently, travel appetite remains constructive, even though competition and geopolitical issues continue to pose a downside risk to the yields. As current booking curve reviews confidence, our 2024 guidance of around 10% higher passenger capacity, accompanied by a low single-digit decline in yields, remain unchanged. For the remaining quarters, we expect our ex-fuel unit cost to be at a comparable level seen in the first half, since GTF compensation will be booked under other operating income.
Our gross CapEx could be around $4.3 billion-$4.7 billion, with 43 net additions, if there are no delays in aircraft deliveries. Our modern fleet and carefully designed sustainability initiatives are the main instruments for lessening our environmental impact. In the first half of 2024, we released our climate transition plan, emphasizing our adherence to the TCFD recommendations. A minus score in the CDP also demonstrates our leadership in the air transportation sector. Additionally, we saw improvements in our ESG performance assessments across various international institutions, such as EcoVadis, Sustainalytics, and MSCI. In June, we launched our sustainability brand, Tomorrow On-Board, to consolidate all our sustainability efforts under one umbrella, providing a clear framework for transparent reporting and stakeholder engagement.
We also collaborate with others, with our subsidiaries and suppliers, to adopt a holistic approach in setting and monitoring targets to ensure alignment with our sustainability goals. Recognized as the most sustainable flag carrier airline by World Finance for the third consecutive year, our dedication to a sustainable future remains steadfast as we continue to integrate sustainability into every aspect of our operations. With this, we conclude our presentation and can continue with the Q&A session.
Thank you, gentlemen. Yes, indeed. We will now start our question and answer session, as you heard. If you would like to ask a question, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. You can do it now, 'cause the gentleman will answer the questions now. Submit your question, and with that, over to the speakers for any questions that might be coming through. Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you, Rob . Welcome back, Murat Bey. We got questions from Garanti, Oyak, TEB, Yapı Kredi, JP Morgan, QNB, along with our investors. Let's start with the details of our second quarter performance. Would you like to highlight some of the main points?
Sure. Well, there are definitely positive and negative developments regarding to our performance. In particular, the strong demand in Far East and Americas regions were helpful. It helped the system-wide passenger yield to be 22% above the second quarter of 2019. So compared to pre-pandemic levels, we are still highly above the, in terms of the yield performance. Yet, we have been seeing yield erosion as the competition came back, in particular since the beginning of this year. However, compared to first quarter of this year, when we compare Q1 and Q2 of 2022, we see that the decline in yield has slowed down. In the first quarter, it was around 6%, and in the second quarter of this year, it was around 2% below last year with the respective quarters.
But we are seeing that it is easing out. And on the cargo side, the strong growth trend in air cargo due to e-commerce and disruptions in sea freight that we have expressed in the first quarter also kept the cargo revenues higher. The revenues overall, compared to the second quarter of last year, cargo revenues were up by 50%, which was heavily derived by volume increase and also recovery in the yield environment. And on the expensive side, the crack spread declined by about 3%. It also decreased the pressure on the fuel consumption, and as the business was recovering, our technical our MRO business revenue also increased by 25%.
On the negative side, if we shed some light on our outlook, we think the increased competition is going to keep putting pressure on the yields, especially on the transit network. And the war and uneasiness in the Middle East region is ongoing, and the Russia-Ukrainian conflict are going to keep putting pressure on the Middle East region performance. Cost pressure, especially on the personal expenses side, and which keep putting big pressure on our expenses, and also the effect of inflation is coming in other expense items as well, like the handling, like the catering costs. So this is going to keep continuing for the remaining part of the year.
Finally, the GTF engine issues, which we expressed to a certain degree in the presentation, even though we got some compensation, grounding of the aircraft are going to keep putting more pressure on the, on the cost side, and it creates some distortions in the fleet and, crew planning. So these are the negative sides of 2024 second quarter results.
Murat , continuing with the GTF issues, how many aircraft were grounded due to this problem? And could you please elaborate on the compensation agreement?
Although I cannot explain the details of the agreement, it was a quite cooperative agreement. It will be covering our commercial losses for the remaining part of the year and for the maximum amount of GTF-related aircraft grounding we will be having. As of August, at the beginning of this month, overall, we have 70 NEOs in the fleet, and 32 of these are grounded. This number could go up to 40-45 towards the end of this year and next year. We believe this will be the maximum amount we will be grounding.
And, the one particular remark I want to make, even though we get this compensation, it will be booked in our financial statements in other operating income, so it won't be netted off in grounded expenses in under cost of sales, so it won't have. So our ex-fuel CASK will be still increasing. This compensation will not make an direct impact in the, in, in our ex-fuel CASK item.
More recent developments, what was the impact of the recent global tech outage on your operations?
Even though the system failure was seen in quite a diverse set of industries and companies, we were very quick to respond to the crisis. All the executives and the technical teams were in the crisis center early in the morning. As a result, we canceled only 87 flights, which corresponds to roughly 5% of our daily operations, and it did not create a company-wide operational pause. Of course, there were some financial impacts, but it was a relatively limited impact. I could say by the afternoon, almost all of our operations were back to normal after these cancellations.
Concerning the current operating environment, I believe one of the most important items in our Q&A is outlook regarding the passenger trends. So Murat, could you provide a color about the current booking trends and forward bookings, particularly from different regions?
Sure. Overall, the demand environment is positive. Even though we see increased competition, which puts on the yields, I can say, network-wise, we see that the yields are going to be improving slightly on the third quarter compared to the second quarter. And this will, as I said earlier, in the first quarter, we had about 6% decline, and we will see improvements in this yield environment for the remaining part of the year, year. Intensifying competition, particularly, is visible in the Asia as the currently this year, we see that that part of the world is main driver of global air travel. Similar performance to second quarter is expected on the third quarter from us. And in North America region, yields and load factors are improving in the third quarter as opposed to the second quarter.
In Europe, considering the aggressive capacity increase of the competitors, we expect the yield pressure on the third quarter, but we are not seeing a major weakness due to the Olympics, for example. Middle East is the region where we had the biggest challenge, but despite of that, overall, in the first half of the year, the total revenue was below by mildly 1%-2% as opposed to last year. So despite of the challenging environment, we have not seen a major drop in the revenue so far, but we take a note that the demand in the region, Middle East region, is going to be tough to recover fully. And the domestic market, after the price cap increase in the domestic tickets, we saw the high significant improvement in the yield environment.
And the demand is also very strong in the domestic market. For the remaining part of the year, we'll keep adding significant amount of capacities, especially in the Far East, and then followed by the Americas. In the third quarter, for example, almost a 30% capacity increase is going to come on from the Asia market, Far East Asia market, and then Americas will have around a 13%, followed by Africa and Europe. So overall, we'll keep adding capacity. Overall, 10% ASK growth in the third quarter, and then about 8%-9% on the fourth quarter, which will bring the year to around close to 10% capacity increase and with about a percentage point increase also on the load factors.
Could you elaborate on current premium passenger pricing and developments?
Especially after years of high inflation and high interest rates, we were seeing in certain parts of the world some erosion on the economy segment, but we were quick to compensate these drops with the premium segment. Our business class yield was almost flat as compared to last year's first half, whereas we saw a much bigger yield erosion on the economy segment. And we saw the share of revenues attained from the business class was around 19% last year, in the first half of 2023, which went up to 21% in this year. So we see that the yields are holding and the demand is strong, which we do actually invest in our business class with the renewing business class seats and doing more marketing on the premium segments. Our target is, by 2028, to have about 25% of our revenues being generated from the premium economy segment.
Murat, given the easing demand environments or relative slowdown, are you planning to decelerate capacity growth in the coming quarters?
Well, we definitely continue to monitor the demand environment and adjust our capacity on a very granular level. And even though the demand for the summer months, or in Turkey in particular, are seeing healthy, we are quite cautious and very dynamically monitoring the developments. Third quarter capacity growth will slow down to 6%-7% levels as compared to last year, due to the high base effect, and depending on the forward booking developments. At the moment, we don't see much of a need to drop the capacity growth on the fourth quarter of this year, but we definitely will monitor the developments and adjust as quick as possible. Overall, as I said earlier in, in the earlier question, our intention to grow the capacity is around 9%-10% this year. For 2025, it's a little early.
We haven't started. We have just started the budget processes, so probably with our, third quarter results, we'll be able to shed much more light on our 25 projections.
Murat, Melis Pocar from Oyak, Erdem Kaylı from TEB are looking for the details of our cargo performance. Additionally, Satish also ask about our exposure in e-commerce volume in air cargo.
So on cargo, as also we went through in the presentation, we had a very strong first half. Asian demand originate- the demand origin from Asia was very strong. It had more than 50% compared to 19% increase in the overall market. This was, actually a very direct result of our initiatives that we highlighted in our strategy. As we expand our, as we expand our network in these new markets, Turkish Cargo, state-of-the-art cargo facility in Istanbul is also facilitating the growth. For the third quarter, the e-commerce business is keeping its strength, which currently makes around, 15%-20% of our revenues, by the way. And, the resilient trade flows, and the continuation of the disruption in sea freight are going to keep our momentum high in air cargo business.
Hanzade from JP Morgan, and Melis from Oyak, and along with other analysts, are wondering about our cost expectation for 2024, and what are the main challenges, and what is the projected ex-fuel CASK?
So we expect cost pressure to continue in the coming quarters. Personnel expenses is going to be on the top of the list. In the first half, as you noticed in the presentation, in the first half, personnel CASK was up by more than 20%. We did a high load of salary increases, and having the Turkish lira being stable throughout this half year, in dollar terms, the personnel cost, together with relatedly, handling expenses and catering expenses, which are personnel cost-heavy cost items for us, were putting a pressure. But on the positive side, having these cost pressures allowed us to run a seamless operations. There were no strikes, there were no work slows, so it helped us to run our busy summer operations seamlessly so far.
So the second cost item, biggest impact came from the engine-related issues that led to some degree of inefficiencies in the operations, because after the grounding of the aircraft, the crew planning became more difficult. There were certain types of crew we could not operate because of the groundings, and one part of the crew had to operate over the limits, so that created some inefficiencies as well. But recovering much quicker than our peers after the pandemic, we have been focusing on the larger picture, and that's why increasing efficiency is going to be an integral part of our 2023 strategy. I tried to explain these pillars at the beginning of my presentation.
And such structural improvements, we expect to have around 1%-2% points increase in efficiency, and decrease our long-term unit cost going forward. And for the second half of this year, we work on some cost-cutting initiatives, overall, which we expect to improve our budgeted CASK structure by 1.5-2 percentage points. And considering these improvements, our end-of-year ex-fuel CASK is likely to be around mid-single digit increase year-on-year by the end of 2024.
What, what are your expectations for fuel CASK, on what assumptions?
This is one of the—it's continuing to be one of the hardest cost items to predict. If we had this call about two weeks ago, we could be talking some different numbers, but today, Brent came down as low as $76 per barrel. So we have not revised our year-end projections yet, but we definitely will be monitoring these developments very closely in the coming weeks. Our most recent year-end Brent projection was $80-$85 per barrel, and, this projection would lead us some low single-digit drop in fuel CASK. But we still, we could have a further tailwind coming from these lower levels of Brent price. Currently, our hedge ratio for this year is around 50%, and our break-even price is around $81. We keep adding new positions. We expect to finish the 2024 with around 50%-60% hedge ratio.
Combining all of these together, is it possible to talk about revenue and margin forecasts for this year?
Also incorporating our yield and capacity guidance, we expect the revenue to go up by 8%-11%, between 8% and 11% increase, and cargo, strong cargo performance is contributing to this. And accordingly, we anticipate our EBITDA margin to be between 24%-27% levels. In absolute terms, we expect our EBITDA level to be close to 2023 level.
Continuing with fleet, what is the projected year-end size?
So this year, we had around 40 net entries to the fleet, roughly 66 entries and 20-some exits. This net growth is going to bring the year-end fleet to 483 aircraft. On the TK side, we got about 37 deliveries. AJet, our low-cost subsidiary, got about 26 deliveries, and we got about three freighters in this year.
What, what are the estimated CapEx and PDP for this year? Also, our analysts are wondering about how it will develop next year.
So, gross CapEx, as we guided earlier, is likely to be around $4.3 billion-$4.7 billion. Towards the end of this year, we will be seeing a significant amount of somewhere between $500 million-$600 million of PDP payments due to our Airbus order that we placed at the last year. And considering the current unknowns in aircraft deliveries for next year, it's still a little early to say something more concretely for 2025, but by the end of our third quarter results, we'll be having a little bit more clarity on that. And yeah, so PDP is around $500 million-$600 million, and gross CapEx, somewhere between $4.3 billion-$4.7 billion.
Erdem Kaylı from TEB and Can Alagöz are asking about the projected year-end net debt level and for 2025, if that's possible.
So for this year, we saw some improvements in our net debt, our operational performance in the first half also, and within our projections for the remaining part of the year are going to be better than what we have budgeted at the beginning of the year. So as a result, our net debt expectation, we will be seeing somewhere between $1.5-$2 billion improvement, which is likely to come down from around $9 billion to $7 billion, on the vicinity of $7-$7.5 billion by the end of this year.
Murat, how will the sharp movements seen in Japanese yen will affect Turkish Airlines financials?
So in Japanese yen, we have been implementing natural hedging for the last, like four, five years, and significant as a result, significant portion of the Japanese yen fluctuations related to our debt structure is recognized in other comprehensive income. It's not recognized in the PNL table. So we don't get too much of a volatility generated by this. On the commercial side, on the cash flow side, we have quite a balanced Japanese yen position for 2024, which means our revenues are matching a significant portion of our Japanese yen expenses. And from our experience, this kind of sharp movements do not have an instant material effect in passenger flows in general. So commercial side, we don't think it might have ... It's too early to make a verdict, how much it's going to have a commercial impact yet.
But current appreciation trend will be beneficial for our cash flow, since it will support Japanese outbound travel, which in turn will increase our Japanese yen generation, which will relatedly, decrease our net Japanese yen exposure.
Murat, can you comment on AJet's current performance and its recent operational issues?
So AJet, as we said earlier, started selling tickets on the mid of March of this year, and they start operations at the end of March. And since this start, they had about close to 6 million passengers, and, which they expect to carry around 20 million passengers by the end of this year. In June, actually, overall, AJet's operational performance, their on-time performance, is actually quite comparable and even more stronger, I might say, better than the, the industry. Like, for example, this year, in the month of July, Eurocontrol's average on-time performance was 51%. AJet's overall on-time performance was 61%. And in the three hubs they operate, which is Sabiha Gökçen, Esenboğa in Ankara and Antalya, they all have much higher on-time performance than the other airlines that operate in these hubs and in Eurocontrol's average.
It's just like we became more mediatic in June and July, and more news came along, about AJet, but their operational performance was actually better than the industry average. But they were not satisfied with these results. At the beginning of July, we even started to use more backup, reserve more aircraft, more backup aircraft to increase the operational performance. AJet has relatively older aircraft in their fleet, so more unplanned AOGs can happen. Aircraft might come up with maintenance needs and then get out of the operation. So to compensate these potential losses, they have come up with almost 12 backup aircraft to be able to run a more seamless operations. So overall, AJet is doing well. Their domestic and international operations are increasing. They are having 103 aircraft and operating in 177 destinations in 34 countries.
So yeah, their on-time performance is not actually worse than the industry average.
Murat, we have additional questions online. Satish is asking about our investment portfolio and what are the main drivers?
So our investment portfolio, we have strategically divided that into three components. One part of it is, depending on our liquidity needs, we leave it as a short-term period. And the second part, which is up to 3 months. A second portion of our portfolio includes investments up to 1 year, and, like, one-third of our portfolio is this short term, and then the remaining two-thirds is divided between mid-term, which is below 1 year, and long-term, which has a longer prospects, where we have long-term bonds and other long-term alternatives. And within these portfolios, the short-term ones are quite liquid. Short-term deposits in Turkish lira, in foreign currencies, and mid-term includes more other investments, includes long-term bonds and other sort of mid-term investments. For the loans, we have Euro bonds from government bonds, private industry bonds, and other products.
One thing with other questions, Can Alagöz from QNB asked about current point to point international traffic and prospects. Satish is curious about the news flow that we're saying, the hot- that is saying the hotels are doing discount due to soft demand, and they are curious about what are we seeing.
So I'll start with the second question. We don't see much of that soft demand impact so far. The second quarter tourism numbers were announced a few weeks ago. In the second quarter, number of incoming tourists to Türkiye was up by 15% on top of last year, and in the first quarter, it was also about, like, 15% higher than the first quarter of 2023. So overall, in the first half, number of incoming tourists to Türkiye went up. And so, it's working in close coordination with the projected numbers for the whole year, where we expect the number of tourists coming to go up from 57 million to 60 million. So we don't see much of that softening in, for the, for the incoming tourists to Türkiye. The other question, the...
I mean, so as I said, in my answer, when we had a record number of incoming tourists to Türkiye last year, first half was strong. We are seeing that Antalya is keeping breaking records in number of coming tourists to Antalya, which is one of the key destinations for the incoming tourists. So Türkiye's attraction for the international tourists, on top of the ethnic travelers, is very strong. Although it will be headwind for the short term, we see that this continuing travel appetite to Türkiye is going to be keeping its potential for the remaining part of the year and for the coming years.
But we have one last question from İlker Gümüştaş about our debt structure over coming years and our capacity expansion, and correspondingly, our EBITDA margin, in which we gave the details in our strategic presentation. Would you like to add a couple of points?
Sure. So the debt structure, in the coming years, the biggest portion of our debt is going to continue to be financing our fleet. Next year we'll have around 30-40 net deliveries, if all the aircraft come on time. So that will make the big portion of our new borrowings. And relatedly, we keep expanding our infrastructure in Istanbul Airport. We have a new maintenance building currently under construction. A new catering facility we will start constructing in the coming, towards probably the end of this year, which will be followed by an additional simulator center. So these additional infrastructure needs are going to keep increasing our net debt.
Overall, maybe if I can put that into some percentages, 80% of our growth of debt will be coming through aircraft financing and the remaining with the aircraft and engines, which are related, and the remaining 20%-25% will come from our other infrastructure investments.
Thank you, Murat . With this question, we conclude our second quarter earnings call. We would like to thank you for your participation and hope to be with you next quarter.
Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, speakers. With that, ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.