Hello and welcome to easyJet's Full Year Results Presentation for the period ending 30 September 2025. Full year 2025 has been another year of positive progress for easyJet, both financially and operationally. We achieved a profit before tax of GBP 665 million, which is a 9% increase year-on-year, building further on the last two years of improved profits. At an EBIT level, it was an 18% improvement. As a result of proactive investments into resilience across the business, we were able to achieve strong operational performance and improved punctuality, despite a continued challenging external operational environment, particularly across French airspace. This improvement has, in turn, helped strengthen our brand through enhanced customer satisfaction, currently at the highest level in over a decade, with 71% of our customers now returning to travel with easyJet within two years.
This investment in resilience has also driven disruption costs to be materially reduced year-on-year. Our owned asset book value has grown by over GBP 500 million in the year and is set to further increase as we continue to build and modernize our fleet. easyJet holidays has delivered early on its ambitious target, set just two years ago, and now enters its next phase of growth with a new target of GBP 450 million profit before tax by full year 2030, launched today. A focus on capital allocation has meant that we've achieved a ROCE of 18%, a 2 percentage point improvement year-on-year, in line with our medium-term target of high teen returns on capital.
Critically, many of the key levers for achieving even stronger returns are ahead of us, and I remain confident in our ability to deliver over GBP 1 billion in profit before tax in the medium term. I'd like to take this opportunity to step back and look at the significant progress we've made over the last two years since setting our medium-term targets. We've expanded our network and now provide more route choices for our customers, flying them to more places and further than ever before. Increasingly, our customers are choosing easyJet as their package holiday provider, alongside attracting new customers from competitors, demonstrated through doubling our U.K. market share from 5% - 10% over the last two years. We've also increased customer satisfaction to record levels and are building brand loyalty over the long term through our continued focus and targeted actions to provide an easy and efficient customer experience.
Financially, over the last two years, we've made strong steps forward in terms of our profitability, with EBIT improving 48%, driving return on capital employed to be in line with our medium-term targets, whilst also strengthening our owned asset value to GBP 4.8 billion. I'm pleased with the improved performance we've achieved over the last two years, but also remain extremely focused on capitalizing on the unique opportunities we have ahead of us. Now I will hand over to Jan to take you through the full year 2025 financial performance in detail.
Thanks, Kenton. I'm very happy to present you all for the first time in my 10 months at easyJet the full year results of the company. Let me start with a summary of the full year 2025 financial results. As mentioned by Kenton, 2025 was marked by the third consecutive profit growth of the company post-pandemic and marks another step towards our medium-term target of reaching a profit before tax of more than GBP 1 billion. Group headline EBIT reached GBP 703 million, 18% up versus prior year, with the airline going forward by GBP 15 million and holidays going forward by GBP 56 million. Group headline PBT amounted to GBP 665 million, an increase of GBP 55 million versus prior year, which is an increase of 9% versus prior year.
The increase in PBT was less pronounced than the EBIT increase, as the airline saw lower interest income on its cash balance, with interest rates falling and higher net finance charges due to the annualization of the GBP 850 million bond issued in March 2024 and the settlement of a GBP 500 million bond, which had a lower interest rate payable than the cash deposits used to repay it. This was alongside increased lease interest and a diverse balance sheet revaluation movement year-on-year. Group PBT per seat increased by 5% to GBP 6.39, getting closer to the GBP 7-10 per seat range targets we set two years ago. As a result, our return on capital employed improved 2 percentage points to 18%, in line with our medium-term target of high teen ROCE.
Next to that, 2025 saw a further strengthening of easyJet balance sheet, with net cash positioning increasing by GBP 420 million versus prior year to GBP 602 million and owned assets on the balance sheet increasing by GBP 506 million to GBP 4.8 billion. In 2025, we continued with our disciplined capacity growth, increasing our fleet by nine aircraft to 356, which is up 3% versus prior year. As we focused on schedule optimizations and flying longer sectors, especially in winter, we were able to increase aircraft utilization by 3% year-on-year to an average of 10 hours per day. Gauge increased only slightly as there were no AB19 retimers this year, with the biggest part of the up gauging still being ahead of us. Resulting seat capacity grew by 4%, which combined with our focus on longer sectors saw ASKs increase by 9% year-on-year.
Our network remains balanced, with 55% of our ASKs being attributed to leisure destinations, up 2 percentage points versus past year, the remaining 45% to City & Domestic destinations. Capacity growth this year was mainly focused on longer leisure destinations, mostly during the winter season, with beach destinations growing 12% and non-European destinations even 36%, supporting the continued growth of easyJet holidays. City destinations, with their 37% share, remains an important part of our network, growing 5% year-on-year, gradually progressing back towards pre-COVID levels. Domestic routes saw an 8% reduction in capacity following two years of investments, resulting in positive unit revenue trends this year. Moving on to airline revenue, demand for our primary airport network remained positive. We carried 4% more passengers year-on-year with a load factor of 89.8%, improving by 0.5 percentage points. Total Airline Revenue increased by 6% ahead of seat capacity growth.
Total RASK was 3% lower for the financial year, with H1 down 6% and H2 down 1%. The reduction in RASK includes a circa 3 percentage point impact from the sector length increase, as we naturally see some dilution on the ASK basis from flying further, with corresponding efficiencies seen within CASK. RASK decrease of 3% in the year was also impacted by the winter capacity investments, recovering from the capacity gap versus 2019 created since the COVID pandemic. Given the size of the capacity growth, this required some price stimulation impacting RASK. We expect to see revenue benefits over the coming years as these investments embed themselves into our route network and mature, as we have seen this year following the rationalization of domestic capacity. Now let's move on to the CASK bridge.
We saw strong cost performance over the financial year, with total CASK reducing 3% year-on-year. Fuel CASK improved by 7% thanks to fuel efficiencies as well as favorable effective U.S. dollar and jet fuel prices. These positive factors more than mitigate the impact of the free ETS allowances that are being phased out and the introduction of SAF mandates. Our CASK ex-fuel has improved by 1%, which is a positive achievement given the current inflationary cost environment. Solid CASK results were achieved as asset productivity increased thanks to flying longer sectors, the positive effect of the proactive resilience measures put in place, delivering a significant step forward in reducing disruption costs, as well as through our continued focus on cost efficiencies, leveraging technology and automation across the business.
Alongside taking nine new NEO aircraft into ownership, we also had the opportunity during the year to repurchase eight young lease aircraft, taking them back into ownership, giving us more control on these strategic assets. This will deliver structural cost efficiencies going forward through reduced ownership costs. This resulted in a non-cash accounting release of GBP 54 million, mainly within ownership costs. This one-off benefit is partially offset by other one-off items and FX balance sheet revaluations. Further details are included in the appendix alongside a slide which provides further detail by line item.
Having been here now for 10 months, I can only say I'm convinced there are further cost efficiencies to be achieved at easyJet as we are catching up from the lower investment of the last decade in both the fleet and in our digital capabilities, leveraging our low-cost DNA, which has been a core element in the existence of easyJet since 30 years. Moving on to easyJet holidays, I must say it has been impressive to see the progress made by easyJet holidays over the last years. After the successful growth of these last years, easyJet holidays grew its profit even further by an additional 32%, reaching a PBT of GBP 250 million, delivering already now its medium-term target launched only two years ago. This was driven by 20% customer growth and continued healthy margins, delivering a PBT margin of 13%, up 1 percent points versus prior year.
Attachment rate increased to 7% across all beach and city flights, leading to a market share of 10% in the U.K. We still see an important opportunity to grow PBT going forward, considering the still overall low attachment rate, the relatively small size of the city offering into the holidays' overall results, as well as the still limited revenues generated outside of the U.K. With the early delivery of our medium-term target, the easyJet holidays target has been upgraded to GBP 450 million PBT, achievable by full year 2030. Cash generation throughout the year remained strong, with cash balance at the year-end amounting to GBP 3.5 billion, an increase of GBP 67 million, whilst making important aircraft purchases and debt reimbursements throughout the year. The positive cash movement in the year was mainly driven by the GBP 1.4 billion EBITDA, as well as positive unearned revenue movements.
This inflow exceeded the GBP 1.3 billion gross CapEx, which includes lease payments, pre-delivery payments, the final delivery payments for nine new A320neo family aircraft, and the repurchase of eight leased aircraft during the year. At the same time, the company fulfilled the repayment of a EUR 500 million bond and paid out the full year 2024 dividend of GBP 91 million. Now moving to the balance sheet, in 2025, easyJet's investment grade balance sheet further strengthened. Net book value of owned assets increased to GBP 4.8 billion, driven by 17 aircraft coming into ownership, with 85% of the NEO aircraft now owned. The net book value of owned assets is set to increase to greater than GBP 7.5 billion by full year 2028. Our net cash position, including leases, was GBP 602 million, an increase of GBP 421 million versus prior year.
Our current liquidity balance stands at GBP 4.8 billion, representing GBP 2.3 billion in excess of our policy to hold liquidity to the value of unearned revenue plus GBP 500 million. This excess de risks future capital expenditure, prefunding over 30% for the next three years or over 50% of the next two years. easyJet has one of the best investment grade credit ratings in the global aviation industry. Standard & Poor's upgraded our rating to BBB+ with a stable outlook, and Moody's continues to rate us a Baa2 with a stable outlook. Our fleet contains 356 Airbus A320 family aircraft, all powered by CFM engines. We have an order book to 2034, comprising an additional 219 A320neo family aircraft plus a further 100 purchase rights.
Our future aircraft deliveries will drive our up gauging journey and enhance cost efficiencies as we move from our current average gauge of 181- 191 for 2028. The future delivery schedule and our base fleet plan remains aligned with our guidance of last year and at half year. All 17 aircraft scheduled for delivery in full year 2026 are expected to be delivered according to that plan and taken directly into ownership. This will take our NEO ownership percentage to 87%. Confidence in the Airbus update delivery profile is growing, helping to integrate timelines for up gauging efficiencies into our plans. The rise in our gross capital expenditure over the coming years is driven by increasing aircraft deliveries as we retire the less efficient A319 aircraft to structurally improve long-term returns. It's important to note that the gross CapEx doesn't account for any potential financing options available to us.
While currently 85% of our NEOs are owned, above our target of remaining NEO ownership at over 75%, we have sufficient financing flexibilities in the future via sale leasebacks, JOLCOs, as well as the debt market. We anticipate elevated aircraft deliveries over the coming years, driven by our fleet modernization program. This will expand our fleet to 395 aircraft by full year 2028. At a steady state level, maintaining the fleet would require delivery of approximately 17 aircraft per year. This steady state renewal rate implies a gross annual CapEx of approximately GBP 1.5 billion, which is below the GBP 1.7 billion operational cash generated in the year, excluding CapEx. We also retain flexibility in financing to lower net CapEx if needed, for example, through the use of a debt market, JOLCO financing structures, and the use of sale leasebacks.
We remain focused on driving stronger earnings and cash generation in coming years, which will support future attractive true cycle free cash flow generation. Capital discipline remains central to our strategy, and we are focused on maximizing the return on our capital reflected through the 18% ROI we delivered this year. Our capital allocation focus firstly goes to the investments in our fleet, focusing on a disciplined capacity growth of up to 5% in the coming years, whilst at the same time modernizing the fleet, which will deliver the up gauging, fuel efficiency, and sustainability benefits, as well as lower ownership costs. We remain, however, cautious, keeping sufficient flexibility in our fleet sizing in case of a potential downsize. Secondly, towards remaining disciplined when it comes to allocating capacity to those bases where highest profits are or can be made.
We continue to be, however, strict when it comes to closing bases that are not delivering the required profitability or do not have enough perspective to increase their profitability. The chart on the right gives an anonymized view of the profitability of our bases in 2024 and reflects our capacity allocation decisions. The bars in red represent our Venice and Toulouse bases, which were closed given they were loss-making and had no perspective of delivering profit. The bars in green show where we have allocated both the capacity of the closed bases and the additional aircraft that entered the fleet. Aircraft were allocated to those bases already delivering highest return or to those with strong prospects of delivering profitable growth. These capacity allocation decisions taken for 2025 were done alongside the decision to open our three new bases: Southend, Linate, and Fiumicino
A similar process was followed in 2025 for the allocation of new capacity in 2026. We're continually reviewing the financial operational performance of our bases, and we implement improvement plans for those not delivering the required return on capital. At the same time, we look to drive further enhancements to those that are already delivering strong returns, making them even stronger. Our third focus goes to investment into capabilities we believe are strategic for the future. For instance, last year we purchased our first maintenance facility in Malta, insourcing approximately 25% of our heavy-based maintenance needs. In the coming months and years, we will continue to look out for further opportunities to insource the maintenance capabilities or any other capability we deem to be of a strategic nature or that could support the further improvement of easyJet's results.
Finally, we continue to invest in our digital capabilities, further developing the holidays platform, as well as investing in the future digitalization of key commercial, operational, and enterprise processes. Turning to outlook, easyJet continues to be well positioned to capture growth opportunities over the coming years as we progress towards our medium-term targets. easyJet holidays still has significant growth ahead. Visibility and confidence over our aircraft delivery profile is improving, helping to firm up timelines for the up gauging benefits that are ahead of us. Although winter losses reductions have been somewhat more challenging to improve than initially anticipated, our actions have been the right ones as they drive productivity and utilization benefits while ensuring that the airline is well prepared for the key summer season.
We need, however, to be mindful that this is the first winter season operating the remedy routes out of Milan Linate and Rome Fiumicino, which will require a circa GBP 30 million investment on top of the GBP 20 million investment already incurred this summer. We are confident that revenue will mature over the coming years as these investments embed themselves into our route network. Looking to the detailed guidance for full year 2026, Seat capacity is expected to grow by circa 3% and ASKs by around 7%, with more growth in H1 and H2 as our investment in Fiumicino Linate will year-round in winter, alongside continuing to look to improve asset utilization over winter with some further winter maturity needed on new routes.
easyJet holidays has entered its next phase, and we expect to see customer growth of up to 15% in full year 2026, with city customers having a lower absolute margin. Our forward booking position is slightly up versus last year, and we expect Q1 RASK to continue the trend seen over H2 2025. Full year CASK is expected to be mostly up year-on-year as market-wide inflationary pressures continue, partially offset by continued efficiency and fuel benefits. Now I will hand back to Kenton.
Thanks, Jan. We remain committed to our strategy, which you'll be very familiar with. Our purpose of making low-cost travel easy is underpinned by four strategic pillars: building Europe's best network, strengthening revenue, delivering ease and reliability, and driving our low-cost model. Ultimately, progress on these strategic priorities will drive the delivery of our medium-term targets. None of this is possible without our people.
Their warmth and professionalism truly sets us apart. We employ nearly 20,000 people, and over 80% of them interact with our customers every day, delivering a great travel experience. We have high engagement levels, and our attrition rate continues to decrease, reflecting the commitment and caliber of our people who are essential to providing excellent customer service. easyJet and easyJet holidays have been named as the top workplace by Glassdoor and the Sunday Times for the second and third year running, respectively. Both are great accolades to our people who are collectively creating Europe's most loved place to work. We've invested in both our people and technology to ensure that we're providing the warmest welcome in travel. These investments have delivered a 4 percentage point improvement in our overall airline customer satisfaction score, reaching 80%, which is the highest level we've achieved in over a decade.
Over 5,000 of our ground staff have completed a new enhanced training program focused around delivering great customer service, and we've rolled out real-time operational information tools powered by AI to ensure they can easily access the right information to enable fast and accurate real-time responses to customers to solve queries in the moment. This focus on customer service on the ground has resulted in a 5 percentage point year-on-year improvement in boarding and bag drop CSAT scores. When disruption does occur, we continue to enhance how we support our customers through these situations. We communicate through our informed frontline staff and the airport customer experience specialists. Due to our new ground crew app, they are now more able to provide on-the-spot assistance and a more personalized service for our customers throughout the airport. This supports our leading self-service disruption management tool embedded within the app.
78% of our customers now self-serve in times of disruption, and we'll continue to enhance the ease of self-service management over the coming months and years. We're the number one low-cost carrier for experience across our key markets, and we continue to drive loyalty and brand awareness with 71% of our bookings this year made by returning customers. We've continued to make progress on our targets this year. We're moving towards our goal of a PBT per seat of GBP 7-GBP 10, having reached GBP 6.39, an increase of 30% from the GBP 4.91 since we first set these targets in full year 2023. It's also pleasing to have delivered an 18% ROCC, up from 13% in full year 2023, in line with our medium-term target. There are still many key opportunities ahead of us, which will drive our financial performance and are unique to easyJet.
We're focused on driving productivity and utilization during the winter period, having made important strategic investments, which we are confident will see route maturity over the coming years as they embed. Our airline profit performance, particularly over winter, has been harder to improve at the rate we wanted. We're working hard to reposition our route network and deliver a multitude of detailed improvements to revenues, costs, and capabilities to support our future growth ambitions. We're also mindful that this coming winter is the first operating out of Linate and Fiumicino. A great long-term opportunity. However, there will be a further investment of around GBP 30 million this winter. Nearly all of the GBP 3 per seat cost savings that will be realized from up gauging are ahead of us as aircraft deliveries ramp up over the next three years.
The average gauge will increase from 181, as at the end of this financial year, into the low 190s by full year 2028. There are significant growth opportunities to come within easyJet holidays, as our new target illustrates. Garry and the holidays team will provide full details of this next phase of growth in the seminar on the 28th of November. As well as these key levers that are unique to easyJet, we also have many other initiatives across the business that we're continuing to focus on to drive customer loyalty, optimize revenue, and to continue to deliver cost efficiencies. With constrained short-haul capacity growth continuing to be seen across Europe as both OEMs remain sold out until the early 2030s, we remain focused on adding targeted growth where we see the best returns and demand is strongest.
We open bases in Milan Linate and Rome Fiumicino, which have excellent profit and growth potential, and demonstrates our focus on taking advantage of strategic opportunities as they arrive. This summer was impacted by a GBP 20 million investment as we were late to market due to the delayed timing of the European Commission approval, alongside the time needed to mature both remedy and new routes. We will see this investment continuing into the first winter of operation, with sequential improvements expected thereafter. Our base in Southend performed really well in its first summer of operation, already in line with the network average returns. This is underpinned by particularly high demand for easyJet holidays, which accounted for 19% of the passengers. In addition to closing underperforming bases in Venice and Toulouse, we've also been optimizing the network by adapting our routes, with 13% amended for the summer 2025 season.
Looking ahead to next year, two new bases will open for summer 2026: Newcastle and Marrakesh. Newcastle is expected to be another strong performer, with over 100,000 customers already booked for full year 2026. Marrakesh will be our first base in North Africa, opening in summer 2026. It is currently our largest network point without based aircraft, so the new base will enable us to better serve existing markets and customers. We'll continue our focus on network optimization and expect about 10% of this summer's routes to be further optimized moving into summer 2026. Starting with easyJet holidays, our unique business model of providing brilliant holidays digitally delivered at unbeatable prices has seen another year of significant growth.
The early delivery of the target of GBP 250 million profit before tax is a great achievement, and we've upgraded our target, which is now set at GBP 450 million profit by full year 2030. Significant growth opportunities remain, including increasing our attachment rates on core U.K. beach routes, EU expansion via growing in Germany, Switzerland, and France, and transforming our city breaks through our new flight plus hotel proposition. Additionally, we recently launched the Luxury Collection, which comprises around 100 high-end hotels. Booking to dates have been positive, with an average booking value of greater than GBP 5,700. Moving on to the airline, now we have full ownership of our app. We are able to develop its capabilities at speed to drive enhanced conversion, as well as delivering new service features and commercial products. We also launched a new ancillary product for the airline called FlexPass.
This add-on enables customers to change a flight up to two hours before departure without a fee. We continue to focus on enhancing our pricing algorithms. For example, we started to group some routes by behavior types as opposed to a traditional route type profile. As we celebrate our 30th birthday this month, ease and reliability remains as core to our brand and our purpose as it did 30 years ago. We've already touched on the improvements in customer satisfaction, but I want to reiterate that improvements have been made across all touch points of the customer journey, thanks to the fantastic efforts that our people have made throughout the business. On-time performance has improved 3 percentage points over the year, and we improved our turn time by 9%, which is a significant step change.
This shows that the action we've put in place and the use of data insights are paying off. Our customers are now better informed as a result of enhancements to our app. An example is a home and lock screen widget that provides passengers with check-in and gate information to help them navigate their journey. We've also recently launched an enhanced automated service recovery for passengers experiencing disruption to their flights. The initial use will be for preemptive cancellations, but once fully implemented, it will be able to serve customers with a recommended solution, which can be accepted in just two clicks. These enhancements make our service smoother and more dependable for our customers. As you know, we're fully committed to delivering low-cost travel.
While our cost advantage on primary airport networks is clear, the gap has widened due to easyJet achieving a flat CASK ex fuel for the past two years. We have been driving efficiencies across the business with the use of advanced technology integration and automation. For example, our AI-enabled customer communication tools have enabled us to respond to our customers much quicker, delivering a 39% productivity uplift and a 29% cost reduction, as well as delivering a strong increase in customer satisfaction scores. We have rolled out multiple initiatives on fuel efficiencies this year, such as lightweight paint, fan speed data to optimize flight paths, as well as the ongoing integration of the NEO fleet. The whole business remains focused on driving further cost efficiencies in the years to come.
In summary, we're confident that executing on our strategy, supported by a disciplined approach to capital allocation, will provide attractive shareholder returns. Our investment-grade balance sheet is one of the best in the industry, and we'll continue to increase ownership levels as our fleet modernization program accelerates over the next few years. This fleet renewal will deliver the material up gauging benefits, which are crucial levers to improving operational efficiency, generating higher operational cash flow, and enhancing margins, alongside further sustainability benefits. The asset-light easyJet holidays model remains another key driver of earnings growth for the group, with an upgraded financial target to deliver profits of GBP 450 million as it enters its next phase of growth. The actions taken this year mean easyJet is in a structurally stronger position for the future, and we remain resolutely focused on our target of delivering sustainable profits of greater than GBP 1 billion.
Thank you for watching this presentation of our full year 2025 results.