Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Wizz Air F 2023 Q3 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question from the phone, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today, József Váradi, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to this presentation. This is Wizz Air, Wizz Air Holdings PLC Q3 fiscal 2023 results presentation. Let me just give you the highlights as we consider this period. In the reporting period, revenue was up 43% versus pre-pandemic level. That is Q3 fiscal 2020. If you take the financial year to date, the first nine months, we are up 35% versus pre-pandemic level. Clearly Wizz Air is the fastest growing airline in Europe. At the same time, unit revenue grew by 4%.
I think we said that before that this is the first time we are seeing a very substantial volume growth, capacity growth delivered to the market, at the same time being able to grow unit revenue too. Within that revenue growth, actually unit revenue represented 7% growth relative to pre-pandemic levels. We delivered break even EBITDA, slightly profitable quarter on net profit, although with some fluctuation of financial inputs, especially foreign exchange. Fuel unit costs came down by 5% versus the H1 of the financial year. We are seeing some improvements of the macro environment. Let's not forget that we are unhedged in this period, so we are really subject to the market, both on fuel and foreign exchange. Completion rate improved significantly.
You recall that, we got severely affected by operational disruptions during the summer. Post-summer, we were able to stabilize operations and improved our completion rate. We are nearly back to historical standards. Still a small gap, but I think we are heading the right way. Liquidity, close to EUR 1.4 billion. This is the same liquidity level as a year ago without taking any incremental financing. Essentially, the business over the past year, was cashflow break even despite the P&L loss what we are reporting.
We've got strong ratings out of the rating agencies, from Fitch and Moody's, and we continue to focus on our environmental footprint and our sustainability performance, which is becoming increasingly recognized by the outside world as well. The latest manifestation of that is the CAPA Global Environmental Sustainability Airline Award, what we received recently. If you look at kind of the key metrics of the business as it stands, with regard to passenger count, we carried 12.5 million passengers in the period. This is 60% more than a year ago and 24% more than the pre-pandemic quarter before the breakout of COVID-19. In terms of aircraft count, the fleet has been growing on a constant basis.
We added 27 aircraft over the past year, and our fleet is now 57 aircraft larger than what it was pre-pandemic. We extended our footprint, but at the same time, we also consolidated our operations. As you can see, we were striking out smaller, ineffective operating bases to make sure that we are gaining scale benefits and operational efficiency as well as financial performance from those moves. It is a more focused, more concentrated network what we are having right now. At the same time, we entered some new markets, new countries, added three more countries to our franchise versus a year ago and nine versus pre-pandemic levels.
We have been talking about sustainability, but also, we have been getting some other awards in this period. I mean, we are not really trophy collectors, but of course it feels good when the industry recognizes our performance. This is important because, as we said, the current financial year is a transition year. We are ramping up operations, and we are ramping up our investments we have made during the COVID-19 times. As a result, you can see our market share has grown substantially in Central and Eastern Europe from 18% pre-pandemic times to 27% now. I mean, that's a substantial growth.
Essentially our impact is 50% bigger in Central and Eastern Europe than prior to the breakout of COVID-19. We have continued to invest across our markets in Central and Eastern Europe. We consider Central and Eastern Europe as home run for Wizz Air, so it remains an investment market. On a going forward basis, you will see that our growth rate is moderated in Central and Eastern Europe, because really the growth will come through some of the new market investments what we have made during the COVID period. Strong results across the board, following through our commitment to Central and Eastern Europe.
With those highlights, let me just turn it over to Ian to talk about the financial performance, and I will take it back for some of the other insights of the business. Thank you.
Thank you, József. Good morning, and thank you. As outlined in the highlights, revenue more than doubled in Q3 versus last year this time, with a Q3 revenue figure of almost EUR 1 billion, 43% higher than the same period pre-COVID in F 2020. EBITDA was roughly break even. Our operating result improved, though still affected by higher operating costs, which we will break down in detail later, as well as explain how these will be brought back in line with pre-pandemic levels. Ultimately, we turned a EUR 33.5 million profit for the quarter, admittedly helped by a course correction from a strengthening euro. Cash remained level with last year's balance despite the growth and the higher volume of business. Revenue is 43% higher than fiscal year 2020 for the same quarter.
Notably, unit revenue growth, when compared to this quarter in fiscal year 2020, came in at EUR 0.0373, which is almost 4% higher than F 2020 and 50% higher than the same quarter last year. It is lining up with the half two guidance we gave you in November. Ancillary revenue is growing fast at 7.5% versus fiscal year 2020 as we optimize and segment our customers better and tailor suitable products to their requirements. Longer routes, such as those to the Middle East and that region in general, present the opportunity to price up. Across the network, as our load factor increases, so will our ticket-related unit revenue. The cash balance at the end of December was EUR 1.37 billion, in line with our forecast, and it reflects the seasonality of the reporting period.
We purchased EUR 125 million of EU and UK Emissions Trading Scheme as part of our offset obligations. Unflown revenue for future flight purchases and the refund of PDP payments from Airbus contributed to almost EUR 100 million of positive cash flow during the period. We ended the quarter with roughly the same amount of cash as we did in the same quarter last year, despite the 43% growth in Available Seat Kilometers, which demonstrates the business's ability to generate cash while withstanding the summer challenges. We have not required the PDP financing facility that we mentioned in last quarter's results presentation, although that credit line has now progressed from a term sheet stage to definitive documentation. We anticipate a closing in early February to provide additional liquidity should there be an unexpected deterioration in macro factors.
With respect to our fleet financing obligations, we have secured financing commitments for all aircraft scheduled for delivery in calendar year 2023. In addition, we have been engaging with the market in preparing for deliveries for next year, for 2024, and we remain confident that the combination of the Wizz Air credit quality and the superior Airbus A321neo aircraft in a 239 seat configuration will make our order book the most attractive asset for the leasing community to finance, which will ultimately put us at a cost advantage compared to other airlines.
Our ex-fuel CASK figure continues to drop and ended at EUR 0.0249, which is now only 10% higher than pre-pandemic levels and is approaching guidance, which targets the H2 of this year's increase to no more than single digits compared to fiscal year 2020. Cost reduction is our top priority now that the post-COVID ramp-up pressure is starting to normalize and the enhancements we spoke about previously start to mature. We remain confident that the results of these efforts, combined with higher aircraft utilization, will deliver reduced unit costs that return to historical levels.
In fact, if you look at the last row on this slide, it shows how our utilization increased compared to this quarter last year, but how it is still below our fiscal year 2020 levels and dramatically below our target minimum of 12.5 hours a day, which József Váradi will talk about later. Fuel costs continue to put pressure on earnings this quarter. As of today, I can confirm that we are, that we continue to follow our hedging policy, and we have 45% of our fuel requirements for next year hedged and 20% of our fuel-related currency hedged as well for next year. In terms of how we're going to tackle ex-fuel CASK, it's twofold. Firstly, there are a number of structural cost reductions that we will benefit from.
These include having the youngest fleet with an average age of 4.6 years, which means lower operating costs and higher fuel efficiency. You have an upgauged fleet with 239 seats for the new deliveries, which, especially with utilization returning, puts us far ahead of any other operator whose seat count is simply unmatched. Secondly, we factor in the work we've been putting in this winter to optimize the business, such as rationalizing bases, optimizing the route network, eliminating certain flying patterns, reducing flight disruptions, and improving customer service. With that, I'll hand the floor back to József to further talk about our cost advantage and targets for the balance of this year and next. Thank you.
Thank you, Ian. Maybe, maybe the best way to put this is that we are putting fleet utilization in the forefront of the business, utilization is the religion of the airline, and everything else is sort of subordinated to that. We would like to highlight a few major directions here with regard to flight disruptions, operational resilience, customer service enhancement, the fleet efficiency, network development, and sustainability. Please kind of keep in mind the utilization target of the business to be reinstated back to pre-pandemic levels. If you look at the business, you are seeing that disruptions are moderating, but at the same time, they are still a factor.
We are clearly resetting the operating model to make sure that we get more resilience out of the system. We are expecting to grow ASKs by around 30% in the H1 of fiscal 2024 versus previous year. While load factors have been building up, they have not reached pre-pandemic levels, we are expecting load factors to be reinstated to pre-pandemic levels 90%-93%. Utilization again, while improving, we are not fully transitioned, we are expecting in the H1 of fiscal 2024 to be back into pre-historic levels with 5.5 hours of utilization.
Same for completion rate, having significant improvement during the quarter, but more improvement to follow with 99.5%, 99.5% target. I mean you can see that in Q3 fiscal 2022 that was achieved. We wanna make sure that it's not only the off-peak period, but during the peak summer period, that performance level is sustained. We are heavily investing into operational resilience. We gave notice on this direction before. We are investing into infrastructure, into people, and into aircraft. With regard to infrastructure, quite a significant number of systemic and automation initiatives are taking place.
Also we are changing design elements of the model to make sure that we get more output through the system. I mean we have gone through some significant disruptions and the consequences of those disruptions were to manage all the claims, customer claims. We are adding capacity to that regard should that happen again that we are ready to do that and effectively process that claim volume. We are adding more crews to the system on standby to make sure that if the operating environment is disruptive, that actually we have better ways to recover. We hired 3,000 people during the last two years in 2021, 2022.
I mean, this is against the 4,000 people we had at the bottom of the COVID period, we nearly doubled the size of the organization over the last two years. Obviously we are putting these people through training, and we have very significant throughput increase in our training center. We have a number of other programs to make sure that people are properly trained and advanced in their careers, like the Wizz Air Academy or the other career program that we have in place. We continue to embark on the A321neo aircraft. This is the best aircraft of our times in terms of economic efficiency and in terms of environmental impact as well.
As you know that we have the high density 239-seater aircraft coming online, and we continuously take deliveries of those aircraft and to advance the renewal of the fleet. If you look at the customer side of the equation, we are very focused on the customers. We have basically the entire document validation put through online. Brand awareness is increasing in key markets and in investment markets across the board. We are becoming increasingly digitalized in our interactions with the customers. So moving away from call support towards digital support, as you can see a significant shift with that regard. Obviously this is a lot more efficient and effective with the customer.
As said, the fleet remains to be a cornerstone issue to the business. We continue to receive new aircraft deliveries. I mean, we all know that the industry is disturbed at the moment in terms of the manufacturer's ability to produce and deliver on time to operators. We are not immune from that. If you really think about this, we are programmatically delivered the aircraft. Even if there is delay, that is suffering doesn't really mean that we would be lacking aircraft over time, but it would just be delivered later. At one point, we would be getting pretty much the same number aircraft as originally scheduled because we have a delivery stream program for five, six years in front of us.
We have a large aircraft order book out there. I think we are in a privileged position to have access to the best aircraft of the world while other airlines don't have that order book. Certainly should you wanna order aircraft today, you would not be able to take it from the manufacturer. We're seeing that the aircraft itself and the order stream in front of us are a great source of structural competitive advantage for the business going forward. If you look at the way we are delivering growth in fiscal 2024, this is a very safe way of growing the business.
Essentially, most of the growth, roughly 80% of the growth will come through as increasing frequencies on existing routes, 16% on joining existing airports. Essentially 95% of the growth will come through the existing network, existing routes, existing airports. And if you look at the geographical split of deploying growth, half of the growth comes through new markets, namely Abu Dhabi and Italy, and the other half would come through the existing network. Again, it is not like that we are blowing growth in our existing market and diluting our revenues as a result, but really growth is put through largely the newly invested markets. Maybe just a few words on Abu Dhabi.
We find Abu Dhabi a very exciting venture, with great results coming through now. I mean, it was a slow start because we launched the airline during the pandemic under quite restrictive COVID measures. As the market opened up, we are seeing the fruit harvested from that investment. We have significantly scaled that operation. Now we are having actually nine aircraft based in Abu Dhabi, eight flying, one being a spare. Obviously it's a young fleet of aircraft. Brand awareness is growing. Customer reaction is very significant, providing further ground for growth in the future.
We are looking at doubling down on Abu Dhabi in the coming years. We are going to double the fleet size in Abu Dhabi in the next 15 months or so. Already we are the second largest airline in Abu Dhabi, and we'll continue to grow our business there. We are seeing market demand pretty much across the board, to Europe, to the CIS countries, to the Middle East, to the Gulf region itself, but also to the sub-continent. Obviously some of them are easier to be accessed, some of them are more difficult from a regulatory standpoint. We are working on each of these countries to make sure that we are able to access those markets.
Abu Dhabi has been a very strong story, with strong results coming through, encouraging us to invest further in that market. I've already commented on sustainability. Sustainability remains in the focus of the business in the company. You can see the current performance of the business and the target for 2030, publicly stated. We are well ahead of the game, well ahead of the industry in terms of current performance and future commitment, in terms of CO2 unit target, for the business. We are working on a number of initiatives, to create staff capacity, for the business going forward. Obviously, this is a work in progress. We are kind of inching every, in every period.
The latest one is an MOU signed with OMV in Austria. We are looking at a number of other initiatives to get access to staff. Maybe a bit of a summary on existing performance and what you should be expecting from the business going into the next financial year. We are maintaining our ex-fuel cost guidance for the H2 of the current financial year. That's a single digit versus single digit increase versus the same period pre-pandemic. We also maintain our guidance on revenue, unit revenue, mid-single digit, for the half year versus pre-pandemic period. Capacity growth remains on track with 35% projected for the H2 of the financial year.
We are halfway through that financial year, and we are tracking in line with that projection. Of course, we are expecting net loss for the financial year as indicated before, as this is a year of transition. We are expecting to return to significant profitability in fiscal 2024. With that, for fiscal 2024, we are focused on two major operational KPIs, getting aircraft utilization back to 12.5 hours. Obviously this is not only an operational issue, but it is also a commercial resource allocation issue, we are adjusting our models as such that we can deliver on 12.5 hours. This is what this business used to deliver prior to pandemic.
With completion rate to achieve 99.5%, which again is the restoration of historical performance. Very importantly, we are very focused on getting ex-fuel cost performance back to pre-pandemic level. You may recall we used to be presenting a chart showing like a very consistent ex-fuel performance year after year for five, six years since listing the business. Obviously we broke down on that during the COVID times due to circumstantial issues. We are intending to reinstate that level of unit cost performance. I would just highlight again the strategic advantages, competitive advantages, we have versus the market. We have the most renewed fleet program benefiting from new technology.
We are up gauging flying the highest density aircraft, obviously, that benefits unit cost production. We believe that those cost savings together with productivity gains, offset the headwinds. Of course, we are seeing on inflation, on macros and all those sort of areas. We believe that we are in a lot better position versus any other airlines when it comes to unit cost prospects of the business, given the advantages falling out of the fleet. We are expecting the H1 of the next financial year to grow by 30% relative to the current financial year. With that, let me just quickly summarize the presentation.
As said, we are much focused on unit cost reduction to get back to pre-pandemic performance levels through increasing utilization, gaining advantages from the aircraft. We are on fuel hedge parity with our competitors, so that issue is eliminated going into the next financial year. Revenue growth is focused on ancillaries and load factor performance. I mean, you may wonder why we dropped on load factor. We dropped on load factor for two reasons. One is that we made a lot of new market investments, and obviously all those new markets investments go through a maturity curve. Those markets are now maturating. They will be in the second, third year of maturity, and that is the time that you expect those markets to deliver full load factor potential.
Also because the COVID booking curves were very different from the normalized booking curves, and now we are transitioning from COVID to normalized, and it takes some time. Because of those two factors, you saw the drop of load factor. Now we are going back to historical performance levels. Network continues to expand, and it will become more robust going forward. The way we are growing capacity is very safe. 95% of the capacity growth is pushed through by increasing frequencies and joining existing dots in the system. Most of the growth goes through new market activities without inflating existing market market years.
We are having strong liquidity, and we believe that the improving financial performance will yield significant liquidity gains for the business. Again, I would emphasize that irrespective of the P&L loss we are reporting, actually last year was a cash flow break even year, and we are expecting to top our liquidity position substantially going into next financial year. Thank you. Now it's questions.
Hi. Good morning. It's James Hollins from BNP Paribas. Three for me, please. Just on the ex-fuel CASK, up 10% in Q3, just wondering if we should be thinking about single digit being high single digit or maybe close to 10% for the half as a whole. Maybe if you just run us through near term, where you're seeing particular cost inflation or indeed some tailwinds in the business. Secondly, you talk about financing your leases this year. I was just wondering, you know, some general thoughts on the market as well as does your loss of investment grade make much difference to leasing costs? Obviously, IAG claim it doesn't. Perhaps you give me your view.
Just third one, I might be being stupid here, does your utilization back to pre-COVID levels, is that not made slightly more difficult by your route network changes? I guess I'd specifically highlight Abu Dhabi. I think you're starting up Turkey as well. Thank you.
All right. Maybe I take the utilization model. The utilization model is at the moment down to operational ramp up mainly, but also commercial ramp up. We don't see any natural barriers to reinstate the utilization model. Obviously, we are testing the resilience of that operating model in light of expected turbulence in the operating environment and some stress coming out of, especially ATC operations going into summer.
ATC is gonna be a complicated issue due to the whole system being underserved on the one side and dealing with hugely increasing levels of complexities, especially arising from the partial airspace closure over Ukraine and Russia, redirecting traffic as a result, and also increased military activities in the air, which has priority over civil flying. This is really the question, how we put the operating model on the ground as such that it is resilient on the one side, but it is delivering the utilization targets on the other side. This is what we have worked out during the year. I think we told you that we are transitioning the the model.
Abu Dhabi actually is adding to the utilization target because its longer sectors are flying more. The Abu Dhabi utilization is more like 14+ hours as opposed to 12 and a half for the European operations.
In terms of ex-fuel CASK, the question I think was whether we expected to land in sort of high single-digit or somewhere at a lower or middle single-digit range. There's certainly a ramp up period that we have to get through from the lower seasons where we are now back into the summer season. I would expect it to be more in the, in the, in the higher single-digit range at this point, and then reducing rapidly into next year. Because if we're gonna go back to pre-pandemic levels for F 2024, you know, we're gonna have to get to that pretty quickly to land there for the full year.
In terms of where we're seeing cost inflation across the line, I would say that our airport costs are higher just because of the lower utilization currently, in terms of 10.5 hours versus where we wanna be at 12.5 hours. Handling is up across the board due to wage growth and general inflation pressures. A different airport mix also contributes to that. Navigation charges are up 10% as a factor of Eurocontrol communications. Maintenance is actually coming down because of the newer aircraft that we operate and the more reliable that they can be. Crew costs are up. As József mentioned, we are obviously having to add a lot of people into the system and then train them up. There's also wage inflation across the board.
We would expect slight disruption costs to come down, although they have been up in this quarter, as a result of compensation claims and other adjustments having to work their way through the system. Overhead, we're planning on bringing in line or below ex-fuel historical or current ex-fuel CASK levels. Depreciation is actually going up as we take more as we take newer planes that have a higher cost. In terms of your third question, in terms of whether the loss of investment grade has a negative impact on our financing costs.
I would agree with the statement you said, which is that the feedback from the aircraft financing market is that the investment grade, and remember, we are a split rating right now, so we still maintain one investment grade rating. I would agree that it has little to no impact on our financing costs. What does matter is the quality of the airline and the quality of the asset. Aircraft financing costs across the board are going to increase, whether you lease or finance them, just because of the base rate increases that have happened. Where we will be competitive is because of our remaining investment grade rating and because of the asset. On a relative basis, our costs will be lower.
For this period and for going into next year, cost is the name of the game. Eliminating any cost advantages or disadvantages that we might have, and getting that utilization up to 12.5, which from 10.5, where we are currently, is a 25% increase in utilization. That 25% increase will dramatically bring down those unit costs across the board.
Stephen Furlong from Davy. Two quick ones. Can you just remind me actually what changes you made internally in the crewing model from last summer disruptions? You made some changes so that at least I know ATC can be an issue next summer, but that there'll be nothing internal that will be an issue. I was just wondering, József , do you have any comment on what happened with the EU in December in terms of the phase out of the ETS allowances, I think, out to 2026, 2027, and how fair or unfair that is? It's certainly, you know, focused obviously intra Europe rather than ex-Europe. Thank you.
Thank you. Maybe to benefit from the presence of our Chief Operating Officer here. Mike, maybe you wanna elaborate on the crew modeling issue?
Certainly.
This is Michael Delehant, being in charge of the airline's overall operations.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Certainly the tightness of the crew model in years past where we had a stable underlying environment, we were able to push the duty times towards where the regulatory high end would be. As we learned through the summer that having no ability within the flight duties in terms of hours available of the crew members was what was being triggered once the environment got highly disruptive. Essentially we've designed out the majority of all of the high-risk duties, which included such things as you may have heard of W patterns, other complex flying that would push to that end.
As we look towards our ability to be able to respond to longer ATC and ground times, we've been working towards getting multiple hours of buffer in the flight duties on a daily basis, while still being able on a monthly basis to maintain productivity by spreading across the days in a better way. That ability to absorb doesn't necessarily increase costs at all, but it does provide the crews with the ability to still have duty time available when disruption occurs. That was the fundamental change that we've made as the model moves towards summer and the utilization of the aircraft move up, the productivity of the crew should be still able to moved up, yet each individual day, they should have more ability to absorb along with a stronger standby model in terms of available people at the right times in day.
Thank you, Mike. With regard to ETS, I mean, this is a long debated issue in the industry, whether this is fair or unfair. I mean, I would say that phasing out the current system benefits Wizz Air because we are yet not benefiting from free allowances. Essentially we have to buy pretty much everything because of the growth while most of our competitors are protected based on their historics. We think it's an unfair system because essentially that is freezing the status quo as opposed to allowing more efficient operators to merge. The issue of, you know, who gets exempted and who's not from any schemes coming into play in Europe, I think this is yet a debated issue.
We totally disagree with any exemptions on long-haul or cargo or anything like that, because this is just a cross-subsidization for the likes of Lufthansa, British Airways, et cetera, and that really makes the system unfair. We are fighting against that approach. We understand that there is a significant lobbying of the legacy airlines, you know, for getting something out for the favor versus our standpoint here. I don't think this is yet a settled view in Europe.
Hi. Morning. It's Harry Gowers from JP Morgan. I've got two questions. Could I firstly ask about pricing and load factors in Abu Dhabi? Are these higher-yielding routes on average, and also as it grows, also matures? How might that affect the group RASK mix? Then just following on from James' question on ex-fuel CASK and up 10% in Q3. If we assume Q4 improves a fair bit relative to 2019, what's the real kicker on the improvement relative to Q3? Thanks.
All right. Maybe to also benefit from the presence of our President who runs the commercial line of the of the airline. Robert, would you please comment on the Abu Dhabi pricing load factor equation?
Good morning, everybody. I think we're continuing to see strength in Abu Dhabi, and it's building up and maturing nicely. It'll be up to, as you've seen the announcement, we have the eight aircraft there, operating now, and we have a much more diversified network we're operating through this winter, with a nice balance of short, medium and long sectors in there. I think load factors are, you know, it's still early in the maturity curve, but load factors are building very nicely with what we would expect. Actually in some of the markets outpacing expectations. Yields on some of these sectors, you know, it's a market that has not seen ultra-low-cost competition, to date.
While we're coming in with price points the market hasn't seen, they are still healthy yields for markets that are basically one year old.
Thanks, Robert. Harry, on the ex-fuel CASK kicker question, I would expect us to see airport flat with pre-pandemic levels handling down as we build more ASKs through higher utilization. We have a stable mix and benefit from some contract adjustments and negotiations, that's a structural change that we've made to the system. Navigation costs will come down as we increase ASK. We don't expect Eurocontrol to be passing any further costs through to us. As I mentioned earlier, maintenance costs to be flat or sorry, to be down like we're seeing currently. Crew costs down as we no longer need to ramp up as aggressively. Sales and distribution to come down as we grow PAX. That's predominantly credit card costs and fees associated with that.
Flight disruptions to be down as we maintain our 99.5% regularity target. Overhead under control and depreciation to be flat with where we are currently, so higher than pre-pandemic levels as a result of the larger and newer fleet. Overall, ex-fuel CASK to remain in line with guidance with bringing it down to pre-pandemic levels in F 2024.
Thanks. Alex Irving from Bernstein. Three from me, please. First, can we come back to utilization? Your target looks like slightly ahead of pre-pandemic at 12 and a half hours per day. You mentioned earlier on that Eurocontrol has been warning on potential disruptions, but you seem quite confident that you'll still be able to maintain that 12 and a half hours. Can you please go into the reasons about why that is? Second on network structure. Noticing your average stage length is up materially this quarter, north of 1,700 km. Does that have any impact on the unit costs you've been talking about around crew overnights or other expenses that you may have not incurred before? Are you still able to maintain your CASK targets? Finally on use of liquidity.
Liquidity seems pretty fine ahead of your EUR 1 billion target. With interest rates coming up, has it become more attractive to own your fleet rather than use sale and lease backs or JOLCO? Are you needing that to term out the EMTN that matures about a year from now? How are you kind of thinking about use of that cash balance, please?
Maybe I would start with utilization. In light of expected ATC disruptions, how are we going to deliver 12 and a half hours? We're gonna be planning for more than 12 and a half hours to create an allowance for ATC disruptions. We just know, you know, from historical performance that, you know, we made a strategic choice of flying brand-new aircraft. That also means that we have to fly that aircraft as opposed to keeping the aircraft on the ground to maximize the economics falling out of the fleet. This is absolutely critical and cornerstone to the model.
You know, you can get fleet economics out of used aircraft, in a low utilization model, but this is not the model what we elected to do. We have to fly the aircraft. Given the allowance and the change to the operating model, we're seeing that we will be a lot more resilient, coming into summer than where we were last summer because simply we just didn't have that level of resilience built in. Because ATC may not be necessarily forcing you to cancel every time, but you have to be able to process longer delays than how we designed ourselves before.
I think that's the change in our model. With regard to the network structure, yes, indeed, we are clearly discovering that people pay for stage lengths. As a result, the model what we bring to the market is equally compelling for medium-haul activities, medium-haul flying. I mean, Abu Dhabi is probably the best example for that. It's not only Abu Dhabi, I mean, we are having significant stage lengths operations within the European network, like flying to the Caribbean and those sort of areas. Let's not forget that in 18 months from now, we are expecting to receive the first A321XLR AC, 21 A321XLR, and we have 70 of that aircraft on order.
We are looking for, you know, best ways to operate that capacity. To some extent, we are testing ourselves with the existing fleet. It, it won't, it won't distress the cost structure of the airline. Obviously one issue we will have to contemplate, especially when the A321XLR comes into play, is crew overnight. We are looking at it, you know, to figure out the best way to minimize the incremental cost of it, so through daily rotations as opposed to keeping crews out for multiple days. This is something that we are working on at the moment, and we might be testing it on a few routes.
We are not adding complexities, and we are not adding incremental cost to the system as a result.
On liquidity, I mean, it's no secret that it is getting harder to identify sources of capital for, I think, you know, weaker or continue leasing, as long as there's leasing companies out there prepared to offer us the kinds of rates that we're seeing, whether it's a standard operating lease or a JOLCO.
Or some other sort of structure like that, it is far more efficient for us to unlock the value in our order book that way and give us the flexibility down the road to continue to recycle aircraft and exercise orders and options on our order book to bring our average fleet age down and benefit from the newer technology and the enhancements that are happening as the fleet evolves. I mentioned earlier the PDP financing. We haven't needed to draw that down, although it is in final documentation stage. That is a feature that we're putting in as an insurance policy, reflecting on the fact that spreads have increased across the board, and it is a bird in the hand sort of opportunity right now.
We remain confident on our January 1, 2024 bond repayment and have no issues there in terms of whether the business is going to have the liquidity to do so through a combination of that PDP facility and cash on hand from operations and what's generated over the course of the year. Overall, as I said earlier, I believe that everyone's going to be impacted, whether you own or rent from fleet. I think our impact is going to be lower than others.
Good morning, everyone. It's Jarrod Castle from UBS. I'm three as well. We've obviously got relatively encouraging commentary about Easter and summer from easyJet, Jet2. Do you wanna give any comments on how booking patterns are progressing for Easter and summer? You've given us the 30% growth in the H1 of 2024. Is it possible to give us an indication of the quarters, how that would evolve? Lastly, you know, you've obviously put a lot of growth in Italy, recent announcements around ITA and Lufthansa, just if that impacts how you're thinking about the Italian opportunity. Thanks.
Yeah, maybe I will start with the Italy question. In the meantime, I would just ask Robert to answer the summer question and the growth breakdown across quarters. With regard to Italy, if you look at Italian market capacity, it is still down versus pre-pandemic levels after our investment. There has been a significant consolidation in the marketplace, not only from Alitalia ITA, but also from other smaller underperforming airlines, pulling capacity out of the market. I think on the one hand, that created the demand opportunity for Wizz Air to come to market.
Let's not forget that structurally, we took advantage of the COVID times, to use our leverage with constituency in Italy to strike long-term arrangement, cost arrangements benefiting the business for a longer period of time, five years, et cetera. Those opportunities wouldn't have been available to us, prior to COVID or after COVID. We kind of pushed ourselves through that window. We feel comfortable with regard to our settings in Italy, both on the cost side and the revenue side of the business, and we continue to grow our activities.
You might have noticed that, we have done some consolidation in Italy in terms of, seizing, smaller base operations and redirected growth to, larger airports like Rome and Milan, where we have very strong reaction to our, products and services. Maybe, Robert, if you take the summer and the growth question.
On the question around the color around Easter and into summer, I think, we're seeing, you know, bookings in line with our expectations at this point. you've seen and I mean, there were comments earlier around where the ticket yield is at right now. We see trends continuing, but I think the real focus we've got is on, as we've said, closing the load factor gap versus where we were at pre-pandemic levels. When we say we see bookings in line with forecast, that assumes we're closing that gap and filling up the load factor. I think we're very comfortable with where summer is booking and Easter is booking at this point.
You had the quarterly breakdown of 30% growth in the H1.
Yeah. The quarterly breakdown of the 30% growth, it's gonna be heavier. We can come back to you with the exact numbers on it. It's heavier in the first quarter, obviously. I believe it's closer to 40%, given we had the reductions last year of Ukraine and Russia impacting that quarter, and then it's a little closer to 25% in the 2Q.
Good morning. It's Neil Glynn from Air Control Tower. I'll also follow the trend of three questions. The first one on the financing chestnut, I guess. Obviously, interest rates rising, not everywhere. I'm just interested, can you give us a sense of the shape of instruments you're using in FY 2024, for example? Are JOLCO helping you take advantage of low interest rates in Japan to keep that financing cost per new delivery down? The second question with respect to U.S. dollar hedging. You've got 20% in place. Is that considered optimal? I'm aware that you're obviously financing in euros, some of the new aircraft delivery. Just interested in your thoughts as to what that natural hedge actually is and how that compares to the 20%.
A final question, obviously a different market, but your, I guess, sister company, Volaris, has announced a loyalty strategy this week, which isn't, I guess, considered the norm for a ULCC. Might that be something that Wizz Air would think about in the future? Or does your target markets prohibit that or make it less sensible, certainly in the foreseeable future?
Well, let me take the last one and then you take the first two. I remember in my previous life when I worked for Procter & Gamble, and we were looking at the U.S. retail market, and you observe two very clearly different strategies in U.S. retailing: price going high and low with a hell of a loyalty program attached to it, and everyday low pricing launched by Walmart at that time. I think we are the Walmart kind of execution in the industry. We're seeing there is nothing more to do for loyalty than bringing everyday low pricing to the consumer.
That's why we are so focused on cost, because that creates our ability to price low in the market if we are the lowest cost producer in the industry. We don't have an intention to necessarily copy what sister airlines are doing. I mean, they are in a different market context, competing against different competitors. We remain focused on cost, on CASK, being the lowest cost producer and the lowest fare provider to the market.
In terms of interest rates and, you know, the mix between traditional financing or sort of more structured financing. As I mentioned earlier, all of our aircraft deliveries for the calendar year are committed, not signed, but committed in terms of binding term sheets. The majority of our financing still comes out of the Far East, and JOLCO play an important role to that effect. We don't have the breakdown in terms of that, but I can say that we are still pursuing innovative structures. For example, in December, we closed a JOLCO that had a debt element to it tied to sustainability. The more sustainable we can be, then the lower interest rate we benefit from.
Features like that continue to drive down our overall cost and make us competitive in relative terms to the rest of the market. In terms of hedging, in terms of the 20% currency hedge, that is the currency related to fuel portion. Our policy dictates that we first execute the policy with regards to the fuel commodity. Once we've hit policy levels, we then move to currency, and we've put 20% in place as of January on the currency-related portion to fuel. We continue to follow policy with periodic reviews of the policy. I think where you're getting to in terms of whether that's enough or not puts us back into the dangerous territory of speculating, which is not what systemic hedging is meant to do at this point.
It's something that we not currently have no intention of doing other than following the policy and reviewing the policy proactively from time to time. Natural hedges are a benefit that we have currently. Because many of our vendors, including, for example, maintenance providers and parties like that are European-based, we do have the ability to balance either some of these contracts by all being in euro payments or some portion of it being a mix, depending on the objectives and the pricing that we are able to get. Fixing currencies in different contracts in different currencies does come with a cost, and we constantly evaluate the cost and the benefit of that versus the overall unit cost that we're looking to achieve.
We're confident that we have a hedging policy both on the commodity and on the currency that's robust and in line with the market.
I would just make a further comment on our hedging attitude, if you wanna put it that way. Do we like hedging? No, we don't. Do we make money on hedging? No, we don't. Is this a strategic long-term driver of the business? No, it isn't. The reason we do it is that we are in a very volatile environment with lots of risks to be dealt with, and this is one risk less. You just strike this out in line with competitive practices and you can focus on bigger fish to fry. That's why we are doing it.
Morning, this is Satish from Citigroup. I got two questions here. Firstly on the fleet utilization, if you could actually give some color on what was the exit rate in December and where are you seeing it in for January in terms of fleet utilization, like number of hours, is it more than 10.5 hours as we go into March quarter? You actually mentioned that the fleet utilization is greater in Abu Dhabi, around 14 hours, whereas in Europe it's around five hours. How much of it is actually related to the bottleneck that we have due to the conflict on the airspace? Within Europe, what has actually been the major drag on the utilization? The second one is around the return to profitability into FY 2024. What are the moving blocks here?
Is it mainly the getting the CASK ex-fuel back to pre-pandemic levels? Is that the major driver in terms of getting back to the profitability levels? Thank you.
maybe on the second one, first as far as I'm concerned, absolutely ex-fuel CASK is determining profitability of the business. This is, you know, what you can control. I mean, I have no idea how fuel is gonna go in the future. Yes, we are hedging, so we are lowering the volatility of the fuel cost component in the business, but I'm not in control. I can control ex-fuel costs, to an extent I can. The real question is how our ex-fuel cost performance compares to other airlines we are competing with. Should we be returning to pre-pandemic level ex-unit, ex-fuel unit cost levels, we would again become the lowest cost producer in the industry in Europe.
I think that's the position we need to take, to be able to, create shareholder value, to drive growth in the business and drive profitability of the business. It is absolutely cornerstone. I mean, that's the single most important, I think metrics what we are having. This is heavily utilization driven. This is why we are talking so much about utilization because it is driven fundamentally by utilization.
It is important because empirical evidence suggests, and I'm pretty sure that you have maybe even broader knowledge on this than what I have, that if you look at this industry over the last, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years, you see rising input costs flowing through the system over time and, you know, declining input costs are also taken out of the system over time, and fuel being the most volatile input cost to the industry. If fuel price goes up structurally over time, kind of through a time lag of 12 months, you're gonna see that affecting the industry through capacity discipline.
Capacity is removed as a result the yield is moving up to cover the cost of increased input cost. Same happens through a time lag when input costs decline. I think the industry has almost like a self-defense mechanism to protect its financial performance against input cost volatility over time. I mean, this is not an adjustment happening overnight. Really where we can make a difference as a, as a competitive actor in the market is to get our business delivered at the lowest unit cost and being on that basis, especially as we are in commodities, and in commodities lowest cost wins. Utilization you wanna take?
I think the question was what's been the biggest drag.
In utilization in Europe. Yeah, I mean, I would say that ATC is gonna be the trickiest constituent going into summer. Last summer we had lots of issues with airports, handling and those sort of economic actors, but I think they have largely fixed that issue, so I'm not expecting them to fall apart. I mean, that is one factor, the European Union is talking about that, you know, all industries might be expecting more social unrest than before because inflation will creep through and will affect consumers, and, you know, economic is recession might be taking a toll on employees, creating some sort of a social unrest.
I think this is something to be seen, whether that's a real fear or not. ATC, I think is very tangible. ATC is gonna be dragging. That's why it is important that we have the model, the operating model as such that we are able to process at least a large part of the ATC drag in our performance as opposed to just being forced to cancel in the end.
There was one question specifically, I believe, on January utilization. We haven't completed the month yet, so we're not advising yet.
What about the December exit rate?
Say again?
in December.
Sorry, in December, what was the exit rate like?
Thank you.
For the people on the microphone who didn't hear the answer, we published the quarterly figures, which is 10 hours and 31 minutes. December was slightly higher on the back of that.
Morning. Jaime Rowbotham from Deutsche Bank. Two from me. I think one for József, one for Ian. József, some investors, very high level struggle, I think, with the idea that when it comes to A321 utilization, that you can make as much moneyAs much profit flying one rotation to the Middle East versus say, three rotations, in your core existing markets. Perhaps you could offer some further thoughts on that. I appreciate we've touched on some of the aspects already. Secondly, Ian, on these EU ETS advanced purchases, obviously it'll be entirely up to you when you choose to use the offsets, but could you give us a rough idea for fiscal 2024 of how much exposure you've still got in terms of offsets that you might need to buy versus what you've got locked in? Thanks.
I think I would factually challenge the statement of Middle East rotations cannot produce the same level of profitability as more frequent rotations in Europe. That's simply just not true. I mean, if you look at the Middle Eastern environment, well, first of all, I think people genuinely pay for stage lengths. Two , it is a less competitive environment, if I may put it that way, giving us more room to maneuver on the yield side. I don't think that profitability is at structural jeopardy just because we are operating in the Middle East, and, or even I don't think that we are leaving opportunity cost on the table by not operating in Europe as a result. Having said all of that, we should certainly not be operating one rotation a day.
This is not the plan, and we would be still operating multiple rotations during the day. Of course we would have more rotations come and go out of the European network, just given the geographics of Europe relative to Abu Dhabi, for example. We are not seeing a structural deterioration of profitability as a result of this model.
Yeah. In terms of ETS purchases, we target to be 100% covered for the F 2024. Yes.
Hi, everyone. Conrad Clifford from Bloomberg Intelligence. Just going back to what you said about load factor, getting back to pre-pandemic levels, can we assume that's just 2024 guidance? What are the sort of underlying drivers? I appreciate there's general demand recovery in there, but is there sort of company specific factors? I think you mentioned, you know, about fuel being a headwind, I mean, you have to prioritize yield more this year. Then maybe if we could just have some comment on the Saudi operations. You know, appreciate it's early days. What's the customer profile looking like? What's the performance like so far? Any update on if you could possibly ever do outbound?
All right.
On the first one, just let me make a quick answer. Sorry. We don't guide on load factor. It's an operational target that we have, but we don't guide on it.
I think if you just look at kind of the underpinning factors affecting load factor. We decided to invest into Abu Dhabi, into Albania, into London Gatwick through the acquisition of a slot portfolio into Italy. That all happened during the COVID times. Obviously all those investments are yet maturing. You can't expect, you know, structural load factor performance to fall out of those investments on day one. It takes some time. It's not a long time, but you know, two to three years. If you look at the portion of that investment within the total network, we are talking about roughly 25% of the total network that would fall into that category.
On top of that, we had to remove significant capacity that was intended to operate to Ukraine and Russia. That's roughly, what was it? 11% of the total capacity we had to remove and reallocate. Now, this is premature capacity obviously because we had to find new home for the aircraft for that capacity. We have like a third of our capacity basically maturing. This is the underlying cause of the drop-off load factor. As that maturity takes place, obviously we will benefit from the load factor ramp up on that. Next year we are kind of getting into the period when you should be expecting significant maturity happening and significant uplift of load factor. That's really what's driving up the load factor performance.
Let's not forget that the growth what we are intending to deliver will be deployed the safest way possible, just putting on existing routes and existing airports as opposed to adventuring, you know, new markets, new airports, new territories. We are de-risking that growth substantially as through the way we are deploying that growth. Saudi. I think Saudi is very exciting. Probably equally exciting to Abu Dhabi, if not more. We are gaining a lot of traction in terms of market awareness for Wizz Air despite the fact that we actually just started operating that market. I mean, we don't have a long operating history, one and a half, two months. So far so good. We like the reaction.
We decided to launch more routes. We have 24 routes on sale, to Saudi. 1/2 of that network is operated, the other 1/2 is yet to be operated. We are seeing quite a mix of travelers. I mean, Robert, what's your early profile detection on the customers?
It's actually a really good mix of travelers on board. It's both Saudi originating and inbound into Saudi as well, with, you know, everything you could imagine from tourist volumes, families going back and forth, religious tourism going back and forth. I mean, there's quite a diverse mix with, you know, as we said, I think, both the load factor and yield expectations are outperforming what we anticipated going in. It started off strong. I don't think we have any comments to make on outbound. I think the position is still the same. It's a market we're focused on building up the routes we have, and we'll continue to explore new opportunities.
Now we're going to take some questions over from the participants on audio line. The first question comes to line of Mark Simpson from Goodbody. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yeah, good morning. Just one left actually after a lengthy call we had today. Obviously cost of visibility is often recognized as something attractive. I'm just wondering in terms of long-term contracts, both with airports and potentially with staff, where do you stand currently and where do you think you could take that in future years?
Mark, if I got your question right, you had a bit of a background noise.
Yeah, sorry about that.
If you remove the party behind you, I think your question was, you know, to what extent we can expand our long-term contracts with airports and people.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay. I mean, I think COVID represented a significant opportunity for Wizz to unlock the benefits of our growth in a distressed period for the constituents. We try to, you know, really lock it down for a long period of time to sustain the benefit structurally. I think what we are bringing to the party nowadays is certainly growth. I mean, let's not forget that we are the fastest growing airline in Europe, so we can deliver more growth than anyone else in the industry. Secondly, which I think is gaining traction is the environmental sensitivities of the industry.
We are deploying the best aircraft from an environmental standpoint and also from an economic standpoint, to airports, which I think makes Wizz very appealing from an airport perspective. We are trying to negotiate that kind of an element into the long-term contracts with airports. We think we have leverage as we speak growth and carbon footprint of the airplane. Obviously the COVID times were unique with that regard. We also see that especially when you step outside Europe, let's say kind of the peripheral markets are very eager to get Wizz into their territories, especially observing the successful expansion in Abu Dhabi and now in Saudi.
I think that also that kind of a desire, also gives us significant opportunities for locking in, long-term, cost advantages through, access to our infrastructure. With regard to people, I mean, when it comes to our own employees, I mean, we manage our employees according to market. If the market changes, we go with the market. We don't have specific policies. We don't have long-term contracts with people. We go with the market. We think it is a fair way of approaching our people with that regard. That's what we are doing. This is what we have been doing, and this is what we will continue to do that.
We are not trying to lock in long-term employment contracts, we just go with the market.
If I might add a few anecdotal points to that. I've been looking at a number of the contracts, and I know because I've also sat on the other side of Wizz as a supplier or a potential supplier. In many cases, the company took the opportunity during COVID to enter into new long-term arrangements. That was before the inflationary pressures hit as aggressively as they have now. Those contracts have provisions in their for inflation escalation tied to caps in terms of what happens in terms of indexes. They have extension rights on terms similar to the original terms. What we're seeing is that we are protected through contractual arrangements from the vendors and suppliers.
I'm not talking about specifically airports, but across the supplier base, in terms of what they are able to pass through to us in terms of, cost increases. That puts us at a very competitive advantage going forward for maintaining our cost advantage and our unit costs.
Mark, maybe just to add to it, if you look at it from a people perspective, so from an employee perspective, we are gaining a lot of productivity benefits, from the gauging of the aircraft moving from 180 seater to 239 seater because 239 seats would require the same two pilots and only o more cabin crew. We are gaining significant productivity which offsets the inflationary pressure on labor costs.
That's great. I say apologies about the party, but, we're just celebrating, the recovery in the, in the industry, so, great news. Thanks a lot.
Oh, no good.
Thanks for the invite.
All right.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes to line of Alex Paterson from Peel Hunt. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yeah, morning, everybody. Actually, can I ask just a couple of questions? Sorry to labor the profile of the ex-fuel cost or ex-fuel CASK decline. You're saying that you're coming in in the H2 of this year at sort of high single digit, but you're expecting to be flat next year. I mean, that would be a very dramatic change in a very short period of time. Do you think that when you say flat, you might be a little bit above or actually are we looking at exiting 2024 at below pre-pandemic levels of ex-fuel CASK? The second question is just, obviously, with your network, you're trying to de-risk the opening of new routes.
You have had quite a bit of change of routes, trialing some and then launching them and then closing them. Can you just say sort of what the costs are of starting and closing a route, and what sort of impact that's had on your utilization and also on your CASK? Thank you.
Maybe I would start. Ian, please to add. I mean, if you look at ex-fuel CASK, there are a number of drivers to it. I mean, first of all, utilization. We are at the moment down to about 10.5 hours. We are intending to be 12.5 hours. I mean, this is a very significant uplift of utilization. I mean, that profoundly affects ex-fuel CASK performance. Second issue is that we were heavily down to all kind of change costs and disruption costs in the current financial year.
If you recall, the board effect, changing the network, removing aircraft, reallocating crews, all those issues obviously incurred a lot of costs, not only in mature revenue, but also substantial incremental costs in the system, coming with the peak summer disruptions, which we are trying to create resilience against. That's another driver that we are expecting a lot better performance and a lot less operational distress coming out of the operation of the coming summer, despite the ATC comments what we have what we have made. Basically, you're gonna be also gaining on compensation costs, as we are targeting the 99.5% completion rate, which we were unable to achieve last year.
I think we should be in a lot better place. When you are kind of adding all these factors on top of that, recognizing that we're gonna be flying a younger fleet of aircraft, a further up-gauged fleet of aircraft with the productivity benefits and the maintenance benefits of the younger fleet. When you kind of add up all those elements of the puzzle, that's how you get to the, you know, kind of the high single-digit improvement on ex-fuel CASK.
I think to answer your question on the cost of opening and closing bases or airports and things like that, I think it's important to look at that in the context of what are the real drivers of our cost lines in our, in our business. Which when looking at this period's numbers, clearly our fuel, airport handling and route charges and depreciation and amortization, those three right there make up the bulk of the cost base.
It's important to maintain perspective that yes, there is a cost of opening and closing base, but the benefit of optimizing that and finding the right route structure so that you can generate the right yields and the right load factors, far outweigh the cost of that when it comes to what really matters in terms of relative sale. Getting the network right so that we can deliver the utilization and the on time performance and the actual productivity is gonna far outweigh the individual costs of those of those modifications.
Thank you. Can you just sort of give an indication of what those costs might be?
I think it depends on a case by case and a market to market, so we don't break that out in any specific detail.
It is, I mean, closing a base, opening a base, I mean, these activities are not cost critical. I mean, most of our pilots are flexible, so you basically relocate them, so you don't really incur substantial cost. With regard to cabin crew, we are also offering the cabin crew jobs across the network. Maybe the take-up rate is not the same as the pilots, but actually many of our cabin crews float around with the movements of aircraft. We don't really incur structural costs. We don't have any infrastructure costs we would be, you know, committing ourselves to or leaving behind when we close.
This is all down to personal cost. I think that is actually very, very flexible. It is fairly marginal, I would say.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker, József Váradi, for closing remarks.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your interest. Thank you for coming over. Thank you for listening and your participation with your question. I mean, just a very quick summary from me. I mean, clearly, this business has been transitioning from distressed COVID periods to getting back to normalized circumstances. We have been encountering significant challenges throughout the current year. We are very confident that now the ship is moving the right direction. We have turned the corner, and you should be expecting a lot more normalized performance coming out of the airline, comparable to pre-COVID times.
We will certainly benefit from our fleet program on the one side, and that's gonna be topped with the operational KPIs cost performance coming into play, which are important drivers of the business going forward. Thank you again.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.