All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to this financial report, Q1 fiscal 2024 for Wizz Air. Also welcome everyone on the phone. Just a few highlights up front. We delivered EUR 61 million of net profit in the quarter on the back of record traffic, over 15 million passengers. Operating profit was roughly around EUR 80 million in this period, this is a major change versus the financial performance last year. You recall, we were going through a very difficult period at that time, we have been putting actions in place to make sure that we solidify financial performance, here you go, you can see the results. Summer has been going according to plan.
It is an improved operating environment, not perfect, but improved, and we are a lot better prepared to deal with the consequences of the supply chains shortcoming, especially. We have full confidence in delivering the previously provided guidance for the financial year, which is a range of EUR 350 million-EUR 450 million, despite some of the challenges we are seeing, and we'll, we'll, we'll talk about that. Flight completion rate in the period was 99.2%. That is compared to 98.4% in the previous year, so we canceled half the flights versus that period.
I mean, you are seeing already some of the peak summer performance, which was reported July, and of course, we are tracking our performance in July. We are seeing a much robust improvement coming through the period. Utilization is now reaching 12 hours, and we continue to build that utilization number. We were talking about that last time, that this is fundamental to the delivery of the ULCC business model. We continue to benefit from a positive revenue environment. Unit revenue was up 21% year-on-year, with rising load factors and rising, rising fares. The cost performance of the airline has also improved. Ex-fuel cost was down 4% and fuel was down 31%. You recall that we started hedging again.
We reinstated our hedge coverage in line with historical standards, short- term being hedged up to 80%. If you take the next 12 months horizon, we are covered roughly around 60%. Liquidity has been up to EUR 1.8 billion. That's a move of roughly around EUR 0.3 billion relative to same period last year. We continue to focus on being a sustainable aviation actor, which we have been recognized for by a number of organizations. If you look at the key operating metrics of the airline, you can see that seat capacity has grown. We are up 51% versus pre-pandemic capacity level. Accordingly, you see the rise of passenger numbers. The fleet continues to build up.
At the end of the period, we had 182 aircraft on, on hand, again, underpinning, kind of the growth, numbers, what we are reporting on seats and passengers. We, we, we have been expanding our presence in, in, in, in airports, so nearly 200 airports are in operations for Wizz Air. That comes with, more operating bases in, in overall, greater penetration of, of countries. We have reached the 8,000 mark on employees. I mean, this is now double versus the low point of, of the pandemic, period. We were down to roughly around 4,000, at the lowest, point. Obviously, that requires significant efforts in terms of recruiting, training and inducting, people, especially pilots and, and cabin crew.
All in all, we, we feel quite confident in our ability to recruit resources needed for delivering the business. With the innovation of the fleet, we continue to drive our emission footprint down, as you can see. With that, let me turn it over to Ian with regard to the numbers. Thank you. Ian?
Thank you, József. Thank you, everybody, for coming today. Revenue ended up at EUR 1,237 million, 53% higher than last year's Q1 revenue figure, which was EUR 809 million and 78% higher than pre-pandemic Q1 revenue. If you compare our year-over-year ASK growth of 26.6% over the same period last year, we've managed to grow revenue at almost double the pace, combining higher volumes with higher yields, higher load factors and improved operating performance. Fuel costs reduced by 13% year-over-year, thanks to a combination of a lower jet fuel price and the impact of our risk management policies.
While our nominal non-fuel costs only increased by 21.8%, which is 4.8 percentage points lower than the ASK growth rate, the impact of which you'll see when we dig into the ex-fuel unit costs. Ultimately, this means we generated EBITDA of EUR 236.7 million, operating profit of EUR 79.9 million, and a net profit of EUR 61.1 million, which is in line with this year's guidance to a return to profitability. Cash is building very well and grew to a June 30 balance of EUR 1.8 billion, and that balance continues to have grown to where we are today. RASK unit revenue ended up at EUR 0.0419, 20%-21% higher than this quarter last year and 9% higher than fiscal year 2020 pre-pandemic levels, supported by both higher ticket and ancillary unit revenue.
We expect strong unit revenues in Q2 as our load factors continue to build, as evidenced by the July load factor figure of 94.9% that we announced yesterday, up from our Q1 load factor of 91.2%. Overall, demand in Q1 and Q2 remains strong. Our booking curve is around five days longer than pre-pandemic, and our machine learning pricing efforts are showing the results with our ancillary revenue per passenger amount continuing to grow more than our EUR 1 per year per passenger fare improvement target. We continue to bring new products to market, including our subscription option pilot programs in Italy and in Poland, called MultiPass, as well as alternative new discount club tier levels.
As of June 30, our cash balance had grown, as I said, to EUR 1.8 billion, driven by a combination of factors, including the underlying performance of the business, lower fuel costs, and the deferred or unflown revenue from future bookings, which follows a normal buildup in this period. We've reduced the balance on our PDP facility by over EUR 100 million, and this is on track for a full repayment by the end of this fiscal year. Overall, our net debt balance stands at EUR 3.8 billion, and with the return to positive EBITDA, we will see our leverage ratio return to target levels. We have scheduled engagements with the ratings agencies, and we look forward to reporting on those discussions after the release of our H1 results. Restricted cash, as you can see...
Restricted cash, as you can see on this chart, continues to reduce, just like it did last quarter, as we release cash that was collateralizing letters of credit under expiring aircraft leases. Fuel costs ended up 31% lower versus last year, helped by a lower fuel price environment and the impact of our hedging policy, which kicked in at the beginning of this fiscal year. Our hedge protection as of June 30 stood at 62% for this fiscal year for jet fuel and 53% for the currency portion of fuel consumption. Currently, where we stand, the fuel price and currency price is within our collars, which means that we neither pay out under our hedges or receive under our hedges.
We simply pay the price of fuel, but there's no, there's no hedge gain or, or hedge, hedge profit or hedge, hedge costs or hedge expense on that portion. Including, including the lower fuel cost is a 1% improvement due to energy efficiency measures. ex-Fuel CASK came in at EUR 0.0251, which is 4.1% lower than Q1 last year, contrary to some of the increases that we've seen from our peers. We expect this year-on-year reduction to continue throughout the fiscal year, despite the inflationary pressures facing the industry. Relative to last year, we are benefiting from higher utilization of 11 hours and 58 minutes versus the 11 hours and 47 minutes this quarter last year, lower flight disruptions and EC261 costs, thanks to lower cancellation rates.
We're benefiting from lower navigation costs, better crew productivity, and more economies of scale, with Wizz being a larger airline. With that, I'll hand it back to Joe to talk about the trading update. Thank you.
Thanks, Ian. I would just like to take you through a few points here. Looking at operations, and I, I will give you some colors as much as I can with regard to the Pratt & Whitney situation, the recovering commercial positions, market positions, how the network is developing, what's happening to fleet, especially in light of the confirmation of further 75 aircraft to be inducted, and a few thoughts on sustainability and ETS allowances. With regard to operations, you may recall that we were talking about like this triad of key priorities for operations, utilization, schedule completion, and crew productivity. Now you are seeing the efforts and investments, what we have made that now are bearing fruit. You see fleet utilization is moving up.
Quite significant progress on, on cancellations, and it will be even more significant when you gonna look at the summer performance of the business, the peak summer performance. We are seeing like a fivefold less cancellation happening in summer so far than what we were encountering last year. I think the business is really improving from an operational perspective. It's not perfect. I think we are seeing two significant challenges still affecting the ability of our teams to operate the airline. On the one hand, we are still seeing ATC being short of staff, as a result, imposing slots in the market, affecting the on-time performance and to some extent the cancellations and schedule completion of the industry.
If you look at Wizz's position, especially from a UK perspective, this is a Wizz, Wizz Air is now one of the top-performing airlines in terms of schedule completion, relative to the rest of the industry. The second issue, of course, is the Pratt & Whitney overall situation, which is not just the very latest announcement, but it is also the kind of preceding issues kind of creeping through the system. You may remember that we were talking about the kind of the meltdown of the GTF engine in Abu Dhabi last summer, given the hot and sandy environment, and at that time, the OEM believed the issue was contained to a severe operating environment but would not affect the operation of the engine in a benign environment.
Now, we have been learning that that's actually, that, that was not the case.... and we started seeing significant issues already in, in benign operating environments to an extent that the that the industry has grounded roughly around 10% of the GTF fleet globally. That includes North America, South America, Asia, et cetera, Europe included. We are not immune from the issue. This has nothing to do with the with the recording of 200 engines just recently announced. Already, that kind of a creeping issue resulted in scarcity of engines in the marketplace and significant pressure on engine removers and, and, and shop visits. That affected the availability of the aircraft, that affected the integrity of the operations.
On top of that, now we are getting the engine removals imposed through service bulletin of Pratt & Whitney, essentially, mandating that by mid-September, 200 engines will have to be stopped in operation and will have to be inducted into shops for routine checks. We have 12 engines of those operated by ourselves. Essentially, that affects six lines of flying, and we are adjusting capacity accordingly. We are removing six lines of flying as of mid-September. The good news is that that action doesn't affect the performance of summer, but essentially that affects the second half of the financial year.
The overall capacity inflect impact is estimated to be around 3%, which basically lowers our capacity in the current half year. When we are re-guiding on, on capacity from 30% in H1 to 25%, this is partly the new engine inspection issue and partly the creep of the existing operations, engine, spare engine scarcity and and shop visit pressure in operations. In the second half, we maintain the guidance of 30% capacity increase despite the grounding of aircraft arising on the back of this engine issue, because we were planning the second half with more slacks, more reserves. Actually, we have the ability to suck some of these issues up without necessarily adjusting capacity.
This is only tranche one, as Pratt & Whitney calls it. Tranche one means 200 engines globally, mandated to be stopped in operation by mid-September. We don't know exactly how much time this is going to take to recover the engines, wing-to-wing. This is still work in progress with the manufacturer to understand the scope of the inspection and the timing required and the capacity on their side available for shop visits. I cannot give you more on this, our current assumption is that we are restraining that capacity throughout the whole winter, so we are not planning on reinstating that capacity during the winter time. There is tranche two that was already announced by Pratt & Whitney, which is globally 1,000 engines.
This is like a five times bigger thing. Now, this is gonna be given a much longer period. We don't know exactly what the deadline will be, but the current best estimate is that probably this is gonna be sometime next year, maybe the first half of next year, but we don't know yet. I think this creates the opportunity for a more staggered approach. This is not going to be shock the industry, but you can stagger the process. Again, we have to understand the issue, we have to understand timings, we have to understand the scope of work that needs to be performed, and we are on...
We, we have to come out with a plan how, how to best, kind of schedule, all these engine removals, against those, those, frames available to us. There might be further changes, but once we understand all these issues, we will be back to you. For the time being, we have accommodated tranche one issues, and we have been planning accordingly, to what we understand today. Moving on to the next slide. This is the evolution of the business in terms of seat count. As, as you can, you can see that we continue to benefit from gauging, converting the A320 fleet to A321 now. The average seat count per aircraft is 221.
I mean, obviously, that drives significant economics and economic financial benefits for the business. You can see the recovery of load factors. We are still not back to pre-pandemic levels, but we are approaching. You probably saw the July report. July was just shy of 95% load factor, so we are really coming back to historical performance levels. With the growth of the fleet, obviously, we continue to benefit from market share gains in our markets. As you can see, it's been a continuous reinforcement of our leadership in Central East Europe, but also our positions in other countries in the UAE or in Western Europe. Maybe a few words on fleet.
You were, you were kind of missing this chart last time around. We added the 75 aircraft, we confirmed. I think what you need to know about the 75 aircraft is that that 75 aircraft were essentially negotiated as part of the Dubai order. The Dubai order was placed under the Indigo umbrella within circumstances that the manufacturer was desperate for aircraft order... You can imagine the corresponding economics of the manufacturer being desperate and essentially signing the ever largest order at that time with, with an airline group. Today, if you look at the situation, aircraft pricing has gone up significantly given the scarcity of the asset. We are hugely benefiting from the conversion of the options into a firm order as we, as we speak.
We are because we are today up against a very different market versus that time. This is not a new order, this is an old, old order option at that time, which is now converted into a firm order. We carry the benefits of the economics of the deal from Dubai with that regard. Now that gives us 350 aircraft or so to be delivered in the next seven years. Which I think is also important because, if you are ambitious to try to figure out a fleet for your airline to, to grow your business, I mean, you are not going to get much out of the OEMs because simply they don't have aircraft to offer to you.
You would need to go to the market, and you can see the lease market really reaping the benefits from their perspective by overcharging airlines. We are not subject to that. Sustainability remains important to the company. On the one hand, of course, we are benefiting from the innovation of the fleet and the investments what we have made into new technology, into gauging. Also we have now landed on the field of sustainable aviation fuel. We started flying, actually, sustainable aviation fuel, and we have made investments into sustainable aviation fuel operations on the equity side, and we continue to look at various other initiatives what we can engage with going forward.
We are not just sitting and taking advantage of the new aircraft, but we are also proactively looking for ways of creating a path for a more sustainable aviation operation beyond just relying on new aircraft. Of course, we are getting increasingly awarded and recognized for our efforts here. There is an important change coming in the regulatory framework. Emission trading allowances are getting phased out. That's a program over three years, starting next year, ending in 2026. This is a relative gain to Wizz. It is a cost to the system, but it's a relative gain versus the rest of the industry. We are the most disadvantaged airline at this point in time, given the high growth of the business, because the emission trading scheme is really rewarding those who are incumbent in the market.
I think it actually goes back to like, I don't know, 15 years ago, level of operation, and airlines that are not really growing or slow growing, the likes of Lufthansa and those sort of guys. Even if you look at Ryanair, Ryanair has a significant advantage over us when it comes to emission trading. This scheme is going to be phased out, eliminated, and we will create level playing field, and we will relatively competitively benefit from that. With regard to guidance, capacity, as said already, we are reducing first half, capacity growth from 30%- 25%. This is the combination of spare engine scarcity in context of 10% global grounding of GTF engines and the latest Pratt & Whitney, recording of engines for inspections.
H2, we continue to guide down 30% despite the capacity decrease resulting from the GTF groundings, we can soak up that balance through the slacks and reserves of the system. Load factors, we continue to rise. We expect 94% for Q2 and certainly above 90% throughout the financial year. Actual cost, we are expecting to be lower than last year. We don't want to specifically guide given all the issues what we are seeing, so we just need to come to grips with the challenges and, and upon fully understanding the exposure and fully understanding the plans for how we mitigate the exposure, we can be in a better position to guide on cost.
With regard to net profit, actually, we are very confident that net profit guidance remains solid in place. Even if we have to absorb more cost on the system, actually, capacity scarcity in an off-peak period results in a yield opportunity. Actually, we can yield the business up. We don't feel uncomfortable with the profit guidance. Actually, maybe this is somewhat of a profit opportunity for the business, but first we need to fully understand all the impacts before we can revise any of these estimates. I just want to reiterate our confidence in the profit forecast. With that, let me just sum it up.
We remain focused on the operational KPIs, with regard to completion, schedule completion, utility of the aircraft and productivity of the crew. We continue to invest into improvements with that regard. Now we are clearly seeing maturity coming through the network, resulting in better RASK performance, that includes yield as well as load factor performance. Summer is in line with expectations. We are not seeing any issues coming. We are halfway through it, and so far, so good. You can see that now, we are a solid operator within that environment, with solid revenue performance, unlike the situation last year.
We are now protected on the macros through hedging, so we are not as naked as we were last year. We reinstated our historical policy. SCL unit cost keeps reducing in line with expectations despite the challenges what the business encounters. Our further commitment on fleet gives us the ability to lower our costs, certainly relative to the performance of the industry. Also to reduce our carbon footprint going forward. The Pratt & Whitney engine issue is a disturbing factor. I think we have come to grips with tranche one.
We are trying to understand tranche two, and then once we, we fully understand that, we're gonna be able to develop our plans accordingly and, and, and guide you, especially on capacity. We don't see any challenge to delivering profit as we have guided already at this stage of the game. Thank you.
For those on the webinar, raise your hand using the Raise Hand button, or type your question using the Q&A button. For those on the conference call, dial five star to ask a question.
Morning. Jaime Rowbotham from Deutsche Bank. Three potentially quick ones. Cancellations have clearly improved. Will utilization get to where you want it to be in Q2, or is that gonna be a tough ask now? Secondly, just looking at the outlook comments, perhaps you could clarify: Is it fares revenues per ASK that you expect to be up by a low, double-digit percent in Q2? Finally, on GTF, insofar as you might start to be inconvenienced, how do you expect compensation to work? Will it be cash now or perhaps commercial discounts later on? Thanks.
Uh, thank you. Uh, well, with regard to completion rate versus utilization, um, but certainly we have more confidence in the, in, in the completion rate than in, in utilization, because utilization is affected by, uh, the, the engine, the engine performance, the engine, engine removals, and, and this is not yet fully, uh, uh, fully understood. Um, uh, but, but clearly we have been improving, uh, and we expect to, um, uh, to continue to, uh, to improve. The extent of which, I think is, is, is, is to be seen. And as said, I would not be there to, uh, to guide you on this at this stage of the game before we fully understand the Pratt & Whitney exposure. Uh, with regard to the, uh, double-digit revenue, uh, improvement, yes, that's on fare.
Obviously the RASK improvement comes on two lines: higher load factors and higher fares. The GTF compensation, but obviously this is a matter of commercial discussions with the manufacturer. Putting things in perspective, Wizz Air is the single largest customer of Pratt & Whitney. With that regard, you should be expecting a treatment according to that status.
Hey, morning. It's Harry Gowers from JP Morgan. Couple of questions, if I can. The first one, just on the 5% that's been taken out in H1, could you maybe give us a bit more color on what parts of the network in particular that's coming out from? Then I appreciate it's a little bit unknown on the impact in H2 at this stage, on phase II in particular, but have you done any worst-case, best-case scenario planning on capacity, or just too early to tell? Then final one, just on the, the Q1 ex-Fuel CASK was down about 4% year-on-year. Should we see that as kind of the lowest year-on-year run rate this year? Can it come down by more than 4% over the coming quarters? Thanks.
Maybe I, I start with the capacity reduction. I mean, this is fairly across the board to be honest. If you look at cancellation or completion rate, we ended up with a little higher than targeted level. Still pretty strong in the industry. I mean, in this quarter, Wizz Air was one of the best performing airlines in the European airline industry, but somewhat higher rate on cancellation than what we expected. That was one impact. The other impact was Abu Dhabi, where we are refleeting the Abu Dhabi operation from GTF to CEO V2500 operation, taking note of the issues we went through last year.
I would say that all in all, this is almost like fairly equally spread across the network, with a bit more on Abu Dhabi, relatively versus the European operation. In terms of H2 capacity scenario planning, versus the Pratt & Whitney exposure, of course, we have been doing a few, a few scenarios. We just need to understand. First, two things: What is, what is the timing? Like on tranche one, we have a mandate September 15th, so that's fairly clear. You can plan against that. The tranche one issue is still not fully understand in terms of scope and in terms of Pratt & Whitney's ability to induct engines and push them through the shops. We don't know wing-to-wing time to be exactly what. Is it a 30-day issue? Is it a 100-day issue?
Is it a 200-day issue? Essentially, we have taken the view that we have removed that capacity from the balance of the financial year, so for the next eight months. In any event, tranche two is gonna go back-to-back with tranche one. We don't fully understand tranche two, because Pratt & Whitney is saying that in the best case scenario, they might, they might be able to come up with a designated shop program, so it wouldn't affect the current operations of the engine shops, but this is not yet fully confirmed. Maybe there is a fast-track procedure available to us, maybe not, so we don't know that.
Our assumption is that, whatever the completion of tranche one is, quite likely it's gonna go back-to-back with tranche two after that.
On the third question, on the, you know, the ex-Fuel CASK reduction of 4%, is that something that we can expect throughout the rest of the year? This is precisely why last quarter we were reluctant to give a specific ex-Fuel CASK guidance number, because of we don't know what's around the corner. Clearly, what happened, what we're talking about now was unforeseen. But with regards to overall ex-Fuel CASK progression, I think you're gonna see tension, right? We're, we're, we're improving on a lot of metrics. Certainly, utilization is going up, cancellation rate is going down. You know, we are, we are, we are delivering against those targets, but at the same time, we're seeing the impact of more frequent engine removals, the scarcity of engines, because everyone's trying to secure supply.
The longer shop visit turn times, that's then affecting overall availability of aircraft and then pulling down the overall availability. I think that you're gonna continue to see pressure on ex-Fuel CASK, such that it's very difficult to give a particular number, even though we are committed to reducing that year-over-year. There's gonna be upside in the form of, you know, taking these aircraft out of the fleet in the winter period will allow us to focus on those routes where, you know, we can, we can, we can bring profitability and avoid negative contribution routes. At the same time, yield up, right? Price up based upon that capacity reduction.
I think what we want to just focus on is the continued commitment to profitability, and that's why we, we, we maintain our confidence in the guidance, as opposed to trying to focus on a particular ex-Fuel CASK number. Overall, year-on-year, that's where we're bringing that down to.
Mm-hmm.
Hi, it's Andrew Lobbenberg from Barclays. Can I ask about the, the removal of, of the aircraft and the capacity changes? You know, I see that you've said that you don't expect it to be detrimental to profitability, and I think all of us in the room appreciate that a bit less capacity means you can yield up, and it's a good yield environment. The capacity change you're making is five points in the first half of the year, when you and the industry make a ton of money, and you're not actually reducing your capacity guide in the second half of the year when you and the industry lose money.
Conceptually, I'm kind of struggling to see why it doesn't end up pressuring your profitability, because you're taking capacity out of the profitable first half, and at the moment, not changing your capacity in the second half. And you're telling us about how it's great you can remove weak capacity at weak time of the year, but actually, capacity is not changing in the winter at the moment. Some words around that would be good. Other question would be around the U.K. CAA announcement on the tight review, I think, of the repayment issues. Where do we see that, or where will we see that in the P&L and in the cash flow going forwards? Then otherwise, how do you see that issue playing out with your reputation in the U.K.?
Because obviously, I guess that does feed through to unit revenues, and I fully appreciate that your performance in terms of disruption and on time is really good now, and unfortunately, you're getting this news flow relating to historic performance. You know, that's something for you guys to manage, I guess.
All right. Maybe, maybe I start with the second one, the U.K. CAA. I mean, look, I mean, I think it's fair to say that we got completely overwhelmed last summer. We were just unprepared for the quantum, the magnitude of disruptions and issues falling out of it. We didn't have the infrastructure, we didn't have the manpower. We were just not set to deal with that level of claims and, you know, consumer, consumer issues. I would caveat this whole problem that 90% of customers were treated pretty much in line with policy and standards. Here, what we are talking about is more like the 10% issue.
Of course, this is the, the noisiest 10%, which is blown out of proportion, creating tension in the system, in the social sphere, and with the, with the regulatory framework. This is the 10% when you buy a EUR 50 ticket, and you want to charge EUR 2,000 for staying in the Four Seasons kind of stuff. Also, these are the claims coming through the claim factory. You know, the lawyers waiting for you at the airport when the flight is late three hours and one minute, and capture you. So this is kind of the category of issues. Now, what we have done, we have put in roughly around a good GBP 100 million into investments, to increase infrastructure capacity, more call centers.
I mean, I think we are operating, you know, four times more, a bigger, larger call center capacity than last year. We have invested in manpower. We have localized resources in the U.K., to be more focused on the, on the, on the U.K. issues, and we invested a lot into automation to make sure that we can systematically scale our operations up. This is history behind us. I mean, it sounds like this is a new issue, but this is history. There is nothing new coming out of this. Largely, all these issues have been absorbed financially, so you are not going to see anything really, in terms of numbers, coming out as a result of this.
I think the CAA fell under some social pressure that they needed to do something and wanted to act as a good countryman with that regard. This is dealing with history, it's not with future matters. I think we are pretty well set for the future. First of all, we are one of the best airlines in the U.K. in terms of the operating metrics. Two, we are a lot more robust in terms of infrastructure and manpower to deal with the issues if anything goes wrong. In terms of reputational damage, I don't know, Andrew, how you measure that. I mean, one of the things what we all know that there is no shorter thing than people's memory.
If I look at the performance of the U.K. business, it is not an outlier at all. Actually, the U.K. is probably now outperforming the corporate, corporate lines in terms of financial performance profitability. I don't think that we have a structural damage caused by that. Yes, I think short- term, we were affected, but as we are now proving ourselves and we have been learning, and we have been making the investments, I think we are re-earning the credit from the market. We are re-earning the trust of the consumer. With regard to the aircraft removal and how that affects things, well, as a matter of fact, I think we were having various, various scenarios.
Originally, we were planning on somewhat higher than 35% growth, we were just not, not, not certain whether that 35% growth would be fully, fully delivered for, for various reasons. It can be, you know, weak market and, you know, we wanted to have the provision to take some capacity out should the demand environment be weak. We are not seeing it. We are not seeing consumer demand falling or even into a period. I, I know there is a lot of chatter around, you know, inflationary pressure and recession coming, consumer spending slowdown, but we are not seeing any of that. As a matter of fact, our bookings are up versus last year. Our bookings are up versus pre-pandemic levels, higher yield, higher load factors.
Actually, we are seeing a robust environment, demand environment continuing to unfold, going, going, going forward. We wanted to have that provision. If you want to play it out on numbers, we were looking at potentially 35% growth, but we were guiding 30% because we want to have that reserve, you know, should we be making that adjustment. We are not making the adjustment for that, we are making the adjustment for the engine issues and to observe the engine, engine capacity. You know, we feel actually quite comfortable that, that this is, if anything, more of a yield potential for the business. We are taking a neutral position on this, so we are not banking on more yield or anything like that.
I think this is more like if you are containing capacity in the current environment where demand is strong, then quite likely that gives you a yielding opportunity. I think you should be pretty much expecting a very heavy compensation by the manufacturer on the cost side. It should not be blowing our cost performance either because of that. I don't know if that deals with the question, Andrew.
I mean, I was wondering just about math.
Yeah.
I mean, I was really wondering, and, and perhaps for Ian, rather than for you, no disrespect. you know, I'm thinking that it's mathematical. you are, to the market, reducing your capacity in H1. You're not changing your capacity in H2. You make money in H1, you lose money in H2, therefore, everything else being equal, your profit's down. Maths.
I think you need to, you need to create a context of supply and demand in the marketplace overall, we are not the sole actor in the market, we are not in a monopoly. I think your logic applies when you are a monopoly player, essentially your own act is determining, you know, supply and demand. I think what we are seeing is that, quite likely, you, you're gonna be seeing reduction of capacity by other actors, and certainly what you are going to see is that other actors are falling under immense cost pressure. The cost of the industry is going up, our cost is coming down.
I think that kind of opens up the window for competitive advantage for us, and I think that will play into the, the strengths of demand for us, which might be very different from the strengths of demand for the industry.
There are no further questions from the room. We can open up to questions online.
Thank you. We'll go to Tobias Fromm from Bernstein. Tobias, do you want to unmute yourself? Go ahead.
Morning, all. This is Tobias Fromm from Bernstein. Just, just two from me, please, on the strategic positioning. The first is on Saudi Arabia. Have you seen any progress in this regard? It's been really quiet, so I was just wondering where we're currently standing. The second one is on Albania. We've seen insane capacity growth from both you and Ryanair as well, and I was wondering whether the market can bear that much growth now. Thank you.
I think, I think in Saudi Arabia, nothing fundamentally has changed, since the last report. There is a process in place, led by the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority, and we are within that process, but no news yet, so we are on status quo. At the same time, we have put in quite significant inbound capacity to penetrate the market, and we are seeing a continuing strong consumer reaction to the proposition of what we are bringing to Saudi. With regard to Albania, well, Albania has been really an up-and-coming market for Wizz Air and probably for the whole industry.
You, you recall that Tirana Airport used to be operated by a foreign operators, pretty much overcharging for the airport, restraining the growth profile of the market. That changed, and a very different cost structure got imposed, and that attracted Wizz Air, that attracted other actors, like Ryanair in the industry. That dropped essentially fares in the market, stimulating a lot of demand, you know, building the franchise of flying in the country. We are not seeing any, you know, significant issues coming out of that market. Let's not overblow Albania. This is a country of 2.7 million people.
Thank you very much. We'll go to Satish Sivakumar from Citibank. Satish, do you want to unmute yourself?
Yeah. Thanks again for taking my questions. I've got two questions here. First is around the fleet to staff ratio. If you look at, say, last Q1 versus this Q1, you had gone up by from 39 to 44, roughly around 13%. How much of this increase is actually related to summer resiliency, and when you see this ratio normalize, given now you're actually taking some capacity out into the second quarter, do you expect it to come down? The second question is: You did flag in your presentation that booking curve is slightly longer now due to the leisure exposure. Again, going into quarter two, what is that the booking curve stands versus 2019 levels? As you go into winter, obviously there will, into quarter three, there will be less of leisure mix.
If the VFR still continues to be weak, do you think that you need to actually do a price stimulation, to get back to, or to get back to normal booking levels? Yeah. Thank you.
Satish, I think it was a little bit tricky to hear you, but I think you were asking about whether the fleet to staff ratio, which you indicate might be up 30%, is that something that will continue to be like that and grow, or is it expected to normalize? Is that the question?
Yes, Ian. especially you cut capacity into quarter two, should we expect that to actually to see a step down into quarter two, or it's just that it's too short notice to take some staff cost out?
I think, I think this is a fairly mechanical mathematics to be honest, if you are talking about mathematics. I mean, you take an aircraft, you take the number of crews required to operate the aircraft, and that's a fairly set number, roughly around six crews per, per aircraft. This is an A321, so one crew is two pilots, five cabin crew, and you just multiply, and that determines the staffing of the aircraft. Obviously, the greatest volatility that goes into this equation is the, is the utilization of the aircraft, because if for whatever reasons the aircraft is not utilized, obviously that inflates the crew number per aircraft.
Assuming a normal cycle of utilization, actually that's a fairly constant way of applying mathematics, and that is not changing. I, I, I don't, I don't think that there is any variability other than utilization coming through this, this line, as far as I'm concerned.
Going into quarter two, given that you cut capacity now, so this number should even further go up, right?
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a, it's not an increase that we're familiar with, we, we have always been very clear throughout the last few reporting cycles that one of the ways that we, that we're planning on increasing our completion rate or reducing our cancellation rate is by ensuring that we have sufficient protection in the system with regards to crewing and spares and spare crews. So that is a part of the investment that we made, and I think Joe mentioned the EUR 100 million earlier, that is designed to help reduce the overall disruption costs that affect us, which we see as a greater magnitude. So that might be part of the.
That's probably part of the effect that you're seeing there, Satish, but, it's not something that, we, we, we think is out of line on a, on a structural basis going forward.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
with regard to the booking curve, -
Yes.
on, on, on VFR. Yes, the booking curve for VFR traffic tends to be fairly normal. I think actually the booking curve for leisure is more extended.
Yep.
Depending on the market, if let's say you take the U.K. as a market, given that we have an airline operating in the U.K., besides U.K., and that airline is increasingly focused on serving the U.K. customer, the U.K. market. There is an increasing leisure component in the operation of the airline. Actually, that extends the booking curve.
Okay, got it. Thank you.
We'll go to Jarrod Castle at UBS. Jarrod, would you like to unmute yourself?
Hello, can you hear me?
We can. Thank you.
Great, thanks. brief for me as well. just coming back to the GTF. I mean, how many planes are actually exposed? It looks like 93 in your fleet, also, can you talk about the future exposure as you take deliveries or, or deliveries on the GTF? Also, like, how did you get to 12 planes? Is it just based on the capacity that Pratt can service or, you know, the other planes okay? If you can just... I mean, I know we've spoken a lot about this topic, but, just color on those points, please. Then just kind of thinking about, you know, how far east you actually prepare to expand. I see you've just gone, further into Iraq.
You know, when- you know, how far east will you expand, and when do you start hitting, kind of, I guess, some of the low-cost Asian carriers, on some of those routes? Then lastly, just talking about Ukraine, Ryanair is obviously, you know, recently announced a big push once it reopens. Just, just would be interested to hear your plans and also, if you do still have any, of your fleet, which is, you know, still, still has to be brought back from Ukraine. Thanks.
Okay. Let me, let me take the reverse order on your, on your question. Ukraine, we have one aircraft in Ukraine. Essentially, you know, we used to have four. We flew one out of Kyiv. We got stuck with three in Kyiv. Two aircraft are disassembled. We bought out two aircraft, essentially, and we removed engines and some of the other parts. We shipped them back to Europe and we basically used them as parts for supporting the business. We have one intact airplane still stuck in Kyiv. In terms of plans for Ukraine, well, maybe I'll just remind you that prior to the war, actually, Wizz Air was an airline with bases in Ukraine, being the only European airlines.
Now, there is a lot of chatter around, you know, what different airlines will do in Ukraine, but there is still war in Ukraine, and the market is closed, regularly prohibited, to operate. Of course, we are committed to Ukraine. We will return to Ukraine as the only base European carrier in Ukraine, prior to the, to the, to the pandemic. We have full commitment for the country, but I don't think that current conditions are prevailing for airline operations. How far east can we, can we get to?
I think we are as far as Abu Dhabi at this point in time. Like in the U.K., we are looking at the market in Abu Dhabi. We are understanding the interest of the consumers flying into Abu Dhabi and flying out of Abu Dhabi, or the broader UAE, if you want to put it that way. We are creating the infrastructure to penetrate those demand flows and those customer aspirations. In terms of flying out of Abu Dhabi, of course, you can imagine the subcontinent, you can imagine a number of countries that create significant workflows for serving the UAE for kind of leisure opportunities for residents in Abu Dhabi or in the broader UAE. I don't think we have any plan beyond that.
The spokes, if you wish, we'll kind of extend out further east in the future, subject to regulatory approvals and designations. In terms of base operation, we are committed as far as Abu Dhabi at this, at this stage of the game, and if that changes, we let you know. With regard to the GTF issues, I mean, again, I, I appreciate that y- y- you want to know more than what you do, and believe me, I'm in the same position as, as you, but simply, we, we just don't know what we don't know at this point in time. We are not expecting to have any issues with future deliveries.
These are issues that reflect on previously delivered engines, especially the first generation of GTF deliveries. But I said, even on tranche one, what we understand is the number of engines exposed, the timing, the mandate to stop the operation of the engine, but we still don't fully understand the verse scope implied on the engine and exactly how execution is gonna take place, whether through designated shops or just going into the current system. We know even less on the second tranche. We don't know how many engines of ours are affected. We don't know the scope. We don't know the timing. We don't know the process. The only thing what I can do is to speculate, but I don't wanna do that.
If I could just clarify, Jarrod-
It's 12 engines, not 12 airplanes. The, how we, how we landed on that number is because we were advised by Pratt on the specific serial numbers, which, then match against our engines. It's, it's 12 engines, which, which, depending on the timing of the removals, 'cause some were already, scheduled for removal, could be up to six aircraft.
Thanks.
We've got a question from Bank of America. I don't have your Christian name, but your surname is Kayani. Go ahead.
Good morning. This is Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America. Can you hear me?
We can. Thank you.
Great. Thank you. First question was just a clarification on the first question in the call around the RASK guidance. To clarify, in the first quarter, RASK ticket was 38.7% up, and your guidance is for low double digit in the second quarter. Did I understand that correctly? If you could clarify, what's the stage length impact here, the kind of sequential slowdown, is that just a base effect from last year's recovery? Secondly, just to clarify, you know, we've heard from your competitor about some softness in closing bookings. Have you seen any of that in your bookings? Thirdly, on the Middle East, how is that impacting the seasonality on your fares, given the different timing of holidays there? Thank you.
Sure. You're right. Ticket RASK Q1 was 38.7% higher year-on-year. In the RNS, we referenced a double-digit increase on, on, on, on ticket revenue for, for Q2. What that translates to is, that is ticket RASK again, and I would say it would be on the lower end, so 10%, 11% would be a fair number for what we're seeing this stage into Q2, so one month in. You wanna take softness?
Yeah. I mean, we are not seeing any softness creeping in. We are seeing demand as robust as you can imagine. I mean, we are having that discussion like every three months. We are here that, you know, the market is telling us, "Okay, we understand you guys today, but what's going to happen in three months or six months?" I mean, nothing is happening in three months or six months, and we are not seeing anything coming in the next three to six months. We stay confident in demand.
With regard to seasonality, issues, actually, we, we like the profile of the Middle East when it comes to seasonality, because if you really think about this, in summer, where you would be expecting the market to be off seasonal just because of the heat, actually you get a lot of demand from residents of the Middle East to travel to Europe and, and elsewhere. In winter, you see a lot of inbound traffic going to the to the market. Actually, these markets are a lot less seasonal than, than even the European markets.
Thank you.
We'll go to Mark Simpson from Goodbody. Mark, go ahead.
Hello, can you hear me?
We can. Thank you.
Great. A couple of finance questions, so probably for Ian. In terms of the CapEx, I mean, if you just run through net CapEx for, well, definitely 2024, 2025, and even if you can, for 2026. Within that, on the financing side, there was quite a shift last year using JOLCO rather than IFRS 16 leases. There's obviously about 170 basis points of financing advantage that we saw in that. Will we see something similar this year? Again, a kind of 60/40 split in, in, in favor of JOLCO and the French leases. Finally, you mentioned the end June liquidity position of EUR 1.8 billion and matched that to the March EUR 1.5 billion. At the end of March, you had unearned revenues of EUR 761 million.
I'm wondering what the unearned revenues were at the end of June.
Thanks, Mark. In terms of CapEx, net CapEx in the outer years, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't advise on that. In terms of the financing profile, we run, we run tenders for our fleet financing roughly for covering the next 12 months in advance. It's harder for for lessors or financiers to really commit anything longer than that. Even at the outer end of 12 months, we see people struggling just because of the volatility in the, in the markets. When it comes to the choice between JOLCO and IFRS 16, each of them have their benefits. Ultimately, like everything else we do in our business, we focus on lowest unit cost and lowest cost in general. We run these campaigns, we compare them against all the options available.
We have seen a lot, a lot of appetite from the Far East in terms of our financing sources, but not exclusively. We've even seen some lessors from the European markets come back into the game and be competitive. We look at it really more as the overall total cost of ownership, or total cost of utilization at the end of the day, because obviously they're not owned, although the JOLCOs do have a feature to convert that and make decisions based upon absolute cost. There's no rule of thumb, Mark, whether it's 60/40 or some other percentage in terms of what we prefer at the end of the day. With regards to the unearned revenue number, the number that...
We, we, we used to provide a, a, a waterfall, but we feel that that's probably a bit too, too much insight in the competitive landscape.
but, I would not, I would not expect any, but I would, I would not, I would not assume any deterioration in that number relative to other periods. Very healthy, no, no deviation, compared to what you would have seen in prior, prior periods.
Okay, thanks.
We'll go to Neil Glynn from Air Control Tower. Neil, go ahead.
Oh, good morning, everybody. Thank you. Neil Glynn here. Just one question. Clearly there's been a lot of discussion about GTFs and capacity management, but the fact that fuel headwind are stepping up again as a theme hasn't been touched on very much through the session. I think it would be helpful to update us on how you feel about the stage of development of the capacity added since the pandemic, and your ability to price up on some of the newer routes around the network, should that be necessary, as a fuel headwind possibly is likely into FY 2025 at the current fuel price. Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, clearly, you, you've seen this, kind of taking a strategic position on, on COVID, and we invested against the cycle, if you wish. And now we are a 50%, 60% larger airline than pre-pandemic, versus an industry of not even reaching pre-pandemic capacity levels. And the same rule applies across the board that every operation we perform must be profitable. I mean, there is no better strategy than, than profitability, and this is the base of allocating capacity, this is the base of growing capacity, this is the base of churning capacity, whatever it is. It is profitability. And the good news is that I think we are seeing a fairly equalized position and performance across the geographies we operate in. We are seeing strong catch- up in, in Western Europe.
We are seeing a very solid operations, from a financial standpoint in Central and Eastern Europe, and we are seeing, you know, the rising of, of performance in, in, in Abu Dhabi and the Middle East, overall. I think we feel very comfortable with, with the investments, what we have made, and with the, with the return of those investments. We don't really see outliers, either, either way with, with, with that regard. What happens in a higher fuel price environment? I think what's going to happen is what, it has been happening over the last, years or, or decades, that changing input costs flow through into the fare environment through capacity discipline. It is a bridge, so it, it doesn't happen overnight. It, it takes 12 to 18 months.
If input costs are rising, what it means is that capacity comes out of the market and rebalances supply and demand. Fares will get increased. When input costs are falling, over time, you will see more capacity coming to the market, and basically that takes the fares down. This is empirically evidenced throughout the decades I've been in this business over the last 20, 20 years, and I think this is exactly the same what you should be expecting. This is an industry game, okay? I don't think that you have to translate it airline by airline, because the other factor is that if you are a low-cost carrier, your relative competitive position will improve in the down cycle.
If you call it as a down cycle, you actually are better off, a better competing force than in the upcycle. What you see is this kind of a trading from high cost to low cost of consumers. And if you look at the step change of the low-cost industry, market share terms, that always happened in the down cycles. When the customer fell under pressure, and then the customer downgraded from high cost to to low cost. Actually, down cycle, a high input cost environment, inflation environment, that's a good thing for low-cost carrier.
We'll go to Ruairi Cullinane from RBC Capital Markets. Ruairi, do you want to unmute yourself? Go ahead.
Hi, yeah, Ruairi Cullinane, RBC. Two questions from me. Firstly, over the pandemic, the combined share of Wizz Air and Ryanair in Central and Eastern Europe has increased. Do you see that as a good thing, because the market is more consolidated, or a headwind because you're more often running up against a more formidable competitor? Perhaps linked to that, perhaps you could touch on how Romania has performed in recent quarters, given you backfilled some of Blue Air's capacity there.
I mean, we have been competing with the Irish guys in Central and Eastern Europe for 15 years. I don't think anything new is happening. I don't think the, the question is what, what, what happens between Wizz Air and Ryanair? Nothing is happening, or the same is happening, that both airlines are growing. Of course, they should be growing, because these are the airlines that can actually stimulate the market, can create traffic and can create demand for the industry. The real question is what, what's happening to the other guys? Because they are going nowhere. I mean, you can see that either they go bust, they got bailed out by governments, they are losing relevance to the to the to the market.
I think that will continue to happen. You will see Wizz growing, you will see Ryanair growing, and you will see the, the, the legacy industry shrinking. That transformation is quite impressive as a matter of fact, but it's also interesting to kind of observe how that process actually takes place. You go back to 2004, I'm just using 2004 because that was the year of EU accession of Central and Eastern Europe, and that was the year when we started flying, coinciding with that. If you look at the aggregate legacy capacity in Central and Eastern Europe today, it's pretty much exactly the same by the very seat than what it was in 2004, 20 years ago.
The legacy industry has not been able to grow one single seat in Central and Eastern Europe, but the airline industry is three times the size of what it was in 2004, that was all stimulated and created by Wizz Air and the likes of Wizz Air. I think that's really the way to look at Central and Eastern Europe, as opposed to assuming that this is a dogfight between two airlines. Of course, we are growing. Of course, they are growing, but that's not the question. The question is that, you know, this is reshaping and restructuring the whole industry as a result.
The second one was Romania, Blue Air.
Oh, Romania. Well, I mean, one competitor is down. Blue Air, we pretty much replaced Blue Air, and we take it from here.
We've got time for just one more question from Conor Dwyer, from Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, Conor.
Great. Thanks very much. Yeah, just one question for me, and it's really just a clarification question, because when I read the statement in the report, I understood it differently than I think it was answered just there. Just could you clarify on the double-digit increase on ticket revenue, is that revenue per passenger or per RPK?
No, that's revenue. That's RASK. Ticket RASK.
Thanks.
I think that's all we've got time for, so back to you in the room. Thank you very much.
All right. Thank you, well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. Thank you for your interest. We appreciate it. See you next time. Thank you.