Hello, and welcome to the Wizz Air FY 2022 half-year results. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards there'll be a live Q&A session, followed by an audio Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question by the audio Q&A session, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded. Today, I'm pleased to present Wizz Air CEO József Váradi and Wizz Air Executive Vice President and Group CFO Jourik Hooghe. Please begin your meeting.
Thank you very much. Again, good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming. I really appreciate your presence and good to see you as human beings around us. Good to be back in real life in business. This is to report the first half of our financial year called fiscal 2022. Maybe I would start with a quick wrap up of first. In summer just behind us, we ramped up operations pretty much to 2019 capacity levels. This is one of the highest in the industry in Europe. We did pretty well on that. It was a profitable quarter in terms of operating profit.
We were clearly seeing a ramp up of the financial metrics as well during this period. We delivered positive cash flow in this period, liquidity reaching EUR 1.7 billion at the end of September. Importantly, both Fitch and Moody's reconfirmed our investment-grade credit rating. That obviously is a very important matter to us, given our exposure to capital markets, especially when it comes to aircraft financing.
Short-term, we are seeing a number of temporary challenges the business is facing. I will talk about this later, but just headlines. We are seeing a few of our markets that are under-vaccinated relative to Western European levels. Obviously, that is affecting short-term demand.
We are seeing a significant ramp up of our capacity to 170 A/C next year versus 119. At the outbreak of the pandemic, that's a significant growth. Obviously, that carries some level of inefficiency at the moment with regard to A/C utilization and group productivity. Once we are fully ramped up, we will be back to our historical operational levels.
We are seeing the macro environment playing against us on commodities when it comes to fuel pricing and FX. We are acutely focused on executing against the Wizz 500 agenda that is strategically important to us. We continue to invest in our fleet, in our network and our people.
Just to give you some numbers, as said, we are going up to 170 aircraft by September next year. This is roughly 50% capacity increase versus the outbreak of COVID in March. We are hiring people. We are looking at having 6,700 employees in the company at that time in September.
That compares to 5,000 at the outbreak of COVID-19 and 4,000 at the low end during the pandemic. We have been investing a lot into diversifying our markets. We opened up a lot of new countries, new operating bases and new routes. You see how that investment has been flowed through.
If you look at the current snapshot of our business metrics, as said, we have been back into 2019 level on capacity and to a large extent also in terms of passenger traffic, added a number of airports, aircraft and operating bases. We are now having 44 operating bases in operations or announced, compared to 26 in March 2020. If you look at the route network, we have a total network of 1,155 routes, of which 440 were opened during the pandemic. We have been greatly diversifying our network during this period.
If you look at capacity levels, you are seeing that this is the calendar year from week 13 to week 44. We are in week 44 today. This is tracking until week 43. You are seeing that our capacity level is pretty much on 2019 ASK level. Load factor is also ramping up.
We have not reached the level of operational efficiency what the business delivered in 2019, but we are certainly on the way to achieve that. It's still a weaker demand environment, but relative to the industry, relative to our competitors, we have been performing quite well, showing how effective we've been in ramping up operations.
This is a market share gain, and a market share gain given the period we are in. This is a deliberate choice of ours. If you look back in 2019, 2010, we did exactly the same thing. We took advantage of the weak market. We took advantage of the weakness of our competitors, and we invested into those markets by gaining market shares.
That's exactly the same what's happening at this point in time. You can see that pretty much in every one of our countries, we are building our market positions. We are grabbing significant market shares. Just to name a few countries, if you look at Albania, out of the blue, we became the largest carrier in the country.
We stepped up in Italy in a big way, tripling our presence in the market, going from 3% to 9%. Even on our existing markets like Romania, we've been able to step up, taking advantage of the situation, the weakness of our competitors. This is a deliberate investment into markets which we believe will benefit us on the medium haul and the long term, irrespective of some of the short-term challenges that we are facing right now. With that note, let me hand it over to Jourik.
Thanks, József. Good morning also from my side. It's great to see some of you face to face. Let me give some highlights on the financial performance. Looking at the key KPIs, starting with revenue, you see that the revenue for the first half increased 87%. Revenue for the quarter increased 80%, so very strong performance.
Obviously, the base was still very low, but as explained, we're nearing the ASK levels of 2019, which is very strong. Looking at the profit side, the operating profit for the first half of the year was -EUR 52 million. The operating profit for the quarter, as József said, was EUR 57 million positive.
We're turning a positive on the operating profit from a total net income for the first half. We're at the -EUR 120 million, which basically implies a -EUR 6 million, operating, sorry, a net income loss for the quarter. There's a big difference between this positive EUR 57 million operating profit and the EUR 6 million loss, and that difference is essentially explained by the unrealized FX losses that we have.
As you know, we are long on U.S dollar liabilities on the balance sheet, and as the dollar strengthened during the last two weeks of September, basically we've kind of had to recognize this unrealized loss. This has nothing to do with operational performance. This is, let's say, purely related to the devaluation of the balance sheet liabilities.
We'll talk a little bit more about cash in a few slides. Looking at the cash performance, you'll see that the first half delivered a cash performance of EUR 0.0275. The quarter delivered a performance of EUR 0.0243 for quarter two. That is around 12% above the quarter pre-COVID. We're getting closer to our cash performance, but we're not fully there yet.
As József highlighted, we are continuing to carry a little bit of inefficiency because of utilization on fleet and on crew. If you look at the fleet line here, which is basically the depreciation line, you'll see there's a significant inefficiency still. Here it's about, you know, close to EUR 0.30.
Also in the crew line, you can see that the balance of those two lines basically add up almost to 0.40 euro cents of inefficiency in the first half. We'll continue to carry that until we're really fully ramped up. Remember, at this point in time, we have 20% more capacity than we operate, but that gap is gonna close by next spring.
Obviously the full normal regular cost structure, pre-COVID cost structure will be fully back and may even have potential to do better. Obviously we have invested a lot, not only in fleet, but in better fleet, and that should come and translate back into the cost structure.
Moving on to cash, you can see that we have gradually maintained and even built our cash position, our liquidity position. We've remained at EUR 1.7 billion. Our balance sheet remains investment grade with Fitch and Moody's, as József mentioned.
Fitch revised the outlook in a report last week, which you may have seen, from negative to stable, as they basically revised the outlook for next summer, where they see obviously stronger vaccination rates giving more confidence for travel to return to pre-COVID and above levels. We continue to have a short booking window, which you'll actually see in the next slide when we unpack the cash performance into the different drivers.
Firstly, if you look at cash from an operating point of view, given the cost structure, which I said was around 12% higher on the ex-fuel CASK, but also giving the pricing environment, which is still 25% below pre-COVID from a RASK point of view in the last quarter, obviously the operating profit whereas was positive, was not where it used to be, right?
Clearly, we have ways to go as confidence comes back, as restrictions fully lift, that pricing performance will return, and most of that should happen by next spring, next summer, and that operating cash flow will obviously continue to increase. Working capital was a positive change. There's two components to that.
I mean, we had a higher volume of activity, so payables contributed to working capital, but we're in front of a lower volume quarter from a revenue point of view. Seasonally speaking, winter is slower than, let's say, summer. Unflown revenue has declined, but still those two combinations together lead to a positive EUR 36 million contribution from a working capital point of view.
Currencies, whereas a hurt on the P&L, were a help on cash because of the U.S dollar deposits. Lastly, as we've always guided, PDP payments this quarter would be relatively elevated. For the year, we have around EUR 120 million predelivery payments. Most of that came this quarter. The EUR 40 million balance is coming in the second half. All in all, very strong cash performance, I would say.
If you look at ancillaries, that continues to be a stronghold for us. Ancillaries in the first half were up EUR 5 per passenger versus FY 2020, so EUR 2.5 per year. That's kind of well ahead of our target of EUR 1 per passenger per year increase. The quarter was a bit lower than the EUR 5, right? In Q2 we had EUR 3 per passenger increase versus FY 2020. So it's slowing down a little bit. That may continue in half two, and the reason for that is obviously the market is more price sensitive, more price elastic, I would say.
That also means that you lure in or you get basically passengers which are more price sensitive, and they would also buy less ancillary services over the summer quarter, and that may continue to some extent over half two. As pricing will restore next year, that obviously will also restore further the strength on ancillary. All in all, we are well on track to deliver our targets for the full year also on ancillary performance. With that, I hand it back to József.
Thank you, Jourik. I think it is very important that you fully understand what we are doing here with regard to investing into our future with much focus on fiscal 2023. We think fiscal 2023 is gonna be a year in which you will see our financial metrics largely restored to historical levels. Our investment has been going through three lines essentially.
We have strengthened our fleet plan. I will talk about that in a moment. It's not only that we are ramping up our existing markets, but we have been adding a number of new markets, and we are starting to see some maturity coming through those early investments during the pandemic.
As said before, we have been substantially hiring people. Just over the last three months, we hired over 1,000 people. I mean, that relates to 4,000 at the bottom of the pandemic. Versus that level, we have been hiring 25% new employees in the company for getting ready for next spring. If you look at vaccination, we're seeing that there is a very clear correspondence between vaccination rates and travel restrictions.
European travel has been evolving around the concept of vaccination rollout. Vaccinated people can travel, non-vaccinated people cannot travel or they are facing significant restrictions. You see how these lines have been evolving.
Clearly, vaccinated people are now pretty much free to move around Europe, but non-vaccinated people are getting increasingly restricted. Essentially, they are fully restricted as we speak now. That poses some short-term challenges, I've said, on our network because Central and Eastern Europe is less vaccinated than Western Europe, and it's playing catch-up.
Having said that, the rate of improvement is pretty enormous. I would say look at a country like Romania. Romania is vaccinated at around 30% level, and it's expected to reach 75% by February. I mean, obviously, events in the country are tragic, and people are acting on it by fear, but there is a very clear improvement.
We're gonna be seeing medium term beyond the next 3-6 months a significant kind of settling on this issue in some of the markets where today we are negatively affected. We think vaccination is a key issue, and vaccination will be driving travel demand and people's ability to fly. That's kind of another way of looking at vaccination. Today, around 20% of our capacity is placed in markets, but at least 70% vaccination level has been achieved. That rate is going to improve immensely in the coming period.
When we come to the end of the winter period, March 2022, it's gonna be over 50% of our markets reaching this 70%+ vaccination level. You see that going through the summer, that is expected to further improve beyond 80% and getting into winter, next winter, 2022, we're gonna be basically fully vaccinated. I would also say that those people who are not vaccinated are probably not our travelers at that time in any event. Around summer, we're gonna be seeing a traveling public we are targeting being fully vaccinated.
That is giving us the confidence that 2023 it has got to be a very different period for the airline sector, for Wizz Air, in terms of our ability to perform properly, not only in capacity, but also financially speaking, because simply we're gonna be carrying a fully vaccinated traveling public. Talking about the fleet, that's one of the key issues we have been focused on and we are still focusing on. This chart is showing to you that if you look at the blue line and the red line, that we essentially are upping the game and we are adding more capacity. We are planning on more growth.
We are acting on some of the newly rising market opportunities happening recently. I mean, some airlines are struggling, contracting capacity, opening up opportunities for us. We are seeing Ukraine signing an Open Skies agreement with EU, giving us access to certain markets. Essentially, we have been adding capacity.
We have been adding more growth to the system as we speak, relative to what we sold just three months ago. We are delivering it on the basis of extending some of the aircraft we have in use at the moment, and we are also trying to advance some of the new aircraft deliveries. The other line, which I think is also important, is to see the gauge of the aircraft.
Last year, we've operated a fleet with average seat count of around 200, and that is going to go to 225 in the next two years from now. I mean, this is a significant improvement because the gauge of the aircraft corresponds directly with the unit cost. The bigger the aircraft, the lower the unit cost will become. It's not only the gauging effect, but also the age effect, which benefits us that right now we have a fleet age of around five years, and that will go down to around 4.4 in the next two-three years, which will also yield significant financial benefits and on the operational metrics.
We think that we will get a lot of competitive advantage out of the fleet. That's why we are continuing to invest into that area going forward. This is against the backdrop of the industry that you see airlines flying an aging fleet of aircraft, which will end up with a significantly higher unit cost, versus the fleet what we're gonna be flying with much lower unit costs coming from innovation, fleet age and technology what we are using. I mean, all the new aircraft we are taking delivery of is a 20% lower unit cost than the previous aircraft. The A321neo delivers 20% lower unit cost than the A320ceo aircraft.
If you look at the markets, we continue to add capacity pretty much in each of our markets. Starting with core CEE, we are adding aircraft and we are delivering through this market. It's not only that we are just ramping our operations back up to 2019 level, but actually we are growing our presence in Central and Eastern Europe.
At the same time, we have been opening a number of new markets like Italy, U.K. Wizz Air UK continues to strengthen its presence. We continue to invest in the United Kingdom. Ukraine, I just said on the backdrop of the Open Skies agreement with the EU, we are seeing a lot more access to our markets.
Albania is a brand-new market and also we are ramping up Abu Dhabi in this period. At the same time, you are now seeing some changes in the market with regard to consolidation. A few airlines are now going down or getting totally distressed. We are seeing airlines contracting capacity not only in winter, but beyond winter.
Based on published schedules, we are seeing a lot less capacity committed for next summer. That's really the opportunity that we are chasing. We are growing our workforce and we are investing into our people. As said, we've just hired 1,000 people over the last three months.
We are building our organization for a 170 aircraft operation in summer 2022, requiring 6,700 people. Jourik was talking about the inefficiency we keep getting. The red line is showing you the organizational requirement of the existing fleet and how that's ramping up. The blue line is showing the actual utility of the workforce. You are seeing that we are clearly underutilizing our workforce, our fleet at this point in time. By spring 2022, we're gonna be fully ramped up and fully utilized, and we're gonna be able to restore our historical operational metrics.
That comes on a newer fleet, on an upgauge fleet, on a newer technology fleet, which will yield significant financial benefits versus our historic performance, but certainly versus the market, versus other airlines. With regard to sustainability, we are very committed to sustainability. We don't think there is a greener airline than Wizz Air.
If you are really serious about being green, you should all fly Wizz Air. If you were to apply the Wizz Air operating model in Europe, operated with Wizz Air aircraft, Europe's emission would come down by 34%. This is the operational efficiency what we are bringing to the market versus the rest of the industry. We tend to be the most innovative airline bringing technology to the market.
As said, we have been adding 37 brand-new aircraft during the pandemic. Not many airlines have done this. The new aircraft we are bringing is far more ecologically efficient than previous technology. We believe that at the end of the day, if this industry is serious about being green and serious about sustainability, it's all about the technology and it's all about the operational efficiency, how that technology is gonna be used.
I believe we have been demonstrating that we are in the forefront of those developments. Obviously, we are also trying to address the short-term and the medium-term issues and bridging ourselves through that period. We are investing a lot into our people, as said, and we take our employees very seriously.
We have been restoring the dialogue in person with our people. I think people are very supportive of the company strategy. They have been supportive in the downturn, and obviously they are supportive in the upturn we are going through right now. We are getting some more credits from the market with regard to our ESG efforts.
Wizz Air is now linked by Sustainalytics number eight in the world out of 70 rated airlines, which is quite a good ranking. We are taking other steps not only to address sustainability, but also to improve our standing on diversity, especially at board level and senior leadership level. Just to recap the presentation.
Summer H2 in total was strong in terms of rebuilding capacity in terms of recapturing travel demand. At the same time, we are seeing that the high demand periods are very strong, but the off periods are somewhat muted. Q3 capacity will be at around 2019 level going forward. In Q4, it's gonna be probably somewhat more than Q4 fiscal 2020.
We're gonna be exceeding that capacity level. I would say that in terms of operating capacity in the market, we are pretty much back in the game. We will continue to invest. We will continue to invest in our fleet, in our network, and our people.
We are looking at spring 2022 as the time period where we can be fully ramped up, and our operational efficiency and financial metrics may be resumed and reinstated at that point. This is all on the backdrop of improving vaccination rates across our markets.
We believe that we're gonna be in great position to stimulate demand given our improved fleet and our improved economics, we will be in the forefront of being able to capture the rising market opportunities coming out of the woods. Nonetheless, short term, we are expecting some turbulences. The commodity market remains volatile, including fuel as well as FX. We'll see how this plays out.
We are expecting a loss in Q3 given the investments we keep making and some of the temporary issues the business is facing, like undervaccinated countries, the commodities. We believe that these issues are short-lived, and in a few months towards the end of the winter period early spring these issues will largely be behind us. Q4 is an uncertain period with regard, we see, to what extent those issues continue to prevail at that point.
As said, fiscal 2022, we see as a transitional year into fiscal 2023, and we are full steam focused on fiscal 2023 to make sure that we are delivering a 50% growth versus pre-pandemic times, and we are fully ramped up for that growth in terms of markets, in terms of fleet, and in terms of the organizational requirements of our people. With that, I would close this presentation and would hand over to the floor for any questions you may have.
Morning, gentlemen. I'm Jaime Rowbotham from Deutsche Bank. I've got three, please. On fuel, we learned this week that Ryanair had splashed out on some fuel caps as a bit of an insurance. Is that not something that appeals to Wizz in the absence of any hedging?
Second one's on maintenance. Your Q2 maintenance costs very low. I think it's EUR 70 million down from EUR 42 million in Q1. I think that has something to do with lease extensions, but perhaps you could clarify. And the last one's pricing. Any comment on fares versus pre-crisis for next summer? Sorry to mention them again, but Ryanair said plus 5%, albeit on low volumes earlier this week. Any comment there would be great.
Okay. I hope you can hear me well. On the caps, I mean, they also come with a price. Nothing is for free in this world. You typically look at a percent of the underlying commodity that you're hedging. If you look at it, I mean, the prices today are actually trading lower probably than the caps that they have put on.
You know, we've committed to a no hedge policy. It's a bit difficult in an inflationary cycle, but you need to see through the full cycle. We'll need to see what the industry is doing when the cycle goes the other way. It is painful in the short term, but we know in the long term, we don't pay the fees to the bank.
We know that the drivers of the hedge decision was really linked to the fact that we have routes that we're still operating, the power that we may have there to adjust pricing if needed. Obviously, we have strength on the balance sheet to see through, let's say, the short term painfulness or inconvenience, if I may call it like that.
Clearly, yeah, we looked at it, but we decided not to do it. On maintenance, it's true the lease extensions have helped the maintenance line in the quarter. I mean, maintenance is always an ebb and flow of cost. I mean, this year we have 14 redeliveries, for example. They come with more cost.
We didn't have any redeliveries in 2019 or in 2020, in the current year. You know, we will see some fluctuations as we go. Yes, this quarter, we've been helped by the lease extensions. Lastly, on the fares, I mean.
I think we are booked 1% for next summer. I don't know what quantum of data people need to guide on to be statistically relevant, but probably we wouldn't be guiding on the basis of 1% of bookings.
I may just want to add to the pricing environment. I mean, there are a few trends we're gonna be observing going into summer. One is that rising input costs will feed through into the fare environment. I mean, we know it. I mean, this is empirical. We have seen it a lot of times and when substantial changes are happening to input costs those feed through into the fare environment, possibly with a six-month time lag, at least this is the empirical evidence. I think that is one trend.
The other trend is that quite likely the industry will be facing significant inflationary pressure coming from various directions, like monopoly charges, possibly fuel, and possibly increased cost of indebtedness of the industry. I think that's gonna push the industry towards higher pricing. At the same time, I think you're also gonna be seeing some other factors like potential overcapacity. We will see how the competitive environment will play out at that time. That will vary depending on the markets, depending on the competitive dynamics, but that might be a balancing act.
As far as we are concerned, as we said, we think we would be in a unique position relative to the industry because we will have a significantly improved fleet to operate versus a deteriorating fleet of older airlines, aging fleet, less efficient fleet.
At the same time, as said, you know, we're gonna be flying a younger fleet of aircraft, up-gauged fleet, newer technology, giving us a significant strategic advantage. We can play a slightly different game in the market versus other airlines. I think we can invest more into stimulating the market and not necessarily by raising fares.
We will benefit from the overall market trends should the pricing environment improve, but at the same time, given our improving cost base, coming on the platform of technology, we will have room to maneuver.
Good morning, gentlemen. It's Jarrod Castle from UBS. Three if I may, probably more medium-term focused. Yeah, you've obviously got this ambition to get to 500 planes, you know, circa maybe towards 300 at the moment. Just any comments in terms of, you know, conversations to secure another order and your view on maybe M&A to kind of acquire planes.
Then just secondly, you know, you've obviously got a very favorable tax rate. Obviously, there's a lot of pressure globally to increase tax rates. I would just be interested in your views over the medium term, how you see that potentially impacting you. And then just any further comments on Abu Dhabi. You did touch on it, but be interested just to kind of get a bit more color. Thanks.
Let me start with the 500 aircraft question. 500 aircraft is established on the base of organic growth, not on M&As. If you look at the history of Wizz, we have been growing organically. Of course, we are interested in market consolidation.
We have been looking at it more from the perspective of acquiring assets, especially airport slots, and that will be the prevailing focus going forward as well. When you break it down by market, if you kind of portray 500 aircraft in 9 years towards the end of the decade, I would expect half of it to be deployed in our Central and Eastern European core markets.
That basically requires us to double down versus where we are today. Delivering that level of growth over nine years would translate into around a 7%-8% CAGR. We think we can deliver it. We have been growing Central and Eastern Europe with double-digit growth rates over the years, so we think it's very doable. Another quarter of the 500 aircraft would come from select markets in Western Europe.
We have made three commitments to date, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Austria. We continue to enhance our presence in those markets, and we will continue to invest. We think we are strategically well-positioned to win in each of these markets, and we'll follow through our industry investments there.
The remaining quarter of the 500 aircraft shall come out of our Go East strategy. Abu Dhabi is the first pillar of that. Now you are seeing us stepping up in Ukraine, and there might be further initiative during the course of the next nine years to enhance that line.
That's sort of how we are seeing 500 aircraft coming together over the course of the next nine years. In terms of aircraft order, indeed, at one point, we will have to place an aircraft order to make sure that we have the supply of aircraft, but I just don't want to speculate on them. In due course we'll take care of that issue.
Just on the tax rate, I mean, you're reading what we're reading, so we've seen the OECD agreement to 15% tax rate, as of 2023. Likely will probably be at least a year delay, as of when it would be implemented in, let's say, all the respective countries. Then there's obviously a question that we have once the tax will be published in terms of the carve-outs that have been negotiated, carve-outs for asset investments, for employment.
It could be that there may be more exceptions than rules and, so we will need to really understand it. I think over time it is prudent to plot the higher tax rate than what we are currently enjoying, if you look at the overall trends in the market. It may not be all the way to 15%, and it may not be all the way as of January 1, 2023.
Abu Dhabi is now moving. Abu Dhabi used to be highly restricted by government-imposed measures. They've been largely relaxed recently. A number of markets opened up as a result, and we are ramping capacity up against those new operating conditions. We have four aircraft based in Abu Dhabi.
We think we're gonna be fully operational with full utilization towards the beginning of next calendar year, 2022. Of course, we'll take it from there as we are seeing further opportunities. Access to markets on the basis of bilateral designations, we will continue to follow up that investment. I don't think anything has changed with regard to our strategic views on Abu Dhabi.
Short-term, maybe the start has been a bit more difficult given the restrictions prevailing. Now we are indeed coming out of the woods, and I would even say that COVID-19 might be just accelerating our plans in Abu Dhabi, given the reset of some of the other airlines. I mean, you see that Etihad Airways, for example, is restructuring its business, probably giving us more opportunities than what we would have sold before.
All right. It's James Hollins from Exane BNP Paribas. A few from me, please. Just a couple of follow-ups on your comments, Joseph. I think the world and its wife is talking about a decent market on capacity next summer. Seems to be a bit of backpedaling on that, and you've talked about overcapacity.
I was just wondering if you could highlight any particular markets you're concerned about, and obviously your own capacity is increasing quite considerably. Secondly, another comment you made was talking about looking to acquire slots. I was wondering if you are going to or likely to have any success of getting into Gatwick for summer season 2022, if that's still top of your agenda. And then the third one, obviously, Joseph, you have your, I guess, juicy long-term contract.
If we talk about the trajectory of that, you've talked about FY 2022 as transition. The slide 13 was rather scary to me in terms of that vaccination rate. Should we be thinking about fiscal 2023 as you growing 50%, a lot more recruitment, getting through that vaccination process, and then the kind of the profit delivery, the returns on everything you're doing comes through in fiscal 2024? Those are the three. Thanks.
All right. Well, with regard to capacity, I mean, I think history is telling us that, especially in peak periods, the industry has the tendency to overdo capacity. We shall see how capacity discipline is gonna play into the summer.
A lot of state aid has been injected into the industry, which I think takes away the incentive from those legacy carriers to rationalize capacity. Simply, we should just see how that's gonna play out. I also think that, depending on how the slot regulations will call for next summer, that may be driving some unnecessary capacity in the market.
If airlines will have to fight for their incumbent slot positions, and they will decide to operate capacity not needed for the market, that may result in overcapacity. We shall see. I don't know, but given the tendencies we have been observing before, I don't think this is such a straight line that necessarily we should be concluding that it's gonna be capacity discipline going into summer.
With regard to slots, in Gatwick, I don't think I can report anything new versus what we have said. Yes, we are interested in expanding Gatwick. Yes, we are interested in acquiring slots. But at the moment, we have no possession of any further slots at Gatwick.
We need to understand how the slot regulatory framework continues to evolve, what it really means for next summer and what impact that's gonna make on existing players, and what they wanna do with the slot portfolio, what they have. For the time being, I cannot really report anything new. With regard to 2023 versus 2024, I think I'm very confident in 2023. 2023 is gonna be underpinned with the improving vaccination. I mean, obviously there is no guarantee that the world is not gonna be put upside down by something.
Putting that kind of a black swan scenario aside, you know, looking at it from a COVID-19 perspective, looking at it from an intention to travel perspective, people wanna go, people wanna travel. They have the financial capacity to do that. Their ability to travel has been much more corresponding with government-imposed restrictions as opposed to fear of COVID. I think we're just gonna be in a much better situation.
I mean, you look at London today compared to what it was just even a few months ago. I mean, it has become a free land again versus a very restricted territory before. I think we're gonna be seeing that happening in many more places as well.
The U.K. is 85% vaccinated again, compared to Romania, 30% vaccinated. Romania is gonna be 75% vaccinated by February. It's going very quickly. The issue is not the availability of vaccines, the issue has been people's willingness to get vaccinated. I think that's all changing. The attitude is changing given the recent events.
I think that backdrop is very critical to the resumption of air travel, and we are seeing that backdrop improving significantly, creating the framework for air travel. No other airline in better position than Wizz Air to take advantage of that demand increase in the marketplace. We are the lowest cost operator. We're gonna be improving our competitive advantages.
We are liquid, and on that basis, we should be able to do well, significantly better than the rest of the industry. If your question is whether I think the industry is gonna be back to normal in fiscal 2023, my answer is definitely no. The industry is not gonna be back to normal in 2023. If your question is that Wizz is gonna be back to pretty much normal, or Wizz be approaching the normalities in fiscal 2023, my answer is yes, simply because we are in a better position than the rest of the industry.
Hi. It's Andrew Lobbenberg from HSBC. I think in the presentation remarks you spoke of some of the new markets starting to show signs of maturity. Yeah, could you give us a bit of color on which of the markets are behaving? Can I ask about ATC costs among the inflationary pressures? You didn't put that up the flagpole, whereas most people have done. To what extent is that a concern? At home in Budapest, I think there's an ongoing battle to try and nationalize the airport. Does that come with threats for you or opportunities?
Okay. Thank you, Andrew. Well, with regard to ATC, yes, I think ATC is a concern. We think monopoly charges will increase, increasing ATC. We shall see to what extent this is going to affect the business. I mean, theoretically, we are seeing headwinds as well as tailwinds in the business going into fiscal 2023.
One of the headwinds actually is this, how monopoly airports, monopoly service providers will impose cost on the industry. Again, at the same time, we're gonna be gaining significantly on the aircraft, younger aircraft, off-gauge aircraft. We're gonna be gaining on crew productivity.
I mean, just think about it like operating a 180-seater A320 with two pilots and then operating a 239-seater aircraft with the same two pilots. That's gonna give us a lot of productivity gain and the cost gain with that regard. I think it's gonna be a mixed bag. We see some issues, fuel, monopoly charges, some labor inflation.
At the same time we're also gonna have a number of offsetting tailwinds like gauge, like age of the aircraft, and technology improvement and productivity improvement coming out of it. I think it's kind of hard to predict the exact balance between the two lines, but it's gonna be a balanced matter.
With regard to Budapest Airport, I personally would not expect any major change, no matter who owns the airport. I mean, airport ownership is one issue, airport operation is another. Budapest Airport has been badly operated airport from our standpoint.
We are seeing actually some positive changes here or there when the airport gets nationalized, so Albania might be a good example. Albania used to be owned by a foreign consortium. It was re-nationalized, and as a result the airport became far more commercial. Actually that gave us a significant entry to the market.
If there is any change, quite likely it's gonna be positive with that regard, but it's kind of hard to predict. The airport is still not nationalized, and it has not been communicated in any ways how commercially the position of the airport would change if that would change at all. With regard to our maturity of markets, maybe just a few example. Clearly we started seeing some early wins in Italy in summer. Some of the early Italian investments we have made delivered profit. Albania quite quickly matured. Also the U.K. during the summer did very well.
When the markets were unrestricted, we did very well, but obviously we kind of fell off the cliff when the markets got closed off by the government. We are seeing a reopening. Again, the real issue from our standpoint is less the market demand or people's intention to travel or people's intention to take up on Wizz, the issue is much more the volatility around restrictions. We're seeing that those volatile measures should be largely phased out with the improving vaccination rates going into next financial year.
Thank you. Neil Glynn from Credit Suisse. If I could also grab three, please. The first one back to the fuel hedging topic. I guess one of the most important aspects here is how it impacts competitive dynamics in the market, and Ryanair obviously isn't your only competitor.
Do you have an awareness or a decent understanding of how your CEE competitors, the flag carriers in that market are hedged or not at the moment? 'Cause I would expect that to have a bearing on pricing for next year. The second and the third question both kind of slightly Indigo-related. Back to the potential next aircraft order. Is that likely to come via Indigo or come via Wizz Air, or is that something that's possible to help us understand at this point?
a third question. It might feel a bit random, but your, I guess, sister company, JetSMART, has recently had an investment from American Airlines, which I assume will eventually have some kind of an operational partnership.
Is that kind of venture in any way on Wizz Air's agenda, or does that just simply not make sense because of the potential complexity if you were to do anything with any other, long-haul-oriented carrier, for example?
Maybe I take the first one. Generally what you see is that the bigger, well-funded players are to some extent hedged. The smaller airlines are typically not hedged. I mean, it's not only in the East, but equally in the West, if you look at some of the Scandinavian airlines, et cetera.
Clearly this will also help us in our region, of course, given that most of the competitive backdrop there hasn't really hedged, and is at better terms on equal level playing field because we are hedged through the technology and the better consumption efficiency than they have.
Being legally correct, there is no such thing as an Indigo aircraft order. There has never been. Aircraft orders have been placed by airlines. Wizz Air signed agreement with Airbus, and each of our aircraft order is gonna be a Wizz Air aircraft order with Airbus. We use the Indigo framework as a negotiating platform, but legally speaking, each of the airlines make commitments on the aircraft order to Airbus. I think it's been a good formula, and we quite likely will apply that formula going forward.
By the way, it is extended beyond aircraft orders, and I think we are doing it on many other fields, buying parts, services, products, in various fields. With regard to JetSMART, well, actually, I am on the board of JetSMART, so I'm kind of close to the fire with regard to the American Airlines investment.
I think it shall be seen as a unique proposition for JetSMART in South America by American Airlines, and not as a pattern that may become applicable for Wizz Air. I think we are on a very different path. We are in a very different stage of development of our business, and we are just operating on very different markets with that regard, and we don't look at it as a model to be reapplied.
Hi. Thanks. Alex Irving from Bernstein. Three from me, please, all on labor. First of all, one of your competitors has been talking about Wizz Air having to cancel a number of flights in the last quarter due to not having enough crew to pilot those.
Can you please speak to the truth of this? How large of a problem is it, and sort of what's the real story on there? Secondly, as we ramp up into kind of spring 2022, and you're talking about full utilization, it looks like your FTE numbers indexed to 2020 are below where they are below so the fleet ramp up, despite the fact you're on larger aircraft requiring maybe more cabin crew per flight.
What gives you the confidence here that you can ramp up and avoid the rostering issues that have maybe dogged some of your U.S peers as they've ramped up in recent months? Finally, on just labor cost pressures, what are you seeing with regards to pilots and cabin crew in the market at the moment, please? Thank you.
All right. Maybe I take these questions. With regard to flight cancellations, turbulence, et cetera, we had a few days actually when we came under pressure, and it was the result of market opening on the one hand, which attracted us to deploy more capacity against those newly rising market opportunities.
At the same time, we underestimated the rusty nature of the industry with regard to the supply chain, and suffered significantly weaker operating performance, especially on-time performance, distressing the rostering of the crew and kind of resulting in issues on crew headcount.
We quickly resolved those issues first by taking a few wet lease aircraft from the market. We phased those wet leases out after a few weeks of operation. Now we are fully in control of our own destiny. For a long time, we haven't canceled any flights for any crew purposes or crew shortage issue. We're seeing that we are back in the game. We are controlling the operational performance of the airline, but indeed, we had a few weeks of turbulence.
I think you need to relate it to almost to like one-off events of sudden demand rise and kind of sudden breakdown of the supply chain. The supply chain has been improving. I think we are better planning on these issues, and we are not seeing that those issues recurring coming back in the business. I think events have passed with that regard.
Our competitors like talking about this, but we are definitely in a much better shape than some of the U.S. peers like Southwest or American Airlines who will be constantly struggling with resources getting crews, getting the rosters going through.
With regard to ramping up and ensuring roster stability, we are investing a lot for that. We think roster stability is one of the key issues in the industry, not only in terms of operability of the airline, but also in terms of engagement with our staff, with our employees. That's where things can go wrong, and we are much focused on that. We understand that it requires a constant effort, and with regard to that issue, also some investment, creating more standbys, more reserves, more buffers in the system. This is how we are ramping our operations up.
I think we are taking full note of the challenge and the issues we have been learning from and what we might be expecting going forward, and we are trying to address those upfront. I'm fairly confident that based on the plans we have in place we should not be distressing ourselves.
It's work having been done and some work still to be done in that regard, but we are fully aware of what we need to do there. In terms of inflationary costs on labor, yes, it's happening. Interestingly, we are seeing more challenges with the cabin crew workforce than pilots. This is the result of cabin crew being lower paid than pilots, but also having more alternatives, carrier alternatives than pilots.
We are seeing a lot more retention issues and a lot more issues with regard to being able to attract large number of interest from the other market. Some of it is gonna be short-lived, and once the industry is back on its feet, we're gonna be seeing that kind of attractiveness to be reinstated.
Despite all these issues, we hired around 800 cabin crew just over the last few weeks, few months. I'm confident that we're gonna be able to deal with this challenge, but we are seeing a lot more inflationary pressure on cabin crew. With regard to pilots, I think this is still a volatile market.
We have been very clear with our pilot workforce, and I think that has worked. We try to protect their jobs during the bad times. Based on that, they've been very supportive to the company going through the crisis. I think they are also very supportive today when it comes to ramping up operations. We have a good engagement with the pilot force, and we don't necessarily see a huge inflationary pressure coming from there. It's a bigger issue with the cabin crew.
Could I just follow up on the pilot point, please, about protecting jobs through the crisis? Just to follow up on the pilots point, you talked about protecting the jobs through the crisis. Can you give us a sense of how many pilots you had pre-crisis? How many was at the trough, and how many you have now today, please?
Yeah. Basically, we implemented an early layoff in around April time, April 2020, when we laid off 20% of the pilot force, 20% of the cabin crew force, and 20% of the office. It was fair and equitable with that regard. We went from 5,000 to around 4,000 employees in the company at that time. With regard to the pilot force specifically, that affected, roughly speaking, 300 pilots. We have reinstated over 70% of them. That was a temporary layoff, and we went back to those people, and 70% are now back.
Beyond the reinstatement, we started hiring new pilots as well, and we are putting them through training programs, et cetera. I think we have totally reinstated our engagement with the pilot force and even we have gone beyond it.
Thank you.
Hi, guys. Conor Dwyer here from Berenberg. Just a quick follow-up on the last question about inflationary pressures on wages and talking about going into markets like Italy. Do you think there's any risk that we might see more talk about unionization as a result of perhaps going into more Western markets? A bit more medium term.
Our engagement model remains intact. We have developed a model which we think is a better alternative for the workforce than unions. We are a high-growth business. Even we're gonna be higher growth business going forward in the next few years, offering significant career opportunities for people.
If people have alternatives and can sort of own their own destiny in terms of managing their careers and managing their well-being on that basis, I think they would be voting for that option. Unionization is more of a threat in businesses which don't prosper. They don't develop, they don't grow, and then people are looking for ways of protecting themselves in that environment. This has been a high-growth business. We remain a high-growth business in the foreseeable future.
We don't think that it should be posing significant challenges to the engagement model that we have our people. Indeed, unionization may be a bigger scheme in some of the countries we are entering. At the same time, I also think that we are capable of implementing our model, which is based on dialogue with people, understanding their issues, being proactive and acting on their issues or the opportunities what they see, and most importantly, being able to offer career opportunities and with that, significant pay opportunities to people. All right. I think that concludes the Q&A on the floor. Oh, sorry. One more here.
Harleen Teja from Citi. Just two really quick ones from me, please. In terms of bookings, where are they currently in relation to pre-COVID levels? How should we be thinking about overloads and pricing for the third quarter? Secondly, guidance for Q3, you've guided to an operating loss of EUR 200 million. Last year, that was EUR 142 million. What are the moving parts of that? Is it a factor of lower pricing or higher costs, please?
Yeah. If you look at bookings versus pre-COVID, and previously we had like 90% of revenue in the span of three months. You know, there's a bit of a difference here with Christmas, but typically we have around 90% of revenue in the full month. That's still the booking window. It's still very short.
This, you know, the Christmas spirit is maybe 25% booked at this point in time, which is maybe a little bit of an aberration versus what we've seen over the last couple of weeks, but it's a very short booking window, as we speak. If you look at Q3 loads and pricing, well, if you look at the past quarter, pricing as mentioned, the RASK was down 25%.
Loads as you've seen were around 80% load factor for the quarter. Probably that will be more or less similar for the next quarter. We'll continue to see very strong price stimulation to basically attract the passenger into our service. Loads, you know, it's obviously a different season than the summer season, maybe somewhere between 75% and 80%. We'll need to see what happens.
If you look at the drivers of the Q3 loss, there's basically three drivers, three big drivers. The single largest driver is really the overall trading environment because we need to price stimulate the demand that's actually leading to the lower RASK. If you would do the math on that's the single biggest driver of EUR 200 million.
The two other drivers are, as mentioned, the commodity headwinds that we're seeing and the, let's say, suboptimal productivity that we have on our assets, be it fleet assets or crew assets that lead to the higher ex-fuel CASK on those two specific lines as you've seen for the half-year results. Those are really the three drivers. We think those drivers will still be around for Q4, but the quantum of those drivers may be different. At this point in time, it's kind of hard to call. It's most important to say that those drivers are temporary. They will be kind of subsiding by spring next year.
I mean, obviously, we don't know on commodities what will remain, but obviously in a post-winter environment, an environment where supply chains will have been able to recover to some extent, one could say that should also be a better environment. We have, as József mentioned, really worked and invested during that period to have a structural cost advantage, and that will fully come to fruition as of next spring.
This concludes the Q&A on the ground. Now we are taking questions from people online.
Our first question is from Mark Simpson of Goodbody. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah. Thanks. Morning, József, Jourik. A couple of questions. One, just thinking about summer 2022, and actually referencing load factors there. Ryanair talking about being in the kind of 93%-94%, seeing that as an opportunity to drive pricing. In terms of your view into next summer, are you targeting similar levels?
Equally, I mean, one of the impressive announcements this morning was the hire of Anna Gatti with an incredible CV in the AI world. Can you take that and talk about the kind of dynamic pricing approach that can be applied once you get load factors back up to historical highs?
Just on the cash front, I mean, clearly we've seen significant movements on the FX front, reflecting U.S dollar volatility on leases. Cash seems to be now more euro than U.S dollar, but is there an argument for actually having a natural hedge and moving cash balances back into U.S dollar deposits?
Thank you, Mark. With regard to the summer trading environment, indeed, it shall be a lot better trading environment than what we have seen over the last two summers. As said before, we should be able to restore our historical operating efficiency metrics, including load factors. Indeed, we would be looking at sort of those historic numbers to be achieved well above 90%. Once you are full, then it gives you a different pricing power. As Jourik alluded to, we have significant portions of our network where we operate ourselves, so our ability to price is much greater than some of the competing markets.
Even when you look at our ability to price in competing markets, as said, we're gonna have a lot lower operating unit cost relative to our competitors going into summer. Our pricing ability will significantly improve relative to competitors. As also said, given some of the inflationary pressure we are seeing in industry and some of the input costs sort of feeding through into the fare environment, we should be seeing a lot of cost pressure pushing airlines to price up along that pressure, giving us an opportunity to compete effectively and improve margins at the same time.
I think summer should be a very strong period for Wizz. Anna is a great addition to the board. I should have commented on her. She brings in a lot of entrepreneurial spirit to the board. That's what we need.
That's one of the board dynamics we are much focused on to make sure that we remain entrepreneurial business as opposed to getting swallowed by the corporate bureaucracy of the FTSE system. I think she will do very well with that regard. She's very well educated, and she comes from Italy, and Italy is a very important market for us. I'm pretty sure that she's gonna be able to bring in significant insights. With that, I will just turn it over to Eric.
Thanks, József. On the cash side, Mark, you're right. I mean, any excess euro or other currency that we have is immediately converted into a dollar balance already since a large number of months. This is how we operate, and we'll continue to operate under if the market conditions remain as they are today.
Okay. Just going back on dynamic pricing and the application of AI. I mean, the new appointment very much helps to drive that forward. Can you just give us a feel for where you think you are as a business, in rolling out new algos on that to help you?
We are going highly sophisticated on this matter. If you really look at how we have been operating, maybe the best example to use is when we started this business back in 2004, I had six people working on pricing and revenue management. Today, we are a million times bigger as a business, and I have six people on pricing and revenue management working on this business.
It just gives you the sense of automation and technology being used for pricing. We are taking it a notch above versus where we used to be by applying artificial intelligence and data science. We are looking at dynamic pricing in a much broader scale.
We used to be focused on ticket pricing, base fare pricing, but now we are expanding that approach across our ancillary revenue streams increasingly. We are a lot more dynamic than ever before, and we will become even more dynamic going forward. We are applying machine learning as a methodology.
We have an assigned team working on all these aspects, and we are seeing significant improvements basically initiative by initiative, you know, implementing and kind of further defining our dynamic pricing approach to various revenue streams, including tickets as well as non-ticket items.
It's fair to say we'll see a greater impact of that FY 2023, 2024 with a return to stability in the market.
Yes.
Yeah. Excellent. Thanks. Thanks for your time.
Thank you. Our final question is from Ross Harvey of Davy. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks, and good morning. I just wanna revert to the fuel hedging question. I'm just wondering, can you run us through again just the general rationale for that zero hedge policy in a post-COVID world? I'm just wondering, was that a kind of a suggestion from management or from the board or from your shareholders? J ust your commitment to that in the medium term with the continued commodity price escalation.
The second question is in terms of summer 2022 and fiscal 2023 as a whole, and obviously, József, you've spoken about the exceptional opportunity there. It's strong language, and clearly RASK is too hard to call. But what would exceptional look like on the ex-fuel CASK line? Would it be getting back to pre-COVID levels, or do you think you can go below that in fiscal 2023? Thank you.
On fuel hedging, if you look through the cycle, and if you look historically, first starting historically, fuel hedging is not a profit center. It's quite the opposite. With an increasingly volatile world, the company has actually lost a lot of money on fuel hedging. We didn't wanna repeat that in the future.
We obviously critically looked at the fuel hedging. The fact is that I said it's not a profit center looking forward. It is paying fees to people that are more expert in fuel hedging than the company itself. We have a strong balance sheet that would allow us to get through, let's say, the short-term disadvantages that you may have if you're in an inflationary cycle. Obviously, you get tailwinds in a deflationary cycle.
We'll need to see this through. I think it will be interesting to see what the industry will do. Let's say prices are at the level of today, will they continue to layer on the hedges for the future, or will they stop hedging?
Because if you look at it in theory, hedging only makes sense if you hedge at the bottom quartile of the historic pricing, and hold them for a long enough time and not if the prices are high. I think the jury is out. We'll see how the actors are gonna behave in the future. This is markets. If Europe's gonna become like the U.S. or if Europe will remain Europe because of other dynamics in the industry.
On how exceptional could look like on FY 2023, I mean, look, we've always said that we wanted to keep the cost flat. If you look over the longer term in the past 10 years, our ex-fuel cost has been flat against, I would say, all odds and against a lot of the other dynamics you have seen in the industry.
I mean, even Ryanair has seen significant inflation on costs pre-COVID in the last two-three years of their costs. There's a lot of headwinds coming, as we know, on ex-fuel costs. We have invested in the right infrastructure and the right asset base to counter some of these headwinds.
How these things will weigh one to the other, I mean, one day I would say we could be better, one day I'd say we could be flat. We'll need to see how it all boils down. There's a lot of volatilities in some of the drivers. For us, exceptional would definitely be targeting to get better than flat.
Okay, thank you. I think this concludes the event. Thank you very much. Maybe just a few words to summarize it. I hope you see our efforts as investments going into post-COVID markets into post-COVID position of Wizz Air, and we think that should be much stronger than what it is today, certainly than what it was prior to COVID-19.
COVID-19 is giving us an opportunity to step change our presence to become a more formidable competing force. We are investing into aircraft, going from 119 - 170 aircraft by summer next year. We are investing into markets from 26 operating bases in March 2020 to 44 next summer. We are investing into people, 5,000 people prior to COVID, 6,700 in summer.
Those investments will make us a better business, a lower cost operator, a more formidable competing force to take advantage of the recovery of the industry. With that, thank you for your interest and thank you for coming.
Thank you.
This now concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.