Okay. Good morning, and welcome to the first quarter presentation for Norwegian. My name is Jesper Hatletveit, and I'm the VP of Investor Relations here at the company. Today, I am joined by CEO Geir Karlsen. I'm also joined by our CFO, Hans-Jørgen Wibstad, who joined us only this week. Today's presentation will be held by Geir, and it will be followed by a Q&A from the audience on the web. Geir, please go ahead.
Thank you, Jesper. I would also like to welcome you all. I would also like to welcome Hans-Jørgen to the team. Finally you are on board. You have been here for just a few days, so I'm sure you will help me doing the presentations from next quarter. The first quarter of 2023 was, I think for us, another special quarter. Finally, you know, we thought when we were coming to the end of 2021 that we would get into some kind of normality. That didn't happen. We had the Omicron situation kicking in late last year, and certainly that has an effect on the figures and the results for Norwegian for the first quarter of 2022.
We came out of the quarter with NOK 849 million in loss on EBIT. You know, it's disappointing obviously. But at the same time, this is pretty much in line with what we hoped for, I would say, when we saw the situation late last year. During the Omicron situation or even early in that situation, I think we acted pretty quickly, and we adjusted the capacity. I think if we hadn't done that, the results for the first quarter would have been in the area of NOK 700 million higher when it comes to the losses.
We have seen throughout the quarter though that you know the demand has been coming back, and I will get into more detail on that later. We have been pretty good taking care of our liquidity in Norwegian the last year. We are continuing to do that. Even if we have a loss in the quarter, we have more or less the same liquidity position coming out of the quarter as we had in the fourth quarter of 2021. We are continuing the ramp up, and we have been doing that throughout the quarter and the effects of that will be seen now through this current quarter and into the peak season in the summer.
We had load of 76.9 in the quarter as an average, and we took care of 2.2 million passengers. When it comes to you know the development through the quarter on yield on load factors et cetera you can see the development here. What we did back in December when we saw the Omicron situation coming in reduced the capacity with 26% in the first quarter compared to what we planned for. We did plan for to fly 10% increased capacity compared to Q4, and we ended up flying 16% lower than the previous quarter. We are seeing a very healthy you know development in yield and in load.
We are very happy that we are now seeing the April figures, especially when the summer season is really here, where we have you know a pretty nice increase in yield, taking it up to 0.77. We have been ramping up, as I said. We were having approximately 900,000 seats for sale in February, increased to 1.3 million in March, and we have 2 million seats for sale. We had 2 million seats for sale in April, and we're even increasing that figure to 2.2 million into May.
The good thing here is that even if we are putting that much capacity into the market, we are still able to fill up the aircraft, and thereby we are seeing a steady load in the area of 80%. Hopefully we can continue to do that and even increase it into the summer. Another good thing, this is the graph you are seeing here to the right, is kind of the development relative between the seven-day rolling sale on pax and on revenues. The spread between the two is even increasing a little bit, meaning that we are selling tickets at a higher yield, which is very good.
In certain part of the markets we are operating, we are now selling tickets, especially in July, let's say late June into the whole of July, at between 40% and 45% higher yield than we did in the same period in 2019. As a whole for the company, if you add in all the routes, all the markets, we are above 30% higher than what we did back at the same period in 2019. We do also know that with quite a few, you know, passengers, you know, people that are going on vacation for the coming summer that has still not booked, you know, their summer holidays.
Thereby, we do expect to see a pretty nice development both in load and on yield going into the peak summer. We have 280 routes for sale, as we have been telling many times, and we are sticking to that, and we are planning to fly those routes as well. We have been working pretty hard to see what we can do on the corporate market in Norwegian. You know, we have been, I mean, first of all, we are, you know, a company focusing on the leisure market.
What we have been seeing now, both in absolute terms and also in relative terms compared to all our revenues, is that we are seeing an increased, you know, portion of our revenues coming from the corporate market. That is nice to see. I mean, we have a regularity in the quarter of 99.4%, meaning that, you know, the routes we are saying we are going to fly, we are actually flying. That is also the plan going forward. I do anticipate that that is a good thing and we are now able to kind of attract a little bit more of the corporate travels than what we have done before.
As a percentage of the total revenue, we are seeing the corporate market is having an increase. That is, you know, something we will look into going forward as well to try to see if we can make it a little bit more attractive for the corporate travelers compared to what we have done previously. The results, I mean, we're not happy with the results, just to make that clear. At the same time, I think we have done quite well over the quarter. We have, you know, obviously, a decrease in the total RASK down to 0.48. Looking at April though, we are up, we have a RASK up at approximately 0.6.
We had reduced the capacity, as we see, on the RPK with 16% compared to the last quarter. Ancillaries is having a nice increase of 10%. Hopefully, that will continue, and we can see higher values over the next months. Then we have, as I said, you know, the $468 loss in the quarter. At the same time, we have been able to preserve the liquidity, and we are still sitting with $7.5 billion in cash. Looking at the P&L, top line of NOK 1.9 billion, we have a reduction in costs of approximately 10%, even taking in the fact that, you know, we have a pretty steep increase in the fuel price.
We have a CASK, you know, mean cost per seat kilometers of 0.55. We are certainly not happy with that, but at the same time, I think we will see going forward that you will have a drastic reduction in CASK going into the peak season. Looking at the P&L, I think it's important that you know that we have been, you know, yes, we have been reducing the capacity. We went into the quarter with, I would say, too much capacity also on the crew side. At the same time, we were very happy that we could avoid to furlough people, or our colleagues throughout the quarter, because it really makes sense.
We had also a struggle with very high sick leave due to the Omicron. By that, you know, we decided not to do any furloughing throughout the quarter. At the same time, we have, I would say, invested you know massively into recruiting new colleagues that we are planning then to you know use when we are ramping up the operation into the summer season. We have taken in more than 800 people, employees, into the company throughout you know the last very few months. It's 540 in the cabin and 280 pilots. We have done that investment, meaning that we are taking them into the company.
We are doing all the training necessary, and thereby we will then put them into operation throughout the next months. By that, we are quite comfortable that we have enough crew and pilots for the summer season. That is obviously, you know, a higher investment than we have taken throughout this quarter. Other than that, we have EBITDA of -NOK 468 million, as I said. We have -NOK 183 million on net financial items. We have NOK 17 million in interest income, and we have NOK 165 million in interest expenses.
When we are ramping up the way we are doing now, that's when we will start to see the effects on the scale that we are building into the operation, and especially on the cost side, you will see an effect. We are saying here today that, you know, we do expect to see. We have already finished with April. In April, we have a CASK of low 40s. When we are going into the summer and throughout 2022, we have a target from now until the end of the year to have a CASK below 0.40.
That's when we are starting to see, you know, an area where we should be, and we will continue throughout, you know, the remaining part of this year and also into next year to even push that level down. That's when we are starting to get really competitive, and that's why we are also starting to get closer to the best guys in class, and this is where we need to be in order to be competitive for the periods forward. Balance sheet, not much to mention. Obviously, we are putting in 6 more aircraft this quarter compared to, the fourth quarter of last year. We are seeing a pretty nice, as we have promised, development towards the credit cards acquirers.
We were coming from a level last year of a holdback. It was actually more than 100%. We took it down to 120%. We had in fourth quarter 109%, and now we are down to 73% holdback. You are seeing that the accounts receivable is increasing, that is an absolute increase in holdback. If you see it, if you look at it as a percentage of the air traffic settlement liabilities of NOK 3.6 billion, you are seeing that the holdback is actually in percentage coming down. That means that we are getting better terms with the credit card acquirers, and we do expect that that level will continue to come down where it should be. I think where it should be is probably below 50%.
I think it will take a little b it of time before we are getting there, but let's hope we can get there as soon as possible. The liabilities are going up from 15.5%-17.8%. As long as the main reason for that is the traffic liabilities, I'm happy because that means that we have sold more tickets, and that's a good thing. Cash flow, a very simple view of the cash flow. What you're seeing here is that if you look at the operations, you know, the operating activities, you know, and that includes the change in the working capital, which also includes then, you know, the effects from these credit card acquirers.
That's, I would say, that is probably the main reason that we are not burning cash in this quarter. We are now, you know, into the summer season, and we can start to really ramp up and to look at, you know, good figures into the high season. We are cashflow-wise, you know, liquidity-wise, very well positioned, I would say, and we're heading into the high season. If you look forward, and the fleet plan, we are flying today 60, 61, 62 aircraft. We are in the process of adding in seven, eight, nine aircraft into the peak season. We will have 70 aircraft, as we have been saying also previously, during this summer.
We have also signed up 15 additional MAXes that we will take delivery of early next year. I mean, I think a few of them will already come in this fall, but the ones coming in this fall will have power by the hour, so we're not paying for them until we are starting to fly them into the spring. I think that the MAXes that we have signed up for next year has attractive terms and certainly below the terms that you are actually able to get today. We will go into the top season in 2023 with 85 aircraft. We have five redeliveries next year. In net, you know, going into the fall of 2023, we will be down to 80.
One thing that is very important also to say is that, you know, the 19 aircraft we have taken in this year has power by the hour also next winter. I think you will see, I don't know if it's the first time in Norwegian's history, but you will see next winter that we will take down capacity. We will fly less, and we are aiming, as per today to take down the capacity with probably as much as 25%. That means that, and we have, you know, the capacity, you know, we have the ability to take down the capacity on the aircraft side with that much as well, on the PBH side.
We have also been able to, let's say, arrange to get to a solution with the pilots and the crew, which also gives us that ability and that thereby we have the flexibility we need in order to have a winter season that could be, you know, pretty good, as it looks today. This is very important for Norwegian going forward as well. We don't have any issue with this for the coming winter, so it's all about now finding the good solutions also for the winter of 2023 and 2024. What we will try to do is we will probably not park aircraft, but we will fly them with less capacity.
We are also trying to put as much of the heavy maintenance of our fleet into the winter season, and by that, freeing up that capacity also throughout the summer season. As I've been saying many times, I think it's all about if you're gonna deliver a good result in this company, it's all about the winter really because I think we have lost too much money previously in the previous winters, and we need to fix that. Everyone can make money during the summer. It's all about the winter. I think we are very close now to finding a solution on that. Just as a summary, I think you know, we are not happy with the first quarter results.
We have though seen a very nice development both in yields and in RASK over the last months. We have, as I said, a strong liquidity position. We have the flexibility that we need. We have taken this year kind of a bet, and you are seeing that, you know, the ticket prices for this summer is more expensive, unfortunate for the passengers. You could say in an indirect way that the fuel prices, the high fuel prices is starting to get into the ticket prices.
If the fuel price is continuing at the high level we are seeing today, I think unfortunately you might see that, you know, the ticket prices will stay at the level they are today and even getting higher as the loads are getting higher, as such. That is just a result of, let's say the environment. But we have not pushed out a lot of what I would call cheap tickets over the winter. Because we do believe that there is a pent-up demand in the market, we think we will see and we are already starting to see that flow. I mean, we are selling now on a seven-day rolling sale between 400 and 500 thousand tickets a week.
I think that will increase. There's a lot of people that has not booked their summer holidays still, and hopefully they will soon. We will just see how this develops. When we are looking at the different markets for the coming summer, we are seeing that we are selling very well in certain markets, while we are not doing that well in other markets. We will be spending a little bit of time now in May to fine-tune the network. We might do some small changes. It will not affect the passengers, but this is just to optimize, you know, the capacity and but this is what I would say is, you know, fine-tuning, and not any dramatic changes.
Very importantly, we are continuing the work on the cost side. I think for the years to come, it's going to be a cost game. We're now starting to see what we have been promising to the market, meaning that we will take the CASK level down 0.55 for the current quarter. Not happy with that at all. At the same time, it is difficult when you're reducing the capacity with 26%, and you are keeping the cost, you have high sick leave and so on. Now we are really starting to see it. April CASK, the month behind us, we are down to low 0.40. As I said, target is to get below 0.40 for the remaining part of this year, and then we will just continue that.
We have an organization today that is running 60-70 aircraft. I think we can run with the same administration. We can probably run 20-30 more aircraft with the same costs on the fixed cost side. We have more capacity to put into a bigger fleet. With that, I think we conclude. Yes, well.
Okay. We then open up for questions from the audience. Please raise your hand and wait for the microphone.
Hans-Olav Næss, Widerøe. The fuel impact for Q1 versus Q4 was plus 35%. If you look at the relative increase in the fuel price from December through April, it's up like 70%. There is a lag in how this impacts Norwegian. We should expect that the fuel impact will be higher in Q2 and Q3. How will you compensate that? If you can go a little bit further into that. Secondly, you are going to look for more aircraft, and the leasing regime is now not as good as it was before. Can we see that Norwegian is going more aggressive to close the deals now for the future? Can you give an update also on the situation with Boeing?
I think on the fuel side, obviously, that is something that is impacting us all. You know, at an oil price between $105 and $107, you know, and it's kicking in, and it's definitely having an effect on the results. I mean, if you saw that the fuel price, the fuel costs in this quarter compared to fourth quarter is actually down, it's not because the fuel prices have reduced, it's because we're just flying less. That's also you know a way to kind of mitigate those losses.
That said, I think, you know, if you look at the fuel price now and also going forward, I think, let's say, in the current quarter, I think you could say that it has started to flow into the ticket prices. I would say that, you know, the relative fuel increase we have seen over the quarters, you know, I think we have compensated close to 50% of it into the ticket prices so far.
As I said, I think if that level is continuing into the next two quarters, meaning that you were seeing a jet fuel price at, you know, $1,100, you know, unfortunately, I think that will probably flow into the ticket prices even more than what it has done so far. It will have an effect. It will have a negative effect to us. You know, looking at, you know, the market that we are operating in, I would say, we are in pretty much the same situation as the other guys, especially the main competitor, which is SAS, where they are sitting in the same position, not hedged, as such. You know, I wish we had been doing some hedges last year.
We didn't mostly because we couldn't due to the fact that we came out of this restructuring and we had to wait for a little while. Today, we have all the necessary lines we need, and we can hedge whatever we need. This is something we just need to follow. On the fleet side, yes, it is correct to answer again. You know, the leasing market is tightening very much. I mean, in three, four, five months ago, you could probably take in a MAX at below, way below NOK 300,000 a month. Today, you are probably paying NOK 350,000+ a month for, you know, to take in a brand-new MAX.
We have secured, you know, what we need for next year, the 15 MAXs at what I would say attractive terms. We have continued the dialogue with Boeing as well as with Airbus. I think I can say that we are definitely much closer to a solution on the plan going forward, and we will share the news when we have the news to share. We are definitely closer.
To own aircraft today versus leasing at the current situation and going forward, that we have better deal for you if you buy the aircraft from Boeing, if you got a deal with them.
Then we will work on the top line as well. We are also looking into the Norwegian Reward. We have a fantastic Norwegian Reward. It's very much liked by our loyal customers. We have more than 4.2 million customer members today. We are working to get, you know, to increase that, but we're also looking into, you know, what we can do with the Norwegian Reward. Can we make it even more attractive? Can we think a little even a little bit more smarter on the Norwegian Reward to. Let's see over the next periods if we can share some news on that.
Okay. There are no further questions, so I think we conclude the session then. Thank you.
Thank you for coming, guys.