Thank you for the kind introduction. Welcome from my side to the presentation of our company's half year result 2023. I would like to remind you that the presentation is also available on our website. This is my first presentation as Zurich Airport CEO, and I'm also happy to introduce you to our new CFO, Kevin Fleck, and Stefan Weber, with whom I will be hosting this call. Although we have a new setup, today's agenda is usual and as follows: I will start with a short business update before our new CFO will provide you with information on our financial performance, followed by the outlook. At the end, we will have enough time to answer your questions. Please submit your questions already during the presentation, which helps us to cluster them. Marcel Heinzer will moderate the Q&A session. Let me start with the traffic development in Zurich.
The travel industry has rebounded, resulting in great demand for both leisure and business flights. Passenger numbers during the first half year recovered to 88% of 2019 volumes. At peak times during the day, they were sometimes already higher than pre-pandemic levels. In a year marked by recovery and rapid ramp-up of operations, Zurich Airport once again succeeded in winning the ASQ Award for the best airport in Europe in the 25-40 million passenger category. Following its previous successes, this is the seventh time Zurich Airport has been placed first in the ASQ Award. We summarized the first half year 2023 with the following milestones: The recovery in passenger numbers was above our expectation, with 13.1 million passengers from January to June 2023, and a year-on-year increase of 44%.
The commercial turnovers has recovered rather well, too, with landside already above 2019 levels and airside catching up as well. The real estate revenues show once again a new record high. In India, the construction of the new airport in Noida is in full swing, and further subconcession have been tendered this year. Following a public tendering process in May, we were awarded the contract to operate Natal Airport in the northeastern Brazil. This newly acquired airport concession perfectly complements the existing portfolio in Brazil, consisting of majority holdings in Florianópolis, Vitória, and Macaé, and will allow synergies to be leveraged. For the 75th anniversary of our airport, we are casting an eye back over our long history and looking forward to future developments under the slogan, "Yesterday, today, and tomorrow." A big public airport festival will take place from September 1st to 3rd.
The festival grounds, which also includes The Circle and park, will host an aviation exhibition, live shows, and concerts, along with a wide-ranging food and beverage offering. Another highlight will be our Capital Market Day on September 4th, right after the public airport festival. At our Investor Day, we will present a broad variety of topics, including more guidance regarding our Noida project in India. Let's have a brief look at some key figures. The rebound in traffic volumes continued in the first half of 2023, and also show through clearly in our key financial figures. While revenue rose by 26% year-on-year to CHF 577 million, operating expenses increased at a slower pace. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization, the EBITDA, increased by 86 million year-on-year to CHF 324 million, a plus of 36%.
Compared to the first half of 2019, EBITDA was up by 7%. Consequently, the consolidated result for the past six months period increased markedly to a profit of CHF 138 million, which is only slightly below 2019 levels. In the reporting period, our investment projects totaled CHF 163 million, of which CHF 84 million was invested at our Zurich site. Let's go through our main business segments, starting with the aviation business. Between January and June 2023, a total of 13.1 million passengers used Zurich Airport as a departure, transfer, or destination airport. This represents a year-on-year increase of 44%, and is equivalent to approximately 88% of passenger levels over the same period in 2019.
In the first half of 2023, the numbers of flight movements climbed 20% year-on-year. The volume of freight handled was down 13%. The reason for the decline is sea freight, which has regained strength due to significant lower freight rates. Overall, 60 airlines offer flights from Zurich to 187 destinations in 71 countries in the 2023 summer timetable. Compared with the 2019 summer timetable, a total of 95% of destinations are being served again by around 90% of airlines. Looking ahead to the winter timetable, Edelweiss has already announced the launch of a new twice-weekly Zurich-Bogotá-Cartagena triangular service from November. On the next slides, we'll provide you with an overview of our commercial and real estate business.
The upturn in passenger numbers during the first half of 2023 had a positive impact on our commercial business. Various new opening and remodeling of units in the Airport Shopping and the Airside Center increased the attractiveness of the retail offering. Prestige brands such as Jimmy Choo and BOSS opened in the Airside Center, and the duty-free shop on level one was extensively refurbished. Our real estate business continues to contribute to the financial stability of our company. Now, in the third year of operation, 49 enterprises coemploying upwards of 5,000 people have taken up residence in The Circle. Occupancy is running at approximately 90%. The Circle lanes and adjacent park offer a unique experience, while its hotels and restaurants are also operating very successfully.
There is still some scope for improvement in certain areas, and some consideration is being given to the positioning of the complex and to the lane level concept. This may include, as an example, additional space for food and beverage due to its strong performance in The Circle. We intend to make good use of the second half of this year to do some further work on our ideas and thereafter implement the adjustments. The purchase of property in the South Side Hangar area in 2019 from Priora, and the new rental contracts concluded at the end of 2022, form the basis for the strategic development of this area, helping us to achieve a new record in real estate revenues. On this slide, we see that commercial turnover bounced back nicely and is only trading slightly below pre-crisis levels.
On landside, our commercial partner's turnover was already approximately 9% higher than in 2019. On airside, our partner's turnover has been around 9% below 2019 in the first half year, however, showing a further positive momentum. Especially the food and beverage segment performed well, both on airside and landside. Food and beverage turnover for the first half year was higher than in June 2019. When looking at the July data, which is, of course, not part of the half year figures, commercial turnover even marked an all-time high and noted 5% above 2019 levels. Last but not least, let's have a look at our international business. On the slide, we compare the passenger numbers of the airports in Latin America of 2023 with 2019.
Comparing to the reference number of last year, in the first half of 2023, around 20% more passengers traveled through Florian ó polis Airport compared to the first half of 2022. With an increase of around 26%, the airports of Vit ó ria and Maca é also recorded high passenger growth in the first half of 2023, compared to the same period of the previous year. Our Iquique Airport in Chile has had to deal with unexpected challenges, as the company contracted to build the new terminal was forced to declare bankruptcy in November 2022. To ensure the project will still be completed, our operating company took on about 150 employees of the bankrupt construction company temporarily. Since then, the building work is again making good progress, and parts of the new terminal already commenced operation during the first half of 2023.
It is scheduled to be completed by the beginning of next year. In May, we were awarded the operation of Natal Airport in the northeast of Brazil by way of a public tender. Natal Airport handled approximately 2.3 million operational responsibility, which is expected for the beginning of 2024. We estimate an additional EBITDA contribution in the high single-digit million CHF range at group level. In summary, we are very happy to have acquired this new airport, which shows an excellent risk/reward ratio, a long concession duration, stable as well as known regulation, very little CapEx foreseen since it is a brownfield airport, and the airport can be integrated in the portfolio by us with only marginal efforts. Our largest international project in Noida, to the south of the Delhi metropolitan area in India, is proceeding on schedule.
Work on the terminal, the runway system, the control tower, and other infrastructure is on track, as can be seen on the pictures. Contracts for freight handling and catering have also been awarded. Further agreements for ground handling and refueling, for example, will be signed shortly, and cooperation with commercial partners is making good progress. We will hand in the tariff filing to the regulator in Q4 of this year, and we will disclose more information around the tariff filing, including some key figures, on our upcoming Investor Day next week. With this, I'm handing over to Kevin for the financial part of the presentation.
Thank you, Lukas. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I, too, like to extend a warm welcome to you. It's my pleasure to provide you an overview of our financial performance over the first half of this year. The increasing traffic figures have also driven up revenues, thereby almost reaching 2019 levels with respect to the total revenues. The aviation revenue share rose by 35% to CHF 279 million, which is equivalent to 88% of the revenue figures over the first half of 2019. Non-aviation revenue, including some small amounts of concession accounting, improved by 18% to CHF 288 million. That's an increase of almost 10% compared to the first half of 2019.
EBITDA increased by 36% to CHF 324 million, while the bottom line showed a consolidated profit of CHF 138 million for the first six months of 2023. So let's have a closer look at the non-aviation figures. Total commercial and parking revenue increased by 14% year-on-year to CHF 127 million, primarily due to higher passenger numbers, while parking benefited from increased footfall. The increase in commercial revenue was less pronounced, owing to a rent concession granted in accordance with IFRS 16 during the pandemic. As a reminder, we had to activate the commercial concessions given to our tenants during the pandemic, and we have to amortize these concessions until the end of each contract.
This amortization is directly deducted from the revenue number, and hence the shown figures are net of IFRS 16. Real estate revenue remained on an upward trajectory, rising by 18% to CHF 98 million. This rise is attributable primarily to additional rental income in connection with the reorganization of the south side hangar buildings, as well as to higher energy and utility cost allocations, as well as inflation adjustments. Revenue from services rose by 11% to CHF 22 million. The increase in revenue from international business to CHF 51 million is due to the sustained strong recovery at A-port Airport Holdings, as well as higher revenue from construction projects, the so-called concession accounting. Factoring out the income statement, neutral revenue, so the concession accountings from construction projects, revenue from international business increased by 31%.
On the next slide, I will speak about our operating expenses. Personnel expenses increased by 9% to CHF 103 million. Part of this increase is attributable to structural CPI adjustments of approximately 3%. The remainder stems from volume effects and the discontinuation of short-time working compensation in the first half of 2022. In addition, costs for police and security rose by 12% year-on-year due to higher passenger numbers, as well as inflation. Energy and waste costs showed a substantial rise to 38% to CHF 24 million, mainly reflecting higher electricity prices. Rising at a slower pace than revenue, operating expenses increased by 15% year-on-year to CHF 253 million. After cost adjustments for construction projects, operating expenses were 1% higher compared to the first half of 2019.
I will now outline some of the key financial ratios. Net financial debt, excluding the Airport Zurich Noise Fund, decreased to a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.9. The higher earnings resulted in a positive impact on our return on invested capital, which increased to 6.3%. The same applies to our cash generation, which has been positively affected by a solid business performance, as well as the free cash flow over the first six months of this year. The next slide shows some major projects we have been working on in the last half year with a total group CapEx of CHF 163 million. First of all, installation of the new baggage sorting system has largely been completed. The system will be ramped up step by step, starting in 2024.
Owing to an appeal raised in relation to the construction works tendering process, further building work on the underground link between The Circle and Airport Shopping, as well as the development of the landside commercial areas, have been delayed. Those plans and tenders not affected by the appeal are going ahead. Over the next 10 years, we do foresee to replace the old Dock A tower and dock bays at Zurich Airport. The new Dock A will also make a major contribution to attain our sustainability goals. Since this construction project involves the renewal of essential core infrastructure, complex prep work is required over many years in advance to ensure airport operations can be seamlessly maintained. Preliminary work is set to begin already at the end of this year on the apron north of Dock A.
Our biggest international project in Noida, in the south of Delhi, is proceeding ahead and expected to open at the end of 2024. The investment for developing and building the airport will total around CHF 750 million, which is within our budgeted cost estimate. So let's move on to the outlook. So far, the current year turned out better than initially expected, and international travel continues to recover. Passenger numbers at the Zurich side are now expected to rise to approximately 28 million in 2023. Aviation revenue will mirror traffic volumes, while non-aviation revenue is also expected to be on a positive trend. Rising passenger numbers at the Zurich side will lead to higher commercial and parking revenue, and a further increase in revenue from rental agreements and international business activities is also anticipated.
Operating expenses, in particular, personal and security-related expenses, are expected to rise due to increased volumes and inflation. Significantly higher energy costs are likewise to be expected this year. As indicated in the past, around half of the energy costs increase can be passed on to our tenants, resulting in higher energy and utility cost allocation revenues. Overall, we expect to realize a much higher consolidated profit for full year 2023 than in the past financial year. Investments at the Zurich side will approximately amount to CHF 200 million in 2023. Investments at subsidiaries abroad are likely to be around CHF 300 million, mainly driven by the new airport in Noida, which is now picking up pace. Thank you for listening. I will now hand over for the Q&A session.
Thank you, Kevin. Well done. It was probably one of the fastest update on our numbers in corporate history. We are now at the end of the results presentation, and start with the Q&A. I hereby hand over to Marcel Heinzer, who will moderate the Q&A session.
Thank you, Lukas. Welcome also from my side. We have received a number of questions, and we'll start right away. The first set of question is, regarding Noida. The first question there is, from Daniel Bürki, from Zürcher Kantonalbank: What CapEx do you expect in India in H2 and for 2024? Do you see the airport to be built in time, or will there be some delay? And in addition to that, he also asks if we expect to keep the CapEx level of CHF 750 million, or if we will have to increase it. And the third question regarding Noida CapEx is from Manish, from Société Générale, which is also asking about the Noida CapEx, and how much will the anticipated equity infusion be?
Let me start with a general remark on Noida. Noida is on track in terms of timeline and in terms of cost and CapEx. So we stick to the targets that Noida will be completed by end of 2024. We also stick to the total CapEx number of CHF 750 million. The equity contribution will be CHF 250-300 million. For the CapEx estimate for the second half of this year, I hand over to the professionals.
For the second half of this year, we assume to spend another approximately CHF 200 million on the Noida project, and then for 2024, it's simply the remainder to the mentioned CHF 750 million total investment that we have to bear.
Noida will clearly be one of the main topics for the Capital Market Day on Monday, where we'll provide more information on the project progress, and first key financial indications.
The next question is also from Manish, from Société Générale. He's asking: In the regulated aviation business, how should we think about financial year 2024 profitability? Will the EBITDA in financial year 2024 get back to pre-pandemic levels of around CHF 313 million, assuming there is good growth in traffic and assuming to handle around 32 million passengers next year?
I can probably start to elaborate on passenger expectations in general. Currently, we are slightly ahead of the anticipated schedule. So for this year, we now expect to handle around 90% of 2019 levels, whereas for next year, we now estimate to be at around 95%, and the full recovery we still expect for the year 2025. And this will also translate then into the aviation revenues, whereas we do not give a precise guidance on EBITDA or EBITDA margins for a specific sub-segment.
Next question, or the last question from Manish, is: How much was the rental revenue booked in The Circle in H1 2023? And how will the occupancy rate ramp up in The Circle from the present 90%?
I may answer the second part of the question. 90% might appear a little bit stable for the last months. We are really step by step, signing new contracts. We are not in a hurry. Quality first was always our intention, so we want to have really good, a good quality of tenants, a good mix of tenants, which I think on this 90% level, we perfectly achieved. And therefore, I don't see ourselves in a rush to, close the gap to 100%. Nevertheless, we assume that this is going to happen over the next months, but with a good addition and quality of tenants.
On the financial contribution of The Circle, the overall guidance that we've provided in the past is still valid. Overall, The Circle will generate approximately CHF 70 million of revenues, whereof Flughafen Zürich AG takes 51%. Now, breaking it down for H1 of this year and also taking into account that it's not yet fully let, it was approximately fi-
We see also that demand is in a way higher than the capacity, resulting in higher prices. But to take that as a positive, we even see on a higher price level a very strong demand, which is very healthy for the whole industry to achieve profitable results. For the second half, I believe that this is going to continue. We also see now first delayed, but first positive impact also from the Asian market, and particularly China. But to answer your question, it was mainly leisure driven and mainly European markets, maybe on top to North America, Canada, the U.S., which also were relatively strong, but also driven by leisure.
Okay. The next question, also from Dario, is: the EBITDA margin for the international division was 61% when excluding IFRIC 12 construction revenue. Is this a sustainable margin going forward?
That sounds like a question to the financial guys.
So when looking at the existing portfolio of international concessions we have, that mainly focuses on Latam, and there in particular to Brazil. And as Brazil has a dual till regulation, that typically shows rather high EBITDA margins. At the time when Noida will come online, so as of 2025, this will obviously also have then a major impact on EBITDA and EBITDA margin. And dare to mention that, India has quite comparable regulatory set as here in Switzerland, which is a hybrid till that is being applied.
The third question from Dario is regarding the guidance. So he says: Guidance seems conservative for financial year 2023. What are you seeing for autumn and winter schedule versus 2019 levels?
Well, here, I think one has to understand that also we see certain impacts on the capacity. For example, Swiss, due to spare part problems in terms of the supply, has grounded eight aircraft. They're compensating this currently with wet lease. But for a further ramp up, I mainly see the capacity of the airline as a constraint and also staffing. I think we will only see a 100% full recovery towards the summertime table next year when we have all the capacity on the ground, but also being successful in ramping up the staff, not only in our company, but for the whole system, which is so far on track.
But that might be, from your perspective, a little bit more conservative, but we're also considering those two factors in when we look into the second half of the year.
There is a follow-up from Andrew Lobenberg from Barclays regarding this question. So again, he's mentioning the 28 million passengers. What does that assume for the second half, as a percentage of 2019? And especially, do you expect July trend not to be sustained?
Well, the guidance says it's 28 million. You all know that we not overpromise in the way we form our guidance, but nevertheless, summer business is over. There was this very strong performance that is considered in the guidance, so we stick for the time being, that is 28 million.
Turning over to the EBITDA, midterm guidance. So Christian Nedelcu from UBS is asking: you target in financial year 2025, an EBITDA that is CHF 100 million higher than 2019 levels. At the end of this year, you may be almost halfway there, with traffic below 90% of 2019 levels. Is there upside to your financial year 2025 EBITDA target?
On that, we measure our new CFO going forward, so that's a question you may answer.
Yeah. Thank you, Lukas. Yeah, we still stick to the guidance with the CHF +100 million EBITDA in the midterm. That's still confirmed. We do see some...
... upside there as well, on one hand, from the Natal business, but also then, in the future from, Noida. But we will give you, some more information then on the 4th of September on the Capital Market Day.
Another question from Christian, from UBS, is regarding commercial business. So he says, June, July, airside spend per pax is around 10% higher versus 2019 levels. What is driving this? Is it a one-off?
So the spend per passenger is still slightly ahead of the long-term average, which we believe is mainly because of pent-up demand, which is still there. However, we expect this KPI to normalize over time, so we don't see any structural changes that makes us believe that the spend per head remains higher than the long-term average.
Maybe let me add, this is not a negative one. Obviously, we were benefiting from the situation in the ramp up, that people spent more time at the airport than previously. We also had, like a situation of longer waiting times at the airport, even accelerating the trend that people come early to the airport. We want to go back to what the quality standards of Zurich were, what the passenger can expect from us. This waiting time situation has rather normalized. 90% of all our passengers wait less than eight minutes on security control, which is a good benchmark. We have to go back to the quality that has been standard in Zurich, and people should not be three hours before an international flight at the airport.
And also, this will be kind of impacting the spend per passenger, but overall, we are not targeting on the spend per passenger. On that question, we are not targeting on the spend per passenger. We are targeting on reliable times and good quality for the passengers in Zurich.
The next couple of questions are from Sathish, from Citibank. The first one he's asking is regarding corporate traffic. Can you please comment on evolution of corporate traffic during the quarter?
Business traffic historically was about 25% of our passengers. We currently overall see a level of 70% compared to 2019, so this is lagging a little bit behind. I personally assume that there will be a positive impact from Asia, from China, where we also see a certain ramp-up demand. Overall, we might see also structural impact in general from European business travel, which may, as a segment, not fully recovers, but in the meantime, it getting also compensated by leisure traffic, by family-related traffic. We are rather positive on the long-haul business travel, where Asia is probably the missing part for a faster recovery these days.
The next question from Sathish is regarding the airside retail spend. Can you comment on trends on F&B versus duty-free spend?
So we don't make comments on specific subsegments. But what we can say is that food and beverage overall, so air and landside, is currently on all-time highs, so there is strong demand for F&B. And at the same time, in July, we had an overall record in terms of turnover when combining Air and landside together. But please also be aware that the turnover numbers are currently not a one-for-one translation into revenues, as still a number of contracts is within the minimum guarantees, so not paying the turnover-based rent. So be cautious with the turnover figures.
The last question from Sathish is: What has been China and Hong Kong traffic recovery and load factor?
I don't have this number in detail. I follow up on that.
In the summertime table, the offered seats compared to 2019 were at 20% for China and 47% for Hong Kong. We will show some more details on different routes during our IR day next week.
The next question is from Johannes Braun, from Stifel. Any update on the tight personal situation at security checks, which has resulted in long queues and operational issues earlier this year? How was the operational performance over the peak summer season?
Overall, very good. I would say even also media has said that there will be a chaos in the airports in Europe in summer. We in Zurich, we had a very smooth operation, given the circumstances of a fast ramp up. And the main driver behind that was really staffing on our side and on our partner side. The Cantonal Police, which is responsible for the security control in Zurich, has hired around 300 people. And we still have obviously a lot of people to hire for the whole system of the airport, but we also find those people, which is very important to close the gap. We are very happy with the summer operation, and we are closely back to the quality standards that we are used to here in Zurich.
... Next question is from Reto Portmann, from z Capital. Regarding the 2023 guidance, what does a significantly higher consolidated result mean? Could you please be a bit more specific?
It's not only higher, it's significantly higher.
Yeah, last year's profit was already above CHF 200 million, so, significant increase might result somewhere above the CHF 250 levels.
Andrew Lobbenberg from Barclays has another question. So he's asking: What's the outlook for electricity price rise? When does this slow or indeed start falling?
We currently already see some decline. We usually, for electricity, we fix the prices one year ahead, and we already fixed 70%, on average, 15% lower than what we have to be on one hand, more sustainable, but we do not have this dependency on the energy markets.
Next couple of questions are from Jose Arroyas from Santander. First one is regarding CapEx at Zurich Airport. The budget for financial year 2023 has been lowered to CHF 200 million from CHF 250 million. Is this a phasing effect, and we should expect CapEx to rise in Zurich in 2024, or does this reflect efficiency, efficiencies achieved?
Yeah, we currently have a number of projects which are indeed slightly delayed, and we've also seen that it simply takes more time to, to ramp up also internal project organizations. That's the major reason why the, the spend is currently a bit lower. However, in the medium to longer term, we again expect the CapEx here in Zurich to normalize somewhere between CHF 250 million and CHF 300 million per year.
Next question from Jose is regarding the Circle. Repositioning the Circle to fit more F&B shops, will this require CapEx? If so, how much?
Yeah, it obviously will include a certain amount of CapEx, especially for spaces that has not been planned for food and beverage units. But it's also always like a question of who is paying this CapEx. Is it the landlord or is it like the restaurant operator? Which also then has an impact on the concession or the concession payment of this individual contract. The CapEx is not meaningful in a way that we cannot open up to 50 more restaurants, but it's a slight adoption on positioning and focusing really on the strength of The Circle after a certain period of operation. We just see that the food and beverage is overperforming, and there we will might add some more facilities within that segment.
We will also provide a more detailed update on The Circle than on the Capital Market Day.
The last question from Jose is regarding freight volumes. So he says that freight volumes stand at more than 10% below 2019 level. Lukas mentioned the shortfall is due to sea freight becoming more competitive. Do you not see this as a sign of general economic business?
For the time being, it's a very good question. For the time being, we rather see like a normalizing of previous shares of the individual segments of freight. So there's like a shift from air freight to sea freight. Also, the harbors worldwide are having, like, normal operation right now. We, to a certain extent, assumed this this trend or this decrease of air freight will happen. Nevertheless, air freight was always like a first indication of a potential slowdown in the economy first, but also then indirectly with passenger numbers. We don't see that as the major trend behind that, but it's something that we have carefully to observe.
The next two questions are from Marcin Wojtal from Bank of America. The first one is about regulation. He's asking: When do you expect to start discussions with the regulator and airlines regarding the next regulatory period?
Well, we have now a tariff period, which ends either when we have fully compensated for the economic losses or latest by April 2025. We assume that this is going at April 2025. It's important really to say that this marks the start of the negotiation, so April 2025 is not the adoption date of the tariff. Today, it's too early. We might start with the negotiation closer to that date, maybe in 2024, but it's actually not a topic that we are actively preparing as we assume that the negotiations officially will only start then by this cutoff 2025 in April.
Okay, there are no more questions from the webcast, and I would like to turn back to Lukas.
Well, thank you very much. If you have not signed in for the Capital Market Day and would like to join us on Monday, please reach out. It's by invitation only. We also have a Sunday afternoon program for those investors and analysts joining a day earlier, and we have a walk-through our festival on the weekend. So thank you very much for the interest. Talking to you again on the Capital Market Day next week. Have a good day.