Perfect. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our conference call for the traffic results of 2022 and the guidance for 2023 of Vienna Airport. Today's presentation will be held as usual by our board members, Mr. Julian Jäger and Mr. Günther Ofner. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session where you will be given the opportunity to ask your questions. During the Q&A session, I would like to ask those of you having questions to unmute themselves, introduce themselves, and then ask their questions. Alternatively, you can raise your virtual hand or write your questions into the chat window. If you are joining online, you can easily unmute yourself by selecting the respective button in your menu. If you are joining by phone, please press star six to unmute yourself.
In the Q&A session, we will give preference to sell-side analysts covering us, and only after the questions have been answered will we allow further questions. As already mentioned, the call will be recorded and will be available on our website shortly. The slides of the presentation that will be held now are also available on our website under presentations. Now I would like to hand over to our COO, Mr. Jäger. The floor is yours, sir.
Yeah. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our call. I would like to start a bit with the highlights of 2022. We showed a very strong recovery, I would say following from May, June, leading to 23.7 million passengers at Vienna Airport. That's roughly 130%, so more than double the passenger numbers from 2021. We had 30.1 million passengers in the Vienna Airport Group, including Malta and Košice Airport. We expect this growth trend to continue into 2023. We expect for Vienna Airport 26-27 million passengers and for the group 32-34 million passengers.
This passenger growth leads obviously to better financial results as well. We expect our net profit in 2023 to be above EUR 150 million net. What is very encouraging is that we had a very good operational performance in 2022. We are the third most punctual airport with more than 20 million passengers in Europe, significantly ahead of Munich, Zurich, Frankfurt, and Brussels. The other hubs in Lufthansa Group, ranked from the independent company OAG. We already reported that we became best airport in Europe in our group from Airports Council International.
Overall, we are doing very well in terms of our operational performance, and I think this is re-acknowledged more and more by our passengers as well. We want to carry on with this quality-oriented strategy, and we restarted our Terminal 3 enlargement project. We intend to start construction by mid-year, and we expect the project to be finished by 2027. Later on in the presentation, you will see a few slides to get a bit of an idea about the focus of the project. Definitely, it's our aim to be in amongst the top terminals in Europe then. I think right now we have an excellent process operation.
In the future, we want to offer better quality in terms of the environment of the passengers within the terminal, and that's the main aim of the Terminal 3 Southern Enlargement. Climate protection is a top priority as well for Vienna Airport, and I think we've done a lot in the last 11 years in terms of reduction of energy consumption. A major stepping stone was obviously the opening of the largest PV plant in Austria in May 2022. This is one of the measures which leads to our CO₂ neutral operations at Vienna Airport as of 2023. Those are the highlights, and I would like to give you a bit more details on traffic development.
I think the most important figure here is obviously the total number of passengers, 23.7 million, over 10.4 million passengers in 2021. Close to, plus 130% over 2021 and roughly on 75%, of the 2019 levels. What is important as well and very encouraging is that the seat load factor was extremely high, in 2022, 77.6% for the full year, so including the very weak month in the beginning of the year, which is even higher than the 2019 figures. This, despite the fact that the seats per flight movement were increased as well.
We had on average 166 seats per aircraft movement in 2022, compared to 157 seats in 2019. Overall, I think this is a very positive development. Bigger planes, higher occupancy, more passengers. Cargo is down -4% over 2021, and this is a trend which continues into 2023. Although, talking to a lot of freight forwarders here in Vienna, I think the expectation is more or less that this will continue in the first half of this year, but we should see by mid-year, roughly, a lot of people expect a change in this trend so that we will see then growing cargo numbers, especially due to the opening of China.
The industry is essentially expecting that this trend should change then in roughly mid-year. A few words about our subsidiaries. Malta Airport had a very strong year as well, 5.9 million passengers, +130% over 2021 and -20% compared to 2019. 2019 was a record year for all of our airports in the group. Košice is essentially on a level with 2019, so just down 2.8%, and we hope that this trend really will continue in 2023. I think Mr. Schmidt. Yes, thank you.
A few words regarding our carriers, and I think the main message is that I think essentially all our airlines did very well in 2022, definitely in Q3 and Q4. Therefore, the usual leader in this list is obviously Austrian Airlines, our home carrier and hub carrier with a market share of 47.1%, quite significant growth over 2021. Not yet on the level of 2019, but still, I think Austrian improved their competitive position within Lufthansa Group very significantly. On the one hand, they had an excellent Q3 and Q4. On the other hand, they are by far outperforming the other airlines in the group in terms of operational excellence, in terms of punctuality, in terms of cancellations.
I think the position of Austrian Airlines has significantly improved in 2022. Overall, Lufthansa Group has a 52% market share to compare with the low-cost carriers. All low-cost carriers in Vienna Airport have 30.9% market share. Ryanair is the biggest of them, 20.9% market share and Wizz Air, 6.8% market share, both growing significantly over 2021. I think overall, I always said that for me, a market share of 25%-30% of low-cost carriers would be ideal. I think that's where we essentially at right now. I think we have a good airline mix.
Obviously, there will be more long-haul traffic coming back in the course of this and next year. But I think overall, even within the low-cost carriers, I think there has been a bit of a change in strategy of Wizz Air. They have a very strong focus now to the Middle East. They will base a sixth aircraft here in Vienna in 2023. They opened already three destinations in Saudi Arabia. They're flying to the UAE. Overall, I think the competition between the low-cost carriers, but as well between the low-cost carriers and the traditional airlines, is not as fierce as it was in 2019.
I think this is a good prerequisite for all of our customers to make money here in Vienna. I think Austrian is in particular doing extremely well on their German routes, on the whole DACH region. Long-haul is doing very well, and I think Southern Europe worked for more or less everybody in 2022. Let's continue with the market shares by region. I think, yeah, we saw very significant growth, obviously, to all regions. I think what is outstanding is Middle East. We were above the 2019 levels. Far East is obviously significantly below the 2019 levels. We expect here some decent growth in 2023.
North America did very, very well in summer, was already essentially on par with the 2019 levels. Overall, I think we can be very happy with the picture. In total, we had 69 airlines with 211 served destinations in 65 countries here in Vienna in 2022. The top performing country was Germany with very significant growth. Still, Germany is significantly behind the 2019 figures. It's mainly Germany, it's mainly Switzerland. They are lagging behind very significantly. I think this is a bunch of reasons. On the one hand, there's Germany has less low-cost capacity than 2019. I think ticket prices are pretty high, so to the delight of our airlines and mainly Austrian.
Obviously, this does not encourage people to fly more. I think Germany has some room for growth in 2023. Switzerland definitely as well. The whole of Southern Europe did extremely well in 2019 and was already above the 2019 levels in 2022. Obviously, what hit us really hard is the terrible war in Ukraine. In 2019, we had 1.5 million passengers to Ukraine and Russia, and they are obviously completely gone. I think the weakness in the so-called DACH region, the war in Ukraine and the consequences with...
In terms of air traffic from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, explain already to a high extent the difference which is still missing from the 2022 figures and the projected 2023 figures vis-a-vis 2019. Just a few words again to praise our staff. I think we did extremely well in terms of operations. I have to say, this has been acknowledged more and more by our airline customers. I think they know the value of very high punctuality, very low cancellation rate here in Vienna. It's nice to see that we came third in this group, airports above 20 million passengers.
To compare. Obviously, we compare ourselves constantly with Munich, Zurich, Frankfurt, Brussels, the other hubs in the Lufthansa Group. You can see here for yourself that we have a significantly higher punctuality than these airports. I have to add that Austrian Airlines is an overachiever, so they have a higher punctuality than the average. Austrian is even doing better here. Yeah, again, I think one strength of ourselves is security. Waiting times are here very low, and this has been recognized as well, as you can see on the next slide, from ACI, best airport, best European airport in our group. We got an award for our ground handling as well in Asia. Overall, I think the high quality in Vienna is being acknowledged, yeah, throughout the board, essentially.
How do we look at 2023? Overall, we are very optimistic for 2023. We will have normalization effects, obviously, in the first four, five, six months of this year, where we were still hit by COVID in 2022. On the other hand, we saw quite a number of airlines coming back in the course of the last few months. Destinations like in Taiwan with China Airlines and EVA Air. Now, Air China starting again on China, Austrian increasing frequencies to Shanghai. Air India announced that they will start again to serve Vienna in February. Korean Air came back.
Overall, I think Asia will do better this year, although I think it will take a couple of months until the full impact will be visible of the opening up now of essentially all East Asia. Middle East did already very good this year, but we will see more growth to the Middle East in 2023. I think what is very positive as well that Austrian got four additional aircraft from Lufthansa. Two would be net positive for us, the other two would replace Lufthansa capacity here in Vienna. Overall, we are very optimistic. That led to our forecast for Vienna, 26 million-27 million passengers. And for the whole group, 32 million-34 million passengers.
Obviously, summer is still a bit of a question mark, but what we see from capacity and what we see from the bookings right now, I think there's a lot of reason for optimism. Finally, a few words regarding our terminal extension. I think the major objective of this project is, on the one hand, to increase our capacity in terms of more space for central security checkpoint, 18 additional bus gates, more new and spacious lounge areas, a vast extension and expansion of our shopping and restaurant space by roughly 10,000 square meters. Overall a more pleasant environment and much bigger waiting areas. We want to increase dwell time with this project.
We are very happy that we are now in the restarting phase of this project and expect to start the construction by mid 2023. If we manage to start the project mid 2023, we expect the opening for 2027. Before I hand over to Günther Ofner, just two slides to give a bit of an impression on the new terminal building you can see. For those who know Vienna, I think this will be a major change.
I think right now we are really strong in terms of our processes and our operations. In the future, we will have a much more a much nicer environment, and I think we will be in a position with this change to attract luxury brands to Vienna and to offer a much better service to our passengers. Thanks a lot. Now I would like to hand over to Günther.
Good afternoon. I can give you an update about our financial guidance for 2023. The net profit proposition is at least EUR 150 million. This is on the background that from a macroeconomic view, we see no recession in Austria. On the contrary, there is still growth. We see record employment. We see significantly low unemployment rates. I think our expectation is very well based on the fact that economically, there is no restriction for people to go on holiday and to use flights to do so.
If you look at a big number of surveys that have been published in recent time, all of them indicate that more people will go on holiday this summer than before, and more did already for the winter season than did before. From the macroeconomic side, we see very positive signals. The discussion that is mostly concentrated on the side of some activists regarding flight shaming or things like that, I think has no impact at all. Therefore, we can expect increasing results also for 2023. What is important, we are debt-free for the first time in decades. The investments that are planned, including the Southern Expansion, will most likely be financed through and by our cash flows.
We will not see any significant indebtedness coming from that. That gives us a lot of independence and a really clear path forward to decide what is in the best interest of our company. Revenue will be above EUR 830 million. If the very upside of the expected traffic figures becomes reality, it could be above that figure. EBITDA at least at EUR 325 million. Both figures are rather conservative from today's perspective, because, you know, it did not look so clear in October when we sat down to do our budget for 2023. I think, we can be a lot more positive and optimistic right now.
I mean, given the situation of the company, I think it's more or less self-explaining that we will re-enter to pay dividends. What is not the case by some of our main competitors and peers. After three years without dividends, due to COVID, we will pay definitely dividend for 2022. The baseline, in any case, is the current guidance of at least 60% of consolidated net profit after non-controlling interest. The dynamic development supports also an increase in the number of employees at the spaces of the airport. Roughly 800 additional people will come to the airport, and that is mainly due to new companies coming to the airport, renting facilities on the airport.
We are stepwise filling our new office park. Fortunately, we already found a new rental contract for the major part of the Office Park two, which was left by Austrian Airlines. We could replace already a substantial part of that lease. It's a very, very interesting, fast-growing company which is providing essential parts of satellites, especially for Elon Musk and his communication project. They are extremely fast growing and it's really very interesting that they choose our airport to do their business and to grow in the coming years. The airport itself, with its daughter company, will only increase the number of employees due to the growth by roughly 250.
Fortunately, we find new people, although the labor market in Austria is very, very tense. We see roughly 200,000 open positions where no one could be hired so far. The airport itself is a very attractive employer and therefore, we have to struggle, but, it's not too bad. A very essential part of our work in the last 10 years was energy efficiency, optimizing of all operations, and especially using digital instruments for this optimization. We are by far the leading expert in regard of Building Information Modeling, BIM. This helped us to substantially optimize the operation of all our buildings.
You might be aware, it's more than 1 million square meters, roughly 150 buildings that are managed for all the needs of energy and other means. We have already completed the project to digitalize all our buildings and all the install. Which should give us a very very substancial cost reduction also in the future, not only in regard of Energy savings, but especially of operations. Because what we saw in our surveys, is that you normally have up to 30% of the time of people in maintenance looking for something that is not on the place, and it was shown in the plans.
So this should be more or less talked in the rate and the void for the future. By truly merchandizing all our buildings. And it's not only supporting us as a company, but we are also in a number of service contracts for other companies and we are running good money to share in the Holland, and that's the same for our photovoltaic.
Capacities will be increased from roughly 26 to 45 hectares this year. So approximately 100, 000 panels will be installed and this should supply 45 million kilowatt hours that is, around 40% of the airport's entire electricity needs, so not only for the airport, but also for the 250 companies on the airport, and we will continue to invest in that direction. As I already mentioned with the company of the satellite devices, Is dynamically growing. The new hotel will be built up to 25. With 510 rooms, its the biggest hotel on our airport, the circle Talent all together. We will have 1400 rooms.
From my point of view, this is not only important because we get another hotel, but it shows that the investors are very confident that our company and the airport system as such will dynamically grow in the coming years. This is a very, very positive signal for the whole system. Summing up, the financial guidance revenue, at least EUR 830, maybe above. EBITDA, at least EUR 325 million. Group net profit at least EUR 150 million. CapEx approximately EUR 135 million. No net debt exposure planned for 2023. That's from my side, and please don't hesitate to ask your questions.
You saw the final slide. If you are a still shareholder, you see the really impressive development of the share price since 2011.
Okay. Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation. I will now give the floor to our participants. If you have any questions, please unmute yourself and ask the question. Thank you.
Hello. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? It is Vladimíra Urbánková speaking, Erste Bank.
Yes, we can hear you.
Good afternoon. Yeah.
Okay. Congratulations. Numbers look really fantastic and maybe let's say a few words about it. When do you think that you might be at the pre-crisis levels? Do you think it's 2024 it will be feasible? With respect to that, what is the plan about the third runway? How does it look like right now? And yeah. There are not only positive things, maybe there are also some headwinds in 2023 and how do you see your position to face them? I mean, namely, higher energy costs, partly you answered with your photovoltaic. But also there are some inflationary pressures, namely in personal costs. Maybe if you could elaborate a little bit more what to expect here. Thank you.
I mean, I will start with your first question hand then over to Günther for the remaining questions. In terms of growth, I think, it will take a couple of years until we are back at the 2019 level. As I mentioned, I think, there's this zero traffic Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, we are still significantly behind in countries like Germany, like Switzerland, even countries like the U.K. To a certain extent, definitely I think from Germany, those are a longer lasting effects. I think this is to a certain extent that, you know, short business meetings are now done online and no personal meeting or less personal meetings than they used to be pre-crisis.
My best guess would be that somewhere between 2025 and 2027, we will be on the pre-COVID level. I think 2023 for me is the new normal. We will see if we are around the 26 million passengers, it might take a couple of years until 2026, 2027 to get back to the 31. If we are lucky and things develop again faster than expected in the second half of this year, we might be high and we might be a bit faster to reach 2019 level.
There are certain structural effects right now where it will take a bit to get the growth again from Asia, for instance, from the Middle East, Africa, some other areas in Europe, North America, to make up for the structural reductions we are seeing right now within Europe and mainly within Eastern Europe. That's why my best guess would be 2025-2027 until we see the 2019 figures.
Yes, I can continue. The first issue you mentioned, energy costs. Yes, they are terribly high, but fortunately they are not so important for us than it had been before. Just to remind you, our peak usage of electricity was around 2015 with 160 million kilowatt-hours, and the expectation for 2023 will be 110 million kilowatt-hours. So you see the very substantial gains in electricity efficiency because there are a lot of new companies working on the airport since 2015, and Terminal 2 was renewed and things like that. So, our cost position in regard of energy has been substantially improved, mainly and firstly through a reduction of usage and extraordinary gains in energy efficiency.
As you mentioned, on the other hand, we are shielded against these price hikes through our own production, but mainly through the fact that we bought electricity for 2023 already in 2018. We still are in the position that we have bought at the time where it was 20% or less of the actual market prices. A little bit different and more challenging is the situation in regard of personal costs. I mean, we had extraordinary cost savings through corona due to short work and to a reduction in the head count of roughly 1,000. This is supportive also there and improved our overall productivity.
I mean, if you take our guidance for full year 2022, you can expect EBITDA margin somewhere at 44%, 43%-44%, which shows an extraordinary productivity given the low level of traffic of roughly 75%. There we saw also some one-off effects and they will not be the same in 2023. We will see an increase due to the collective agreement of 5.6% from 1st of January, and another increase of starting 1st of May with the inflation as a basis for 2022 and the first three months of 2023. To remind you, the other side of the coin is that the Austrian airport charges law was amended in the COVID crisis.
We are entitled to increase airport charges by inflation rate up to 2026, and therefore, we can digest these cost increases due to inflation by offsetting them by using these legal provisions to increase our charges, at least with inflation rate. Overall, I think we are very well-positioned, and late figures show that the hike of inflation will slow down stepwise in the coming months. I mean, we don't know what external shocks could come around the corner. In any case, although we will not see recession, the growth rate will be lower in 2023, substantially lower than it was in 2022, because Austria had 5% growth in 2022 and was growth leader in Europe.
The growth rate for 2023 will be substantially above, below. From that side, we will see some support for lower inflation rates in the coming months.
I would like also to ask this third runway you have forgotten?
Oh, sorry. Sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you know, after this terrible experience with COVID, we are now on the way of recovery. Still, far ahead or below the expected movement figures that definitely would trigger the start of the project. It will be pushed further down by a number of years in any case. Therefore, actually, we are not active to start any form of planning or construction because, as you know, it is still a situation where we cannot exactly foresee how the business will work.
What still is a very essential factor is that, and Julian showed you the figures in regard of that passenger growth is not accompanied by the same growth rate of movements because especially Austrian changed their fleet from Fokker to Airbus. Per movement, they have substantially more passengers. The passenger rate per flight has improved. From that perspective, the pressure we expected on capacity is not in place right now, and therefore it will take many, many years until we come there.
Thank you very much for your comprehensive answer. Thanks.
Thank you. Are there any questions? Any other questions? Sorry. As a reminder, please unmute yourself, or if you are dialing in by phone, please press star six to unmute yourself if you have questions. Or was everything comprehensively answered already in the presentation? Which kind of seems to be the case. I would like to conclude this call. Thank you very much for your attention, everybody who has joined. Also thank you, gentlemen, for your presentations. Finally, I would like to say thank you to all of you as I will be leaving the company at the end of this month. Goodbye. It has been a great pleasure.
Yeah. Many thanks.
The next-
the work you did for us, so. Good luck.
Thank you. Thank you.
Successor is already known, so.
Exactly. Exactly. That's also my final.
You can hand over without any delay.
That's true. That's true. That's also my final sentence I wanted to say. The next call will already be hosted by my successor, who is already named. All the best to all of you, and, goodbye.
Thank you. Bye bye.
Bye bye.
Thank you. Bye bye.
Thank you.
Bye bye.