Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our conference call for the first 9 months of 2022 of Vienna Airport. Today's presentation will be held as usual by our board members, Mr. Günther Ofner and Mr. Julian Jäger. 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, then you can easily unmute yourself by selecting the respective button in your menu. If you are joining by phone, please press star and six to unmute yourself.
In the Q&A session, we will give preference to sell-side analysts covering us, and only after their questions have been answered will we allow further questions. 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.
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Now I would like to hand over to our CFO, Mr. Ofner. The floor is yours, sir. I will now also share the slides.
Yeah. Good afternoon. I can report that we have good results after three quarters in 2022. We saw a significant passenger increase and also a substantial earnings increase compared to 2021. Passenger volumes went up to 22.3 million in the group. For the whole year, it's roughly three-quarters of the pre-crisis level. In summer, we almost were at 90%. The financial performance indicators show that we could transfer our additional revenue to a very high degree into EBITDA and net profits. We had a very high cost discipline that helped to improve the financial situation of the company.
If we look at full year 2022, we will see that we have a net profit of at least EUR 150 million. It could be even more if the good development we saw in October will be followed by good results also for November and December. So far, we had no negative interference, neither from the war against Ukraine or new measures due to COVID. These negative factors, I think, should not negatively affect the rest of the year. I'm quite sure that our guidance will be not only fulfilled, but maybe even we will come out above the net result proposition we had so far.
What we can also confirm is that given the financial health of our company, we'll see later that we are more than debt-free, so that we even had a positive net cash position at end of the Q3. This will allow us to start to pay dividends again. I recently got the message that Fraport decided not to pay a dividend. We can firmly confirm today that given the consent of our general assembly, we will pay at least 60% of net profit after non-controlling interest as a dividend for 2022.
If you look at the figures in detail, you see revenue up at EUR 508, EBITDA at EUR 256, so +140%, EBIT at EUR 156.9. Also in a slight improvement in financial results, so earnings before tax at EUR 150, and net profit for the period, EUR 109.3. If you deduct non-controlling interest, it's EUR 97.8. If you look at our expenses, you see that consumables and services used were up EUR 53.8, which is below passenger and traffic development. Personal expenses up EUR 40.8, which is especially attributable to the fact that we only saw support for short-time work in the Q1, and the program was stopped beginning first of April for the whole company.
Other expenses were up by 111%. This is also reflecting the recent development. You might ask to what degree we are affected by higher energy prices. The good part of the story is that we bought electricity for 2022 already five years ago. We have profited from much lower prices. We fixed in this period for 2022 for a considerable part of our consumed electricity. Additionally, we had the advantage that roughly one-third of our electricity was produced by our own. Through our big photovoltaic plants, which we will further develop in the coming year. Putting all that together for 2022, we have been substantially shielded against the price hikes on the electricity side.
This, unfortunately, is not the case on the district heating side. There we are exposed to gas prices, and we have saved a lot of energy also there, but there we are much more exposed to the hiking market prices. Net liquidity at EUR 61.7 million. It's a debut for our company, so I don't know if anyone remembers when we had last time a net liquidity of EUR 61.7 million. What I can remember, we have been heavily indebted at least for the last 20 years of our company, so that's really a very interesting point. It gives us now really a lot of room to maneuver in respect of future activities, investments, or even letting our shareholders participate on the financial health of our company.
The gearing is below zero, and we saw a very strong cash flow from operating activities of roughly EUR 234 million. Free cash flow at EUR -13 million, CapEx at EUR 38 million. Our equity position was substantially improved, and the equity ratio is at comfortable 65.7%. We saw a good development there. If you ask why free cash flow is on the negative side, this is due to payments for deposits where we are bound for a certain period of time, and where we earn higher interests than we had so far. Understandably, CapEx was at a low level for 2022, and we will restart some investments in the coming year, especially regarding the south extension project, which should substantially contribute to our profitability further down the road.
If you look at the share price development, we are still very far ahead of our main peers, of Raiffeisen and Zurich, and I hope we can keep and maintain this position. I already mentioned our guidance. Revenues should be at roughly EUR 670 million or above. EBITDA should be above 290. Group net profit at least EUR 155, most likely even above. Net debt, as we guided, is definitely below EUR 50 million. It will be on the positive side and CapEx may reach a certain percentage of the EUR 84 million, but might stay somewhere around EUR 70 million at the end of the year.
I think all these developments are now more or less on the secure side 'cause we are mid-November and there are no indications that major actions could stop again the traveling. Very important for us as a company is that we will start CO2 neutral operations at our airport in 2023. All the measures are on the way that are necessary. We have reduced our CO2 emissions compared to 2011 by 60,000 tons per year. We will further improve our electricity production. From 24 hectares in 2022, we will move to roughly 45 hectares in 2023. We will increase the facility on our airport, but we will also add roughly 10 hectares in the airfield of Bad Vöslau, which is also owned by us.
I think that it was very wise to start with all these measures already 10 years ago, so long before it was discussed in public. Therefore, now we are, I think, substantially ahead of most of our peers and competitors. I also want to stress that you might remember that Austrian reduced their rentals on the airport, especially in Office Park 2. I think it's, given the actual situation, a very good news that for 50% of the rentals Austrian reduced, we already found a new partner, and two floors of Office Park 2 will be rented in these days with the option to take even a third one.
That overall, we see still a very good interest of potential companies coming to the airport, and this will also support our results for 2023. That's from my side, and I hand over to Julian for your part.
Thank you, Günther. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will start with the traffic development. I think most of you followed the traffic results of these first three quarters. We saw a very strong Q3 with roughly a level of close to 90% of the pre-COVID 2019 levels. Summer was really strong. Overall, we are in Vienna now at roughly 73% of pre-COVID levels with 17.4 million passengers in Malta at roughly 80% with 4.4 million passengers, and in Košice already very close to the 2019 levels with 400,000 passengers. Overall, in the group, we are at 22.3 million minus 25%.
I would not want to go into more details here. I think what is very significant is the seat load factor. Although it's still the first four or five months were still very much disrupted by the pandemic. But you can see here how strong the Q3 was, and we are, for the full year, already on the same level as the seat load factors in 2019. I think the good news is that more or less all our airline customers had an excellent summer as well and making good money here in Vienna. Let's have a look at the next slide.
You can see here that for the first nine months, Austrian had a market share of 47%, Ryanair 21%, and Wizz Air 6.7%. If you look at the peak in summer, Austrian performed even a bit better with a market share of roughly 50%. Ryanair was at twenty-one percent and Wizz Air at around 6%. The low-cost carriers overall had a market share of 31% and Lufthansa Group of 52%. You can see here that all airlines amongst the top 15 had a really strong growth versus 2021. Some perform even above 2019 like Turkish like SunExpress. You can see that obviously Southern Europe did extremely well over summer.
Italy, Spain, Turkey, Greece were between +20 or +30% above the 2019 levels. What's still lagging behind is traffic to Germany, to Switzerland, to the U.K. Those are the main countries, apart from the obvious complete losses from Russia and Ukraine. Apart from that, Germany is still around 30% below the 2019 level, Switzerland -40% below 2019 levels. This is an area where there's still room for more capacity and for more passengers in the future. Let's have a look at October. October was still very strong, -14% versus 2019.
2.4 million passengers versus 1.6 million in 2021 and 2.8 million in 2019. Transfer passengers performing a bit better than local passengers relative to 2019. Flight movements at -21%, and this is again a very important development for the airport. The planes are significantly bigger and significantly fuller than they used to be, so which is good news for airside and runway capacity. You can see here that the seat load factor throughout October this year was even 2 percentage points above the 2019 figures. The only negative on this slide, I would say, is cargo.
You can see here that we are below the 2021 figures, and I think this is a trend we see definitely throughout Europe, throughout Germany, that cargo is going down versus 2019 and 2021. Probably one of the signs of a looming recession in 2023. Let's move on to operations. I think this is something which makes us very proud. I think we had an excellent operation throughout summer. Definitely compared to most other European airports. We are very happy that this was widely acknowledged in the industry and then from our passengers as well. Our Airports Council International Europe rated us as the best airport in Europe this year.
We recently got an award from Asia, Ground Handler of the Year in Europe. In October, OAG just recently released punctuality figures where we came second after Helsinki in October and for the full year, we are number four in terms of punctuality. We constantly perform better than the other Lufthansa Group airports in terms of punctuality. I think as an airport and a hub system, together with our hub carrier, Austrian Airlines, the operational performance throughout the airport was really excellent this summer.
I think this is a good base as well to argue for higher prices and higher charges in the future because our customers know that we are a reliable airport and that essentially all the processes work really, really well. Let's move on to the next slide. Having a look at winter, I mean, obviously compared to last winter, this is a very strong development. Overall, my impression is that for the lower season, for the season outside the main holidays, airlines still are a bit cautious. We expect that we will see a reduction in traffic now vis-à-vis 2019 in the coming months.
We already see now a bit of a relief towards East Asia. I expect Korean Air is back, Air China is back, we expect some other long-haul carriers to join this list in the future as well. Air Canada obviously was already back this summer. I think we have a very strong Middle East portfolio now. What is interesting as well that Wizz Air moved away a bit from their Central European destinations, and they're concentrating right now a lot on the Middle East, flying to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, three destinations in Saudi Arabia.
So my impression is that Wizz Air is very successful to find a niche, a mix of Middle East, sun and sea destinations within Europe and the one or other city destination. Ryanair, 8 new destinations, 70 destinations in total. I think this is a strong sign that they are here to stay. In Austrian, I think the good news is they got 4 new Airbus A320neo. Now the first two are already in, the other two are coming next year. My best guess would be that Austrian actually will have a bit more capacity here in Vienna than they had this summer and a total of 80 destinations. Overall, I'm happy with the winter schedule.
What we see so far from the summer schedule of next year is that our main airlines will have at least the capacity they had this summer. Obviously, there's a lot of room for growth in the first four months of next year vis-à-vis 2022. I'm already cautiously optimistic for next summer and next year. We will give you obviously some more details and our assessment of the full traffic year 2023 then later on in January. In the group, we expect 29 million passengers this year. In Vienna, we expect more than 23 million, probably more 23.5 than the 23, you can see here.
Overall, I think a successful year given the rocky start in the Q1 and the first four or five months of this year. A few words regarding the segments. Airport had in Q1 to Q3 essentially more than doubling the external revenue, an EBITDA of EUR 101 million, and thank God, a positive EBIT of EUR 42 million compared to the minus EUR 14.3 million of last year. We saw strong increase in the passenger-related fees as well as an increase in the aircraft related fees and in infrastructure fees. Looking into next year, it's our main aim to increase the net revenues per passenger in the airport segment.
We will increase our airport charges by 5.6% with the first of January, covering the inflation until mid-2022. There will be another increase on the first of January 2024, covering then the inflation from mid-2022 till mid-2023. There's a bit of a delay in terms of the reflection of inflation. We are about to, and we have not got approval yet, but we applied for some changes in our incentive scheme. With the increase of the airport charges by 5.6% plus a reduction in incentives, we expect a significant increase in the net revenues next year. Let's move on to handling and security.
Yeah, a positive EBIT here as well, EUR 4.5 million, EBITDA of EUR 11 million, and external revenue of EUR 91.8 million. Personnel expenses increased here as well by EUR 29.9 million. You mustn't forget, and this is something you have to appreciate. Next year, looking at our figures in the Q1, we still were in the Kurzarbeit regime, short working scheme of the Austrian government. This was still very supportive in this year's staff costs. Overall, handling is doing well. I'm, yeah, fairly optimistic that we will manage to keep the very high reliability of our handling and security services into next year.
Overall, I think the development is very positive in this area. Retail and properties, strong development as well. EUR 52.9 million EBIT versus EUR 20 million in 2021. EBITDA, EUR 67 million, external revenue, EUR 98 million. I think in parking and center management, the results were excellent. Rental, obviously you can see here the reduction of rent from Austrian Airlines. That's why there's a slight decrease of 0.9%. Center management and hospitality, +130%, parking +118%. We managed to make more out of each passenger than in 2021.
Overall, I have to say, center management and hospitality, given the passenger mix, hardly any Chinese, hardly any East Asians, no Russians, no Ukrainians, I'm fairly happy. Duty-free is doing very well. F&B is doing very well. Where we feel the pinch is in the area of specialty retail. So I hope that in the future when the passenger mix changes again in our favor, then we will see here some even better results. But I think given the new mix and I'm very happy with the results of 2022. Obviously, Günther mentioned already the South extension. This will be a major change in how the Vienna Airport appears to its customers.
There will be 12,000 square meters additional F&B and retail space, 18 bus gates directly under the commercial area, very comfortable waiting areas, new lounges. We are all looking forward to this project. Malta International Airport, there's one really good news which came in the recent weeks. Malta International Airport got a EUR 12 million tax credit from the Maltese government to make up for the losses which were incurred in the period of the pandemic. This obviously improve or will improve the results even further. EBITDA was at EUR 33 million versus EUR 6 million last year. EBITDA, EUR 43 million versus EUR 16 million. External revenue essentially doubled with EUR 66.5 million.
Malta was a bit stricter in terms of COVID, which we felt in the beginning of the year, but summer was good. I think looking ahead, Malta will do next summer very well as well. Now, there's a base of Wizz Air coming to Malta. There's the strong presence of Ryanair, so I'm still optimistic that we will see growth from Malta Airport next year as well. I think that's it from my end, and now we are happy to take your questions and looking forward to the discussion.
Okay. Thank you, gentlemen. I would now like to open the floor for questions. Anybody who has a question, please unmute yourself and then introduce yourself, and then ask your question, please. The floor is open.
If I may, I would go ahead. It's Bernd speaking from Raiffeisen.
Yeah, please go ahead.
Yes.
Super. Thank you. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Three questions I do have. First, the obvious one on the guidance. Yeah, you have a slide showing the development of guidance throughout the financial year in September. Then you upgraded, you hiked only the net profit guidance. What does it mean with reference to sales, especially EBITDA and net debt guidance? Is this still in place as it is, or isn't it? Yeah, that's question number one. Question number two, in the quarterly report, you outlined some positive effects on personnel expenses from changes in provisioning, from changes of tax rates, interest rates. Here I would be interested how big this effect, this positive effect was in the Q3.
Finally, you also outlined the strong relative performance of the passenger development of Vienna Airport versus German airports. Would be interested in your view or your arguments behind this. Is it as simple as a higher share of tourism and a lower share of business activity in general, which especially in 2022 kicked in these characteristics, or do you see some more developments behind this?
Okay. I would like to start with guidance. I mean, I think you are partly on the right track, so there should be also a further improvement on EBITDA results. We have not made a specific guidance for the rest of the year for that. It's obvious that finally a higher net profit will also be reflected in the positive deviation of EBITDA versus the figures you see now.
Thanks for the clarification. Yeah.
Yeah. Interest rates, I think we should deliver to you after our call, 'cause this needs maybe some deep dive about the figures in detail. Rita, do you have any detail for that?
Yeah. Just put it there. The interest plus 1% is profit result of EUR 4.5 million on the basis of 5.6% additional expense of EUR 1.5 million. For the whole three quarters, it's EUR 3.6 million in total.
Income of EUR 3.6 million.
Positive effect of EUR 3.6 million-
Yes
You booked in personnel expenses in Q1 to Q3.
It's the whole year, so it's.
Yeah
from January to September.
Yep. Thank you.
Sorry, in Q2 2023 it was 0.9, so roughly EUR 1 million.
Thank you. Super.
Regarding your last question, maybe a few comments. I think there are multiple reasons for the fact that we are performing better than Germany. I think to a certain extent, it's already reflected in our passenger figures to Germany as well. There's less capacity than 2019. Just to give you an example, Berlin, there's just 50% of the capacity of 2019. Ticket prices are significantly higher. There's less low-cost traffic within Germany and out of Germany. I think there is still a fact that you probably wouldn't travel for a one-hour, two-hour meeting to Frankfurt anymore.
I think it's to a certain extent that the business traffic did not come back. I think on the long haul, the business traffic is back, but on short haul, I think there's still the effect of Teams. I think it's a mix, but one part is definitely that there's less capacity that with this lower capacity the airlines are making really good money on certain routes, and this obviously is not good for the passenger development. It's good for the airlines, but not necessarily for the airports.
Thank you very much.
Okay. Are there any other questions in the audience? Please come forward and ask your questions. Okay. A final call from my side. Is everybody satisfied with the presentation-
It seems.
the questions? It seems, yeah. Final call. If anybody has a final question, please speak out now, or else we will close the call.
Yes. Many thanks for your interest.
Thank you.
Thank you. Have a nice day.
Have a good day.
Have a good day, and maybe as an organizational point to point out, we will have, as Mr. Jäger already said, on the 19th of January, we will have our presentation for the full year traffic figures of 2022 and our forecast for 2023. Okay. With this, I wish you a nice day.
Bye-bye.
Until the next time. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye.