Give guidance for traffic and financial results for the current year, 2026 . More flavor on the numbers and the outlook will now give Julian Jäger and Günther Ofner, and I hand over to you, Julian.
Thank you, Bernd. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, 2025 was a record year for Vienna Airport in many aspects, in terms of passenger volume in Vienna, Malta, and Košice, in terms of cargo throughput in Vienna. So overall, we're looking back on a strong year. The outlook is a bit more challenging, so we expect around 30 million passengers in 2026. And probably we'll talk about that a little bit later in more detail. And one main aspect for us to remain competitive and to see more growth in the future again is the necessity to reduce or better abolish the current aviation passenger tax of EUR 12.
So those are the three key messages we gave to the Austrian press today, and in my presentation, we will focus on these things as well. I will go pretty quickly over some slides, which are probably not that interesting for you, but obviously we are, as always, happy to answer your questions later on. As I said, 32.6 million passengers, plus 2.6% in Vienna, plus 12% growth in Malta, 10.1 million passengers, really an astounding growth, and a huge success story. And in Košice, had a record last year with plus 8% and 825,000 passengers. Overall in the group, 43.4 million. Maybe a few details now on Vienna.
Seat load factor remained very high, above 80%. Cargo, 313,000 tons, +5.3%, very strong as well. Overall, I would say from a traffic perspective, which is obviously the main driver for our financial results, an absolute record year. The growth was mainly driven by Asia, Southern Europe, Middle East. Asia or East Asia, 21% growth, Middle East, +10% growth, despite the geopolitical conflicts there. In the last quarter, we were hoping that we would see a more quiet development in the region now with the protests and the reaction of the regime in Tehran.
We see some turbulence now as well, but we do hope that there will be a more peaceful future even for the Middle East in the future, and I think this would be a very substantial opportunity for traffic development from this region to Vienna. Southern Europe did extremely well. Eastern Europe was growing, Western Europe and North America pretty stable. You can see here Austrian with a market share of 46%, Lufthansa Group roughly 50%, Ryanair flat development in 2025, and Wizz Air already on the decline. Still holding out, so currently Wizz Air has a market share somewhere between 4% and 5% in January so far.
But they will close down the operation in mid-March, and so we will see a stronger impact, then, from March onwards. Yeah, in respect of countries and destinations, I mean, I think more interesting than the 2024, 2025 results is the relation to 2019. You can see here, Germany still 25% down, Switzerland, 30% down, France, close to 10% down, Netherlands, 24% down. And I think you can relate here as well to the competitive environment in these countries. Germany, Austria, Netherlands, France, those are all countries with a ticket tax, and I think that this is a consequence as well, that the traffic in these countries is still significantly below 2019.
Southern Europe, you saw huge growth and this is essentially holding on right now as well. Let's continue with the next slide. I think quality is one important success factor as well. 2025 was a strong year in this respect as well. We were the most punctual hub above thirty million passengers, the third most punctual hub above 25 million passengers. This is until October. We don't have any figures for November and December yet, but we are hopeful that we will remain in the top place this year at the end of the year as well. So we still focus a lot on quality. We were awarded again Best Airport Staff in Europe in 2025 .
I think the major game changer here will be the south extension of Terminal three, which is on track and should be opened in the second quarter of 2027 . We're on our way to award the F&B contracts in the coming days, essentially. Next week, we will announce them, and it's definitely a kind of best of Vienna, so quality will improve in this aspect very significantly, and in terms of retail, it will take us probably another two months to finalize all the contracts, and then we will announce this as well. We have an all-time high for cargo. I think the main driver here was belly cargo. Traffic was up 17%.
Exports were growing, mainly, technical goods. Pharma was growing, plus 6.4%. So overall, I think a very positive development. And we got some very important contracts here as well. We got an extension of our Korean Air Cargo contract. We signed a cooperation agreement with the newly founded Korean airline, Air Incheon. And we signed a five-year ground handling contract with Turkish Airlines. So overall, I would say good news in this area as well. Yeah, Malta, last year, 10.1 million passengers, and the expectation is to grow further in 2026 . So overall, really astounding. When I left Malta in two thousand and eleven, we had 3.5 million passengers.
Obviously, this is the effect as well from strong GDP growth of the whole island in recent years. We have an excellent cooperation there with the government, with the tourism authority, and we have a very much business-oriented, aviation-friendly, tourism-friendly government, obviously. I think this leads to these great results. We have to deliver now on a vast expansion project. In the last fourteen years, the infrastructure hasn't changed in the same way as the passenger numbers, so we will invest here very significantly in the next five, six years. Roughly, we have to invest here to cater for the strong growth.
But not only in the terminal building, we will expand the airport city at the airport in Malta as well. So overall, a very positive development in 2025 , and we expect Malta to do very well in the coming years here as well. Košice, obviously not that important. Malta has already a share of 23% of our overall traffic. Košice is a small contribution to our results. Nevertheless, a good development in 2025 . The new domestic route to Bratislava is doing very well, nine frequencies per week from Wizz Air. So overall, I think the development here will be very positive in 2026 as well.
Coming to our outlook, Vienna, we expect roughly 30 million passengers, and I know that some of you think that this is maybe too conservative, so I hope you're right, one. Secondly, I would not expect more than 30.5 million passengers, and it could be that we are below the 30 million passenger mark as well. So, I really believe that approximately 30 million passengers is a very, yeah, very thorough guidance for this year. What we see now and what we saw in the last quarter, we saw very high load factors. We saw Middle East coming back. We saw Ryanair not reducing as much capacity as expected.
I think it took them a bit longer to adapt, and we still don't know exactly the summer flight schedule. But I believe that we will not be far off the thirty million mark. And what you should be aware as well, that in the first quarter of last year, we saw very low load factors. Lufthansa Group was pricing them out a bit last year, so we see now a relatively good development in the first few weeks of January. We saw a good development in December, but don't forget, load factors were pretty low last year. And therefore, I think we will see the full effect of the reduction of Ryanair and the exit of Wizz Air with the summer schedule.
And I don't think that there will be in the same summer a year where we get close to the passenger numbers of 2025. Nevertheless, I think this is the good message. We see a lot of airlines which are growing in Vienna. Maybe if we go to the next slide. So we have a significant reduction at the ultra-low cost carriers, Wizz Air and Ryanair, but we see a lot of other airlines growing in Vienna, Austrian, two additional aircraft in the summer schedule. SAS launched again Copenhagen, Scoot is increasing their connection to Singapore. Air Corsica is new, SalamAir is new, finally a direct flight to Muscat. Yerevan, we will fly one new. Air Arabia is growing to Sharjah. Air India is growing to Delhi.
Condor is significantly going to Frankfurt. Baltic starts Tallinn again, so overall, I think the trend we will see is that we will see a lot of smaller airlines which increase capacity on certain routes, which open new destinations. So we will not find one airline to make up for the reduction in capacity of Wizz Air and Ryanair, but we will see many airlines who grow into Vienna, and I think this is the way forward to be less dependent on individual low-cost carriers, but have many other airlines which are growing in Vienna, and therefore, I'm optimistic that until 2028 we will make up for the likely reduction in passenger numbers in 2026 .
But I forgot, Etihad is growing significantly as well. They got more traffic rights. So overall, I'm optimistic to see probably some new routes to East Asia as well, and we have a lot of discussions with the airlines to attract them to Vienna. Low cost is more of a challenge, this mainly due to the current tax environment. While a number of countries like Hungary, like Sweden, abolished the aviation tax completely, Germany is going to reduce in 2026 their aviation tax.
So we are still trying to convince our government that essentially the aviation tax is a shot in the foot, and that it would be overall economically much more much better for the whole economy to abolish it, or at least to reduce it. And if you look at the taxes in Europe, in Austria, we have the third highest short-haul tax. You can see here only the Netherlands and Germany are more expensive for short-haul airlines, so here, and Germany is going to reduce this to twelve fifty something. So overall, I think this explains the competitive disadvantage we are having.
As you can see, I mean, Ryanair, it's not only a decision based on how good routes are and how much money they are making on certain routes and on certain bases. It's mainly as well to push governments to go into their direction. As soon as the German government announced that they will reduce the aviation tax in Germany, they shifted capacity back to Germany. I think this, for us, if we want to see very significant growth from Ryanair, some movement in the aviation tax would be very important as well. We will try to convince our government in times of very, very tight budgets.
This is not easy, but we will definitely try to make some advancements in this direction. One thing which obviously was an important decision in 2025 is the fact that we will not continue our third runway project. The main drive of this decision was essentially a change in the environment, and I'm not just comparing 2025 with 2008, but even since 2019, we saw a very changing pattern of traffic. Aircraft are bigger and bigger, they are fuller and fuller, and therefore we expect to handle in a two-runway system more than 50 million passengers.
Austrian, apart from us, came to a similar conclusion, and therefore we will and we want to grow in the future, but we will grow in a two-runway system, and the business case simply was not there. In this respect, it was a very easy decision, and we had intense discussions as well with Austrian Airlines, our home carrier, but we consulted Ryanair as well. Neither of them would be willing to pay for a third runway. Both of them are of the opinion that they can grow in Vienna without a third runway. Therefore, the costs which have been rising, obviously, since the pandemic as well, of roughly EUR 1.6 billion plus EUR 400 million for the land necessary.
The business plan simply didn't add up, and therefore we decided not to follow up on this project, and we had to write down nearly EUR 56 million in 2025. That's it from my end, and I'm happy to hand over now to Günther.
Yeah, good afternoon, and my task now is to give you more details on the financial guidance for 2026. And the overall, and as I think, positive message is that our net income 2026 should be exactly what the guidance for 2025 right now is, EUR 210 million. Why is this possible? Looking at the decline in passenger numbers and the reduction of air fees because we made a company-wide efficiency and cost optimization program, and have reduced the personnel and material costs. And these measures helped us to at least half offset the revenue losses and the negative effects of airport charges reduction and passenger reduction.
In numbers, especially for the personal costs, our plan is that they should stay even to 2025. So, the higher collective agreement and all other cost driving effects are offset by reducing overall staff in an amount of roughly 200 persons. Mostly and almost all of them are the natural fluctuation, and we have no program with special measures or one-offs for restructuring of personnel. We did it in a very low number and small scale in 2025, and there is nothing included in the budget for 2026 for that.
The bigger part of the cost savings are on the material side, and there we have cost reductions all over the company and the board. And so energy, maintenance, and all other parts had to contribute, and I'm pretty optimistic that we will reach the cost goals throughout the year. Nevertheless, we will see a peak in investments of around EUR 330 million in Vienna and in Malta. In Vienna, it will be around EUR 260 million, and in Malta, EUR 70 million. Financing in Vienna will be out of our reserves and the cash flow, and Malta will finance a bigger portion of their CapEx through credits.
Therefore, they are now again debtors in regard of their investments. The main projects are the completion of the south extension of Terminal three, which is on time schedule and within budget, and should be opened in the second quarter of 2027. The major part of the work there should be finalized end of 2026. Other projects are the building of our Office Park four, roughly 17,000 square meters of office space, and also the development of a new Zone West, which means an expansion of the airport of roughly 74 hectares. The project will start throughout 2026, and will offer very unique possibilities for companies to come to the airport.
And we see a very, very huge interest, so much more than we can offer to move to this development zone. We are also in the process of planning for the extension of Pier North, which should follow the completion of the south extension of Terminal three. And there are a lot of smaller projects also that amount all together to roughly EUR 260 million here in Vienna. The financial guidance for 2026 in detail, revenue EUR 1.50 million, EBITDA EUR 415 million, net profit before minorities EUR 210 million, after minorities EUR 185 million, and CapEx EUR 330 million. Our Airport City continues to grow. The new hotel is ready and will start operation most likely in March.
We see very high interest for our Space Hub, so five new companies will come to the airport in the coming months, and we'll further strengthen the Space Hub here on the airport. Roughly 20 companies settled newly last year, so we are growing steadily, and I think with the development of the Zone West, we will see a very substantial leap forward in regard of our Airport City strategy. Julian addressed the issue of ticket tax. I think it's also the matter of EU over-regulation and cost increases that has to be addressed.
The expectation is that Fit for 55 and certificate trading and all other regulations could amount to an increase of ticket prices of roughly 20% up to 2030, and this would be an additional pressure on the competitive disadvantage of European airports and airlines. Non-EU carriers and hubs are growing much faster, and I think there is a fundamental change of EU aviation regulation necessary in the wake of the 2027 revision.
What is especially painful is that SAF requirements cannot be met without significant changes in regulation, because currently nobody is investing in new production facilities, and the SAF is too costly, the supply is inefficient, and given the fact that it should go up to 5% addition in 2030, nobody can see how this would work without investments in production. So all those issues are hindering growth in Europe, and it would be very, very urgent to change the direction and to support the European aviation industry so that it can grow at least at the same speed as Asia or the U.S. is growing. So that's from my side, and please feel free to ask your questions.
Yes, now we come to the Q&A session. Please raise your virtual hand. Vladimir Aditso, please go ahead, open the floor.
Yes. Hello, good afternoon. Thank you very much for the presentation and sharing with us some details. I would like to maybe learn a little bit more, especially regarding, as you mentioned, that for Malta, you plan to raise some debt. Do you consider external financing? How big debt you are talking about? What could be likely conditions on it? Regarding CapEx also, quite sizable CapEx of EUR 260 million planned in Vienna, how big portion out of this will go to Terminal three south extension, and then last but not least, if you can share with us maybe some thoughts regarding initial thoughts regarding dividend on 2025 results. Thank you.
Yeah, CapEx for the south extension is more than EUR 100 million, and. The substance of the construction work is around EUR 100 million, but then you have IT, and a lot of other side projects. So in total, it should be somewhere around EUR 125 million. Malta is now in the preparation of their financing, and what I learned so far is that they get very favorable conditions from the office of Maltese financial institutions. It's right now not finally decided how big the portion will be that has to be financed by credit, but it will be the major part of the seventy million. Dividend policy will more or less remain stable.
You know, our guidance, it's 60%-70%, and the payout ratio lately was around 65%. So we would have maybe a little room to maneuver on the upper side, but that is not decided, and will be public on the second of March, when we have our full year's results available.
Thank you very much for your answers.
Thank you.
Elias, please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my questions. I'll just start on the likely impact from the low-cost carrier capacity reduction. So just wondering if you could give us an update for what you expect here in terms of the headwinds for passenger numbers? I think, as your Q3 results, you were sort of guiding towards two point five million, and looking to offset around a quarter of that impact. So just wondering is, if that is still sort of roughly what you're thinking, and perhaps also whether you think you'll see some more Ryanair capacity reductions, so beyond the fifteen planes that they now expect to have by the summer schedule, if I'm correct.
Yeah. I mean, you know, Ryanair is always very difficult to judge, because I think. And if you look around, I mean, they are now they have a fight now with the Belgian government. I think they put a lot of pressure on the Austrian government, and you see this in many places. So therefore, it's really difficult to judge. I think we are very well placed with the roughly thirty million passengers for this year. So we expect low cost to shrink by roughly three million, and we see some growth from other airlines, as you've seen before, and that's why we believe that we will be around thirty million.
Look, if we see, you know, a more peaceful situation, probably in the Middle East, I think this is, this would be an upside, probably higher load factors than expected, would be an upside. But it's difficult to judge right now, the effect of significantly more capacity in Bratislava, which is pretty close to Vienna. So overall, I think we will not be far off the thirty million passenger mark, at the end of the year. And looking forward, I think one major factor in Ryanair's decisions regarding capacity will be our ticket tax. Because, I mean, you can follow Germany, for instance, they have reduced year by year by year by year, capacity in Germany.
Now that the government announced that they would even just reduce slightly the ticket tax, they are shifting capacity back to Germany. Therefore, I think this will be a critical factor. Yeah.
But it will be partly also offset by growth in Malta and Košice. I mean, this is one of the side effects that you see in our overall financial guidance. So the reduction in the group is lower than the reduction assumed in Vienna.
Understood. Thank you. And just a follow-up from my side, perhaps. Just in terms of the decision not to pursue the third runway project, obviously that frees up quite a bit of cash. So just wondering, in terms of sort of capital allocation, whether you would be more focused on perhaps M&A activities going forward, or sort of, you know, increasing shareholder returns through dividends?
I mean, the main strategic focus is to further develop Vienna and Malta, especially. There is an investment program for Malta of roughly EUR 300 million for the coming years, and we are now preparing major projects also in Vienna, so the extension of Pier North and other terminal projects... and therefore we have not a cash deposit we made for the third runway. Instead of that, we are investing now primarily in the development of Vienna and Malta. And if we perform as we want to perform, I think also the shareholders should be happy then.
Regarding M&A, if I may make one comment. So far we have not decided to change our policy in this respect. We've decided in 2012 that we will focus on our existing airports. One exemption was always Bratislava. In the current political circumstances, I don't see any change in the opinion of the government in Slovakia, so I think this will not come on the market. I mean, we monitor the global aviation market, but for the time being, I don't think that we will engage o urselves here in significant M&A activity.
Understood. Very clear. Thank you.
Any further questions or any follow-ups? Seems not to be the case. Then I thank you all for your interest in the company to follow our 2025 passenger numbers and guidance for 2026. Next scheduled event is March second, with our preliminary financial results for financial year 2025. For any questions you might have in addition, please reach out to me. I close the call. A replay will be online soon, half an hour roundabout, and wish you a nice day.
Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye.