Good morning, dear listeners. Welcome to Novaturas Investor Relations Conference. I'm Paulius from Nasdaq Vilnius, and I'll be moderating today's event. We will start with a presentation from the management, which will be followed by the Q&A session. Please be informed that this webinar is being recorded and will be available for a rewatch on Nasdaq Baltic YouTube channel. As always, I encourage every one of you to share your questions in the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen, and you can submit them either anonymously or with your name. With that said, I'm pleased to introduce today's presenters, the Chief Executive Officer, Vitalij Rakovski, and Chief Financial Officer, Vygantas Reifonas. As well, we are pleased to be joined by the Chairman of the Board, Mr. Gediminas Almantas. Dear guests, please, the floor is yours, and good luck.
Thank you very much. Good morning, dear investors. It is a huge pleasure to have all of you here. Today, we're gonna overview our Q2 financial performance and also observe H1 results. I would like to begin my presentation with announcing significant revenue and profitability improvements of Novaturas. So during Q2, our EBITDA reached EUR 3.2 million, and our net profit reached almost EUR 2.5 million. As a result, for the full half-year results, we are approaching EBITDA of close to EUR 6 million and net profit close to EUR 5 million. With such exceptional profitability results, we already beated our full financial year EBITDA guideline, which was announced previously, and the higher end of that guideline was EUR 6 million.
And we are already 30% above our full financial year of 2019, which was a pre-pandemic year, and the EBITDA at that time for the full financial year was EUR 4.3 million. Such a good performance was, first of all, led by a strong travel demand and was well supported by a few things. So first of all is high early booking sales. Secondly, well-diversified destination mix. Thirdly, well-managed fuel price fluctuation risk, and last but not least, increased customer service quality. During the presentation, I will touch those driving factors in a bit deeper way. Sales profit per pax also increased considerably from EUR 14 per pax to almost EUR 70 per pax during Q2 this year.
Load factor was also good of 95%, and it was on expected levels. Sales-wise, sales remained flat and reached EUR 63 million. As a result, during first half of the year, our revenue is increasing by 12% and reached EUR 103 million. The sales being flat were driven by a few reasons. So first of all, our volumes slightly and temporarily decreased by roughly 6.5%. Meanwhile, our average package price increased by 8%. Volume decrease was mainly driven from Turkey destination, which is a destination of competition at the moment with a very high supply of seats, and consequently, it drives much lower profitabilities.
So, seat supply for Turkey destination during this year increased by almost 30% compared to the pre-pandemic year. Taking a deeper view on performance by the markets, we can observe that volumes decreased in Lithuanian market and Latvian market. Meanwhile, in Estonian market, volumes remained relatively flat. From destination's point of view, the main decrease is coming from, as I previously said, Turkey market, and on top of that, from Greek Islands. In Greek Islands, our volumes went down this year due to a few reasons. So first of all, we did have some challenges with the quality of services in the destination, and on top of that, we needed some improvements with our hotel selection.
Those things were properly done during this year, and going forward, we expect to regain the lost volumes and even increase them next year. Touching the Turkey destination, so as I said before, this is the destination which this year is experiencing huge oversupply, which basically leads us to quite low prices and as a result, leads to much lower profitabilities. However, the strong point of Novaturas is the well-diversified destination mix and our destinations which we were early adopting in the market or even launching them first in the market. The trending destinations, which is the Montenegro and Tunisia-...
In those destinations, we grew by 6,500 during the first half of this year, and it helped quite a lot to offset the decreased volumes in Turkey and in Greece. So we can clearly say that the destination diversification pays off, as actually, the profitability levels in those trending destinations are much, much better compared to the, for example, Antalya. Few words about the competitive environment. So this year we saw a new tour operator from Turkey, Anex, entering the market in June this year, and they started operations with flights to Turkey only. On the other hand, we are observing that they're adjusting their volumes. So during Q2 and Q3, we already saw a decrease of 14% from their initial plans.
On top of that, we observed that another newcomer who entered the market last year is also adjusting its initial seat supply. During Q3, the seat supply to Turkish destination decreased even by 50%. So these few illustrations clearly indicate that the competition is tough, and it's not easy for new market entrants to gain the market share in the Baltic markets. I must admit, recent market entrants indeed disrupt the market, and they require changes. Meanwhile, Novaturas managed to keep market leader position in the Baltic countries. Taking a deeper view on H1 destination performance, we can see the same tendency as we observed in Q2, that our share of other destinations, meaning excluding the mainstream destinations, which is Turkey, Egypt, Greece, and Greek Islands, and Canary Islands.
So this year is increasing. Last year it was 20%. Meanwhile, this year, we are approaching to 30%. On top of that, we do invest a lot into the early booking sales, and we are aiming to be typically, whether the first or among the first to introduce early bookings in the market, as typically, it allows us to decrease the last-minute sales, which are usually less profitable due to the higher seat fulfillment competition. And as you can see, we did it well this year, when the share of sales booked more than three months ahead increased from 20% to 24% this year. On top of that, this year, we already sold out 80%, more than 80% of our current full-year seat supplies.
And on top of that, we are stepping into the winter season, which starts in November, with twice as high early bookings, compared to the same period, last year. And we believe that this is a huge advantage, for us, as at the moment, we are also experiencing and observing a huge oversupply to the Egypt market. Which probably should indicate that the competition there would be high and the burden and for profitability would be also high. However, for that, we prepared already very well in advance, and when we launched our winter program, we diversified a lot. We introduced a new destination, which is Jordan, which is a bit of an alternative for Egypt market.
On top of that, we launched a new skiing destination, which is Austria, and in addition to that, we extended our long-haul destinations a lot by approximately 50%. So at the moment, I can confidently say that majority of our profits in winter destination is generated from non-Egypt destination. Also this year, since January, we started to collect customer feedback on our services, and when in the beginning of the year, our Net Promoter Score was closer to 35%, in end of June, it increased almost to 60%. In all key destinations, which is Montenegro, Turkey, Crete, Madeira, Tunisia, Net Promoter Score is everywhere well above, at the moment, 50%. Which we believe is a very good achievement, and it is above the market benchmarks.
Such good performance was achieved by few actions. So first of all, we improved our flight punctuality a lot, and we also decreased our three-hour delays. On top of that, we invested a lot of our time on updating the hotel selection during this season by removing non-performing hotels and hotels with relatively negative customer feedback. On top, adding trendy hotels with good feedback. And last but not least, we invested in the quality of our services in the destinations by changing personnel and by giving needed trainings for our representatives abroad. A few words about the aviation. So as I said before, it's one of the quality improvement factors this year that our flight punctuality improved.
As you might know, last year, we experienced a lot of challenges with our aviation, and our punctuality performance was not as good as we wanted, especially in Latvian market and Estonian market. As a result, our proactive actions with aviation suppliers allowed us to improve our On-Time Performance and three-hour delays. So we did a lot of changes by first of all changing the plane to the new generation plane in Estonian market. The reliability of this plane is much higher. It is newer. It helped us to improve the punctuality in Estonian market. On top of that, we diversified our aviation suppliers in Latvian market, where we extended our cooperation with airBaltic.
On top of that, we added to the Turkey destination, Turkish Airlines flights, which are also considered to be of a higher quality, product. All, all, all combined allowed us to improve on-time performance with 30 minutes accuracy from 74% to 83%. On contrary, number of flights with three or more hours delay decreased more than three times. When last year, during H1, we had almost 40 flights with such delays. This year, it's only 12. This first half of the year, we are growing 12%, as I said before. Meanwhile, our own sales are increasing by 18%. Consequently, our own sales share during Q2 increased by 1%. Meanwhile, during H1, it increased even by 2%, so from 29% to 31% own sales share.
Following such growth, our effective commission rate was also down to 5.2%. Meanwhile, last year, it was closer to 5.5%. The sales distribution between the market varies. So, in Latvian and Estonian market, our own sales are closer to 41%. Meanwhile, in Lithuanian market, it is twice lower, so closer to 20%. Such structure clearly indicates open opportunities for the growth of own sales, which we, I believe, addressed well during the first half of this year. So in Lithuanian market, our own sales increased by 60%. Meanwhile, in Latvia and Estonia, we recorded own sales growth of 13%. Such growth was driven by a few things.
So first of all, by increasing the efficiency of our sales personnel, by introducing the customer service standard in sales process, and on top of that, utilizing customer relationship and management software, newly adopted software, in our company. On top of that, we were increasing our spending in marketing, which helped us to generate more leads for our own sales. In addition to that, Novaturas in e-commerce area remains the firm leader, with web traffic share in all Baltic countries being close to 50%. On top of that, we still believe that there is a huge growth potential in e-commerce. And that's why in the last twelve months, we were investing heavily in our development of a new web page. So we started at some point of time in summer last year.
This year, we are already live with the new web page, which was launched in August. It should enable our customers to plan, compare, and choose, ultimately to buy travel packages quicker and in a more convenient way. So we updated the performance of our web page, changed the designs, the user experience, and customer journey, during the sales process. Going forward, we plan to further invest into our web page, and we expect a huge growth potential there. Our expenses, operating expenses, excluding the commissions, increased by 30%, this year during Q2, roughly by EUR 630,000. However, majority of that increase is related to accruals. EUR 355,000 was related to staff-related accruals, which previously used to be accounted at end of the year.
Additionally, the remaining growth of operating expenses is attributable to the annual salary review process. Last but not least, our non-personnel related expenses increased by roughly 5%, and mainly it is related to our more active actions related to the brand awareness activities, where we joined various initiatives by promoting our, whether existing destinations or new destinations, and also we slightly increased our spendings in TV channels. Headcount increased only by 2.5% during H1 this year. I would like to end up my part of the presentation by giving you a forward-looking statement for the full year of 2023. We are not changing our annual volume and annual revenue guideline, so it remains flat versus the initially communicated guideline.
However, we are considerably improving our guideline for annual EBITDA and net profit. So newly updated guideline for EBITDA is EUR 6 million-EUR 8 million, and net profit guideline is EUR 4 million-EUR 6 million. On top of that, our main focus going forward would be maintaining the leading position in the market, also further diversifying the destinations, which we can clearly see are helping us to increase profitabilities. We would be further focusing on digitalization of our services, including web page. We would be trying to capture the growth potential which exists in our own sales channels. We would be further improving customer experience and also investing into the early bookings. At this stage, I would like to pass a word to our newly elected Chairman of the Board, Gediminas Almantas, who would present the board priorities.
Gediminas, the floor is yours.
Right. Good morning, from my side. The board started its term pretty recently, it was the end of June, this year. And, we understand our short mandate of two years, that means that we started very actively with our activities. The key focus of the new board for the end of this year is a review of the strategy. And, I mean, review here, not really a new strategy. Organization has a well-established strategy, but we would like to adjust it to new trends around the industry and put quite a strong condition on that.
So, as a first priority, we see the overall governance excellence of the board with the focus on people, organization, culture, and efficiency overall. So we're gonna also review the structure of the organization and put some elements for the additional motivation of the staff. Customer centricity is our second priority, and with this, I mean, customers as our partners and also the end customers. So, the CEO mentioned already that there is a process of collecting the data of the customer satisfaction, so we're really gonna use those data to improve that. And, with that, we're gonna go to also new products, diversification of the destinations. We'll look also into possibility of the new services.
So, going also from the very traditional markets of the organization to new potential. Digitalization as a priority goes beyond the web page, as also mentioned by the CEO. So that is kind of organizational part of the organizational culture that would allow us to use the data that we collect and transform it into the strategic decisions, delivering the value for the shareholders. So, mainly those are the elements that we're gonna look in adjusting the organizational strategy. And the autumn gonna be very active with this one. So we believe that in the middle of autumn, we're gonna also... We already gonna have our clear vision on the next steps and the implementation.
Those are the key messages from the board. Thank you.
Thank you very much, and we are finishing our presentation, and we can jump to the Q&A.
Thank you for the comprehensive presentation. Now we will proceed with the questions. Before that, I would like to remind that you can submit the questions in the question box in the bottom of your screen. So, the first question is: Could you please share your outlook on the tourism sector in Lithuania?
Yeah. So actually, as you know, our exposure to Lithuanian leisure market or tourism sector is quite low. I would say close to nil, so we don't feel very confident to observing this market.
Thank you for the answer. Next question is: What data Novaturas use to measure its market share? Could you name some data sources?
So, we look on market share from, I would say, three different perspectives. So first of all, on a operational level, on a weekly, daily, or even monthly basis, we look on seat supply, and that data is available through the public sources, through the web pages of our tour operators, where we can see the number of flights. We know what planes are used with number of seats there. So this is one measure, which is more operational, however, maybe not as accurate as it should be. Another measure is the passengers served.
You know, this data is typically observed by, let's say, various sources from some of the airports, such data exists, from some of the destinations, such data exists, or it is available in the financial statements of other competitors. The third measure, which we believe is the most accurate, is the revenue. This data can be checked in the financial statements of the competitors. However, it is available only once a year. We are the only tour operator in the market who is announcing financial results on a monthly basis, others only on annual basis.
Thank you for the answer. One more question has arrived. If any, what are the expected losses from the wildfires in Greece?
Those are minor, I would say so. So we did have some temporary effects, when those fires started. So I would say they are insignificant. And on top of that, we did manage these risks quite well, I believe, by allocating people from those affected areas. And also the feedback we received from the customers and also from our agencies is very positive, where we are mentioned as the tour operator who managed the communication and the whole processes the best, compared to all the competitors and all the market. And on top of that, I would say that, as it was a temporary effect, we also noticed the increase in sales in other destinations.
So basically, customers were switching from Greek, Greek Islands to primarily Bulgarian market, Bulgarian destination and others.
Thank you for the answer. Another question has arrived: Could you please provide some guidance on the dividends next year? Could we expect 70%-80% payout ratio from this year profits?
So we are not changing our dividend policies. It's still active, and that should be as a reference for guideline.
Thank you.
It is still subject, and maybe I say it's still subject to the decisions by the board and to certain decisions that need to be obtained from our lenders. However, as I said before, such a strong performance clearly indicates that our results are improving, and there is clear expectation for dividends.
Right. If I can add here also from the board, as mentioned by CEO, we see the good trends in the industry, overall in the aviation sector and the tourism sector. So, definitely, the board will do all the best to follow the guidelines for the dividends and meet the expectations of the shareholders.
Thank you for the answer. Currently, we are waiting for more questions. If you have some, please do not hesitate, but if you'll think of any additional ones, you can always reach out to Novaturas Investor Relations, and ask the question afterwards. So it looks like no additional questions are coming in. So as all of the questions are answered, on behalf of Novaturas and Nasdaq Vilnius, thank you, everyone. It was a pleasure, being with you today. The recording of the presentation will be available in the company's website and Nasdaq Baltic YouTube channel. Gentlemen, thank you for the very informative conference. Have a great day, and goodbye.
Thank you very much. Goodbye.
Thank you.