Good morning. Dear listeners, welcome to Novaturas strategy presentation for the year 2023-2025. I'm Emilia 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. 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 presenter, Chief Executive Officer of the company, Vitalij Rakovski. Mr. Rakovski, please, the floor is yours, and good luck.
Thank you very much. Hello, dear investors. It's a big pleasure to have you here, and thanks a lot for joining. Today is a really special day when we will present Novaturas Group's strategy for upcoming 3 years. Before jumping to the strategy presentation, I would like to give a very short snapshot about Novaturas in general, as there might be new investors joining this webinar and also potential investors joining this webinar, as this context is quite important. Very shortly, Novaturas is a holding company with direct operations in Lithuania, and also we are having two subsidiaries operating in Latvia and Estonia, 100% owned, who are executing the operations in those markets. Novaturas is already operational in the tour operator market for more than 20 years.
For a very long period of time, it is a leading tour operator in the Baltics, with sales which last year almost reached EUR 200 million. We're also listed in Nasdaq Vilnius and Warsaw Stock Exchanges. We have more than 6,000 shareholders. 6 of them are having more than 5% of shares. Also, we are having an experienced top management team with average experience between 15 to 20 years in various fields. By top management, I mean myself, the recently appointed CFO, our Chief Sales Officer, who joined the company last year, our long-term employee, who is the Chief Commercial Officer. Novaturas is market leader not only in offline, but also a market leader in online among other tour operators.
As you see, our market share in online is more than 50%. Our closest competitor are having quite huge gap versus Novaturas of almost 20% market share difference. Meanwhile, the other, the third market player is with approximately 10% market share, and the market player who recently entered the market last year is having negligible operations in online. This strong market position in online allows us to think that we are well-positioned to go further in this area as we believe that this is the future of travel. We as a tour operator are having the widest destination selection of more than 30 destinations.
Meanwhile, the closest competitor is having approximately 20 destinations, and the remaining two market players are having less than 10 destinations for selection. And this wide destination selection allows us, first of all, to diversify our revenue, and second of all, to have a extensive offering for our clients. The market outlook is positive, according to the publicly available information published by Euromonitor. Sun and Sea, or we can say leisure holidays, in the upcoming 5 years will remain the most popular holiday selection among other holiday types. So by other holiday types, I mean like cultural traveling, sports traveling, eco-traveling, etc. So despite the fact that those niche holiday types are growing, but still the forecast is such that Sun and Sea and leisure holiday destinations will dominate this market.
Second of all, Novaturas top destinations, which is Turkey and Greek Islands, were among the top recovered destinations after pandemics, which also helped us last year. Thirdly, destinations introduced by Novaturas, which is Montenegro in the Baltic markets. We introduced this destinations the first, and also the returning destination, which is Tunisia, are becoming the market trends. The fact that we're introducing this destinations or returning these destinations to the markets the first, shows that our know-how in this area is very good, and we can understand the tendencies properly and introduce them to the market the first. Also, we're having the wide customer base. Last year, we served almost 270,000 travelers. Also, we had almost 4 million unique web page users last year.
At the moment we are cooperating with more than 400 travel agencies in Pan Baltics. Our distribution and sales distribution is also well diversified, where 70% of our sales are coming from travel agencies. Meanwhile, the remaining 30 from our own sales, including our web platform. I would like to shortly overview the historical growth of Novaturas also in order to give the context to the listeners how Novaturas was developing during the years. The business was established for more than 20 years before. After the establishment of the business, Novaturas quite quickly launched the geographical expansion, and in 2 years after the launch of the operations, Novaturas entered Latin America, and after 3 years more, Novaturas entered Estonian market.
By doing so already in the year 2004, we became the market leader in the Baltics, it was noticed by the private equity investors from Poland, who in year 2007 acquired the majority stake of the company. In the coming 10 years, with ups and downs, Novaturas was continuously growing. In the period between 2017 and 2018, Novaturas experienced the best performance historically. Where the results were the highest. As the investment cycle of the private equity investor ended, they decided to exit the company through the IPO. That's how Novaturas became publicly listed company in 2018.
Going forward, in year 2020 and 2022, we had an extremely challenging period with the COVID pandemics and Ukrainian war crisis last year. It was not an easy period of time for the business. However, we survived and managed to solve this crisis successfully. It was even noticed by Nasdaq, where this year we were awarded as the most resilient company among other listed companies in Nasdaq Stock Exchange. Going forward, and then today, I'm gonna present you the new growth strategy for the years of 2023, 2025. A very short snapshot on financials. This year we are planning to generate revenue between EUR 210 million and EUR 225 million. EBITDA, we plan to have from EUR 3 million-EUR 5 million with a midpoint of EUR 4 million.
Net profit from EUR 1 million-EUR 3 million with a midpoint of EUR 2 million. We plan to keep the dividend policy as it was before from 70%-80% of dividend payout ratio. Our leverage policy would be quite conservative going forward. Our guideline is less than 2 times net debt to EBITDA. Historically, during the peak period, it was even below 1 time. During the difficult times, this level was between 3 and 6 times of net debt to EBITDA. Now I will jump to the Novaturas strategy presentation part, where our ultimate goal for our strategy is to make traveling together easy. In order to make it easy, we outlined for ourselves 4 main directions. First one is technology-driven direction. Second of all, it's customer experience-orientated direction.
Thirdly, it's sustainable traveling. Fourth, it's people engagement. I would like to begin with technology-driven direction, where our main focus would be on technology-driven solutions. Our strategic guideline here would be an EBITDA between EUR 5 million-EUR 8 million with a midpoint of EUR 6.5 million. In order to achieve such results, we outlined for ourselves three main priorities in this direction. First is our willingness to launch a new web page, which we are planning to do already in the second quarter of this year. The rationale behind that is that the existing web page is already outdated. The architecture is also outdated, which was developed more than 10 years ago. Which means that our web page requires significant refurbishments. We will be changing absolutely customer experience.
We would be changing the design of the web page, and we would be also improving the performance speed. All in all, these actions should enable us to convert a much higher portion of our visitors in the web page. As you saw in the beginning, the potential there is huge of almost 4 million visitors annually. Second, our priority would be our orientation towards the dynamic packaging. By introducing this solution, we want to extend our destination selection, and also we want to extend our product selection. What I mean by dynamic packaging is the following. First of all, we're gonna be integrating ourselves with flight aggregators, regular flight aggregators. Flight aggregators who are aggregating low-cost carriers. On the other side, we would be also integrating ourselves with hotel bed banks.
By doing so, we would be able dynamically to pack various tours, we would be able to offer much wider selection to our clients, which would ultimately lead us to revenue increase. The third priority in this direction would be our orientation towards the algorithmic and automated pricing. The current market situation is extremely dynamic. Moreover, the competition is very high. That's why our timely reaction with the prices and accurate reaction with the prices is very much needed. By doing so, we would basically achieve two goals. The first, we would be able to offer better prices to our customers. Secondly, we believe that we would be able to maximize the returns to the shareholders. Our second direction is customer experience-orientated direction, where we would aim to create hassle-free traveling experience to our clients.
The strategic guideline here would be our client net promoter score of more than 50. Here we have 5 priorities. First is reliable aviation, where we would be focusing on partnerships with aviation companies who would be putting a lot of attention towards the punctuality. Who would be putting attention towards qualitative in-flight services, and who would have strong, sustainable aviation agenda. Second priority would be the refreshment, timely refreshment of our hotels selection. We would be updating our hotel selection with new trendy hotels, and also, removing those hotels who have a negative client feedback. On top of that, of course, we would be mixing the traditional contracting business model, which we applied before, with the new opportunities arising with integrations of various bed banks.
That would allow us to quite actively and quickly to adapt our hotel supply to our client needs. Our third priority is our orientation towards the customer experience, mapping and journey. We're gonna remap our customer journey, and we will pinpoint those areas where the most qualitative improvements are needed. The certain actions would be set up in those areas. In the fourth priority, which is the extension of extra services, we would be orientating ourselves into extending various additional services which our clients are willing to have during their traveling time. Current market trends are showing that the customers are caring to have three things. First of all is personalization, second of all, it's convenience, and thirdly, it's security. These are the main tendencies what customers are saying, what is needed for them.
We already started to move towards this direction by introducing lowest price guarantee in our early booking sales process. We've also introduced additional punctuality guarantee in one of our markets. We are also piloting the express transfer in one of our destinations, which should allow our customers to save time on transfer. These and similar types of services would be of our attention going forward. This should allow us to upsell more and increase sales, and we believe increase profitability. The last priority in this direction is the diversification of sales channels. We will be not only investing into our reservation system, which is heavily used by our travel agencies. We would be definitely introducing new functionalities and updating the existing ones.
Also, with this priority, we would like to empower the development of our own sales through the technological advancements. At this moment, we are actively developing our customer relationship management system. We're also heavily investing into the development of customer service standard in sales process. This and similar types of initiatives should enable us to convert much higher number of customers into real sales. Our third direction is the sustainable travel direction, and we want to act with highest care for our planet. The strategic guideline here is the decrease of CO2 emissions. I must admit that this area, not only for us, but for the whole market is quite new. However, being as a market leader, we would like to take here initiative and to lead this direction, the market.
We are planning three main priorities in this direction for ourselves. First is the reduction of CO₂ emissions in aviation. We already started this journey by switching into new generation airplane in Estonian market. We are also extending our partnership and cooperation with airBaltic in Latvian market, where airBaltic is having one of the newest fleets in the market. Those two actions are strongly contributing towards CO₂ emission reduction. Again, this and similar type of initiatives would be of our attention going forward. Our second priority is the promotion of sustainable production. We for sure are noticing that our clients are showing interest in sustainable traveling topic in general. However, they lack information, they lack education, and they lack knowledge.
We also know that some hotels are investing more into the sustainability, meanwhile, others are investing less. Our ultimate goal here would be to outline and to promote those hotels who do more in this area. In case our clients would be interested in this kind of hotels, they would be able to find it in our selection. Last but not least, is our dedication towards the sustainable traveling education. It is clearly noticed by various researchers that more than 80% of respondents are curious about the sustainable traveling. Meanwhile, only minority of them do have knowledge of how to have such kind of services.
That's why we're taking the leadership in this area, and we will be educating, first of all our clients, second of all, our partners, and thirdly, of course, ourselves. Our last direction is people engagement. It is probably more than in any other industry, important to dedicate attention towards people, as the traveling industry is extremely dependent on people. Our strategic guideline here is employee net promoter score of more than 30, and we have three main priorities in this direction. First is effective organizational structure. During the last year and going forward, we were already doing huge changes within the organizational structure by consolidating certain functions, separating the others, introducing new competencies to the company. By this, we want to create such organizational structure which would be empowered to deliver the current strategy which I'm presenting.
Our second priority is the talent retention. To put it into the context, I would like to say that, probably Novaturas is the only tour operator in the Baltics who has full know-how resources here in the Baltics, in Lithuania in particular. Meanwhile, the other tour operators, I would dare to say, are having limited operations and quite significant part of their know-how is situated somewhere outside the Baltic countries. That's why to acquire the know-how and knowledge from the market is not so easy, and we want to grow our know-how, our expertise from the inside. Thus, it is very important to put attention towards the talent retention. What I mean by that, it means more attention towards identification of those people, training those people, and preparing them for future leadership.
Our last priority in this area is the people engagement. Here we would invest more into learning and development of our employees. We would be improving our motivational system, and we would be also improving our onboarding process, which is extremely crucial in order to retain people. These are the main priorities in terms of people engagement. At this stage, I would stop and give time for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your presentation. Indeed, let's proceed with the Q&A. I have a few questions now in the Q&A box, but I would like to remind all the attendees that you can send in your questions in the Q&A box of your screen, and I will read them out loud. The questions can be sent anonymously too. Let's begin. The first question would be as following: Will Novaturas stay profitable if there will be any sharp price jumps of aviation fuel? Let's say if the oil price rises to 110, 150 USD per barrel level? Thank you.
This year, we already hatched 95% of our fuel expenses exposure. Everything what is sold in advance for future period is hedged, so we're not having this risk anymore compared to the last year. This is first thing. Second, thing is that in case fuel prices would rise up again, our, of course, package prices would increase again, and we would not be, how to say, accepting this risk on into our P&L. Directly answering the question, yes, we would stay profitable.
Thank you very much. What is the Novaturas profit target for the future years?
Yeah. That's what I presented in one of the guidelines. From EUR 5 million-EUR 8 million of EBITDA, with a midpoint of EUR 6.5 million.
Thank you very much. It seems that we have the last question, so please, if you have questions, send it in now. The question would be: Will Novaturas sell shares of Novaturas for Novaturas employees? If so, what will be the price per unit and when will it happened?
Yes. maybe I might interpret the question differently, but currently all Novaturas employees already became the share option holders of Novaturas shares. We did it last year in the beginning of this year. Going forward, those people who would retain for at least 3 years would be able to execute their share options and would become the shareholders of Novaturas. Our rationale behind this decision was very simple: to involve the people into the one common goal which we have, the increase of share price, and through share options we are exactly executing that. We're having few areas through which we encourage people to select the share options. One is through the, let's say, loyalty.
The longer people work in the company, the more shares, share options they can get. Also, in their performance, evaluation and through bonuses, our employees can select how, in which way they want to receive the bonus. It's whether cash or share options. Share options are having much higher coefficient for bonuses.
Thank you very much. We have one more question. Could you please describe the new functionality of your webpage?
Probably I would repeat that the user experience would be different, so it would be shorter, much more convenient. The design itself would change. The speed of the webpage, which is currently not acceptable or maybe not enough speed we have in the webpage, should change substantially. It would be adaptable to the mobile, easier than it is currently. All those functionalities should contribute to the higher conversion rate. I would probably outline that this development and these improvements are not the final improvements. This is only the first stage of our webpage development. Going forward, we would be developing a future roadmap of what we want to have there additionally.
Mm-hmm. Thank you very much. Will the dividend policy remain the same in the new strategy period? Thank you.
Yes.
All right. Let's proceed. It seems that we have the last question. Please send in your questions if you have some. The question would be: What is the average cycle EBITDA margin for the market leader in your sector, in your opinion, and what are the main drivers for the margin growth?
I would say that the margin is from 3%-5% is something which is what is what is achievable and what is a benchmark in the market. The driver for our margin improvements are few. First is the increase of web sales. Second of all, increase of own sales. Thirdly, algorithmic pricing, which according to various researchers, improves the profitability quite significantly versus the manual pricing process. Additional profitability should come through the sale and through the expansion of extra services which are typically having much higher profitability than the tour package. Those would be probably the main ones.
Thank you. Could you please comment, if you think about share buyback in addition to dividends?
It is one of the considerations which is on the table during the board and board discussions, but it's not yet, let's say, so decided, but it's one of the considerations, dividends versus share buyback. Yes.
Thank you very much. It seems that it's again the last question for today. What is the future plan regarding listing on Warsaw Stock Exchange? Any plans to delist from there?
Currently, there are no decisions made in terms of this question. Currently we are remaining.
Thank you. As all the questions are answered, on behalf of Novaturas and Nasdaq Vilnius, thank you everyone for joining us today. The recording will be available for rewatch. Dear management, thank you once again for the presentation and interesting Q&A session. Have a good day, everyone, and goodbye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.