Good afternoon, dear listeners. Welcome to Novaturas meeting with investors. I'm Emilija from Nasdaq Vilnius, 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, will be available upon the request. As always, I encourage every one of you to share your questions in the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen, you can submit them either anonymously or with your name. With that said, I am pleased to introduce today's presenters, CEO of the company, Vitalij Rakovski, CFO, Arūnas Žilys. Dear guests, please, the floor is yours, good luck.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello, dear investors. It's a big pleasure to have you all here. Let's start our presentation for the full year of 2022. To begin with, I would like to share with you the good news, which we had this month when Novaturas was recognized by Nasdaq for excellence in overcoming current challenges. We won The Challenge of the Year award, which is, I think, a huge recognition for full team who really did a lot of efforts by overcoming those challenges during the pandemic years and also afterwards. Also, jumping to the year 2022, I believe that we demonstrated quite good resilience and also adaptability towards the situation in the market.
Despite the extremely challenging first half of the year, where we generated a negative EBITDA of EUR 0.8 million, we managed to finish full year with EUR 1 million EBITDA plus. Also, we almost managed to neutralize all the net loss which we incurred in the first half of the year when our net loss was minus EUR 1.7 million. Meanwhile, full year result is minus EUR 0.2 million. Basically, in the second half of the year, we earned EUR 1.5 million in profits, which is considerable improvement versus the second half of the year in year 2021. I would outline a few things which helped us to improve.
First of all is the fact that we introduced a fuel tax, which helped to significantly reduce the losses due to the jet fuel price spikes. It's approximately EUR 1.6 million-EUR 1.7 million of additional funds which were gathered from the customers. Second of all, once we noticed that there is a shift in demand after the war started, we adjusted our capacities quite substantially and quite fast, which also allowed us to avoid a lot of last minute sales.
Thirdly, when we saw the opportunity in the market of potential takeover of Kidy Tour bookings, we embraced this opportunity and also managed to increase our volumes by executing that transaction when we overtook all the bookings from Kidy Tour, who later on decided to terminate their operations. All those things actually allowed us to strongly recover during the second half of the year and substantially decrease the losses coming from the first half of the year. It is important to note that due to the IFRS 15 adjustments in the Q4 , which had a negative effect coming to this year of EUR 370,000. This is basically a movement of profit between the periods.
The same equivalent amount would be moved to this year, January results. Without this adjustment, we would be even net profit positive of EUR 150,000. Customers served this year, last year, we almost reached EUR 200 million, it's approximately up to 50% increase versus last year and even 10% above 2019 levels. Meanwhile, talking about customers served, we reached 267,000 of customers served. It's still slightly below the pre-pandemic levels of 294,000. However, the gap is indeed very small. Just a quick reminder that in 2019, it was a record year in terms of customers served for Novaturas.
We are very close to those record years last year. In terms of competition in the market, I would say so that last year was quite dynamic. First of all three Baltic large tour operator was sanctioned and basically stopped the operations in the Baltic markets. Second of all, we saw also the discontinuation of operations by Kidy Tour, which I mentioned before. Thirdly, we saw a new market entrance coming from Join UP!, which is a Ukrainian tour operator. There was quite a lot of movement in the market. Currently, I would say so that Join UP! is still very active in the market in terms of capacity and in terms of pricing. Prices levels are still very aggressive.
Now, despite that with Novaturas in all the three Baltic countries maintained our market leader position in the Baltics in terms of capacities. Also, we even iincreased the gap from the nearest competitor, which is also a good news. Jumping to few things in terms of our financial liabilities. I would like to say one thing that during year 2022, we managed to decrease our net debt quite substantially. Almost, we cut our net debt almost half. Full effect, P&L effect of these actions should be visible in year 2023.
Also, we did quite huge improvements in aviation space. From the beginning of December last year, we changed our aircraft in Estonia from the old generation plane to the new generation plane. We would be using one plane for full year this year. There are few advantages which I would like to outline. First of all, this plane has more seats available by approximately 5%, but also it is much more fuel efficient. The fuel savings are up to 15%. All in all that should give us quite huge improvements in CO2 emissions. We are estimating that it could be up to 18% CO2 savings.
In terms of annual tons, equivalent tons of CO2, it should be from 5,000-6,000 tons. This is, I would say the first huge step towards our sustainability strategy and all sustainability agenda. Also a few things to be mentioned about the early bookings and how we are performing so far. Last year in October, we launched our early bookings for the full summer. This year we did a few new things. First that we started with the full selection of destinations. Second of all, we also introduced the Lowest Price Guarantee to the market, which was quite unique. Last but not least, we also offered quite extensive extra services packages available for our clients.
All of that, of course, the recovery of the travel sector in general, allows us to already now generate significantly more early bookings than we had in year 2021. Also looking on the tendencies which are visible from year, from the beginning of the year 2023, we see that we are even overcoming year 2019. Also, which is which is promising is the sales performance during the tourism fairs. I would like to say that the tourism fair week is the most intensive sales week during the whole year. They are typically held in different Baltic countries in the end of January, middle February. This year it was an extremely successful week for us.
It was a record high week in historically, where our sales were 40% more than we did last year, even 20% more than in 2019, which was a record year as well. This is, these two things going forward are quite promising. Jumping to the performance by the quarters. Here, I would say that tendencies are very similar, looking on performance quarter by quarter. The gap versus 2019 in terms of revenue and number of passengers is quite stable. We are still up to 10% below 2019 levels. If to jump to our performance by the markets, here we should probably say that we did quite good in Lithuanian market and also in Latvian market.
Meanwhile, in Estonian market, we did have some challenges, competitive challenges and also operational challenges related to the punctuality of our flights. It was a temporary, let's say, obstacle for us to operate, especially during the summer season. It was one of the reasons why we decided to change the airplane and also to do other needed actions to improve the quality. We already saw some improvements in the year-end. However, the full effect of those changes should be visible in year 2023. Meanwhile, talking about the Lithuanian and Latvian markets. We in Latvian market, I'm happy to share that our we returned to the market leader position and our gap versus the closest competitor is very significant. We're a very clear market leader in Latvian market.
In Lithuanian market we are very closely sharing market leader position with the second largest player. In terms of sales distribution among the destinations. Turkey remained our number one destination as it still offers best value for money proposition for our customers. We are intensively investing into other destinations. First of all, last year we had two unique destinations, which is Montenegro and Tunisia. Where we did quite good. This year our capacities there are even further increasing quite substantially. Despite the fact that the competition in these destinations from this year already is existing. We believe that we are very well positioned to perform well in those markets as we have quite a lot of, let's say, securities in the hotels where we operate.
This is the best selling hotels, so we very well understand what customer wants and what are their wishes. This is first thing. Second of all is that we believe that we are quite strong in terms of our aviation costs. This is about the Montenegro and Tunisia, and also we are further increasing our, let's say, operations in the long hauls. We are observing already a while, the increasing demand towards those destinations. Already last year we increased our volumes, but going forward we plan to do so even more. Also, we further keep our widest destination selection in the market. As you see, the gap among the second-largest player in the market is still quite high. We are operating in more than 30 destinations during the year.
If to look on the e-commerce performance, which is also important for us as a tour operator, as a leading tour operator. Our web traffic share remains quite high as it was during the full year 2022. More than 50% of web traffic share among three largest tour operators is attributable to Novaturas in all Baltic countries. Our web pages in all Baltic countries were visited by almost 4 million unique users, which is 44% more than we had in year 2021. Also, we would like to outline our sales distribution between the sales channels. Here we quite substantially increased our position in Latvian market, where our own sales share increased up to 40% when before it was closer to 30%.
We basically used the market situation where the largest agency decided to diminish their operations and later on to diminish them up to almost up to zero. That allowed us to increase our own sales share quite substantially. Meanwhile, in Lithuania and in Estonia, our distribution between the sales channels remained quite stable. In terms of efficiency and productivity, load factor in the Q4 was 96% plus. For the full year it was 94%. Basically it's even 2% load factor more than it was in year 2021. Still not maybe the perfect load factor which we would like to have, which is 95% and even more, but the tendency is quite positive.
Second of all, our sales profit per pax for this year was basically by 25% lower than we had in year 2021. The reasons behind are, I would say the same as we have for the EBITDA performance. First, and the biggest impact is the jet fuel price spikes, which were not fully hedged, and that basically generated significant losses for our operations. Second of all, I would say that as you see in the Q4, we are also slightly below than we had the sales profit per pax last year. The reasons behind that are, first is that the competition in Egypt was quite high this year. When I say this year, I mean the year 2022.
The reason behind that is the new market entry made by Join UP!. The competition is intensive, and we want to keep our market share, and that's why our profitability is slightly below year 2021 levels. Second of all, we still have this IFRS 15 impact, which also impacted our sales profit per pax. In terms of operating expenses, here the tendency during the year kept the same. Every quarter we were slightly below even to 2019 levels, despite the very high inflation in the Baltic markets. However, how I would say our operational efficiency measures allows us to be even below to 2019 levels and serve almost the same number of customers which we did in the year 2019.
From the operational excellence point of view, I would say so that we are doing very well. Our sales and marketing expenses are, let's say, so slightly already above to 19 levels as basically operations are back on track. The main increase here is coming not from marketing expenses, but from sales personnel expenses as we were expanding our own sales teams in all Baltic markets, which basically resulted in increase in sales. Yeah. Last but not least, and maybe probably the most important, is that forward-looking statements which we have for year 2023. Four things we would like to say. First of all, volumes.
In terms of volumes, we're not planning anything significantly above year 2022, so we are targeting from 270,000 to 290,000 passengers served. In terms of revenue from EUR 210 million to EUR 225 million, which should contribute to the EBITDA result from EUR 3 million to EUR 5 million, so substantially more than we had this year of EUR 1 million. To the net profit, it should be from EUR 1 million to EUR 3 million. Other qualitative things which I would like to outline for the year 2023 are the following.
First of all is that we would still be willing to maintain our market leader position in the market in terms of capacities, and also we would be further enhancing and searching for opportunities to launch whether new destinations or returning destinations, and we would be further investing in the long-haul destinations. Second of all, we would be investing and putting a lot of attention into the digital agenda, and we would be introducing new features, new opportunities and new services in terms of digitalization.
Thirdly, we would continue to improve our customer experience, and also we would be willing to shift our customer behavior towards the early bookings, similarly as we did this year with Lowest Price Guarantee services and all other, let's say, extra services which are motivating the clients to choose early their holidays than move them to the last minutes. We want to continue this trend. Last but not least, we would also be willing to upsell more our passengers going forward. Last but not least, this year, in year 2022, we already did quite a lot of improvements relating to our dynamic pricing.
However, we're just starting this journey, and going forward, we will be searching for new opportunities how to make our pricing more algorithmical, I would say so, and also going forward, to, how to say, to use various AI technologies and machine learning technologies. Last but not least, this year, we would be using much more intensively hedging instruments and would be hedging our forex exposure and jet fuel price fluctuation exposure. At this moment I would stop and leave a time for questions.
Thank you very much for the presentation. Indeed, now we will proceed with the Q&A session. Before that, I would like to remind all the attendees that you can send in your questions in the Q&A box of your screen, and you can send them anonymously too. Let's begin then. The first question would be as following: Could you please indicate how many people Novaturas have by the end of 2022? Thank you.
It's approximately 200. Roughly, we have 100 employees in Lithuania, then approximately 20 in Latvia and Estonia each, and also we have around 60 employees in the destinations.
Thank you very much. Let's proceed. The next question would be: Is Novaturas happy with the current funding structure, and are there any plans to redeem EUR 5 million bond this year?
I would leave this probably for Arūnas.
Yes. Hello. Hello, everyone. Thank you for this question. Of course, for this moment, we are quite happy with our funding structure. However, as our results are improving with every quarters, we are opening another sources of financing with more beneficial conditions. Get back to the question, are there plans to redeem EUR 5 million bond? It depends on our further cash flow as this bond is until 2027, year 2027, with quite favorable conditions. For this short period, we do not see a short-term plans to redeem it.
Thank you for your answer. Let's continue. The next question would be: Given the announced 2023 targets, what sales profit per pax does that imply versus EUR 30 per pax last year?
I can also answer that. As Vitalij indicated in last slide, our initial EBITDA goal is EUR 3 million-EUR 5 million. What does it mean that we need at least EUR 40 per pax in sales profit. This amount should be not smaller than in 2019, as it was EUR 40 per pax.
Thank you. The next question is regarding the dividends. If 2023 targets are met, would that give a way for the dividends?
Yes. According our dividend policy, we, if everything will be reached according to our plan, it would be year that we will pay the dividends for 2003.
Thank you. We are moving quite fast, so I would like to take a chance and 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 next question is: Could you please provide a bit more details on supplementary services as ways to improve sales?
Yeah. As an example, there is services and new services introduced last year. This is the Lowest Price Guarantee. Also, there is a so-called flexibility service, where you can change your booking, or you can change your hotel with a certain additional supplementary fee. Also there is a new service introduced in our largest destination in Antalya, where we have an express transfer. This is not a private transfer but an express transfer where, I would say, a few passengers can join and with very limited number of stops come to their hotels. This kind of services we are talking when we say about the supplementary services.
Thank you very much for the clarification. Let's continue. According to IFRS 15, the profit of EUR 670,000 from December 2022 was moved to this year, January. Could you please provide more details?
Yes, I would like to be very brief because it's technicalities in the accounting procedures. The majority, there are two streams of profit that moved to January 2023. First is when we book our holiday in a year, we book by the... It begin. If this holiday starts in, let's say, December 28th, three days, profits from those three days go to 2022, and the remaining part of the profit goes to the January. This is first stream. Another stream that commissions cost incurred in January 2023 as incremental costs are backwarded to 2022 year. What does it mean?
This year, our package price is significantly higher as it was last year. This significant amount. This amount is significantly higher than it was last year's.
Thank you very much for the explanation. Let's continue. The next question is: What percentage from revenue it would take for Novaturas to be fully hedged from oil price changes?
The jet fuel oil typically is around 17%, up to 20% of our revenue. The total amount is around EUR 40 million. If you would like to hedge all amount, this will be the number.
Thank you. What are your plans or policy according hedging for 2023?
Now we have favorable conditions when we have a foundation in jet fuel price, yet, we will still improve our hedging positions and try to hedge significant amount of upcoming summer season amounts. It should be between 30% and 60% of summer season.
Thank you very much. I would like to take a chance and remind everyone that all the attendees are welcome to send in your questions in the Q&A box of your screen, and you can send anonymously too. The next question that we received is: Can you say what are the company's expectations for 2023 in terms of customers, revenue, and profit?
I think it was answered during the forward-looking statement. From EUR 270,000-EUR 290,000 taxes. Revenue, EUR 210-EUR 225. EBITDA, EUR 3 million-EUR 5 million. Net profit, EUR 1 million-EUR 3 million.
Thank you. another attendee is thanking you for the presentation and, asks you to explain the jump of cost of sales in Q4 of 2022 compared to the previous quarter. Thank you.
Probably, Arūnas, you should unmute yourself.
Sorry. Yes. As I mentioned in the previous question, that a significant amount is according to IFRS, when a larger portion of commissions was transferred from 2003 to 2022. The major difference for comparing to last year is this. Of course, this year we are having a full team, bigger program, and that's how we proportionally increased our sales cost.
Thank you very much. As I see that we have two questions remaining, I would like to encourage all the attendees that you are welcome to send in your questions if your question hasn't been discussed yet. The next question would be: In terms of Q4 revenue that grew 30% compared to Q4 in 2021, while sale commission expenses increased three times, could you please explain the difference?
Yeah. I have a little bit answered before, previously.
Mm-hmm. Thank you. Then, it seems that the last question for today is, unless we receive more, is: What is your long-term profit per pax target? Is it EUR 50, EUR 70, or EUR 80?
I would say that, in the short mid term, from EUR 50- EUR 70 . In the long term, probably it could be in the similar range or even higher.
Thank you very much. It seems that we covered all the questions for today. On behalf of Novaturas and Nasdaq Vilnius, thank you everyone for joining us. Dear Management, thank you very much for the presentation. Attendees, thank you very much for the questions. Have a good evening, everyone, and goodbye.
Thank you. Goodbye.