Flughafen Wien AG

set of results for 2024. So we saw substantial growth in passenger numbers, lower energy costs and positive interest income improving our financial results. in terms of revenue we saw 16.6 plus and the the additional revenue could also be passed through to ebitda and and net doubt so ebitda margin was even slightly above the figures of Q123 and was at 37.8%. Financial results have been positive. Are aware that we have repaid our EIV loan last year. So the burden of interest is now removed and we will see also for the full year a positive financial result. Passenger numbers went up 13.8% and we have to interpret all these figures against the fact that the first quarter, 23, still was rather weak. So we see also a positive pace effect. And we had with the 29th of February, one additional day that is also a part of the results. For the full year outlook, we have slightly improved our financial guidance. And from today's perspective, we are optimistic to see a turnover of one billion or slightly above. and an ebda of more than 400 billion and our net profit should increase over 220 billion euros and these figures are on the background that we expect a good level of traffic also in the summer months You have maybe seen the very aggressive situation between Austrian Airlines and the substantial and severe labor conflict there, including 36 hours of strike. But finally, collective agreement could be found and the good side of it is that now for three years there is an industrial peace obligation so no action is allowed within this period and I think the compromise that was reached is also financially viable for Austrian Airlines and is not destroying their business model as it was initially expected, unfortunately, due to the very, very high and unsound proposal from the Labour side. The airport itself has also successfully concluded the bargaining about a collective agreement starting from 1st of May 24 until end of April 25 and we fortunately had no labor conflict at all. And it was cordially agreed to increase wages by 7%. And it is a positive signal, I think, for a very functioning social partnership within our company. If you look at the earnings improvement and the financial results in detail, you see that our net profit for the period went up from 25 to 37 million. And that the net profit after non-controlling interest was 33.5.

compared with 23 last year.

Financial results at 3.8 million positive and this will also be the case for the full year. Our cash flow from operating activities ended up with 68.2 billion that is slightly below last year's figures and is the effect of the payout of of the incentives for airlines And some of them have not only been higher, because also traffic was growing, but have been also paid earlier compared to the first quarter in 2023. And if you look at our capex, you see that what was announced is now realized so we had 35 million in the first quarter which is substantially higher than it was last year despite all that we saw an increase in our net position to 393 million and also a better equity From the CAPEX side, the main expense was due to the intensive construction phase now of our terminal project. You are aware of our dividend proposal and the AGM should follow this proposal beginning of June. So to distribute the dividend of 1.32 per share for 23. And if you look at our financial side, we can finance the capex out of our cash flow and it would not be necessary to raise debt in the coming periods. One question we received in advance was about the further development of personal costs. Yes, we will see on the expense side a substantial plus in personal expenses that is related on one hand to the collective agreements. We had two of them last year and also of additional employees. So the number of employees is up at roughly 8.3%. compared to the same period in 2023 and this is also an effect of additional traffic and higher passenger rates and will lead finally for the full year to an increase in personal expenses of somewhere 13 to 15 percent for our company. What is remarkable is that energy costs went down in the first quarter and we could profit also from our own production and depreciation was more or less the same other operating expenses went up due to higher maintenance expenses in the period of corona we have saved money by reducing maintenance and now have to to additional work also throughout 2024 and this is reflected in the respective figures. If we continue to our key projects, then we have to look at our third runway project where the evaluation for the project by our teams is underway. The realization decision can be expected most likely in 2026 and it will depend on traffic development passenger volumes flight movements and also the expectable profitability how the decision will be made what is recently coming up is a decision of the federal administrative court uh we have received the permission by the authority to postpone the construction period for phase one to the 30th of june of 33. uh now the federal administration from our perspective unlawfully and reduce these data to 2030 as from our point of view is clearly contradicting the existing legal framework of the respective law we will appeal against this decision to administrative court and we don't see immediate effects of the decision for our procedure, even if what I think is very, very unlikely, the highest administrative court would accept the decision of the administrative court. So the immediate effect of this decision is very limited. The biggest project in realization is our terminal expansion project. And it is now under intense construction work. And it's on time and within budget. and should be finalized in 27. also impulsion started operations at the airport they are producing beyond propulsion engines for satellites and they start with production right now So they are producing one unit per day and their plan is to triple production the next month and also their footprint on the airport. And their start now is accompanied by the first European Space Agency VLAB that is established on Vienna airport. There will be eight of them throughout Europe. The first now was established in Vienna on our airport and it is financed by the federal country of Lower Austria and the federal government with 12 million euros to support other companies in their startup

for base activities.

We have now received the license for an additional PV park with a 10 megawatt peak for our airfield in Bad Schleslau. And we are finalizing another peak park on Vienna airport of three megawatt peak and it will start production just next week. We are also in the final phase of the construction of a fast electric charging station at our airport and it should be operational end of June. and we are going to have the groundbreaking ceremony of our third hotel and finalized within the next 18 months so you see there are many projects underway and things are progressing positively and based on that as already mentioned We have slightly improved our financial guidance for 2024, and I repeat, with revenues at or above 1 billion, EBITDA more than 400 million per group, net profit more than 220 million, and CapEx higher than 200 million. So that's from my side, and I hand over to Julian.

Hi, good afternoon. I would like to continue with the traffic results. As Günter already reported, I think we had a strong first quarter in the group, driving our financial results, plus 13.8%. Q1 plus 6.5% in April, especially in Malta, extremely strong growth in the first quarter, which will normalize now a bit over summer. Yeah, but overall, I think we can be very happy with the results so far. Obviously, in April, we felt some effects of the strike of Austrian Airlines and the staff meetings they had prior to the strike. Overall, even in our case, the damage was probably for the whole company, roughly 2 million euros. And I think Austria will see now through May still a bit of a negative impact on passenger numbers. Overall, they are still growing. And one should not forget that we still have the war in Ukraine, so no passengers from Russia and Ukraine and Belarus. significant reduction in traffic from Tel Aviv, which on its own was before the 7th of October, 2% of our overall passenger numbers. So I think given this dense geopolitical situation, I think we can be very happy with the traffic figures. Tel Aviv, which has an impact on Egypt and Amman as well, still overall only minus 4.4% versus last year, market share of 7.1% to the Middle East. Far East is growing, although still on a relatively Still quite behind 2019 figures. Western Europe, very strong, plus nearly 14%. Eastern Europe, plus 5.7%. North America, plus 14.5%. So I think overall still really good numbers. Compared to 2019, I think the biggest disappointment is still Germany, followed by Switzerland. both roughly 30% below 2019. So to look at it from the positive side, lots of room for growth in the future. Now Berlin has significantly more capacity because of Eurovision opening. Berlin, but overall still quite reduced capacity and therefore demand from Germany.

Let's continue.

I think what probably we jumped over was traffic development in April, and I did not mention cargo. Cargo is the positive surprise, I have to say, plus 15%, and no, this is not a mistake. Q1 and April had exactly the same growth rate, plus 15.6%, so that's really positive. I think what we see as well is that to a certain extent, the ratio between passengers and flight movements is normalizing. If you look at April, plus 6% passenger growth, plus 6% flight movements. So I think we see that in terms of seed load factor, we probably reached a certain peak last year.

Summer looks good.

Up to 60 airlines with roughly 190 destinations in 67 countries, Austrian 121 destinations, New, Boston, Bremen, Tiflis, 70 stationed aircraft, Ryanair 79 destinations, 19 stationed aircraft, and Wizz Air, 28 destinations, five station aircraft. Wizz is obviously the most impacted from the engine troubles. So I would expect them to make up for that next year in 2026. So I'm sure there will be quite some growth from Wizz Air in the years to come. I think Ryanair, slow growth, but on a high basis. So I'm pretty happy with the development of our three biggest carriers here in Vienna. And as I said, Euro Wins, additional 11 frequencies to Berlin, Sun Express growing, Anna is coming back, Hainan is coming back. So overall, slowly but surely, East Asia is coming back as well. We focus a lot on quality with an ongoing high punctuality. In January, February, we were the third most punctual European hub with more than 25 million passengers. I think that's really, really positive. We have obviously a lot of competition within the Lufthansa Group, so Brussels, Zurich, Frankfurt, Munich, This year so far, in every single week, Vienna was the most punctual airport, Austrian Airlines the most punctual airline of Lufthansa Group, so I think this is really proof of the high quality we deliver to our airline customers. But not only for Austrian, as well for Ryanair in February, we were the most punctual hub in the Ryanair network. So also probably BASE would be a better name than hub. So I think that the cooperation with Ryanair in this respect works very well as well. We opened our VIP terminal in February which came very nice. We got awarded by Priority Pass for the best global lounge of the year. This was an award which really made us proud. Priority Pass is our biggest customer in our lounge and Probably everybody knows them. So they really have a global exposure. So we were very happy with this achievement. Coming to our traffic forecast for 2024, we stick to our about 30 million. So you might ask yourself, why didn't we change the passenger forecast, but improved our guidance, our financial guidance? We still feel that we are within our passenger guidance from January. As I said in January, about 30 million to us means something between 29 and 31 million passengers. From today's point of view, we are probably a bit closer to the 31 into the 29 or significantly closer to the 31. so, somewhere between 30 and 31, but even the, the, the difficult geopolitical situation, um, I think it's too soon to really be overly optimistic. I think by mid-July, end-July, we will have a much, much better picture. And if there's any need to update our guidance regarding the passenger numbers, we will do that in our H1 session. But from today's point of view, we are still covered with about 30 million passengers. Regarding seat capacity and bookings for summer, my best guess is that we are roughly four or five percent increase in seat capacity in the summer months. Bookings seem to be good, so what I've heard from our main customers, I think everybody so far seems to be happy with the bookings for summer, although obviously they still have to come in. And the ticket price level is somewhat stagnating on a high level. A few words regarding the segment results. A major drive of Q1 positive results was the airport segment from 9.2 million EBIT to 18.6 million EBIT in Q1. Passenger related fees very significant increasing by 23%. Overall, I expect a net revenue per passenger for this year roughly around 15.5 euros. This is an increase of roughly 20% over 2022, if I'm not mistaken. let me check that quickly i'll i'll check it out and and let you know um in in a couple of minutes uh yeah it's it's over 22 in the last two years. So we have an increase of roughly 20% in net revenue in airport charges per passenger over 2022. Regarding our We will go back to our old model, the price cap model in 2026. So in 2025, we will increase our airport charges according to inflation until the end of July. So we expect something around 4% airport charges increased by January 2025. And then in 2026, we will go back to the formula. It's difficult to judge today what that would mean because obviously it depends on the growth we see until mid of 2025 plus the inflation until mid 2025. But my best guess would be that we will have to reduce our airport charges then by 3, 4, 4.5%. As I said, lots of question marks around that, but from today's perspective, I think this would be a sensible forecast. Handling and security services had a result which was not as good as last year's results. We had a slightly negative EBIT, mainly due to the warm winter in ground handling The wind operation and de-icing is a very important factor in our results. But we will, both in security and ground handling, we will make up for that loss due to strong traffic in the quarters to come. So we expect to see a clear positive EBIT at the end of the year in this segment as well. Coming to retail and properties, I think mainly parking and centre management and hospitality did very, very well. Centre management and hospitality is 48% of the overall revenue in this segment, parking 32 million, rentals 20%. Parking did extremely well. Rentals did well as well. So over and center management, we saw mainly due to the passenger increase, good results as well. So EBIT 16.2 million, over 14.6 million. a slight decrease in the margin. Overall, we saw a PRR in center management and hospitality of 2.8% over last year. So, as I said, the main driver here are the passenger numbers. We are opening now in summer the extension of our duty-free shop in Terminal 2, so this should drive sales and revenues then in the second half of the year. And overall, I think, as we said quite a couple of times already, The big game changer mainly in shopping will be, but F&B as well, will be the south extension, won't centralize, much bigger duty free shop, lots of high quality space for luxury travel and significant increase in F&B space. So I think this should then increase our revenues very significantly. Yeah, slowly but surely Malta becomes an ever more important part of our results. EBIT plus 75%, 10.8 million euros. G1 last year was 6.2 million euros. Obviously on the back of very significant passenger growth. I think apart from The excellent result, I think what was really relieving is that the Maltese government found a solution for Air Malta, now KM Malta, so a reinvent new airline without this huge baggage they had to carry in the last few years. So we are very happy that There's a new home carrier, Ryanair, still growing, despite the fact that they're already the biggest carrier. And Visa growing as well, roughly by 70%. So overall, I think, an excellent development. Yeah, that's it from my end. And now we're looking forward for our discussion.

Carlos, you have been very fast. First hand is yours.

Please shoot.

Hi. Hello, everyone. Yeah, thank you for the presentation and for taking my questions. I'm just going to have one, and it's on the third runway. I mean, the implementation deadline has been extended until 2030, and as you have mentioned throughout the presentation, you're currently carrying out the evaluation works. Therefore, would it be possible if you could provide us with a target date for the start of construction? Thank you.

Unfortunately not now because it's still a major work to be done in regard of all the respective parts of the project and I would assume as a best guess that we know more in 2026, or can even provide you then with the decisions how to move forward.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. Vladimir, please go ahead.

Yes, in fact, my question also relates to the CERB runway project. So you say that you will appeal to the Supreme Court. Is there any time frame for first placing your appeal, filing it, and then for the answer? So then we will basically know if your appeal was rejected or if you would have been granted approval. may be prolongation. Secondly, in case that you will go for the project. What are your criteria in terms of you are still referring to the traffic? So where do you see the threshold in the planning phase? What could be the number of takeoffs and landings or some other characteristics you are looking at? Where is the threshold to say, yes, we need a set runway, we go ahead? And then regarding financing, you would then consider external financing most likely or what would be then the mix for financing. And yeah, in case Bratislava airport would be ready, would it have effect on decision in this respect? So these are my questions.

Thank you. If I may start, and then I would hand over. I would start with the last question. I think this is a very theoretical question because I'm in touch now with several experts Slovakian government on possible corporations on a very low level to possible corporations on a bigger scale. We are involved in Kosice Airport, we have a good relation with the government, but my impression is that I think I don't see any cooperation, any meaningful cooperation with Bratislava Airport on the horizon. Definitely not with this government, but even with other governments, I think it would be a very difficult issue. And regarding capacity, I think in the end, we have to have quite some discussions with our major customers. I think we have to understand their growth plans for the future. Obviously, the driver for a third runway would be the increase in runway capacity. We expect that with a third runway, we would go up from 72 hourly maximum movements to somewhere around 95, probably a bit more. But on the other hand, The ground operations are important as well. So again, we will use the next 12 months to very thoroughly go around all the operational and financial criteria, construction costs. And then, yeah, we have to take all these elements in consideration and then we will take a decision.

Yeah, and in regard of the legal aspect, so for the appeal, there is a six-week period, and it's not difficult to come up with our appeal within this period, and it is the case that not only we will appeal, but also the federal country of Lower Austria, because they are the UVP authority and it's their decision that was now challenged. How long it will take at the highest administrative court, I mean, nobody can really give an accurate estimation about that. My best guess would be that we should expect the decision most likely within 12 months from now as it's a legal question and not a factual question. What cannot be ruled out is that it takes maybe substantially longer This would be the case if the highest administrative court would opt to ask the European court for advice. I don't think that it is very likely that this happens, but it cannot be totally ruled out. Why we are optimistic that the decision of of the federal court, administrative court should not prevail is that since more than 20 years it was decided as it was done by the federal government of Lower Austria. and it is for the first time a totally new approach to the legal position that now the Federal Administrative Court declared itself as eligible to decide the case and decided in some aspects of the case And this would not only affect our project, but all projects that are under that procedure. And so I would be also optimistic that even in the case that the highest administrative court would find some merit in the decision that finally Parliament might be in the position to pass new legislation to make it totally clear. Because if the decision of the Federal Administrative Court would prevail, it would mean that many, many projects that are very essential for energy transition electricity lines, wind parks and all that would become a further very substantial hurdle and that is totally against all the plans of the government and of all institutions that we have to accelerate the procedures and that we should reach decisions on the respective projects very quicker than it is the case now. So putting all that together, you will see that we are not very impressed by this decision.

Thank you very much. Philipp, you rank next.

Thanks for taking my questions and also thanks for the presentations. I have only two short ones. First one basically is regarding passenger growth. I think Ryanair has in the past week or two has announced that they see weaker pricing, I guess. And did you see any weakening trends as of recent as regards the demand of passengers at airport Vienna or is this unchanged? So was there no real impact compared to what airlines saw such as Ryanair? This would be the first one.

I mean, we saw, I mean, the first quarter was a sort of, was above this year's average, obviously. So, there was a kind of normalization effect. Load factor in the last few weeks was probably slightly weaker than it was last year. a slight reduction, but on a very high level. So obviously we don't see the exact pricing, but overall for summer I would not see a huge, I wouldn't see any reduction in demand. Probably in certain destinations where there is a lot of competition, airlines have to reduce their prices a bit.

Thanks a lot.

And the second one would be as regards to the cargo. How much would you say is really due to the disruption in the Middle East and how much is a much more permanent volume that you would see going through Vienna, if you could maybe dissect that a bit?

I mean, it's impossible to say. I don't think that the cargo in any way that there is something like a long-term guarantee that the traffic is going through your airport or cargo traffic is coming at all. I think it's a mix of effects. I think it's to a certain extent obviously the situation in the Middle East. I think it's to a certain extent Chinese low-cost parcel shops It's the additional capacity on long haul. So I think, to be honest, we're in the trend as well. So I think overall, I think European airports see now some growth in cargo. But how sustainable this level in the first four days, that's very difficult to judge.

Okay, thanks a lot. I will jump back into you.

Thank you. Stella, please go ahead.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. So I have two questions today, and the first one is about OPEX. I would like to ask management team, do you envisage this higher OPEX growth as we see a 49% growth in 2023 versus 22? And also for this quarter, we see, again, 29% growth for other operating expenses versus last year. And I wanted to ask, would you see this rather than a one-off case, or would you say there will be a similar case going forward, especially on marketing costs and the maintenance costs and also the third-party costs? Thank you.

Yeah, it's a mixture. I mean, there are some one-offs and, as I said, maintenance projects that have been delayed. throughout COVID. But on the other hand, when we see growing traffic, also marketing expenses will somehow breathe in the same direction. There is not a strict one to one relation, but it has more or less the same tendency. And therefore, I would not foresee another steep increase, but also not a sharp decline. So it's somehow on the way to normalization.

Thank you. That's very helpful.

And on the second question, could you please give us an update on the negotiation with unions on several ways? ideally both for 2024 and also for 2025.

Thanks.

Sorry, I have not.

Unfortunately, there was some.

Sorry, I was saying for the second question, could you please give us an update on the negotiation with unions on the salary rates and ideally both for 24 and 25? Yeah, thank you.

I mean, we already concluded our wage agreement for 24, 25. so it is seven percent from the first of may 24 and the agreement is for 12 months so the next negotiations will take place in april 25 and as always they will be based on on the inflation rate of the 12-month starting from 1st of April to 31st of March. So given the current tendencies, I would assume that inflation for this 12-month period, so 1st of April 24 to end of March 25, should stay somewhere around 3, 3.5%. As rates are going down now substantially and there are predictions from financial institutions that we will see maybe 2% or 2.5% at the end of the year and at the beginning of next year.

Yeah, got it. Thank you. That's very helpful.

Thank you. Henry, it took a bit longer today, but now it's your time.

No problem. Thank you for taking my questions. I've just one for Mr. Jäger. It's regarding the still below 2019 travel to Germany. Why is it still lagging behind so much if you compare it to other destinations? And I've seen that you also added Bremen, so my hometown, to the new Australian destinations, which is nice to know. And yeah, I would just like to know, is there a

um also upside to to grow from germany again or what is hindering um um the the traffic to germany to become uh to grow again to to prior uh 2019 levels i mean uh i think that the only good news is that we are not alone i mean germany overall has a significant lower recovery rate in in terms of air traffic than most other european countries um This is due to the absence of low-cost carriers in Germany, or they've come back just in a very, very small number. Essentially, I mean, higher taxes. Just now, the ticket tax in Germany has been increased very significantly. And in our case, it's the reduction in capacity. With very few exemptions, we have essentially a youth transit group monopoly in Germany. And I don't blame them, but the reality is they have to look after their results. So they optimize the units. And that means not a lot of capacity or less capacity than we had in 2019 and higher ticket prices, which means a low recovery rate. Similar is the situation in Switzerland. So yes, I think there is some, room for growth in the future and what obviously you have to see as well is that that the habit of people change so i think there's significantly less business traffic between austria and germany um because of teams and other means uh and on the other hand there is a certain number probably which is using now the train or the road uh instead of um flying probably to a certain extent because of the high ticket prices. On the other hand, probably because of CO2 reasons. But I think the mix of all these things together leads to a relatively low recovery rate.

Okay, thank you. And then I want to follow up, if I may. What impact do you see from the European Championship in football for the summer? Is it like very minor or does it have like some... Minor, completely minor.

The only impact is that if you want to fly to Berlin or Düsseldorf or wherever the Austrian team is playing on that day, you need a fortune to buy a ticket. But in terms of numbers, this doesn't have an impact. We hosted in Austria in 2008 the European Cup and the impact is minute. You can know events like that in all your calculations.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any further questions? No hand raised at the moment.

Okay, so thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your questions, for the interest. Have a good day. Goodbye.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you.