Jet2 plc

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our investor and analyst conference call, our first audio cast. I'm Steve Heapy, CEO of Jet2 PLC, and I'm joined today by Gary Brown, our group CFO. We're going to take you through the highlights of the results and then talk about the financial performance of the group and then give you an update on our strategy and then we'll open up the floor to questions from people both in the room and remotely. So, record passenger numbers, record revenue and record profitability. Another year of record results. Very happy and very proud of them. Passengers, nearly 20 million at 12% up. Revenue, £7.2 billion. That was 15% up. And profits, record profits again, 11% up. Group PBT, pre-FX and tax, £578 million. We've made a lot of investments during the year. We opened Liverpool base last year, four aircraft, that's increased to five aircraft for this summer, performing well. We've launched Bournemouth middle of February this year and we launched Luton on the 1st of April. So that's three new bases in the last 14 months, all performing to expectations. We've been able to do that because of our continued investment in the fleet. We have 14 A321neos in the fleet. The A321neo with the CFM engine variant is a very economical, very green and quiet aircraft. We've got 146 on order and nine leased aircraft. That's a total of 155, 14 in the fleet, with another 10 to arrive during this year. Financial resilience, very strong balance sheet. We ended the year with 1.1 billion of our own cash. That's total cash net customer cash because, of course, customer cash isn't ours. And we posted earnings per share of 213.1 pence per share. Shareholder returns, we've announced a dividend of 12.1 pence, final dividend, and that's an increase of 13% on the previous year. We also did a share buyback to offset future dilution from the EBT, and we did a repurchase of the convertible bond, £384 million. So I think to summarise, we think that's a very strong set of results, and I'll talk you through at a high level our growth strategy. So that's the next slide. Growth of both flight-only and package holidays. Both products have grown. Liverpool, very successful. Bournemouth and Luton, also a successful start. We cancel very few flights, and this is a big difference with us. We cancel only 0.05% of our flights. The air traffic control issues last week saw airlines cancelling many, many flights. We didn't cancel any. We bring our customers home and we take them on holiday. When people book a holiday or a flight with us, we make it our priority to make sure they get to or from their destination. Net promoter score still in the mid-60s. We have a 61% repeat booking rate with our customers and over 7 million MyJet2 members. We know that loyalty with MyJet2 members is higher and conversion is higher also. So we're continuing to grow that channel. Sustainability, good progress against our targets. Obviously the new aircraft are a big part of that, 14 NEOs that are in the fleet, but we've also got a number of other measures to reduce our carbon intensity, which I'll go through in a later slide. The retail operations centre is performing well and has started paying dividends. More on that later. So that's pretty much where we are at a very high level on our growth strategy. We'll go into that in more detail following the financial update from Gary. So, if I may, I'll hand you over to Gary, who will take you through the financials.

Thanks, Steve. Morning, everybody. Just on to page six of the presentation. I think this chart is important from our perspective, not to pat ourselves on the back, but to briefly reflect on the last decade and how we've got to where we are today, because many of the fundamentals that were in play back in 2015... are still very much as relevant today. The resilience of the holiday market, I think, is self-evident per that chart. And our business is now much stronger than it was 10 years ago in terms of revenue, in terms of profitability, in terms of market share, and also in terms of the fleet order, the firm fleet order that we have today. Over the last 10 years, we've seen package holiday customers grow from 1 million to 6.6 million in 2025. And also we've seen our flight-only passengers grow from 4 million to 6.6 million as well. However, I think it's important to stress that we've not chased growth at the expense of returns. You can see the healthy operating profit per sector seat at the bottom of the chart and the fact that our long-term ROCE has been in or around 17% as well. There's a lot of reasons for that. Number one, we've got a fully integrated operating and financial model, and that provides us with inordinate flexibility to be able to optimize our profitability. I'll talk a little bit about that in the context of FY25 results in a couple of minutes. Secondly, our differentiated end-to-end customer service offering, which helps drive margin expansion through added value. We're selling a holiday product here. We're not selling a commodity. And it's important that we create positive memories for our customers, such that they keep returning again and again and again. Thirdly, there is the enduring appeal of a holiday for customers. People find it hard to understand why people go on holiday regularly. I think, you know, listening to the gloom and doom in the media today, and secondly, the fact that the majority of our people earn average wage, they need something to look forward to, and they do, and they look to go away year on year on year. And if done well, it supports incredible loyalty. Steve mentioned the 61% repeat booking rate before, and that for me as the CFO means a good quality of recurring revenue and profitability. In turn, if you provide a great product, word of mouth is incredibly important, plus obviously data-driven marketing in terms of driving new customers, and Steve will touch upon that a little bit later on. So the compound annual growth rate of 19% for revenue and 27% for PBT, we think, underscores the effectiveness of Jet2's business strategy. It's very much about creating memories. We're not selling a commodity. We're selling dreams. And if you create memories, customers come back again and again and again. So moving on to page seven in terms of the results themselves, we've started deliberately with the key performance indicators because there's been a lot of commentary in the past about, well, what's load factor doing? What's pricing doing? What's mix doing? What's non-ticket revenue doing? And in terms of our model, it's very much that we will try and balance across all of those indicators to achieve the optimum profitability for the business. So it's not about just maximizing load factor as some of our competitors do. It's very much how do we maneuver the business through our flexible, integrated operating model to get to the right profitability overall. In the year, capacity increased by 13%, and 4% of that was in terms of our new bases at Liverpool and Bournemouth. Liverpool, as Steve said, has done very well. Its load factor was just one percentage point down on the company average across the year, but its package holiday mix was 75%, so a lot higher than the average. So we're very pleased with that, and on the basis of that, we put a fifth aircraft in there for summer 2025. It was a later booking profile during the course of the year, and that has continued into the current year we're now in. And what tends to happen with a later booking profile is that demand for the more price sensitive, shorter lead time flight only passengers tends to be a little bit stronger. Now, you can read that in two ways. I like to read it in terms of very positively in the fact that because we have two products, because we're very flexible, because we're in many different channels of distribution, we're able to capitalize on whatever market presents itself to us, and that's what we did last year. In turn, though, higher absolute margin per passenger package holidays did very well, growing 8% to 6.6 million customers. Pricing was resilient on the holiday side of the business as supply-led cost increases were passed on. Flight-only ticket yield per passenger set, it did soften by 2%, reflecting a slightly more promotional environment. But you have to read that in the context of 18% increase in flight-only passengers. And then finally, non-ticket revenue was up by 6%. We were pleased with that performance because the retail operations centre which we invested in was the driver of most of that increase, and that was due to increased stock availability on our aircraft. The availability averaged 99% during the course of the year, and also through a better product mix. And that's the first sort of signs that that investment is paying back, and there's more of that to come in the coming years. On into page eight and the numbers. Listen, as Steve said, we were very pleased with the overall performance, the 15% growth in revenue. Operating expenses were also up by about 15%. As I've said in previous meetings, the inflation running through that P&L during the course of the year was about 5%. The other 10% was due to volume or activity. In general, the cost base was well controlled, just giving you a flavour of the big movers. Hotel accommodation costs, they were up by 21%, 8% in terms of volume. But there was quite a lot of supply-led inflation in there, particularly in the areas of wages, food, energy. Also alongside an increased mix of customers choosing higher star-rated accommodation. Fuel costs were up by 6%. We saw a 14% increase in flying hours, and that was offset by reductions in the average hedge rates, plus the fact that obviously we have more new A321neo aircraft in our fleet. And then finally, in terms of our colleague costs, they grew to £841 million. We awarded 5.5% pay award. We also had the ROC, the Retail Operations Centre, in its first full year of operations. We made investments ahead of time to support the Summer 25 flying programme. And we also took pilots on slightly earlier as a function of the training plan for our new Airbus fleet. So overall, the operating profit was up by 4%, which we were pleased with, particularly considering that there was also investment in terms of the new bases at Luton and Bournemouth in the year. Our higher cash balances year on year and higher average interest rates led to an increase in terms of our net finance income and that led us to the bottom line PBT and a flat PBT FX per sector seat. Tax rate 25% and as Steve has said the earnings per share was up 15% to 213.1 pence. On into cash generation, which is slide nine. Obviously, the strong trading performance generated a very healthy EBITDA, which was up by 9% year on year. And that gives us confidence that we can support the capital expenditure, the debt repayments and our future growth and also returning value to shareholders moving forward. The CAPEX, as you would expect, represented largely balance payments for new aircraft, pre-delivery payments, etc. Also, long-term investment in our existing fleet in terms of sea checks and engine overhauls. But we also invested in the construction of a second engineering hangar at Manchester Airport to make sure that we control our own destiny in terms of aircraft maintenance and the installation of leading edge automating equipment at the retail operations centre, which is in the process of being commissioned. In addition, with sustainability in mind, we invested quite a lot of money in terms of ground equipment, electric ground vehicles, etc., As Steve mentioned in the opening slide, our finance repayments included the early repayment of the convertible bond, and we also bought shares through the Employee Benefit Trust to take future dilution from share options off the table. And I think all of these actions represent proactive use of our balance sheet and are consistent with our capital allocation framework. We ended the year with a very healthy cash balance and a 22% reduction in our debt pile. And as Steve said, of the 3.2 billion, 2.1 billion was customer monies, which left us with 1.1 billion of own cash and a reduction year on year, which is leading through to our midterm ambition to end the year with 600 to 700 million of customer cash moving forward. On into page 10, onto the balance sheet. It's very flexible. It's very strong. We have ample liquidity. A lot of the points on there are regurgitated from the price slide. But it's important to also note that we renewed our RCF on improved commercial terms, and we increased it by £200 million to £500 million. and that facility will run until 31st of October 2029. It is undrawn, and we do have an option to extend it by a further two years. Our return on capital employed over the past three years is a very healthy 17%, and our long-term average is in or around the same number. And I think that, again, serves to underpin what I said earlier on, that we haven't been growing at the expense of returns to the business. Finally, the capital allocation framework, it's simple and straightforward. That's how we like to run it. It's very much about investing in the business, and we've done that in terms of the retail operations centre, in terms of new bases, in terms of aircraft fleet. It's about being able to satisfy our CAPEX and debt obligations in a manageable way, and as part of that, we would like in the medium term to have 65% of our aircraft fleet unencumbered, which would mean about 50% of the Airbus fleet being bought through own cash over time. We want to reduce the cost of debt, which we have, and ultimately make returns to shareholders. And I think in terms of the dividend that we've announced and the buyback that we've also announced, that we are adhering to the framework in front of you. I'll now hand back to Steve. He'll give you an update now in terms of our strategy. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Gary, for going through what I'm sure you'll agree is a very strong set of results. So on to our investment case. I think this clearly demonstrates why Jet2 is still an attractive prospect for investors both today and for the future. We're in a growing market. Capacity to beach destinations is up for summer 2025. People very much still want to go on a holiday. The latest Mintel stats showed that 51% of people intend going on a holiday in the last 12 months. That's increased from the last survey, which was 48%. Holidays is still seen very much as a discretionary option. item that that is essential and people want to go on holiday and they prioritize that above streaming services lottery tickets meals out etc so it's still a very important purchase for people Size and scope of the offer, we've got a network of highly attractive bases. 85% of the UK population lives within a 90-minute drive. That's 58 million people. And we've added Bournemouth and Luton recently, which brings more of the population in the south and the southeast to our bases, and they too can experience Jet 2 holidays. We've got a fully integrated operating model. We're in control of our own seat supply. We handle our own aircraft at many airports. We've got our own engineering and training facilities. And, of course, we've launched our retail operations centre, The Rock, where we're in total control of our onboard stock. And that's resulted in significantly increased stock levels and also more of the stock that our customers want. We are the number one tour operator in the UK and the number three airline, and we're continuing to adapt our product range to current trends and trading environments. We have a customer first approach. We have and we'll continue to do that. We've got a 61% rebooking rate and our net promoter score is in the mid-60s. It's stayed there for a number of years. Sustainability, still very strong. We are delivering against our commitments in the second version of our strategy, the second version having tougher targets than the first. We're receiving new aircraft and we're doing a lot of things to further reduce our carbon intensity. We'll give a bit more on that later on. So we've got a clear path to growth. We've got our aircraft on order and we have a strong balance sheet to enable us to continue to invest in the future of the company. So that's an overview. If we go on to the more specific points... Our growth agenda. First, we are defending and strengthening the core. We've got our aircraft order, which will help us to both renew the fleet in the next few years and also provide aircraft for growth at our 13 bases. Some of those bases are more mature, and we consider four at the newer end of the scale. We had Bristol, which was launched earlier. After the pandemic, and we've obviously got Liverpool in its second year of operation and Bournemouth and Luton in its first year of operation, there's a lot to do there. We've got great coverage across the UK. As I said, 85% of the UK population within a 90-minute drive. And we are attracting new customers, both flight only and package holidays. And when customers experience our customer service, our customer-led approach, they tend to rebook 61% rebook rates. And we are hopeful that these customers will continue to book. We are also investing in our product. We've got a new product. I'll talk about that later on. We are constantly innovating and doing things to entice our customers and react to current market trends. We're leveraging technology. We are progressing with the upgrade of our revenue management system. We're harnessing the power of AI and we have a machine learning model that will price our flights and then our holidays. According to multiple data inputs and that will be integrated with our marketing systems, customer data platform, content management system, etc. And that will help us market to our customers in the right way at the right time with the right price, the right promotion, the right content, etc. Proof of concept is scheduled for later this year and we look forward to seeing the results of that at the end of this year and from early next year. The other part of our strategy is to extend our reach and diversify. We've seen diversification of UK bases, of overseas destinations and of products, and we will continue to innovate over the coming years. We are looking at extending our reach of customers. We currently over-index in the older demographic and the more affluent demographic, which is great. provided a great protection for us in financial downturns, etc. And we are undertaking a project to bring more people in from the younger and less affluent demographics. So we'll be broadening our coverage then. And in the coming slides, I'll talk a little bit more about these things and tell you what we're doing to attract these customers. So on to the next slide, Fleet Growers. We're committed to growing and replenishing our fleet, and this will support our growth agenda over the coming years. We retired our remaining 757-200 aircraft back in January. A very sad day. They've been great aircraft for the company. We retired them, and we've replaced those with our Airbus A321neo aircraft, a much quieter and more fuel-efficient aircraft. You can see from the chart, by summer 31... We'll have a total fleet of about 159 aircraft, and 116 of these will be A321 aircraft powered by the CFM engine. This is what we think is the best narrow-body aircraft in its class, quieter, more fuel-efficient than its equivalent. The average seat gauge will increase from summer 25, 197 to 221 in summer 31 as the proportion of 230 seat aircraft, 232 seat aircraft for 321 increases. This will give us an annual compound growth rate of about 4.7% over the period. You can see from the charts that there is some flexibility. There's the upper dotted line and a line below that which shows how we can flex the fleet. to respond to market conditions. We will have the ability to take more aircraft if required in the short-term lease market, and we can accelerate retirements, etc., if the need arises. So we have a lot of flexibility in our fleet going forward. That will help us to respond to market conditions accordingly. On to the next slide. A little bit more about the Airbus A321neo aircraft. I think it's important to recognise the significant benefits this will bring to the fleet. Current mainstay of the fleet, the 800, can seat 189 passengers. The 321 seats 232 passengers. That's 23% more seats, but 20% fuel and carbon reductions. It's half as noisy as our current fleet, which makes it a much more attractive proposition for many airports. Many airports have noise limits now and will only accept new generation aircraft, and this makes it a very attractive proposition. It will result in average cost savings per seat of about £10. And this aircraft is a vital component of our climate transition and carbon intensity reduction plan. It will be a very important lever going forward. So it will help us to reduce carbon, it helps us to reduce noise, it will make a more efficient means of transport because it's carrying more passengers per flight and it will result in cost savings per seat across the fleet. So a very, very important strategic move for the company going forward. Size and scope of offering. So you can see from the map we have increased the number of UK bases and have excellent coverage across the UK, but we also have excellent coverage across the Mediterranean, the Canaries and European leisure cities. We have a very diversified model, which is very important. So you are able to react to market trends. And if some destinations are doing better than others, you have diversification and that gives you protection. We've got diversification of UK bases. Of overseas destinations, diversification of brands. We've got our beach, cities, villas, indulgence escapes, our Vibe product. We've got diversification of product. We've got many hotels over five and a half thousand, two star to five star, self-catering to all inclusive. That caters for all of our customers. We pioneered the fully flexible package holiday. If you remember many years ago, you could go for seven or 14 nights. We pioneered the flexible duration holiday. People can go for any duration from two nights up to 500 nights if they want. How nice would that be? And we offer people the ability to do what they want, truly flexible holidays. We've launched a number of new destinations, Agadir Marrakesh in Morocco, Jerez in Spain, Pula in Croatia, the Istrian... Riviera, we have announced Samos, Greek islands, so we're constantly innovating, looking at where our customers want to go, speaking to our customers and reacting accordingly and putting capacity on to these destinations. The new destinations have sold really well. It shows that customers do want to go to different places. They want to tick off the boxes of places they want to go to, and we are reacting accordingly. We've not only done expansion in beach destinations. We've added Mercia and Braga for summer sun city destinations, Tallinn, Geneva, Salzburg for the winter. We have full control over our seat supply. We don't buy seats from third parties like other tour operators might. Every seat is on our own aircraft, controlled by us. And we are, according to TripAdvisor, the best airline in the UK, the best airline in Europe and the fifth best airline in the world. So why would we want to buy seats with anyone else? So a compelling offering, lots of diversification in the scope of our offering and you will see further diversification, further new destinations and further new products in the coming years. Building loyalty. So you can see from the chart that we have optimised our model to build a cycle of customer acquisition and tried to drive long-term sustainable growth and, importantly, shareholder value. Awareness and consideration. It's ensuring we're top of choice for both new and existing customers, and we'll talk a little bit about marketing in the next slide. We want to make sure we are front and centre of mind, and that's why diversification is important, because we want to be able to offer something for everyone. We're not a niche operator. We are a package holiday and airline company that offers something for everyone. We're seeing growth from new and existing customers. We've got a multitude of channels, web, app, call centre and independent travel agents. Independent travel agency is very important to us. Still, many, many people want to book through the high street. The call centre is still a very important channel. Some companies don't have call centres. It's all online. automated now we have one because our customers want one they very much still feel the need to speak to one of our expert travel advisors that will help find them a holiday to help inspire and excite them and find the right one and also when there is something the customer wants to change something they want to ask a question on our travel experts are available The app is growing in popularity, particularly for MyJet 2 customers. We know more about them. We can market through the app in a much more efficient way. And we can further tailor our products to our customers' needs, bearing in mind we know more about them. We've got industry-leading customer experience. You've seen the awards we won. Only two days ago, we were announced by the UK Institute of Customer Service, Jet2 Holidays being the 12th best company in the UK, Jet2.com being the 19th best company in the UK. the only airline and tour operator placed in the top 50. We consistently score above our competitors. Net promoter score in the mid-50s, rebook rates of 61%. Our package holidays are all about the experience, building excitement and creating memories for our customers. It's such an important part. We don't just put people on a plane and then forget about them. We are there... holding their hand throughout the journey and providing great customer service. We have our red team in Resort 24-7 customer helpline and we are available if customers need us. We had a lot of worried customers last week when the air traffic control strikes were on. They said, are you doing like the other airlines, cancelling your flights and abandoning us because I can't find anywhere to stay? And the answer was, of course, was not. We continued flying during the air traffic control strikes, brought our customers home, and took our customers on holiday. That's what we do. We go over and above to give our customers a memorable experience. Branding, very important to us. I don't know if you're aware, but we have a song associated with our brand. It's a triple platinum selling chart topping song. And if any of you don't know what that is, we'd be very happy to play it at the end of this presentation. But it's something we're very happy with. People hear that song and associate it with Jet 2 holidays. It's part of our branding. We have very strong visuals. We have television and radio campaigns everywhere. And we like to keep them simple. It's all about trying to provide inspiration to our customers. It's showing our customers what they can do on holiday, and hopefully they'll put themselves in those adverts and think, that could be me. We have a long-term and consistent approach to building brand equity, strong visual and sonic branding. We are highlighting the difference in our adverts to our customers in terms of the experience that they will have on holiday. We are number one for awareness, number one for branding, number one for ad recall and number one for consideration. 82% awareness from people of our brand and it's because of our very, very strong branding. Go to one of our airports, you'll see our red team, you'll see our branding and the red team will be there to welcome you, to help you, to carry your suitcase to the check-in desk, to give you advice and This is what we do. It's about customer service. MyJet2 is very important. We've got over 7 million members now in the MyJet2 scheme, and these are a very loyal set of customers. They love Jet2. They want to go on flights and holidays with us. They understand the difference of our customer service, and they have a higher rebook rate, higher retention, and are more loyal customers. 90% of our bookings now are with MyJet2 members. We know more about them. We can tailor our products more effectively to their needs. Database has continued growing every year, 9% since financial year 2001 and we are providing more relevant marketing campaigns to our customers. I mentioned earlier some of the technological advancements, our revenue system, our marketing systems will be integrated using AI and machine learning and this given the that we have on our customers and what we know about them will enable us to provide individually procured marketing campaigns to all our customers. We've got 10.6 million people on our database. We will be able to effectively execute 10.6 million individually tailored and procured marketing campaigns for our customers. There's many opportunities to widen our customer base. I'm on the next slide now. You can see that we over-index in the more affluent and older demographic. with an incredible amount of protection and resilience over the last few years in terms of financial downturns, etc. It's given us a lot of protection and this is one area of the database that continues to grow. It's a very loyal part of the database and we are continuing to nurture that element of our customers. We do see a big opportunity going forward in the less affluent and the younger demographics. We under-index in those demographics at the moment, and it's one area that we are working very hard to increase. There's a lot to do there. We've started our programmes of attracting these people through pricing, through product enhancements. through our marketing strategies, doing more on social media, that will attract these type of people. So you will see over the next few months and years that we will be attracting more people from these demographics, the younger demographic and the less affluent demographic. So again, we'll be widening our customer base, we'll be providing more diversification to our business in addition to product, destination products, base, brand diversification. We will achieve more customer diversification that will help us reach more new customers and attract a higher rebook rate with our customers. On the next slide, customer care. We talk about this every year. We have 11,400 customer-facing colleagues. Our Take Me There values are running through the DNA of all our staff. 94% of our customers can quote these Take Me There values and all work to provide these. They are, of course, be present, take responsibility. Work as one team. If we get those three things right, we will create memories for our customers and our colleagues who are incredibly engaged. 88% agree that the work they do makes a real difference to the success of Jet2 and the happiness of our customers. And 84% feel very proud to work for Jet2. These values are extremely important to our company. They're not just things that we print onto stickers and put them on the wall in the business. Our colleagues very much try to live and breathe these because if we get this right... We will improve the products that we provide to our customers. We'll improve the experience that they have. We'll create memories and we will, of course, increase the rebook and retention rate with our customers. Customer care is everything to us. And I won't talk you through all the awards we win. You all know these by now, our witch awards. the trip advisor awards awards with travel agents uk institute of customer service and everything our company do does makes us be seen as the company that provides the best customer service and of course that results in higher retention rates in terms of The next slide, creating memories. Again, this is a little more colour on what we do. We have a call centre. We have an app. The countdown begins on booking. We send our customers enticing information, provide them with information that helps build the excitement and anticipation. It can't just be seen as a transaction that customers do. This is the biggest annual purchase that customers make, and it's our job to make sure that they have a memorable experience, not only when they start going on holiday, but from the time they book. Go to one of our airports. I know many of you have flown with Jet2 before. You will see our red team waiting to greet you. Look at some other check-in desks. There's hardly anyone there. Our red team are there to give you the best experience and to help you with any queries that you have. Our service in the sky is unrivalled. Our friendly, happy, helpful cabin crew will give you a great experience. Our carts on board are full. Now we have our retail operations centre. Our stock availability has gone over 99%. We have more of the stock that our customers want. That means happy customers because they have what they want. Happy cabin crew. because they are able to serve our customers and happy us and happy shareholders because that feeds through to margin. When you touch down, you have, of course, our red team at the other end of the journey and then you have our famous customer helpers in hotels helping people. Hardly anyone has customer helpers anymore. Some people thought they were old-fashioned. We don't. They think they're an important part of the holiday experience. And that's not just what we think. Our customers think that also. They see it as a very important part of the holiday, particularly when there are issues in resort. When they need something, when there's air traffic control strikes, when there's issues, they go to our customer helpers and we're able to give them what they want and to help them accordingly. If they don't want to speak to one of our customer helpers, they can contact us via the app or via our call centre. So the service we give, as you all know, is unparalleled in the UK leisure travel industry. Our metrics, customer service, net promoter scores, rebook rate have stayed very consistent over the last few years and for a company that has grown like we have. you could say that was quite unusual. Very often when companies grow quickly, they lose touch with the customer and customer service falls away. That has not been the case with Jet2. So I think we're on the last slide now before questions. Outlook for summer 25. Bookings for summer 25 continue to be made closer to the departure date. It's clear, however, that customers are eagerness to get away to enjoy a relaxing holiday experience. is very strong i went through the mental stats before customers are uh keener than ever to get away 51 percent said they're going to go on holiday in the next 12 months compared to 40 uh 48 percent the prior year the barclays customer spending review uh showed that uh travel spend was up 9.7% in May, up from April. We're satisfied with the progress so far for financial year 26 and we're currently trading in line with market expectations. Our fully integrated business model is providing very enticing to our customers and we're continuing to balance load factor, pricing and product mix to maximise overall profitability. We fully hedge for fuel and FX for the season and over 90% for the full financial year. Our carbon emissions are fully hedged. This gives us important cost certainty going forward. So, as we said in the announcement, the peak summer months of July, August and September are yet to complete and the majority of winter. And we will provide further updates at our AGM on the 4th of September. We believe that the proposition we have underpinned by our People's Service Profits philosophy means we're poised for an exciting future and we remain very happy with our results and we're satisfied with our trading so far. So that's an overview of our strategy, et cetera. I hope that was useful for everyone. I think we're now going to move on to Q&As, if that's okay.

Yep, absolutely.

Good morning, everyone. It's Jared Castle from UBS. I think you said stick to one topic, so I'll let someone else ask about pricing into Anusha. I'm going to ask something more about the medium term. You're talking about kind of targeting the less affluent, the younger customer. I'd imagine that means a lower revenue per package holiday to target them. That means a lower profit per customer. In that respect, I mean, why not consider going for more affluent customers further afield in continental Europe, or what is the thinking around that? Thanks.

It doesn't necessarily mean lower profit for a customer. We've put a tremendous amount of effort into sourcing more accommodation at the lower star rating end. Now, we don't just sell any old hotel at any star rating. Like you may see on some websites... We have very strict quality controls and, of course, every one of our hotels is fully health and safety checked. So unless it meets minimum standards for health and safety and quality, it doesn't get through. But in saying that, we are adding, as we speak, more two- and three-star properties, more self-catering properties. etc. into our portfolio. In cities, we've started offering hostels. They may not be the product that you might associate with hostels. They are very good quality accommodation that provide a cheaper product for people to go with. The fact we're going for these demographics doesn't mean we're not trying to grow other demographics as well. Our more affluent customers, of course, we're growing that area as well, but our strategy is proportionally we will increase the number of low demographic and younger people. Is there anything else to add to that, Gary?

No. No?

Thank you.

Morning. Thank you. It's Damian from Canaccord. I want to ask about sort of quality and service. I mean, our research, and you may disagree with it, suggests that your pricing is still up 1% to 3% this summer. So clearly the passion Steve talked about, about the product and looking after customers is coming through. But where is the sweet spot in terms of NPS? Clearly there'll be a point where there are diminishing returns, where the investment doesn't pay off. And are you at that, or is there a little bit more to go?

I think in terms of the NPS, obviously, we're giving you an average. But when we look at NPS, we're effectively through CSQs, which are in some ways linked. We're looking at each stage of the customer journey. And if we find that there is... a hotspot for customers that we know we can improve on with pragmatic investment, we will. But to your point, Damien, trying to get to 80% for argument's sake, that would not make sense because it would just cost far too much money. I think we are a long way ahead of our competitors and actually in terms of our NPS generally, it's one of the highest rated in the consumer industry anyway. I think our challenge will be as we continue to grow that we maintain those standards actually whilst looking, as I said, to tweak where necessary in terms of the customer journey. One of the areas that we last year had a little bit of I won't say negativity, but slightly lower ratings was the inbound transfer service, you know, from the hotel back to the airport. We are trialling now in terms of being able to give people real time in terms of where their transfer coach is, which has gone down very, very well. So these little tweaks we can make without spending a great deal of money, which, again, just improves that quality and ultimately will improve the NPS.

It's Alex Patterson from Peel Hunt. Can I slightly ignore your previous message on one topic and ask three, obviously at the risk that you ignore some of my questions. But the things I was just going to ask were, you were talking about the... the revenue management, the AI, the systems integration, and that optimizing your ability to sell the right product, right price, and so on. Well, looking at your results, you're not a million miles off that anyway. So is the benefit of this really revenue increments, or is it actually other cost savings that can be had because you need smaller teams to do that? Secondly, just on the rot, your non-ticket revenue per sector was up 6%. How much of that can you ascribe to The Rock? Is that a significant contributor to that, would you say? And then finally, just on the new bases at Luton and Bournemouth, are they shaping up very much as you would expect and on the sort of similar track to other bases in their maturity, ability to sort of grow customers and so on?

Do you want to answer the first one or do the other two? Yeah, that's fine. Well, I'll do the third one if that's all right. Well, they're all easy, to be honest. But Bournemouth and Luton performing in line with expectations. Each early days, they went on sale quite late. I mean, Luton only went on last quarter last year, so we had less time to sell that. But that aside, we're seeing customers being attracted to our brand and our product, and we're happy with how sales have gone so far. We're happy with the operation. We're doing a very good operation there. It will take time to mature. We'll probably see a higher mix of flight-only people early on, and then we will hopefully cross sell those to become holiday customers and attract more customers. But the two bases are performing in line with expectations. And as Gary said earlier, Liverpool is doing well. It's slightly below the load factor above on holidays mix with increased capacity by 25% for this year. And we're very encouraged by all three bases. It's added a lot of potential customers to our catchment area. And as we become better known, people experience our product and tell other people we'll continue to grow. So on to the first one, now our revenue management system. It's sort of state-of-the-art technology using machine learning, artificial intelligence. And the thing is, yeah, I mean, we are doing well now, but this will be a solution that will be able to receive many, many data points from external sources and read data. economic factors whether whatever you want can be read into there and we'll be able to reprice as often as it wants it will be able to do testing of prices within the market to see what happens work out the best promotional strategy that once it's linked with our marketing systems will enable As I said earlier, individually procured marketing campaigns sent to the right person at the right time with the right content, the right creative, the right price, the right promotion, etc., etc. These things take time to bed in, as the name suggests, machine learning, and it will take time. for this to bed in and it will have obviously a lot of oversight from our revenue team but it should make obviously benefits to the bottom line but it should also make us more efficient going forward in that obviously when you have a system like that you shouldn't need to bring in lots of extra people as capacity grows.

Just to give you a bit more colour on that, just very briefly, at any one time we've got over 200,000 flights on sale and 250 million holidays in terms of permutations, combinations. So you can imagine in terms of marginal gains what that could look like. And with the best will in the world, our systems are 2010, 11, 12. and human beings cannot get to all of those permutations combinations. So if we do this right and it works the way we hope it will, then to Steve's point, we would expect there to be incremental benefit to the bottom line. In terms of the non-ticket revenue, which was up 6%, 4.5% of the 6% was down to the retail operations centre. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Richard from Deutsche Numis. Can I just maybe do two topics? They're not quite as greedy. In terms of the package holiday mix, I think it was the first time in a while I think it's come down slightly. Given all the capacity which is coming on board, do you expect that to be broadly the same or even sort of drift down a little bit further? And associated with that, could you say what proportion of your flight-onlys are taken up by OTAs? And the second topic is just the later booking profile. Do you expect that to reverse? Is there anything you can do to kind of de-risk that profile? Or do you think that's here to stay for many years? Okay.

Which do you want? In terms of the package holiday mix, I think we're on record as saying if we're anywhere between 65% and 75% for the summer season, that's fine. And if we're between 65% and 70% for the full year, then that's fine. But they're guardrails at the end of the day. As you can see, you've talked about the late booking market. The market changes quite dramatically from summer to summer to summer, and therefore you've got to be flexible within those guardrails. I think in the market we're in at the moment, the 65% to 75% for summer will be in that range. But I think in terms of the full year, if this late booking trajectory continues, I would imagine that the package holiday mix will be somewhere in the region of 63, 64 percent. Is that a problem for us? No. You know, the point is and the point we keep making is that it's a fully integrated, flexible business. We have two products for a reason. And it's to reflect the fact that at different points in the cycle, the market will look different. And therefore, we've got to be able to tap into that and, you know, provide a great offer, whether it's flight only or package holidays. The other positive is, you know, from a flight only perspective, we get a great opportunity to cross out. And, you know, the market won't always be like this moving forward. I'll let Steve talk about it in a minute. And therefore, that stands us in very good stead.

On the last point, the late booking profile. The market's a cyclical market, as we know, and it's been a late booking market for about a year now. We are doing what we can to try and promote early bookings. I talked about our 10.6 million database and over 7 million MyJet3 members online. We know more about those customers than ever before. And we can interact them in a way that will entice them to book early. You know, we're comfortable with winter 25, 26 and summer 26 at the moment. earlier bookings at some stage the market will change and the market will become earlier we're in a cyclical industry and it happens so at the moment we're continuing to get business in later but still cultivate our bookings earlier and I think at some stage the market may come earlier When that is, we don't know, but we are doing what we can and being successful in getting bookings in earlier.

You asked about flight only from the OTAs. What I would say is that the proportion is very similar year on year.

Yes, Rory Cullinane from RBC. First, well, I'll stick with one question. One question on the NEOs. Are you receiving them on time and what proportion would you expect to take unencumbered this year?

In terms of the delivery profile, we're receiving them pretty much in line with where we expect. Going forward, we're in constant negotiations with Airbus. Obviously, they have... challenges within their supply chain in terms of engines and other components and that has resulted in some delays that you've seen in the press with airlines. We speak to Airbus regularly. I speak to them every three or four weeks. We're in very close contact. And where there are delays or potential delays, we manage those within our overall fleet. We've got spare aircraft within our fleet, our standby aircraft, et cetera, and that helps us to manage any slight delays in the delivery of the aircraft. But at the moment, there are no substantial issues that we need to raise.

In terms of unencumbered, in terms of the NEOs, the Jolco market is very much open to us. And the cost of that market is very compelling at the moment, if you want to use that. So this year, at the moment, our plan is we'll only take one unencumbered and the others we'll take on a Jolco basis. because that market might not always be open to us, and I think we've got to make the most of it whilst it is. It's been very good to us. We are a great credit for that market. They really love us, and that's why we're trying to take maximum advantage of it. But the medium-term ambition is still the same, which is ultimately 65% unencumbered of total fleet, which will mean about 50% of the Airbus order will be unencumbered over time.

Hi, Jaina Mystery from Jefferies. I've got a couple of questions around the topic of fuel. Obviously, fuel prices have been fairly volatile over the last few months. But in terms of your hedging policy, are you able to take advantage of market prices when they're lower? And any implications or comments on what this means for fuel prices for FY26, FY27? And then just secondly, on SAF and EU ETS, I wondered if you're able to quantify the impact on fuel costs for this year.

Yeah, in terms of fuel prices, well, as we said in the update, we're pretty much hedged for this year, to be honest with you. And we've seen a benefit coming through, hence why actually we haven't discussed it. In terms of the inflation running through the P&L for financial year 26, net of FX and fuel, it's in or around 3.5%, which is down from the 5% we saw last year. In terms of fuel prices, yeah, we've got a hedging policy, but we have flexibility within that, Jane. So if we see the market move dramatically, then we can move with it quickly, partly because it's a very flat structure and we can just get on with it. So that's been quite handy and at the moment we're over 50% hedge for summer 26 and that's a benefit compared to summer 25 at the moment. In terms of the FX side of the business, That's slightly less percentage hedge, but it's in line with policy. So we have gone out further on fuel as we saw weakness. In terms of SAF, I think we said it'll be about 20 million incremental cost this year because the SAF premium is a lot more than normal jet fuel. So it's 20 million running through this year, yeah.

So the final one from the room from Harry, and then we'll go on to the webcast.

Morning, it's Harry Gowers from JP Morgan. Just on the outlook, I mean, it's clearly quite a competitive UK backdrop at the moment. So maybe you could just go in some colour where you're seeing the most competitive pricing or pressure, flight only versus packages. I would assume flight only is particularly competitive at the moment. So with the later booking profile, but any thoughts?

In the previous two statements, we said that package holiday pricing was resilient and modestly up year on year, and that remains the same. In terms of flight only, I think we said last two times, which was February and April, that it was slightly up. in the last four to six weeks, it's become sharper in flight only, exactly to what you're saying. But, you know, the facts are, even if it is sharper, you're still taking, you know, people are still out there booking. And in terms of, you know, the value it can still add to the P&L, it's still meaningful. And I think we'd be completely wrong not to be looking at the flight only market and thinking that's a great opportunity at the moment in terms of the future of the business, in terms of cross-sell, et cetera.

Perfect. We'll now go on to questions on the webcast. Our first question comes through Andrew Lobbenberg at Barclays, who asks, you've been cautious in going back to Egypt and Tunisia. What is your thinking about these markets in the current geopolitical context?

We're looking at lots of potential destinations. We've served both Egypt and Tunisia in the past. Both those are accepting holidaymakers at the moment, and we continue to look at them along with other destinations. I think geopolitically those regions seem pretty stable at the moment, and... We'll keep an eye on it. The Egyptian market seems to be pretty strong at the moment. And we'll see.

Thank you. The next question comes from Peter Bates at Killick, who asks, you say that the trend towards later bookings continue, whilst also saying that it is clear that customers' eagerness to get away from it all remains strong. Aside from the survey data you referenced, is there anything else giving you this confidence, web slash app traffic or something else?

Yeah, I think traffic remains strong. We're seeing that visits are encouraging to our website and our app calls to the call centre, but people are taking a little bit longer to decide. It's not many people that visit the website once and make the booking on the first visit. They'll go away immediately. Think about things, research, talk to family, etc. Look at lots of different destinations. I mean, we've got over 70 destinations on sale now. We've got new destinations, new products. There's a lot of factors for people to take into consideration when they're choosing a holiday. They are being very choosy, and rightly so. There's a lot of choice out there. Our call centre experts are available to help them if needed. We've got lots of information on the website, on the app. We know who's visiting the app. We can send them relevant information to help them with the choice. But I think people are taking the time, digesting what's out there and picking the holiday that's exactly right for us. But traffic to our websites remains very encouraging. People are just taking a little longer to decide.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Chas Jutler at Jet2, who asks, is Gatwick a potential base for Jet2?

From who, sorry? chas juttler um uh no not at the moment we we've just as i said we've launched four uh new bases in the last two or three years um bristol liverpool uh bournemouth and luton and we're concentrating on building and maturing those bases. There's a lot to do there. But there's also a lot to do at our 13 other bases. So Gatwick isn't on our radar at the moment. It's a very busy, a very full airport. And we don't have any plans at the moment to start operations from there. We serve 85% of the UK population from Gatwick. our existing bases, and there's a lot to do before we, I think, before we mature there. So at the moment, no.

Thank you. Andrew Lobbenberg from Barclays has another question. What is the winter 25-26 capacity growth? Last winter, the Canaries were reportedly a bit competitive. What do you expect for this coming winter?

It's up by 15% for this winter. It's about 5.8 million seats. We believe that in terms of winter sun, it's still as popular as it's ever been, and city breaks are increasingly popular. It plays to a slightly older audience, and as you've seen from the demographics that we over-index in, that plays to our strengths. Hence why we've put up that capacity. Also Morocco last year performed well, so we've increased capacity into Morocco as well.

And we've got capacity from our two new bases in the winter as well that wasn't on in the previous year.

Thank you. Our final question comes from Julian Cook at Atka Capital who asks, is there any scope to increase daily aircraft utilisation or aircraft utilisation during the low or shoulder season?

Aircraft utilisation has increased year on year. We're more efficient. And with the more southerly bases, we can sometimes do more flying because obviously the flights are shorter. We may be able to do more in a day than we can from the very north of England or in Scotland. And aircraft utilisation is a measure... We look at constantly, it's up year on year, and we will try and increase utilisation where possible in the future, if it makes sense.

Thank you. That concludes questions from the webcast, so I'll hand back to the management team for any closing remarks.

Well, first of all, thank you for everyone attending the office today and those online. As I said at the start, we're very happy with our financial results and we think we have the right strategy which has helped to deliver these results and help deliver results in the future. Thank you for everyone for the support. I hope you're as pleased with the results as we are, and we hope to be able to keep delivering record results in year-on-year growth in the future. So thank you.