Wizz Air Holdings Plc

Good morning and welcome to Wizz Air's full year 25 H1 results. In a moment, we'll be handing over to Joseph Faraday and Jan Malin for the presentation, which will be followed by Q&A. This is being broadcast live on a webcast and we will hand over to Q&A in the room first, followed by those listening online. We'll hand over to Joe.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming and thanks for listening to this. So this is our H1 results for FISPR 25. Would you please move the slide one more? Thank you. So I would like to spend a little time upfront regarding explaining you some of the drivers of the of the business all in. I believe that the ship is turning. and clearly we are entering kind of a better era for the business. I would just still like to remind you the challenges we have been navigating this business through, the war in Ukraine, the Middle Eastern conflict continuously dragging the business, and probably most importantly, the GTF engine groundings. So with regard to the revenue environment, first of all, We are reporting positive unit revenue development in the first half, and probably even more important, we are seeing that revenue strengths continue to unfold going into the second half. Some of it is the base. Same time last year was a fairly weak base. You remember early October, the Israeli conflict broke out, making a significant impact on our business by removing profitable capacity and putting that up after reshuffling to immature capacity. So obviously denting our ability to generate revenue and denting profitability as well. So we're seeing that this positive momentum is actually even getting stronger going into the second half. And I will elaborate on this a little later. Uh, we got to cost, I guess this is the area where we feel the most disappointed by. Uh, but this is all explainable. Um, most of it is, um. corresponding with the GTF engine groundings. And I know that you may say that Brett is compensating you for that, but that's not entirely true, certainly not in our context. If you measure compensation on the basis of direct costs to the business, yes, Brett and Whitney is compensating us for that. But if you look at our entire exposure to the GTF engine, we were forced to make soft scale decisions, especially for the current year. Overnight, we lost kind of 20% of our fleet and we had to make sure that we essentially back up our capacity one way or another. And we were opting for three things looking for two initiatives, and one was happening anyway, so we continuously received new aircraft deliveries, but we decided to extend old aircraft leases, and we decided to take market leases, market vet leases. Both of these come with costs. We could have decided to do nothing, and then we would have been kind of in the money with Brett and Whitney, but we had to take the decision, because otherwise, strategically, we would have been turning over invested markets, newly invested markets into into the hands of all competitors. So we had to protect capacity and we set the target to upward capacity. That came with significant costs. And also as we related on previously, now we are shifting focus towards more expensive airports to less expensive regional airports, secondary airports, alternate capital airports. And let's not forget that Airport costs came under pressure because we were not growing. And the airport business actually is fairly simple. Airports support you for growth, penalize you for no growth. And I think this is what we have been affected by. I think the business has been actually achieving a lot in this period. We have reshuffled our network further, so we remove capacity from underperforming markets and we deployed that capacity to actually perform in markets. If you just look at the Middle East, given that the Middle East continue to drag, I mean, people kind of don't like flying over war zones. So we started experiencing weakening demand in the Middle East. We removed significant capacity and we reallocated that capacity where actually that capacity was demanded. A very recent example was the Moldova Bays reopening. We used to have a very strong performing base in Moldova due to geopolitical reasons. We suspended the operation of that base, but now we've just reinstated it. that base operation, which makes a lot of sense. And we are basically tapping into already mature market capacity. Again, with regard to sustainability performance, we've got CAPA's recognition for the third time in a row of being the most sustainable airline in the whole of Europe. So we believe that we have become even more resilient uh to navigate ourselves through volatility uh continuous volatility i would i would say um if you look at the way we are uh going forward uh now we are entering the era of growth after standstill a period of a year or 18 months now we are actually at a tipping point that we're going to be growing again. Certainly that is the case in fiscal year 26. We are growing organically. We are looking at margin expansion and we are looking at our kind of valuation multiples to come in line with our peers. So we're seeing that we are enhancing our value proposition to the market. I mean, clearly, the grounded fleet is a hangover, and it will be a hangover for some time. But at the same time, the proportionality of the issue is getting reduced by the day because we've totally bottomed out on the number of aircraft on the ground. But given the fleet growth that we are having, actually, the proportion of the grounded fleet is getting less and less. And as we have said, we are in negotiation with Brett and Whitney with regard to the extension of compensation. That's going to happen. Just met the company yesterday. I think we have still some job to be done in terms of ironing out some of the issues, but that's going to happen. So I would be relaxed about that, although I cannot... give you much insights at this point in time given the confidentiality involved could you please move the slide so if you look at the um the numbers um um i mean as said the gtf um has been a significant overhang um on the um on the numbers but maybe if you kind of break it down you look at capacity uh capacity is kind of flat flattish ASK terms is down almost 1%. C terms, it's up 1%. So basically, this is the function of reducing stage lengths, which is important because by reducing... we are actually increasing sector productivity. So with the same volume of assets, we are reaching more customers. We are engaging stronger with the market and likely you should be expecting that plan to continue to unfold going forward. Our passenger numbers basically corresponded with seat capacity. We are up almost a percent with flat, flattish load factor performance. So the total fleet actually grew substantially during the period. So we went from 189 aircraft to 232 aircraft. So that's a significantly larger number of fleet, although that number contains the eight wet list aircraft. Now, those wet list aircrafts are out. They were removed from operations at the end of October. So we no longer rely on market capacity. You know that this is a very expensive capacity. We needed to do that for protecting overall capacity against competitive incursions. But it is at a cost, and now that cost is phased out from the business. We had around 44 GTF aircraft grounded. and that made a profound impact, not only on the cost of running the business, but also with regard to the measures that we had to take for protecting our capacity. Utilization was slightly improving in the period, so we were more effectively using the fleet on hand, which I think is important with regard to utilization and spreading costs on the basis of utilization. Some improvements on operational KPIs. Completion rate was slightly up. 99.4, our target is 99.5, so we were nearly on target. We think we will be able to catch up on that in the second half, and on an all-year-round basis, we will be able to deliver our target. On-time performance was slightly improving. I mean, let's not forget that ATC It was, again, disastrous during the summer, slotting the whole industry, and we were not immune to that. So that created significant distress. I think kind of where we are with regard to our operating model, we feel very confident in our ability to operate timely with integrity. But when operations peak up in Europe, especially the summer peak period, the stakeholders break down, especially ATC, and they continue to make significant impacts on our ability to operate. So we are looking at ways of further enhancing our resilience during these peak periods. And this is the... uh the focus going uh going forward and you see that with regard to airports and roads we have been consolidating ourselves so basically we have eliminated uh loss making routes for the benefits of uh uh routes uh actually where we are making uh good money so all or in all the performance of the company thank you let me just let me hand over to you

Thanks, Joseph. Can we go to the next slide, please? Thank you, Seth. So I guess the good news is that we're flying more people, and those that are flying with us are flying at higher fares. That's the takeaway from H1. We're seeing that trend continue dramatically into H2. So as Joe explained, even though ASKs came down, and that's due to a shorter stage length, which is by design, that's a deliberate choice to try and drive more sector productivity, we're generating more seats. and we're keeping load factors roughly stable, which means that the higher revenue comes from yield. So that's a positive yield environment in an industry that's challenged in that respect. So that's a positive outcome, and we're seeing, as I said, that coming through into Q3, and we'll talk about some of those dynamics in a little bit. Fuel cost was a support for us. Even though we're flying an inefficient fleet versus what we could be flying, Due to older aircraft and lease extensions that we had to take on, due to the inefficiencies around wet leases, our fuel costs went down. They could have been much lower had we been able to maximize the troop potential of an all-GTF-powered fleet. And that is something to keep in mind, is that as we continue to eliminate some of these older aircraft and bring more GTFs back online, our fuel efficiency will continue to benefit from that. In terms of non-fuel costs, I'll save that for the next slide because we have a Slide dedicated to that. EBITDA slightly down on prior year, and that's despite an average of 44 aircraft grounded during the period. We're around 40 aircraft grounded, and we expect that to continue. Those aircraft are incurring cost but not generating EBITDA, and so that puts pressure on the business. Likewise, on depreciation, I'll cover on the next slide. So overall, our positive RASC was driven by a strong performance in Q1, and a positive performance in Q2, so 1.4% up on the period versus last year. We're starting to see some strength in ancillary RASC, as well as obviously ticket RASC performing nicely, and the factor basically flat. So in terms of the revenue environment and why that's supportive is I think it's important to point out that while we're talking about flat capacity or slightly up on capacity for the year, Q3 last year, so F23 versus F24, we were up 27% in capacity. This year, we're basically flat. Q4 last year, Q3, F23 to F24, we were up 17%. So we were able to benefit from the lack of capacity pressure. and really be selective in terms of where we're deploying our aircraft and making choices around profitability and maximizing that. And so that's giving us the confidence for the full year numbers. If I can go to the next slide, please. In terms of cost, you know, while we see optimism on revenue, we do see pressure on cost. Now, I think the fuel environment is favorable, and we'll continue to see that through our hedging program, the benefits from that. In terms of ex-fuel costs, a lot of prices in the half and in the quarter on that. And I'd like to try and segment that into three categories, our costs. One of the costs driven by Pratt that are either something that we can control or have already controlled. So as we've mentioned, we had a plan to exit the wet leases. We've talked about that in Q1. We executed that plan in line with our target, which was to get out of them by October. Those wet lease contracts are terminated. They were full year contracts. And so that's no longer gonna be something that you'll see coming through our P&L. The other will be the ad hoc wet lease here and there for emergency situations, but not something structural like what we put in place this year. The takeaway from that is that the exit costs were higher than what ultimately we were expecting at the Q1. And that's part of the reason why you're seeing such high numbers flow through into Q2. And some of that overhang will fall into Q3 because we had wet leases in place in Q3. So things like wet leases gone, there's other inefficiencies that come along with the PRAC grounding that we're in the process of addressing. So if you think about, if you look at our cost structure, disruption costs were high in the period. And that's just simply down to the fact that if you don't have spare engines or spare aircraft and you have a technical problem with an aircraft, you're faced with no choice but to cancel. And that drives the costs up. We did pretty well in Q1 with disruption, and we're expecting to see very strong performance in Q3 and Q4 as we drive stability into the business and as we start to see more capacity come online. But in Q2, we had a rather high disruption cost line driven by the lack of spares, driven by the Pratt situation. Likewise, on crew costs, we saw high costs in the period. And we always said that crew was going to be an area of pressure on the business because we were deliberate and are being deliberate when it comes to maintaining the employee base so that we have them ready for the return of capacity growth. And so that's a choice that we took at the expense of short-term profit, but to the benefit of long-term stability. So that's the first bucket. I don't think that we can control or are controlling or have control. The second one are the costs associated with groundings. There is going to be a cost for as long as we are grounding aircraft. We're going to be seeing more maintenance events. It's just a simple fact. As we move engines around and try and optimize the availability of assets, there is a cost associated with that. And there's cost pressure in that across the industry. which we're dealing with. Likewise, there's depreciation. We have all these extra assets that are not contributing to ASKs, and they're not contributing to EBITDA. And so we're taking this fixed element and spreading it across an inefficient base in terms of ASKs. As we start to return to growth, and we're talking about growth somewhere between 15% and 20% for F26, that'll help take some pressure off that. But as long as we have aircraft grounded and as long as we're running a high spare engine ratio, there is going to be an inefficiency there. And so it's very difficult to compare that number in its current condition against the peer group, considering that we're grounding and others aren't. In terms of other costs and income, you can see we've given you a rather helpful breakdown of the constituent parts to that. We benefit from sale leaseback for the half. We did have lower sale leaseback activity in Q2 versus Q1. We would expect there to be a tick-up in Q3 and Q4 versus Q2 on sale leasebacks, and then a real ramp-up in F26 as the number of transactions happen. What will be different this year is that there will be no engine sale leaseback activity because we don't have any other engines in the delivery pipeline in the near term. That could change, so there are two discussions really underway, but this is all aircraft activity. Um, we take our sale leasebacks as the assets arrive. Um, and so, so we have a pretty good view as to when the aircraft are coming for the next, um, 18 months. Um, and that will be something that we can plan for. In terms of compensation, I would expect that number there to flow through, uh, pretty, pretty much consistently between Q3 and Q4, uh, because we're still seeing a consistent number of aircraft grounded. So that's a pretty reliable number there. The short-term wet lease numbers are going to go away. Um, and then, um, And then the other ones are, there's nothing unusual on that. So back to the buckets, you have the ones that we can control, do the prep, the ones we can't control, do the prep, and they will simply roll off either through un-parking or through capacity growth. And then the third bucket in terms of costs, are the ones that I would say are to some extent self-induced. Joe talked about that. So some decisions around the network that we made that we need to now change, and that's migrating towards aircraft airports that that are prepared to incentivize us or even pay us to fly there. And so really identifying those opportunities and making sure that the incentive program is right With us being the only airline out there that's really going to be able to add any sort of meaningful capacity and reward those airports, we're going to see benefits through the network in terms of cost and revenue by virtue of the quality of the network. So rather than being speculative or opportunistic and trying to identify new markets, and try and rapidly mature them, we're going to focus on deploying our capacity consistently within our existing footprint, so harvesting the profit that's available from our footprint. And there's a slide that shows later on where we're putting that capacity and how it's consistent with our core markets. And so that's how I would summarize the cost. We have a very specific cost plan in place, how we get through the end of the year and how we deliver on our numbers. that's the baseline if we are helped by revenue then that's upside and if we're helped by fx that's help that's upside as well but our focus is on cost and that's the plan they're here to deliver and with that i'll move on to the next slide please I'm trying to give you a little bit of color when it comes to our free cash flow and to show you our EBIT for free cash flow conversion ratio, which is roughly 100% at this point. Obviously, it's the better performing half, and so you would expect there to be a strong performance, but I want you to understand how we're able to convert EBIT into free cash flow. The net capex line after the operating cash flow bar of 720 is basically the combination of PDP deposit payments to the manufacturers out, the refunds from PDP payments when we take delivery of an aircraft, as well as the net benefit from sale leaseback gains under sale to operating lease or sale to Joelco arrangements. So that's the cash benefit from that. And then the lease repayments is the combination of all the type of rent that would be going out across all the structures, whether it be French tax lease, DOLCO, finance lease, or operating lease. That 447 number there ends up being the free cash flow. If I move to the next slide, please, you can see that we generated $270 million in cash in the period from Q4 at the end of last fiscal year to where we are now at the half. We ended up just under $1.9 billion in cash at the end of September. And that's after the bond repayment in January. So we basically would have been 500 million higher for the periods following Q4 had we not had to make that. So it shows a rather generous, a rather robust cash position. And in terms of industry peers, our cash-to-revenue ratio is sort of in the mid-30% range, which is higher than most. In terms of how we bridge our free cash flow from the prior slide of 447 to the 270 million in net cash position, the difference there to get to 270 down from 447 is a combination of repayments of PDP loans. We had a facility where we borrowed against our PDP deposits, and that's something we put in place in the winter of 2023. Sorry, winter of 2022. that when we were emerging out of COVID and we hadn't yet returned to profitability, We've since decided that we no longer need that facility, and it's part of our overall cost drive, and we've repaid that early. We've prepaid that. So that facility is no longer there, and as a result, we'll save on the interest costs. It's a structured facility. It's one of the more expensive costs of financing. I wouldn't say it's punitively expensive. It's just relatively more expensive than other sources that we have available to ourselves. So that's just one element of the overall cost. drive to deliver on our numbers. You would have seen that Fitch downgraded us from investment grade to one notch below last month. While it's disappointing, it's not unexpected. We've been spending a lot of time talking to them. It comes down to ultimately the math. And at the end of the day, our net leverage ratio is not where they want it to be, which is two times. Our net leverage is under pressure for a number of reasons. One is that we have 40 to 44 aircraft grounded, those aircraft grounded. They come with leverage because when you take a lease back, you have to add the leverage to the business. And this is the lease leverage. But they're not generating EBITDA. And so it's just simply hard to make that number work. On top of that, you have a very high spare engine ratio. Those engines, while they're contributing to the business in terms of reducing the number of grounded aircraft, they're not generating dollar per dollar the same amount of EBITDA if we were to invest those dollars elsewhere in the business. And so those two elements alone drive the leverage ratio out of the territory that Fitch was comfortable with in terms of maintaining the investment grade rating. i will point out that um if you look at the the the commentary from fitch over the last couple years in particular in the ratings actions um the reason why we were on negative outlook in those periods was was related so can we get back to profitability how are we going to deal with hedging what's going to happen with regards to geopolitical issues within our territories things like that um and um in this in this this time around all the commentary has shifted The reason for the downgrade is specific due to the inefficiencies caused to us by Pratt. And if you look at some of the commentary, we have some of the highest EBITDA margins. We have strong liquidity positions based upon their analysis. They see the aircraft order book backlog as a competitive advantage. And that's something that I think it's very important to emphasize. Lastly, we do see a lot of volatility flowing through our P&L due to the unrealized FX gains and losses. That is something that is unfortunately unavoidable being a Euro reporting currency company. with most of our leases being dollar-denominated, that problem is going to become more acute as our fleet growth starts to ramp up in the coming years as we continue to take aircraft that are dollar-based. We do whatever we can to try and secure euro leases or euro-type funding structures, but the market is dominated by dollar-type funding structures. And so just like we've successfully executed our hedging program when it comes to fuel and the FX portion of fuel, We're in the process. We have approval. We're about to start layering in cross-currency swaps to be able to swap our dollar obligations for euro obligations. And we'll start with addressing the existing portfolio using a combination of those structures as well as converting our free cash into dollars. to deal with the existing portfolio. And as new aircraft are delivered, we will continue to swap those in. And that'll smooth that out and giving everybody, certainly those of you with models, an easier time to try and predict how the unrealized effects, gains and losses flow through the business. In terms of hedging, there's a slide at the back, which I won't get to talk about, but we're very pleased with our position. So we can... we can confirm that we're continuing to execute our policy. As it was designed, that policy is delivering the results that we're expecting. And like I said, we've augmented our policy now to start these cross-currency swaps to deal with the balance sheet risk. And with that, I will pass back to Joe.

Thank you. Thanks, Jan. So one more page, please. Yes, so let me elaborate a bit on revenue. I mean, you clearly see that revenue performance has become a lot stronger than previous trends. And I would like you to understand kind of the underpinning reasons for that. This is not sheer luck or anything like that, but you will see some very substantial movements behind the numbers. And especially when you take a forward-looking view, I mean, you see that – Our revenue outlook is based on empirical evidence, what we are seeing right now. We are much up on bookings in November, December, and we are expecting that trend to flow into the last quarter of the financial year as well. But if you really kind of drill down to understand what's behind that, you see that On the network side of the equation, there are two fundamental shifts. One is that we actually have the suffered capacity from underperforming markets to performing markets. So the Middle East came under some pressure due to the – geopolitical situation and revenue outlook deteriorated as a result, we removed significant capacity from the Middle East and moved that capacity to markets with high demand. That's a structural improvement of profitability and revenue for the business. Second, a very important issue, and we have not talked about this, but this is maybe the most relevant matter, that In previous winters, we used to have anything between 25% to 30% premature capacity to carry on because we invested new capacity into diversified markets. But this time around, we opted for densifying markets as opposed to diversifying market, and we have not invested into our new market. So effectively, 100% of our capacity is mature. that makes a significant impact to the performance of revenue. So these kind of background network shifts in strategy, I think, are profound to the improvement of revenue performance. But I would also highlight two other factors on the pricing revenue management side of the equation. You recall about two years ago, we basically moved our commercial organization from Geneva to Budapest. We lost quite a lot of people in translation, but that organization is completely beat, and actually we are now starting benefiting from the maturity of that organization. I think people have a lot better understanding of what they are doing, of markets they are assigned to, and as a result, we are making better quality decisions. Secondly, I think that was already commented, that we started deploying AI tools and machine learning to make revenue management more real time as opposed to just being proxied or making decisions based on historic performance. And we are seeing very clear improvements, especially on managing the late booking markets. So we're seeing that what you are seeing on revenue performance is yes i mean you can argue that it's against a low base but it is very structural in a way we are seeing the performance enhancement and when you run the number you will see our guidance on revenue being mid single digit for the whole financial year which basically implies that we are looking at somewhere around a a very high single digit or or low teams on improvement in the second half. And this is against the low base, but against fundamental shifts in quality of revenue and quality of profitability of the business. Could you please move the slide? So with regard to cost, I think this is where most of the challenges lie. As said, end of October, we returned all the wet leases. So they no longer drag performance of the company. We are much focused on continuously improving our operational efficiency. we made a decision to suspend Israel until mid-January to make sure that operationally, financially, customer care-wise, we are focused on the high-demand Christmas period, and we are not running the risk of volatility in that period, and we create certainty for operations, and we continue to affect the design of our operating model. We kind of learned, as I said, that We do pretty well in terms of fundamental operating KPIs during work peaks, but we are still stretched during the peak period. So we are looking at ways of improving the design with that in mind. We are continuously improving completion and functionality. I mean, these metrics are profound to performance on customer compensation. We are very... focused on EC261 and to make sure that we lowered that exposure in the company. We titled the stream of initiatives Customer First to make sure that we are further reducing our delays and improving the overall experience of the customer, especially in the peak periods like summer. You will see shortly that more predictability will be created on on maintenance costs once we are forming the discussions and arrangements with Brett and Whitney. It's coming, and I think we are sort of inching to the end of that process. I mean, I would still like you to understand that, I mean, These matters require negotiations and you wanna make sure that you get the best out of the situation while we appreciate that the market wants to have absurd certainty and, and, and, and corporate plans. But sometimes this is just not corresponding with the, with the realities. We have an agreement in place legally binding all parties by the end of this calendar year. But this agreement will be renewed and extended because I think this is simply just the interest of, of, of all parties and that's going to happen. You also appreciate that when the business is not growing then pressure on airport costs builds up simply because the way airports operate you bring gross you get rewarded with lower costs you don't bring gross you you pay you pay more we are just exiting this tensile phase of of no growth, and we believe that we're going to be able to attract a lot better deals as a result of being able to grow. And especially when you put that in context of the market, that likely we will be the fastest growing airline in Europe next year, and our competitors will fall under pressure with regard to their delivery streams from their respective OEM. And I would just make one more comment that we were talking about like over-crewing and crew inefficiency in the business. This is limited to captains. Captains are the most critical human resources for ramping up the business, and we have been over-crewing captains because we just wanted to make sure that we ease the ramp up whenever we come to it, and now we are approaching that period. But the fact of the matter is that actually first officers scouting through are fairly intact in terms of numbers. So we don't have much inefficiencies and unproductivity over there. But indeed, we have captain unproductivity. But we felt that was important because otherwise we would be distressing the business with a sudden need of trying to find 20 percent more captains, which is almost like a mission impossible. So you have to groom for that and you have to set some reserves with that regard. So please move to the next slide. I think it is important that you understand what is going on on the fleet side, because it is not as rock solid as it used to be. It is more fluid and there are variable components to that. Of course, we know the fleet as we speak. I think we pretty much know the fleet, what's coming in the next year, although As said, we are only reconfirmed until end of 2025, so more confirmation to come from Airbus. And you see the number of contracted aircraft in the fleet, and then you see another line, which is the expected fleet. So there is a gap between the two, and this is due to the OEM's delays. Let's not forget Airbus is not a manufacturing plant. It is an assembly plant. So basically everything is manufactured somewhere else. So Airbus is big time subject to performance of their own supply chain. I'm pretty sure you have come across with the news that Spirit Spirit is in trouble. Spirit is one of the key suppliers to the industry, to both Airbus and Boeing. But the issue is not limited to Spirit. You also know that the engine manufacturers are struggling to uphold their contractual commitments. And this is not limited to Brett and Whitney. So this is across the board. There are issues with CFM. There are issues with Rolls-Royce. So this is a different industry in terms of the integrity of the supply chain of that industry. So these delays, this supply chain performance will creep through the years, and we don't know when Airbus, for that matter, would be able to catch up to their contractual commitment. unlikely they will be, and most likely they will continue to drag, and we will have to kind of start building up the order book towards the back end and beyond the back end of the current commitment period. And personally, I think that we're going to fall well into Canada year 2030, maybe even 2031 by the time this order book may be actually delivered to the company. We still have 380 aircraft on order, but I think this is going to be smooth. So the relevance of this is that you may feel like there is too much growth coming here and there, and this is going to be very dilutive to the business. But we are in discussions to make sure that we are kind of forwarding of this 15% annual growth rate and iron out the delivery stream accordingly. And the two issues that need to be addressed in the discussion are on the one hand, the Pratt & Whitney grounding and kind of the recovery of those aircraft and engines, and two, the Airbus delivery delays. So we are taking those into account when we are resetting the delivery stream. So I think in the end, we will do a lot better than what it looks based on current contract, because that contract is going to change, probably not once. I mean, it was between us to date since, uh 2005 we have changed contracts with airbus i think 80 times eight zero uh so that's going to happen um in terms of groundings um we are expecting to kind of hold the current levels uh for groundings uh 40 45 aircraft uh also for fiscal 26 and then from there on we would be gradually recovering and uh Current best estimate of ours is that the Pratt & Whitney engine situation may go into net positive sometime in 2027, but not before that. Would you please move the slide? Okay, so with regard to growth, as said, we are looking at 20% growth in the next financial year. And we just wanted to demonstrate to you how we are set geographically for that. You can see that bread and butter continues to be San Antonio, half of our business over there. A second layer of growth will happen in Western Europe, and some growth will happen in the Middle East. But we are looking at kind of 85% of growth to be delivered through European markets. So I don't want you to come across with the view that Bizair has gone far too far, you know, uncharted territories, I think that risk is contained. We're seeing there is an upside in non-European areas, but that upside needs to be managed very carefully to make sure that the proportionality of that capacity is well contained, and also by taking into account all the risks associated with that capacity. Importantly, the year ahead is going to be a lot more about densification as opposed to diversification. So we are not really looking at chasing new market opportunities. We are looking at actually enhancing our existing market opportunities. Most of the growth will actually happen through our very core markets like Poland, Hungary, Italy. Romania and it will be a very safe delivery of growth as opposed to taking risks with new markets. Next slide, please. So with regard to guidance for the balance of the financial year, we are upholding national guidance. I know that you are challenging it, but I would like you to really try to understand the fundamentals behind. Our revenue stream is very different from previous revenue streams. There is no immature capacity in that. and we have been really shifting capacity along the line of profitability with enhanced pricing revenue management capacity and ability. So we're seeing that revenue will be a strong driver of debt performance and we are upholding the revenue guidance of going up mid-single digit Capacity is roughly the same as we previously guided. We are seeing one percentage point up on capacity, but that's not a drastic change. We are seeing some variables on the cost side, we will end up with better fuel cost than previously guided and somewhat worse ex-fuel cost as a result of the grounding impact, the battle is impact, although that's behind us, but it kind of drags the the annual numbers. No change on tax rate, no change on net profit guidance. And we have the program in place, not only on the revenue side, but also on the cost side to make sure that this is not, net profit is not an inspirational target, but this is based on plans which we have been delivering and we continue to execute against. So management has the confidence that this business will deliver this guidance. Thank you. I think that kind of wraps up the presentation. So questions, please.

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Hey, good morning. It's Harry Gowes from JP Morgan. Just two questions, if I can. First one, you talk about the better yield or RASC momentum into H2. So maybe you could give us a bit of a flavor in terms of the monthly progression, maybe September, October, expectation for November in terms of RASC. And in the second one, more looking actually for next year. So the ex-fuel cask is obviously up mid-teens percentage now for this year. Clearly a large proportion of that will be due to the groundings and some of the one-off costs that you've taken this year. So as the growth comes back and some of those one-offs unwind, I mean, how much of that cost pressure from this year do you think you can recover going into next year? Thanks.

So with regard to ROSC, actually the progression is quite linear. I would go back to last year. So 7th of October is the date when the war in Israel broke out, and that forced us to remove 7% of our total capacity and reallocate that capacity across the board. So basically we went kind of empty on that capacity for some time before we kind of – really put it back into operations. But when that capacity was operated, it was a very premature capacity. So the base is distorted, first of all. So obviously, one part of the revenue progression is to catch up against that kind of a deflection last year. But the other part of revenue progression is more structural, and this is what I was trying to explain, that this is network shift, no immature capacity, and improved pricing revenue management capabilities. And you are pretty much seeing a linear rebuilding trend with Etigar. So we are seeing a double-digit ROSC improvement in In November, we are seeing double-digit ROSC improvement in December, and mostly that level will flow into the last quarter of the financial year, too. Now, with regard to ex-fuel costs, as you said, ex-fuel costs is highly distorted by one-offs like wet leaves. That's not going to happen next year. I mean, that's fairly significant, about 4%. of the total cost increase this year is attributed to at least, so that's not going to happen. The proportion of the ground it freed, given that we are now containing the number, so roughly the same number up through the terms, around 40, 45 aircraft, But again, it's a growing fleet, so the proportionality will change. So the exposure to grounded fleet is going to be less, so that will obviously make a positive impact. I think we're going to be sucking up some of the reserves, especially on the capital side, the unproductivity of the organization through the growth. So that's going to help too. And last but not least, we're going to be delivering better airport courses out of growth because we're going to be leveraging that growth profile. And I think we will be in a pretty good position, especially relative to the market, because others will not be in a position to present that ability to grow. And as I said, all these design changes to the peak operating model are aiming at reducing compensation costs to the consumer. So we may have saving opportunities there as well. So I think fiscal 26 costs should look quite significantly different from fiscal 25. I don't know, you want to add?

Yeah, you should factor a reduction in ex-fuel cask year-on-year. I would say sort of low single digits around there.

Hey, Tobias from Bernstein here. I have one more question on RASC. When you look at Q2 specifically, RASC was obviously flat despite the lower denominator. Can you help us decipher what exactly is behind that? Is this a Ryanair or is it something else? And then I was wondering what is assumed in your guidance for the supplier compensation? Thank you.

Yeah, so Q2 RASC was, from memory up, 0.4% versus 3.1% in Q1. And I mean, I would just simply say that there was a combination of the busy season with the disruption challenges and all the other issues they were facing, as well as we just needed time for these changes to start to flow through, which we're starting to see now. So we've made some commercial changes in the organization, and those are starting to produce fruits, and that's what we're seeing in the Q3 and Q4. And when Joe talks about double-digit RAS improvement for Q3, I would say that that's a very, very modest number. Right now we're seeing very strong evidence of that. What was the second question?

On the supplier compensation.

On supplier compensation number. So I would say that take the Q2 numbers and you can roll those forward, Q3 and Q4. The sale leaseback profile, it comes down to when the fleet deliveries are. Q3 is a modest quarter, and then we'll start to see some increase in deliveries in Q4.

Yep, good morning. It's Rory Cullinane from RBC. Firstly, I saw you cut back on distribution and marketing expenses in H1. Is that illustrative of a very strong focus on cost at the moment? And how do you think of the trade-off with the top line? uh secondly on rask into full year 26 appreciate you're not going to have much visibility but ryanair um painting quite a bullish picture on monday given continuing capacity constraints and soft prior comps in h1 um considering this and the improvements in revenue management you touched on is that something you agree with your competitor on thank you

I mean, I would just take the second one, Ross. I mean, I think we are very optimistic with regard to going into the next financial year when it comes to expected revenue performance. I mean, first of all, we are not under pressure to diversify capacity to markets where, you time to build maturity. I mean, we are really focused on densifying our markets. Two, I would say that likely the competitive pressure is going to ease on us. I mean, you can imagine that over the last year or so, we have been under immense pressure with regard to protecting our positions against competition. And, you know, we got challenge here and there. And that's why we had to take some suboptimal short-term decisions in order to defend the business for the long run. But I don't think our competitors will be in a good position to really challenge us with capacity because they will be constrained on capacity. And now we will have capacity actually to play our game. And by now, most of our core markets, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, have become underinvested capacity-wise. So we are just kind of putting capacity back into these markets, which have been already demanded by the marketplace and the consumer base. So we're seeing that the revenue environment for our business in the first half of next financial year is going to be fairly benign.

And just on distribution marketing, were you talking about the 63 to 65? Is that the number you're talking about? Okay. Well, I mean, there's certainly an element of cost savings there that's coming through. And in particular, what we're doing is trying to embrace some of these new payment platforms that are out there. So whether it be Apple Pay, Google Pay, things like that, or some of these pay now, buy now, pay later type arrangements, or even some of the other sort of digital banks that are out there, we're plugging all those into the system. And we're excited about some of the partnerships that come through that. So that's the sort of innovation that we're trying to take advantage of just to make it easier. People are buying more and more of their products through the phone, and so making it all integrated and really looking at what we can do on an e-commerce side of things. I mean, it's a $2 million increase or savings and a half, but I think that there's more to come. The other thing when it comes to distribution is credit card processing is becoming a big issue. cost to the business. We're basically a 6 billion euro or 5.5 billion euro business at the end of the day. All of that flows through the credit cards. I talked to our peers in the industry. They may have one, maybe two credit card acquirers just because of our footprint and because of our business and the currencies that we work with. We have six. We're constantly playing those against each other to drive the best deals. We're also renegotiating those deals. Many of the deals that we have were renegotiated during COVID just because there was a uncertainty around the viability of airlines in a COVID period. And so we have onerous terms. And those terms are what we're in the process now of renegotiating based upon the strengths of the business that we have now, you know, profitability, liquidity, cash conversion, things like that. And so that will drive ultimately savings through the distribution line. So, I mean, you have to assume that any contract that was signed in the last five years is fair game for renegotiation at this point.

Good morning. It's Jamie Robotham from Deutsche Bank. I just wanted to follow up on Harry's questions about the phasing of RASC, focusing on this December quarter, just to make sure I kind of understand. So maybe you'd be willing to share roughly what RASC did in October. And following on from that, we can see from slide 11, you know, there wasn't much of a tailwind to RASC in October from load factor because it was flattish year on year. Hopefully you got a bit of yield improvement and that gives you maybe a low single digit RASC. But then in November and December, Hopefully you hold on to these 300 basis point improvements in book load, and they are in themselves roughly a 4% tailwind to RASC. So to get from four up to double digit, the rest must be yield. So you're saying a lot of that yield improvement is the mix of the network mature this year versus not mature last year. Is it fair to say you weren't getting that benefit in October because technically that's the final month of winter and then suddenly, so there weren't many root maturity differences in October but then there are from November through to March because that's the winter season. Perhaps you could clarify. Thanks.

I think it's fair to say yes. I would say so.

And October RASC? Not double digit? No. Okay, thanks.

Hi, it's Jona Mystery from Jefferies. Three questions, if I may. Your press release says that there's a sharp focus on costs. But when I look at guidance, ex-fuel costs are still mid-teens, which implies mid-teens growth in H2 as well. Could you quantify the level of cost savings that you're expecting to see in the second half of the year? And when should we expect this to flow through into the P&L? My second question is around grounding. So your grounding's commentary has improved slightly, say 40 to 45 planes versus 50 previously. What's the implication for ASK growth in the next 18 months? Are we still talking about 15 to 20 percent or is it the lower end or maybe slightly higher than that? And then third question, just on guidance for FY25, what should we expect in terms of FX costs or indeed income in the second half of the year? And could you just clarify whether and why disruption costs will improve in H2?

Let me start with the grounding and you can sing of the others. I would caution you with regard to breathing too much into improvements with Pat and Whitney, because really what is happening at Pat and Whitney is that they invented a process called quick turn. And quick turn means that you take the engine off, you put it in a shop, you replace the contaminated parts, and the engine goes back to the aircraft. This takes roughly around wing to wing 90 days. long-term process is 300 days. But the difference between the two is that in long-term, actually you are addressing other maintenance events on the engine. So maintenance events that may occur in three months, in six months or nine months, but given the long off-wing time, you are kind of compounding all those activities. You fix the engine and the engine goes back for years to be operated. The problem with quick turn is that, yes, that is, again, very short term, but you pay the price for that after because quite likely a year later you will have to put the engine back into the shop and then you start the 300 days. So this is really kind of easing capacity situations short term, but it's not really giving you a structural fix in the big scheme of things. Now, kind of the way it works is that this is, a prioritization of Pratt & Whitney. So Pratt & Whitney controls the shock capacity. And they decided, as a corporation, that they want to prioritize operations over structural engine fix. So that's why they created the quick turn. And at the moment, they almost only do quick turns. So they push every engine into the shops in order to release those engines to the industry for operation, and they start the long-term process. So, again, I think that gives you some short-term benefit, but it doesn't give you structural benefits. So, yes, we are gaining something, a few aircraft as a result of that operation. next year uh but um this issue is still going to stay with us until 2027. so yeah i i mean i would say probably we are gaining five six seconds as a result of of this in uh in in fiscal 26. okay in terms of cost i don't have a specific number to give you because it's a rolling it's a rolling action right so so we have a plan

that we design every month based upon our forecast as to what it takes to get to a number within our guidance. That number changes based upon delivered actions, undelivered actions, FX, revenue environment, things like that. So we're constantly modifying it. Like we're confident that we're gonna get there. we have identified measures that will get us there. We don't have gaps that say we don't know what to do. We still have to do this. We have said these are the list of things and we report within our team as to who's doing what to deliver against them. But there are variables, right? If the revenue um ends up being better and we deliver our costs then that's going to be upside and that'll push us further into the guidance zone if the fx moves against us like it did yesterday then it means that the gap widens and we got to find other measures and we're going to monitor that and we're going to keep on pushing to that our objective is to get to this 350 plus number obviously if i can smooth out the fx impact through this hedging program that we've not put in place then that eliminates that variable at the end of the day um but you know yesterday was the impact to FX and tomorrow something else will happen that'll impact FX um we don't have a FX expectation because it would be silly that would be you know making our strategy be based on hope at the end of the day we can only measure what's what the the variables that we have available to ourselves at the time and we can only execute against that but against a cost base of 5 billion um you know we're confident that we can we can generate enough profitability to get from 315 to north of 350. There are, but I'm not prepared to say that because it's not relevant at this point. It's a profit. We're here to generate profit. On disruption costs in H2, so the question was, why do we think that they're going to improve? Well, we had a very strong disruption cost performance in Q1 versus the prior year. Like I said, we had a challenging Q2 due to the level of activity in that period. a lot of time talking about how we've improved the network and changed the network that also applies to our spare aircraft capacity so where we would normally look at the network and say okay we have dedicated aircraft as spares we've now looked at a combination of dedicated aircraft and what we call virtual spares so rather than flying the aircraft 13 hours every aircraft 13 hours a day we bring some aircraft down to a much more modest number, even half that number. And those aircraft then are available to be able to slot in when there's an issue as opposed to having an aircraft be based in, say, Budapest and have to fly it somewhere else in order to get it to where the broken aircraft is so they can resume the service. So having more balance around that way. And that's the specific design that we've changed. It actually allows us to deliver more spare capacity, believe it or not. with the same amount of aircraft than if we were dedicating those aircrafts. So that's some of the changes that we're facing. There is a tension in disruption costs because what's happening is the consumer is becoming more educated and they're becoming more savvy in terms of claiming. So it's driving claim ratios up. And so we have to assume that that's just going to be the world that we live in. In fact, we're assuming that the world we're living in right now is just a volatile world, right? It's volatile. It is what it is. We're focusing more on Wizz Air's ability to be agile and to cope with that and Wizz Air's experience in doing that. I don't think anybody else has more experience in volatility right now than we do. But in terms of our disruption plan, we've proven that we can do it in January. We are driving stability into the network. We are changing the way that we fly in terms of patterns and frequencies, also flying more between bases. And that gives us a better ability to manage disruptions than we had before.

Any other questions? Maybe. Online? Online, questions online.

Yes, we have a question from Alex Patterson at Peel Hunt. Alex, do you want to unmute yourself? Or dial star six to unmute yourself. Go ahead.

Morning, everybody. A couple of questions from me, please. Firstly, Could you just say if there's any implications from Fitch's downgrade on your lease pricing? This is both existing leases and future ones. And secondly, this is a question a little bit out of left field, but I see Trump has been elected president in the US and he has said that he's going to implement tariffs of 10% to 20% on the world ex-China. Now, currently aerospace is exempt of these tariffs between the US and the EU, but that exemption is only to 2026. If the US imposes tariffs and it includes aerospace, the EU is very likely to retaliate. What can you do to mitigate that? And I'm thinking specifically for your Pratt & Whitney engines, you know, is there any sort of way around this or would you just incur a higher cost because of the tariffs?

Okay, I'll start with the easier question, which is Fitch. So we haven't had a rating in his history for maybe 17, 18 years. We had the rating when we issued bonds, and that allowed us to get very competitive pricing on that. There was a concern that there would be an impact to the downgrade. As I said, it was not unexpected. It is disappointing, but it's not unexpected. On the day that the bonds downgraded, we saw a widening of spreads, roughly 10 to 15 basis points. But since then, where we sit as of yesterday or two days ago, we saw 63 basis points tightening on the bonds. And maybe part of that is just simply the bondholders expecting that we're close enough to maturity. Maybe there's a pull-to-par effect that's going on there. But there was no additional impact to – there was actually a pricing improvement on the bonds. And so we have no plans to issue, so we don't really know what that would mean if we were to go to market. We will continue to maintain that program as a safety net to deal with the unexpected down the road. But at this point, we're happy with our liquidity and happy with our cash profile. And so we don't see that cost ever coming to fruition because we're not planning on issuing. When it comes to the leases or anywhere else in the business, the short answer is there is no impact to the existing portfolio because Those are mostly fixed. There's some variable, but like I said, that hasn't had an impact. In fact, it's had a benefit. And in terms of going forward, there's been no impact because at the end of the day, these leases are secured. Financing. It's not unsecured financing. It's less focused on the credit of the business and more on the underlying desirability of the asset. Yes, there's an element of portfolio management that lessors go through to try and find less ease of a diverse credit base, but we haven't seen any impact and we don't expect there to be any impact. There hasn't been any impact on suppliers either. There's been nobody who said as a result of this, they want to seek for tighter payment terms in terms of our accounts payable. We maintain very high negotiating leverage when it comes to our supplier base. And we will maintain that through our rigorous RFP process when it comes to working with anybody. So it's been very pleasing to say that we have not seen any negative impact from Fitch.

Okay. Right. But, I mean, I don't know what he's going to do. So we'll cross the bridge when we come to it. But let's assume that there would be tariffs imposed on aviation between the EU and the U.S., But first of all, we have a contract in place that shall be a protective shield. So of course, we would need to examine the contract. But I don't think that the contract gives any excuse for Brett and Whitney to charge us for tariffs. So they would need to absorb that themselves. But of course, we would need to look at that and maybe we would need to negotiate on that. But there is also kind of a relative approach to this. I mean, we are buying more European aircraft than some of our competitors. I mean, we buy Airbus. Airbus has a lot more European components of that aircraft than Boeing, for example. They are a lot more sourced from the United States. If that issue comes into play, I don't think this is going to be really individualized. I mean, this is going to be an industry issue. And being a European operator, operating Airbus aircraft, I think we would be scoring significantly better than our competitor. Thank you.

And we'll go to Andrew Lobenberg from Barclays. Andrew, do you want to unmute yourself?

Hi there. Can I ask, please, about the new or the extension of the Pratt & Whitney deal? You expressed confidence that you will secure something very similar to what you've got in place at the moment. But, you know, what are the factors that are making the deal take time to negotiate? And related to that, what's the status of the RFP on future engine orders? And to what extent are the two tied together? It seems to be your one point of leverage. And then can I just come back to these wet leases, which you have terminated, but Jan spoke of quite a high cost to exit. So, you know, how large was the exit cost relative to the actual cost of the wet lease? Can you perhaps reassure us that you're not going to end up paying this high cost to not fly the planes compared to what you've been doing now, which is paying a high cost to fly the planes? Thanks.

Well, let me start with Brett and Whitney. I cannot elaborate on this extension. I mean, this is all confidential and it is being negotiated. But if you want to moderate, I think, safely, you can extend the current terms and then I think you would be pretty close to the realities why it takes time, because negotiations take time. With regard to the RFP, kind of the same thing. We are not under pressure to decide, but sometime next year I would say it would be decision time, although the process is moving. I mean, you may appreciate that given the delays of Airbus, given the kind of the GTF recovery process, actually, that shifts the timeline for the unengineered aircraft quite a bit. So I think that gives us more time. We simply just want to negotiate the right deal, what is best for the company. And we are negotiating with both parties, CFM and Brett and Whitney, but we are not there to disclose any progression there or any outcomes. We'll break the news when the news is breakable, and I would turn it over to you on the wet leases.

Yeah, thanks, Andrew. So on the wet leases, we started talking about this in Q1 when we realized we no longer needed the wet leases. We had certain wet leases that were just for the summer, and then we had a number of aircraft that we had committed to for the full year. And those contracts come with a minimum monthly flying commitment. So there's a minimum cost, hours, times, times price that we would have to pay each month. And so if you look at that on a full year basis, that delivered us a number. We made some assumptions at the time thinking that, okay, if we connect to these aircraft in October and give the aircraft back to those wet lease providers, they would at least have an opportunity to find replacement customers. And that would help them in terms of the mitigation of damages or the cover that they would need to do. in order to relieve us of those obligations. We made some assumptions and said, okay, we're going to be incurring some costs, and there might be a break cost to convince them to let us off the hook from October onwards. And we spent the remaining months negotiating that. And ultimately, where we ended up is that we ended up having to pay more than we thought to we had to pay in order to get out of them. We're still paying less than if we had to basically have those aircraft for the full year and pay the minimums. We're paying more than we had hoped. And that's just a function of the fact that we had signed a contract. And so we had to work within the parameters of the contract and making sure that we uphold our obligations to give our supplier base across the board confidence that WIS is a trustworthy counterpart. But ultimately, the commercial deal was a different one than we had anticipated when we went into the negotiations.

But this is all factored into the numbers.

It's all factored in now into the guidance.

That's great. That's helpful and makes sense. Can I just come back with one more since I've got the microphone still open? Recently, there have been cancellations of aircraft orders from U.S. Airlines, from Air Spirit and JetBlue. Does that change the dynamic at all, potentially slightly for the better with Airbus?

I think it's hard to say because, I mean, clearly... Airbus is out of line with regard to their ability to deliver against contracted delivery streams. So, I mean, I don't know how this would be easing Airbus's position to deliver in line with contract. But this is just one component. I think one issue is how kind of the um the demand pool is changing for the aircraft and that's the contracts and demonstrations etc but the other issue is how their supply chain is ramping up and i know for the fact that actually airbus has produced a significant number of gliders unengined aircraft because they are not getting the engine supply for those aircraft so i think it's kind of a Two-way issue. One is the evolution of demand, and the other is the evolution of supply. And evolution of supply is certainly not going in the right direction at the moment. So I think Airbus is under pressure with that regard. So this cancellation might just be offsetting that. But I don't know exactly. I think you need to ask the question from Airbus. But I don't think this is making a profound impact on the market.

Interesting. Thank you. And we'll go to Jared Castle from UBS. Jared, do you want to unmute yourself?

Great. Hopefully everyone could hear me. We can. Great. Yeah, maybe also just three from me. You did keep the guidance and you're completely right. I mean, consensus is way off at the moment, even the bottom end of the range. And you've seen a bit of currency move with trump um already um i was just wondering why you kept the top end and you know in terms of probability i mean i mean what are we what are we really talking about in terms of your ability to hit the top end isn't it extremely low chance so so i guess the question is just guidance why you kept the top end um and i know you said like on investment grade um you know in in terms of let's say issuing new corporate debt, it's not on your agenda. But when you look over the next few years, when do you think you'd effectively get to, you know, a financial situation where you would be rated investment grade? And then just lastly, UK aviation taxes. You know, it's interesting in the slide, you still highlight 35% of your growth into Western Australia. kind of Europe and part of that's the UK. So I just want to, based on last week, how do you see things from a UK perspective? Thanks.

Maybe I'll just start off with your last question, the UK. I think we have to be... somewhat delicate in judging countries' profile on the basis of taxes, especially from a European perspective. I personally think that the whole of Europe has come under pressure in terms of economic performance, in terms of budgetary performance of governments, and like Germany introduced new taxes, now the UK is imposing taxes, and Hungary has special taxes. And one way or another, almost every government is seeking some kind of a recourse to that issue. So I just think that this is an element of the new realities that governments are in trouble and they will look for ways to impose burden on the industry. By the way, the same is happening on the regulatory side. I mean, if you look at how this industry is regulated today versus how it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. I mean, we have been evolving quite a lot. Of course, you have some room to maneuver, but at one point you may just run out of options because if all governments impose taxes, where do you go from one place to another? So I think you have to be somewhat smart about this, what you do, and of course you have to weigh it in. But it is actually fairly simple. I mean, we will just see demand at the cost base, the new cost base, including government taxes. And based on the evolution of demand, we can decide on capacity. So we don't have any kind of pre-commitment to the UK or any other countries that No matter what we're going to be increasing capacity, we will see how demand reacts to the new cost realities. If demand absorbs that, that's fine. If it doesn't, then anyway, we will have to adjust capacity to maintain profitability of the business. Where we got to corporate debts, I think it is fairly simple. At the moment, we are the victim of the GTF groundings. We would have been meeting investment grade criteria, so we would be this year, as we speak, effectively, so we would be comfortably investment grade rated. I think we have to get out of the of the pretend business cycle. So another two years, at least two and a half years to go before realistically we can put investment grade back on the table. The issue, as Fitch stated, is not how the company performs overall on the core business model. The issue is that the Brett and Whitney grounding caused such a distortion to leverage that they don't tolerate any longer. And simply, we just need to go through this cycle. So I would say it's two and a half years from now.

Yeah, so... Jared, if you remember what our original guidance was, 500 to 600, right? That was set because you can expect that our internal budget was set to deliver that sort of numbers. Now, we've had some things happen that impacted that, and we brought that down to 350 to 450 due to the wet lease costs, due to some other pressures, due to, say, some revenue evolution that we saw at the time. That being said... We haven't abandoned our budget. We set that for a reason, and we report against that. We measure ourselves against that. And it's not a sliding scale. It is what we're working towards. And so we have ambitions to drive as much profitability into the business, and we have ambitions to try and correct these wet lease costs and any other unexpected costs that we've incurred year to date in the remaining period of time. Like I said, we have a plan to get us to the low end, and there are elements of the business that could drive us into the higher end. We shall see. I mean, we're one of the ones that actually do give guidance in this industry, and we're proud of that, and we respect that. And so we're working towards making sure that we deliver. And a lot can happen between now and then. I don't think one day worth of FX volatility is worth now speculating on the rest of the year, especially when we spend all this time eliminating speculation from our business and focusing on results.

Great. Thanks a lot.

And we've got a written question from Thula Pippakaran from Rothschild. How do you think about the refinancing of your 2026 bond?

Think about it the same way that we thought about the Jan which is that we're not planning on rolling over or refinancing it. We're planning on generating liquidity out of operations, using that to retire debt, reduce our leverage ratios, increase our balance sheet strength, reduce our borrowing costs, use surplus cash to bring down ex-fuel cask in the business. You know, we talked about what could happen at the capital markets day with regards to surplus cash and how we think about our aircraft financing strategy. We need to look at those decisions with the inputs available to us at the time. We're not there yet. Right now, we're still working through the Pratt & Whitney issue. We're maintaining as high liquidity balance as possible and looking to bring down debt for the benefit of the security of the business. Simple as that.

Yeah, I would just add that, I mean, the business has become cash generative again. I mean, significantly cash generative. I mean, that shall create the sources for repaying that loan. I mean, that's our prevailing approach to the issue. But we need to get that and we will take a view when we are getting closer to the day. But that's the way we are thinking about this.

Thank you very much. And we'll go to Jacob Cathalm from Wood. Jacob, do you want to unmute yourself? Very quietly. Can you try and speak into your... I'll try to speak up. That's great.

The depreciation... Thanks. The depreciation grew significantly faster than the fleet size. The capacity is broadly flat. Is this a reflection of the more expensive leasing rates? And if so, would you be at some point willing to trade the SLB gains for a lower monthly rate? And a second question, just following on the cash flow discussion, would you say, given the growth should be resuming into F26, Is it more likely that we would see a positive or a negative result on net operating cash flow in the second half of the year?

Thank you. So on the first point with regards to depreciation, don't forget that in addition to aircraft fleet growth, we added approximately 41 engines an engine has a market value of, I would say, close to, well, it's not a small asset, let's say, in terms of price. But those engines are also then ultimately put onto the balance sheet because we say at least back them and add to the leverage. And then as a result, it adds to depreciation. So there's an element to that. There's also an element of the way that our depreciation profile works. As we hold on to aircraft longer, which we did, we extended aircraft leases to deal with the capacity shortage. There are more maintenance events that have to be capitalized. Those maintenance events get pushed through depreciation at the end of the day, and that causes an increase there too. So it's predominantly due to the fact that we have an inefficient spare engine ratio right now, efficient for where we are right now, but you wouldn't normally have this many engines there. if we were operating a normal aircraft fleet that wasn't subject to groundings. And the fact that our mix has changed into an older-age fleet, that will come down as we start to take new aircraft. Those aircraft will benefit from a better depreciation profile with the deliveries, and that will offset the older aircraft at the end of the day. In terms of cash flow for the period of growth starting next year, we would see positive cash flow. If you think about our working capital cycle and our working capital profile, we get paid within basically one or two days by our credit card acquirers when someone books a ticket. irrespective of whether that ticket is for this week or for six months from now. And then if you look at our overall payment terms with our suppliers, it can be on average around 60 to 90 days, if not longer. And so we benefit from the working capital that comes from getting paid in advance and having to pay after for our bills. Thanks.

and we'll go to Gabor Buchta from Concord. Gabor, do you want to unmute yourself?

Hi, thanks for the presentation. I just have two questions and just follow up on yours. So you suspend it flies to Israel, but the probability of the de-escalation of geopolitics may have increased after US elections, I guess. So I'm just wondering if it makes sense to reallocate capacity to Israel before January. And the next question on India. So you earlier referred to this market as an opportunity to grow your business. But you started to focus on growth across your sea market. So what's your view or what's your stance on India right now?

okay we are not going to allocate capacity before january no matter what happens to aspiration or de-escalation simply we are out of time on that now we have to protect uh christmas capacity based on our existing commitment and we will do so so israel is not going to be back before mid-january india as we said before we think it's a prospective market opportunity for uh for wizard uh but it is a cumbersome regulatory process uh to actually get fully designated uh and get uh root licenses to um to the country uh we are in that process um it can be actually fairly quick. It can be fairly long. I don't know. This is a new experience, but personally, I think this is going to still drag for some time before we're going to be able to confirm anything to be flown to India. But yes, we are working on it. Thank you.

And that's all we've got time for. Back to you in the room.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your interest and attention. Have a good day.

Many thanks for joining. This is the end of the webinar.