Wizz Air Holdings Plc

All right.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming. So I would say that last time we gave you a hell of a story, did a lot of details, and you crushed us. This time we're going to give you no story with no details. So I hope you understand what you have to do as a result of that. So let me just, could you please just move the slide? So with regard to Q1, this is the period what we are reporting on. We are seeing positive developments on ROSC improving balance sheet, and we believe that trading is largely in line with market expectations. There have been certain decisions affecting performance, but those are kind of one-off timing-wise, so not structured. But looking at the structural matter, so we are back into growth. So Q1 delivered over 10% passenger growth, This is now significant after a period of standstill given the GTF grounding situation. Look at the financial metrics. EBITDA is up 9.4% year-on-year. ROSC is up 2.2%. The cost performance obviously varies depending on the component you look at. Fuel is down given the macros out there, but exterior cost is up. given some of the specific issues we will be elaborating on. If you look at the quarter itself, obviously April got boosted by Easter, but June got negatively affected by the withdrawal of capacity from Israel. You recall the flare of events between Iran and Israel. We decided to pull capacity. Israel is a strong component of our commercial program in terms of revenue performance as well as profitability. and we reallocated that capacity for summer across our network. Now Israel became consolidated and we are back into flying starting in August, but really by the time this capacity will be full fledged to pre-grounding levels, it's only gonna be mid-September. So there is an affection of that in Q1 and there's gonna be an affection of that in Q2 too. If you look at liquidity, liquidity is improving. Our liquidity cover as a percentage of running 12 months revenue is up to 36% versus previous 34%. So we're seeing that structurally the KPIs are moving to the right direction. If you look at the period in front of us, Q2, we are expecting it to be flat. This is somewhat down versus our previous guidance as a result of Tel Aviv. I just elaborated it. But also I would say that the Abu Dhabi wind down is also affecting the revenue performance. I mean, this is a gradual wind down throughout August and a hard stop at the end of August. H2 capacity is still to some extent increasing. Uncertain. I mean, there are a number of moving parts we are dealing with. Certainly, we are dealing with an accelerated on-parking of Bretton Whitney aircraft. So part of the deal, what we announced a few weeks ago in Paris, also contains kind of an accelerated bus for on-parking. And now we are setting a target for middle of 2027. against a lot worse outlook at a time more falling into 2028. But that requires collaboration between Pratt and Wyss and more spare engines to be inducted into the system to make sure that actually we can lift the grounded field. So that's one component and that has an impact. Obviously, the Abu Dhabi withdrawal has an impact of reallocating capacity from hot and harsh to benign environment in Central and Eastern Europe and in genuinely refocusing in Central East Europe. As a result of those two factors, we are now talking to Airbus with regard to new aircraft deliveries. It's going to be moderated. The overall growth rate is going to be taken down to 20% to around 10% to 12% over the course of the next two, three years in order to have this transition and ease the capacity pressure on the company to improve performance. So all these things are kind of in limbo at the moment, or at least in discussion right now, but we think that we're going to be able to clarify this in the next two months or so. And also importantly, the XLR component, I mean, very clearly that as Abu Dhabi is gone, the XLR program is going to be rescaled, downscaled significantly. Good news on the XLR, we are very happy with the performance of what we are seeing in the UK, so I think the UK remains the candidate for XLR program, but group-wise, it's going to be as much smaller program than before. Then if you look at fiscal 27, we're seeing that this is the financial year when the cost picture is going to improve given the exit of the AC20s. I mean, very shortly, we will be fully converted into new operations. And, you know, the AC20 is on the one hand dragging return costs and affecting cost performance that way. And also it is an inferior year performance relative to NIO when it comes to fuel burn and overall operating cost of the airline. And also given the acceleration of on-parking with Brett and Whitney, so the grounded aircraft ratio will continue to fall and will give us a better cost picture going forward. I think we should start seeing the evidence of that in fiscal 27. And with that, with those remarks, let me turn it over to Jan.

Thank you. Thanks, Joseph. Could you go to the next slide, please? So we saw top-line momentum with total revenue of 13% to 1.43 billion euros, with ASK growth up 11% through restored network scale, while load factor held at 91%. Ticket RASC was up 2.5% on disciplined pricing and marginally higher loads, while ancillary RASC increased to 1.6% from 0.73 euros per pax higher spend, which is trending back to target levels. The reported profit after tax of $38 million was powered by a $65 million FX game that offset a step down in predominantly engine sale leaseback gains from the prior quarter. Operating profit reduced because non-fuel costs rose faster than revenue as you restored capacity growth this quarter. Thanks to positive cash flow, we cut net debt by $251 million to $4.71 billion, with $1.96 billion in gross cash at the end of the quarter. In summary, revenue is comping ahead of last year. Cash continues to build, and FX gains have cushioned the P&L while we continue to work the cost line. The strategy is to keep this momentum while engines come back and unit costs ease. Next slide, please. Going through the cost lines, maintenance gas is up 6% year on year. Half of this unit cost increase is attributable to higher costs associated with having a greater number of older aircraft that we would otherwise not have had in the fleet had it not been for the groundings last year. And we were protecting capacity last year as we discussed in the last quarter. Airport handling and route charges are up because of higher navigation charges from a rate hike that happened this past January, which we didn't have last year. And currently a network mix that favors larger airports. This is part of the network redesign that will be addressed. especially as part of the focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Depreciation reflects the same pressure that we also explained last quarter from certain maintenance-related depreciation being recognized the closer an aircraft reaches the end of its lease. However, of the $0.05 increase, half of that was attributable to an early re-delivery of a CO aircraft where the remaining maintenance asset value had to be written off in the quarter rather than spread over the remaining lease term. In terms of total ex-fuel cask, Half of the increase relates to lower sale leaseback gains, which are embedded in the other expenses line. And this is a timing issue. So to put it into perspective, we basically did fewer sale leasebacks this quarter than last year this quarter. So last year in fiscal year 25, we did in total 16 aircraft sale leasebacks. We anticipate doing 42 aircraft sale leasebacks this year. And so the pace of sale leaseback transactions will pick up in the remaining quarters of this year, heavily weighted towards the second half of the year. I should point out the fuel cost is down 14% per ASK, thanks to hedging and lower spot rates. And I'll wrap up this slide quickly. by pointing out that we expect unit costs to peak in H1, and from fiscal year 27, we get three structural tailwinds. More CEO retirements, that's Airbus A320 family CEO retirements, grounded aircraft returning thanks to engines from the latest Pat Whitney deal, and scale leverage from a second consecutive year of growth. Next slide, please. Oh, sorry, this slide is fine. In terms of cash, so we ended 7% up quarter on quarter. From that last year to this year, where we stand here today, as of yesterday, we're at $2.1 billion in cash. So we've added to the cash buffer since the end of the quarter. And we are still anticipating to simply repay the bond, the January 26 bond of $500 million. And we roll over the emissions trading repo agreement just like we did this year. So no change on that. So cash continues to build nicely and will continue to build as we deliver the sale leaseback activity from this year. We also continue to build our balance sheet hedging portfolio or our cross-currency swaps. So these are basically swapping our U.S. dollar liabilities into euro. And between the cash that we have on hand and the swaps that we've built in, we're 90% covered. So any fluctuations in FX rates, will be much less volatile to the P&L based upon the protection that we have here. So that's been a big effort as the dollar weakened. We ramped up our hedging and built that position up. So overall, from a balance sheet perspective, we are in good shape and our overall net debt reduced as a result of the cash generation. So that summarizes that slide, and I'll hand the floor back to the strategic part. Thank you, James.