Wizz Air Holdings Plc

In a moment I'll hand over to Joseph Faraday and Jan Malin. There will be a full presentation followed by Q&A where we'll start with questions in the room and then move on to the webcast. With that I'll hand over to Joseph.

Thank you. Good morning everyone. Thank you for coming. So this is our Q3 results. I would just like to set up the stage for the discussion today. Could you please move the slide? Yes. So we are up on passenger numbers by good 12%. On the back of capacity, increased ASK terms, 11%, slightly lower risk than last year. But I think this is pretty much in line with what we guided to the market. EBITDA is up 12%. And our cash improved to 2 billion euros. Important to note that In the meantime, we have actually repaid the 500 billion outstanding bond. Net loss was improved to 139 million by around 100 million versus past year. So we think that these results are consistent with what we have told the market we would deliver. So no surprise. So with that regard, this is a fairly benign report this time around. If you kind of dig into some of the attributes and driving factors, revenue growth came out as a good 10%. Please take note of the fact that our stage strength is down. by about 5%, so obviously this is somewhat affecting unit revenue performance. GTF engine recovery continues to unfold, so we are now grounding 33 aircraft versus 40 a year ago. As you know, the plan is to uplift the aircraft completely by the end of calendar year 2027, and I think we are on track on that. Sadly, it is strengthened to 2 billion, of which we repay the 500 million outstanding bond. As in the other market speculations, what would happen to that bond, extended or not, but it is behind us now. The network reshuffling has been continued. As you know, Abu Dhabi got closed a while ago, and Vienna base will close in March, and we have transitioned significant capacity to central Eastern Europe, pretty much across the whole of central Eastern Europe, reopening previous bases in Romania and opening other bases in Bratislava, Port Gorica, Yerevan or Warsaw. A number of aircraft allocations have been announced in this period. Again, this is pretty much across the board in Central and Eastern Europe, but also in Western Europe, particularly in Italy. We are managing the fleet growth, and we have not only managed the fleet growth, but we also moderated capacity going through the week or second half of the financial year in the OPEC period. That's why we ended up with lower utilization. But again, I think you need to consider it as kind of a transitionary period, and this is an issue of the time we are going through. productivity and utilization will ramp back up going into the next financial year. So summer capacity, I think we are fairly clear on that by now. We are seeing as the growth of around 24% coming through, which will translate into around 30% seed growth. Again, you recall, we guided you on this, that while we are looking at medium-term growth rate of around 10 to 12 percent. It still takes some time to get there given the aircraft order and the GTF uplifting process. So the next period is still going to be high growth and then we start moderating it down in the second half and as of the next financial year fiscal 28 you're actually going to be seeing the growth rate what we were talking about. And accordingly, the Flippen is adjusted for that. So again, high growth in the first half, in the summer fiscal year 27, and somewhat of a moderated growth coming closer to the target in the second half of fiscal year 27. And with that, I would hand over to Julian with regard to the numbers.

Thank you, Joseph. Could you go to the next slide, please? So before I dive into the numbers, I just want to clarify one rumor going around. We do not have plans for scheduled service to the United States. We have applied for charter rights for World Cup flights next year, potentially. The beauty of charter is that we have an aircraft that can do it. in the form of the XLR. The competition does not. And we would only do a charter if the money makes sense. So you sell the flight in advance, you collect the cash in advance, you price it accordingly, and the profit's locked in. So that's an example of us being opportunistic and looking at ways for us to diversify our revenue stream, but I would not expect there to be a material impact to the numbers based upon that. The application allows you to select a checkbox for scheduled, and that checkbox was selected, but I think somebody's taken that. far out of proportion, so there's no change to the business model other than opportunistic charter costs based upon the mission that that aircraft can fly. In terms of this slide now, so we generated 139 million loss this quarter, 42% better than last year, and that was driven by, as Joseph already summarized, 11.1% more ASKs. I should also point out that from the seat capacity, seats grew 13.1%, giving us more units in terms of seats to be able to sell. That means that we're generating more sector productivity, and that is driven by the lower stage length. It's actually 1.8% decline this quarter, although we will see the stage length and the whole network come down as a result of the business decline. densifying and fortifying into Europe. Ticket Rask was up. 0.2%, but ancillary RASC was down for total RASC increase or decrease of 0.8%. That ancillary RASC reflects the shift in terms of the network moving away from those longer stage length lights where we were able to have a different profile of ancillary services. Ancillary remains an area of focus, and we will continue to look at ways for us to recover that decline that we saw this quarter. But overall, 0.8% lower RASC, better than I think what people were expecting. However, I will emphasize Not as good as what we would like and we're going to continue to focus both on ticketed ancillary RASC going forward Load factor was marginally down And that is driven by again, I think to some extent the seats capacity So we have a bigger gauge aircraft, which means that I think that a half percentage point down given the growth is is not anything to be concerned about we're certainly not other than focusing on improving that and Which means that overall the combination of RASC and ASK is generated just under $1.3 billion in total revenue, up 10% year on year. EBITDA, I will emphasize, was – the EBITDA margin was the same as it was last year, 13.6%. So we were able to preserve EBITDA margin despite the growth and despite the changes coming through the business. And so that's important to emphasize. However, we do see pressure on depreciation, which I'll explain in the next slide when we get to the cost side of things. So overall, I would say that revenue came in probably – better than expected and costs came in probably better than expected as well. Although, like I said, what we were expecting was anticipated and certainly still opportunities to improve. If I can go to the next slide, please. So, in terms of the cost position, we were able to keep the ex-fuel cast growth to 2.1%. That is in line with what we were communicating throughout the year. And full cask was up 2.3%. The fuel line was driven by, to some extent, the fuel pricing, but also the cost of the emissions credits. We're seeing some inflation in terms of the emission credits, which is putting some pressure on that. And we are, like everybody, receiving fewer free allowances, which means that we have to incur more costs there, although that impacts us less given the baseline that we're coming from. In terms of the rest of the cost structure, so I think staff costs in line, so with ASK growth. And then the areas where we do need to focus on and we are focusing on are the ones that we've talked about, so maintenance and depreciation in airports. So maintenance has gone up, again, in line with expectations and for the reasons that we know about, which is that we are planning on retiring 18 current engine option A320CO aircraft this year. That compares to three last year, so a six-times increase. and when you return those aircrafts they come with event related costs the event is the return and you have to comply with the lease return conditions and and the problem with that is that that requires maintenance capacity and maintenance capacity is scarce due to all the supply chain channels all the supply chain troubles happening in the industry and maintenance has just simply been higher due to inflationary pressure so we're having more event-related costs at a higher cost base. However, the good news is that we are seeing that in the next few years, we will retire most of our CEOs, 18 this year, 19 next year, 16 the following year. And with that, those event-related costs will reduce. Likewise, a portion of maintenance costs flow through depreciation, and we have 70% more aircraft in the sort of eight years or older bucket in 2026 versus 2020. And so, as a result, we're attracting higher depreciation costs in the form of maintenance depreciation than we were if you want to look at us pre-COVID, which means that those costs will simply eliminate as those aircraft are returned, but it is a transition that we have to go through. These costs, particularly in maintenance and depreciation, are high year on year, but they're driven by specific symptoms or outcomes based upon symptoms that we knew that we were going to be experiencing. Airports and handling and en route, it's a bucket of three lines there. Handling is actually, we're starting to get a handle on it, but airports and en route still are elevated. En route is due to higher pricing around navigation charges that we see across our footprint. I think many airlines are are frustrated with those costs we certainly are that's a network design issue to some extent that we will be factoring into our decision making and on airports we did a deep analysis of the cost base from fiscal year 20 to where we are today and we saw that post coping we were growing we were able to keep airport costs um under control so certainly we were seeing cost efficiency coming through there but then when we were hit by the powder powder metal grounding and our growth went from 10 to 12 percent to zero We lost the benefit of the incentives that we had negotiated. We lost the benefit of the rebates that we were expecting to generate, and we're now in the process of having to redeploy capacity in a way that we can get those back. And so the problem with that is that we've said this a few times on these calls. It's a timing issue. We have to We have to demonstrate the growth. We have to deliver the growth. We have to commit to the growth, and we have to measure it, and that takes time. But that's the gift that we have now with capacity growth coming back. Again, 10%, 11% this quarter, roughly the same next quarter, and then next year we have quite a tool to deploy when it comes to that capacity. So, yes, there's going to be a lot of pressure with that capacity in terms of deploying it. We have some exciting ambitions and plans on how we're going to do that, but we're also going to use that capacity sensibly to make sure that we tackle those cost lines. In terms of the one-offs or the other income, it's a call on the one-off. So, we did see higher sale leaseback benefits this quarter. That was, again, anticipated. No surprises there. And we were able to keep disruption costs in line with where they were last year. We had a pretty reliable third quarter last year, and the same happened this year. And we were able to continue to improve our wet lease costs and to bring that down. So, overall, I would say that the cost picture was in line, if not marginally better than expectations, but that's exactly what we're trying to do now is just to deliver expectations, and we did that this quarter, we did that the prior quarter, and that's the plan as we march through this transitionary period. If we can go to the next slide, please, just to look at the cash profile. So, again, things are in line with expectations. We were basically flat on free cash flow. We ended up the quarter with just under $2 billion in cash, just a smidge, and $1.98 billion. That's up $400 million versus the prior year. And our liquidity ratio, so the percentage of cash to last 12 months' revenue, increased five percentage points to 34%, which is one of the highest in the industry. Now, that cash balance has, of course – been reduced through the bond repayment that happened on January 19th as Joseph said And that was anticipated we did on the 23rd of December renew the bond Documentation and so that program remains available to us For the future, but at this point we don't see any requirement to raise debt and therefore we won't But we have that option on hand our cash profile going forward is is robust. We have the benefit of an earlier Easter in the beginning of April this year, which means that the cash volumes will start building as we enter into February and March. And with the growth coming in the summer period, that will deliver a large amount of unflown revenue. So we expect to restore the cash that we expended on repaying the bond uh relatively quickly to get back to a number north of two billion and that will then grow depending on how we ultimately um deploy that cash into fleet or other measures um in terms of the um in terms of the fleet we we we are um actually there's a fleet slide i'll let you talk about the xlrs so i think that's that's that's it for me um um i will also just take a moment to thank everybody from the analyst community this is my last call as official cfo i welcome my predecessor my successor veronica sponerova who joins on monday and i will of course be in the room with the team to make sure that she is set up for success as is the company so thank you all

Thank you. Could you please move it to the next slide, but maybe in the meantime I would just want to thank Kian for the tremendous help that he's done, contributing in a difficult, challenging period in his intellectual capacity and professional capacity as CFO, but also playing a very good corporate citizenship in the company. I mean, we all uh had to act like a team um you know to face all these challenges arising from geopolitics of side chain etc um and i think now we are starting to see some um some sunshine uh coming through uh and hopefully that you uh will also be seeing it and jan has been instrumental to that to the development so thank you thank you for that thank you so with regard to the fleet i would like to kind of put fleet matters into a history perspective also to give a bit of a forward-looking view on that. So, historically speaking, the company has celebrated two major milestones fairly recently. One was the 250th cycle of delivery. quarter of a thousand, I don't know what it means, but it felt a milestone to us. And secondly, maybe more significantly, we celebrated 500 million passengers in aggregate since inception. Now, we looked at the 500 million passengers. What is the meaning of that? And we figured something out. It took us 21 years to deliver 500 million passengers. This is an absolute record in Europe and probably close to a world record as well. We didn't look at the world, but we looked at Europe. And guess how many years it took for the second best in Europe to get to 500 million passengers and who that is. I have you. 34 years and it's called Ryanair. So when you think about the world in a bigger perspective than just an exporter, please recognise this, that we are at a pace which well exceeds everyone else's pace ever in history in Europe. The second thing I would like to say is that you take a perspective view, on the fleet. So imagine this air in two years from now. I know this is more than a quarter, but this is not that much far out. So in two years, we're going to be effectively fully converted to AC21s, which is by far the most productive aircraft you can imagine in the single aircraft community. And basically, we're going to be converted into new technology, neo-technology. And all the aircraft will fly and nothing is going to be on the ground. And what kind of an efficiency that can create and what kind of a competitive platform that could create for this. And we are two years away from that. And in terms of kind of navigating ourselves through the next three years, you see that uh we revamped the aircraft delivery program uh so effectively between fiscal 27 and fiscal 28 hardly any deliveries uh new aircraft or there will be new effort deliveries of course but there is children of the fleet so uh you know most of it is going to be replenishment as opposed to net growth um so the growth will come through gauge and uplifting the grounded aircraft and sectoral productivity. So basically these are the three sources of growth in that period. And you can see that if you look at the next four year CAGR forecast, effectively we're going to be growing the fleet by around 7%, but capacity will grow by 12%. So that's kind of the level of efficiency that will be derived from the fleet program. I would also want to make a comment on the XLR, because I think there is a bit of a misconception on the XLR here. So, first of all, our program is scaled down from 47 to 11 aircraft, full stop. Six of those have been delivered, five to be delivered in the next eight months or so. Now, you take the XLR, we were saying that the XLR has to be long-haul. It doesn't have to be. unit economics of the AC21neo, the AC21XLR and the AC21CO. The AC21CO is an inferior aircraft. the XLR in terms of unit economics. So if you operate the XLR as a normal AC21EO operation, rotated on short, medium, whole flights, it delivers better economics than the AC21EO. A little inferior to the AC21EO, of course, because of the weight penalty, but it's fairly marginal. So we don't have to force ourselves into long routes or unproductive, almost long-haul operations, you simply just operate the XLR as an AC21neo and you get a lot of the economic benefits of that. And still far superior to the Boeing 737 and still far superior to the Airbus AC20, but we are currently operating a few of those airplanes. So, no stress about the XLR, so we don't have to make stupid decisions just because we have an aircraft called XLR and we have to push ourselves into long route. Now, of course, if we find appropriate commercial and financial opportunities to deploy and operate the XLR, as XLR we will do that, as we are doing it from London Gatwick, we are flying Jeddah, Medina, those routes, I think, exceed expectations significantly. But we don't have to fly all the 11 XLRs and XLRs. We may end up flying only half of them, we will see, but we can be a lot more measured on financial expectations with that regard. So we feel good about the free trend. We think we are arriving to a shape on that that actually makes a lot of sense for the long-term ambitions of the business, not only in terms of delivering growth, but also delivering financial performance through it. If you please move it to the next slide. So if you kind of put the puzzle together, what we are trying to do here, just to recap, so we have a number of strategic initiatives we are moving. One, we have been addressing our weaknesses in terms of financial performance. We seized the Abu Dhabi base operation and we are seizing the Vienna base operation as well in a few weeks from now. That basically addresses the structural issues we have been having in the network design. Secondly, we have reset the Airbus order book, as you can see. We think that this is deliverable, this makes financial sense. and it is executable and makes a lot of sense with regard to enhancing our market positions and delivering enhanced competitive advantages with regard to cost performance. XLR is reset, it's resized, but also resolved. As I said, XLR doesn't have to be XLR necessarily, and the weight penalty actually is a lot less than alternative aircraft types that we are operating or competitors are operating at the moment. We continue to reshape the network for the better. for more fortification of strengths and exploiting opportunities in the business. As we speak, I think we are seeing market opportunities pretty much across the board. So they are not down to one or two areas, but we are seeing fairly consistent performance, fairly consistent improvements and fairly consistent prospective opportunities for deploying more capacity. Then of course you can talk about Israel, you can talk about Ukraine, and you know that our discussions in Israel are ongoing, time to time it becomes very typical. Ukraine, we all know the situation, we will jump on Ukraine, we think that Ukraine is a significant opportunity, but I will have a slide on that just in a moment. Then we continue to un-park. We are two years away from uplifting the entire aircraft, so we are reclimbing down on the parked aircraft. No matter how you look at compensation, we are not in the business of compensation. Compensation is a good thing when it's a force measure on the business, but we should be able to better monetize the asset on hand when we fly as opposed to when we ground and get compensated for that grounding. uh and i said we uh continue to um uh to innovate our fleet uh moving over to uh to new technology uh i would say that the uh the advantage engine is coming uh so we are within a year from that please know that advantage uh has uh two applications one that you actually delivered with uh advantage engine two uh existing fleet can be uh retrofitted uh with uh video advantage uh and can do probably 80% of the improvements on the technology. So actually that's a big deal, and it's a big enhancer of economic performance coming through that technology. So next slide, please. So just want to give you an update on Ukraine. We don't have the crystal ball. Personally, I think we are coming to an end. The guys just need to find a way to finish it. But probably pressure is now building up on all sides sufficiently to get there. Nevertheless, we are ready. We are ready for Ukraine. We kind of phased our plans into three chapters. Kind of initial chapter being you know, the quick get back onto Ukraine as inbound carrier, I think we can activate that capacity imminently when a ceasefire is put in place and the system gets reopened according to European constituents it's probably going to take around six to eight weeks to reset Ukraine for purposes of air traffic control mostly before you can perform flights and we will see how quick the ramp up is going to be on the Ukrainian side we're going to be inducting capacity accordingly but we have an initial plan to launch 30 inbound roads immediately when the system opens up followed by another wave of expansions through base capacity. You recall at the outbreak of the war, we had two operating bases in Ukraine, in Kiev and Lviv. we would be reinstating those bases and that would give us another layer of growth opportunities next to the inbound flights. Also, we could start flying outbound. We're seeing that at that time, we would be ramping up to roughly around 5 million seat capacity. This is a combined of around 10 aircraft based and flown inbound in Ukraine at year one. And then you kind of take a year three approach. We're seeing that the business is going to go to around 30 aircraft, 15 million sea capacity by further enhancing our route network, possibly opening up new bases in Ukraine. So that's the plan. That plan is on the shelf and may be activated immediately when they have the opportunity to do so. know we used to be hometown airline to ukraine we will be hometown airline to ukraine uh we're gonna be first to go and i know that there are other airlines with ambitions to uh uh to go on ukraine so we don't expect to be uh to be alone but we are fully committed and we have the plans uh we have the aircraft we still have sea aircraft actually as a matter of fact in ukraine so we have never left that country that market uh and we would need to put those aircraft also back into uh conditions to uh to operate Yeah, so just to wrap it up, so with regard to fiscal 26 full year outlook, as guided before, we are expecting around 10% capacity increase. You know, the fiscal 27 is going to be a year when we're going to be at high growth in the first half and moderate growth closer to the assumed new normalities going forward in the second half. Load factor is expected to be flat, ROSC flat. COSC, total COSC to be around flat to low single digit year on year. I think Jan explained the attributes to that. and that proved to be an unbreak even so we are putting it in the range of minus 25 to plus 25 million euros. These numbers are consistent with previous guidance and expectations and of course from here on going into fiscal 27 as the business is going to be ramped up more more productively given the less exposure to grounding sucking up the excess fleet, like coming out of Abu Dhabi, etc., which will be deployed by that time. We're seeing that from there on, you shall be starting seeing improvements on a structural basis. And with that, this is the end of the presentation, so questions, please.

As we move to Q&A, as usual, we'll go with questions in the room first and we're moving online. When you take the microphone, please remember to introduce yourself for the benefit of the webcast. Thanks.

Thank you. It's James Hollins at BNP Paribas. Jan, congratulations on your tenure and your new role, and thanks for everything. And on that note, I'll start with an unsustainably dull question on sale and leaseback and compensation. Obviously, you've given full year 26 guidance. I'm wondering what you've included for fiscal Q4 for sale and leasebacks and compensation income. And I know you prefer to fly aircraft and get compensation, but maybe a very broad figure as we might look at it today on how much the headwind is on the compensation line, fiscal 27 versus fiscal 26. And then probably for Joseph, I know you have passionately said you'll never do transatlantic, and I know you don't want this question, but let's assume you're never going to do transatlantic as a schedule. But just on the charter side, I was wondering if you could run through sort of what interest you're getting on the charters, what that would mean for capacity, I guess, based on the level of interest you've had, and whether, you know, 30% seat growth this summer slightly scares you and maybe you're thinking about any other ways of reducing that in terms of moving out on wet leasing out or chartering other aircraft. Thank you.

Let me start with the U.S. thing and capacity increase. I think you guys should think of very little when it comes to the U.S. matter. I think it is a good exposure communications-wise, but substantively looking at it, it is a low profile matter to the company. And maybe just for you to understand the history here, so about two months ago we were asked by the Hungarian government to perform a charter to the US, taking the Hungarian government from Budapest to Washington. And VISAIR UK performed that operation because VISAIR UK is the entity of the group that actually is recognized for regulatory purposes, oversight purposes by the USFAA. because Hungary and Malta, the two other airlines, are under EASA governance, but EASA is not recognized by the US as a governance body, because they only recognize the national authorities, not like a European authority. And we saw that, you know, these sort of matters may reoccur. You know, the World Cup is around the corner in two years, Olympics in Los Angeles. So let's just be ready for inquiries like this should they come along. And as opposed to kind of doing last minute ad hoc chaos with permits, we just have it on hand and we can activate when there is a need. But that doesn't translate into anything structural in terms of ambition to fly regular charters even or, you know, certainly not share your files. I mean, this is really a simply regular two point agency, but we are trying to to secure. So please don't say too much into this because that isn't anything to really think about it. And this is not going to move the dial on capacity. So this is not going to be one percentage points or two percentage points. It's going to be totally different from that. But with regard to 30% sale growth, I think it depends how you look at it. I mean, of course, it's a big number and it may be scary. Although we said we would have a high growth in the first half of fiscal 27. But if you look at how that growth is sourced, it is actually not coming through excessive fleet deliveries. This is all coming through by eliminating some of the inefficiencies inherent in the system at the moment. So we are lifting aircraft. We are increasing sector productivity. So using the same assets on hand, which cost us at this point in time, and you put that into a better production. Yes, it will increase the... the growth rate, but at the same time that comes through efficiency measures. So this is not excessive free growth. I mean, the fleet is effectively not growing. Hardly any growth coming through the fleet. So I think As far as I'm concerned, this is a lot better way of delivering growth than by adding more aircraft to the system. It will put pressure on ROSC, but at the same time it also gives an upside through cost because you increase utilization, you create more efficiency, more productivity in the system. And, you know, you look like a year or two ahead. it will create the opportunity for maturity of the new investments, of the new roads. But these new capacity is not going to be like brand new capacity we are not opening uzbekistan we are not opening nigeria or anything like that i mean we are enhancing strongholds uh what we have already uh created we are fortifying some of the uh the best performing uh markets we are joining the dots uh we are improving products by increasing frequencies on existing rows actually that enables us to tap into higher quality demand, business traffic on some occasions, etc. So I think this is a de-risked growth profile. It's a big number, but it is de-risked as much as it can be.

Okay, so in terms of Q4, say, a leaseback activity, look, I mean, these things are driven by availability of assets and the delivery of assets. And so we expect to take delivery of eight aircraft this quarter. That may... shift into one quarter or the next, depending on ultimately what happens. So you probably have heard us say that we were at one point aspiring to have our XLRs down to six aircraft. We're now at 11. So there was an opportunity with five of those aircraft. And ultimately, as Joe said, our job is to monetize and generate profits from these assets. and the transaction became less compelling from a disposal perspective. than it did to not give the benefit away to somebody else. And so when we did this analysis in terms of the operational cost, especially when it comes to marginal routes within the network, when I say marginal routes, I mean, we all know that with this armada heading towards the Middle East from the United States, there's been some airspace closures, and that has required us to reroute some of our flights around Egypt. And depending on what time of year, especially this time of year, you end up with tech stops. Tech stops are bad for cost. They drive more cost. They're also bad from customer experience, which means that they dilute RASC. And so if you can deploy an XLR that still performs better than a CO on a route that it can actually deliver on in terms of its mission, then you avoid that. And so that's a very sensible utility of that asset. And so those are the things that we're going to look at. Obviously, there's some planning that needs to happen. and we don't have unlimited XLRs, but we also don't have too many of those routes. And so, it's an opportunity for us to bolster our reliability, which is an area of focus that I'm going to be bringing into the new job. So, to answer your question specifically, you know, eight aircraft delivering, those will be a combination of mostly sale lease-backed, some finance leases like we've been doing. There's also going to be an element of engines that we are taking and sale lease-backing at the same time. We're not buying any incremental engines other than what we're contracted to under the order book with Bratt & Whitney. So, we're keeping in line with our contractual commitments. And so, really, we see that as part of our normal fleet evolution. So, an element of sale leasebacks will support the full year results, as it has, but nothing out of the ordinary to what you would have been aware of through your discussions with my IR team and the regular engagement. When it comes to compensation, headwinds going into fiscal year 27, Well, I mean, you know, the good news is that we're reducing the number of aircraft parked. We went from 35 to 33. The bad news is that we don't get compensation for aircraft that aren't parked. But that's okay because the good news is that those planes are flying. We're not in the compensation business. So there will be a natural tapering down of compensation as the fleet unparks. The faster we unpark, the less compensation we get, the more we can return to flying. Yes, there's a tension between where we are this year with the combination of unparking, new deliveries, and that fleet growth that we talked about. But ultimately, we're focusing on that end of 2027 calendar year target. Again, it's subject to Pratt & Whitney at the end of the day, which we – are trying to influence what we don't control and we'll continue to to uh to focus on the core business and that's really that's really that's really what we are trying to convince ourselves and yourselves over the last quarter and the previous quarter is that just keep the head down work hard at addressing the areas of the business that we've identified and deliver the results that we um told you to expect may i just come back to the um

the first half growth rate and the way that growth is delivered because I think this is important to understand because we are not talking about bringing capacity into the system from the outside to create that growth. We are saying that we are using predominantly existing capacity to deliver that growth. And that's very different because I'm already getting a lot of cost observed in the system already. So I'm already paying for the aircraft. So I'm paying rent for the aircraft. I also pay for some maintenance of the aircraft. So I would say that probably 25% of the costs are already in the system I'm paying for. So effectively you are getting this capacity that you are uplifting from the ground for only 75% of the cost as opposed to when you are bringing in your aircraft that you pay 100% of the cost. I think this needs to be taken into account. And then when you look at the other source of growth through sector productivity, it's even better from our perspective, because I'm pretty much using the same crew, the same aircraft, the same maintenance profile, and I'm gaining more productivity through that. So this is almost like a free capacity cost wise. Of course, I pay a very low cost, but I mean, a lot of the cost will be saved. So this is a very low cost growth compared to previous growth profiles when actually growth was fueled by the intake of aircraft that was the way to create uh capacity but this time around this is all pretty much within the system uh within the existing parameters of the um of the fleet all right uh morning jamie robotham from deutsche bank two from me um first just coming back to the ukraine joseph um

I don't know if you listened to Ryanair on Monday, but Michael O'Leary was talking about the airport charges in Ukraine. He seemed to be saying that the airports were stubbornly wanting to stick to tariffs levels as published pre-war, whereas they'd be looking for deep discounts on those tariffs to try and bring 5 million passengers back. If the tariffs stay as they are, maybe they'll only look for 1 million. I just wondered where you guys stand on airport charges in the Ukraine. And then the second one for Jan, sorry to do this on your last appearance, Jan, but I just wanted to come back on James's question about Q4 positives within the net other. I know compensation is a sensitive one, so I'll leave that one alone. But on the sale and leasebacks, I hear you on the aircraft and some engines. I mean, it's very difficult for anyone, I think, to establish what the quantum positive benefit might be from all those things in Q4. The way I would frame it is this. You know, you've just guided a very narrow range for net profit in the full year, minus 25 to plus 25. I think the sale and leaseback gains year to date are about 90. I think you're looking for as much again, if not more, maybe 100 million euros in Q4. to deliver that sort of net profit outcome. Could you comment on that? Is that a sensible, you know, quantum for what you have in mind at the moment for those transactions and the benefit you get from them in Q4? Because without that, it's very difficult for us to judge you on everything else.

Okay, maybe I answer the Ukraine question. So look, I mean, we have been in negotiations with Ukraine in airports for a long time. I mean, probably for two years. Even he made it to Ukraine, so he was in Kiev. He made it back as well, so that's good. So I think we have been very engaged with Ukraine. And, you know, competitors do whatever they want to do. We do whatever we think we should do. We are committed to Ukraine. Seriously, you know, we're seeing that, well, Wizz Air is going to be the national carrier of Ukraine. And we will manage the business accordingly. Of course, you negotiate and you try to get the best deal out of the system. Personally, I don't think Ukraine needs Ryanair. I mean, we'll do it. Some others will do it. And, you know, those guys do whatever they want to do. We'll be there.

Yeah. In terms of the SLB, you're right. There is going to be SLB activity. I mean, it's unlikely that in this quarter we're going to see dramatic improvement to the maintenance and depreciation and airport lines. And so, yeah, so I think in terms of math, There is going to be an element of SLB to get us there. You know, we are two months away from the end of the year, so we have visibility as to how the year is coming up. I mean, you know, like I said, we did have this XLR sort of pivot and so how those ultimately get financed could end up impacting this year versus next year but it's a timing issue at the end of the day um they're going to get financed and we just have to execute on that but ultimately you know the slbs are part and parcel to the business and and so we will take them and we will benefit from them from them um we may we may end up financing those xlrs um instead of doing slbs because Financing them allows us the flexibility to terminate the deals sooner. If we decide down the road we no longer need the XLRs, we want to move them on to a different operator, and that then will impact the amount of gain that happens. But ultimately, SOVs are certainly an element of the Q4 numbers.

Morning, it's Harry Gowers from JP Morgan. First question, if we could just go back on the capacity growth for summer, just in terms of what you can control. Joe, you mentioned before around that de-risked, kind of more mature capacity growth profile in the network. I mean, are there any other positive things you can do to help drive pricing when the growth is that high? And I guess, Jan, that will be something for you in your new role. And then second question, if you could just talk about growth in the UK, actually, you know, where you're putting... aircraft and how you see the market dynamics in terms of supply versus demand at the moment for the UK. Thanks a lot.

All right, so with regard to first half capacity growth, you know, one of the things what we are doing, so I would say that, you know, this capacity growth is delivered at a lot lower cost than otherwise, because if it's all from within, so pretty much by activating existing capacity, which partly we are already paying for, certainly on certain cost items. But the second thing what we are doing is that I think we are really enhancing the proposition, the product to the market to tap into different consumer needs. So we're going to be coming across a lot more segmented than before. Densifying is significant. We are adding frequencies on certain routes. I mean, creating effectively a product for business travelers. I mean, you know, the business traveler has a deeper pocket. So through that, there is revenue enhancement coming through segmentations. So we're seeing that, again, this is not just spreading the network and Some of these capacity deployments may actually be profit enhancing, even the improvement on product quality and being able to reach high spending customer segments. With regard to the UK, actually we like the UK. believe it or not, and I just spoke to someone yesterday and she said that Christmas retail was disastrous in the UK, but this is not what we are seeing. What we are seeing is that We are seeing a continuously rising demand for our products. Actually, our performance is improving very significantly in the UK after cutting some of the questionable capacity and resizing the business at Gatwick. Now we are really into growth mode in Luton. I think we are stabilising our Gatwick performance. So the UK, as far as I'm concerned, is an investable market. The bigger issue we have in the UK is the strains on capacity. So our ability to grow on capacity due to the infrastructure constraints. So Luton is stuck at the moment. They have all sorts of reconstruction issues and passenger limits. Gatwick just is put into the right place in terms of capacity versus demand. But we are seeking opportunities to continue to grow our presence here and our market positions. We do a lot more inbound flying, for example, to tackle the overall sort of issues at the airport. So as far as we are concerned, UK remains an investable market.

I think Joe covered it very well, but just one point that I would emphasize is that while we've got this growth, we acknowledge that it's there, we've also created extra growth by churning our network. We've created growth inadvertently. So it's not just new capacity, but it's just redeploying capacity within the network, which is effectively the same as growth. It creates immature capacity that we have to manage. And that's something that we're going to bring down. We did some analysis and some benchmarking, and in the last 12 months, we churned our network nine times more than the industry average. And so that causes all sorts of issues around the network in terms of what you can do In terms of price stimulation, you have to lower your prices, but also it creates havoc with regards to the costs. And so, for example, just looking at airports, you know, why would you incentivize WIS to bring a new route on if they know that after the incentives expire, we're going to disappear and move on, right? So, we need to be sure that we're creating a more stable, more reliable network. And reliability, you've seen come through the disruption line, like this summer, where we had a huge improvement and it's staying stable this year. And so, reliability helps from a cost perspective. It helps not just in the disruption cost, but in crew and on airports, and it also helps in a revenue perspective. So, that's one of the key pillars of our focus going forward.

Thanks. Alex Serving from Bernstein. Two from me, please. I'll start, again, with the growth in summer of 2026. Talking about 24% ASK, but think about the risk profile of that. Does it place risk? How does that break down into gauge frequency between existing airports and then new airports in the network? And then maybe related to that, how does that then interplay with your airport costs? We think about that development into this summer and beyond. The second question, really for a confirm or deny on this one, I've heard it suggested there's no more GTF compensation coming beyond the end of calendar 2026. Is that accurate, or as long as there's AOGs, you still get paid roughly a day rate per engine grounded plane? Thanks.

Okay, let me start with the GTF thing, because... I've been involved into this personally. I think there is a Pratt and Whitney line and that is a bizarre matter. So the Pratt and Whitney line is that they don't want to extend compensation on a blind basis to all airlines beyond 2026. But we managed to negotiate a different agreement. You recall last year we confirmed more aircraft to be powered by GTF. I mean, you can imagine that that discussion was leveraged um and uh we are fully covered until end of 27. uh so i think you can be totally relaxed with uh with that regard but indeed the industry line is different from that but we said it's the single largest operator of of bretton whitney uh and we have probably the most significant overlooking commitment as well uh so i think you should reasonably expect that we are treated a little differentiated versus the rest of the the industry So that's GTF. With regard to the profile of growth, I mean, maybe you want to deep dive into it, but maybe my commentary would be that, I mean, of course, when you are growing that much, you are trying to take this leverage against the airport community. So we are looking at reshuffling some capacity according to airport deals. But at the same time, we also have to take note of certain facts. I mean, one fact is capacity scarcity is becoming a phenomenon in many places that are new. So if you look at Santonissi rope, I remember when we started, uh no one was thinking about slots and capacity scarcity now you are seeing it in Bucharest in Warsaw in Budapest so whether we like it or not but it does obviously it puts pressure on charges and airport charges because when you are scarce on capacity as an airport why the hell you know should you discount that capacity because it's a high demand so You know, you have these controversies that you want to have your strongholds and fortified presence, and those airports might be constrained airports, and you have kind of minimal room to maneuver. But at the same time, you still have, given the high growth rate, what you are delivering, you know, some room to maneuver to shift capacity according to airport costs and airport deals. So you have this kind of a duality we are managing. Maybe you want to comment on that?

Yeah, look, I mean, you've seen from what we've put in this presentation, we are deploying capacity into our core markets where we have a cost advantage. And that's deliberate because obviously, you know, we're in the cost business, but if we can operate at a lower cost, then obviously that allows us to be more competitive on the fares. And as Joe said, some of those bigger airports where we have strongholds, we will continue to fortify so that we maintain leadership. But we are also seeing different flows, we have the equivalent of our sunbelt in Europe now, which is the sort of east-west across Spain to Italy, Spain, Greece, you know, those sorts of places. And so, with the Italian presence that we have, where we have invested significantly recently, we are looking at flows that we hadn't spotted before, hadn't taken advantage of before maybe. And likewise, to and from Central and Eastern Europe, it's not just the export of Eastern Europeans to Europe, but also it's bringing people from west to east. And our focus is really on identifying those opportunities where we can generate sufficient profitability year-round so that we are less impacted by the seasonality in Europe. And so, in fact, all of our aircraft now for summer are fully deployed and on sale by one announcement next week. And that will give us the lead time to be able to work on accelerating the maturity profile. We used to think that it took a year or so to get to profitability on a route. And then maybe by the second or third year, we would sort of have it be mature. that timeline doesn't work for us anymore. And so we need to focus on this fortification where we already have a market leadership and then flex that market leadership in a way that we activate the base that knows what Wiz is. And then, as Joe said, expanding the Wiz franchise so we are more appealing to different types of passengers. And that will help offset the growth on the Rask pleasure.

I would have one more perspective to those because I think we are kind of taking it almost like an isolated issue from context uh but you have to look at the context i mean not many airlines in europe are growing uh so when you are talking about growth yeah it may be high on us but when you look at it from an industry perspective uh this is still not outrageous so this is not like the whole industry is growing like hell uh and we are one of the craziest uh to uh to do that i mean we are the one growing effectively we are taking advantage of our positions that we are able to grow while others are not able to grow because of fleet constraints or whatever they have. So I don't think that you should be ignoring that context. So yes, the 24% ASK is a big number, but we are pretty much the only one growing and all others are kind of stuck with what they have at the moment. And I think that actually gives us a competitive advantage.

Mini Bakiani Bank of America. So continuing on the kind of cost questions for fiscal 27, just you mentioned if you could help us on some of those modeling. You said depreciation costs and maintenance costs would be higher. Any way you could help us quantify that? And then we've had the discussion around the productivity improvements from the higher ASK, but then these higher costs as well. So, net-net, where are we landing up, you think, right now? Higher unit costs, X view, for fiscal 27, while RASC goes down? Is that how to think about it, big picture? I know you don't have guidance at this point.

Yeah. So, you're right. We're not guiding yet. We will as we get to the full year results. But In terms of maintenance, yes, there's still going to be pressure on that just because of the 19 CEOs that are returning this year and those event-driven costs. Depreciation is one of those areas where we will start to see the turn in this year, and I would say that that's probably likely to be flat just because we are starting to have the exit of the more expensive depreciation aircraft market. including this year's retirements. However, that benefit is being pushed up against the fact that the GTFs in their current durability profile require more frequent maintenance than anticipated. And so when you do more frequent maintenance intervals, you start to capture some of that depreciation that was historically backloaded sooner. And so you have the benefit of the new aircraft being less beneficial against the detriment of older aircraft. And so it's a moving feast at this point and something that we're analyzing. But I would say that the biggest headwind that we're going to be seeing next year to CASC is going to be the change in one-offs, as you call them, or I guess the accountants call them, which is on the – on the sale-leaseback gains. So, we will not benefit as much next year on sale-leasebacks as we did this year, and so that will create a headwind that the rest of the cost base is going to have to overcome. So, when looking at total ex-fuel cask, I think you're going to start to see improvements. However, there's going to be a headwind from the fall-off of sale-leaseback gains, which will offset sort of core cost improvements. And so that's where it's tricky. So we're not guiding yet on where CASC is going to be. Obviously, as we get through this year into fiscal year of 28, you're going to start to see strong CASC improvements, but it still is a transitionary year where it's still too early to give you a view as to whether CASC will go down, up, flat, whatever the case may be. So we're reserving the right on that for now. And in terms of RASC, yeah, there's going to be pressure on that, but I think that with some of the applications of these concepts that we just talked about in the last question, we're less inclined to accept as strong as a RASC dilution is what you're implying to your question.

I think if you want to kind of let it all in, we are expecting much improvement coming through the next financial year. The magnitude is yet to be confirmed and yet to be guided, but we've seen that all in, we should deliver better results in fiscal year 27 than in fiscal year 26.

Hi there, it's Conroy Gaynor from Bloomberg Intelligence. So, first question just on the fuel. How might you start to think about fuel going forward, just given SAF and certain environmental measures? Will there be perhaps a higher inflationary component within that or is there now a more volatile component that you have to think about and how might that impact the way you communicate your outlook to us? And then the other one was on Saudi, just to pick up on your comments about it essentially being a positive read across for entering other new markets. Some may say with Saudi it's a very unique market in terms of the types of traffic flows you get, including religious traffic flows. So what parts of it do you think actually do read across into other markets?

Yeah, maybe I take Saudi, I don't know, maybe nothing to be honest. I mean, I agree with you that I think Saudi is a unique market. This religious traffic is a significant driver of what we are delivering on those roads and the applicability of that may be none for anything else. And that's why I'm saying that we should just build on the XLR, because if we find a way to operate the XLR as XLR with proper profitability, we'll do that. if we don't find it, we just operate the XLR as a normal AC21. So I think that kind of takes the pressure off from the organization to definitely deploy these aircraft on long routes and take the risk on financial performance. So we are not going to take risk on financial performance. Either we get ourselves convinced that this is a profitable flight pretty much from day one, like what we are achieving in Saudi. If we are unable to define that, then we are not going to do it. And we just operate the aircraft as normal AC-21. So, back to your question, I don't know. I mean, maybe it's applicable, maybe it's not. But we are not under pressure to follow the Saudi route, if you want to put it that way.

Look, fuel efficiency for us is extremely important because of the WIS position of being one of the, if not the world's most emissions-efficient airline out there. From a staff perspective, we comply with our purchase obligations and we go through the same challenges as everybody else, thankfully, because We are as efficient as we are. We probably have to buy less than other people who consume more fuel, which is good. We continue to hold the investments in the two SAF production facilities or production concepts that we invested in. And those are moving forward, although we're not going to see any meaningful benefit from that until the end of the decade in terms of having access to the outtake agreements. But that's something that we're promoting and excited about. But ultimately, you know, when it comes to our volatility, we're smoothing that out through the hedging program that has been in place since the beginning of F24. We follow that religiously and without any speculation and We have recently conducted a benchmark of our policy against the peer group, and we've made some enhancements to make sure that we are remaining competitive on that, and we'll continue to follow that. And obviously where things are right now, we are in a favorable fuel environment, and we're locking that in. So the combination of prudence when it comes to risk management on the fuel and the FX portion of fuel, On top of the efficiency as we get rid of the inefficient aircraft and move towards these, and you can see that through the fuel unit cost when you benchmark it against Ryanair on a stage length adjusted basis, we are miles ahead. And I think that's something that you need to factor in when looking at the overall aircraft ownership costs is that if you aggregate aircraft maintenance and fuel and you compare it to the peer group, it actually looks far more compelling than if you just look at it on the raw numbers as presented.

I think that's really an important point. When you look at the merit of the aircraft, some people say that there is no such thing as good aircraft, there is only cheap aircraft. That's actually not true. So if you really take a more holistic view on the aircraft cost and you include fuel burn, you include capital cost ownership cost, you include maintenance cost, probably these are the things you should add up and kind of compare and then you understand the value of the aircraft. And, you know, we are getting cleaner and cleaner on the aircraft side. So all these aircraft are superior. They represent better value than alternative aircraft. They will be flying as opposed to partially being grounded. So that kind of a value coming through the aircraft line is just going to be a lot more visible and a lot more impactful on the performance of the business going forward. So I think it is important to understand because this is the single biggest drag on the business at the moment. We don't shine on the aircraft, and we should be shining on the aircraft because it's a better aircraft than any of the other guys have.

Thanks very much. Connor from Citibank. First question was on maintenance. Obviously, a bit of a headwind this year, but into next year and the year after, still looks like quite a few re-deliveries. I think it's 25 and 14. Do you think as a result of that, that's still going to be leading to a lot of provisioning for maintenance in those years as well? And then the second question is kind of back to your comment around margins potentially being up next year it broadly from your comments it seems like overall non-few unit costs kind of the improvements in the underlying business being offset by saying leaseback gains i think a lot of uh models in the market are including unit revenue up slightly this coming year um but you know with capacity out to 10 this year unit revenue flash There's quite an acceleration into next year. I'm wondering how can we think about that bridge of margins coming up? Is it fuel? Is that a big component? Is it financing? Any help you can give on that would be super helpful. Thank you.

Okay, I'll take the first one on the maintenance provisioning. Yeah, I think those numbers you were referring to were probably calendar year numbers, so I've only got them committed to memory in fiscal year. So it was 18 this fiscal year, 19 next fiscal year, 16 in F-28, and then I think we're basically just a handful left. And so, yeah, those will come with elevated costs, event-related costs is how I'm referring to them. And the challenge I think that we've faced so far is that we were – we were competing we our resources internal and external were we're we're competing with the challenges of powder metal and we deliveries and trying to keep the fleet flying and manage whatever we could as we as as every day goes by we get better at managing the powder metal issue and now we're putting putting all of our attention on the end of these side of things because of the huge pressures putting on the maintenance line um while making sure that we have the base capacity available for the operating fleet and so i think we'll get better at it but there is going to be an inherent um event driven um exceptional cost pressure coming through the next few years on maintenance that we will not be able to avoid it is simply what is required in order to put these aircraft back into returning conditions and to comply with the contracts. Otherwise, you pay a lot worse, which is lessor compensation, right? So, you have the option to pay the lessor cash, which they'd love to have, but at our scale and our rates in the maintenance ecosystem, it's better for us to do the work. Of course, it impacts all sorts of things like availability of slots at the facilities, And it takes down utilization because you have to obviously take the aircraft out of the fleet in order to allow for the time that the aircraft are maintained so it has those pressures. But that's just part of the transition and the cleaning up of the business. But there's going to be elevated maintenance costs and the associated maintenance depreciation that flows through the depreciation line that comes with the exiting of the aircraft. If we didn't have the new aircraft coming in, there would be some opportunity to extend COs, as our friend Andrew would like to write about, but unfortunately that would just add more capacity at this point, and so we have to balance the trade-off of, you know, what even more growth would mean versus trying to migrate the older aircraft out and benefit from the harmonized efficiency of an A321-only fleet.

So maybe on the margin issue. So I can tell you that we actually have quite a number of markets where we are growing 20 plus percent and ROSC is improving, going into positive territories and we have a few markets where we are not really growing and ROSC is down. So obviously what you do is that you address the underperforming parts of the business and you exploit the overperforming parts of the business. And I think the way we are allocating capacity through this growth period in the first half is trying to embark on that principle. As Jan said, yes, I mean, of course, high growth always gives you some kind of a containment on a unit revenue improvement. But I think you have to look at it in context of I mean, competition is pretty much benign. I mean, doing nothing. I mean, we are not really seeing any significant competitive activities pretty much anywhere in our markets. I mean, you know, we have been discussing Albania due to the other guys that they've been very topical on Albania. But the fact of the matter is that we are three times the size of Ryanair in Tirana and our financial performance is improving. just because one guy is saying something that doesn't mean that there is anything close to the realities. I think they are stating ambitions as opposed to actual realities. So, you know, we actually feel very comfortable with the with the redesigned network and the way we are allocating new capacity there against the competitive backdrop, against the strengths of the brand and awareness of the brand, what we have been achieving. I don't think that ROSC is going to come through as a detrimental issue to the performance of the company in terms of margin. Now, we will have to see how the cost line is going to play out, given all the issues, and we have still a few decisions we will have to make that would affect maintenance cost and when to amortize some of these maintenance lines. But we think, as said, that FISCO 27 is going to be an improvement on margin versus 26.

Hi, it's Andrew Lobb from Barclays. Can I ask about the journey to diversifying your aircraft financing structure? which I think you spoke about previously but doesn't seem to get a lot of profile today. How hard is it to kick the habit of the SLB gains, I guess? And then in terms of competitive pressures, Joe, you just said there's no competitive threats around the network despite Michael's comments. Can you talk about the big Eastern European markets and what the trading trends are like in Poland, Poland, Hungary, Romania, I guess.

So let's talk about the competition first. Our market share, as we speak, is up to 26%. That's nearly a two percentage point improvement. and the other guys are flat or down slightly. So Andrew, the problem I'm having is that, I mean, this guy is talking a lot of rubbish, which are simply untrue. I know that the whole media nowadays is checking the facts on what Trump is saying. Maybe someone should be checking the facts of, you know, some of the other guys are saying, so this is simply not true. So we are gaining foothold in incentives at the detriment of all others, including Ryanair. So when you look at Poland in particular, the Ryanair leadership gap has been closed to a large extent. They had double digit margin points. I think we are kind of mid single digit now, given the capacity deployments in the country. Romania, we are 50% of the market in Romania and our market share has been growing. So again, if you fact check the system, I mean, you see, you know, kind of standstill on one side and significant growth on the other side. So if you just look at Poland, what we have done recently, pretty much to every operating base we have announced new aircraft. We opened up secondary airport in Warsaw, Warsaw-Modlin. If you look at what's been happening in Romania in the past year, we have been adding aircraft to almost every single base we have in Romania. And we opened up the secondary airport in Bucharest, Banyasa Airport. So maybe we don't bark like a dog, but we have been doing a lot in both of these markets in particular. And by the way, the other topical issue is Tirana. I think just very recently we have been adding two to three aircraft to Tirana, enhancing our market leadership position. Again, we are three times the size of the other guys. So Sentinel-East Europe has been going from strength to strength as far as we are concerned in terms of competitive dynamics. So, I mean, some of it, of course, is an investment into the future, but these investments tend to mature actually pretty fast and quite well. We feel very good about the competitive strengths of Wizz Air in Central and Eastern Europe. And going beyond Central and Eastern Europe, you must have noticed that we have been quite active in Italy, announcing new aircraft deployments in Italy, Milan, not far out Venice, Rome, Catania, more to come next week. So actually we are building a lot of strengths in In Italy, we ended up sponsoring IS Roma, which we think is a step up in terms of stimulating brand awareness and reputation in the marketplace. So it is not just San Tonino, but we are also picking up the pace in some of the other markets.

So in terms of the journey to diversify, so it is a journey. Not something that we feel that we need to immediately launch into because to some extent we're already diversifying through the JOLCOs that we do. I think roughly 50 aircraft in our fleet are under some sort of ownership structure, whether it be JOLCO or finance lease. But that's what I think, Andrew, you're referring to and what we've spoken about in the past and certainly in material that I've put out there. is a more focused effort towards owned aircraft. And that is something that is certainly in our roadmap. And we plan on talking about that during the Capital Markets Day. The good news is that we have aligned on a date internally, Joe and I, and we'll be communicating that date through the investor relations team to you. And we have plenty of time to plan for that. And that's where we're going to break it down in detail. the reason why we're less compelled to jump into it now is two reasons one is that basically the next 12 to 15 months worth of aircraft are already committed into some sort of form of financing and so even if i said i want to do x i want to buy x aircraft today i can't do anything for another 15 months anyway on that and so so we have some time but also i don't think it's appropriate you talk about journey right we're talking about consistency stability reliability predictability in terms of what we're telling you we want to do and what we actually print when it comes to results and so this quarter in the last two quarters have been deliberately um i would say without fanfare we just want to simply deliver on what we say and if i start taking away things like, say, a lease-back switch, as we've discussed through the questions, this business does use as part of its profit structure, then it's not going to deliver the consistency and the reliability that we're working so hard to bring. The biggest takeaway that I've seen from the conversations I've had with you today is that there's still a surprise that we're delivering on the consistency. We want to make sure that we eliminate that surprise and simply deliver. And so I'm trying to keep as much unchanged as possible so that we can focus on the pillars of our business, which is to be you know, ruthless on cost and reliable when it comes to operations, reliable when it comes to the commercial decisions that we make. And so there is certainly a lot of work that's gone into that, and that's something that we discussed as recently as yesterday with our board. But it's not something that we're ready to go to market with because we think that we – can do better in terms of just delivering on the expectations and making sure that we set the right expectations for the next quarter so we can repeat what we've done in the last two quarters. Two quarters is not yet enough for a pattern.

We'll take our first online question from Jared Castle. Please go ahead.

Right. Thank you, everyone. Good morning. Yeah, two from you as well. I mean, you mentioned commercial areas, Jan, and I just wanted to get some cut on what your thoughts would be, I guess, Jan Joseph, on... You know, something like Starlink, we've obviously seen comments from Ryanair and EasyJet today, so Wi-Fi. And secondly, you know, maintenance shops, obviously, costs there, you know, are impacting you. And obviously, you know, a large competitor is rolling out maintenance shops, so it's thoughts there. And then just secondly, you know, your comments on costs for 27. I mean, I assume, you know, you're talking more constant currency, but, you know, clearly the dollar is coming under a lot of pressure. So... Any color that you want to share on that front? I can obviously see your dollar hedging, but just some color there, how you see things. Thanks.

Maybe I'll just pick up the first one. So with regard to Wi-Fi and onboard connectivity, I can tell you that personally I have been looking at it for 15 years, probably six or seven different iterations. And You have two challenges with that. One is that you need a technology that actually performs. And two, you need the economic model that actually makes sense from a financial standpoint. One thing what you have learned in this industry is that people will not pay for this. If you think they do, you are naive. It's just not going to happen. So with regard to technology, I think StarLinks is kind of the technology that delivers what you need. uh but it may not deliver the economic side of the uh the equation because you may think that this is overcharged um and unless you find a sponsor uh who is prepared to uh pay for that you know for sure you're going to be ending up with the cost of uh operating the system uh with no visible benefit uh on on the revenue side because people won't pay for it so you have to get those two things right uh to move forward with wi-fi i think we are you know very upbeat on the wi-fi connectivity opportunity i said you know i have been looking at it on a constant basis pretty much but you need you need to get the technology right as technology is coming but you also need to get the economic model right on on that but with regard to maintenance i would just like to draw your attention to a very major difference between maintaining Brett and Whitney engines versus maintaining CFM engines. Well, first of all, when you think of aircraft maintenance, you know, 70-80% of the cost of aircraft maintenance are associated with engines. So, effectively, you are talking about engine maintenance when you think about it structurally. CFM doesn't underwrite the product. So, the CFM philosophy is that, you know, we are big enough We created a market, it's sufficient enough, take advantage of market airline. That's not our business. Brett and Whitney is totally different. Brett and Whitney underwrites the product and effectively guarantees the infrastructure for maintaining the engines. So we are not as widely affected by market volatilities when it comes to engine maintenance as the other guys. And I know that there is a huge inflation creeping through labor in the maintenance space all over. That's a global phenomenon. So this is not down to one or two guys. But we are contextually protected against the inflationary pressure. It doesn't mean that we are totally isolated from that issue. So we are not immune, but we are a lot more protected. So while you are seeing some of the guys seeing 2x, 3x of maintenance post-creep, we are nowhere near to it. I mean, we are still talking about, I don't know, some fairly nominal inflationary rate flowing through the system. So this is a major difference. So I think this should be a competitive advantage for us going forward. Unfortunately, that competitive advantage at the moment is tainted because of the powder matter groundings, etc. But once we are clean, I think our ability to manage maintenance costs against market volatility will turn into a competitive benefit for us.

So, Jared, with regards to the benefits of the U.S. dollar, I mean, absolutely, you know, 120 is something that makes us excited. We benefit in the form of obviously our rent. Most of our rent is paid in dollars for the aircraft, although we do have a good proportion of rent that we've originally put in place. In euro, the new aircraft that are delivering, they get swapped into euro rents through our latest evolution in our risk management through our balance sheet hedging or our lease liability hedging. And, in fact, there's a request today for four more deliveries to be swapped in, so we'll get the benefit of that. In terms of the rest of our cost structure, we're less exposed to dollars than most airlines because we've been looking to contract in Euro as much as possible to create a natural hedge. So, for example, a lot of our maintenance we're able to do in Euros because we don't perform maintenance too much outside of Europe. It's mostly in Europe. But there is a heavy element of dollars still in this business, and so that will help us. The funny thing about this journey to ownership is that when you buy an aircraft you establish a future residual value number the appraisal is done in dollars because that's what the purchase of the aircraft is done in and so you set some residual value number and then you depreciate down to it over the period of time but as the dollar weakens actually your depreciation grows because you're now depreciating to a lower dollar amount which means you have to take more so there's a risk there that we have to manage but i think that there's ways we can deal with that through through our risk management program. So, overall, there's a benefit there, but it's not something that, Jared, I would be able to quantify at this point. In terms of the commercial other areas, I mean, I think Joe summarized the Wi-Fi side. Of course, we're in discussions with Starlink. We understand the costs of it, but we're not prepared to incur the cask that comes with that without somebody helping us offset that because it would simply go against the ultimate Strategy that we're pursuing and maybe I'll just take the opportunity to fill you in on some of the key themes that I'm going to be focusing on going forward basically got four that I really just want you to hear now so that we can start to To follow up on them one is that we have to be and we will be ruthless on the cost gap Okay, that's something that you can see is there and that's something that I want to eliminate and the way that we need to do that is by way of productivity so productivity means fleet utilization and crew utilization and And so making sure that we can be as productive with that, that is core to the model, especially with the kind of aircraft that we operate. And so that's the first pillar. The second is that we're growing and we need to grow better. So how we grow is critical. So we need to grow better. That is, you know, establishing those fortress positions, deploying capacity into core markets where we have a cost advantage. The third is reliability, right? Everyone associates reliability with the cost benefit, so you have lower disruption costs, but you also end up with, like I said earlier, in terms of lower crew costs, but also reliability is a RASC lever. The more reliable you are, the more confident the customer and the consumer is going to be in purchasing tickets with Wiz, and the more customers we can identify, the higher we can charge in terms of supply and demand. And the last is that I... We need to expand the Wiz franchise. Everyone associates Wiz with a certain customer profile. One of the things that Mike and I have been talking about a lot is tailoring the schedule for the specific customer segment. Capture the high flyers, the high value flyers without sacrificing utilization. establishing root quality metrics to align with customer needs, and pushing ancillaries. And so things like what we're looking at, like WIS class, for example, pushing things like that, but ring-fencing them so that we keep the ULCC model. So trying those things, squeezing more out of flights that may have lower load factors by looking at products like that, but keeping the ULCC model, so ring-fencing them. so that's those are the four areas ruthless on cost grow better reliability and expanding the whiz franchise that's extremely important to us and that's the direction we'll be taking this business going forward thanks as a reminder for online participants if you wish to ask the question please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your zoom screen we'll just pause for a moment to see if there are any further questions in the line

There are no further questions on the webinar. I'll now hand over to management for closing remarks.

Thank you. I think I would just like to close it with the notion of I think we are on the path to reset this business. We don't want to pose any new surprises. I think we've got enough of those in the past few years. We are still in transition, so please don't expect performance taking us to the moon yet. But we are not far away now from a vision when you know, the operating model is going to be back into where it used to be. We're going to be clean of many of the issues we wanted to carry, like groundings, free transition is going to be completed in two years. So I think we are moving along the track and we are protecting performance alongside our expectations that we were trying to reset with you previously. Thank you.

Thank you for joining today's call. We're no longer live. Have a nice day.