Ryanair Holdings plc

Welcome to the Ryanair FY23 earnings call. My name is Maxine and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to your host, Michael O'Leary, Group CEO of Ryanair Holdings PLC to begin. Michael, please go ahead when you're ready.

Okay, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Reiner Full Year Results investor call. We have extensive numbers of teams all dialing in because we have an extensive 12 teams on the roadshow this week. So anybody looking for a meeting, please call any of our brokers out of Davie, Citi or Goodbodies. I think the results have read that we have an extensive presentation Q&A on the Reiner.com website. Go there, while you're there, make some bookings. You'll need them this summer as prices are rising. To touch briefly on the last 12 months, we've seen a very strong recovery. Traffic grew to 168.6 million passengers, which is up 13% in our pre-COVID capacity. in a marketplace in Europe which was operating last year at less than 90% of pre-COVID capacity. So Ryanair has been taking enormous swathes of market share in almost all markets across Europe. While our traffic has recovered last year ahead of COVID, profits are still marginally behind where they were pre-COVID at 1.43 billion. Nevertheless, a very strong performance at a time when most of our, certainly the alleged low-code competitors in Europe are still reporting losses for the last year. Underpinning that was a very strong fuel hedge performance last year, and that poses a challenge for us going forward over the next 12 months. Looking out at a couple of broad themes, which I'd like to explore, I think, during the Q&A in particular, we're looking out into a year where we have embedded an enormous cost advantage over almost every other airline in Europe. I think one of the very significant results of COVID has been two things. One, a huge amount of capacity has been weeded out of Europe. You've seen a huge number of airlines with quite a considerable capacity go both to Thomas Coates, to IVEs, German Wings. The other incumbents to survive that COVID have either A, structurally reduced their capacity. Alitalia is operating at 60% pre-COVID capacity. TAP, about 50% pre-COVID capacity. Lufthansa, for example, this year in the German market, is still only operating at 80% of its pre-COVID capacity in the short haul market, and yet its prices have doubled. So there is heavily constrained capacity. The other feature of COVID, and particularly when we look back and rewrite the history of COVID, has been a seismic movement in the unit cost gap between Ryanair and every other airline in Europe. We have worked extraordinarily hard during COVID to keep our XQ unit cost down at around 30, 31 euros per passenger, but we've seen most of our competitors suffer very significant increases in their unit costs. Most of our local competitors had higher wages and labour before COVID. They're even higher now. Their airport and handling costs have materially moved upwards while we, thanks to our growth, have been able to maintain low and stable airport and handling costs. But on the ownership and maintenance side, Ryanair, thanks to the renegotiation with Boeing during the max groundings, we have seen a very substantial widening of our ownership and maintenance cost advantage over most of our competitors, almost all of whom who either are operating almost entirely leased fleets or went into COVID owning a significant proportion of their fleet but came out of COVID with most of their fleet refinanced on sales and leaseback. And as we move into an environment, a world environment of significantly higher rates and financing costs, Our competitors will be paying significantly higher aircraft and ownership costs going forward for the next number of years, whereas our aircraft and ownership costs will be low and will keep low. And I think if you look at where we stand now with a widening cost advantage, the ability to enter into markets all over Europe, regardless of who the incumbent is, where we can get slots at airports, I think we're looking at a fundamental shift in European aviation towards Ryanair. large market share gain. Looking out over the next 12 months, we expect to grow our traffic to 185 million passengers. And to put that in context, that's 25% more than our pre-COVID traffic in a marketplace where short haul capacity would be at best 90, 95% of pre-COVID capacity. And it is that constrained capacity is, in my view, what is delivering or what is sustaining this strong demand outlook. We and all of our competitors are seeing this summer. Capacity is still behind pre-COVID. Demand is significantly stronger. People who've been locked up for two, three, two and a half years are going back traveling. I think there's a very unusual scenario in Europe of essentially full employment. People are getting paid at the end of every month. And despite fears over energy costs, inflation, rising interest rates for spending money and travel, business travel, leisure travel, visiting friends and family is no longer a luxury. It appears to be a kind of a necessity. So we're looking out into this summer with, as we said, advanced bookings, stronger than they were pre-COVID, forward airfares slightly higher than they were pre-last year. Again, and that's why we have to be a little bit cautious on guidance here. An awful lot of the strengthening of airfares is the last 10, 15, 20% of passengers. We have spent most of this year urging passengers to book early because prices we think will rise. There will be no near-term short sell-off in airfares. Prices are rising. Demand is strong. Europe is being welcomed. It will be invaded by American visitors because of the strength of the dollar and we're also seeing Asian traffic recover. Well hedged on fuel, although our fuel bill this year would be about a billion euros higher than it was last year, thanks to the strength of our hedges last year. The Boeing delivery delays are getting resolved. I think we're now down to talking weeks instead of months for the remaining aircraft for this summer. We're now reasonably confident we're going to get all of the 51 aircraft by the end of July. There will be a disruption to... We've had to take out some capacity in June and July, but we don't expect it to cost us more than 600,000-800,000 passengers, which in a year when we're forecast to ride to 185 million passengers would be largely immaterial. With the benefit of our widening cost advantage, we're rolling out those 50 new aircraft across most markets across Europe, where competitors appear to be in retreat. Many of them are focusing on building up their capacity at their fortress airports. or they're switching capacity away from competing with Reiner to the Middle East, which I think is a good, sensible strategy. Over the medium term, we see that capacity constraint story being maintained. The OEMs are challenged. Obviously, they have large backlogs. Airbus is suffering significant delivery today, as is Boeing. There is little prospect, I think, given the challenge in the supply chain, that there will be a dramatic increase in monthly production for the next two or three years. It will creep upwards, but it will creep up in ones and twos, not tens and fifteens. And then, as you've seen, a surge of orders post, I mean, firstly, Airbus' order book was essentially full out to the early 2030s. Boeing have been doing great work in, I think, this year to date, signing up a number of very significant orders with Tata in India, our order for 300 new aircrafts, There's more coming at the IATA conference in Istanbul in June and at the Paris Airshow. And I think we're looking at an environment where essentially the OEM's order book are completely full out to the early 2030. The good news is in Ryanair, we still have access to 50 aircraft a year for the next three summers. We will continue to roll out growth. It's astonishing to me that we're the largest airline in Europe by some considerable distance, 185 million passengers, and yet we're still delivering 10% growth. That is the strength of the Ryanair model, the huge cost advantage we have over every other airline, and our ability to go in with very low fares stimulate growth. I think the the way all of our competitors, every time I listen to a competitor investor call when they're talking about, you know, very dramatic fare increases, fares rising by 20%, 30%, that is driving traffic towards Ryanair. We don't expect our airfares to rise by those very, I think, irrationally exuberant numbers this year. We do expect our airfares this summer to be stronger than they were last summer, but we need that to pay for the full restoration of our people's pay and the higher oil bill. Looking out over the medium term, in a constrained environment, I think one of the key features of the Ryanair story will now be the recently announced 300 Boeing MAX order. This order secures our growth out to the mid-2030s in an environment where there will be very scarce aircraft availability. The pricing is exceptional. Yes, we are paying a slightly higher price than we paid in our last order, but as I said previously, if you factor in The delivery delay compensation, the price per seat, comes out as a little bit less than our last order in 2014. So I think our timing was fortuitous. We're very pleased to have a long order book with Boeing, and we think and look forward that that will deliver very stable growth. The growth will slow down as we get to 2027 at the max 10 orders. We don't expect to be growing at 10% a year when we're 225 million passengers, but we do expect to be growing at mid-single digits, 5%, 6% a year. That means we'll still be able to offer our airport partners 10, 15 million passenger growth a year. We will be still the beneficiary of low-cost aircraft that we will be purchasing out of internally generated cash flow, so we're not going on some debt splurge, and it means we will be able to widen the unit cost gap between us and all of our competitors across Europe. So I think we will and hopefully be able to deliver a decade of sustained, careful, slower, profitable and remunerative growth. And I think it's critical that we've now established a new target of growing to 300 million passengers by 2034. And to put that in some context, that is 100% growth over our pre-COVID figure of 149 million passengers in our last year pre-COVID. It is astonishing the demand that is out there across Europe. There are some lazy analysts out there who believe that Europe is tapped out for growth. It isn't. We're still growing strongly, as Neil said this morning, in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal, even in mature markets like Ireland and the UK. We're seeing very significant growth. Central and Eastern Europe, there is enormous demand for Ryanair. People are fed up paying the high fares of our incumbent, of incumbent competitors. And we have more growth opportunities out there than we can handle, not just for the next 12 months, but certainly for the next five or six years. One parting cautionary note, and I know everybody will lose the run of themselves. Q1 is going to be very strong. Q1 is entirely distorted by the impact of the illegal Russian invasion in Ukraine last year, which collapsed Easter and badly damaged both traffic and fares into Q1 of FY23. We had to go out and dump yields and stimulate travel into Q1. So I caution, just a note that I want on the record, Q1 would be very strong. It would be distortedly strong because there's a weak prior year comparison. And when many of our competitors are out there telling you about the new paradigm and how wonderful it is, be cautious. Q1 would be very strong. We think FY24 will not be driven by Q1. We are cautiously guiding. If one were confident we'd grow to 185 million pastures, that would be approximately 10% growth over next year. We cannot give guidance today. Too much of the yield story depends on the last 20 or 30% of our passenger bookings. It looks like Q2 would be strong, certainly if there's nothing untoward. But at this point in time, we have less than 5% of the seats sold for the second half of the year, which is the December and March quarters. We see no reason why demand won't continue to be strong. But we're cautious. We think we're right to be cautious and that we... I think it's appropriate that we caution everybody. We've seen too much, I think, irrational exuberance from our competitors. But there's no doubt that there is a strong recovery underway in a market where Ryanair is taking huge market share, in a market where capacity will be constrained, not just for the next 12 months, but for the next four or five years. And only Ryanair has a decade of aircraft deliveries and sustainable growth to deliver over that period of time. Neil, do you want to take us through the highlights of the Q&A, please?

Sure, Michael. Thanks very much for that. It's covered off very nicely on the unit cost performance that we had. I think it's important to call out the strength of the balance sheet. We've seen a good recovery in our balance sheet over the course of the past year. We finished with very strong liquidity of $4.7 billion, but importantly, moved into a net cash position of just under $600 million from debt of $1.45 billion at the same time last year. I would caution, however, that that was flattered by the timing of aircraft deliveries, which meant that about 450 million of CapEx has now been timed from FY23 into FY24. The balance sheet, however, remains extremely strong. And last week, S&P upgraded us to a BBB+, which I think is in recognition of the fact that nearly all of the fleet is on balance sheet owned and unencumbered, which, as Michael already said, greatly enhances the financing gap that we have between ourselves and everybody else. The interest rates are rising, but yet we're paying maturing bonds out of our own cash resources. We're not taking on expensive leases. And over the course of the next year, we'll judiciously use that cash, having restored pay for our people. We will now deal with peak capex of $2.6 billion. over the course of the next year and pay down 1.5 billion bonds, of which 850 million was already paid off in March, just gone, and another 750 million in August of this year. And then, of course, with the new Max 10 order book coming, we will start to build up the war chest for that, with CapEx starting to rise from there on. But the balance sheet in a good place, costs in a good place.

Okay, thanks, Dan. Eddie, would you want to give us some insight into the market trend into the summer and median term growth opportunities across Europe?

Yeah, again, as referred to earlier, I mean, you know, fares are strong going into the summer. You know, we continue to grow. We've got our new bases are going well in Belfast and the Canaries. We've added aircraft to 11 bases, two aircraft to 11 bases. We've added one aircraft to 23 bases. The only base that went backwards was Zaventub this year for cost reasons. Across all market segments, we've seen them all recover as traffic has recovered. We see very positive signs in places like Spain where government has taken a sensible decision there, which feeds into our call space of lowering costs at airports, putting incentives in for secondary airports and freezing costs at the 2027. Likewise, the largely privately owned airports in Italy, many of the smaller ones dependent on Ryanair. And again, you know, we've got to push down airfares into secondary airports. Air Force where we're competing with ourselves. But as you look right across very weak markets with incumbents reducing in places like the Baltics with SAS going into Chapter 11, TAP operating at 50%, ETA operating at a fraction of itself and continuing to grow in markets where we have substantial market share like Ireland, for example, where we've got, you know, again, the largest summer schedule ever. So right across the piece, UK as well, German regional airports and in French regional airports as well. So robust demand out there. Good.

Okay, I think we're done. Let's open it up to Q&A, please.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star, so by one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing star followed by two to cancel. There will be a brief pause whilst questions are being registered. Our first question today comes from Jamie Rowbottom from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead, your line is now open.

Jamie, hi. Morning. Two from me. Michael, point taken on the dangers of looking at the yield on a year-on-year basis for the next quarter. But compared to the same quarter pre-COVID, your March quarter fares were, I think, about 26% above. Can we think about them being at a similar premium to pre-crisis levels in the upcoming June quarter? Second one's on the costs. Good to see the fuel largely locked in. In terms of the non-fuel unit costs, it sounds like it's mainly staff pay restoration and the en route charges driving the expected increase. Are there any other cost actions you can take to offset other than getting the 737 MAXs in to improve the fleet mix? Thanks.

Yeah, two good questions, Jimmy. Firstly, on the yields, clearly we can't predict what's going to happen yield-wise I would be more cautious than that. I don't think we'll see 26% growth replicated in the first half of next year. All I can give you at the moment is that with about 80% of seats sold for Q1, at this point in time, about 40% of seats sold in Q2, average fares are running modestly ahead of where they were this time last year, and bookies are stronger. So, I think the yields will be up modestly. We could have a very strong June to August. We're not used to these kind of environments. We haven't been in an environment for 25 years where we have capacity down net over a two-year period and demand surging with transatlantic and Asian traffic. feeding into the mix of very strong intra-European travel. So it could be better than that, but I would urge caution at the moment to let's see where we get to. Again, and I come back, the Q1 would be distortedly strong because of the weak prior years. The Q2, the half-year numbers in November will tell everything. We could have a very strong H1. I would be cautious at this time. I always get nervous in this industry when all of my competitors are predicting huge booms and blue sky scenarios and massive, you know, 20% and 30% fare increases, I get cautious. Non-fuel unit costs, I think, again, you know, the only slide you need to look at in our presentation is slide four. You know, it is not so much what happens to our absolute unit costs, it's that the gap is materially widening between us and every other airline in Europe. But you're right. I think we will have pay inflation over the next number of years. We've worked hard. On pay restoration, we've restored the pay of all of our pilots, cabin crew, by agreement with the union. We've built in pay increases each year over the next three or four years, depending on whichever country the deal is done. We have also increased headcount significantly this summer because of the experience of airport security and staffing shortages last year. We're more crewed. We have better crew ratios this summer. We are seeing that translated into better on-time performance, better customer service. although being derailed every time there's a French ATC strike, and we've had 55 of those already this year. But the things I would point to where there will continue to be a widening gap will be on the staff ratio, the staff cost between us and our competitors. I think there will be more inflation on the Airbus fleet across Europe, whereas if you're a 737 employer, I think there will be marginally less pay inflation. We will remain competitive. Airport and handling will continue to be a huge differentiator between us. You look at our competitors and they're suffering far more airport and handling cost inflation, although a lot of that is a by-product of the fact that they're no longer growing. Wizz, for example, appears to be growing, but all the growth is taking place in the Middle East. It's not taking place in Europe. In fact, they're in retreat. And the ownership and maintenance costs, the aircraft deals we did during COVID and the new 300 aircraft order, particularly where our competitors will be taking delivery of much more expensive Airbus aircraft and having to use financing, expensive debt to fund those orders, will materially widen that gap between us and them. And then the kicker on all of this is we're still adding in new aircraft. We have 110 more game changers where the operating cost performance of these aircraft is stellar, 4% more seats, but the fuel saving is slightly more than 16%. and we're moving to a fleet of MAX 10s, where we'll be carrying 20% more passengers but burning 20% less fuel. You know, it's staggering, not just cost efficiencies, but staggering environmental gains as well. And, you know, we are continuing to see a rising demand from the customers across Europe for greener travel. The way to your greener travel is to switch and fly Ryanair. It's the easy headlines across the media, oh, Ryanair is your biggest polluter. What they should remember is that the 185 million passengers we carry this year are reducing their environmental footprint by 50% by transferring off high fare legacy competitors who have older aircraft, much lower load factors, less seat density. So the good news is that Ryanair is your biggest airline and we're reducing the environmental footprint by 50%. Thanks, Jamie. Next question, please.

Thank you. The next question comes from from Raymond James. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning.

Just following up on Jamie's question a little bit, just wondering, you know, the non-fuel cost, you were expecting it to be down and now kind of expecting it to go up. Just is that all max delivery delays? And also, you know, you usually don't take max during July, August, and if that's having an impact on that as well. And then for my second question, I was wondering if you could share what you're seeing on the business travel demand front, particularly if you're seeing any benefits from the Alameda agreement or if it's too soon for that.

Yeah, thanks. The max delivery delays, I would be a little bit more optimistic. I think Boeing have it down to the delays are really running in terms of weeks now rather than months. The critical thing for us, particularly for the summer of 2023, was can we get all 51 aircraft in by the end of May? Then could we get them all in by the end of June? We're now reasonably confident we'll have them all by the end of July. Now, we have had to take out some capacity in June and July. We think it'll cost us about 800,000 seats over the May, June, July period. We will have all the aircraft in for the August, September peak. um you know so i wouldn't get too caught up in max delivery delays and we've already and we're working through uh with bowie the delivery for next winter for the summer of 2024 and it looks at this point in time now absent a curveball that comes out of left field such as the fastener issue we will have all those aircraft in by probably the end of may so if there might be some slippage into june But we'll have them all there. The fleet will expand by another 50-odd aircraft for the summer of 2024, allowing us to grow again from 185 million passengers in FY24 to breaking 200 million passengers in FY25. Again, in a market across Europe where capacity is constrained. And I'll keep coming back to that enormous opportunity for Ryanair and our shareholders in this. Business travel. We've seen a huge surge in business travel over the last year. Post-COVID, there seems to be not just a desire for people to go back to the beaches, but businesses going back to work. Again, people are locked up working from home for a two-year period. We see a lot of demand into countries, into Eastern Europe, Poland, Morocco, a lot of focus on businesses, smaller businesses, fixing supply chains, switching supply chains away from Asia, China, which are now unreliable, and repairing their supply chains or relocating their supply chains closer to Europe and close to home. And Ryanair is the airline that is the offer, in many cases, we're the only airline operating into many of these regional destinations. So strong business travel, I think because we had delivered such exceptional recovery last summer, we had exceptional on-time performance, exceptional feedback metrics, but many of our competitors were struggling to recruit and train people post-COVID. As I've long tried to espouse, on short-haul European, premium traffic is over. No one will pay for business class on short-haul intra-European, as they don't across North America either. People just want an efficient, affordable, on-time service. I look to where I see some future growth. Germany is a very interesting market at the moment. We've reduced our capacity in Germany in the last 12 months. We're still the second largest airline operating in Germany. But because the airports have been increasing fees, we switched capacity out of Germany. The Germans now are beginning to realize the error of the backing Lufthansa as the national champion. Lufthansa have deliberately not returned their pre-COVID capacity. They're only operating about 80% of the German market. Airfares have more than doubled in the last 12 months. German businesses and consumers are going to be the victim of monopolistic pricing by Lufthansa in the German market. The German airports will suffer, will be unable to recover their pre-COVID traffic volumes, obviously, other than the two big hubs of Frankfurt and Munich. And I think German airports will become much more competitive the next uh 12 24 months uh when they realize they're all getting screwed by lufthansa and they'll want uh somebody to come in there with uh and provide competition choice and a much lower alternative for business and leisure travel and i suspect that'll be right here um eddie anything you want to add on business travel yeah just in in relation to uh the the specific query on avidaeus i mean it's it's too soon to say but we are um

in terms of any sort of volume. We only launched it last week, but I mean, it is encouraging and it's interesting that you call it the German market. I mean, even in a place like Nuremberg where we have a relatively small base, two aircraft base, large employers around there, you know, the Pumas, Adidas, SAP, et cetera, who want to get access to direct connections and their only alternative is to get on the train or to drive to Frankfurt. And we have seen that in Germany where people want to get access to travel You know, they have a lot of intermediaries with travel management companies that manage their expenses, and Amadeus will allow them to segue into that. So I think the, I mean, one of the areas that you didn't call out there was Nordrum, Italy, where we see a surge in business traffic, particularly from small and medium-sized businesses there. So we're very encouraged. I think this channel will work for us. People want to get access to our lowest fares. but find it more difficult to do it directly through Reiner.com when they've got the gap of a travel management system to manage expenses, and Amadeus will deliver that for us.

Although, the Amadeus volumes will remain reasonably small. Overwhelmingly, we'll take all the bookies through the Reiner.com platform, but lots of businesses have the internal or travel implants, and that needs a GPS like an Amadeus.

next question please the next question comes from alex irving from bernstein please go ahead your line is now open alex hi good morning gentlemen two from me please first on cash returns so you've got a net cash balance sheet you know capex and debt maturity that looks fundable out of ongoing operations what would you want to see before taking the decision to restart the buyback or to implement the dividends Second question around M&A, so a couple of deals coming in Europe, Europa, ETA, TAP, clearly not going to be appealing to you, but how significant do you think growth opportunities could be for potential antitrust remedies? How many planes might you want to allocate to new opportunities arising here? Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Alex. Again, two good questions. I think we should be cautious. We finished the year with $500 million of net cash, but as Neil has said, $400 million of that was Boeing delivery delays. I think what we've tried to set out, we do expect to generate significant cash flows over the next two or three years if profitability, you know, if there's no curveballs, we don't get any more COVID or Ukraine wars. But we have a sequence of what we want to do. The first challenge was pay restoration. We brought forward the pay restoration, which was originally agreed over a two-year period, which was originally done over... the medium-term period out to 2025. We brought it all forward to December 2022 because we saw it coming. So pay restoration is critical. Funding, and these are expensive pay increases we've already agreed with pilots and cabin crew over the next four years. You know, when we're operating with higher, with increased crewing ratios, that these built-in pay increases will be expensive and need to be managed. Secondly is debt repayment. We've repaid an 850 million bond in March as it fell due. We've another 750 million bond repayment coming in August. So we have a very large burden of debt repayment. We then have two further bonds to be repaid in August 2025 and March, I think, of 2026 or something like that. I might get those dates out, but they're in the numbers. So debt repayment, it's vital to us that we pay down debt when interest rates are rising from 0% or 1% towards medium term, 5%, 6%. And for risky industries like the airline industry, some of the recent bonds being done by the lessors are at 8% and 9% per annum. Then we have a huge CapEx challenge. I mean, we are spending $2 billion or €2 billion a year net on aircraft, and that will continue for the next two and a half years. We take a funding gap for a year in 2026 before we start into the max 10 orders. And so if you take that sequence, I think it's pay restoration and pay increases for our people first, debt repayments, aggressive debt repayments. We want to get to zero net debt by 2025. Capital expenditure, and we have ambitious CapEx challenges. And I'm afraid, and I say this as one of the largest shareholders, the shareholders will just have to wait in line. We need to be cautious and careful, and I think our shareholders understand that. We are conscious of the fact that shareholders stumped up $400 million in additional equity during COVID. We do want to return some cash to shareholders as soon as it's safe to do so, and that we generate some meaningful net cash. I think it remains our business objective that when we have surplus net cash, we will return that to the shareholders. I don't foresee there being an opportunity to do big share buybacks anymore, but I think a modest and reasonable dividend program sometime over the next year or two, if the net cash balances allow that, would be fair and reasonable. The people who stood by us during COVID, the people who put their hands in their pockets and helped us during COVID with additional equity and additional debt should see some modest return on that investment. M&A, I think, will be an opportunity for us for growth for the next couple of years, as we strongly encourage. And I think it's logical that Europe continues to consolidate. There's been a lot of consolidation during COVID and as a result of COVID. And what we're seeing post-COVID is the emergence of four very large airline or airline groups in Europe, Lufthansa, Air France, KLM, IAG and Ryanair. I don't believe in the next four or five years there will be room for any significant Those that cannot grow will either perish or have to find a way into the M&A space. I think there will be further soft divestments. Soft divestments at big airports are interesting to us, but they're not going to allow us to allocate 50 aircraft a year. We would expect to be involved in the IAG Acquires Air Europa in Madrid and Barcelona. I think there would be slot divestments there. I think that many of the incumbents, a bit like TAP in Lisbon, are desperately trying to find a way to give their slots to some other high-cost airline like EasyJet or it might be Volatea in Madrid. But I think the airports increasingly recognize that with Ryanair, you get kind of guaranteed growth. You get very efficient operations. We arrived there with bigger aircraft with 93% and 94% load factors. So I think the airports are very keen to see us take up some of those slot divestments. But slot divestitures and M&A remedies will not be the driver of our growth to 225 million passengers or 300 million passengers in the next 10 years. We are going to continue to allocate aircraft in large numbers to the Italian market, the Spanish market, as we have in the last two years. We're allocating a lot of aircraft in the UK market this year, particularly on UK domestics, where, again, the government has enlighteningly reduced APD on domestics by 50%. We've opened up a base in Belfast. We're adding capacity in Glasgow, Edinburgh. So, you know, and I go back to the same point. There's not much growth, I think, out there for airlines whose average airfare here in Europe is sort of 150 or 200 euros. But if your average airfare in Europe is 40 euros and your average cost is 30 euros, there's a lot of growth. Some of it will be market share capture. Some of it will be continuing to grow the overall marketplace. And so we are very, I think, excited and very ambitious with the growth prospects for the next decade and that's what is underpinned by the 110 additional game changer deliveries over the next two and a half years and then the 300 max 10 order. Eddie or Neil, do you want to add anything on the M&A or Neil on cash?

I think on the cash returns you covered it off well. We've 2.6 to 2.7 billion worth of CapEx in the current financial year and we've got a big draw on debt to be paid down. So, you know, for the next 12 months, anyhow, the cash is well spoken for. M&A, again, there will be some room for us to play where there are remedies, but equally we'll continue just pushing capacity into core markets. And Eddie probably added a bit more colour to me on that.

Yeah, I mean, I just called out, like, what you said there about IAG, I mean, like, on A lot of the domestic routes, if that went ahead with Air Europa, in some cases they'll have 100%, certainly 90% of a lot of those domestic routes. We probably see more widespread divestments at Spanish airports, which would be welcome. I think that's the only near-term M&A that would crystallize into divestments for us. we would welcome those, particularly with the coast break on coasts in Spain for the next four years.

Yeah, okay, just to clarify, so the bond repayment dates, I just have them here. So we have a 750 million bond to pay in August 23, 850 million bond in September of 25, and then a 1.2 billion bond we raised during COVID is due for repayment in May 26. So we still have about three, almost just under three billion in debt to repay over the next three years. So, you know, there are still significant funding challenges ahead of us. But no, we're confident we can deal with them. But that's why I say, you know, the shareholders will have to wait. And I think our shareholders understand that. Next question, please.

Thank you. The next question comes from Maniba Kayani from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Maniba, hi.

Hi. Hi. So you were mentioning kind of Asian demand being positive for the short haul this summer. I just wanted to get a sense of what you've seen so far on Asian demand, and do you see it coming through in your bookings at this point? And have you seen basically a change in booking patterns this year compared to kind of pre-COVID in terms of the booking window. And then secondly, Michael, your contract ends in 2028. The Max 10 delivery is gone well beyond that. How should we be thinking about you staying on?

Thanks, Beneva. I think I might ask Jason McGinnis to come in on the booking patterns, Jason. But just on Asian demand, you know, we are seeing I think what Europe, there is unusually strong demand this year. I mean, it is very difficult to get a hotel room or a golf course booking anywhere in Europe this summer with the number of Americans who are over here. The dollar has been strong now for over a year. The forward traffic, I mean, as someone who got scalped on a transatlantic airfare yesterday from Lisbon to New York, the strength of transatlantic business is astonishing. And Europe, the strength of the dollar means that, you know, people are, and there is going to be an invasion of Americans across Europe all summer long. We had no Asian traffic across Europe for the last two years, three years. I don't, we don't, we carry a significant number of Asian, but for us, I think the real driver of the Asian traffic recovery is the transfer traffic onto short haul legacy carriers. It's the, you know, they fill up an awful lot of the short haul of LaPanza, Air France, IAG and others. I think Carson was previously quoted saying, you know, upwards of 50% of their short haul travel across Europe in the summer is long haul transfers. And I think that's what is translating to there is that actually it further constrains the available capacity. In a marketplace where short haul Europe this summer would be operating at 90, 95% capacity, you have extraordinary transatlantic transfer demand. You have a beginning of a medium-term recovery in Asia, filling up the short-haul capacity of our competitors, which leaves less seats for the European consumers who are turning to Ryanair because we're the ones offering not just the lowest fares, new aircraft, fuel-efficient aircraft, but also we're the ones adding significant demand. In a marketplace that's operating at 90-95% pre-COVID capacity this summer, Ryanair is operating at 125% of capacity, and we're capturing large amounts of market share. Jason, maybe just give us your thoughts on the booking patterns this summer over last or this summer against pre-COVID, and then we're going to deal with my contract in 2028.

Yeah, just on bookings, as you said earlier, bookings are strong at the moment for the summer. We're not quite back to pre-COVID. The booking curve isn't fully recovered. So bookings are still happening closer to date, but it's certainly trending more towards what it was in summer 19. It varies across, we have 47 different market segments across Europe, and it varies across them, but leisure is booking almost as it was pre-COVID. some of your domestic and ethnic routes will be closing closer to the date. So that's why we're just a little bit cautious when we're giving our fare guidance looking out across the summer, particularly into Q2. Although bookings are strong, it's still happening closer to travel date. But I'm very comfortable in terms of the rate that's happening at the moment, very comfortable with load factors, You'll have seen that in terms of our April load factor when we announced May, and when we look into the peak as well, load factors are very, very strong, but they are happening just a little bit closer to the travel date, but very strong in general.

I mean, just to finish briefly, thank you for your concern for my contract in 2028, but I would caution, it's five years away, and nobody is thinking about it. Firstly, it's a matter for the board when we get to 2027 or 2028, and whether the board wants me to stay on after that period of time, I don't think is all that important one way or the other. I think this business is no longer heavily dependent on me. I think particularly where we have a decade of aircraft deliveries that now run us out into the mid 2030s, and we have done a lot of really good work in the last, I think during COVID and post COVID on succession planning, You know, we now have five airlines in the group. We are growing individual airline CEOs. We have multiple ops directors, multiple commercial directors, very good and strong financial CFOs across the group. So we have a kind of a training ground and we have a very strong pipeline of management succession, not just for me, but for every other senior manager within the group. But really our focus, I think, as a group now, and I, you know, I, and I keep trying to urge everybody, there was the early days I used to make all the decisions in Ryanair. Increasingly, I make very few of the decisions in Ryanair because it's such a big operation. I think the strength of the management team in Ryanair has been demonstrated to an extraordinary extent by the way we came through COVID. We've managed our way through COVID, I would say, spectacularly well. We were the only airline that was ready for the post-COVID recovery. We were the only airline across Europe that has emerged out of COVID with the same cost basis we had going into COVID. And you look, we have a pipeline of aircraft deliveries now that allows us to grow from 149 million passengers pre-COVID to 225 million passengers in 2026. And now it's 300 million passengers in 2033 or 2034. And much as I would like to believe that is all due to my innate genius, I'm afraid it's not. We just have a very good management team. And so increasingly, whether the board wants me to extend my contract in 2028 or not is frankly immaterial. There's a really good management team in Ryanair taking this business forward. And we will be, I think everybody's excited by the opportunity of executing this plan to grow to 300 million passengers by 2034. Remember, the next largest airline in Europe at the moment is Lufthansa. at about 100 million passengers. And yes, they will engage in M&A, but we will certainly, I think, capture about a third of the entire market for short-haul air travel across Europe. And that is good, because if Reiner doesn't capture a third of the market in the next 10 years, Lufthansa, Air France, KLM, IAG are going to screw everybody for ridiculously high airfares. we'll be the airline keeping them all honest we'll be the airline offering lower fares we'll be the airline delivering growth to airports we'll be the airline delivering growth in not just traffic but also jobs in the regions of Europe and so I think we're headed for a very exciting five years or ten years and it doesn't really matter whether I'm there after 2028 there's a really good management team and we're not just the senior team but also the middle management team coming through as well and you'll all get the opportunity to meet them over the next week as we've banging them all out on roadshows you can ask them what they think of the my contract in 2028 or that mostly they'll yawn about it thanks whenever next question please thank you the next question comes from stephen furlong from david please go ahead your line is now open yeah hi michael hi neil um

Yeah, just on the winter profitability, just more kind of generically, do you think that the business is a bit more, obviously, there's a summer peak there, but I mean, if changes in the network, maybe something for Eddie, whether it's more weekend travel, changes in labor contracts to make it at least when you're having the Q3 and Q4, it's not like... a massive kind of loss-making period because I think the seasonality has improved to some extent. And the second one maybe for Neil, maybe just talk a bit more about what happened there in terms of the conversion of the syndicated term loan and did that help in the deliberations with S&P for the upgrade? Thanks a lot. Thanks, Stephen.

When we talk about winter schedules and profitability, maybe ask Eddie to take that and maybe Tracy McCann might come in on it as well. And then Neil, the loan story, please.

Yeah, we've been working over the last number of seasons on aircraft optimization, or as we call it here, repacking the suitcase in terms of getting better utilization out of the aircraft. And also within that, there is a sort of a pivot, a slight pivot away from midweek. Okay, we've got to do that within the constraints of the 5-4 roster and a base network of over 90 bases. But yes, we are trying to fill out the weekends. We've been more successful in that now in terms of how we've done that. We've sort of moved from a sort of a a 65-35 split to about 70-30 now towards the weekends, which runs through from Thursday to Monday. So that has really helped. Also, on a lot of city pairs, if you look back 10 years where we weren't even daily on some of those major trunk routes where we've now got multiple frequencies and we continue to build them, and also the domestic networks in places like Italy and Spain where we're continuing to grow, which are less seasonal, covering long distances. So we are sort of hedging against that. We're working our way in. More frequencies, more domestic markets, pivoting towards the weekend and strengthening up on city pairs. So it's working its way towards that, yeah.

Tracy, anything on that, sir? Yeah, I suppose what Eddie said, the fact that we pivoted away from it, we could certainly help on the yield and help on the ancillary. much stronger fares to be got at the weekend. And I suppose it's helped a little bit on costs in that it's allowed us, you know, no flying at some bases at the weekend, but it's helped with staff costs. It's helped with things like uploading onboard sales, where it's allowed some bonds probably closed midweek on some of the smaller bases. So, yes, it's definitely helped on both sides, fares and costs.

Good, thank you. Maybe we took all the data and the syndicated terminal. Maybe Neil Thorne, I might ask John Norton, but good pressure to come in as well at the end of Neil.

Yeah, well, John did all the heavy lifting on this. What I would say is that, you know, it was important to S&P, but more important was the 99% unencumbered balance sheet that we have and the strong liquidity within the group. And they did upgrade it last week to a BBB+. But they like the fact that rather than having a term loan, which was going to mature next year, we've now termed that out to 2028, but have the flexibility to a revolving credit facility to pay that down or draw it as needed. And they count that effectively as cash. And John did a great job getting the margin down. significantly lower levels. So maybe, John, do you want to add a bit more colour on that?

Yeah, I think it also kind of ties into the message around the debt pay down on the basis that it was a year out, the facility in terms of May 24, it was due to mature. And we've obviously extended that out for five years. So I think, look, it's a good piece of work. And I think, look, we're helpful for the support of our banking group.

Thanks, John. Next question, please.

Our next question comes from Mark Simpson from Goodbody. Please go ahead, Mark. Your line is now open.

Mark, hi. Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Two questions, one for Neil. In terms of use of cash, obviously significant inflows expected over the next couple of years. Is there an opportunity or potentially a benefit to accelerate PDP payments as we look into the, say, third year of forecasting? And then a kind of broader issue, probably if Julius is online, kind of political competition issues. Two things there. Obviously, we've seen the ECJ ruling, which must be seen as a win with regards to Lufthansa and SAS. I don't know what the kind of ramifications of those rulings are. And equally, is there a kind of move by the EU Commission in terms of open skies and competition to actually act on issues around ATC? Okay, Mark.

Yeah, so Mark, on PDPs and use of cash, we're getting to the stage now where we're more into delivery payments rather than PDP payments in relation to the remaining 110 game changers. So accelerating them doesn't make a huge amount of sense. We don't really, with the exception of having paid assigning deposits on the 300 max 10s, we don't get into pdp discussions or obligations this side of kind of the back end of 2026 so you know we can look at that stage depending on where interest rates are etc on whether we accelerate some of that or not but the working assumption is that as before uh you know you'd pay up to 25 of your your pdps uh between 24 and uh three months of delivery of the aircraft with the balance on delivery

Okay, I'm going to answer that just before every Julius. Obviously, the only issue that we do have outstanding there, but we have a number of years, is we haven't yet hedged the dollar or euro on the new aircraft order, the first deliveries are in 2027. We have extraordinary, exceptional hedge position on all of the remainder of the game-changer deliveries, the $1.24 to the euro, which means that, again, it just underpins how exceptionally low-cost our aircraft additions will be looking across at our competitor space where they're adding aircraft, they're not dollar hedged, and they're taking leases with significant cost inflation as interest rates rise. Julius, ETJ, and... I was just going to do an add-on there, Michael, on the hedging.

As Michael said, having hedged the MAX 10s, we'll wait to start that after AGM approval in... in September when we've got what's called a firm commitment for accounting purposes. The S&P upgrade last week will be very helpful in ensuring that we have the hedge lines in place. I wouldn't anticipate hedging 10 years out, but we may start looking at kind of shorter three, four, possibly five-year horizons on the euro dollar. I'm sorry, Julius, now hold yourself. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark.

Hi, Mark. Look, obviously, The European Commission did a very poor job on the Lufthansa decision three years ago, and I think we all knew that back then the legal community could not believe that the Commission could cut corners to that extent. So I think the decision from the court two weeks ago was welcomed by most, maybe not by some people based in Frankfurt, but generally it was welcomed by most. And I think the focus now is on converting that court win into something tangible. Obviously, we don't want it to become a pyrrhic victory. Damage to competition has been done. It's being done because Lufthansa managed to hold on to all of its slots and all of its aircraft. And when you compare their situation to the situation of EasyJet, for example, who had to do sail and lease back on the majority of their fleet to survive, the damage to competition clearly has been done. what can the EU Commission now do when reissuing their decision to repair some of that damage? And obviously, you know, what obviously springs to mind is slots in places like Frankfurt, Munich, you know, Dusseldorf or Vienna, where Lufthansa is in a very, very strong position, but didn't have to effectively surrender anything in return for this massive state bailout. On ATC markets, It's not a great story. There's a five-year-old complaint with the European Commission filed by Ryanair and several other airlines in relation to French legislation that governs ATC strikes. You see, in France today, when the ATC goes on strike, 50% of flights overflying the French territory are protected as compared to 80% of flights which land or take off in France. And that is at odds with the position in Italy or Spain or Greece, where 100% of overflight are protected. The EU Commission have been sitting on a complaint from airlines for five years since 2018, and nothing has been done. So it's hard to say whether anything will actually be done at European level. We're pushing very hard. It's our priority number one in terms of our public affairs engagement in Brussels. But I think that we need a very, very bad summer, I think, some sort of calamitous events with people not returning from holidays before anything will actually happen. I think it's worth mentioning on this occasion the petition that we have launched a few weeks ago where we have been gathering signatures from customers to support our call on the European Commission to act, to do something. And I think we have been surprised. By the strength of support, we have reached our target of 1 million signatures much earlier than planned. I think we're at 1.1 or 1.2 million signatures now, adding over 100,000 every week. And we very much intend to submit it to the European Commission very soon and call on them publicly to finally do something in this area.

That's great. Thanks very much.

Well done. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Kirsten. Please.

The next question comes from James Hollins from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead, your line is now open.

Hi, morning. One for Neil, just on fuel hedging. As you look at affiliate 25, you're 25% hedged. I was wondering how, maybe updates on your policy, whether you're tempted to up-ticket, given we're at 75 bucks a barrel. And then Michael, just as we look at ETS allowances stopping at the start of 2026,

oem delivery delays do you think for the year fiscal 25 is your best shot at delivering 2.2 billion in net income would you not really think about it that way okay uh james thanks yeah we're half 25 hedging in place now for the first half of fy25 locking in savings where we're hedging at 77 a barrel as opposed to 89 at the current financial year I suppose one of the issues we have as we try to go out longer is that we're one of the only airlines that has the balance sheet to be able to hedge that far out, which means in a relatively illiquid market, which Jet is, when we come into the market, they see us coming, and we run the risk that if we do large volumes, we move things against ourselves. So we're gradually layering that up, and I would hope over the next few months that that will start to trend up 30%, 40%, 50%. Patrick Corbett- percent locking in savings, but we have to take baby steps on this because compared to. Patrick Corbett- Pre COVID a lot of our competitors are still investment grade but negative equity on their balance sheets. Patrick Corbett- And just can't play in this place and equally we've had to start looking at something we hadn't done in the past, and so far as what we're now hedging out some of our capacity through caps or options. And again, this means that we get insurance against the worst case scenario. So if Goldman Sachs are right and we go to $100 a barrel, we've locked in a ceiling on that. But equally, if the market drops, we get to participate with more variable options there. So 10% of our cover this year is through options. And then we've got another 15%. that's unhedged. So that has changed slightly the way we have to few are hedging into the future. The other side of the coin is the dollar. It's a more liquid market and we will absolutely pay for the fuel regardless of what happens in dollars. So we're slightly better hedged there with just under 40% hedging at 1.11 into the first half of next year as opposed to 90% at the moment on FY24 at 1.08. Okay, thank you.

And on ETS, look, I mean, you know, I think we will be a beneficiary of environmental taxation going forward. We have one of the most fuel-efficient fleets in Europe. We have a very wide margin over all of our competitor airlines. I think there's no doubt in my mind that environmental taxation will be a feature of air travel, particularly in Europe, over the next five or ten years. We are campaigning very hard, though, that there needs to be fair environmental taxation. In my view, scandalous and indefensible. The short-haul intra-EU pays all of the environmental taxation. We exempt long-haul flights to and from Europe despite that they only deliver 6% of the traffic and yet account for 55% of the emissions, Europe's emissions. That is unsustainable. Long-haul has to pay its fair share and also as does transfer traffic. It is bizarre. You can take two flights through a hub, whether it's Schiphol or Frankfurt or Munich or Paris, to get to your destination in Europe, and you're exempt from ETS or environmental taxation, whereas if you take one direct low-cost flight, you pay all of ETS. So I don't regard environmental taxation. It won't fundamentally alter the huge cost and price differential we have or advantage we have over all of our European competitors. I am not going to get into any discussion on FY25 profitability. It's far too far away. And as we've seen from COVID and the war in Ukraine, too many outside factors or curveballs can emerge out of nowhere. However, I will go back to the underlying I think themes of this morning's conference, that is capacity constraint in Europe. European short haul capacity will be constrained for the next five years out to 2030. Traffic, I think, will continue to recover and be strong. People have more leisure time, rising incomes. They are going to spend more money on travel. And Ryanair is poised to be the beneficiary of that as we grow from probably 20% market share to 33% market share over the next decade. Thanks, James. It's an opportunity to bring in Thomas McNamara, who's our Director of Sustainability. Thomas, anything else you want to add on the environmental piece or ETS for the next couple of years?

No, look, I think you've covered it off that we'd like to see a polluter pays policy, but in Europe in particular, given that long haul does emit the biggest, the higher proportion of emissions. Sorry, Thomas, you're getting a bit garbled there. Sorry, can you hear me now? Yeah, we can. Yeah, just repeat if you would, please. Yeah, I kind of agree with what you were saying. Look, we need a polluter pays policy and long haul shouldn't be exempt and we'll be hopeful under the new ETS reform that by the end of 26, if it per se is not fit for purpose, we see them fall into the ETS taxes as well and everyone pays for their CO2 emissions.

Thanks.

Good. Okay. Let's go to the next question, please. Thanks, John. No, James.

The next question comes from Steve Kumar from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Hi, Michael. Thanks. Thanks. I got two questions here. So first is on the ancillaries. Do you see it actually normalizing in the near term? And have you seen like sign of inflationary pressure on both sides or do you actually benefit from inflation because of the price mix impact? And the second one is actually more specific to the Italian, how the consumers behave there. Given now you kind of not a domestic carrier for them, how does you see the booking curve evolve there compared to the rest of the network? Yeah, thank you.

Okay, Neil, maybe you take the ancillaries. I didn't quite, you broke up a little bit on the second part, but booking curve in Italy seems to be, and if it is, then maybe Eddie or Jason, you take that. Neil, ancillaries.

Yeah, sure, Satish, good morning. Ancillaries, you know, had a good performance last year, just under €23 per passenger. We continue to see strong demand for priority boarding, reserved seating, and a lot of that's true. The various pricing models that we have in place where we're trying to hang on to the revenue while increasing the conversion on the product. Equally on-board spend has come back well, and we're working hard to grow that year on year. So I think you'll see modest year-on-year growth in ancillaries this year. It might be another 50, 60 cents per passenger onto what we had. But, you know, you're not going to see the kind of 3, 4, 5, 6 euro increases that we had over the past three to four years. It'll be at a more stabilized level, probably single-digit increases from here.

Sorry, just on the question, the line got a little bit jumbled there. It's a question on Italian domestics.

Yeah, so just like I want to understand how the Italian domestic consumers like Big Air, how does that compare to the Booking Co. versus the rest of the network? Because now you're not just a leisure carrier there, you're actually a main flag carrier for the domestic market there.

Yeah, you're right. Italy at the moment is very strong for us. We're 40% market share. We're probably closer to 50% on the domestic market where we now have well over 100 routes. So in terms of what's happening on the domestic market, Italy or Alitalia, whatever they're called now, have broadly halved on the domestic routes. We had some carriers who tried to come into Italy, but have subsequently closed. They've done more closing a basis than opening a basis. So the domestic market at the moment, we're well over 100 routes. We launched about 30 new routes during COVID and they're performing very strong. The Italian market for us is our largest market. We carry close to 60 million passengers in Italy this year, and I'm very happy with how it's booking at the moment. I think we're by far and away Italy's favourite airline, and it continues to book very strongly for us.

Thanks, Jason. Thanks, Natalie. Next question, please.

Our final question this morning comes from Harry Gowers from JP Morgan. Please go ahead, Harry. Your line is now open.

Harry, hi. Yeah, morning, gents. Two, if I can, two quick ones. First one, just on the ex-fuel unit costs, I appreciate the guidance for this year for the increase and the widening gap versus peers. But then maybe how should we think about it more into March 25? Should it come down to the 31 euros per pack suited this year? So any thinking more midterm? And then just secondly, on Probably something about some of the markets where the incumbents are weaker or the build back's been slower. So Scandi or Germany in particular. Are you in active dialogue with airports to expand or put more aircraft in? Or are you waiting for airports to actually come to you over the next 12 to 24 months to drive traffic? Thanks.

OK, Neil, why don't you take the person actually unit costs out to March 25 and then maybe Eddie and Jason might give us some commentary on Germany and Scandinavian markets and discussion.

OK Harry, good morning. I suppose I would echo Michael's earlier comments in relation to slide four of our presentation and the gaps that exist between ourselves and everybody else. Some of the drivers of higher unit costs this year will be a savvy, pointed out earlier on in the call, down to higher crewing ratios. We staffed up for a full complement of 52 game changers for this summer at the back end of April. A lot of those won't be in until the end of July into August. We've got a headwind on route charges with less airlines playing in that space. But, you know, you may see a euro or so uptick on our unit cost ex-fuel this year. I think we'll hold that into 25. And as we get more game changers in, and indeed as ATC hopefully improves over the next year or two, we'll see those crewing ratios starting to come back down again. But the key focus point here is the gap that exists between ourselves and everybody else. I think it would be short-sighted if we didn't invest in operational resilience this summer. We had a phenomenal performance last year. I think a lot of people are booking on the back of our reliability and having the higher crewing ratios as we go into the summer, particularly with 57 days of French ATC stripes, is the right thing to do. And the key for us is to retain the massive gap that exists between ourselves and our competitors in Europe over the next decade.

Just on the German market, I mean, there's clearly dysfunction going on in the German market at the moment. There are rising costs there with security costs, and it's not unusual to have airport costs on a per-passenger basis up in the sort of mid-50 euros. And where you've got Europe's largest airline that has got discretion on where to allocate resources, then you're less likely to put aircraft there. I mean, we have the, you know, you've got the capital city of the largest economy in Europe where Ryanair cuts its capacity by 25% and grows its market share by 2%. And EasyJet cuts by more than 50% its based aircraft in Berlin. Like there is something broken in the German market, particularly at the major airports. And that sort of dovetails what Julius had to say with the sort of state bailouts there protecting the incumbent carrier. But we still continue to grow in regional cities in Germany. And I think it's only a matter of time. And I think when the German economy, you know, bounces back, that you will see the real lag in lack of capacity that must mirror sort of GDP growth. And you're going to get, there's just going to be a serious loss of connectivity there. And I think it will eventually change. I think it will eventually come around in the next 24 months or maybe it could be up to three years. But in the meantime, we'll continue to grow strongly at German regional airports. In Scandinavia, it's sort of a different play there. You've got two very weak incumbent carriers, but you also have, to date, the governments up there that seem to have an unending bottomless pit for bailing out airlines. And that feeds into the sort of narrative from the airport you think somebody's going to come and save the day. And while we have five aircraft based in Orlando and are growing quite nicely there, having moved from the secondary airport in Nishoping, we have a small operation, no based aircraft in Helsinki at the moment. We've got bases in Riga and we've also a long-standing base in Gothenburg. So we have the bases there when we get a turn on cost there to grow that market. It has all the sort of short-term connections which you need to put in a serious amount of frequencies in there. Scandinavian leisure has been excellent for us over the last, particularly as it picked up post-COVID, and we would hope to grow, and we will grow in those markets, particularly with two weak incumbent carriers, but I think it's got a dawn on some of the airports up there that there's nobody else coming in terms of growth, and we're essentially going to be the only show in town that can move the dial, so I'm pretty hopeful that we're going to We're going to grow in Scandinavia. That's going to move first. And Germany will come in the major airports in time.

Right. Okay.

Yeah, I don't have much more to add other than that we're going aggressively in our core markets, Italy, Spain, UK, majority of which we've locked away long-term, low-cost deals out to the end of the decade. and places like Central and Eastern Europe, where we're by far the largest carrier in Poland, where we've close to 6% market share, 15 million passengers. We're probably going to double those passenger numbers over the next 10 years. So there's many more opportunities than we can deal with at the moment, and we'll come back to Germany and Scandinavia when the costs are at a level that we are willing to accept. Okay, thanks, Jason. Next question, please.

This does conclude the Q&A session for today, so I'll hand back over to Michael O'Leary for any additional or closing remarks.

OK, thank you very much everybody. I said reasonably strong numbers this morning. This summer looks strong, but I want to stand aside from the irrational exuberance of all of our recent competitor commentary. I think there will be challenges. We are seeing forward bookings and average airfares into the summer. or ahead of where they were last year. Whether they get to the kind of 20 or 30% our competitors are talking about, I'm not sure. And I think now is an appropriate time for caution rather than irrational exuberance. I think the good news this morning is that we have resolved the delivery delays with Boeing for this summer. We are increasingly confident that we'll take 50 aircraft for summer 24. We'll have another 25, 30 aircraft into summer 25, FY26. I would not underestimate the strength of the Boeing MAX order, the fact that we're able to set out an ambitious growth strategy for the next decade, taking it to 300 Indian passengers by FY34, in a marketplace where we would be funding all of that capex largely from internally generated cash flow. The balance sheet is strong. We will pay down all of our debt by 2026. But I think shareholders will just need to be patient with us for the next year or two. While the cash generation is strong, we still have significant challenges with this year. The fuel bill will jump by over a billion. We have the full year of pay restoration and committed pay increases with our pilots and our cabin crew over the next four years. Debt repayment is a commitment that the board is very strong on. We are very ambitious and capex financing costs for the next two or three years. But I think what underlies that is an enormous and widening gap between us and our competitors on the cost side. I thought it was interesting just to come back briefly on Harry's point. While we do focus, and I think everybody should focus on the ex-fuel unit cost slide on page four, Don't forget that for the next four years and then for the next decade, we will, on top of that, be adding in new aircraft with more seats, but dramatically more efficient, dramatically lower fuel consumption on a per-aircraft, on a per-seat basis. So we're not just talking about the ex-fuel unit cost advantage going forward. We're talking about an ever-widening inclusive fuel cost advantage going forward, and we will be trying to pass on those fuel savings in the form of lower fares to our competitors. In a marketplace across Europe with constrained capacity, our competitors are, I believe, pushing the pricing envelope or being too aggressive on pricing, and that, if you like, underpins our growth, and I think what would be strong growth over the next four to five years with reasonable prospects of growth. strong profitability and strong cash flows as long as we don't see any more curveballs like COVID or Ukraine. Can I again just caution, the Q1s will be very strong. They will be artificially strong because the Q1 prior year comp last year was badly damaged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted Easter and meant we had to aggressively price to maintain high load factors on constrained schedules. up to the end of June last year. Q2 will be much more modest because Q2 last year was very strong for us. We didn't have the kind of disruptions we had, our competitors had. But nevertheless, I think we're set for a year where we will see strong traffic growth to 185 million passengers, up 25% on our pre-COVID numbers. Modest profit growth this year. And again, I think the number we should focus on if traffic is going by 10%, we aim to deliver that type of profit growth as well. but in a cautionary environment, it could be better than that. If our competitors are right and if our competitors are correct and pricing close in remains very strong, we will obviously be the beneficiary of that, but I'm not sure we'll see that until we get to the half-year numbers, which will be October, November, and then we'll have a much better feel for what's going on. I hope my competitors are right and that pricing will be ludicrously strong all summer long, but 30 years of pain in this industry has taught me to be cautious when my competitors are uh irrationally exuberant and maybe to be a bit more exuberant when our competitors are cautious okay everybody thank you very much i said we are extensive roadshow teams on the road all week across north america i'm in new york for two days uh chicago boston chicago uh we have teams on the west coast all across europe if anybody wants a meeting or hasn't got a meeting booked in please Ask one of the brokers, Citi, Davies, Goodbodies, and we'd be delighted to meet with you. If not, and you want to come visit us in Dublin at some stage during the summer, please do so. We'd be very pleased to give you a briefing and update. And other than that, thank you for participating in this morning's call, and we look forward to seeing you all at some stage during the week. Thanks very much, everybody.