Ryanair Holdings plc

Okay, good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Ryanair Q1 results conference call. You'll have seen this morning we released our Q1 results together with an MD&A and a slide presentation is on the Ryanair.com website. I therefore won't read the press release, but I'll touch on a couple of key themes. We reported Q1 profit of 360 million. That's 46% down on last year's Q1, 663 million. Despite strong traffic growth, traffic is up 10% in the quarter to 55.5 million customers. But this has been offset by weaker than expected airfares, some of which is impacted by the first half of Easter falling into the prior year Q4. Nevertheless, traffic growth is strong, up 10% to 55 million, but it's only strong at a price, and we're having to repeatedly stimulate fares and bookings, and the close-in fares and performance of close-in bookings has been disappointing and materially weaker than we've expected, particularly on the way into the peak months of July, August and September. We have 156 game-changers in the fleet at the end of June. That is 20 aircraft less than we had originally budgeted, We are seeing record summer scheduled bookings, but at lower prices. We are continuing to sign up multiple approved OTA partnerships, which will protect consumers and ensure that consumers get the lowest, Ryanair's lowest airfares, while we get the consumers' correct email and payment details. We've continued to extend our fuel hedges at attractive prices. We're now 75% hedged. for FY25 at about $79 a barrel, saving ourselves over €450 million in the current year. And we're now extending our fuel hedges for FY26 to 45% of our needs at about $78 a barrel. And as of Friday, we have completed just over half of the €700 million share buyback. Touching briefly on our continuing environmental commitment during Q1, we took delivery of 10 Boeing Game Changer aircraft. These offer 4% more seats but burn 16% less fuel and have less CO2 emissions as well. And the retrofitting, winglet retrofit program on the NGs continues. We're on schedule to achieve our target of retrofitting the entire fleet of 409 NGs by 2026. These winglets reduce fuel burn by 1.5% and noise by 6%. However, much of this excellent environmental work is being undone by the deteriorating performance of European ATC. Eurocontrol's old numbers this morning shows that while flights in July or up to July are 4% higher year-on-year than they were in 2023, it's still 3% less than the 2020-19 levels. Year-to-date, the number of flights across Europe is 5% below 2019 levels, and yet we are suffering, as are all other airlines, repeated inexplicable ATC capacity restrictions. These can only arise from material understaffing or short-staffing, mainly in the French, German and Hungarian ATC areas, and we are suffering horrendous ATC delays, particularly which is inexplicable on the first wave of morning flight departures. They're blaming all sorts of things like adverse weather, etc., etc., but it is down to understaffing, and we are having our worst summer ever in terms of ATC delays and flight cancellations, because as these delays roll through the day, we're having to cancel late evening flights at curfew airports. We're continuing to call on the EU Commission, President Ursula von der Leyen, and the EU Parliament to deliver their long-delayed reform of Europe's hopelessly inefficient ATC services. In terms of fleet and growth, this summer we're operating our largest ever schedule. We have over 200 new routes and five new bases as we deliver as much low fare growth as possible for passengers and our airport partners in FY25. To that end, Lauda has extended operating leases on three of its A320s out to 2028. And we have agreed that Boeing will continue to take delivery of 737 game changers through the peak months of August and September, although these aircraft will arrive too late to be able to schedule them for peak summer flights. We'll use them as backups and as spare aircraft through the remainder of August and September. We expect, and it is real, that European short-haul capacity will remain constrained for some years. As I said, Eurocontrol's own figures suggest that year-to-date we're 5% behind where we were in 2019 in terms of EU capacity. A320 operators are grounding aircraft with the engine repairs. The manufacturers are continuing to struggle with delivering backlogs, more pronounced in Boeing, but also Airbus is failing to... hit its delivery commitments, and airline consolidation continues. Most recently, the Lufthansa, the EU approved the Lufthansa takeover of ETA in Italy, and we believe IAG's today takeover of Europa should also be accelerated. These capacity constraints, combined with our significant unit cost advantage and a strong balance sheet, low-cost aircraft orders and industry-leading on-time performance will, we believe, pin a decade of profitable growth to 300 million passengers by FY34. To touch on shareholder returns, as I said today, we've completed just over 50% of the programme. When it's complete, Ryan, it will have returned over 7.8 billion to shareholders. We also expect a final dividend of 200 million to be paid to shareholders in September, which will take the total shareholder returns to just over 8 billion since 2008. Reiner ADSs, following a recent board review, the board has approved a change in the ADS ratio so that one ADS will equal two ordinary shares compared to currently a one to five ratio. We hope and expect that this will make the ADSs more attractive to new investors and will potentially increase ADS liquidity. Turning to the more important issue, which is the outlook. FY25 traffic is expected to grow 8%, but somewhere between 198 to 200 million passengers. We think we're edging closer towards 200 million than 198, subject to no worsening of Boeing delivery delays. We were supposed to take seven aircraft from Boeing in July. That now is only going to be five. Two of those have slipped into August. And we're supposed to get 10 aircraft in August. That's now down to eight and probably heading towards seven. So we're still struggling even to get our delayed to Boeing delivery in on time. As previously guided, we expect unit costs to rise modestly this year as our ex-fuel unit costs, most notably pay and productivity increases. Higher landing and ATC fees and the impact of multiple 737 delivery delays on our unit costs are substantially offset by our attractive fuel hedge savings and rising net interest income. These gains will significantly widen Ryanair's cost advantage over its competitors and allow us to continue to grow strongly, albeit at lower fares than we had expected this summer. While Q2 demand is strong, pricing remains softer than we expected, particularly the closed-in airfares. It is not pricing up the way it has for the last number of summers. And we are repeatedly seeing price resistance as we try to close off cheaper seats. And we're having to open up again, close in in July and in August. We have only 34% of September already booked, but we expect this trend will continue. As a result, we now expect future fares will be materially lower than last summer. We had previously expected them to be flat to modestly up. The final H1 outcome is, however, completely dependent on these close-in bookings and yields in August and September, and we think the trend is downwards, not upward. As is normal this time of the year, we have zero visibility in Q3 and Q4, but we see no reason why Q3 and Q4 pricing won't be soft as well, and we will have to continue to simulate through the second half of the year. Q4 will not benefit from last year's early Easter outlook, And therefore, it's too early to provide meaningful full-year profit after tax guidance, although we would hope to be able to give you some headlines at our Hague Fund results in November. The final FY25 outcome remains so as to avoiding adverse developments during FY25, particularly given the continuing conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, repeated ATC, short-staffing and capacity restrictions, which is leading to a spike upwards in cancellations or further Boeing delivery delays. And with that, Neil, I turn over to you for a quick run through the MD&A or highlights on the MD&A, please.

Yeah, no problem. Thanks, Michael. I think I'll turn first to costs in the quarter. As previously guided, we saw costs modestly up as we saw the benefits of our fuel hedging offset much of the non-fuel inflation coming through, the likes of the annualisation of productivity pay increases and, of course, the impact of the Boeing delivery delays Balance sheet in very good shape. We finished the quarter with $4.5 billion in gross cash. That was after half a billion at CapEx. And we'd spent about $250 million on the buyback, which we all know started in May during the quarter. Now, cash improved from $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion. And just on the buyback, as Michael said, we're now over halfway through the programme at this stage. It's going very well, a little bit ahead of expectations on that. Michael, I'll hand over to yourself then.

Okay, thank you. Before I open up to questions, I'm going to deal with the first question, what does material mean? We don't know what material means, although clearly we think the pricing, the minimum floor on price falls into Q2 is going to be above 5%. Could it get to double digits? It could. It doesn't look that way at the moment, but pricing on close-in bookings is getting weaker as we have moved through July. We see no reason why that would change in August and certainly no reason why it would change in September. We are now going on a front foot aggressively, and we will continue to aggressively advertise low fare availability. We will maintain our targeted 95%, 96% load factors. We have a much lower cost base than any other airline, and if the fares are going to be materially lower this year, then that's what it's going to be. We repeatedly guide everyone that our fare guidance, to the extent that we give fare guidance, is always fair. dependent upon close-in bookings. And the reality is that during June and also now into July and August, which is surprising given the capacity constraints, close-in pricing is materially weaker. It is down on where it was prior year. Why? We don't know. We look around and we see that consumer spending under pressure all over Europe. There's no one market where we're seeing any material strength or weakness. We think the consumer is under significant pressure across Europe. Interest rates are materially higher. Mortgage loans, et cetera, are materially higher. Most consumer-facing operators are under pressure, and we believe that is being translated into air travel. People are traveling. We are growing strongly, although we're growing at a slower pace than we had originally budgeted to because of the Boeing aircraft deliveries. But we are having to increasingly discount to fill our flights. We think that's good news for passengers, even if it means short-term pain for shareholders. I share your pain, obviously, but we're better off at the moment. If the consumer is under pressure and there has to be price discounting, then we will lead the price discounting and we're going to continue to lead that price discounting through July, August and September. I will now open it up for questions, please.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you do change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your line is unmuted locally. Our first question today comes from Stephen Furlong from Davie. Please go ahead, Stephen. Your line is now open.

Stephen, hi. Yeah, hi, Michael. You talked about ATC there, firstly. I seem to remember that they were recruiting or investing in Karlsruhe, and I was just wondering if you heard anything from Eurocontrol that maybe by next summer things will have normalised, or would you be... not optimistic about that. And then the second thing, I was just wondering about cost inflation in the industry. Do you think that whether it's staffing or operations, it's sticky? And if it is and the pricing isn't, do you think that the industry, in theory, could have lower margins post-pandemic than pre? Thank you.

Thanks, Stephen. Your control is a mess. And I think even your control are in denial. The figures they're producing shows that year-to-date European flights are 5% below 2019. They're 3% below in the month of July. They're 3% below 2019. And yet when we rail against Eurocontrol about their performance and the performance of the ANSP, they keep saying, oh, the capacity is up 10%, 20%. We're at record levels. We're not at record levels. We are putting a lot of pressure, as are other airlines, by the way. When you really drill down into it, you know, there is a marked increase in thunderstorms over Europe this summer, but that would affect punctuality through the day. Where we are highly critical of Eurocontrol and the ANSP is we're typically having about one in four or one in three of our first wave departure flights early in the morning being delayed by capacity restrictions. when there's no aircraft up in the air. There's no reason why. The only reason why first-wave flights are being delayed is because they don't have enough staff deployed for the summer schedules. I talked over the weekend to other competitor airlines, and they're seeing exactly the same thing, in fact, worse. And so if the first wave of flights are delayed, it is because, and we are aware that the French are materially understaffed on the first wave of flights. of Eurocontrol covering up this massive underperformance by the French, the Germans, and the Hungarians in particular. In actual fact, air traffic control this summer is much worse than it was last year. Last year, we had 53 days of French ATC strikes. In many respects, that was easier to manage. You just cancel the flights. Everybody knows it's a French ATC strike. Okay, and you cancel the flights and you reaccommodate passengers. The problem we're having at the moment, and all airlines are suffering this, is across Europe, we're having massive 10-hour delays on the first wave of flights. No way of picking that up during the day. And then you're running into cancellations on later flights that evening either because crews are running out of hours. Our curfew airports won't let us in late, which we understand. And to give you just an example of that, over this weekend, now it was compromised by Friday's computer failure, our ATC delayed more than one in three of every Ryanair flight this weekend. So ATC delayed 37% of our flights on Friday, 35% of our flights on Saturday and 35% of our flights on Sunday. And we're the largest airline in Europe. It is a shambles of understaffing, mismanagement. And I would point to the fact that ATC fees have increased by 15% over the past three years since 2019. So we're being scammed for significantly higher ATC fees by these government monopoly ANSPs who then don't properly staff and recruit and staff for the schedules that we've already filed some six months ago. So it's getting worse. Cost inflation. Look, I think there are areas, I mean, we're seeing among our competitors are seeing some material cost inflation. Labour is obviously one where a number of our competitors are out there now conceding significant pay increases. Much of that is to catch up with the pay increases that Ryanair negotiated with our unions and our pilots two, three years ago. The Aer Lingus pilots haven't had an increase since 2019, whereas the Ryanair pilots have had increases in... when 24 we also built in pay increases in 25 and 26. however our pilots are flying larger aircraft these aircraft are burning materially less fuel so i would think on the labor side while it's challenging out there our pilots are materially more productive We are seeing some airports where we operate, particularly in Portugal, where you have airport monopolies like Vinci, who own Ana in Portugal, are significantly increasing airport fees because they have a monopoly down there. We are negotiating, though, a lot of growth incentives and discounts for growth. I would point to Italy in particular, where a number of the regions in Italy have scrapped the municipal tax. something that we certainly applaud and would welcome. So there's a balance. I mean, I think as capacity will be constrained for the next two or three years, I think we are facing a period of cost inflation generally within the airline industry. But as capacity is constrained, I think that will be reflected in higher airfares, particularly among our high fare competitor airlines across Europe. It's just we're not seeing it this summer because the consumer, I think, is under pressure with higher interest rates and certainly average airfares are. are lower than they were in summer of 2024. Now, in 2023, we did benefit from two years in summer 22 and summer 2023 of double-digit fare increases. Maybe this year it's just the rebalancing. But ultimately, over the medium term, I think airfares will be higher in Europe. They're materially lower in Europe than they are in North America, and we do tend to trend up behind North America. Eddie, anything you want to say on airfares?

No, I mean like no more than what you said already in terms of that the demand is there but the consumer is reacting to pricing and that is generally across the piece, generally across markets throughout Europe. It's a question of you're trying to ratchet up fares, but the consumer has reacted to generally a softness out there at the moment. Nothing else, really. Thanks, Eddie. Next question, please.

The next question comes from Jared Castle from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Jared, hi. Hi. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I mean, it's Just on fares, I don't want to spend too much time on it because I think a lot gets said. But, I mean, you say demand is there, but you're having to stimulate, which does suggest that not everything is well on demand front. And, I mean, I guess you've acknowledged that the consumer is feeling some pain at the moment as well. But, I mean, I guess has it surprised you just how quickly things have deteriorated? Because it seems still like in June things might be okay. So, you know, has there been a step change, I guess, is the question around that. And then just coming back to costs as well, I mean, you know, by far you're the industry leader. I don't think it's even a question. But, you know, this is the second year of ex-year unit costs going up. I mean, when we look out, I guess, to March 26, you know, do you see kind of inflation abating and I guess exterior costs being much more stable from here on out. Thanks.

Thanks. Are we surprised at pricing? Yes. You know, we did see a weaker Q1. You know, partly that was the move of the first half of Easter into Q4. But, you know, at that point in time, you know, we had about 30%, 40% of the Q2 bookings in. We were on target. But, I mean, Q2 was certainly softening. Like, we were moving down. If you go back to our original sort of, you know, expectations rather than guidance on pricing, we started off the year, we'd be up maybe 5% to 10%. That was an attempt on our part to walk back from up 20 percent last year. It won't be a third year 20 percent. In Q1, we're now saying, no, it won't be 5 to 10. It'll be maybe 0 to 5. It's getting weaker. And I think we might have been. So, you know, I think there was reasons to believe that the peak would be that the price would be strong into the peak. It hasn't been. And everything here is dependent upon the close-in bookings. And the close-in bookings, we are having to continue to stimulate close-in bookings. So volume is there. I mean, we are growing by far and away the largest area in Europe. We are growing at about 8% to 10% above this time last year. June was the first month, for example, where we've ever carried more than 19 million scheduled passengers. We didn't even do that in August of last year. But the close-in bookings are materially weaker. We have, for each of the last four weekends, attempted to close off some of the cheaper seats and drive people up as we come in. And each weekend, we've been running 50,000, 100,000 bookings less than target, and we're opening up again on Monday and Tuesday. So it's not that we're not trying, but ultimately the consumer is king. And if the consumer won't pay those higher fares, we simply will accept that that's the way the market is going to be this year. I look around the marketplace generally and there's carnage all over any of the consumer facing stocks of cattle, carpet right going into liquidation, all the luxury goods. We're not necessarily luxury goods, but the consumer is under pressure. And we have had two years of very strong price growth. I thought we would have modest price growth this year. I mean, what has surprised me is how weak pricing has been, despite the fact that capacity still hasn't recovered to 2019. And that, I think, is the greatest surprise. But, you know, if close-in pricing is weaker than we expected, we live with that. We will respond and are responding immediately by opening up some cheaper seats close-in, which is why we're hitting our kind of target 95% loadback during the summer months. But we now accept that Q2 is going to be materially weaker on pricing. It is going to be above 5%. It could be into a double-digit number. At the moment, it doesn't look like it, but the trend is downwards and weaker. So I would rule nothing out, and it could well be a double-digit decline in pricing in Q2. And then if it's double-digit decline in pricing in Q2, all bets are off in Q3 and Q4. We will simply go into Q3 and Q4, load factor active, price passive, and that is the way it will be. In terms of cost, again, yes, our cost increase is modest, the unit cost increase. It would have been better if we had got all the aircraft deliveries from Boeing. We are 20 aircraft short of what Boeing had contracted to deliver. We have recruited the pilots. We are over-crewed on pilots and cabin crew. Mind you, given the amount of ATC disruption, we're in a reasonably fortunate position that we have significantly better on-time performance than almost any other airline in Europe. But we are burning through huge amounts of crew hours, both pilots and cabin crew, trying to deliver schedules where ATC are delivering. Yesterday, for example, we were looking at two- and three-hour slot delays through the middle of a Sunday, the second-to-last Sunday in July. So will unit cost be slightly up? Yes. Do I believe that will continue out into 2026? I think it will moderate itself, but a lot of that depends on Boeing delivering us aircraft. And we're already now focused on our spring 2025 deliveries. And as of our last conversation with Boeing on Friday, some of our spring 2025 deliveries are going to be delayed into the peak summer of 2025 again. Now, the numbers will be a lot less. We will certainly have the benefit of the 20 delayed aircraft deliveries this summer, which we will get before the end of the year. But we will have less capacity in the summer 25 than we are originally scheduled to have with our Boeing delivery. And then we're into two years of essentially no capacity growth at all. And if the consumer is going to be under pressure for the next year, 18 months, that might not be the worst place to be. But at this point in time, all we can see, and I caution here, as of today's date, we have 95% of July already sold. We've only 74% of August sold, so we've another 20, 21% of the bookies to take in August. We've only 40% of September sold. So when we go back here, we don't have visibility. We really don't have visibility. Our numbers are heavily dependent on the close-in bookings, and whereas, as is currently the case, close-in bookings are materially weaker in terms of price, that's what it will be, and that's where we're going. Thanks, Gerard. Next question, please.

The next question comes from Alex Irving from Bernstein. Please go ahead, Alex. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Good morning, gentlemen, and two from me, please. First of all, think about... All right, think whether demand change is structural or cyclical. I don't ask what the fare is going to be next summer, but do recent demands in fare trends change your own internal steady state expectations of where net income for passengers is likely to be as they go out into F26, F27, and beyond? And then second on ancillaries, right, broadly flat per passenger year over year this quarter. Is that basically just Easter moving, or do you think that is slowing down too? How should we think about the path of ancillaries for passenger going forward? Thank you.

Neil, I might ask you, Steve, with ancillaries. Is demand structural or cyclical? Look, I think the price – there's nothing wrong with demand. The pricing is cyclical. The consumer is under – I mean, our guess is the consumer is under pressure out there, and they're simply not willing to pay up even for close-in bookings. When we try to close off some of the cheaper seats at the moment, bookings die. When we open up again, bookings recover. And we still will grow this year from 183.5 million passengers last year towards 200 million. Do we think there's any longer-term change in the trend of people traveling across Europe? No, we don't. But I certainly am of the view they're going to be price-sensitive for the remainder of this year and maybe into summer 2035 unless there's a material change in interest rates or consumer disposable income. And it seems to us that the consumer across Europe is under pressure at the moment, and they're going to be more price-sensitive. That's good for our model. We do have a wider cost gap between us and every other airline in Europe. We are adding more aircraft if and when Boeing delivers them. We're adding more aircraft with more seats that burn materially less fuel. So not alone are we hedging better into FY25 and FY26, But we'll also have a higher proportion of the fleet will be burning materially less oil and carrying more passengers. And we believe that the MAX 10s, if and when they get certified and delivered in 2027 onwards, will structurally lower our unit cost base. And so we believe we have material cost advantages going forward. Over the medium term, I see no alteration to the supply dynamics in the European sector. There will be less airlines operating in Europe. They will be offering less capacity. Nobody, the A320 groundies will continue for summer 24, summer 25. But at the moment, until the consumer spending begins to improve, I think we should be bearish on pricing and expect pricing will continue to be down year on year.

Neil, ancillaries? Sure, Alex, how are you doing? On the ancillaries, Alex, as you saw, we were flat on a per passenger basis. Different products doing different things. Seats are running ahead of budget and ahead of last year, as is onboard spend, the teas, the coffees, the duty-free. Priority boarding is a little bit tougher this year, so it's not rising at the same extent. So I think now this stage into Q2, we're probably looking at flattish ancillary again. And beyond that, it's too hard to call, but you're probably looking flattish with a fair wind, marginally up, but no better than that.

Thank you very much, Neil. Next question, please.

The next question comes from Harry Goers from JP Morgan. Please go ahead, Harry. Your line is now open.

Harry, hi. Hey, morning, Michael. Now, first one just on the weakness in Q2 fares. I mean, is this completely network-wide in terms of the weakness, or is there any particular pockets, geographies, or any particular passenger cohorts that you might be able to call out? And then second one, I mean, the buyback's obviously running well ahead of schedule, 50% done. Is it a base case for you guys that we might get another announcement or an extension in a few months' time? Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Harry. No, it's network-wide. Given our scale, and I think we're sort of authors of that, wherever we're pricing, if we're pricing aggressively, we tend to be pricing aggressively across the piece. There's no one market where if we're doing lots of 1999 seed sales or 20% off seed sales, there's no one market where we're suddenly pricing upwards. So it is across the piece. It seems to be system-wide and no unique markets there. On the buybacks, as I said, you know, we've indicated previously that the buyback, we expect to complete the 700 million buyback by the September AGM. It is no secret that the board is looking at, you know, Maybe a top-up buyback, but that would be a decision that would be taken probably at the board meeting at the AGM. And if we have something to announce, it will be announced either at the AGM or the second quarter or that half your results in November. Thanks, Harry. Next question, please.

The next question comes from Dudley Shanley from Goodbody. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Dudley, hi. Good morning, Michael. Two questions for me, if I may. First of all, just on Boeing, I was wondering if you could give us an update on what's going on there, because the last thing we heard from a lot of customers was that things were improving slowly, but they seem to have taken a little step back for you guys, based on what you said earlier. And then second of all, if we take a step back and think about the medium term, as the current order comes to an end and there'll be a gap before the max 10s arrive, how should we start thinking about network optimization in that scenario?

Okay, thanks, Dudley. I think it's fair to say we believe the situation in Boeing has improved, but we're still running into glitches. We had thought we were going to get seven aircraft in July. That's now five. We were going to get 10 aircraft in August. That's now eight. So, you know, cumulatively over those kind of two key months, we're going to be five aircraft short. The greater concern at the moment, but it's developed as recently as last Friday, is our deliveries in 2025. We're originally supposed to get 29 deliveries between the end of February to the end of May. they're now moving towards March to the end of July. And we don't yet have a handle. So we've sent Boeing back on Friday. Please explain why these are moving. There's no reason why these should move. I think there is a risk of labor disruption in Boeing in October when the contracts come up for a new... We're getting a little concerned. We can't have a second summer in 2025 like we've had this summer where we're constantly chopping and changing schedules because of Boeing aircraft delivering a week or two weeks later than they had originally promised. But overall, I think Stephanie Pope is doing a good job. There is at least management on the ground in Seattle where there's someone we can talk to. It's just the schedules are moving slightly backwards. The bigger issue there... If they leave us, if we're 10 aircraft short for summer 25, it's not the end of the world, particularly in this softer pricing environment. We will still have probably the guts of 30 or 40 additional air of capacity growth for summer 25 or summer 24. The bigger issue now is getting the MAX 7 certified in the first half of 2025, the MAX 10 certified in the second half of 2025, which would then mean we would not expect any delays in our first 17 MAX 10 deliveries in the spring of 2027. But it is important that Boeing hit those max certification dates, and also that their plans step up in production. Both they and Airbus are planning steps up in production. Boeing has to recover back towards 36, 40 aircraft a month, that they achieve those dates. Otherwise, we run into delays on our spring frame 27 deliveries. That's not really germane at the moment. I think where we are at the moment, particularly in this softer consumer spend environment, I think we'd be reasonably relaxed to take the remaining 49 aircraft deliveries we're due from the end of July this year up to the end of July next year, and then very little capacity growth in FY in summer 26, very little in summer 27. That's probably the right place to be with no capacity growth in Europe as we would hope consumer spending will recover over the next two or three years in a marketplace where capacity remains constrained. Over the medium term, You know, we are already, we have always been engaged in network optimization. We are constantly churning aircraft routes. I mean, we've had the example this week of Bordeaux, who we have a two or three aircraft base in Bordeaux. They materially, they basically wedged on our agreements. The cost dramatically escalated, so we announced the closure of Bordeaux. Within a week of the announced closure, we had six other French airports on looking for those aircraft. Now, it's likely those aircraft will turn outside of France elsewhere because we have better growth at better cost elsewhere. We had planned to put three aircraft into Dublin this summer. Again, we have this mad capacity cap at Dublin Airport and an incompetent green transport minister who won't do anything about it. So those three aircraft, two of them went into Italy where they're scrapping the municipal tax and one aircraft went to Poland. So we are continuously churning, but there will be, and we are having more aggressive discussions with a number of airport partners into the winter of 24 summer 25 because there is going to be a greater rate of churn particularly of underperform either underperforming airports are those airports where costs are increasing uh portugal is likely to be an area focused there we've already closed the ponta delgada base i think it's likely given the cost increases the madeira base will close uh and they they Whereas Italy, for example, where municipal tax is being rolled back and costs are falling, we'll see a greater allocation of aircraft.

Eddie, anything you want to add to that in terms of... Yeah, I mean, it's really sort of, I suppose, two phases. I mean, like we've done a huge amount of work over the last two to three seasons on utilisation. Now it's looking at the quality then of what frequencies we have on it, but that also feeds into cost. You've called out most of them there are... And if you look at places like Morocco, where we still have some element of utilization that goes, we tag on domestics. But the one other call out I would give that has a structural cost problem there is Germany. And so you're now having taxes or charges per passenger there north of 55, close to 60 euros, you know, at what you would see as secondary major airports in Germany. And, you know, they will be front and centre along with Portugal, as you say, and other high-cost countries and regions in this churn. So the churn will be more than it has been in previous seasons because we're not growing as much and that there are less alternatives out there for airports. So there will be a big focus on that now, particularly over the next number of weeks for summer 25 and then beyond. Thanks, Eddie.

Next question. Thanks, Dudley. Next question, please.

Thank you. The next question comes from Jamie Rowbottom from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead, Joanna.

Jamie, hi. Hi, Michael. Two from me. First one, obviously you've talked again today about the constrained intra-European supply, but obviously one could argue stubbornly that last year's price point was actually now oversupply rather than undersupply, which is why you're having to lower the fares to fill the planes. You touched on this earlier. How bad would it have to get to start practically moderating down the capacity growth for summer 25 rather than it coming organically by the Boeing delays? Or do you think the consumer just comes roaring back from whatever's weighing? Because you just mentioned growth in 25, then none in 26, 27. I just wonder whether there may come a point where the other way around starts to look like a better plan to allow the consumer some breathing space. Second one for Neil may be on the non-fuel unit costs in Q1. The maintenance line came in lower, certainly, than I expected. And you mentioned on page six of the release a supplier credit in there, presumably from Boeing. Have you, as I suspect you might, have a fair bit of credit stored up, allowing that line to be lower than normal for the rest of the year? Or would there indeed need to be further delays for this not to go back to being higher maintenance costs in the coming quarters? Thanks, guys.

Thanks. You broke up in the middle of that, but if I understand the gist of the question is, in a softer pricing environment, would we not, I don't know, take delivery of or not deploy those aircraft for summer 2025? If that's the question, the answer is no. In a softer pricing environment, we will take the capacity and we will fly it more if we can. We will take more market share from competitors. given that we have a much lower unit cost base, we will accept lower margins and lower pricing. And if that means we push some more competitors out of our market, then that's the way it will operate. We prefer periods of recession or where consumers are under pressure because that's when we grow best and lay down the kind of market shares for improved medium term kind of profitability, etc. And so we will take those aircraft. I would take them as early as I can. In fact, we've already said to Boeing, United, once they were talking about walking away from MAX 10s in 25 or 26, that they did, that we'd take them at our pricing. So no, if there's a consumer pricing is soft, that's our marketplace. We will grow and try to grow faster in those markets at lower margins. We have a much lower cost base. The unit cost base, if we grow faster, will be slightly enhanced or improved. But at the moment, the Boeing delivery delays are constraining our ability to grow and are also at the edge of damaging our unit cost performance. Overall, our cost advantage is widening over all of our competitors, and they'll have to decide for themselves what they want to do in response to our lower pricing. Neil, you want to take the second half of that question?

I will do. Jamie, yeah, you referred to the maintenance line there. There is a modest credit from Boeing in the Q1, not material. We have an agreement with them in relation to compensation. Again, confidential. they're very heavily motivated to get the aircraft in on time. So if aircraft start coming in on time, then it won't really be a particularly material number. If there are significant delays, then that number could get bigger. But for the Q1s, it was totally immaterial.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Jamie. Next question, please.

The next question comes from James Hollins from B&P Paribas. Please go ahead, James. Your line is now open.

Thanks, Jamie. Hi, how are you doing? Yeah, just on the revenue, clearly you very well flow the consumer problems. I'm guessing five new bases, see some roots in maturity in there as well. I was wondering if we could lay any blame on your revenue management systems and maybe not building the load through the booking cycle as well as it should and if that's something you need to address. And the second one, 74% sold for August. Thank you for that number. I don't know if you might put a number on what you've actually sold at and whether the guidance is all down to an assumption of late Brookings weakness. Thank you.

Yeah, okay. On the revenue management, no, I wouldn't put any blame on them. In actual fact, they've done a terrific job in a, you know, they notice that we pick up faster than almost anybody else that pricing is getting softer. You know, when we were the first ones out in March, April, talking about pricing being softer than we had expected, we were the only ones. Everybody else, oh, no, we're not seeing anything, we're not seeing anything. And then two or three months later, they're all seeing much the same thing. But don't worry about what generally they say. We, at the moment in July, we went into July about 1.5% ahead of Target where we were in Target bookings, which is why we thought now, okay, let's turn off some of the cheaper seats and price up into July. Every time we've attempted to turn off, we have struggled to make sales, or we've failed to hit our either daily or our weekend volume targets, and we've had to open up again. So we went into July about 1.5% ahead of target. As of this morning, we're still 0.5% ahead of target. So we'll finish July just at or marginally ahead of target. Now, we have had a shed load of cancellations during July 2020, Over 400 this weekend, mainly due to the computer system and ATC delays over the last three days. But you will see us hit impressive load factors and traffic volumes in July. But at the moment, we're about half a percent behind the target for August and we're about half a percent behind for September. We need to get that back towards being half a percent ahead. We want to go into each of these months slightly ahead of target so that we have the availability to open up or close off or open up as we need. So, no, the revenue management system is bang on where it needs to be. They have done everything they can to try to price up into the peak summer months. In fact, we've fallen 1% against target as we've moved through July, but we're still 0.5% ahead of target. They protested August and September, but we're half a percent behind in August and September. We will close that up over the next couple of weeks. So, no, I think the revenue management team are doing an excellent job. Our philosophy here is to be load factor active, yield passive. Now, we have tried in the last couple of summers to be more yield active because we had such strong demand into the post-COVID recovery. I am surprised at the weakness of pricing, given that Eurocontrol's own numbers confirmed this year. Yeah, while capacity is up in July, it's 4% higher year on year. It's still 3% behind where it was in 2019. But there is no doubt that the consumer is more priced. I've talked to one of the long-haul carriers recently. a week ago and told me that Transatlantic is softer this year than it was last year. Everything just points to the consumer spending being a little bit softer than we had expected. And I thought we'd originally been cautious in guiding this year that for summer pricing, fares would be, you know, it'd be up 5% to 10% after two years of up 20%. We weren't half cautious enough, but we have zero visibility. What was the second part of the question? It was the revenue management system. Oh, yeah. Can I give any indication of what that pricing is in July and August? We've given it to you this morning. The pricing will be materially lower than it was in 2023. And I'm not willing to define what materially lower means. I've just said it's above five and it could be double digit. It's not double digit yet, but I think the way it's trending, it could well be double digit by the time we get to the end of September for Q2. Okay, thanks. Thanks, James. Next question, please.

The next question comes from Satish Sivikumar from Citi. Please go ahead, John.

Hi, Michael. Yeah, I've got two questions here. First is on the fleet to crewing ratio. So obviously, yeah, ATCs are impacting right now, but as we go into the winter, how should we think about That ratio, will you see that trending back to 2019? And if at all, when do you get back to that level? And the second one is, given that you've got to do some price stimulation now, what does it mean for winter capacity? Do you see some scope to optimize winter capacity? Again, both midweek as well as weekend as well. Yeah, thank you.

Okay, thanks. Is there going to ask Eddie to deal with the first half, which is the crew ratio, and then I'll deal with the winter capacity?

Yeah, I mean, the crewing ratios are very strong. I mean, both with pilot and cabin crew, in particular pilots, you've got to plan a full 18 months out. And we would have been, like in previous years, we would have been down to, you know, 5.5, 5.2 crews per aircraft. We're now up around 5.8 crews. Cabin crew are probably in a more healthy state and we have needed those for the disruption that we've had to run standby crews, particularly as the days if you've got delays and you have to call in standby crews in the late evening to do the final sector sometimes. And many of our competitors just don't have that resilience built in into their crewing, which means that there are significantly more cancellations. But are we going to pare it back? We've always said that we will pare it back, but not until ATC is fixed. We've gone through all the other areas of resilience that we've bolstered up over the last number of seasons, both in our operations control center here by doubling the capacity there and the sort of physical footprint of it, along with a lot of new systems that are now critical for us in planning disaster days like last Friday. And I think we're significantly better at that. Yes, we would like to get crew levels back, but now is not the time to do that. We need those crews. But over time, yes, there's some headroom there for us to pull down.

In terms of winter capacity, Satish, no, there's no change. As you know, we're on track, we think, to get very close to 200 million passengers this year. That would be up about 8-9% year-on-year. Q1 traffic is up 10%. Q2 traffic, we think there might be a fraction below that. It could be 9-10%. Second half of the year, we expect it to be up kind of 8-10% as well. There are some pinch points there. Dublin, for example, because of the cap, we may well not get a slot for the extra flights we normally do at Christmas, but we will redeploy those aircraft to doing Christmas extras elsewhere. our response to weaker pricing would be if it's going to be weaker pricing this winter we will accept weaker pricing but we will deliver the traffic we wouldn't and cut back the capacity growth we wouldn't add it either I mean if you take 20 aircraft we're expecting to get from Boeing this winter we don't plan to deploy those aircraft we will need them for next summer schedule April, May and June but It will be steady as she goes and we will take the pain on the pricing. Tracey, anything you want to add in there in terms of winter capacity?

Yes, we just continue to do, we always do a network optimisation. We will reduce capacity and stop the trading period to mid-week in Jan, Feb and March. And we have three new bases for the winter, Reggio, Tangier and Trieste. And then we continue with winter sun and expansion in central and eastern European markets.

Okay, and Morocco, I think, would also be a market where we will grow meaningfully in Morocco this winter, where you have winter sun, but also a growing domestic presence in the Moroccan market. Thanks, Satish. Next question, please.

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

Hi, Sally. Just a question on another question on just the fair booking environment. Some of your competitors have talked about maybe the summer booking season extending a bit further out. I wonder if you're seeing anything on that front. I know you mentioned September is only 34% booked, so maybe too early. And then on the second question, I was kind of curious what the significance of the win against bookings.com on Friday was.

You broke up a little bit. The first question is summer bookings. Are they likely to extend longer?

You've had some competitors talk about maybe summer bookings extending longer than normal, so the peak maybe being a little bit longer. I'm wondering if you're seeing any of that.

I mean, our monthly traffic, our summer schedule runs through to the end of October. The traffic does dip down in September and October, but we would expect to see strong load factors. I would kind of slightly counter that is that we're in a weaker pricing environment. So, you know, I think we will see strong bookies through September and October. What we don't yet know is what the pricing mechanism will be. You know, if October, as we stand today, you know, we have less than 20% of the seats sold for October. So I wouldn't hold too much. I mean, the summer travel period is extending significantly. You know, we're short haul year-round operator. We do cut back, as Tracy said, capacity meaningfully in the winter. But during the summer, which would include September, October, we keep going. But we keep going at weaker pricing. Currently, the pricing environment is materially weaker. The win over Booking.com last week, I think, is seismic. You know, we had seven days or five days in front of a jury in court in Delaware. We were, you know, and the verdict of the jury is comprehensive. We won on almost every, we lost on only one of 12 points on our suit against Booking.com, which means we have now, our jury has now established that Booking.com were in breach of the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. They also found that the deceptive trade that they had knowingly and with intention to defraud have been illegally screen scraping our website. We had so much evidence of Booking.com scamming consumers by overcharging them for Ryanair airfares and Ryanair ancillaries. Booking.com with a battery of lawyers arrived in saying, no, we don't do that, we don't do that, we don't do that. It was kind of Trumpian defence and the jury just shot it down. It was, I thought, also quite significant that the jury found in our favour on all of Booking's counter suits against us, which is that we had defamed Booking.com by calling them overcharging pirates, that we had somehow engaged in unfair competition against against a 130 billion travelled behemoth and that we were engaged in deceptive trade practices. I mean, I was surprised that Booking.com allowed this to go into court given that the evidence against them of what the scamming that had been going on them illegally scraping our website and using it to overcharge customers and then try to cover it up by giving us fake email addresses and fake payment details. They claim not to. And I think what was notable is that Booking.com took us off sale about four or five months ago in the run-up to this case. And they're kind of defensive, well, we don't sell Ryanair anymore. No, but when you did, you were scamming them. I think it is, what's interesting is, now, whether they appeal or not, we don't know. I'm not sure they have any grounds for appeal, but that might not stop them anyway. but I think it will now be materially difficult for booking.com to scrape any airline's website. Now, other airlines who have higher fares may not mind working with booking.com. We object to working with booking.com on the basis that they are going to overcharge our customers for our airfares. Booking.com have the same opportunity as all the other now approved OTAs. If you want direct access to the round.com website, you can have it, but only if you agree that you will not scam and overcharge our passengers, and you must show and display our real airfares and our real ancillary prices, and you must give us the genuine customer emails and payment details. Almost every other OTA has now signed up for that, with two notable exceptions, Bookie.com, who also have Kayak in the States, and eDreams, a Spanish pirate in Europe. But we think ultimately their models are now ultimately flawed. It's fine for Booking.com who do deliver meaningful distribution for hotels and accommodation, but they charge those hotels accommodation 16, 20% for their services. It is not fine for them to try to insert themselves into the relationship between Ryanair and our customer in what is clearly an attempt by them to grab a huge volume of our bookies and turn around and try to overcharge us or the consumer. The reason they've been overcharging consumers for Ryanair airfares is because Ryanair won't agree to pay them a fee for their non-existent services. We don't need booking.com to sell Ryanair airfares across Europe when we have the lowest airfares. We're surprised that other airlines do, but that's a matter for them. But I think it means, I think that the Booking.com ruling is now, I think, the death knell for OTAs illegally scraping the Ryanair website. And therefore, they will not be able to insert themselves into the relationship between us and our customer and then turn around and either charge the customer a fee or turn around and charge Ryanair a fee. So I think it is pretty seismic. We'd be interested to see what other airlines do in North America, when in our view they should turn around and tell Booking.com to stop overcharging their customers, but that's a matter for them. But we think the Booking.com model, insofar as it relates to accommodation, is valid. They've made huge multi-billion fortunes out of it, but scamming customers for overcharged airfares is not going to work going forward after the Delaware ruling. Thanks, Avi. Next question, please.

The next question comes from Dwayne Finneyworth from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead, your line is now open.

Dwayne, hi. Hey, good morning. Can you expand on the board's decision to change the exchange ratio on the ADS? You know, how do ADR holders navigate around the foreign ownership restrictions? And do you think this will help the ADS trade closer to parity with the locals from a valuation perspective.

Thanks, Duane. I mean, look, we're trying, I've always been, the challenge we have, even in our own present buyback, is the ADSs have always been reasonably illiquid. They're closely held by a number of very large shareholders. And so what we're trying to do is to make them a little bit more or create a bit more liquidity in the ADS program. We do believe if we can do that, that it may help ADS liquidity. I'm not sure it will until we resolve the ownership and control restrictions here in Europe, where we are pushing hard together with a number of other airlines that there should be control restrictions, but not ownership restrictions. I'm not sure that the gap between the European ordinaries and the ADSs will close. I might ask Neil for a comment on that and I might ask Julius from a legal point of view to comment on it as well. Neil?

Yeah, I think that's fair comment in relation to the premium. There's quite a large premium at the moment on the ADS compared to the ordinary shares. We did look, Duane, at where our ADSs are trading in absolute terms versus other airlines and travel industry stocks. And it's a head off by some considerable distance. So it makes sense to effectively realign to bring the price down close to 50 or 60. And ADS is where, which is where it kind of will get to following the splits. And that may hopefully increase liquidity because we need that liquidity to not only finish the current buyback, but to also do future buyback so that we can get closer to 50% EU ownership and control and then see where we go from there. And I'm sure Julius may have some colour on that.

Julius, I don't know if you want to add anything on the ADS issue, and maybe I might also ask you, since it was your team, any commentary on the Booking.com ruling in Delaware? Sorry, I should have asked you to comment on that in response to Savvy's question. So, firstly, the ADS, and secondly, the Booking.com ruling.

Thanks, Michael. Hi, everyone. The change of the ratio in ADS won't immediately have an impact on our ONC situation. We are still over 48% EU-owned at the moment and trending up slowly at this stage, but we think it is within sight that we will get over 50% at which stage the board will be in a position to restore voting rights for non-EU shareholders. So it's helpful in that context. And in relation to Booking.com, I think the only thing I would like to add to what Michael said before was that this is the fourth significant ruling in the last two years in our struggle against screen scraping. The first of those was against last minute in the Paris Court of Appeal in 2022, when the court said that screen scraping of our website is equivalent to free riding on our investment. This was a case against last minute. We then had a ruling in Ireland against Flightbox, a Polish provider of software for screen scraping. which essentially said the same thing, that screen scraping is unlawful. And then the Court of Appeal of Milan, again in the case taken against us by last minute earlier this year, said that our objection to screen scraping does not amount to an abuse of dominance position. So it removed that hurdle. So now with the Booking.com ruling in the U.S., I think it is fairly clear, it should be fairly clear to all that screen scraping is unlawful and must not continue. So it really puts eDreams in a very difficult position as pretty much the last OTA that still continues to scrape our website. Thanks, Julius.

Thanks, Dwayne. Next question, please.

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

Yes, I just wanted to ask on, now that ETA and Lufthansa have the green light, what's your view on the Italian market and any comments on the remedies that have been proposed, especially at Linata? And then secondly for Neil, just if you could remind us on the CapEx outlook for this year and next year, And I know you're expecting the MAX 10 certification next year, but if there are delays on that, how should we be thinking about the TAPEX profile? Like, when are you scheduled to start pre-delivery payments on the MAX 10s for now? Thank you.

Thanks, Miniva. I'll touch on the Lufthansa ETA takeover. We welcome the ruling out of Europe. I think it's slightly depressing that Europe is so slow to approve what is the inevitable consolidation of the airline industry in Europe. We believe and have long supported Lufthansa purchasing ETA. The alternative is that the Italian taxpayer keeps bailing out ETA every time it loses money, which is an annual event in ETA. So we think it is long overdue. Obviously, we don't think the remedies go far enough, although they are handing over slots in the NAFE. We are not interested in slots in the NAFE. We do think EasyJet or somebody will take up those slots. But ultimately, it seems to us that the only way the likes of ITA, TAP in Portugal... SAS up in Scandinavia are going to survive over the medium term is going to be some process of consolidation whereby the high fare legacy carriers gather or coalesce together. we will continue to expand across Europe with a much lower cost base than any other airline. And therefore, we think that that consolidation process is ultimately good for our growth. We see strong growth in the Italian market. We do believe that ITER will do as they have done in every other merger. That will be pivot ITER's capacity into feeding from Italy into the two big hubs in Germany, Munich and Frankfurt. There'll be less capacity deployed doing O&D markets from Italy to Europe or Italy domestic. And we will certainly be adding more capacity into those marketplaces to ensure that Italians do not become the victim of Lufthansa's very high airfares as German consumers are currently struggling with. The German market is the least recovered market in Europe. It's operating at about 82% or 83% of its 2019 capacity. And the Germans are now paying among the highest airfares in Europe as a result. But it is inevitable, I think, that the consolidation process should continue. And we think there should be a much faster clearance process that should consist of handover slots at congested airports and get on with it. Neil, you want to touch on capacity and also what will happen now if the MAX 10 certification slips, please?

Yeah, well, on the CAPEX, Muneeba, no change from the guidance that I gave back in May. So we're looking at about 2.3 billion CAPEX this year, although that's predicated on all of the aircraft coming in this side of 31 March. Next year, we're looking at somewhere between 1.1 and 1.2. So there could be a little bit of timing between this year and next year. depending on Boeing deliveries. The MAX 10 doesn't really become meaningful from a PDP perspective or from a delivery perspective until actually 2027. There will be the first PDPs due within the next 12 to 18 months. We'd be hopeful, as Michael said in his opening comments, that the certification process will have moved on and that we'll be taking our first aircraft as planned. uh in in the first half of 2027 so it wouldn't have an impact but if there was to be a move out uh the first couple of years of pdps are not that meaningful in any event okay thanks for even thanks for your next question please the next question comes from gerald poo from liberum please go ahead your line is now

Morning everyone, two from me if I can. You talked at great length about the air traffic control delays. I was just wondering whether you might be able to quantify the cost in any way. And secondly, I think you mentioned that you extended the leases on some of the now the A320s. How much scope is, how much more scope is there to extend further leases or have you extended everything that you can already?

Okay, thanks, Charles. It's impossible to quantify the cost of these ATC delays. We're now in the peak travel period. This time last year, we'd had 53 days of French ATC strikes. The strikes are easier in many ways to handle because you cancel the flight, and while we have right-to-care obligations, we don't have compensation obligations. We are struggling over the last two, three weeks uh with materially lower on-time performance i mean historically our on-time performance this time last year was over 80 percent at the moment we're struggling to get to 65 66 percent uh so one-third of our flights are being delayed it is leading to some higher modest rates of cancellations of flights because of airport curfews and we are therefore responsible for more compensation. So I think there's likely to be a modest uptake in our EU 261 cost this year, but we haven't quantified it. We don't know how long this is going to last and whether the situation will improve. I've spoken to a number of the other airlines in the A4E group, and they're all as equally frustrated as we are with the lamentable performance of ATC. And it will encourage us to lobby harder for some more effective ATC reform when Europe has delivered nothing. Ursula von der Leyen got reappointed president last week, promising competitiveness and improved competitiveness despite five years of sitting on her arse doing nothing about air traffic control. So maybe this might inspire... We think the more, if a few commissioners and parliamentarians have their flights delayed this summer because of ATC delays, we might see some action. The problem is most consumers just blame the airline. It's our fault. So they blame the airlines for the delays. They get compensated for the delays. And yet we're not allowed to recover our EU261 costs from ANSP or ATC providers because they're generally immune from prosecution across Europe. So it's just another lamentable failure in Europe's ATC infrastructure. We need real effective reform. Privatisation would be far and away the best thing you could do with that lot, ensuring that they're actually properly staffed and protecting overflights during national strikes. On the A3, we have extended three of the lease out to 2028, so 25 or 26 is allowed at A3. 20 is run out to 2028. We are not minded to extend the leases beyond that date, although the aircraft are getting old. I'm sure we could if we wanted to. But it was very much part of our vision that the MAX 10 deliveries or alternative A320 deliveries would replace those aircraft in 2028. And that continues to be the case. If there was a material change in the outlook. I mean, the reason I should say we extended those three is we were able to extend those three aircraft without any increase in the lease rates. which was a significant gain for Lauda and for our shareholders. You know, lease rates have doubled in the last 12 months over the rates we're paying for in Lauda. But, you know, where that kind of value is available, we were happy to take it. I think in all cases, the lessors want to keep Ryanair as a customer and see value in having Ryanair as a customer there. But aircraft leasing is not a big part of our operation. We own almost all of the Boeing 737 fleet. We have very little leasing left in place. And it's mainly on the Lauda A320 fleet. And we wouldn't see leasing as the way forward. Leasing has been, you know, the lessors that we see most swanning around Dublin in their overpriced offices and overpriced automobiles. The world has moved in their favor. The cost of engine leases, aircraft leases is now, I would say, at record high. And because I think that will significantly increase the cost inflation, many of our competitors are suffering for the next number of years, whereas we own all our aircraft. We're paying down the debt of those aircraft aggressively, and all we have is a depreciation charge. Thanks for the question, Gerard. Next question, please.

The next question comes from Alex Patterson from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead, John, and open.

Hello, everybody. Two questions from me, please. Firstly, I just wondered if there's any regional variation in terms of the fare declines? Is it perhaps stronger in... No, there isn't.

No, no, it's all a possible piece. We've answered that question already.

Oh, sorry. And then on the load factors, you said that you were half a percent behind for August and September. That was behind plan. Was plan flat on last year, i.e. are bookings moving later?

Yeah, the plan is flat on last year. We set the time in, sorry, the plan is flat on last year, but with, you know, 9% or 10% additional seats this year. So the plan is flat. We had aggressively priced into July, so we went into July, I said 1.5% ahead of the target. The target moves on a daily basis. but we're running one and a half percent ahead in july and that's what we thought right we can now price up into july and every time we tried to price up we may resist and we finished up opening up again and as we've gone through july we've moved from being one and a half percent ahead of target today we're half a percent ahead of target now we're getting very close to the end of the month so it's likely we'll finish modestly ahead of target but we're half a percent behind for uh august and september So our efforts to price upwards have failed. The close-in bookings, we're meeting significant pricing resistance on close-in bookings, and we're having to open up again. And I think that's reflected this morning in our commentary, which I accept comes as a surprise. I mean, we've been surprised as well. But we're not seeing the same kind of aggressive load factor build and pricing that we have seen in both of the last two summers, in summer 2022 and summer 2023, when we were repeatedly closing off prices. cheap seats close in and bookings were running ahead of our daily targets but it is against this time last year so we would expect to hit the same load factors as last year the traffic will be up about 9-10% but the material yields and the average fares will be materially lower in Q2 July August September Thank you Thanks Alex Next question, please.

Our final question today comes from Johannes Braun from Stiefel. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Johannes, hi. Yes, hi. Actually, just one left for me, and that would be on the free cash flow, which looks for Q1 actually pretty good, despite the profits being down. I can see that it's largely because of lower capex, given the delivery delays of Boeing. But there's also cash inflow from ticket prepayments, which are much stronger than last year, above 600 million. And I just wonder how this fits with your warning of significantly lower yields in the summer. Is it just the volume growth that I can see there, or is there anything else that I miss?

Neil, do you want to take that on the free cash flow? Yeah, Johannes. Bookings traffic is strong. We're taking in. about half a million or more bookings a night at this point in time. So the cash continues to flow very strongly. You're right, half a billion in capex or slightly lower in the first quarter. But I expect the cash to continue to remain strong over the course of the year. I think that's a factor of the volumes that are coming in and what they're paying for the FERS. FERS are down, as Michael said, but yet they're up on where they were on a pre-COVID period. And that's coming through in the numbers on the cash flow, 4.5 billion in gross cash, 1.7 billion net cash at the end of the quarter.

All right, just lastly, the volume element, compensating for the price element.

Yeah, there's a steady flow of cash in every day, yeah. All right, thank you.

Okay. Johannes, thank you very much. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, if we have no other questions, we'll wrap it up there. As I said, you know, we are surprised by the weakness of pricing into the second quarter. It is heavily driven by close-in bookings, and the close-in bookings we're having to open up rather than close off as we move into the peak summer period. We think that will continue. Nevertheless, traffic growth will be strong. Cash flow generation will be strong. We will continue to focus on returning surplus cash to shareholders. The Booking.com win last week was a momentous win. We think that is structurally significant for us going forward and for us and for the industry going forward. And therefore, we will continue to deploy capacity. We'll continue to be low-factor active price passive. We will still have strong profitability this year, although clearly profitability will not be as strong as we had originally hoped for the full year. But pricing is where it is, and we will continue to aggressively price in all markets so that we hit our traffic load factor assumptions. If anybody has any follow-up questions they want, Peter Larkin is here, head of IR is here in Dublin. Neil is doing some investor meetings in London, I think, and Frankfurt to the next day or two. But other than that, we will see you all either here for the AGM in September or on the Happier Results Roadshow in November. Thank you very much, everybody. Good to talk to you.