Norwegian Air Shuttle New

Good morning and welcome to the first quarter presentation on Norwegian Air Shuttle. My name is Jesper Hotterteit and I am the VP of Investor Relations here at Norwegian. Today's presentation will be held by our CEO, Geir Karlsson, and our CFO, Hans-Jürgen Wibstad. It will be followed by a Q&A from the audience and the web. Please go ahead, Geir. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone, and also good morning to the guys listening in. I think... First of all, we are very happy that we are now out of the so-called low season and we're now heading in full speed into what will hopefully be a new record summer season for Norwegian. But let's have a look at the first quarter of 2024. It ended with 763 million loss on EBITs. We are never happy with a loss in Norwegian, but it is the low season, and I think it is an expected loss. If you look a couple of months back, maybe two, three months back, we were actually expecting a higher loss than what we ended up with, which means that the market, the demand, has been actually better than what we anticipated. We have a significant higher capacity in the market this quarter compared to last year. The revenues are up by 55% compared to the same quarter last year. We are keeping a very comfortable cash position. Very happy to see that the cash position has actually increased through the quarter. So we are... At the end of the quarter, 10.4 billion NOK. Today, the cash position is higher than that. We are continuing to push on the cost side of the business. I'll get back to that in much more detail. 340 routes, more than 100 routes in Vidre. So we are expanding the network as we have been promising. We are doing very well, in my opinion, operationally. We can always do better, but we are doing very well. And I will also get back to that. We have also updated or upgraded the visual profile of the company, including a new logo. This is in kind of the way we are doing it in Norwegian, in a very efficient and cost-efficient way. And this will then be implemented throughout the company over a period of time. Very happy to conclude the Videre transaction. We joined forces with Vidre in January. I have to say Vidre is a great company led by Stein Nilsson sitting here. And I'm very, very optimistic on the way forward together with Vidre and what we will do together. So this is the first quarter that we are together with Vidre. The ramp up for the summer season has been going on for quite a while. It has been going well. We have been onboarding 650 new colleagues into the company. It has been a massive demand of people that want to work for Norwegian. And this year, the ramp-up has taken place earlier than last year, which means that most of the costs associated with the ramp-up is included in the first quarter. That was more in the second quarter last year, so if you're doing the comparisons. And then on the fleet side, I'll get back to it in more detail. That's a concern, the delays in deliveries from Boeing. But we have measures to mitigate that as I will go through. We are continuing to push on the corporate markets. We are double-digit growth growing, both on revenues and on passengers. Very promising to see. The defense contract started up. February 1, it's also according to plan, slightly better actually. And also on the corporate side, we think it's exciting to see then that more than 40% of the passengers traveling with Vidro is actually corporate travelers. So it also helps kind of the corporate value proposition that we have been working on for a while. Looking at some numbers, Close to 5 million passengers in the quarter. Load factor up 4% both in Norwegian and in Videre compared to the same quarter last year. We have been increasing the capacity. We have 15 aircraft more in the first quarter this year compared to last year. So 87 in 2024 against 72 aircraft in 2022. But we are only increasing the capacity in the quarter with 3%. That means that we have reduced the capacity seasonality-wise even more in 2024 compared to 2023. So in periods in the first quarter of this year, we had a 40% capacity reduction compared to what we were flying back in the third quarter of 2023. Punctuality. extremely important. We are doing well on time. We have had a tough winter, actually, especially January, half February, where we were struggling because of all the weather issues that we have in this region. In March, when we are getting back to a more spring type of climate, we are up at the level where we need to be, at 85 to 87 percent as a minimum. We've all just tried to push for higher numbers. But now we are back on the list, top five in Europe, top three if you look at all the global low-cost carriers. This is extremely important for Norwegian going forward. And it is also very positive for, you know, of course, for all the passengers that are flying with us. Looking at this one, and it shows, again, the seasonality that we are... that we are having in Norwegian. And you can see that we are taking down capacity from October 2023 throughout the winter. And now we are into a ramp up position again. If you look at the first quarter, we are 17% up on RAS compared to last year. But we had the Easter in March this year. Ideally, we would like to have Easter in April every year. We know that that's not possible, but it's better for the airline. That also means that you will probably see a softer April in 2024 compared to last year because of the Easter effect. The ramp up is, as I said, really going on. Looking at the February seeds for sale compared to April, we have put close to a million seeds into the market over the last two months. So we are now ready and really heading into a summer season that is looking promising. As I said, regularity, close to 100%. Again, we have a customer promise that the network that we have for sale will be flown, and we are all the way up there on punctuality as well. But this shows how you will see us flexing between the seasons. We have done quite well, in my opinion, the last two years, and we will do the same thing going forward in order then to minimize the losses in low season, and then full speed ahead into into the summer season. If you look ahead a little bit on bookings, on the left side, you can see the seven-day rolling sales. It came up over New Year, as you can see, and it has been keeping on that level throughout the first quarter and then also into the start of the second quarter. And looking at the bookings, it's very diversified. It's booking all over the network, all over the months, the summer months, first of all, from May to August to September. We have also, as you have probably seen, been opening up new bases throughout the network. We're opening up a base in Riga, in Latvia. And this is kind of the first base where we will actually touch, you know, destinations outside of the Nordics. This is the first kind of first move outside of the Nordics since the pandemic. The bookings out of Latvia to Montenegro and to Greece is looking comfortable, good into the summer. We have also opened up a route from Germany to Spain, you know, taken care of by our Spanish bases, also looking very promising. And most likely, as we see today, something that we will be able to build on going forward. Looking at the growth that we are putting into the market in 2024, we are growing in all segments. That means beach, city, and domestic. And we are also growing in all the four Nordic countries. Percentage-wise, we are growing mostly in Denmark this year, but we are also growing in the other three Nordic countries, which is promising because we are growing out of a situation where we are profitable on all four Nordic countries. Now we can start to build on that for the months and years to come. to come. Capacity-wise, we're up 15% if you look at May to August compared to last year. We have a load factor today very much in line with the same situation last year. That means that we have been selling between 3 and 350,000 tickets more as per today compared to the same time last year. On the yield side, we are seeing low single-digit increase from the record summer that we had last year in 2023. On the revenue side, we have passed, as you can see on the right-hand side here, we have passed. This is comparable networks, also back to 2019, so we have passed the 2019 line, which we should do, by the way, but it's showing a very promising development. into what seems to be another good summer for the company. I will get back to more details, you know, looking ahead or looking forward a little bit later.

Thank you, Guy. And good morning, everyone. I will, as usual, go through some deep dive into some numbers for the first quarter. We're very happy to see that the unit revenue was increasing from the first quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year from 0.63 to 0.73. It's a very significant increase of 17%, and you've seen that also in the traffic figures. So that's a strong improvement. We're also seeing, luckily or fortunately, also that the auxiliary revenues are coming up quite nicely from last year, from 158 to 173 kroner per passenger. On the RPK, it's interesting to note, of course, that it's coming down from the fourth quarter. But at the same time, despite an US crease of only 3%, we're actually increasing the RPK by 8%, driven by a higher load factor, which, as Guy says, has been a key item for the improvement in our financial results. Also very happy to see on the column below there that the EBITDA has a significant increase. And then we're taking out actually the other losses and gains, which is a balance sheet adjustment to our working capital positions, which accounted for 126 million. So as you can see, it's a It's not directly related to our operating performance. And that actually goes from a minus 124 million to a plus 427 million, which is a significant 551 million improvement from the level of 2020. Of course, that includes VIDRA, which plays into that. So, it's good to both look at the EBITR, but also look at the EBIT, because that then, of course, brings in the depreciation and other elements from VIDRA. CUSC is at 0.61. As mentioned, we are on plan with our cost program and our cost expectations for 2024. As we will come back to in a minute, our guidance is kept at the same level, but it's slightly up from the level of Q1 2023. And that's driven by a couple of things, and I'll come back to that. But it's partially also driven by the fact that our business has grown, but we're keeping the capacity down, which is good for the bottom line, but it obviously has an impact on the cask. But we're happy with that level, and it's spot on with our plans. Balance sheet, as mentioned, a robust balance sheet. We're seeing that the cash goes up by about one billion during the quarter, a little less than a billion, and that is kind of despite us having paid one billion as consideration for Vidra and for those that Of course, you will remember that the whole Videra business was paid in cash. So we're happy with that. And that's partially driven by good pre-sale or sales activities during the first quarter, which is driving that. And I will come back to that also in a minute to show you the transition from 9.5 to 10.4 billion. A little bit more of a deep dive into the revenue development. And it's really nice to see that we're having actually a revenue increase from quarter to quarter, as Gary mentioned, of 55%. That's quite a significant number. But it's partially driven, of course, by our own revenue growth. But it's also driven, of course, by the inclusion of Vidra. And it's also important to note that Vidro, while Norwegian has significant seasonal fluctuation, Vidro also has significant seasonal fluctuation, but less so. They have a more stable business model and less variability in the revenues than what is the case for Norwegian. Very happy to see that the revenue increase for Norwegian alone is 17%, which is a strong number. And it's driven by really the three main factors that is driving our business and the improvement in our business. One, what's bringing the smallest contribution is the increase in the ask, which is quite limited, which adds 107 million. The yield improvement is 451 million, and that's a significant number, and that's driven, of course, by, just as I mentioned earlier, an improvement in our yield of about nine öre, comparing the quarters, so that's a significant improvement. The other factor is, as mentioned, the load factor and being able to keep the load factor as high as we have during the low season has been a key factor for the improvement. So that's contributing 209 million. And then we have a net effect on the other revenue, which on the Norwegian side, which is impacted by the cash point and actually less void of the cash point. which we had quite a bit of during 2023 and 2022 because of the COVID cash point, and that's not impacting the revenue this quarter. And then EBITDA is contributing nearly 1.5 billion. Also, a further deep dive to understand the EBIT development. Very nice to see kind of the revenue, which we went through there, contributing 679 million. Then we have a fuel impact, which is mostly driven by lower fuel prices compared with the same quarter last year, partially offset by a somewhat higher US dollar rate. but overall a net positive impact on the fuel. Then we have the operating expenses, which has a negative impact of 312 million. About half of that relates to the ramp up, cost related to the ramp up of the crew. As I said, we're having a kind of a bigger business at the same time as we're keeping capacity down. So about half of the 312 million is related to training or crew for hopefully what will be a strong summer season. And the remaining part is about 20% is related to FX and also kind of a general inflationary level. But as mentioned earlier, we're holding on to our cost guidance and we're right on target when it comes to our CASC plans for 2021. Then we have the other losses and gains that I mentioned that is impacting our result relative to Q1 23 with 98 million. And then of course, as we are building our business, we have higher depreciation and also the depreciation is impacted by higher US dollar rate as these are US dollar denominated figures. So, and then lastly, Vidra, as I said, more stable business. We are very optimistic about their performance for the year. That is looking good, but actually, as with Norwegian, a loss in Q1, but a moderate loss of only 23 million, which is really also a signal that it's a more kind of stable situation or stable, less seasonality in Vidra than what is the case in Norwegian. So these are kind of the total group figures on the P&L side. Strong operating revenue increase, 55 million. The EBITDA plus 551 million. And then we have the operating result, which is 154 million after the other losses and gains. And then at the bottom line, we have 904 million versus last year of 993 million. So that's then, of course, including the figures from VIDRA. One thing to note, which is maybe a bit technical, but on the net financial items, there is about 25 million also, which is negative FX impact from the VIDRA, the nominated debt in US dollar. So that is also an impact of the weakening of the Norwegian kroner. A few words on the balance sheet. I'm very happy to see that the cash balance is growing as expected. The inclusion of VIDRA is there as well. We're seeing that the aircraft settlement liability is increasing nicely. It's driven by the good pre-sales. The equity ratio is kind of seasonally down from 18.9 to 14.3%, but it's still a very robust balance sheet situation. On the net interest bearing debt, we're seeing that that is changing quite a bit. Of course, the cash is improving, which is good, but also the aircraft financing is increasing by 2.2 billion. Out of the 2.2 billion, about 1.5 billion of that is related to BIDRA, and the remaining part is, for the most part, revaluation of our own in US dollars. But still a very manageable situation for the business. We're continuing to optimize the capital structure. We started that work in 2023. And we also, so during the quarter, we paid down a little bit more than 100 million on one of the loans from the reconstruction, which were provided by Norwegian institutions. So kind of that work is ongoing. And then, as you know, the board has proposed to the annual general meeting to pay a dividend in 2023. four of 0.60 kroner. However, as you all know, that is subject to approval from holders of our debt, our bondholders. that process is ongoing. And I think we can, you know, the latest time that should be payable will be when the last of the older bonds mature, which is 2026. But we're also at the same time continuing to look into that. And we think that is a good level for the business in terms of or paying a reasonable dividend given the solid balance sheet position of the company. And then lastly, the cash flow, as I said, growing by nearly 1 billion, very strong cash flow from operating activities, 3.1 billion positive. That is mostly driven by strong sales in the business, where we're kind of building cash from sales opportunities. and also a very low holdback. The holdback is no longer an issue for Norwegian. We are at the normal level between 10 and 20 percent, which is really effectively the processing time of getting most of these payments done. So that's a good situation. Investment activity is 1.3 billion, out of which 1 billion is is the payment for the VIDRA, so that's in good process, and then we have the traditional financing activities. So ending up then with a, And in cash bonds of 10.4 billion, which since this was reported has grown somewhat. So we are still on a good footing. And I think overall, from a pure financial point of view, we are on plan on most of our KPIs when it comes to our financial performance. And we think overall it's a good and robust quarter for Norwegian.

So let's discuss a little bit Vidre. As I said, we joined forces with Vidre in January. It has been working very well. You can probably hear that I'm a little bit excited about this co-operatorship. It is a complementary root network that we have. We're not competitors, and we will try to combine these two networks in a better way than what we have been doing before we joined forces with Vidre. Seasonality, as I discussed a little bit earlier, is one – Vidre is having one-fifth of the seasonality compared to what we have in Norwegian, which is also a very good thing. The PSO tender kicked in April 1. It is looking very good. The Norwegian government has reduced the max ticket prices with 50%, meaning that it should increase the traffic flow. Looking at the bookings in Vidre today into the PSO routes, PSO network, the bookings are 30% higher today compared to the same time last year. So it clearly shows that it has an effect what the Norwegian government has done. Also, so... As I said for Norwegian, if you look three months back, looking into the first quarter, we have actually performed better than anticipated. And the same is the situation for Videre. Vidre have, in my opinion, done a great job securing their fuel costs going forward as well, 80 percent secured for the remaining part of 2024, 40 for 2025. I thought that we had done a quite good job in Norwegian hedging the fuel. Well, Vidre have done even a better job, so that's a little bit interesting. And then even better, if you look at the interlining traffic between the two airlines, that interlining traffic has increased by 42% in the quarter compared to last year. So this shows that what we are now in the process of doing is already starting to give an effect for the two companies in combination. If you look at the synergies that we have been promising to achieve, as you can see on the right-hand side here, this is the areas. This is an illustration more than the exact numbers we're looking into. But we are taking out synergies going forward on The technical side of the business, finance, procurement, ground handling, not at least. Ground handling is a big part of Idre, close to 1,800 employees. And they are now serving us big time Norwegian in Norway. Definitely a synergy. We are talking the group fleet review. How can we combine the two fleets in the two companies in the best way? And not at least on the commercial side, interlining side, aligning the two networks is, as it shows here, approximately 50% of the synergies that we are planning to take out. We are already way into the process of working on the synergies. You will see results already in 2024. But the full effect, maybe especially on the commercial side, will be taken out during 2025. Because after all, we have had the summer program for sale for quite a while in both airlines. But it looks good. I think we are definitely sticking with the in excess of 300 million in synergies. And then time will show how we will end up. On the Norwegian side, we have a really good push on the cost side, efficiency side in the company. I talked about that last quarter as well. I'm just not going to repeat, but this is the key areas that we have been working on. On time, I have mentioned earlier, we are doing well. But it's all about not kind of falling asleep. It's just to keep on pushing on it. And make sure that we are on the list. By the list, I mean the top five in Europe should be the target throughout at least what I call the summer season. It is tough to keep those levels in January, February especially. But for the rest of the year, we should be all the way up there. Handling and airports is something that we have done quite a lot of changes on throughout the last year. We insourced what we call front of house at the Gardermoen last year. We have done the same in Copenhagen starting from April 1 this year. It shows, you know, we will have the effects that we have been looking for. We have also insourced full ground handling in two airports in Spain this year, which is also working quite well. And we have renegotiated a massive number of contracts throughout the last year on ground handling, on airport charges. That is giving us an effect now, full effect into 2024 and going forward. Customer service, I think we're 30, 40% more efficient on customer service today compared to two years back. And it's all about serving the customers better. and in a more efficient way. And I think we are definitely on the right track. There is more to gain on that side, but we are on the track. Engine maintenance, as I have been mentioning before, we have changed vendor. We have left Lufthansa and gone over to GE. It's giving us significant cost savings compared to the alternative, which would have been to stay with Lufthansa. And the full effect is from 2024 and also going forward. Base structure. You're trying to optimize the base structure, both from a cost side level of the company, but also on a network side. And as I said, opening up bases in Riga, We are opening up a summer base in Palma de Mallorca this summer. We are keeping Barcelona as a 12-month base. And we have also said that we are going to open up a 12-month base in the Canary Islands from this fall. And that was very well received by our Spanish colleagues. And think about it guys, Spain for us today is a very important market. We have close to 1,000 employees today in Spain, all included. Aircraft optimization. That applies to harmonizing the specification that we have on the aircraft, both from a CAPEX point of view and from an OPEX point of view. And we are expecting to see significant cost savings going forward on the OPEX side. And we have also renegotiated the purchase price, adjusting the specifications on the aircraft, taking down the CAPEX. We have, as I said, been looking into the Max 10. A Max 10 for Norwegian will have a configuration with 225 seats. We think that the Max 10 is the right thing to go for, and we will probably spend or use maybe all the 30 options buying Max 10. But by obvious reasons, it will take a while, in our opinion, before the first MAX-10 can actually deliver from Boeing. So it is a few years down the road. This shows you that this is a very high focus, because it is extremely important for a company like Norwegian to be competitive on the cost side, because the competition out there is brutal. Then on the fleet side, this is... This is a slight concern, we have to say. The production level at Boeing on 737 MAX 8 has come down significantly over the last couple of months, and I'm sure you have all read the news. Into the summer, we are saying that we are going to fly 87 aircraft. Deliveries from Boeing from now until the summer is very limited into Norwegian. We took delivery of the second last aircraft into the summer yesterday, and it arrived Copenhagen, I think, very early in this morning, Torea. So by that, we have one remaining delivery before the summer that will take place in early June, as it looks today. And we are comfortable that that will happen. Going forward, we are concerned on deliveries from Boeing. But the good thing in all this is that we have a fleet today that are leased, and we have re-deliveries over the next years that we can extend. We started to extend 727-800s in 2022. We did it in 2023, and we have also done it in 2024. And this is something we will... absolutely also continue to do into the next two, three years. Why two, three years? Because I think it will be at least two years until we can see the production level at Boeing at the level they want it to be. So this is a concern. You don't have the same issue, but we also have an issue on the GTF engines, on the 320s, which will also take capacity out of the market I don't know for how long, but definitely for a year or two as we see it. So there will be a capacity constraint, I would say, for a while. It's not all bad in reality, because it just means that there will be less capacity flowing into the market, which will support the performance on yield and the risk that we are currently seeing. We have paid in 3.4 billion into this aircraft order. We are extremely confident that we were able to finance these aircraft. We have a massive demand from banks and leasing houses already that are lining up to be part of the financing package going forward. Sustainability. We are continuing the work. There is not really a lot of news this quarter, but we'd like to mention it anyway. We saw a 10% reduction in emissions per passenger kilometer in the quarter compared to last year. The major reason for that is actually that we have full aircrafts and we have a high load. We are flying more MAXs today than what we did last year. And we are flying slightly longer as well, so that helps. We are a member of A4E, Airlines for Europe, which consists of most of the European airlines. That's a group that we then use to push into EU on sustainability, on making incentives to start production or increase the production of sustainable aviation fuel. And we are doing also the same here in Norway to the regulatories. We have been investing into Norsk Airfuel. We have investing and we've also agreed on an offtake agreement when the first litre, first tonne is coming out of that facility. So we're just continuing the work that we started many years ago on sustainability. Lastly, on guiding, I think capacity is more or less exactly the same as we guided on last year. So is actually EBIT and KASK. We are under pressure on the cost side. We have a weakening local currency, the Norwegian krona, which is hitting us not only on fuel, but on other parts of the cost base that we have as well. But we are sticking with an EBIT guidance of 2.5 to 3.2 billion with the same currency assumptions as we used last quarter. Very important to note. This is excluding Vidra. From next quarter, we will include VIDRA in the guiding. We have said since we did the VIDRA transaction that we think that you can, if you want to have a look at the VIDRA or think, have a thought about the VIDRA figures today, we have said that you should then estimate the historical EBIT percentage, which is in the area of 5%. That is still what we, that is what we can say today, and then we will update you next quarter. Jesper, I think that was it.

Okay. Can you guys go over there? Yes. Okay, we then open up for some questions. We'll start with the audience. Please state your name and where you're from.

Start with Hans-Jürgen. Hans-Jürgen Innes. We have two questions from me. With relation to Boeing and the concerns of the deliveries delays, what they said in the call yesterday was that they expected to reach 50 aircraft per month, maybe during 2025. Would you be able to maybe utilize some of the Widerer fleet on some domestic routes to release some of your 737s to be used on other more profitable aircraft? European routes. And the second question is you want to open more places outside the Nordics. Would that signal that you are also looking for more intra-European routes to compete with the binary seajet and others in Europe, not flying between the Nordics and Spain, for instance?

The first question, I think, on the fleet composition between Vidre and Norwegian, that is a part of the synergy project that we are running. I mean, we have already done some changes between the two networks already in effect. Could we kind of use each other's fleet across the airlines? Yes, absolutely. So it is something that we are looking into. And you are pointing to kind of the areas that we are looking into. But we haven't really taken any decision on it yet. Because, you know, Vidre has the summer production already planned. So do we. So this will be something that we're looking into at the earliest next winter and then into the summer of 2025. On the other question, you know, The Riga base, for example, is a base, is our first move out of the Nordics, where we are going to fly from Riga to another destination outside of the Nordics. The bookings are looking very promising. It's not a massive, it's two aircraft. We are going to touch the Nordics, but we're also flying to, we are flying to Montenegro and to Greece to start with. It's what we call a test rocket we are sending up. So far, it works. The same with the Germany-Spain production, also promising. And hopefully, this will start a process where we're going to build on it. And I think you will see in 2025 more growth outside of the Nordics.

Any more questions from the audience? Okay, we'll start with some questions from the web then. We'll start with Steven Furlong from Davie Capital Markets. Can you talk about broad plans for fleet deployment to 2030, growth versus replacement, and the financing options that we're considering? What's the second one? Growth versus replacement, how many new aircraft versus... Call it how many extra aircraft versus just replacement of the fleet, and... and how we're financing for the orders.

Flip deployment until 2030, that's not an easy one. And if you also, as you are saying that the Boeing can produce 50 aircraft, 50 737 MAX in 2025, that's very good news. That means that we will start to take a lot more maxes over the next two years. We are not planning for that. Let's call it that. We are not planning for Boeing getting back to, let's say, even a 40 aircraft production in 2025. So we are looking into all the scheduled re-deliveries for the next three years to extend a lot of it. That's what we are working on. And then time will show how we are doing it. We have a 50 aircraft order with Boeing, plus 30 options. We will definitely take delivery of the 50. And I think it's pretty sure that we are going to take the 30 options as well. And then we are looking into the Max 10. So that's what we can say on that one.

Okay, over to a question from Hans-Erik Jakobsen, keeping to Boeing. Is it possible to give any color on the compensation we get from Boeing for the delays that we're currently incurring?

Not really. But it is part of a purchase agreement that you will get compensated after a certain number of days, and then you will have a compensation thereafter on a kind of a daily rate.

Okay. Moving on to a question from Ole Martin Vasco in DME Markets. How do you see the competition landscape and capacity growth within the Nordics at the current moments?

Well, if you look at the capacity flying in the Nordics today, it hasn't really changed that much. So even if you're seeing the capacity constraints with Boeing on the GTF side, if you look at the capacity flying in the Nordics, it's pretty much the same. It hasn't really reduced. So the competition, the competitive landscape, I would say is not completely unchanged, but there's not a lot of changes.

Can you be a bit more specific on the cost of the ramp-up in Q1 versus Q2 relative to last year? Were you able to do that?

Yeah, well, I think, you know, we are increasing the capacity quite a bit, as we've shown. And it's mostly to do with the recruitment of training of the crew, as I mentioned in the kind of column showing an OPEX increase of 300 million. Half of that is related to additional crew costs, which is the training and the ramp-up of the crew. That is the most material impact on the ramp-up. Maybe you can say something on the financing of the aircraft. I think that was the question we didn't answer. Yeah, I can also do that on the first question. Yeah, we're working very, as I mentioned, we have, you know, we're right now, you know, discussing with Lessors and the financiers of the aircraft to finance the 50 plus the potential additional 30 aircraft. That is going very well. We are getting very attractive offers in. And it will be a combination of operational leasing deals and finance leasing deals. So we haven't quite made up our mind. We said 70-30 in favor of owned versus leased. That's something we are juggling with and which we will work to optimize the best possible structure with the lowest possible cost for Norwegian combined with making sure that we maintain the strength of the balance sheet. So it's looking really well and we're very confident about how we're going to finance this order.

Last question from Ole Martin. You reiterate your guidance, flat cask ex-fuel for the current year versus 2023. Can you comment on what you see as underlying cost inflation at the moment?

Yes, we are guiding a flat cask. I have been through in the presentation some of the areas that we are working on. On other areas, we have a push on... on cost increases. One is, for example, salaries throughout the organization, including the cabin crew, including the pilots in the different countries. But I think, you know, and we will have, you know, a cost increase on those areas. that means that we will have to, you know, do cost savings and cost reductions on other areas. I think even if we are, you know, one area, for example, even if we are, we will have, you know, salary increases, you know, for the 2024 and 2025. At the same time, if you look at what I call the crew efficiency for the company, we have a 20 to 30 percent, you know, higher crew efficiency today than we had two years ago. And that is kind of compensating a little bit for the salary increases. And we have other areas with similar effects, really.

Okay. Moving to the final two questions of the day. They come from Achal Kumar at HSBC. Booking curve, advanced sale. How do you see the booking window versus what we had after COVID-19 and what we had before COVID-19? Is it normalized at this level? It has come out.

The booking curve has come out to a certain degree. It's not back to where it was back before the pandemic, but it has come out. we're looking at, you know, even if we have increased the capacity with 15% throughout the summer, the load factor, the number of tickets we have sold is on the same load, meaning that means that we have sold, what did I say, between 300 and 350,000 tickets more today than the same day last year. So slightly out, but not much.

Final question from him. Any thoughts on the auxiliary business target for the years to come on auxiliaries?

The target is higher than previous years.

Okay. I think we have no further questions, so we conclude the session there. Thank you very much. Thank you.