Ferrovial SE (FER) 2024 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, everybody. This is Silvia Ruiz speaking and I would like to welcome you to Ferrovial's conference call to discuss the financial results for the first half of 2024.

I am joined here today by our CEO, Ignacio Madridejos; and by our CFO, Ernesto Lopez Mozo. Just as a reminder, both the results report and the presentation are available on our website since yesterday evening after the US market closed.

This quarter, you have probably seen that we are including, for the first time, not only the information related to the first six months of the year, but also the quarterly information in order to follow the evolution of the main KPIs on a quarterly basis. (Event Instructions)

With all this, I will hand over to Ignacio. Ignacio, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Silvia, and hello, everyone. It is a pleasure to present the first half year results with a robust performance across all business divisions. The 407 continues benefiting from congestion in Toronto. The managed lanes continue doing well with a solid revenue per transaction growth that keeps beating inflation. Heathrow and Dalaman airports are at record figures of number of passengers.

Our construction business is approaching towards 3.5% EBIT margin target for the year. In terms of cash, the first half of the year was a good combination of investment for growth and shareholders' distribution. We closed the acquisition of 24% of IRB Infrastructure Trust for EUR740 million, with an upfront payment of EUR652 million in the quarter.

And in the first half of the year, we have injected EUR173 million of equity in NTO. Our shareholder distributions in the first half were EUR514 million, including both part of the 2023 and the 2024 share buyback programs.

During the quarter, we divested 5% of IRB for EUR211 million and received EUR373 million in dividends from our infra-assets, including EUR179 million first dividend of I-77. During the quarter, we announced a new agreement to sell a 19.75% stake in Heathrow for GBP1.7 billion. On July 25, we announced that no shareholders have exercised their tag-along rights, but the transaction is still subject to regulatory approvals.

Our toll roads division grew revenues by 20.9% in the first half compared to last year and 19% adjusted EBITDA, thanks to the contribution from North American assets. Our US toll roads increased revenues by 29.5% in the first half compared to last year and adjusted EBITDA by 28.5%.

We received EUR339 million in dividends from our US assets, including EUR179 million from the I-77 first dividend after five years of operation. The 407 grew revenue 11.4% in the first half of the year compared to previous year. Total revenue increased 16.4%, thanks to the new toll rate implemented the February 1, even when other charges linked to tolling like camera chart or trip on chart were flat compared to previous year.

In the same period, fee revenue decreased due to lower late payment charges and lower enforcement fees. And we did not have contribution this year from contract revenues due to removal of tolls for Highways 412 and 418 since June 2023. Traffic improved 5.6% in the first half of the year with positive impact in all time periods and supported by increased mobility, good weather in the first quarter and rehabilitation works on the 401 in the second quarter.

In terms of dividends, CAD175 million was paid in the first half and another CAD225 million was approved to be distributed in the third quarter. These CAD400 million implies an increase of 33.3% compared to the same period of 2023.

Moving now to the US managed lanes. All assets have performed well in the first half of the year, with revenue per transaction beating both inflation and GDP. NTE transactions were affected by the capacity improvement construction works and reduced 5.2% in the second quarter and 1.8% in the first half of the year. Revenue per transaction increased 4.8% in the first half and it distributed $85 million dividend in the first half for the 100% of shareholders.

LBJ grew transactions, 7% in the first half, revenue per transaction, 7.8% and adjusted EBITDA 15.9%. Construction works are still impacting traffic, but less than previous quarters, thanks to some partial completion of the tranche that connects to LBJ. It distributed $45 million in the first half for 100%. NTE35 West increased transactions 38.7%, thanks to the new segment 3C. Excluding this effect, transactions increased 13.7% in the first half.

Revenues per transaction increased 17.5% in this period and adjusted EBITDA 61.1%. I'd like to highlight that this EBITDA was negatively affected by the accrual in second quarter of $6.7 million of revenue share for the first half of the year. Remember that this increase in OpEx is for the good reasons, given the good performance of the asset. Dividends in the first half were $73 million for 100%. Moving now to the I-77, transactions increased 1.5% in the quarter, revenue per transaction 11.4%.

During the quarter, traffic was affected by summer seasonality and less leisure and weakened traffic. EBITDA decreased 8.5%, affected by $2.4 million of revenue share related to the first half of the year and by $1.3 million cost related to the refinancing process.

Also, the asset distributed its first dividend of $268 million for 100%. The I-66 continued with a solid ramp-up during the quarter increased transactions by 15.6%, revenue per transaction by 34.5% and adjusted EBITDA by 58.7%. Last quarter, we made two transactions related to our investment in India.

On one side, we acquired a 24% stake in IRB Private IRBIT for EUR740 million. With this acquisition, we take direct participation in a portfolio that includes 14 road projects plus one committed new project and the possibility to invest directly in the new pipeline that today consists of 14 projects under study with more than EUR4 billion investment.

On the other side, we reduced our participation in IRB Infrastructure Developers, selling 5% of our participation for EUR211 million, with a capital gain of EUR133 million. We still own 19.9% of IRB, remaining the second largest shareholder. We are comfortable with the level of investment in India and we do not expect to significantly increase our exposure to the country.

Heathrow had the busiest first half of the year ever recorded with a 7.3% increase in the number of passengers versus previous year. The outlook for the end of the year was again raised to a new record of 82.8 million passengers.

However, EBITDA is 11.1% lower than previous year, affected by lower charges set by the regulator, who in July, announced a confirmation of the decision set out in March. Last quarter, we announced a new agreement with Ardian and PIF to acquire a 37.62% of Heathrow. Ferrovial will sell a 19.75% or GBP1.7 billion and other two shareholders will sell 17.87%.

We will maintain a 5.25% stake and together with the other two shareholders, we will keep a 10% of Heathrow that will have the right to nominate a board member from Ferrovial. We recently announced that no shareholders have exercised their tag-along rights, but the transaction is still pending on regulatory approvals.

AGS increased 7.8%, the number of passengers in the first half of the year; Southampton, 12.9%; Glasgow, 9.7% and Aberdeen 0.6% respectively. Revenue increased 13.9% and adjusted EBITDA 24.3%. Dalaman increased 10.4% in number of passengers in the first half of the year, revenue 9.2% and adjusted EBITDA 20.8%.

NTO is progressing on track, remaining within budget and schedule. We added 3 airlines in the first half of the year and injected $187 million of equity. Last June, we issued $2.55 billion of long-term green bonds. Our Construction business has shown a strong quarter, delivering a 3.2% adjusted EBIT margin for the first half of the year, supported by a 4% margin in the second quarter. Budimex EBIT margin was 7.3% in the first half of the year; Webber 2.8%; and Ferrovial Construction 1.1%.

We maintain our outlook to reach 3.5% adjusted EBIT margin at the end of the year. Revenues increased 6.7% in the first half, supported by an order book of EUR16 billion that is at peak levels. This order book is mainly concentrated in our local markets of US and Canada, Poland and Spain and it does not include EUR2.3 billion of pre-awards contracts.

The operating cash flow was minus EUR53 million, affected by the absence of significant advance payments and seasonality.

And now Ernesto will continue with the main financial information.

Thanks, Ignacio. Good afternoon, good morning. Well, in the slide where we have the full accounts, I will just cover the main items below the operational results. I mean, in terms of period depreciation, I mean, you can imagine that as traffic increases across the portfolio, that means that depreciation increases and also some items that were capitalized once they start operations, they go through depreciation, right? And we opened 35 West at the end of June, segment 3C at the end of June 2023.

More relevant is probably in disposals and impairments, we have a gain of EUR166 million. And this is split between EUR133 million regarding the 5% of IRB divested and then EUR33 million relates to [Serveo], the services participation that we still had in Spain that now is fully divested. If we go into the financial results, we have the split between the financial results from infrastructure projects. And here, we have the increase that is related in part to the 35 West opening. There's no capitalization of interest throughout this first half and almost all of the first half in 2023 was capitalized.

You also have other items like the financial update of further obligations in toll roads, like the transit funding payment and in the I-66, for instance, in this item. If we go into the financial results from ex-infrastructure projects, we have an increase compared to last year. I mean, half of these results is related to good cash returns and general interests have remained high across the board. And the other half of the 90 income is related to a positive fair value adjustment. You have different items here.

And one hand, you have the hedges on the employee stock option plans with the share going up, they have a positive impact. You also have a positive impact from guarantees that were incurred for the tax procedure that I will comment when I get into taxes, also improvements in terms of the shareholder loans that we had to credit evaluation.

So according to IFRS 9, that also has a recovery once the refinancing has occurred. So all these items, as I said, like half of that is just the net income from interest on cash. If we go to the equity accounted affiliates, here, we reflect the improvement from the operational improvement in ETR407 mainly.

If we go into income tax, we see that as a proportion of the profit before taxes is lower and this has to do with the procedure I mentioned before. The Constitutional Court declared that the change of the percentage of net operating losses that you could apply in a year, the change that occurred in 2016 was not constitutional and therefore, we are able to claim the usage of these NOLs for these past years, 2016 to 2023 and that's an amounting this caption of EUR37 million.

That's the main item. Okay. All that gets to a bottom line that is EUR414 million, the attributed profit to the parent company.

If we move on to discuss the cash evolution. In terms of dividends from projects, we cashed in EUR373 million, a very strong number. This number, of course, does not include the latest dividend announced by the 407 that will be paid now and the other item that is included and was very relevant is the first dividend of the I-77 ahead of -- above our expectations.

Then, of course, we have the operating cash flow from construction. This is the normal working capital impact that you would have in the beginning of a year when you have advanced payments at the end of the prior one, and it is mostly related to Budimex.

And then you have other cash that is being used by the different operations apart from construction. In tax payments, the main items here, I mean, close to EUR100 million is the fact that we brought EUR2 billion from Canada in cash here to Europe and that has a withholding tax impact of 5%, all that cash is moved for all the investments we are carrying out.

And then we have something like EUR33 million that is related to Budimex. In terms of cash flows used in investments, I mean, we have the main one that was discussed before by Ignacio, the investment in IRB, but we have others that have also been mentioned, like JFK, the NTO Terminal One that keeps developing. In terms of investment activities, according to the custom in the US, we will reflect the interest received in our cash deposits here as investment activities, this EUR99 million.

And then we have EUR437 million from divestments that includes the ones mentioned by Ignacio before, the 5% sale of IRB Serveo. So all this come in this caption. It's very good to see that we are catching up with the shareholder remuneration of last year as well as this one. So we have EUR514 million related to shareholder remuneration. And then the other item that is relevant is the cash from financing activities.

And here, we include also the dividends paid out to minorities in Budimex, for instance, that is close to EUR100 million. You have lease payments as well here as well as interest that make up most of the EUR250 million and then the effect of the exchange rate. All this leaves a net cash position of close to EUR35 million.

And now let me hand it over to Ignacio to conclude.

To summarize, we had a strong performance of all our infrastructure assets in the first half of the year, with both growth in traffic and revenue per transaction. Our construction business is on track to meet the 3.5% EBIT margin target at the end of the year. In the first half of the year, we have been able to maintain a solid financial position, combining investment for growth and shareholder distributions. Mid-August, we will know the outcome of the SR-400 express lanes in Atlanta, the first new Managed Lanes of the identified pipeline. And now we will follow with a Q&A.

Thank you very much, Ignacio and Ernesto. The Q&A session will begin shortly. Please stay tuned.

(Operator Instructions) Luis Prieto, Kepler.

I have two, if I may. At the 407 ETR, when should we expect the positive impact of the 401 rehabilitation works to fade away? Is it possible to strip out the impact from Q2's performance to get a better understanding of underlying demand?

And the second question, in the past, you have talked about the potential magnitude of the impact on traffic of the capacity improvement works on the NTE. In Q1, the performance was better than as expected, everyone expected and it then deteriorated in Q2. Would it be possible to provide us with a rough idea of the phasing of the traffic disruption impact until 2027? Is it an abrupt impact now and then stability? Or is it sort of a phased impact?

Thank you, Luis. Regarding 407 and the 401 impact of rehabilitation works there, this maintenance work is done every year. As you know, in 401 there is very intense traffic. And the only period of time that they can do some maintenance is during the summer and spring that there is good weather. So all the work is concentrated in that short period of time.

But this is something that is done every year. Some occasions impact a little bit more the traffic than others, depending on what specific job they are doing. And nothing special, I will say, one year compared to the other.

Usually, they publish what is the worst that they are going to do in the following year and I think nothing special that is considered this year or is expected in the following years. And regarding the second question, the capacity improvement in NTE and what is expected, the phasing of the project is already in the configuration that will remain until the end of the works.

The impact that we are seeing now is more about entering and exiting to the construction side of the trucks that need to go there for the construction job. I think that we'll see in the following months what is the evolution. But I think that during the end of the year, we'll have a good idea of what would be this impact for the rest of the construction works in the NTE.

Sathish Sivakumar, Citigroup.

I've got two questions here. Maybe first, taking on the construction side. Obviously, the margin has been quite strong at 4%. I just wanted to get a clarity there. Is there any like one-offs that has positively impacted margin?

Or do you think this is kind of the exit rate right now? And how should we see this evolve into 2025 in terms of construction segment margin? And then the second one is around 407 ETR. If I'm looking at the ETR, traffic is up 4.6%, the revenues are up around 11%. So that implies your pricing is probably around 6% up in quarter 2, given that you would have actually had a full quarter impact on the tariff that went up in February.

So can you like explain the delta here, why this, say, pricing-wise, it's only up around 6% versus the overall tariff increase, which is around mid-teens, right? Yes. Does it factor in any concessions that you've been offering in terms of promotions and so on?

Ernesto here. I'll take the first one. Well, really, the 4% margin in the quarter is a combination of several effects. One of them is, in general, Ferrovial Construction US is not affected by the overruns of closure of projects that we had last year, right?

So that definitely takes out a drag that was affecting the results. But it's also flattered by a very good performance in Budimex and all that combination yields the 4%, right? So I mean, going forward, we don't provide a specific guidance, just the one that we made about the 3.5% for this year, we are comfortable. The projects have been substantially derisked, as I mentioned, with the closure of these main works in the US But as I said, we are also helped by a very strong Budimex in this 4%.

About the second question, Sathish, the revenue is true that it increased 11.4% in the first half of the year. Total revenue in the first half of the year increased 16.4%. And that -- even that you have to consider two things. One is that the increase was done in February, not in January. And second, also that as part of this toll revenue, we are also including camera charge or trip toll charges that were not increased this year.

These are fees that may catch up with inflation in other years. So the focus this year was to increase the toll rate during the year. On top of that, there were other fee revenues that were not increased this year, even decrease compared to the previous one related to the late payment charges and lower enforcement fees. And also the contracted revenue that we got for toll services that we did to the province were canceled this year because of no tolls in the Highway 412 and 418.

So to summarize, just to comment, the toll revenue increased 16.4%. And even though that some of the fees that are included there did not increase this year.

And do you see scope to increase the others, like, say, camera charge or trip toll charge to increase as we go into '25? Or there is any specific time period for those?

No, it's something that we can catch up later on in future years. Yes.

And does it come under Schedule 22 or is not actually impacted by Schedule 22?

The Schedule 22 is affecting traffic, not the revenue. So it's not -- but -- so it is affecting the tariffs, but not the traffic. No.

So the other charges are not under Schedule 22, so, yes, you can increase at any time?

Well, we can increase them, but, yes, they may have an effect if there is some kind of elasticity increase in that and is as part of the compensation that you have to pay, you have to include those.

Elodie Rall, JPMorgan.

On the 407, I was wondering if you could explain to us a little bit why the trends for the toll roads differ so much from the trends that we see on the [TomTom]? Is there like a structural impact that you see that explains why traffic on the 407 is not recovering as fast as the congestion in the Toronto area?

And could you give us maybe an early outlook on the amount of the Schedule 22 provision that you'll start accounting for next Q1, if I'm not mistaken? And second, on the US managed lanes, so we've seen this EUR6.7 million impact of revenue share being accrued and impacted in EBITDA. Is this reflective of ongoing trends? Like what kind of guidance could you provide for us on that?

Thanks, Eli. Can you repeat the second question because I couldn't understand very well?

Yes. My question was on the profit-sharing mechanism and the -- on the US managed lanes and the impact that we've seen on the --

No, the second -- about the Schedule 22, sorry, not this one. The one about the Schedule 22?

Oh, sorry. Yes, if you could give us an early outlook on the expected provision for next year and when will you start accounting for it?

Okay. I think that -- as you know, we are not giving any outlook for next year. I think it's a difficult calculation and also it takes traffic estimates for the following year. About the other questions, TomTom versus the trends, I think that the trends are very similar. What we are seeing in terms of traffic in the 401 and the 407 is very similar.

And of course, you cannot take this information as a precise number about the traffic growth for a period of time, gives you more about the trend and how things are moving, but it's difficult to extrapolate from that specific numbers about the traffic for the toll road or even for the 401.

And about the managed lanes and the revenue share, as we have done with the fact book, I think you have very good information about the bands in which bigger the revenue shares with different levels of revenue and different amounts of revenue served for all the assets.

And I think it's quite easy to follow what we'll do to provision based on the expectations that we have for the end of the year traffic every quarter. I don't know we have information that we need to allocate something for revenue share for that period of time. We see that revenue share, by the way, as something that very -- is very positive in the sense that it is because we are outperforming the initial models and the assets are doing very well.

And on the other side, we are sharing with the DOTs and they also, I mean, see benefits out of the good performance of the managed lanes.

Augustin Cendre, Stifel.

Augustin Cendre from Stifel. I've got two, if I may. First, with construction. It seems like your 3.5% margin target this year could imply a 3.8% margin in the second half. So could you please talk about where you think your margin improvements will come from specifically?

Is it only driven by the end of some loss-making contracts that filled out construction? Or do you also see the improvement at Budimex and Webber? And my second question is on the 407. You previously highlighted the risk of significant Schedule 22 payments in 2025. I've noticed that the 407 traffic reached pre-COVID levels in May and June.

So I was wondering if that would be sufficient to avoid any payments? Or maybe in other words, what traffic level do you believe you need to avoid Schedule 22 payments?

Okay. I'll take both. Well, we don't provide a specific guidance per line of business. I think that this quarter has been, let's say, a ordinary quarter in terms of performance. And going forward, you know that you have more activity usually in the third quarter.

That's helpful for margins. So without providing any specific guidance, I think that the trends are supportive for the 3.5% comfort in terms of margin. And then regarding Schedule 22, I mean, it's not about the overall level of traffic. It's about how also traffic performs at different moments of the day, right? So in that regard, I mean, how you structure tariffs, loyalty schemes or promotions helps to, let's say, manage also that traffic, right?

That's also one of the reasons that eases pressure on Schedule 22 going forward, but we cannot be really specific at this point in time.

Jose Manuel Arroyas, Grupo Santander.

First question is on your statement about traffic softening on the I-77 related to seasonality and traffic on the weekends. To me, this is something new. And I suppose if it's seasonality, it's not a new thing. It must happen every year. And I wanted to ask you if you are seeing some signs of economic weakness that you wanted to make us aware of?

My second question is really a clarification is on the revenue-sharing payments in NT35W and in I-77. My understanding is that these payments were not accrued last year in the first half but instead were accrued in the Q4. Is that correct? Has there been a change in the accounting methodology of these costs and hence, we are not comparing apples to apples?

And my third question is about I-66 dividends that were none in the first half. And I wanted to understand if there is any issue for dividends to be distributed in the second half? And lastly, sorry for taking long, Heathrow Airport, Ferrovial still holds a 5.25% stake. Does Ferrovial intend to keep this stake?

Thank you, Jose Manuel. I will answer the first and the last question, and then Ernesto will take the other two. Regarding the I-77, we talk about seasonality because we saw this weakness on traffic compared to previous year and the growth that we had starting this holiday period. And it has not been during weekdays in the big time of the day. It has been mainly during the weekends.

And we see that is related to leisure. It has been also related to long distance. So from license that are out of the state that maybe was some problems with some of the highways that were alternatives for the traffic going in the East Coast, north to south. And I think that these effects are more about additional increases probably last year or the reduction of this year. But the performance has commented during the weekdays and the peak has been growing compared to previous year.

And regarding Heathrow, no, we are divesting now the 19.75%. We are keeping 5.25%. And we see that Heathrow is a good asset. In terms of infrastructure, it's performing well. However, we are not the largest industrial player. That is what the position that we want to have in the assets. And for us is something that, of course, we can divest in the due course, but we are happy with investment and of course, it is done at the fair price.

But for the time being, we keep it as an asset and will be part of the Board and will contribute to make a successful asset and infrastructure giving services in the UK.

Okay. So I mean, regarding the revenue share, you are right that during last year, I mean, they were, let's say, computed at the very end of the year, given the small amount and the ramp-up in traffic, so accrued was done at the end of the year. And this quarter, we've made the decision to accrue on, let's say, a day-by-day basis pretty much.

So this quarter has reflected two quarters, the first quarter and the second is still a small amount, but it has a comparison the fact that you mentioned, right? So from now on, it would be on an accrual basis day-by-day.

And then regarding the I-66 dividend, I-66 needs to have one year of TIFIA payments current and basically, that should happen at the end of the year. So no dividend can be done before that end of the year.

Gregor Kuglitsch, UBS.

A few questions, please. Can you just maybe give us the detail, if you can, on the 407, how much of the revenues are these camera charges and trip toll charges, which remain flat, so we can work out, I guess, maybe a percentage or something just so we can do the math?

Second question, NTE. So are you saying that Q2 was already the full impact? Or do you expect it to get more material in Q3 and Q4? I'm not entirely sure when exactly the construction work is sort of fully in place, I guess.

Maybe a third question. So I see you generally speaking got quite nice sequential revenue per transaction growth. Is there anything that leads you to believe that kind of can continue or that you at least can hold them? I'm talking about the US lanes. So just looking at the sort of sequential moves there.

And then finally, can you give us the working capital performance of the sort of ex-Infra business in H1? I couldn't find it. And what your expectations are? I mean, I'm kind of calculating it was a relatively large outflow. I just want to check whether that's a seasonal point. Just some detail around that, please.

I will answer the first two. So about -- we are not disclosing that information. We prefer that probably the 407 that gives that information probably the next quarter, we'll try to give some information about that. But it's -- I mean, it's less than 10% probably, no. Regarding NTE, the comment that I made is that we have to wait until the end of the year to see the full effect.

But I don't know if that effect will increase a lot compared to what we have seen. So it's difficult to anticipate how we will work because also the configuration is that it is going to be for the end of the works. We don't know the full impact of the trucks entering and exiting the construction site.

So we have seen some effect in this quarter that is in, I mean, in full, I mean, production, but we have to wait probably quarter second, then third and then fourth to see if it confirms the number that we have today or increases a little bit. We don't expect a reduction, but it could be a little bit more to what we have seen, but it's too early to say.

And probably by the end of the year, we'll have a much better knowledge of is a confirmation that is stable or that it will increase a little bit more. But we cannot say today. Also, as commented, is in final configuration, it's more about the impact of trucks entering and exiting and how it does affect the traffic. And Ernesto will take the other two questions.

Sorry, it took some time to take the mic -- the mute off. Okay. So regarding the evolution of revenue per transaction, well, I will tell you the different components that go into that rather than provide any guidance, right? I mean, you know that you have the sort of capital increases with inflation, then you have mandatory modes that are more difficult to predict or forecast and have continued to be a positive surprise for us. The other component that affects is the traffic mix, the proportion of heavies that you could have.

And then any marginal improvement that you could have on midday tariffs because the peaks are close to the soft cap, right? So all that goes into the equation. I mean, we don't provide any specific guidance on this regard. The overall traffic and economic performance is what supports the growth and could affect the mandatory mode events that I mentioned. Regarding the working capital effect, I mean, the main driver of the working capital effect here is construction.

As I mentioned, we had advance payments at the end of the year that are normal and I would say, let's say, seasonal, but we didn't have any advance payments that are material this first part of the year. And therefore, the working capital in construction has been EUR222 million. The rest is EUR20 million of consumption, right?

So when you compare it to last year, last year we had very strong advance payments from the Ontario line rail. I mean, all these stations that we're building in Toronto and those advance payments flatter the working capital in that regard, okay? So the effect, as I said, EUR222 million construction, EUR20 million the rest of working capital consumption this first half.

(Operator Instructions) Graham Hunt, Jefferies.

I have three questions, if I may. Firstly, well, first two on the 407. First question, historically we've talked about a gap between the average traffic and peak traffic. I just wondered if you could comment on how that's evolved year-to-date and whether we're seeing that gap close as office occupancy in Toronto continues to increase? Second question on the 407.

I think one of your partners in that asset has publicly stated that it's looking to dispose of its stake by 2027. Could you just share your thoughts on, in principle, would you be -- is there any reason you'd be against increasing your stake there? And do you have any kind of preferential rights as a shareholder for its rights to be refusals, et cetera, for any sell-down from one of your partners?

And then third question, just on the revenue-sharing bands. Could you give us a sense of how you think about these bands in the bidding process for these assets in terms of the equity IRRs that we typically think about for these managed lanes, when we start going into band one, band two, up to band five, are we increasing that equity IRR on the base case where you bid at and therefore, this is incremental upside on sort of what you would have been assuming at time of bid?

Thank you. I will take the first two questions about the 407. And as commented previously, what we saw during the quarter is that the traffic is improving in all time periods. So I think in that sense, it's recovering also in the peak periods, both morning and also in the afternoon peak and is progressing well, as you commented, thanks to the better mobility and people back to the office.

Also the first quarter was affected by weather and also the work in the 401 that, I mean, they're something useful during the spring and summer because of the maintenance that are needed. But yes, I think that we saw, I mean, also a similar evolution with the improvement of traffic in peak periods compared to the off-peak periods of the weekends.

About the 407. In this case, we have also heard this announcement that was done by this partner of the 407 that we understand that is in very early stages and we'll follow closely the process. I understand that the agreements that we have with the shareholders are confidential, so we cannot share at this point of time with you.

The third question, Ernesto will take it.

Well, I mean, every bid is different. We always take into account a healthy double-digit return when we bid into managed lanes of any kind.

And usually, revenue share tends to kick in when we have something additional from that base case. But as I said, every asset could be different. We could select to have on the best case some sort of revenue share.

In any case, we will all the time be considering a comfortable return, okay? So in all these managed lanes in Texas in particular, just we are doing better than the base case, if that was the question.

Nicolas Mora, Morgan Stanley.

Just two quick ones. Just on the 407, is there any impact in Q2 of the discounts that reflect in the price early on? I mean, is this having any kind of material impact on slightly lower total revenue per kilometer? That's question one.

Question number two, the performance of EBITDA was -- for me was actually quite good. Is there anything of note in terms of maybe lower impact from construction works on the adjacent I-635? Anything to notice? I mean, that should be it.

Thank you, Nicolas. I will take the first one and Ernesto will take the second. Regarding the impact of these discounts. As you know, what we are doing is some pilots and in these pilots, what we want to learn is what is the value for customers of certain offers and what is the value for the company, especially next year when we have the Schedule 22. But this is just a pilot. It's a very small-scale and it does not have any effect in the revenues or in the traffic yet. So it's too small to have any impact.

So if I may, does this mean that Q2 is a clean number, so the actual underlying tariff increase clean was around, what, 10%, 11% year-on-year?

Yes. What -- again, as I commented previously, just the increase of the -- in this case of the -- of the toll revenues was 16.4%, yes, in the -- and it was quite clean, not any, I would say, I mean, it's a minimal impact from these pilots that we are taking in order to understand some offers how much value could take to some of the customers. So it's clean out of it. Yes.

Okay. Well, regarding the LBJ, it's a little bit complex what's going on with the works on the east entry point. I mean, one of the directions is clearly affected by heavy construction works. The other might be flattered a little bit from a tranche that is already working. So we could be getting some more traffic from that.

So it's a possible explanation that part of the better performance is some partial finalization, but it's still -- I mean, we are still working on the analysis. But yes, you're right that there could be some help from there.

There are no further questions from the conference call at this time. So I'll hand the conference back to Silvia Ruiz.

Thank you very much. We have a couple of questions through the webcast. So let's start with the first question from [Miguel Medina from Mervo]. If Heathrow declares a dividend against 2024 results, is Ferrovial entitled to that dividend or agreed price will be adjusted down by any distribution to shareholders prior to the sale of the shares?

Well, what you're saying is there is a standard in M&A deals, but we cannot comment, the agreement is confidential, so we have to hold that one. Thanks.

And next question from the webcast, Fernando Lafuente from Alantra. What is the expected outlook for dividends from concessions in 2024? Can we expect additional dividends from the I-77 this year and from the rest of the managed lanes?

We don't give a forecast for dividends. But in the case of the Texas managed lanes, they can give dividends in June and December, also the I-77 starting this June. And in the case of the I-66, it was commented previously by Ernesto.

Okay. It seems that there is no more questions here.

Okay. Thank you very much, everyone, who has participated in this conference call and thank you. Bye-bye, everyone.