Ryanair Holdings PLC (RYAAY) 2025 Q1 法說會逐字稿

So good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ryanair Q1 results conference call. I am, as usual, joined this morning by Neil Sorahan, our Group CFO. As you'll have seen earlier this morning on the ryanair.com website, we posted our Q1 results reported Q1 profit down 46% to EUR360 million profit after tax, as traffic grows 10% to 55.5 million, but 15% lower airfares in Q1.

The highlights of the quarter included traffic growth of 10% to 55.5 million, this despite repeated Boeing delivery delays. Revenue per passenger fell 10%. Average fares were down 15%. Some of that was due to the move of the first half of Easter into March and out of April, whereas ancillary revenues were flat.

We have 156 Boeing 737 gamechangers in the fleet at June 30. That's however 20 less than Boeing's contracted deliveries. We've launched a record summer schedule with five new bases and over 200 new routes in our summer 2024 schedule. We're signing up multiple approved OTA partnerships which protect customers from overcharging by OTA pirates but also mean that we get access to real customer email addresses and payment details.

And as previously announced we've extended our fuel hedges. We're 75% hedged for FY25 at just under $80 per barrel. That saves over $450 million in the current year. And as of this morning, we're just under 45% hedged for FY26 at $78 per barrel. As of this morning, we've completed just over 50% of the EUR700 million share buyback and that process continues.

Touching a couple of themes in Q1. On our environmental policy, we continue to be the number-one-rated airline for ESG by Sustainalytics. We're also industry leading. We have industry leading ratings from both MSCI, NA rating, and CDP NA rating.

During quarter one we took delivery of 10 Boeing 737-8200 Gamechangers. These aircraft offer us 4% more seats but burn 16% less fuel and reduced CO2 emissions and we continue to retrofit winglets to our older 737NG fleet. The target is to have that fleet fully retrofitted by 2026 and these winglets reduce fuel burn by 1.5% and cut noise emissions by a further 6%.

However, much of that progress in the last 10 days of June has been damaged by significant deterioration in European ATC capacity, which has caused multiple flight delays and cancellations, especially on the first wave of morning flights, making it more urgent than ever that the new EU Commission and Parliament deliver the long delayed reform of Europe's hopelessly inefficient ATC services.

We are continuing to call for two reasonably easy and deliverable improvements. Firstly, requiring European ANSPs, particularly the French, the German, and the Hungarians to properly staff their ATC services, especially for the first wave of flights, and then protecting overflights during periods of national strikes. These two measures alone would eliminate about 90% of the current delays that we and other airlines are suffering in Europe as a result of ATC capacity restrictions, which is a euphemism for staff shortages.

In terms of fleet and growth, as I said, we are operating our largest-ever summer schedule: 200 new routes and 5 new bases as we deliver as much low-fare growth as possible to our passengers and airport partners in FY25.

And to facilitate this, Lauda has extended operating leases on three of its A320 aircraft from 2024 out to 2028. And we will continue to take delivery of 737 from Boeing during the peak months of August and September even though we'll be unable to schedule these aircraft into our peak summer schedule.

We continue to expect European short-haul capacity to remain constrained for some years. Eurocontrol statistics confirm that year-to-date capacity in Europe after the end of June is running at about 5% less than where it was in 2019, which makes these ATC staffing shortages inexplicable. We expect those capacity constraints to continue as A320 operators continue to work through the Pratt & Whitney engine repair issue. Aircraft manufacturers struggle to increase production and lease their delivery backlogs and airline consolidation continues.

Turning now with -- Neil will deal with most of the Q1 revenues, costs, and results in more detail in the slide presentation. So I just want to turn briefly to shareholder returns. The EUR700 million share buyback commenced in May. To date, as I said, we've completed just over 50% of that program, just over EUR350 million.

When we complete that program, Ryanair will have returned over EUR7.8 billion to its shareholders since 2020. The Board has now approved a change to the ADS ratio. So that one ADS will equal two ordinary shares whereas currently one ADS equals five ordinary shares. We believe this change in the ratio will materially improve liquidity of the ADS, making them more attractive to investors as well.

Turning to the outlook, FY25 traffic we expect to grow 8%, finishing up somewhere close to 200 million passengers per year, subject to no worsening in Boeing's delivery delays. As previously guided, we expect unit costs to rise modestly this year as ex-fuel costs including pay and productivity increases, higher handling and ATC fees, and the impact of multiple Boeing delivery delays on our traffic growth, crewing ratios, and fixed costs will be substantially offset by our fuel hedge saving and rising net interest income, which widen Ryanair's cost advantage over all of our competitors here in Europe.

However, while Q2 demand, volume demand is strong, pricing remains softer than we had expected. And we now expect Q2 fares to be materially lower than they were this time last summer. Previously, we expected Q2 fares to be flat to modestly up, as the pricing environment continues to deteriorate as we move into the summer peak.

The final H1 outcome is however totally dependent on close-in bookings and yields through the remainder of August and September. As is normal at this time of the year, we have zero visibility on Q3 or Q4 fares, although Q4 will not benefit from the move of the first half of Easter into Q4 as it did in Q4 of 2024.

Therefore, it's too early to provide any meaningful FY 2025 profit guidance, although we would hope to be able to do so at our half-year results in November. The final FY25 outcome remains subject to avoiding adverse developments during the remainder of FY25, especially given the continuing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, repeated ATC short staffing and capacity restrictions, or any further Boeing delivery todays.

And with that, I'm going to hand over to Neil to take us through the slide presentation. Neil?

Great, Michael. Thank you and good morning, everybody. Ryanair has the lowest fares and the lowest costs of any airline in Europe. We're number one for traffic. This year, we'll carry close to 100 million passengers, which is an 8% increase on last year. We're number one for on-time performance and reliability and Sustainalytics have ranked Ryanair as the number-one airline in Europe for ESG.

Our 300 aircraft order book for the MAX 10 underpins a decade of growth. And this, coupled with our financial strengths and lowest cost, makes us the long-term winner. We have a platform for growth with number-one coverage and choice all across Europe. This year, this summer, we're operating 95 bases, 234 airports, 37 countries, and we'll have a short haul fleet of 600 aircraft during the peak summer months with 350 aircraft in order. And that will underpin our growth to 300 million passengers by [FY34].

This slide is very important. It shows the huge cost advantage that Ryanair enjoys over everybody else. We did significant work throughout COVID and since then, and as you can see, the gap is widening between ourselves and everybody else. The strength of our balance sheet and our net cash position shows that we've got an ever-increasing interest income advantage over our competitors who are taking on expensive leases and expensive debt. So I would expect to see this cost gap widen over the coming years.

On the quarter itself, we had strong traffic growth of 10% to 55.5 million passengers at a 94% load factor. Fares, however, were softer than we'd anticipated. Some of it down to Easter but some of it down to more stimulation than we had originally anticipated. So we delivered a fair of just under EUR42, a 15% reduction.

Ancillaries performed better, rising in line with traffic. So as a result, we saw a modest dip in total revenues, 1% reduction to over EUR3.6 billion in total revenue in the quarter. Operating costs were marginally ahead of the growth in traffic, so up 11% to EUR3.3 billion. And as a result, we saw a drop in profits, 46% dip to EUR360 million.

The balance sheet remains rock solid. We've got a B+++ rating, the strongest rating of any airline in the world. We had very strong liquidity at the end of the quarter with EUR4.5 billion gross cash. And that was after EUR0.5 billion of CapEx and over EUR250 million of share buybacks, which commenced at the back end of May. Importantly, we saw our net cash balance increase from EUR1.4 billion to EUR1.7 billion at the end of the quarter. And we've got lots of unencumbered aircraft on the balance sheet at this point in time.

Michael, I might ask you now please to run through current developments, please.

Thank you, Neil. So let's touch briefly on current developments; some of which I've already addressed. So we expect peak summer 2024 -- that's the July, August, September -- volumes are strong. We're enjoying record traffic but the fares are materially lower than they were in summer 2023.

EU air traffic control continues to perform even without the record 53 French ATC strikes we suffered in 2023. We're continuing to sign up approved OTA deals. We have 10 of the top 12 OTAs signed and the two others are on the point of signing. These are vital because they protect customers from overcharging by these OTA pirates and it also means that Ryanair has accurate customer information, payment details, and contact details.

Fuel is very well hedged. We're 75% hedged for the remainder of FY25 at just under $80 a barrel. That's a EUR450 million saving locked in. And we're 43% hedged this morning for FY26 at a cost of just under $79 per barrel. Boeing deliveries and the quality of the aircraft deliveries continues to improve, but it's not sufficient to catch up the 20 aircraft they're going to leave us short for summer 2024. Our focus now is on getting the remaining 50 deliveries which Boeing are contracted to deliver to us ahead of summer 2025 before the end of April or May next year.

As I've said, the share buyback continues. We're about 50% -- we completed about 50% of the program as of last Friday, around EUR350 million, and at an average cost per share about [EUR19.90] given the premium that attaches to the ADSs in the US. And we remain convinced that we're on the start or the precipice of a decade of low fare profitable growth to 300 million passengers per annum by FY34.

Turning to the summer 24 performance. As I said, we've seen record summer traffic, five new bases, 200 new routes. June traffic results, we recorded 19.3 million passengers for a load factor of 95%. This is the first calendar -- first time in any calendar month we've carried more than 19 million passengers. So our June traffic was higher than it was in August 2023.

But Q fares are down 15%. Some of that was due to the move of the first half of Easter into prior year Q4, but Q1 fares have been down. Q2 fares are now moving materially lower than they were prior year. And the situation continues to -- pricing development continues to deteriorate.

The final out turn for Q2 depends on close in bookings in August and September. We have tried over recent weekends to close off some cheap seats and price passengers up, but meeting resistance and we're opening up lower cost seats again. The consumer spend is weaker than we expected and we are continuing to stimulate strong volume growth but at the price of yields.

It has always been our philosophy in times of recession or where consumer pricing is strained we will be load factor active price passive. Intra-EU capacity remains constrained and will be so over multi-years, which makes this summer's soft pricing environment somewhat surprising and certainly we didn't expect it.

That capacity will continue to be strained for the next year or two because of Pratt & Whitney engine repairs, aircraft manufacturer delivery delays, and continuing M&A in Europe. And as I've said, Ryanair's philosophy, we will continue to be load factor active, yield passive. We intend to hit our 94%, 95% load factor targets. And if we have to accept lower pricing or give passengers better deals and better value to maintain that growth in those load factors, then so be it, that's what we'll do.

Because we're load factor, active yield passive, we remain convinced that we will be the long-term winner. Air traffic control continues to woefully underperform. It highlights, again, the urgent need for ATC reform. We don't need some pie-in-the-sky 20-year plan for a single European sky. We need simple and effective measures. One, ATC should staff up for the full summer schedule, and they should be fully staffed, particularly for the first wave of departures every morning. They're not and we're entitled to ask why.

Two, we should protect overflights during national ATC strikes as the Spanish, Italians, and Greeks already do but the French don't and that needs to be addressed. This is mismanagement by ATC monopolies across Europe. There is no excuse for short staff and equipment failures but they suffer no loss. When we have to delay flights or cancel flights because of ATC failures, the airlines compensate the customer but we can't recover the compensation from the ANSPs because they are protected by law.

This is manifestly unfair. We should be able to recover our losses from the ANSPs as that would incentivise the ANSPs to eliminate this short staffing and equipment failures. In the last 10 days of June alone, 30% of Ryanair flights, 1 in 3 of every departure, suffered an ATC delay or a cancellation. And at the same time as we're investing in operations resilience, increased crew ratios doubled the size of our operation center here in Dublin and in Warsaw, improved engineering investing in Ryanair Labs, French, German and Hungarian ATC are sitting there understaffed, throwing their hands up in the air, and failing to deliver -- to staff up for the schedules that we need to operate. It's unacceptable and Ursula von der Leyen and the Commission need to tackle this issue.

Following the delivery update, we're still 20 aircraft short for our peak summer deliveries. We are working weekly with Boeing to improve the quality of deliveries and also the timing of deliveries. We have said we'll continue to take those deliveries in the peak months of August and September, even though we can't fly or deploy those aircraft. But our focus is on getting the remaining 30 aircraft delivered -- 20 aircraft delivered during calendar '24, and then take the delivery of the balance of 30 aircraft in early 2025 before we get to peak summer.

We expect MAX 7 certification in the first half of 2025; MAX 10 certification in the second half of 2025, which should still leave us in a good position to take our first MAX 10 deliveries in early 2027. The approved OTA deals are critical, I think, to protecting consumers. These new approved agreements protect consumers from OTA overcharging, guarantee no markups on ancillary products, there's no digital piracy, no screen scraping, and we get the benefit of the real customer email and payment details so that we can communicate with customers directly on flight delays, cancellations, and also on refunds.

The upside for the OTAs is they get a direct feed from ryanair.com so they get access to our real airfares without paying intermediaries to illegally screen scrape. Sadly, eDreams, the Spanish pirate, won't sign these approved OTA agreements because they want to continue to overcharge and scam consumers. And we're calling on the Spanish and the European consumer agencies to outlaw what is these manifest anti-consumer overcharging scams being perpetrated by eDreams at the moment.

Shareholder returns, as we said, we are over halfway through the buyback of EUR700 million shares. We are changing the ADR ratio from 5 to 1, to 2 to 1, and we think that will increase the liquidity of the ADRs. And we are buying back ADRs as part of the current share buyback so that we can maintain or move towards our target of being 50.1% EU-owned.

When we complete this share buyback, we will have returned about EUR7.8 billion to shareholders since 2008 in the form of share buybacks and dividends. And our policy remains to return surplus cash to shareholders once we have -- through dividends and buybacks, once we have looked after our people with pay increases, serviced our bond debt, and we have two large bonds to repay in 2025 and in 2026, and funded what is a very ambitious and expensive capital expenditure program.

And maybe, Neil, I'll hand back to you for the outlook.

Thank you, Michael. So just on outlook, traffic has previously guided will be somewhere up to 200 million passengers this year. This is totally dependent on no further Boeing delivery delays. Q2 volumes, as Michael said, are strong, but pricing is softer, trending towards materially lower on summer of last year. It all totally depends, however, on what happens into August and September close in bookings as to where H1 actually ends up.

As is always the case, at this time of the year, we've almost zero visibility into the second half of the year. But we should highlight that we won't have the benefit of an Easter in Q4. Costs, as previously guided, are performing in line with expectations. We expect FY25 costs to be modestly ahead of last year as our significant fuel savings offset a lot of the non-fuel costs, including higher productivity, pay coming through annualizing this year, but also the Boeing delivery delays having an impact. But our fuel, as I said, and our rising interest income helps differentiate and widen the cost gap between us and everybody else.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of visibility at this time of year, it's way too early to provide meaningful full year profit after tax guidance. We do hope to be able to revisit this again when we come out with our H1 numbers in November.

But when we look beyond this year, we've got a very strong order book, not only the 50 Gamechangers left, but also the 300 MAX 10s. And we believe that this will underpin a decade of growth to 300 million passengers. When you combine that with our rock solid balance sheet, our industry-leading low costs, I think we're well placed to deliver very strong traffic and fleet growth, while at the same time, returning funds to our shareholders. Thank you.

Michael, before we get into the numbers, in your PR, you're calling for urgent ATC reform. Why?

Well, ATC, in the last 10 days of June, delayed 1 in 3 Ryanair flight departures, as it did for many other airlines across Europe. ATC fees across Europe have risen by 15% over the last three years, and yet they are meaningfully understaffed. We're suffering repeated equipment failures, and they're failing to deliver the service we're paying such record prices for. It's unacceptable.

Last year, French had 57 days of ATC strikes. This year, so far, we've had three days of French ATC strikes, but actually the ATC performance and ATC delays are up because of this short staffing. We're now calling on EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the Parliament to stop long fingering ATC reform and deliver two key reforms: you must compel ATC to fully staff for the summer schedule; and two, you must protect overflights during of national ATC strikes.

Moving to the fleet, what's the latest update on Gamechanger deliveries?

We had 156 of the Gamechangers in the fleet at the end of June, which is 10 ahead of where we were at year end. Given how July deliveries are going at the moment, we'd expect to be over 160 by the end of July. So 160 of those available for the peak summer period. But we had plans to have an additional 20 ahead of that when we were setting our stall out for the current financial year. We continue to work very closely.

As Michael already said, with Boeing weekly calls taking place to make sure that we get the aircraft on time. And in fairness, we've noticed that the quality and the frequency of deliveries has improved. There's always the risk of Boeing -- further Boeing delivery delays. But at this point in time, our focus has now changed very much towards getting in the additional 50 aircraft that are left in the order book this summer of next year, 2025.

And will you receive compensation for those delivery delays?

We get very modest compensation, mostly in the form of maintenance and other credits. Our focus however has been getting the deliveries in here before we get to the end of July, so at least we have the maximum number of aircraft available for August.

But the compensation we receive will not reflect the significant loss we're suffering as a result of being 20 aircraft short, which means this year we've reduced our full year traffic guidance back from 205 million down to 200 million.

Looking ahead, when do you expect the MAX 10 to be certified?

There's a couple of steps in this. We have to see the MAX 7 certified first. Based on what we're hearing and our expectations, we think that will likely get certified at some stage in the first half of 2025. That would then put the MAX 10 in a good position to be certified in the second half of 2025. And we're still very much planning on the base of having our first MAX 10 in H1 2027.

Back to your summer 24 schedule, what are the call-outs?

Well, volumes are strong and we expect volumes to remain strong over the rest of the summer. I think you can see from our June numbers that we carried record traffic over 19 million passengers for the first time. Pricing, however, remains soft and we would expect it to be weaker throughout the summer than in the same period last year. This summer, however, we're operating a record schedule. We've got 200 new destinations, five new bases including for example in Morocco, Tangier, which ties in very nicely with the domestic route operation that we have down there this summer as well.

We're committed to delivering as much low fare travel as we can this summer. And I believe indeed over the rest of the year to our customers and our airport partners. And to that end, not only will we continue to take delivery of aircraft through July and August where we won't necessarily be able, and September, where we won't be able to put them into the peak summer schedule but we've also now extended three of the Lauda A320 leases out to 2028, again to facilitate as much growth as we can.

And what's your view on intra-European capacity over the next few years?

We're going to remain significantly constrained for the next number of years. We can see even this year, if you look at the Eurocontrol numbers, we're running at about 95% of pre-COVID capacity on average daily flights. Now, some of that may close in a little bit into the peak summer.

But the Pratt & Whitney GTF engine issue for A320 operators is not going away. It's going to take a couple of years to sort that out. OEMs, Boeing and Airbus way behind on the deliveries. We're not going to see that backlog getting closed anytime soon. And then on the back of all of the capacity that come out during COVID, we're seeing the M&A story play out in Europe. We already saw the ITA-Lufthansa deal get the green light in recent weeks.

I think the Air Europa-IAG deal will also get a positive decision from the European Commission soon. And then TAP is going to go to market if not this year, most likely into next year. And at the same time, with capacity hugely constrained, we're taking another 50 Gamechangers before the summer of next year and with 300 MAX10s, which are going to underpin a decade of growth for Ryanair to 300 million passengers.

And Michael, moving to your results. Ryanair reported a Q1 pat of EUR360 million, down 46%. What were the key drivers?

Well, Q1, we've seen strong traffic growth up 10% to EUR55.5 million, despite 20 Boeing aircraft delivery delays. Q1 average fares were down 15%. Some of that was the move of the first half of Easter into Q4. But also, underlying pricing has been softer than we thought it would be this summer after two years of 20%-plus fare increases.

As a result, Q1 schedule revenues were down 6%; ancillary revenues up 10% to EUR1.3 billion; and operating costs were up 11%, reflecting traffic growth of 10% as our fuel hedge savings offset higher staff costs, ATC handling costs, and also the impact of the Boeing delivery delays

And that's Q1. What about Q2? How are bookings and fares tracking?

Well, as I said, you know, previously, the Q2 was going well and we had very strong traffic numbers in June, where we carried record numbers. Pricing is weaker and we would indeed expect it to be materially weaker than it was in summer of 2023.

This, of course, very much depends on what happens on close in bookings into August and September, where we don't have a huge amount of visibility at this time.

So the market is supply constrained and volumes are strong. Why is pricing not stronger?

It's a good question. We've been surprised at pricing being weaker. You know, the Eurocontrol figures suggest that year-to-date capacity is 5% behind where it was in 2019. That does represent a 2% or 3% recovery on summer 2023.

We're seeing another strong -- in summer '24, we're seeing very strong Ryanair growth. We're on track to grow from 183 million passengers last year to 200 million passengers this year. We have enjoyed two post-COVID recovery summers where we had double-digit fair growth and capacity and traffic growth.

So this summer, strong volumes, weaker-than-expected pricing. We've seen many of our competitors in recent weeks come out and confirm that the pricing market -- the pricing has been softer than they expected, but none of them are delivering the growth that Ryanair is delivering.

Moving to fuel, what's your latest update on hedging?

Well, we're well hedged, 75% of the current financial year hedged at about $79 a barrel, which is locking in about EUR450 million in price savings this year, offsetting a good chunk of the volume that's coming through. And then we look into next year with 45% hedged, or close to 45% hedged already at about $78 a barrel. So we're in a good position.

What about your OPEX currency hedging?

Yeah. We're about 85% hedged for FY25 at about $1.11. And we're over 40% hedged into FY26 again at a similar price, about $1.11 to the euro.

Looking at your strong balance sheet, what are the key callouts?

Yeah. It's a very strong balance sheet, B+++ rated by both Fitch and S&P. Liquidity very strong with EUR4.5 billion in gross cash at the end of the quarter, and that was after EUR0.5 billion in CapEx and EUR250 million in the share buyback, which kicked off at the back end of May.

Importantly, we saw our net cash increase from EUR1.4 billion at year end to EUR1.7 billion at the end of the quarter. I think we're very unique here in that nearly all of our Boeing 737s, all of our fleet, is on balance sheet, unencumbered. So 566 aircraft on balance sheet. And this gives us a massive advantage coupled with our net cash where we're generating net interest income. At a time when our competitors are out there taking on very expensive leases, refinancing at very expensive levels, we're just growing the cost advantage between ourselves and everybody else.

What's your FY25 CAPEX guide?

It's unchanged at about EUR2.3 billion, but it's heavily subject to the timing of the Boeing 737 deliveries and it's inevitable that some of those will move into FY26 as we take deliveries of delayed aircraft in April, May, and maybe June of 2025.

How will you fund the Gamechanger and MAX10 CapEx?

Well, the plan at the moment is we'll use our own internal cash resources. As you saw, we had lots of liquidity, EUR4.5 billion at the end of the quarter just ended. But we are very opportunistic. We look at the lowest form of financing out there. We have the balance sheet to do bonds, to do sale and lease back, to do any kind of debt financing. So it's cash this year. It may be something else next year if it's cheaper, but lowest cost would be the decider.

Moving to shareholder returns. You commenced a EUR700 million buyback in May. How's it going?

Well, as I said this morning, we've done more than 50% of it has now been completed, just over EUR350 million worth of buybacks. What's interesting, with a slight majority of that in ADRs, we've seen a bit more liquidity in the ADR program. And the average cost of that, even allowing for the ADR premium, is under EUR20 a share. So we've benefited a little bit from the recent weakness in the share price. It has certainly assisted the share buyback program. And that is good for the long-term value of the shares for our remaining shareholders.

Can we expect more buybacks?

Look, as Michael said, we're only halfway through the current EUR700 million buybacks, so let's get that done first over the next few months. But after that, the Board have been very clear, to the extent that we're covering our CapEx, our maturing debt, and our other cash commitments in the business, they won't be found wanting. And there will be further buybacks or dividends over the course of the next few years.

When's the next ordinary dividend?

The balance of this year's dividend which is about EUR0.18 a share will be paid we expect in September after the AGM. And then beyond that given our policy to distribute about 25% of our prior year PAT, we expect to be distributing about EUR0.45 per share during 2025.

The Board recently approved an ADR ratio change. What are the details and why do this?

Yeah. Following a review of the sector, we felt that the ADR price was kind of out of sync with norms across the leisure and travel sector. So we're reducing the current ratio, which is 5 to 1, five ordinary shares for every ADR, to 2 to 1. We'll notify people over the next number of weeks. No action needs to be taken.

Why are we doing it? Well, this, we believe, will improve the liquidity in the ADR. And that's important as we complete not only the current buyback, but also future buybacks.

What's the Group's FY25 outlook?

So just on outlook, traffic as previously guided will be somewhere up to 200 million passengers this year. This is totally dependent on no further Boeing delivery delays. Q2 volumes, as Michael said, are strong, but pricing is softer, trending towards materially lower on summer of last year.

It all totally depends, however, on what happens into August and September close in bookings as to where H1 actually ends up. As is always the case, at this time of the year, we've almost zero visibility into the second half of the year, but we should highlight that we won't have the benefit of an Easter in Q4. Costs, as previously guided, are performing in line with expectations. We expect FY25 costs to be modestly ahead of last year as our significant fuel savings offset a lot of the non-fuel costs, including higher productivity pay coming through and being annualized this year, but also the Boeing delivery delays having an impact.

But our fuel, as I said, and our rising interest income helps differentiate and widen the cost gap between us and everybody else. Unfortunately, due to the lack of visibility at this time of year, it's way too early to provide meaningful full-year profit after tax guidance. We do hope to be able to revisit this again when we come out with our H1 numbers in November.

But when we look beyond this year, we've got a very strong order book, not only the 50 Gamechangers left, but also the 300 MAX 10s. And we believe that this will underpin a decade of growth to 300 million passengers. When you combine that with our rock solid balance sheet, our industry leading low costs, I think we're well placed to deliver very strong traffic and fleet growth, while at the same time, returning funds to our shareholders.