Ryanair Holdings PLC (RYAAY) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Hello everyone and welcome to the Ryanair Holdings PLC FY25 earnings release. My name is Nadia and I'll be coordinating the call today. (Operator Instructions)

I will now hand over to your host, Michael O'Leary, Group CEO of Ryanair Holdings to begin. Michael, please go ahead when you're ready.

Okay. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Ryanair full year results conference call. We have all of the management on various calls, and I'll try and distribute some of the questions around as best we can.

I'll take it briefly. You've seen this morning we released the numbers on ryanair.com website. We reported a full year profit of after tax of EUR1.6 billion compared to a prior year profit after tax of EUR1.92 billion. The reason for the decline in profitability was due to a 7% decline in airfares last year. A number, I think we're particularly proud of that fair decline drove traffic growth of 9% to a new record of 200 million passenger despite repeated Boeing delivery delays last summer.

While average fares were down 7%. Units ancillary revenues were up 1%. Total ancillary revenues were up 10% with 9% traffic growth. I think the most stunning number coming out of this morning's numbers is unit cost per passenger were flat last year, which means we meaningfully again widened the cost gap between us and our competitor EU Airlines. And if anything, that strengthens our ability to grow over the next decade.

Despite Boeing delivery delays, we took delivery of 181 Gamechangers at the end of April. We have 618 aircraft in the fleet for this summer. We are constrained in terms of growth because of those delivery delays. There's still 29 aircraft we will take this winter for summer of 2026. And that means we can only grow by 3% this year to about 206 million passengers.

We used the profit warning last year as an opportunity to increase the share buyback. So we bought back 7% of our shares last year and have cancelled them in their entirety. So I think overall, a reasonably good year in a very tough pricing environment for Ryanair.

We move into this year then with the unusually, for us, with weak prior year comps, particularly in Q1 and we're already seeing that now. So we have a full Easter in this year's April compared to only half of Easter in last year. And we've also fixed the OTA boycott last year. We now have almost all of the significant OTAs are approved and are booking strongly into this summer, which is why we look into this summer.

Forward bookings are running close to 1% ahead of where they were at this time last year, and we're pricing up certainly very strongly in Q1. Pricing in Q1 is up about 14%, 15%. Q2 is a little bit early to say. Yes, we have only about 30% of the bookings in the system for Q2, but pricing looks like it's up 4%, 5%. We're not going to get quite back all the 7% decline we had last year in Q2, but it looks like we'll get back a significant proportion, if not all of us.

Touching on the balance sheet. Gross cash is a bit stronger than we had expected, again, primarily due to Boeing delivery delays. At year-end, gross cash was EUR4 billion. Net cash was about EUR1.3 billion. And that's why we've brought forward another share buyback this year. We're ahead on long on cash because of the Boeing delivery delays. And because we have that spare cash, we think it's timely to return it to shareholders.

The big challenge for us in the next year in terms of cash flow is we have EUR2 billion of maturing bonds, EUR850 million in September, EUR1.2 billion in May of 2026. We plan to pay down all of those bonds out of our internal cash balances. And that will mean Ryanair will this time next year be entirely or almost entirely debt-free and sitting on a fleet of 650 aircraft, totally unencumbered and debt-free.

And we would plan to continue to return excess cash to shareholders, but we won't have a lot of excess cash for the next year or two as we pay down debt and begin to fund the step-up in the MAX 10 deliveries.

The relationship with Boeing, our Boeing's performance has continued to materially improve in the last 12 months. We think the new management team led by Kelly Ortenberg and Stephanie Pope are doing a terrific job. The aircraft, hope fuselages are coming out of Wichita in a timely manner with very little -- no defects being carried forward, and that's increasing Boeing's ability to step up its manufacturing.

I'm heartened by the fact that in April, Boeing delivered 45 aircraft compared to just 24 aircraft in April 2024, and we expect that will continue. Boeing now are reasonably confident that the MAX 10s will be certified later this year, the MAX 7 first, the MAX 10 before the end of the calendar year, and that will put us in good shape. We think to take delivery of our first 15 MAXs in the spring of 2027.

We expect the European short-haul capacity will remain constrained out to 2030 as many of Europe's Airbus operators are still working through their patent with the engine repairs. The two big manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus are well behind on their aircraft deliveries and EU consolidation continues.

I think the consolidation is also driving that benign pricing environment, certainly, as Lufthansa test control of Alitalia in Italy, we're seeing strong upward pricing movement in Alitalia. We would expect the same to take place in Portugal when one of the major buys TAP.

And as the largest airline in Italy and the largest airline in Portugal, we would expect to continue to benefit from that trend. One of the more notable regional developments has been on the ownership and control side, following an extensive consultation period with regulators and investors, the Board removed the ownership restrictions in March.

It means that EU, non-EU shareholders are free to buy the ADRs or the orders without restrictions. We will continue to maintain voting restrictions. Non-EU shareholders can't vote at the AGMs. Recognition of that development, the MSCI Index recently confirmed Ryanair's inclusion in the MSCI World Index at the end of May, and we would expect to be included in one or two other of the bigger world indexes before the end of the year.

I want to touch briefly on the fact that Howard Miller has chosen not to seek reelection at the next AGM. Howard has been CFO from 1992 to 2014, a period of about some 22 years and then it has been an NED for the last nine years, has an enormous contribution to the success of Ryanair. In fact, without himself and Michael Cowley, together when we floated in 1997, we would not be where we are today. So I want to recognize that and thank Howard for his effort.

Turning briefly to the outlook. As we tried to communicate this morning, we expect the FY traffic growth is constrained, we expect to grow by maybe just 3% this year to 206 million passengers because of those 29 Boeing delivery delays.

We've agreed with Boeing will take those deliveries at the back end of this calendar year. So through September, October, November. So we guarantee we'll have all of the 210 Gamechangers well in advance of summer 2026. Nevertheless, growth this year will be constrained to 206 million, and then we'll pick it up again or recovered to 215 million in FY27.

The following year of flat unit costs, we expect very modest unit cost inflation in FY26 as the delivery of more Gamechangers, strong jet fuel hedging and cost control across the group helps to offset most of what our very egregious increased route in ATC charges and higher environmental costs, the unwinding of the ETS and the introduction of a SAF blend mandates.

However, and I know it will come up in the call, we think that unit cost will be modest, maybe up 1% or 2% where we are this year. To date, for summer 2025, demand is strong, peak fares are trending modestly ahead of the prior year. We think we're up 5%, 6% in Q2. And the question is what happens for the remainder of the year.

Q1 fares are on track to finish a mid high-teen percent ahead of Q1 FY 2025. Some of that is the weak prior year comp and the fact that only half of Easter was in last year's Q1, both as of Easter this year's Q1. We expect Q2 pricing to recover some but not all of the 7% decline we experienced in prior year Q2.

As I said, we're only about 35% of Q2 bookings in the system. And the final H1 outcome is, therefore, heavily dependent on close-in bookings and the peak summer yield. As is normal at this time of the year, we have zero H2 visibility and therefore, we don't think we can give our full year guidance.

Other than to say, we cautiously expect to recover most, but not all of last year's 7% fare decline as we move through the year. It could be better than that, it could be worse than that. It depends on what happens in the geopolitical environment as we move through the year.

But that should lead to a reasonable net profit recovery or growth in FY26. Two years ago, we recorded a profit of EUR1.93 billion. Last year, on the back of 7% lower fares, that fell to EUR1.6 billion. And I think you'll see a reasonably strong recovery in that through for the remainder of this year, but we're not willing to give guidance at this stage and that's because the remainder of Q1, Q2 are heavily dependent on close-in pricing.

The one thing I would draw to your attention though is the opportunity in terms of lower-cost oil going forward. We had already hedged about 85% of our FY26 fuel at $76 a barrel. Last year, we were hedged at $79 a barrel. So we secured a 4% saving.

Following the Trump tariff announcement or Independence Day, we saw a material fall in oil prices, which we will pick up that at the moment. And Friday, [Brent] was at $62 a barrel, jet was $67 a barrel. We will pick up meaningful savings on the 15% unhedged for the remainder of this year.

We did jump on the oil price weakness following the tariff announcements to hedge 40% of next summer. In other words, H1 FY27. We've hedged 40% of next summer's oil at $66 a barrel, a 13% saving compared to this year. On a cost or a cost base -- $5 billion is our annual oil price. So we think there's a material possibility of -- we think these are real possibility of making material oil price savings, not just for us but for the rest of the European industry.

I think in advance of President Trump's trip to the Middle East last week, we thought more and more significant development was the fact that the OPEC producers abandon their production cuts three weeks before he visited the Middle East. And we expect the US administration will turn its attention towards increasing supply and reducing oil prices in advance of the midterms next year.

And there may be a short-term or medium-term gain for airlines in general, but Ryanair in particular, has been move forward for the remainder of FY26, where we have weaker FY25 comps. That's all I want to say at this stage.

Neil, I'll hand it over to you in terms of anything you want to draw attention in the MD&A and then we'll open it up to Q&A.

Thanks, Michael. I'll just reemphasize maybe a couple of the points that you made. So just focusing on costs. As previously guided, we were very pleased to come in flat on a unit cost basis. This was as a result of our strong hedging, which helped offset productivity pay increases that we had and other Boeing delay related costs that came through the business.

As Michael just said, we continue to be well hedged in the current financial year at about $760 a metric ton and then a meaningful dip on our hedging rates of $660 a metric ton out to FY27, where we're over 40% hedged in the all-important first half and about 34% in the second half of the year. So that blend is about 36% on the year.

Liquidity was very strong, helped a little bit by the timing of Boeing delivery delays, but we come in with just under EUR4 billion gross cash, EUR1.3 billion net cash after EUR1.6 billion CapEx and EUR1.9 billion shareholder returns, including the EUR1.5 billion buyback. We will be launching the EUR750 million buyback in the open period, which starts tomorrow. So later on this week, that EUR750 million buyback will formally launch.

Just on the liquidity side as well, I would point out that we increased our revolving credit facility back in March. We upsized it from EUR750 million to EUR1.1 billion, most of it on drawn at this point in time. So it gives us lots of flexibility and additional liquidity should the need arise.

And then finally, I would point to our rejoining the MSCI at the back end of May. I think this is an important development on the back of the ownership and control review.

And Michael, I don't really have much more to add.

Okay. Eddie, you want to add anything or just a commercial general trading point of view for the summer.

Just from a general, the demand is solid and like we've taken the opportunity with restricted capacity increases, which we'll be catching up later on in the year with Boeing with further extracting cost decreases at some of the major hubs that we fly into.

So we're much more picky about where we allocate that capacity and that's going to continue into next summer where we pretty much have all of those aircraft allocated in our own mind, but there's still a small number to be allocated. So that's about it.

Good. Okay. We'll open up for Q&A and I'll try to move some of the questions around. We have all the wider management team on the line. So moderator, if you'd open it up, please, and we're going to treat every to two questions and we try and get through as many as we can. Neil has to leave at 11:00 our time, but we will try to get it wrapped up by 11:00, 11:15.

(Operator Instructions) Jamie Rowbotham, Deutsche Bank.

Morning, gents. Michael, tickets revs per packs down only 5% in March without Easter, then up potentially as you said, 14%, 15% in June with Easter. The net of those two is very strong, even considering some tailwind from the resolution of the OTA issues. So have you been surprised by that strength and maybe by geography, where do you see it mostly coming from?

And then one for Neil, presumably too early to ask for detailed non-fuel cost guidance, but can I ask about CapEx? You mentioned in the deck taking the first 15 MAX 10s in spring '27. Would you be willing to give a steer on the phasing of CapEx over the next three years, please, through to fiscal '28. Thanks.

Okay. I think the first half of that, I mean, Neil you contribute as well. We're not that surprised the strength of Q1, but again, I would caution it is more driven by week prior comps. We have half of Easter was in March last year. We have both halves of Easter this year in March. We have strong growth because last year, we were growing capacity by 9%, we added 17 million passengers last year. This year, we're only growing capacity by 3%.

So I think you have a combination of week prior comps, very strong Easter because you have two halves of Easter in April. And then we, the largest airline in Europe, are only growing our capacity to see this year by 6 million passengers instead of 17 million passengers last year, and then you're creating a more benign pricing environment across Europe generally, and we will be the beneficiaries of that.

I think Q2 is probably a more accurate reflection of the underlying trend. We think at this point in time Q2, and we did have a very strong Q2 last year. We think Q2 will price up 4% or 5% at the moment. That could get to 7%, 8% if the close-in pricing remains strong. It could weaken if there's some unforeseen events, like terrorist events in Europe, but who knows.

And geographically, because we're in constrained capacity, we've been trying to allocate more capacity to those countries and regions who are abolishing taxes, regional Italy, Hungary, Sweden and those airports who are still incentivizing growth, but I'll ask Eddie maybe to add a couple of words to that and then Neil, you might comment on the CapEx. Eddie?

Yeah. Like I would echo, like you've largely touched off all of the points there. I mean, I wouldn't run away with what has happened in as we close out Q1, it really is down to an exceptionally strong Easter, but they were weak prior comparable as well. We've about 30% of the bookings in for peak, and we are running like just ever so slightly ahead on volumes, but again, wouldn't run away with it in Q1 at all or translate that into Q2. No real things on them.

Geographies, I mean, it's a small part of our network but the only, call this, that there are not a call out even is that there is less huge amount of capacity from all operators from areas post COVID, and there seems to be some restriction on accommodation down there. But other than that, it's right across the board in terms of demand, that's the only thing I call.

The only other one we do there is the one market that has constrained itself has been Dublin, obviously where the new government, which has now been in place for five months with a 20 seat majority still hasn't passed any legislation to scrap the Dublin Airport cap.

We have successfully got a legal injunction against it, but it has held up growth that we would otherwise have deployed in Dublin. We're growing reasonably strongly in Cork and Shannon, but they're very small markets.

Dublin is being constrained by government inaction and five months into the lifetime of this new government, it's time for them to start passing legislation before they all bugger off on summer holidays in the next couple of weeks. Neil, CapEx?

Yeah. Jamie, good morning. You're right. I'm not going to give you an awful lot of color over and above what we've already put out there. So we're talking about EUR2 billion, maybe a bit higher this year depending on the timing of aircraft, engine shops and other spares and parts.

The PDPs on the MAX 10 are going to ramp up relatively slowly over the next couple of years. So you'll see a drop down in CapEX into FY27 somewhere below the EUR2 billion and then it'll start to creep up again into FY28.

So it'll probably be a mid EUR2 billion to EUR2.5 billion to EUR3 billion territory that year. But as I said, it ramps up relatively slowly this year and next, and with only a small number of aircraft, 15 coming in ahead of summer 2027. There won't be too many delivery payments on the 10 at that point in time as well.

Stephen Furlong, Davy.

Yeah. Hi, Michael. Can I ask you one question on the EU and just get a few questions on that. And regulation post Draghi and stuff, are you seeing any signs that there has implied to regulate. I'm thinking of the challenges with the SaaS and delays in deliveries just makes the whole net zero thing a challenge for the industry.

And then also the noise they make about retaliatiory tariffs with Boeing. And then the other thing, maybe for Neil, just talk again about the rationale for, A, paying back the bonds and B, for the upsizing of the facility, the revolver, that would be great. Thanks.

Okay. Thanks, Stephen. No. I'm sad to say we've seen very little action from the EU. The Draghi report, I think was a very positive development last year, but there's been no action on it. If you want to call out EU inaction on regulatory is the failure to take any action on ATC reform.

We're giving them two very simple but basic ATC reforms. One protect overflights during national strikes, no action whatsoever. Wringing of hands and saying, it's a national competence. It isn't a national competence that. It's a single market and you can't close down the skies over a single market just because the French air traffic controllers want to go on strike.

They're entirely free to go on strike, but there is no impediment to continuing to overfly France during a national strike. The Italians, the Greeks and the Spanish protect overflights during national strikes, and the French should be required to do likewise.

And more locally, we have this lunatic Spanish minister running around trying to force all airlines to take unlimited bags on board free of charge, it's a clear breach of EU regulation 1008, 2008, which gives the airlines the freedom to set prices free of national interference. And we're still calling on DG move to take action on this. They've written to the Spanish, but they haven't yet started the enforcement proceedings, and they should.

SAF, I would be more optimistic. It is now clear that the oil majors are cutting back on development of renewable fuel. There will not be a SAF supply to meet the mandate in 2030, and the only logical development will be to move back those mandates. I think it will come, but it will come slowly.

But Europe could do much more in terms of rolling back regulation and making air travel more competitive. The one very significant thing would be to move from the environmental taxes in Europe away from ETS towards Croatia, which is what the international long-haul airlines pay.

The European airlines should be moving environmental taxes away from ETS, which are more towards Croatia, so that we're all paying Croatia rents and then everybody is operating off a level playing field and again, no action whatsoever. So as with always with the European Union, particularly Ursula von der Leyen, lots of talk and head nodding and no bloody action whatsoever.

But we leep pushing and we'll keep campaigning and the airlines. I do think we'll see some move back. I think the campaign for ATC reform is unarguable, and the campaign to move environmental taxes towards Croatia, where European citizens will be paying the same environmental taxes as non-European citizens, those two cases are unarguable and should be implemented.

Neil, do you want to come back in on the rationale for the bond repayments?

Yeah. Sure. Good morning, Stephen, and thanks for the question. Yeah. At the moment, as has been the case for some time, cash continues to be the cheapest form of finance for the Ryanair Group. We finished the year with over or just under EUR4 billion in cash. We're sitting on over EUR4 billion in cash at the moment.

So we're planning on the basis of paying down the EUR850 million bonds in September. That bond is a coupon of 2.875%. If we were to refinance that today, we would pay somewhere in excess of 3.5%. So cash continues to be the cheapest form of financing. We've got another EUR1.2 billion bonds with an eye-watering coupon of 0.875%, maturing in May of next year.

And again, unless we saw a significant dip in share prices over the coming months, we would finance that also out of our own cash resources. The revolving credit facility is a great opportunity for our banking community to step up, put some balance sheets at risk while getting opportunities to participate with us on currency and on jet fuel and carbon hedging. So we had an opportunity in March to increase the size of the revolving credit facility from EUR750 million to EUR1.1 billion. We upsized the banking group from [14 to 17] and we extended the term out to March 2030 from 2028.

There's a very low cost facility. Most of it's undrawn and to be honest, we probably won't draw much of it over that term unless there are certain shocks or opportunities that we want to jump on top of, but it's priced at a very low margin over your riper. And so, it gives us lots of flexibility and lots of liquidity and really, it's an umbrella if it starts raining.

James Hollins, Exane BNP Paribas.

Hi. Thanks. If I can come back on unit costs, unlike Jamie Rowbothom, I'm going to give it a go. If I do my maths correctly, you're looking at hedged fuel down about 4% year on year this year. You've talked about overall unit cost up 1% to 2%. I assume that implies extra unit costs up maybe 3%.

I think you've flagged double-digit increases in things like recharges, maybe just Neil can give a bit more granularity on where else you're seeing some cost inflation? Where you're doing much better than that.

And the second one, thank you for your comments on ITA. I was interesting about them pricing more or pricing up. Are you seeing any irrational behavior by any competitors in Europe, whether it's on growing ridiculously or putting fares down? I would think maybe whiz there as they grow again. Any comments would be useful. Thanks.

Okay. Thanks. I mean, there's not much more we give you in terms of color. I think it's a cautious guidance the unit costs up 1% to 2%. We still have 15% on hedge fuel that could kick in a significant saving which would bring down unit costs. It might go the other way. And the one call out we would have at this point in time though is root charges, ATC fees, which are going up across Europe by another double-digit percent for probably the world's most spectacularly sh**** service.

They'll all start no showing for work next week at the start of June. Punctuality, which has been at record highs, we're delivering 85% to 90% on time performance up to the end of May. Last year that fell to 60% in June, July and August, and we expect the same to happen again.

Again, we should expect this every year, but what we're entitled to expect is some action from Ursula von der Leyen and her useless crew to reform ATC, and yet nothing happens. So there are costs that are moving against us. We've also done another round of pay increases with labor starting on April 1.

That's part of a long term four and five year pay deals. But generally speaking, I think we're reasonably comfortable with where unit costs are. I mean, what we've been trying to do is to transition across to the MAX 10 deliveries, which we hope will happen in spring of 2027.

And those aircraft will transform our operating costs. We get 20% more seats, they burn 20% less fuel, and you can argue whether fuel over the new year term will trend downwards or upwards. I think on balance, it'll trend downwards into the US mid-terms next year.

But the issue for us in unit cost, Jamie, is not our absolute unit cost. It's what are the competition doing. And if you look at the reports from all of our competitors across Europe in the last year, they've seen unit costs rise from between 5% to 15% in the case of one spectacular competitor who couldn't manage costs if it jumped up and bit them.

They are increasingly exposed to financing and leasing, rising leasing costs and all of those are rising rapidly. So the unit cost gap between us and every other area is getting wider and we have a unique 12 months this year where we have -- unusually for Ryanair week prior your comp.

So I think we will make a -- we look good this year, but bear in mind that some of that is due to weak priorer comps. Touching just on the pricing, there's nobody out there doing any irrational pricing because there's no real capacity growth, (inaudible) are taking a couple of aircraft, but frankly, we don't see them in our marketplaces.

They're still taking capacity away from our markets. They've closed three routes out of Vienna down into Italy in this summer, where we're the only competitor in those marketplaces. We don't see much out of EasyJet. There's been a little bit, I think, some pressure on some of the tour operators, TUI and Jet2 are seem to be kind of doing a bit more seat only pricing.

We think that's the reverse. The trend last year were -- during the OTA boycott, some of our holiday customers may have moved towards the tour operators. They've all come back to us this year. But no, I mean, everything we see across the marketplace, probably driven by us only growing at 3%, which for would be a historically low rate of growth is everybody is pricing up and most of them pricing up more than us.

Eddie, you want to add anything on that?

No. I mean, what you say like EasyJet is not growing, continue to -- they closed a number of bases. You've got Wales largely growing in places like Romania and further out to the (inaudible) and that. So we don't really see them growing in our markets.

We have seen some discounting from competitors, but not a rational discount as Michael said, that's manifested itself, particularly those that are selling package holidays where they've got the option of package holidays and seat only, they seem to be discounting on the seat only rather than on the package.

But their discounted pricing is still materially higher than our entry pricing. So at the moment, everything we see into the summer season, Q1 and Q2 is strong forward bookings or stronger than we'd expected forward bookings, closing off some of the cheaper seats, and we're pricing up very strongly in Q1.

But I think that the only issue for us at this point in time is this in the first half of the year do we get back all of last year's 7% decline or most of it. I'd be more concerned. I think we'll get back most of it, but not all of it, and I could be pleasantly surprised on the upside, but it's too early to say.

Remember when things are going well in this industry, that's always when some curveball comes out of left field, whether it's geopolitical issues, terrorism attacks somewhere, something. So we're always cautious. When things are going this well, usually something else goes wrong in this business.

Just before we move off this this question, I'd just like to add on the cost side, Michael. We did call out additional environmental costs in the release. This is the SAF mandates that have come in this year and the full on wind of the ETS credits.

If I was to point to one area where I feel a number of the analysts are maybe a little bit light, it's on DAC. We've guided that we're moving from EUR850 million charge last year to over EUR1 billion this year, and I still feel that maybe that's James where some people are a little bit light in their numbers.

Harry Gowers, JPMorgan.

Morning, Michael. Morning, Neil. First question just on transatlantic leisure traffic. Are you seeing any evidence that that's redirect into places within Europe on Ryanair instead this summer? And would you expect any material boost in demand or yields from that? Or is it just too hard to tell at this stage?

And then just on the share buyback running for 6 to 12 months, just what's your thinking in terms of the time line there? Like will it be the longer end of the time frame given where the shares are trading? Just what your current thinking is on the pace of completing that. Thanks a lot.

Okay. As to the first half, look, I mean, it's too early to say yet, but anecdotally, there seems to be a kind of a weakness in EU originating transatlantic travel. US originating is strong into Europe. We think that might be helping. I mean, I think there might be a trend. There's a perception certainly in Europe that the US is an on-welcoming destination at the moment, that seems to be translating maybe to a bit more holiday at home in Europe.

We see no decline in the inbound transatlantic to Europe this year. And all of the metrics we see forward bookings into Spain, Italy, Greece, the holiday, the islands this summer has been reasonably strong, both on the charter side, demand is strong, pricing is strong.

And we think there may be some element there. But I couldn't put a number on it. It's more really anecdotal than anything else is that there's a little bit of local to people in Europe to travel and transact to the states, and they're staying at home in Europe.

But I wouldn't want to put too much more on that. I think the underlying trend on pricing here is not driven by transatlantic demand is driven by heavy capacity constraints in the European marketplace, which I think will roll out this year and probably next year again.

On the buyback, Neil, before I give it to you, we're announcing 6 to 12 months I think we've had a strong run in the share price. The buyback comes from that we are surplus cash at the end of the year because of the Boeing delivery delay.

So I'm not that first. Well, we do it over 6 or 12 months. I think Neil and the finance team will largely drive that. But I would caution I think we'd be reluctant to promise any more share buybacks for the next year or two. We have EUR2 billion of bonds that we have to repay in the next 12 months. That's a big slug of money. We do need to keep building a modest cash position thereafter.

We will then -- that will take us into the run into the MAX 10 deliveries running into the summer '27 and summer '28. And we will spend a considerable amount of money on that opening two engine shops in the next two, three years, where a lot of the order for tooling and spares will be front-ended.

And we're looking again, particularly on the LEAP-1B, we may need to buy some more spare engines there. So I think this year's share buyback will be the last one for a year or two, unless we do better than we plan on profitability and cash. Neil, maybe you want to add anything to that on the buybacks?

Yeah. I would say, Harry, I would be expecting it to run slower rather than faster. So closer to [12% and 6%] last year's EUR700 million buyback was accelerated because we saw a significant dip on the share price, and we leaned into it.

But if we're a more normalized markets with an EUR850 million bond maturity in September and a EUR1.2 billion bond maturity in May of next year. I think this will go a bit slower. So I would be expecting closer to 12 than 6 months.

Alex Irving, Bernstein.

Good morning. Two for me, please. First one, just coming back on cost. You mentioned a moment ago around of pay increases in the April 1, which we quantify that which you're thinking about in 2026 and then any remaining years for the multi-year pay deal.

Sa questions on tariffs. Would it be right to assume you can just take delivery of planes into the UK AOC and avoid any tariffs on delivery itself? But also, to what extent would you expect tariff increases on upstream components to feed through to upward pressure on future CapEx? Thank you.

Sorry, Alex. Your line was breaking up. I missed the first half of that question. It was quite on pay increases, so would you just repeat the question about first half.

(multiple speakers) can you just mentioned the pay increases from April 1, if you could please quantify them?

Well, the answer is no. We don't quantify by increases. The pay increase at April 1 this year are year three and four of our four and five-year pay. And we have another agreed pay increase in April 2026. They are modest because we tend to front-end the pay deals where we do multiyear pay deals.

But no, we wouldn't put a number. But Darrell Hughes is here with me, who's our Director of people. I ask him to give some outlook or give some color on the pay negotiations or where we are on pay deals. Darrel?

Yeah. Thanks, Michael. I think you've covered most of it there. We've got a couple of cabin crew deals expiring next March, a couple of pilot ones as well. The big chunk is in March 2027. So that's really when the cycle comes up for the next round of deals. And as you say, we've got modest increases in the tail end of the existing agreements running in April '26 -- sorry, April '25, just gone and into April '26 as well.

And we think the timing of those deals was driven, Alex, as we get into April of 2027, we're starting to get into the MAX 10 deliveries where we would be getting a reasonable productivity benefit out of those aircraft.

Now there are more -- we're getting a reasonable productivity benefit. I think we can incorporate or afford a reasonably favorable or generous pay deal with our people without going mad over a three or four year period on the back of productivity gains will be delivered by the MAX 10.

The tariff question again, I think if I understand, you broke up again, but is one of the solutions with tariffs is that we take aircraft into the UK. Our view generally on tariffs is as follows. One, all of the evidence out of the Trump administration is that they announced tariffs but they postpone them for 90 days.

They do a kind of an outline trade deal with China, with the UK, and there's another 90 day postponement. We don't foresee tariffs being a big issue. We think trade deals will replace the risk of tariffs and the imposition of tariffs on commercial aircraft will be delayed until there's a trade deal.

We would be very surprised if the Europeans imposed tariffs on commercial aircraft, given that Airbus exports much more wide body long haul aircraft to North American customers than Boeing does to Europe, it couldn't be ruled out. But ultimately, our deal with Boeing is a fixed price agreement.

So the tariffs will be for Boeing to count, not ours, but we would certainly work with Boeing to take deliveries into those economies or those countries where by working together with Boeing be able to take delivery of aircraft without any risk of tariffs is obviously UK or somewhere else in Europe, we'd certainly have a look and we will work with Boeing on that.

Dudley Shanley, Goodbody.

Hi, Michael. Two questions. First of all, I think you said on the video today that there was no new bases, but there's 160 new routes. Are the levels of route churn picking up as capacity slows? And if that manage costs? Or is it just better opportunities on the newer routes?

And then the second question is a longer-term one. In terms of, I guess, the capacity constraints in Europe and the consolidation of the industry, do you still think longer term we move towards four big operators? Thank you.

Okay. Dudley. Eddie, do you want to take the first half of that since you are adjacent with the churns?

Yeah. I mean, there has been a bias towards like increasing frequencies as opposed to launching new routes where you've got to do a lot of investment in lower fares. And we've also picked up some excellent efficiencies, particularly as we launched the winter schedule this year where we're flying less on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and slightly more on Thursdays and we're probably at the limit of what we can do.

We've been on a program of that for the last two to three years. So you're seeing less new routes, more frequency building and a lot more analysis on how we allocate capacity as well, given that they are just smaller numbers, and we have moved around capacity and closed some bases as well, in particular in places like Scandinavia, where you've seen [Bilon].

And you've seen taxes rise there as well, tourist taxes and you look across the water in Sweden were tax they're going to be ups away and then they end up with essentially the bill on the aircraft in the same season. And so, we'll continue to do that churn, and we'll be very judicious on opening new routes.

Okay. Thanks, Eddie. And the capacity, I think the world moves in the trend of four big operators? Yes, absolutely. It's going to be -- we are heading for 200 -- heading for 206 million to over the next two years, 250 million passengers, the Lufthansa Group, the BA -- the IAG group, and Air France KLM. We think there will be further consolidation. Obviously, TAP is next on the block.

I think inevitably Wizz will have to find a home somewhere with one of the bigger airlines because they clearly can't make any money as an independent airline. And then I think logically that's what over the medium term will happen with EasyJet. The challenge for I think all of the other independent airlines is what do you do when Ryanair keeps expanding on top of your geography or your marketplace.

They don't have a cost base that would enable -- they generally as a group of airlines don't have a cost base that enables them to compete with Ryanair. Their costs -- unit costs are still rising while ours are flat or marginally falling for the next couple of years.

Savanthi Syth, Raymond James.

Hey. Good morning, everyone. Just a couple of aircraft related questions just on the NG retirements. Were those as expected to look like maybe five or retired and just how are you thinking about disposals and kind of the fiscal year '26.

And my second question just on the MAX delivery, could you clarify that, Michael, did you say like you're not taking any more deliveries ahead of the summer and the rest are coming here in the winter? Is that the way we should think about the rest of the MAX deliveries?

Yeah. Yes, Savi. So we had the last five of this year's deliveries -- the deliveries for this summer, the last five were delivered in April. All of them came a couple of days early, which is positive. And we'd already agreed with Boeing that we delayed the last 29 of those aircraft. So we have 181 of the 210 Gamechanger order now delivered.

We had agreed with them that we would delay the last 29 to the spring of 2026. They've asked us recently, would we take them in the autumn of 2025, which doesn't really suit us. And we can't deploy them during the winter, but we're going to take them early so that at least we ensure and guarantee that we have those there for the summer of 2026.

Obviously, that's also a consideration if there were tariffs we could delay those deliveries once the aircraft are manufactured, we could bring them forward or delay them as long as we get those aircraft in advance of summer 2026, we'd be in very good shape.

So coming back and then obviously, the next big issue is getting the MAX 10 certified and be guaranteeing or ensuring that Boeing deliver us those first 15 of those aircraft for summer '27 growth, which again is kind of critical to our continuing capacity growth here in Europe.

But like Boeing, I'm growing more confident that will happen without disruption. On the NG retirements, again, we had planned to start maybe retiring the first of the NGs sometime around 2028-ish, 2029-ish. Again, we could time that around the deliveries of the MAX 10s.

Obviously, the first issue there is we still need to -- we have the Lauda 27 Airbus aircraft, they're due for -- those leases run out in '28 and '29. We would want to try to replace those with some other Airbus aircraft, but at the moment, we're still looking at those opportunities, but the market isn't in our favor in the short term.

I mean, current market lease rates are more than double what we pay per month on those 27 aircrafts. So the first issue would be how do we replace those, preferably with Airbus. If not, we replace them with maybe some of our older NGs and then by the time we get into '29, '30, we're taking 50 MAX 10s a year.

We would then begin to start to retire some of the older NG aircraft. We have no plans at the moment to dispose of them. It's a bit too far away yet, clearly in the current marketplace you could dispose of them because the leasing companies are short of aircraft and are pricing up.

But we're making so much money out of those aircraft. We would want to continue to maintain our own capacity growth in a market where we're challenged. It's more profitable for us to run the aircraft and operate them as you see in this morning's numbers and hopefully in next year's numbers that it would be to sell the aircraft. And nothing in the near term on NG requirements and we're very happy where we are in the MAX deliveries.

Jarrod Castle, UBS.

Hi. Thank you, everyone. Good morning. Michael and team, I mean, assuming your shares remain above the '21 level, it looks like you should be able to get your options vesting in about 16, 17 days. I wanted to get your thoughts in terms of is there potential for a follow on scheme. I don't know if it's '26, '27. I know the current scheme runs to March '28. And then just also how you see that as an incentive program in general for Ryanair management going forward.

And then the second question, it seems like there's more confidence around Boeing, and the MAX 10 getting signed off, but just wanted to get your thoughts on, if it doesn't get signed off on potentially doing more leases or indeed maybe there's an external factor where you want to accelerate capacity such as peace in Ukraine. So just any thoughts on that optionality either way. Thanks.

Okay. Thanks, Jarrod. I'm glad somebody raised the options questions since I'm sure some mo**** in the daily mail will be writing it up in about '16. The options don't vest until 2028. We may achieve the targets either later on this month or later on this year, but none of those options and it's not a bonus, it's share options, don't vest until 2028.

I and the rest of the management team have to stay here to 2028 and continue to deliver before we can actually get hold of those share options. So they don't come around for another what's that three years, and a lot can happen between now and then.

But I accept there's a possibility that we might at least hit the performance targets either later this month or hopefully later this year. Remember there's two targets, share price at EUR21 or an annual profit of EUR2.2 billion. Chance to follow on scheme, I think pretty limited. The Board about three or four years ago moved away from share options.

We originally had shares here for many years that they were driven by profit targets and the problem is that creates a regulatory concern that we can't share forward-looking profit option for forward-looking profit targets. So we've moved away from those for the last, I think, three years, certainly the senior management team have been getting LTIPs, which are awarded every two years, and that seems to be a kind of quieter and more reasonable way of rewarding superior management performance.

And I think that may be what will continue going forward. Obviously, my contract runs out in 2028 and they'll have to be some discussion, I presume, with the Board and the Remco as to how my remuneration will be fixed from 2028 onwards if they want me to stay on after 2028.

I will have all the usual bulls*** out of the newspapers all I would draw the point that we are, I think, we're delivering exceptional value for Ryanair shareholders in an era when premiership footballers and managers are getting paid EUR20 million or EUR25 million a year. I think Ryanair shareholders are getting a particular value out of our share options, both mine and the rest of the management team.

Moving on to some more sensible topics. If the Boeing MAX 10 doesn't certify, we've already had that discussion with Boeing. Boeing have to make something, and it is what is likely to happen, although I think it's increasingly unlikely is that they will make more MAX 8-200s.

And so, Boeing have kind of confirmed with us that if for some reason the MAX doesn't -- they don't think the MAX will get certified later this year, and they will start up or make more MAX 8-200s and deliver those to us maybe for summer '27 or summer '28. Boeing do have to make something.

I'm reasonably confident this stage that they'll be making certified MAX 7s and MAX 10s, but the fallback position is they make more MAX 8-200s, and they can do that with about 18 months' notice. So it's only a difference in the fuselage. So one way or another and now, obviously, I would prefer the MAX 10s because they have 20% more seats and 20% less fuel, whereas the A-200s have only got 4% more seats and 60% less fuel.

So operationally, and Boeing clearly wants to sell more MAX 7s and MAX 10s than 8-200s. So I think that's the fallback position, which both Boeing and we would be reasonably comfortable with. But I think the likelihood of that fallback are receding as confidence grows that they'll get the 7s and 10s certified later this year.

Ruairi Cullinane, RBC.

Good morning. First question on slide 9, where you're expecting 7% passenger growth in full year '28. It looks like that's on just over 2% fleet growth. So is there something else other than fleet growth going on there? And then secondly, just on cash tax going forward, the cash tax charge was just under half the tax expense on the income statement. What are your expectations in future? Thank you.

So Neil or Tracy, Malloy might deal with the cash tax question. Let me just go to slide 9. e set out there what we expect from the fleet growth. We expect FY27 that is summer of '26, we pick up the last 29 of the MAX aircraft or the Gamechanger aircraft, takes the fleet up to close to 650 or 650, 655 aircraft.

The following year, which is summer '27, we go up by 15, which is the first of 10 of the MAX 10s -- the first 15 of the MAX 10, sorry, which have 20% more seats. We do believe we would actually pick up the reason that there's a little bit more passenger growth there is that we think we would be able to deploy some more of those aircraft in the autumn of '27 or into the spring of '28.

We'd have a bit more growth in the winter half of the year in addition to the summer growth. We wouldn't have any issues over Boeing deliveries during the winter period, and we could deploy more of that capacity during the winter period, which is why the passenger growth slightly steps up a bit from 4% in FY27 to 7% in FY28 and then levels out at 4% in '29, 4% in 2030.

And Neil, do you want -- Neil or Tracy, do you want to take the cash?

Tracy's on a flight to Canada at the moment to go over and meet our shareholders there. We expect cash tax to remain relatively light for the next number of years with significant capital allowances due to the volume of aircraft that we're taking delivery off. The effective tax rate this year and last was 10%.

That will gradually creep up over the next two or three years as the OECD rules get adopted by more and more countries across Europe unless of course, there's a rollback given what's happening in the United States where they've now moved away from OECD, but on cash tax, it'll be relatively modest in the overall scale given the capital allowances.

Muneeba Kayani, Bank of America.

Yes. Good morning. So I wanted to ask firstly around ancillaries, there was around just 1% growth per pax last year. How are you thinking about it this year? Is that kind of a similar flat to 1% increase that we should be expecting?

And secondly, if I could just go back to unit costs, through the quarters, is there any cadence? Is [1.5%] a bigger increase in second half or anything like that, that we should be looking out forward. And just secondly, a quick clarification. The guide, is that based on the current jet fuel price or not? Thank you.

Okay. I think both of those -- sorry, what's the guide you're talking about there? I didn't give any guide.

No, unit cost. When you say the modest increase (multiple speakers) for the 15%?

Yeah. That'll be current jet prices and (inaudible) because the current jet price as we see it today like it was taken at a moment in time.

That's based on what jet closing last Friday at about $67 a barrel for the 15%.

Okay, I want to take ancillaries and I'm --

I'm not going to break out the quarters. We've given a full year number today. We're not going to go into the micro of quarter by quarter, but I think there's enough there maneuver for you to build from. And then on the ancillaries up 1% last year, we'd anticipate something similar, maybe slightly better in FY26. So I think again if you model plus 1%, you probably won't be a million miles away on a per passenger basis.

Gerald Khoo, Liberum.

Morning, everyone. Two, if I can. Firstly, on finance income, which did seem to be very high in the second half in the fourth quarter. I think it implies an interest rate of about 10% or 11%. I think that line includes some compensation from Boeing. Firstly, is that right? And if so, how long is that likely to continue for?

And secondly, you talked about the Spanish rules on cabin bag charges. Can you just clarify what you're actually doing? Are you still able to charge passengers for cabin bags coming out of Spain or are you actually prohibited from doing that at the moment? Thanks.

Yeah. No. The Spanish bag ruling, Gerald, is under appeal to a regional Spanish court. I mean, the appeal is dispensary. So we continue with our policy, which is we have one large free carry-on bag for non-priority passengers. Priority passengers get to bring two carry-on bags, and there will be no change in those rules.

We think ultimately, unless the commission force the Spanish to stop interfering in pricing or breach of EU regs. If you go to the ECJ, which could take about two years, and it will in our view undoubtedly be overturned by the ECJ. So it's only a question of time, but at the moment there is no change.

There's a bit of jumping up and down various consumer organizations of glorious victory for fu**** passengers. You can now bring as many bags as you want. Nobody in the industry wants to go back to that kind of free for all. It will result in much bigger airport security queues. It will result in much higher costs for airlines and higher fares.

It is the kind of dumb regulation that Draghi has been pointing out in Europe. The airlines should be allowed to get on with what we do. We had 200 million passengers last year who demonstrate that they're very happy with our baggage policies, and all we want to do is to comply with the sizes so that we really don't want anybody's baggage fees. We just want to comply with the bag rules which makes the airport security and boarding aircraft much more quicker.

Finance income, there's a tiny bit of Boeing compensation in the finance income line. It's not material. It will not continue. Boeing have caught up on those deliveries that -- sorry, the 29 delivery delays next year. There'll be a little bit of compensation, but it's very modest and the numbers are small in the context of a EUR1.6 billion full year profit. Neil, you want to add to that?

Yeah. I just add in the MD&A, we do break out that. We've got strong cash, got low financing costs in business and then, as Michael said, the modest Boeing compensation which we received a bit in Q3 and Q4, but it is a confidential agreement. We can't and we won't break out the exact numbers, but it's coming to an end at this stage with just the 29 delays to be caught up and hopefully no more thereafter.

And not alone is it very modest, it doesn't go anywhere close to make up for the shortfall we have of the delayed growth in this marketplace.

Andrew Lobbenberg, Barclays

Hi, there. Can I just check, you spoke about the expenditure on the engine MRO shops. Is that all included in the rough CapEx guidance you given earlier --

No.

And then the second question would come around -- it's not included. Are you able to quantify like how big it might be (multiple speakers) Okay. And then, Ukraine and Israel, there's been lots of excitement about the potential of the peace in these markets, yet we still don't have peace.

How are you thinking about it and were there to be the opportunity, how would you execute it, but yeah, how are you thinking about those two potential opportunities?

Okay. Take the first part of the engine complex number, it's not all of it, and clearly, we're negotiating this. And it's also subject to finalizing location of both shops and there's obviously some kind of government assistance and some of that. But the reason I wanted to draw attention the engines that there are -- so it is a big CapEx number, and it will be a big CapEx number.

But it will be spread over a three or four year period, but it's a big number, but it's something I think that will secure, a significant cost advantage for Ryanair going forward. Touching on the Ukraine and Israel situations, I mean, clearly, we want to see peace in both our Israel Tel Aviv schedules and to a lesser extent the Jordans are repeatedly being disrupted by the that conflict.

At the moment, we've canceled all the flights to Tel Aviv until early June. And I think we're running out of patience too with Israel and the Tel Aviv flights to and from Tel Aviv. Like if they're going to keep being disrupted by these security disruptions, frankly, we'd be better off sending those aircraft somewhere else in Europe where at least we can sell the seats without these kind of repeated disruptions.

Ukraine is clearly a big market for us. We were the second largest airline in Ukraine before Putin's illegal invasion. We would wish to go back into Ukraine. We have been disappointed, however, at the response of the Ukraine airports who have basically refused to engage with us in a postmark -- in a kind of a post-war marketplace and we have an extensive plan to go back into Kiev, Lviv and Odessa, but we're not sure about the integrity of the runway at the airport in Odessa, but certainly Kiev and Lviv.

At this point in time, I would have said we charged back in there with 5 million passengers in the first year, growing to 10 million passengers within three or four years, but unless the airports come up and at the moment all we're getting out of the airports here just pay the public charges.

If that's their response then, I think we would certainly charge back in there with a more extensive network, but a more narrower. I think we'd be looking at going back here maybe 1 million passengers in year one rising to maybe 2 million or 3 million and we simply wait for the Ukrainians to realize that nobody else has the seat capacity and if you want to recover and rebuild that economy very rapidly, the egregious profit-making by empty airports is not the way forward.

If you're going to rebuild the Ukrainian economy quickly, those airports need to follow the example of many other European airports and aggressively discount what is an empty airport. And not just to Ryanair, they should be aggressively discounted to all airlines. It's just that Ryanair is the only airline that will go in there on day one from about 26 or 30 European cities because we're the only one that has bases spread across those 26 or 30 cities.

And there's a couple of very lazy airport directors on Ukraine who need to get up off their fat a**** and do a deal with us quickly. If they want real radical growth and real radical economic rebuilding and development in Ukraine.

Alex Paterson, Peel Hunt.

Hi. Morning, everybody. Two questions, please. Firstly, would you mind just repeating what you said about FY CapEx guidance please? I just missed that. And also, I just wonder you've been very clear on holidays that you would not be interested in offering them until your aircraft deliveries in the 2030s.

But your relationships with OTAs that have signed agreements with you seem to be working well, that seems to be helping you. I just wonder if you might be interested in helping them growing in regions where perhaps their brands aren't so strong, perhaps with people starting a booking-by-booking flights on your website and then being directed through to theirs in order to book a holiday.

Yeah. Okay. Alex, thanks. Neil, you might take the CapEx. I'll deal with the holidays question. Be careful here, I didn't say we're not interested in holidays, but I think that the development of a Ryanair holidays brand will have -- well, it can only come when like EasyJet or others have significantly slowed our growth or we're not effectively growing headline traffic at all.

We're too busy getting on with growing headline traffic by 4% or 5% a year, which in our case is now 10 million, 15 million passenger growth. We're using Ryanair Labs to transform the way we deliver that service, dramatically transforming our cost base. We've gone in-house with all our op systems. The kiosks are transforming our airport and handling costs, all that kind of stuff.

So we have too much going on. We're very pleased with the approved OTA deals as are the OTAs themselves, they've been very complimentary on the beach, love holidays and those, about the growth they're enjoying our stimulating with the Ryanair approved OTA deals.

And we're very content while we're busy growing headline traffic for the next 5 or 10 years to let them monetize the holidays or let them work the holidays. If there's particular markets they want to work with us, we'd be very happy to kind of take that on board, but we want them to do the heavy lifting.

I really don't want to waste our time and resources running around places like the Canaries or Greece trying to buy fu**** hotel rooms or mom and pop fu**** holidays or organizing bus transfers. We have more to be getting on with -- if you look at our profitability, even this morning in the year where fares declined.

We're reporting about EUR1.6 billion in profit. So we carry about twice EasyJet's traffic and we're about 3 times their profitability. So I'm not dissing the EasyJet holidays product or Jet2. The holidays have a valuable, it's a bit of a niche, but it's a niche I think we'd only be interested in looking at when our growth materially slows down.

But if there's something that they want to work jointly or there's new markets they want to or had to break into, we'd be happy to work with them on that. Eddie, you want -- maybe Jason might ask you something there as well.

The OTAs are agile enough. They don't need our help on that. There's already evidence that they're moving into winter weekend breaks, which was less of volume prior to the agreement, and they never really invested in that because of the potential sort of disruption, but they're now morphing into that and they actually have more of agility to put things together.

You could argue against those that go to buy bed banks and that, and there's probably further disruption. To come with AI and how all these things are going to be presented in the years ahead. So there's probably going to be another wave of that, but the OTAs are able to take our inventory, and they're the experts in putting that together at the moment, and they're probably much more agile than the more traditional model even though they had any (inaudible)

Okay. Thanks. Before we open it up for next -- that's a useful segue. We have John Hurley here, who as you know is the head of Ryanair Labs. And John, we just useful on the conference call. Give us a couple of pointers on what Labs is working on? Where we think the next development in terms of improved customer experience and lowering costs are coming from?

Thank you, Michael. As you touched on, the biggest piece of news from Labs this summer has been the roll of our new system for ops, crewing and scheduling. We call that ROCS. It's giving us efficiencies right across the board from tail allocation to main role engineering to crewing to annual leave planning. And it's all Ryanair code, Ryanair rules, and it's our efficiency is baked in. So we're in a very good place there.

On the website front, the big news is we've launched Primes in two months, going well for us. We're focusing heavily on customer service and customer service improvements, helping customers self-serve to reduce our costs, which is important and a better price across the board.

And the big improvement going forward is going to go fully 100% mobile boarding on mobile app, and that'll happen next November. They're the key main highlights. We're very hard in machine learning. We're looking at Gen AI and machine learning. The biggest wins so far have been the dynamic pricing around (inaudible) some of our fares.

It'd be useful just on the ROCS is to explain to people what happens now, for example, there's a disruption and we now allocate with 600 aircraft, how do we identify standby pilot or there's a disruption. How did the machines are now determining which pilot or which cabin crew standby crew gets called.

Yes. That is correct. So historically, when we had a disruption with the crew people who was next available on the list. Sometimes that was alphabetical, not an ideal way to do it. Now as a computer we can actually who is the best hours to cover standby will not impact their schedules in the following weeks and following months.

All the cabin crew and pilots are limited to FTLs. So you can't just let go by the next person on the name. That's now been fully automated. We're now recovering from major disruptions in hours as opposed to in days. So it's going very well and very positive.

Okay. Thanks. I should say two on Ryanair Prime has been one of the great skeptics of this thing. I thought it was a complete load of [bullshit]. But I have been persuaded as usual that I'm wrong and the IT and labs team are right. What's different about this is a member subscription service for EUR79. We promised that you have benefits multi-year or year-long benefits of travel insurance, seat selection, et cetera.

What was different in Ryanair, we said we'd give you one major seat sale each month. In the first for a cost of EUR79 in the first three months we've delivered seat sales worth over EUR140 and that's just the first three months. We have nine more of them to go.

We will deliver something of the order of over EUR300 to EUR400 in seat sales exclusively for Ryanair Prime members over the next 12 months. I think actually the seat sales will get better as obviously, we move out a peak period into the winter period. There will be more availability and deeper discounts. And those are absolutely secure and only offer to, it's not -- we're not including them in other seat sales.

And particularly as prices rise, visibility to kind of payer or design of seat sales specifically for members has been something that I certainly have been surprised at. I mean, I thought we'd be lucky if we sold 100 Ryanair Prime memberships. We're now up to [30,000] at EUR79.

I think the only mistake we made is we underpriced the Prime membership. We should probably charge about EUR99 for it. But if we got the pricing wrong for the first 12 months and for EUR79, Ryanair Prime members get about EUR300 or EUR400 in seat sales. So be it and the numbers continue to increase.

It's never going to be huge. We're probably at this point in time, going to generate about EUR2.5 million in membership fees in a company where we're making EUR1.6 billion is not huge. But I think it is very critical to our ability to target seat sales, selective seat sales, where we don't want to do a big broad brush jump to sh** out of pricing across all the geographies. I think Ryanair Prime would be something that we will continue to look at work on. And again, it's a demonstration of what Labs can do internally and will continue to do. And next question, please.

We have no further questions. I'll hand back to you Michael for closing comments.

Fantastic. Okay, that's great --

I didn't cover Alex's CapEx for him. So we just cover that off.

Sorry, apologies.

Alex, I'm assuming you missed the question at the start of the call from Jamie in relation to phasing of MAX PDPs over the next three years. So as I said to Jamie, PDPs and delivery payments are going to be relatively light over the next couple of years and then start to phase up into FY28.

So in the current year, we're looking at a CapEx figure around EUR2 billion, maybe a bit more into next year. That's maintenance CapEx aircraft and various other odds and sods. It'll dip below EUR2 billion next year and then I said to Jamie, these are all very broad brush, somewhere between EUR2.5 billion and EUR3 billion in FY28 and then of course, more ideas around engine shops, we'll bring those numbers forward.

Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time this morning. We have an extensive roadshows. We have something like 12 teams on the road around the Ireland, the UK, Europe, East and West Coast, US. We're going to do some online our teams meetings with Asian investors as well.

If you'd like meeting with us, please come to us through our broker Citi, Davy's or Goodbody, and we'd be happy to include you either in lunch or breakfast or set up a one-on-one meeting. If anybody would like to come to Dublin over the summer, before we get to the AGM in September, see the operation, you're more than welcome.

And thank you for your support over the last what has been a difficult and challenging 12 months, but I think as you can see in this morning's numbers, we're coming out of it strengthened, very cash positive, and we will be paying down debt aggressively over the next 12 months so that we'll be hopefully debt free in the next 12 months, still growing strongly.

And what I hope would be a more benign pricing and certainly more benign fuel environment as well. So I think hopefully we're set fair for a reasonably strong summer trading as long as there's no unforeseen adverse developments in the next couple of months.

So look forward to meeting you all on the roadshow this week and if not then we'll see you in Dublin sometime in the next couple of months. Thank you very much, everybody, and thank you to the moderator for your time and assistance. Bye.

Thank you. This now concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.