Neil Sorahan
Management
Good morning. Michael O’Leary: We'll open as usual with some opening remarks from me and then I'm going to ask Neil to take you through the slide presentation and then we'll mix and match during a Q&A session. So this morning Ryanair reported a Q1 profit after tax of €170 million as traffic recovered strongly post-COVID but at lower fares. That €170 million PAT is before exceptionals, but is well below the €223 million PAT we reported in the Q1 of FY 2020, which was the last year pre-COVID just to put in some context. Highlights of the quarter. During Q1, traffic recovered very strongly to 45.5 million passengers from 8.1 million in the previous year. That recovery would have been stronger but for the significant damage that April and Easter suffered both bookings and fares as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the end of February. Prior to this summer peak, we've taken delivery of 73 737-8200 Gamechangers. That Summer 22 capacity is on sale at about 115% of Summer 2019, in other words the pre-COVID capacity. We've also this morning announced that our hedging for FY 2024, so next year has been increased to 30%. Currently in the current year, we're hedged at 80%. Net debt has significantly reduced to just €400 million at the end of the quarter, that's down from €1.4 billion on 31st of March, thanks to very strong and positive cash flows from bookings and trading. And we're also pleased this morning to announce that the majority of the 29 A320 leases and our subsidiary Lauda Europe have been extended by up to four years to now to 2028 at advantageous rates. Just a couple of quick themes, this summer we're very proud to be operating 73 of the new Boeing 737 Gamechanger aircraft. These aircrafts carry 4% more passengers, but they burn 16% less fuel and also reduce our noise emissions by up to 40%. We're continuing to invest in our partnership with Trinity College Dublin Sustainable Aviation Research Center. And in April, we're very pleased to have announced a partnership with Neste to power up to one-third of all of our flights to and from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam with a 40% SAF blend. In April, Sustainalytics ranked Ryanair as the Number One airline in Europe, the Number Two globally for our ESG performance. Following the beginning of the post-COVID recovery in air travel this spring, Ryanair moved quickly with our trade unions to negotiate accelerated pay restoration agreements, so that we could restore previously agreed pay cuts with all of our people as soon as our business returns to pre-COVID levels. To date, I'm pleased to say that accelerated pay restoration agreements have been agreed with unions representing over 80% of our pilots and more than 70% of our cabin crew. And we are -- significant progress is being made in the closeout the remainder of those pay restoration agreements. The sense or the -- our decision though to work with the unions and to agree pay cuts to minimize job losses during COVID, during which we kept our pilots and cabin crew current and employed, and those decisions have been vindicated in recent months, as many European airlines, airports, and other third-party providers have struggled to restore jobs that were cut during the pandemic. Ryanair seems to be unusual among the major EU airlines this summer, and suffice we are fully crewed for both pilots, cabin crew, engineers and handling staff at those airports where we do our own handling, despite operating at 115% of our pre-COVID capacity. And I think that reflects very well both on the team at Ryanair and on the decisions, the difficult decisions we took during the COVID pandemic. Over the past two years, numerous airlines went bankrupt and many legacy airlines including Alitalia, TAP, SAS, and LOT only survived by significantly reducing their fleets and their passenger capacity despite receiving multibillion euro state aid packages. These structural capacity reductions have created enormous growth opportunities for Ryanair in Summer 2022 to deploy our new fuel efficient 737 Gamechangers. With Boeing scheduled to deliver over 50 more of these Gamechangers ahead of Summer 2023, we continue to recruit and train substantial numbers of pilots, cabin crew, and engineers. Already approximately 50% of our Summer 2023 capacity is now on sale and we recently announced new basis and new growth in Belfast International for Summer 2023, a fourth based aircraft in Venice in for winter of 2022 and the commencement of flights from Bologna-Forli airport in winter 2022. Thanks to our 210 737 order book and available fleet capacity, the Ryanair Group expects to grow from 149 million passengers pre-COVID to 200 -- over 225 million passengers by FY 2026. And in so doing, we will capture very significant market shares in most of our major markets across Europe. Just to touch briefly on outlook, our outlook remains cautious. We remain hopeful and optimistic that the high rate of vaccinations in Europe means that the airline and tourism industry will fully recover and put COVID behind us through the remainder of 2022. But we cannot ignore or eliminate the risk that there may be new COVID variants in the autumn of this year. And our experience with Omicron last November, which really devastated our Christmas traffic and yields and the Ukraine invasion at the end of February which devastated our April bookings and yields, shows just how fragile the air travel remains -- market remains in Europe. While our recovery and certainly Ryanair’s recovery during the summer of 2022 has been strong, we believe that recovery remains fragile and hugely dependent on there being no adverse or unexpected developments, either from Ukraine or COVID for the remainder of FY 2023. If we don't have negative developments, we'll perform very strongly. But if there are negative developments, we'll have to act appropriately. There are clear signs as we had barely -- as we've previously guided of a huge pent-up demand for air travel particularly for short haul in Europe through the summer of 2022. However, while bookings are recovering strongly, they still remain closer in than was the norm pre-COVID. At this stage, while we have limited visibility into the second half of Q2, we still have almost zero visibility into the second half of this year, the two winter quarters which are typically loss making. At this time, though, I'm pleased to say that Q2 average fares are tracking ahead of peak core Summer 2019, the pre-COVID period by a low double-digit percentage that's moved up from a high single-digit percentage in Q1, Ryanair plans to -- at the time of the Q or at the time of the full year results announcement. At this time Q2 -- sorry, Ryanair plans to grow our FY 2023 scheduled traffic to about 165 million passengers, that's up 11% on FY 2020, the pre-COVID figures, it would have been higher but for the damage that was inflicted on April and Easter by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite being one of the best hedge airlines in Europe, higher oil prices will lead to increased costs from the 20% of our unhedged fuel for the remainder of FY 2023, that's a much stronger fuel hedge position than any other airline. But given this later booking profile, the lack of visibility in the second half of the year, volatility in oil prices for the 20% that's unhedged and the potential risk for COVID -- adverse COVID and Ukraine developments, it's still too soon to provide meaningful FY 2023 profit after tax guidance at this time. We hope to be in a better position to do so at the half year results in November but it is our experience again with Omicron last November and Ukraine in February shows any such guidance will be subjected to a very rapid changes from unexpected events which are well beyond our control during what remains a very strong but a very fragile recovery. Neil, do you want to take us through the Q&A -- the slide presentation.