Operator
Operator
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Ryanair Holdings plc FY '25 Earnings Release. My name is Nadia, and I will 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. Michael O’Leary: Okay. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Ryanair full year results conference call. We have all of the management on various calls, as I'm now trying to 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. We are still -- 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 canceled 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 kind of 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 are 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 2, 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 Ortberg and Stephanie Pope in Seattle doing a terrific job, the aircraft, I hope fuselage 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 2 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 takes control of Alitalia in Italy, we're seeing strong pricing -- price upward pricing movement in Alitalia. We would expect the same to take place in Portugal when 1 of the major buys TAP. And as the largest airline in Italy, in 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 ordinary 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 1 or 2 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 9 years, has an enormous contribution to the success of Ryanair. In fact, without himself and Mike and Corley, 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 we’ll 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 recover to 215 million in FY '27. Following a year of flat unit costs, we expect very modest unit cost inflation in FY '26 as the delivery of more gamechangers, strong get fuel hedging and cost control across the group helps to offset most of what are very egregious increased route and 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, like 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 and 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 out 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 FY '26. We made 2 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 drive -- with draw to your attention, though, is the opportunity in terms of lower-cost oil going forward. We had already hedged about 85% of our FY '26 fuel at $76 a barrel. Last year, we were hedged at $79 a barrel. So we secured a 4% saving. Following the trunk tariff announcement or independent, we saw a material fall in oil prices. which we will pick up that at the moment. And Friday,[indiscernible] 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 FY '27. We've hedged 40% of next summer's oil at $66 a barrel, a 13% saving compared to this year. In -- on a cost or a cost base of $5 billion is our annual oil price. So we think there's a material possibility of -- we think these are a 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 the more significant development was the fact that the OPEC+ producers abandon their production cuts, 3 weeks before he visited the Middle East. And I think the -- we expect the U.S. 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, as we move forward for the remainder of FY '26, where we have weaker FY '25 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.