Good morning, and welcome to the Ryanair H1 Results Call. My name is Adam, and I'll be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions]. I will now hand over to Ryanair Group CEO, Michael O'Leary, to begin. Please go ahead. Michael O’Leary: Okay. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Ryanair H1 Results Conference Call. We're joined by all the members of the team from different parts of the globe. And we'll -- I'm going to run through quick highlights. As Neil Sorahan, our group CFO, as usual, to give you a comment on the financial highlights, and then we will maximize the time for Q&A. So, you'll see this morning, we reported H1 after-tax profits of EUR1.8 billion, 18% lower than the prior year H1 profit of EUR2.18 billion. Highlights at the half year were traffic, strong growth, 9%, to a record of EUR115 million. It would have been higher, but for the repeated Boeing delays. At the key theme, with average fares fell in the half year by 10%, but the trend is improving. We were down 15% in Q1, down 7% in Q2. We'll turn to Q3 on -- when we look at forward guidance. We have 170x B737 Gamechangers in a 608 aircraft fleet at the end of the half, and that had risen to 172x by the end of October. We have five new bases; 200 new routes opened this summer. The approved OTA partnerships now cover over 90% of all OTAs. These protect consumers from being overcharged by OTAs. We give OTAs direct feed into the ryanair.com website, but in return, they guarantee that the customer will get only to win our prices. We also get the e-mail accurate cost of e-mail and accurate customer credit cards. So, we have a direct relationship with…

Okay. Thanks, Michael. You covered it fairly well, but I'll reiterate. Pleased with how costs went in the first half of the year. The hedging that we locked in for the year is delivering good savings, but we're focusing across all of the other lines as well. And that's enabled us now to improve the guidance on the full year unit cost to broadly flat. Balance sheet is rock solid. BBB+ investment grade rating. Over 580 aircraft onward, which gives us a massive advantage over everybody else. And another reason as to why the cost advantage and the cost gap between us and everyone else is widening because we're financing ourselves through cash when everyone else is out there raising expensive leases and expensive debt. Distribution is going well. We're about 1/3 of the way through the EUR800 million buyback, as Michael said. That will hopefully get us out the summer of next year. We've now locked in some modest savings on fuel hedging into next year, which is very important in this current very volatile oil market that we're in. And then on CapEx, while we're still guiding EUR2.3 billion CapEx for this year, having spent about EUR1 billion in the first half of the year. The reality is that some of that is now likely to slip into next year when we've got greater visibility on where and when the aircraft are coming in from Boeing, we will revisit that. But it's a timing issue more so than anything else. I don't think really, Mike, have much more to add. Michael O’Leary : Okay? let's all go to Q&A, please, and spread some of the questions around the wider management team here.

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from James Hollins from BNP Paribas. James your line is open. Please go ahead.

Just one for me, actually. So, feel free to spend twice as long as you would have done on this. I think the ATC situation, I mean, clearly been discussed at length, while set in my investors. Maybe any chance you could quantify what the ATA situation was? Not just in Q1, I mean, it seems to me, from your comments, you very much saw that lasted into the summer. So, we start to think about, I guess, fiscal '26 and the not easy comps. But just as much detail as you can on -- and I think you did note it was probably a bigger impact than you had thought. So just I'd love to hear your thoughts on this maybe as well. Michael O’Leary : I'll give you an intro and Eddie will talk or maybe Jason McGinnis as well. I just missed the OTA -- impact the OTA, online travel agency dispute lasted -- it started last November. Now it's undoubtedly took 2 or 3 -- 2 points off our load factors in the third and fourth quarters last year. But it did hit us this summer, by more delay, I allowed for. I mean the one reason I was a bit specific is I didn't see any of these bookings going to our competitors. I mean there was no notable bump in load factors or yields of either easyJet or Wizz or the others. But I think we've seen a strong bump in both bookings and load, and for some of the tour offers this year to easyJet, to Wizz, et cetera. So, I think some of that traffic did migrate away from the OTAs and Ryanair on to the kind of tour operator site. I would, by the way, however -- was it the right…

Yes. It's Eddie. I mean the difficulty, James, sometimes is that when you're looking at comparisons, and when you look in prior years with OTAs, like it was impossible to who was doing what coming through the pipes because they were using other intermediaries to scrape. But what we tend now is, as Mike has pointed out there, about summer booking. There are -- OTAs don't -- are not a sort a homogenous set here, they do -- they operate in different ways. But we can definitely see the holidays ones that do package holidays are -- they book further ahead and at higher fares. And if you look at that as compared to last year, well, then if we weren't getting those bookings, then we were obviously chasing those to get a load factor. But the good thing as well is that the OTAs it's not just a question switching on the pipe here either, because some are better than others in maximizing what's coming through there. Like the ones more tech-focused have got up to speed much more quickly and others haven't. But there is no doubt that we can see the forward booking input, the summer ones. They're ones that bookings that we didn't get in January, particularly, of last year. Because when this happened broadly in late November last year, you're pretty much sold into December. So, it was really those summer bookings in January and then the effect of obviously the other factors of the sort of macro wages like interest rates and consumer sentiment and all that, that into it. But I echo as well what Michael said there, the hard decision was to do is the right thing to do. And we can see that reflected in customer issues, like some of the hardest customer issues we had. When you get to the sort of volumes that we have now, people showing up being charged check-in fees because the OTAs have just sold on this and couldn't care less at that stage about like what the problems were business upon consumers at airports. So broadly like echo, it was absolutely the right thing to do, and some are better than others. We still a little bit to go with some of the OTAs in getting and spilling back up to where they believe they were comparable with last year. Jason?

If I take Q1 to Q2, so Q1, the fares are down 15%. Now I think as much as 1/3 of that was probably the first half of Easter moving into prior year Q4. So, if you step back Easter, I'm doing back of the envelope here, I think Q1 like-for-like is down somewhere between 7% and 10%. Q2, down 7%. Q3 was down -- is down by a figure of between 0% and 5%. How much of that do you think it's OTAs and how much is just the consumer spending under pressure, and I know it's a [indiscernible], so...

Yes, for me. Yes, I don't disagree. I think it's about half and half, the interest rate inflation environment. I think last Christmas into January; the consumer was certainly weaker. I could see it in the volumes. Particularly, as we said previously, across leisure and Canaries. But lots of the markets continue to book very well, like Central and Eastern Europe was strong throughout the whole period. load factors through to summer very strong. I'm very happy to have the summer it finishing out, particularly with a very strong October midterm. Hopefully, that continues into December, but a little bit too early to tell in terms of Christmas. And I agree, like summer '25, very early days so far, but I'm very happy with how it's selling so far. All the markets selling well. And I think that is an indication in terms of the capacity environment as well. I think we are booking earlier this year than they have been on the Leisure and Canary. Michael O’Leary : Thanks, Jason. Thanks, James. Next question, please.

The next question comes from Harry Gowers from JPMorgan. Harry please go ahead. Your line is open.

I've got two questions, if I can, probably both for Neil. Just on the ex-fuel costs, I mean, I think we should start to annualize some of the pay increases put through at the back end of last year. So maybe a little bit more color on what you're seeing for ex-fuel cost per pax, specifically over winter or on a full-year basis. And then related to the first one, on the delay compensation received in the first half, maybe you're able to quantify the total, and will that continue to be a bit of a tailwind maybe for ex-fuel coin the next 12 months or so?

Okay. Harry, I'll start with the second one first. We're not going to quantify the delayed compensation. It's modest as we call out in press release. In the first half of the year, coming between ourselves and Boeing and then falls well short of putting us back in the money for the 5 million plus passengers that we've lost. Will there be more in H2? The likelihood is yes. It will depend very much on how many aircraft we get -- and then we get them. But again, it will be relatively modest in the overall scale of things. On unit costs themselves, total cost has done a very good job. Absent the Boeing compensation, we've seen some improvements on other ex-fuel cost lines in the second quarter of the year. We hope that will continue into the third and fourth, which is why we're guiding total unit costs broadly flat rather than marginally down, which we had previously. We would hope that next year with the slower growth, we won't be over-crewed, as was the case this year. We've enough crews for about 20 more aircraft. That's hopefully the case into next year. And as you rightly said, as we get out into kind of the first quarter, calendar quarter of next year, we'll start to annualize some of that productivity pay that had come through. But it's too early to put a numbers on where our unit costs are going to be next year. We haven't done the budgets yet. But I think we've done a good performance this year and pleased that we're guiding broadly flat, and locking in with the 75% fuel hedging that we have modest year-on-year fuel savings. Michael O’Leary : Thanks, Neil. Thanks, Harry.

The next question is from Stephen Furlong at Davy. Stephen your line is open.

Michael, I guess, two for me. Just where you -- just looking at the allocation of growth, Michaek, I think you called out some scrapping of aviation act of Sweden, Hungary various regional airports. So, you just might talk about that where you see that going. And yes, well, maybe I'll start and then I'll come back to another. Michael O’Leary : Okay. And again, I'll ask Eddie to join. Look, I mean, we are too light on aircraft. So, we're doing a lot more churn. We're taking aircraft away from airports and our countries who are using taxes. The two big call, I'd say, would be the French budget. Now we're small France, even though we're the number 3 airline. We're taking capacity away from France. We're reducing capacity in Germany, where the government hasn't got a clue. They're not alone raising aviation tax, but also ATC fees and security charges. And even Lufthansa Group are now reducing flights significantly, which is about 1,000 Eurowing flights in Hamburg. I'm medium term optimistic on Germany. I think they'll eventually realize that either this government hasn't got a clue or this government is going to change its policy and start lowering air travel cost in Germany. And then we had the U.K. budget last week, where they increased APD, a new labor government committed to growth, got elected on a solid mix strike growth and the first thing to do is tax, increased taxes on air travel on and off [indiscernible] and the periphery of Europe. So, we again -- and I think these plays into the capacity constraint story for us next year, early going to be to deliver of between 205 million and 210 million passengers and more churn. And I think you'll see us moving some capacity out…

Yes, Michael, I think you covered most of the geography there, except that I would say that, post-COVID, we would have probably expected airport in terms of traffic recoveries have moved earlier. But now that it has started in places like Italy, where you have taxes coming out. Or you look at just one example of Sweden whereby SAS are much smaller than they were at post-COVID -- or pre-COVID. Norwegian largely back in Norway, what does Sweden do for trapping and they figure it out, they or the taxes, we put in 30% more based aircraft. And I think that's really going to start to play out across Europe, where when these airports now realize there's nobody else coming. So, I think the sort of the cracks are beginning to come. And we see one other area where we put in a lot of capacity as well are states like Morocco, where we've got 14 or 15 based aircraft down there, close to 10 million passengers. So, I think there's a lot more to come, but I think you've covered all the geographies there, Mike. Michael O’Leary : I think one of the points I'd make in, we're looking at the U.K. market next year and we expect to take our traffic down from about 55 million to about 50 million passengers. We're not going to close routes. What we're going to do is we have enormous capacity in the U.K., but we're going to trim out frequency. And I think you're going to see us across a lot of our bigger markets trim frequency next year, switch that capacity to those countries who are scrapping aviation taxes or lowering access costs, and airports who are incentivizing growth. And I think, again, I will be -- I'm optimistic on pricing next year, apart from the fact that we'll have a pretty weak prior year comp is that we will be constraining frequencies. We will not be closing routes. We will not create vacuums that I don't think we've any competitors in Europe anyway, but we're certainly not going to be inviting anybody else into markets where we are currently operating. But trimming capacity on a lot of markets out of Ireland because of the traffic happened in the U.K. because of the insane rise in APTs, I think will be very good for our pricing next year. And again, if you come back to Neil Sorahan's point, if you look at the cost discipline in this business, the cost discipline is unmatched by any other European airline. If we get any bump in pricing next year, you're going to see an awful lot of that flow straight to the bottom. Juliusz, do you want to give us anything on the Dublin cap?

Thanks, Michael. Maybe just to say that it is accepted by all parties, that there is a serious question of EU law to be answered in relation to the cap. And this is reflected by the fact that the court case on Friday was argued, not only by Ryanair, but also by Aer Lingus and, importantly, an association of American airlines who are concerned about the risk of losing some of their slots in Dublin. So, it's hard to be definitive and hard to predict the outcome of court process, but we are fairly optimistic that the court will see sense in our arguments and grant the stay that we requested, which would result in growth being possible in Dublin next summer. Michael O’Leary : Stephen, what's your second?

No, I'll leave it at that, yes.

Next question comes from Jaime Rowbotham from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead, Jaime. Michael O’Leary : Jamie, go ahead. Okay. let's move on. We'll come back to...

Next question comes from Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America. Muneeba your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. It's Muneeba from Bank of America. So, I just wanted to follow up on the earlier question around OTAs, and you said that over 90% have been converted. What exactly does that mean? Like are they all -- kind of technology, is it fully kind of integrated at this point? And then secondly, are you -- where are discussions with the 2 remaining ones, do you think you would be able to get them on board as well? And then a question for Neil around cash return and buybacks. And in the video, you mentioned that there could be more. Like how have you thought about the amount for share buybacks, the EUR700 million and the EUR800 million that you've announced this year? And kind of any framework for thinking of the amount into next year? Thank you. Michael O’Leary : Thanks, Muneeba. Maybe I'll take the first and Neil to give you the second. So, on the OTAs, we have -- if you take the range of OTAs where making bookings on our system prior to last November, we've now signed up over 90% of them. There's essentially only two remaining OTAs who have not signed up to our deals, who are still overcharging, or inflating our airfares and overcharging consumers. So that is Booking.com, but they're very small by volume in Europe. These names are bigger by volumes in Europe, particularly in Spain. We have multiple court cases ongoing with both. We've won in -- we're booking in the States in Delaware. We've won numerous cases against the E-dreams in Europe outside of Spain. We have lost a couple of defamation actions in Spain, although generally, they've been ex-party deformation actions where we haven't been -- weren't able to make our case and we would be appealing those measures. I expect -- I think it's inevitable that both Booking and eDreams will eventually sign up to our approved OTA agreements, because I think it's been very difficult using the transparency of the web to be able to be overcharging your customers, while your competitor OTAs are selling them directly Ryanair's low fares with no kind of hidden charges or no inflation. But I think the critical thing is, so far, we protected over 90% of OTA customers, and we expect that figure will rise towards 100%. Over what period of time? I don't really know. What else, I think it's more fair on the OTAs. Unless Jason or Eddie, you want to comment on it? And then Neil, you answer the second question.

Yes. Sorry, Michael, it's Edward, like what you have is that like without naming the specific one, those that are more tech-focused companies, are much better at maximizing the APIs that we've put into them already because they've got the tech resources on the other side, and some aren't. And they're still coming up to speed, particularly because as part of the OTA agreement, they can't put on extra charges on things like ancillaries. So, they've got to be doubly sure that they are reflecting the transparency in pricing. So, there's some way to go on some of them where they maximize it. But those that are selling out summer holidays for next year in terms of packages where it's a little bit more complex on their side, where they got to put hotels and all that as part of it, they're generally getting back up to where they would have been. So, they're at different paces. But like I'm not going to give you color on how many -- like what ones are behind the curve, it's just about their tech resources on the other side. Michael O’Leary : Okay. And just before I hand on the share buyback point, Muneeba, I would draw your attention to two things. One, the Boeing delivery delays this year meant we had with less CapEx, more spare cash. Our first instinct was to return that additional cash to those -- that's spare cash to shareholders. I would highlight, however, as we've done in the results, we have two large bond repayments coming up in September '25, EUR850 million; and May '26, EUR1.2 billion. We are determined to pay down that debt. And that will be the Board's first priority, while maintaining our dividend policy going forward. Neil, on share buyback?

You're [indiscernible] where I was going to go. I mean the quantum this year was driven by the lower CapEx, but also, we didn't have any big bond repayments. We've got an opportunity just given where the share price went in the first -- sorry, in the July, August period to lean into the EUR700 million buyback. We finished that earlier than anticipated. And EUR800 million with the slowing CapEx and the delays in Boeing seems about the right number. That gets us out to the next number, but we're very focused that we do of that EUR850 million bond in September '25, and there's a EUR1.2 billion bond beyond that. We'll continue to pay back 25% of prior year PAT, and you're seeing that. We've already announced about a EUR240 million dividend in February. There will be another EUR240 million or thereabouts in September of next year. But ultimately, the profitability in the business, the CapEx opportunities, the debt repayments will dictate how much spare cash is available for the Board to return. But I think the net finished the EUR800 million buyback first and then we look at what comes after that, Muneeba. Michael O’Leary : Thanks, Neil.

The next question comes from Dudley Shanley from Goodbody. Dudley your line is open. Please go ahead.

Two questions, if I may. First of all, can you just update us on the latest you've heard on the certification of the MAX 7 and then the follow-on certification of the MAX 10? And then the second question is one of your favorite topics, Michael, which is ATC disruption. It was particularly during the summer, especially for the first wave. Can anything be done about this and can it be done without route charges going up over time? Thank you. Michael O’Leary : Great. Okay. And my just speak -- court on Friday afternoon, they remain confident that they're still working away on the certification. They still expect certification of MAX 7 in the first half of FY '25, and then that the MAX 10 certification will follow reasonably quickly thereafter in about -- sometime in the mid-second half of 2025. And I think we could take them at their word. We've had some reasonably positive feedback with EASA, who have said that they're reasonably impressed by the MAX 10 and don't see any reason why that certification won't take place. It's a good aircraft. The -- but it's driven by getting the MAX 7 Tire certified first. And I think what's important though is that work continues even while the strike is ongoing. The ATC disruptions have been in shambles this year. I think what's really depressing about ATC is so much of this is fixable. Much of the -- EUROCONTROL on figures showed that flights in Europe this summer were at 98% of their pre-COVID volumes. So, it's not that the skies are black or they're dealing with huge growth, they're actually dealing with fewer flights than they had in 2019. But they're short-staffed. And in many cases, they're short-staffed because people simply won't come to work…

The next question comes from Alex Irving from Bernstein. Alex your line is open. Please go ahead.

A couple for me, please. First of all, both on the MAX 10, what you say about the certification, but what are you accruing for? Is there a risk of unit staff cost inflation, if this gets pushed out? Second is on ancillary sales, the passenger muted growth has been pretty low in this quarter and the last quarter. What's driving this? And what initiatives are you currently working on to get these backs to growth, please? Michael O’Leary : Sorry, Alex, could you just repeat the second half? You broke up their, the tax something in the second quarter?

Ancillary sales per passenger in low growth [indiscernible] what are we working on together back to growth? Michael O’Leary : Okay. I'll give that to the second one to Neil. MAX 10, look, we're very optimistic about the MAX 10, it's why I wouldn't change one decimal point of our growth trajectory to 300 million by the mid-2030s. The big issue for us is we'll do our first 17 deliveries of MAX 10 in the first half of 2027. So, we have been there for summer '27. As long as the MAX 10 are certified in the second half of 2025 and Boeing can increase their production -- their monthly production in line with their projections, then there should be no delays to those deliveries. So, we see those aircraft will bring us, compared to the original 737 NGs, we're getting 20% more seats, burning 20% less fuel. I mean their transformation of our operating costs. We don't foresee any significant staff impact. It will make our -- if you go back to Slide 3 of our present -- or Slide 4 of our presentation, unit cost line, it will meaningfully widen our staff cost leadership, airport and handling cost leadership, everything, with the sole expected route charges, the aircraft are heavier, and our fuel leadership over every other airline in Europe. We will not obviously recruit additional pilots if there's some additional delay to those -- the deliveries in the first half of 2027. But I think you've seen us -- which did happen to us in the summer of 2024. So, I don't see any significant bump in staff costs arising from it. We will have a fifth cabin crew on board. But all of our trade deals at the moment with polots, cabin crew are done. Whether…

Yes, I'm happy to that, Michael. As you said, it was a pretty good performance in the first half of the year with a 10% increase in revenue. There's probably three big areas, Alex, as you're well aware. We're we make a lot of the money to reserve seating. That's going well. It's up year-on-year. And we'd hope that there's more we can do on optimizing that and the pricing around it. Onboard sales have improved year-on-year, and our new order to seat initiative, which we were trialing in the early summer and then now rolled out across the network, is going very, very well, with the people keen to get their order in early on board. So, I'd be hopeful more to come from that. The one area that probably disappointed me a little bit this year was the priority boarding. I think some of that might have been down to the fact that we've been under pressure with air traffic control this year to try and not take on slots. Our priority is to close the door, get the Airbus on the aircraft and fly. So, there's maybe been a little bit of gaming from some of the customers on not take the bags on board. But we're addressing that. We're working through some upside there. So, I feel there's a bit more to go on the priority. We've been quite clear. There's not going to be any major new initiatives coming, but there's lots to be done with the products that we have, just enhancing them. I'm pleased with what's happening on board. Having underperformed over the past couple of years, on board sales have turned the corner this year. And I think with order to see plenty more to go on that front. And then working with labs, we'll continue to try and work on improving the seating and working with my colleagues in the operations and the airports. We'll work on improving the priority boarding. Michael O’Leary : Eddie, anything to add on ancillaries?

No. I mean just -- it's really -- sorry, it's Eddie here. It really just stands in the interplay or whatever between those core products in terms of optimizing revenue between the trade-offs between behaviors on bags and priority boarding and bundles and issues like that. And it's just -- we'll never get to the end of this, Alex, with the lab team as the models get even more -- as the models will get more sophisticated in time. Michael O’Leary : I would just add one thought there. In a past year where the average fares -- or the average fare was down 10% per passenger, in that -- along that is due to consumer spending being under pressure. I think it's very impressive that ancillary revenues were up 10% on a 9% traffic growth. We are still able to mine the ancillary revenue line and to encourage or convert customers to the convenience of priority boarding, reserve seating, et cetera, even in a period of time when consumers spend is under pressure?

The next question comes from Jarrod Castle from UBS. Jarrod your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. You hedged 75% of your fuel for 2026, and if I look back a year ago, you had only hedged 53% that stage for March '25. So why do you, I guess, increased the hedging? Is this suggesting anything in terms of the direction you see oil going to in the next year? And then also, you've kind of highlighted a lot about ownership, those control rules and your engagement with stakeholders, I'm not asking kind of where these heads, but can you kind of just give a bit of color in terms of potential outcomes that you'd like to achieve? Michael O’Leary : Okay. I'll ask maybe, Juliusz, do you know ownership and control part on hedging, Jarrod. Look, we're always there were waiting to pound for it. We see weakness in oil prices below our current year where we can lock away a cost saving. I think we're always keen to do so. We're undoubtedly in a period where the world is more volatile. Fuel prices a week ago were under $70 a barrel, today, they've opened up over $75 a barrel. So, what we're trying to do is to have some cost certainty going forward. We're hedged this year at $79 a barrel. We're now 75% hedged at $77 a barrel. I don't think we would go over medium term higher than that. I think there's a real risk that the -- and some of the market analysts are beginning to talk now of maybe $60 a barrel. We could find ourselves a bit exposed compared to our own hedge competitors. Oil price could go lower. But then we'll pick that up with our 20%, 25% unhedged fuel. But I like the feel of where we are at the moment. I think given the…

Yes. Thanks, Michael. So, over the last few weeks, we spoke to shareholders who represent approximately 60% of the issued share capital. Those shareholders currently hold both through the ordinaries and through the ADRs. We received a lot of interest in feedback, and generally found this exercise very useful. We still have quite a few meetings in the diary for the coming weeks. And at the same time, we are in discussions with our regulators. So that's the national regulators in Ireland, Poland and Malta, and also the European Commission. I wouldn't want to talk more about potential outcomes, and I don't think it would be appropriate to give more color given that we haven't yet spoken to everyone. We have an open invitation out on our website for shareholders to express those views, and we have received interesting feedback to that channel also. So, I don't think it would be appropriate to those that we haven't spoken to yet to now go and give more color. But it has been useful, and we will give an update as soon as we can. Michael O’Leary : And I think that's an important point to be made here, Jarrod. There was some concerns at the start of this, particularly with the ADR holders, the ordinaries were trading at a discount of 29% of the ADRs when we start this consultation on the 11th of September. Over the past 6 weeks or 8 weeks, that ordinary discount has narrowed down its current as of last Friday, it was at 18%, the discount on the ordinaries compared to the ADR. That narrowing has been entirely due to the prices of the ordinaries rising by 11% over that 7-week period. In fact, the price of the ADR has increased by 1%. So, I think…

That's the best estimate at the moment, but no fixed time frame.

The next question comes from Sathish Sivakumar from Citi. Satish your line is open. Please go ahead.

I got two questions here. First on the ancillaries. On the video, it is mentioned about 35% of the passengers are ordering directly via app. So, in terms of the spend, how does it actually come past, say, consumers or customers ordering via app, are they tend to spend more versus the traditional onboard spend? Any comparison on that, like what is the spend per pax would look like? And then the second one is around the fuel cost. As we go into next year when the SAF Ryanair kicks in. Like can give you like any visibility around how much of the SAF procurement is done, at what price, so that, again, it gives us good visibility in terms of fuel cost into the next few years, yes. Michael O’Leary : On the orders, what we're seeing is a greater propensity. Now it's reasonably recent, but there's increased propensity of people making the orders, making decisions while waiting for the aircraft to board. I think it will boost the spend per pax on in-flight sales, but in-flight sales are a pretty small part of our total ancillary volumes. As Eddie has said, the large volume -- the large moving items are the priority boarding, reserved seating. And from we are, we think, and it's certainly borne out in the first couple of weeks of files, there is a notable double-digit increase in the percentage of people who will shop on board when they can do so using -- do it in advance using the order seat functionality, and we think that will continue. And I'm here with Thomas Fowler, our Director of Fuel and Sustainability. Tom, do you want to take the second part? And then I might double back and ask Eddie or Neil to comment further on the orders.

Yes. So Sathish, just on the SAF side, we're currently negotiating the prices with our field suppliers ahead of the mandate next year. So, it's very early to give an exact number on it. But we will -- we have some contracts rolling off with suppliers in January that we're negotiating at the moment. And like we're looking at somewhere SAF premiums of between 2 times and 4 times depending on the region, but we're nowhere near finalized on the year. Michael O’Leary : Thanks, Thomas. And Eddie, Neil, you want to add on the order through seat ancillary spend?

I mean as you say, it's just -- just two points I'd make is that, one is from a lab perspective. There's a low-cost solution done by Bluetooth that has changed behaviors on board and just shows me the innovation that we're getting from the lab side. Without any servers on the back of the airplane or any certification or anything like that, so it's a pretty slick solution. And then the second thing I'd say, and I'm here with Sinead and you get this anecdote back to the crew, that people are more inclined to buy more when they're ordering on the app rather than asking directly. So -- and sometimes people don't ask for like three packs of -- four cans to Heineken put a go difficulty during that when they're doing it through the app. So, it's a behavioral change. And so, people -- it looks like people actually -- we'll need more data on it, but it totally okay if they actually buy more per passenger.

Yes, I'd agree with Eddie there. I think one of the other benefits of that is that people who may have traditionally waited for the second service or third service are now willing to put in that random order between service, and you get the incremental sales that you wouldn't have off before -- and stuff like that, that's performing well also. Michael O’Leary : Yes. I'll give you an anecdote when I came back with a kid from Rome, the school midterm last week, my wife now has me ordering the stuff there, are paranoid that we won't have a panini or ham or cheese or something on board. So, we now order through app. The only downside is I was sitting in row four, people around me say, they're right down with my stuff first. So, they said, you get special service here on the in-flight. I said, no, no, you should order through the... I think it will significantly boost the conversion of people on board, but it won't be dramatic. Its impact on our overall ancillary revenues won't be dramatic because inside sales is a reasonably small percentage of that.

The next question comes from Savanthi Syth from Raymond James. Savanthi please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning. Just two quick questions on -- if you look at like the next 12 months to 18 months, just given your slower growth plan, are there any kind of major cost items that you think, from current trends, you'll see kind of greater pressure or maybe because some of the items that you're working on that might see less pressure than you're seeing today? And then just on the second question, could you talk about the steps that you need to take to migrate that last 25% of our customers to kind of the app? And are there any kind of related cost savings that you're expecting? Michael O’Leary : Okay. Eddie, you do the second half, I'll do the first half. Next for 12 months, 18 months on cost items, I mean, I think the two that we would focus on at the moment is the propensity of governments, like the French and the U.K., to look for increased taxes on air travel. I think we've seen very significant successes in getting the Irish, the Hungarians, the Swedes, the Italian regions to roll back taxes. But it's no doubt in my mind that the U.K. and French are going in the opposite direction. I would worry about route charges, although I think while we think there's some reasonably simple solutions here on route charges, like protecting overflights and making sure that they are sure to work first thing in the morning, I think it will be used by governments as a way of trying to drive up ASPs to drive up route fee or ATC fees by above inflation. Other than that, we think airports and handling labor, aircraft and ownership, and our financing income line will continue to be strong. But I think I draw no further comfort from our cost performance in the first half of this year and over the full part of this year. No other airline in Europe is going out there this year which kind of cost flat, unless they're kind of scanning the P&L by recognizing a loss of sale, leaseback profits through the P&L. I think the real upside for us in the next 12 months to 18 months with our capacity constrained and revenue or for frequency reductions in a lot of the bigger markets, is I think there's a real potential to the upside on pricing and payers. And we didn't hope we're beginning to see that as we move into Q3, where there's no doubt in my mind, where strong bookings, pricing, the price declines are moderating. A lot depends on what happens in the summer 2025, but I would be reasonably optimistic that -- and again, against prior year weak comparables, we'll see fares up in summer 2025. Eddie, do you want to talk about could we migrate to the other 25% of customers is the app?

Yes. I mean the real benefit here, and we've seen this flowing through from the app and the data travel app where we're actually able to communicate what gates you're going to, any delays that might be coming, and we're just able to manage that much, much better. And the next phase of this will be on the -- you'll be able to get -- be able to manage operational problems more easily on the day. So, for example, if you are engaging an aircraft than 8200 to 800 and there's a different seat configuration, you'll be able to virtually do that in real time without people having to talk about which seats they're in. And all those things that will drive operational efficiency and 25-minute turnarounds. And there's also the ability, when you've got everybody on this app, to get around those old legacy systems that are at airports, which have been around since old times, seasoned systems, et cetera. You'll be able to manage cues at virtual boarding areas, et cetera. So that would speed up -- like anything that speeds up getting people on aircraft, turning around on side, particularly as more larger-gauge aircraft come online, we've got to be thinking about that as well. And ultimately, like, okay, it saves paper. But there will be ultimately a cost benefit for us in getting around legacy systems, and it will be a much better experience. And it will be in place for next summer. And you just need -- you'll need a smartphone to do that. And 70% of people do it. And like we did this before with online check-in and people didn't have to go to a check at desk. It's another change, but I think people see the benefit of it. Michael O’Leary :…

Your next question comes from Duane Pfennigwerth from Evercore ISI. Duane your line is open. Please go ahead.

Just on overstaffing, have you paused pilot hiring? And maybe you could put it into context the number of pilots you plan to hire in the next year versus what you've done in the last couple of years? And then really the point of the question is do you have an estimate for the size of the cost headwind from overstaffing, which presumably should work itself out over the next year or 2? Michael O’Leary : I think so. I mean I wouldn't want to put a particular number on it, Duane. But we had geared up, we were crewed for, we have trained up and we recruited and trained pilots in the first two calendar quarters. So, we had hired more than 20 -- more pilots and cabin crew for 20 more aircraft than we actually operating through the summer of 2025. Now we could have taken a decision right there, make them return, get rid of them, we won't. We did think natural attrition would take them out. The problem actually is we have very little attrition of pilots and cabin crew. We're at an all-time record low or low turnover of pilots and cabin crew. So, we did carry the thing this summer. I think it was -- it is minimizing some into one compensation costs because we did have more standby prices done by cabin crew. But we wouldn't want to do it again. And I think that's why we're telegraphing now to the market early, we're taking down the growth next year. We're saying today 210 million. If Boeing come back with adverse news between now and Christmas once the trike -- the strike is -- I mean, safety focus committed to me. she'll come back to me once they are out of the strike…

No, I think you've covered it very well. This is the 20 aircraft worth of over-crewing was the key lag for us this year. And hopefully, we can manage that down a bit into next year. If we're growing for less aircraft in the fleet, we will accrue appropriately.

The next question comes from Ruby Colony from RBC.

Good morning. Firstly, on Slide 17 of your presentation, you've now got 10% passenger growth in full year '27 on 1% fleet growth. So how should we think about that? And then secondly, your -- I was wondering if in Q3, your book-to-date pricing was much different from your fair expectations given the slightly weird prior year comp you've got from OTA to moving Ryanair flights from their websites last November? Michael O’Leary : Thanks, [indiscernible]. I mean I can't remember off the top of my head what's on Slide 17. What number of traffic -- number have been for FY '27 there? If you're looking at it, going on only...

230 in there, which is in a point in time, it may or may not be that number, depending on the number of aircraft we guess. Michael O’Leary : I think that's reasonable. Like we would expect for FY '27, I mean, a lot of this now would be dependent on getting it. If Boeing deliver all of the 20, I mean, assurance is people on Friday. But while the they missed some of the deliveries for summer 2025, we will have all of the remaining Gamechanger, the 210 Gamechangers in the system by -- for summer '26. I think it would be reasonable that we would get close to 230 million. So, we are determined to continue to hit those traffic numbers, but they're dependent on Boeing delivery delays. So, if you take our FY '25, originally, we are 200 million, I think we'd be at about 199 million and change. FY '26 was originally 215 million, we would step that back now towards about 210 million. But I see no reason why we wouldn't then be able to get that back up towards 230 million for FY '27. Now maybe it might be 225 million, 227 million, 228 million, but we will -- as soon as we get those aircraft, we can deploy them profitably. And so, I think that's reasonable. We then will have a year or 2 -- I'm not sure about FY '28 or FY '29 because we will, at that point in time, be facing -- redelivering some of the Lauda A320s and were heavily dependent on Boeing not having any delivery delays on the first of the MAX 10s. On Q3 on the OTAs, look, it hard to separate it. I mean all we can give you is what we have at the…

The next question comes from Andrew Lobbenberg from Barclays. Andrew your line is open. Please go ahead.

You're cabin capacity to the U.K., you saved by 10%. What you're going to do with those slots? And then a second question back to OTA. So, you bought it, yes? Saying 90% of the OTAs have signed up. But eDreams is kind of large, I think. So, would it be fair to say that, that represented more than 10% of your passengers back from last year? So actually, you're missing a bit more than the 10%, you suggest that. What is the pathway forward for you to kiss and make up with eDreams? Michael O’Leary : Okay. Thanks, Andrew. We -- a lot of the -- as I said, we try to make the point that the -- a lot of the airports in the U.K., if we cut about 5 million passengers out of the U.K. next year, it will be done on frequency. We won't move the aircraft. We won't vacate overnight aircraft in place. So most of our U.K. airports are not slot restricted, but we certainly wouldn't reduce overnight aircraft at the big airport, [indiscernible], Manchester, Bristol -- I'm trying to think, Eddie, off the top of my head, is there any other that are slot controlled. I don't think so. Edinburgh, Glasgow, over to that. But we will take kind of some -- a lot of the capacity we operate with those airports is on aircraft that are based elsewhere in the Ireland and or in Europe, flying in and out of those airports. And we will divert some of those frequencies away from the U.K., so the lower-cost destinations like Italy, regional Italy, Sweden, Central Eastern Europe, where we're seeing incentives are -- increasing incentives. So, we don't think and we wouldn't compromise slot for any of the couple of U.K. airports for…

The next question is from Gerald Khoo from Panmure Liberum.

One if I can. Firstly, on the tax rate which seemed a bit high at 14% in Q2, obviously above by the stand point. I was just wondering why that wasn't -- what would be a sensible assumption for the full year? And secondly, on your revised aircraft delivery schedule, could you clarify what you've actually assumed in terms of timing of the resolution of the strike at Boeing, please? Michael O’Leary : Okay. Maybe Neil or maybe Tracey McCann might add -- handle the tax, please, and then I'll take the Boeing delivery schedule.

Yes, I'm happy to jump in there on the tax, Gerald. As you're probably aware, we make most of our profit in the first half of the year and in jurisdictions where tax rates are slightly higher, whereas we tend to make less money in the second half of the year. So, you'll see the tax rate by rate down as losses to some of the market in H2. I think a reasonable assumption for the full year would be somewhere close between 10% and 11% tax for the full year. Michael O’Leary : Thanks, Neil. And on the aircraft delivery schedule, we've put there an updated aircraft delivery schedule more flowing. So, we can give you a sense of where we think we are in terms of the additional growing delivery delays and why that's causing us to step back our traffic forecast for FY '25, but also for FY '26. We've made no assumptions on the settlement of the strike. The reason where -- the strikes, there's a ballot today on the 38% pay increase. We have no idea whether it will get settled or not. Boeing themselves I think it's about 50-50. I suspect the labor may well turn it down if they're at per 8%. I mean my view is these guys will hang out for 40%, but what do I know. I mean all we're saying there is that's what our current forecast will be for FY '26. To get to 210 million passes, we need to get -- for the 9 delayed Q4 aircraft in by the end of April or May and say we get those in the first quarter. And then the critical issue is how many of the 29 additional aircraft do we get by the end of June. We're not…

Our last question comes from Conor Dwyer from Morgan Stanley. Conor your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. First question is just on the buyback. You talked about the slowdown being influenced by the payback of bond next year, lower CapEx this year, accelerating it. I'm wondering if there's any influence by the fact that you're also expecting potential rule changes on the ownership? And if basically would make a bit more sense to hold back some of the cash to do more of the buyback on the ordinary. And the second question, on the prerecorded call, Neil, you spoke about a willingness to explore other financing options if they become more attractive than cash. Just wondering if that's only to really kind of change the capital structure or if you also might consider extra leasing to bump up the growth of the overall business over the next few years? Michael O’Leary : Okay. Thanks. I'll take the first again, and get Neil to take the second. On the buybacks, I don't think the review of the ownership in -- would have any difference. The buybacks are not driven by the pricing of -- the discount on the ordinaries are on the ADRs. I mean we have -- the current buyback we skewed 70-30 towards the ADRs anyway. But I think it's instructive that since we began this consultation process with the shareholders, the discount on the ordinaries has eroded from 29% to 18%. And almost all of that has come as a result of the cost of the -- or the pricing on the ordinaries rising even at a time when we are buying more ADRs than ordinaries. So, I don't think it will make any significant difference. Where if the Board wish to change either the ownership or the control rules in conjunction with our regulators, we will still be facing, I think, material…

The financing options available to us. Conor, we've always been opportunistic in what we do. The reality is in relation to leasing, we've got a higher investment grade rating than any of the lessors out there. So, we can raise money cheaper than the lessors. But they would have to have a compelling reason for why we would go towards that financing. I can't see what capacity constraint for some years at the lessors are going to reduce what are now sky-high leasing rates, which thankfully we're not paying, but our competitors are. But if the bond market, for example, was to become cheaper than financing ourselves out of cash to refinance bonds and so forth, we might look at it. Potentially in a few years' time when we're trying to take some of the residual risk from the NGs off the balance sheet, we might look at lessors. But I think if the pricing remains where it's at, that wouldn't be my first, second or third port of call when it comes to looking at alternatives to our current cash. Michael O’Leary : And again, I think you're looking forward to next year, nothing fills me more -- full of optimism more than the aircraft lessors making record profits on lease extensions and new aircraft leases to our competitor airlines. They're driving up the cost of operations of our competitors across Europe at a time when we're taking -- buying new aircraft and using our balance sheet, and those aircraft are carrying 4% more passengers, with more 16%. When we get to the MAX 10, 20% more -- at 20% less fuel. So, I'm very optimistic going forward that the unit cost gap between us and our competitors will continue to widen. And our competition in Europe are going to be under significant pressure. If you look at Lufthansa's results last week, Air France this week, all talking about EBIT, because there isn't any earnings there. These guys in a constrained capacity market are going to drive up airfare for the next couple of years. And I think that will give us a lot of headroom for -- to see modest growth in airfares, much rate will flow through to Ryanair's bottom line. Any other questions or that's the end of it? No? Okay.

That concludes the Q&A session. I'll hand back to you. Michael O’Leary : Thank you very much, everybody. I think we've run 1.5 hours on questions, Q&A. We have an extensive road show in place. I'm -- me and a number of the team are over here in the U.S. And Neil is in the U.K. heading for the U.S. Eddie, and there's other team members who will be covering investor meets in Ireland, in the U.K. and Europe. If anybody wants to meeting with us, please can you contact a Davy's Goodbody, our [indiscernible], we'd be very happy to have a meeting with any investors. And may I conclude by saying, look, I think we've had a fraught summer on pricing. We were surprised by the downturn in pricing after 2 years of very strong pricing. I think the real message today take away from this call though, if you look at the unit cost performance, the unit cost performance is absolutely bang on. We are doing a stellar job on containing costs. We've been surprised by the weakness in pricing this year. But I think there's -- it's reasonable to expect that pricing will be -- will move modestly upwards for the next summer in a heavily constrained marketplace as long as there's no geopolitical events that disrupt air travel. And I would think the Ryanair balance sheet, concerning Ryanair's P&L is poised to benefit from any improvement on -- in pricing or alternative pricing next year, particularly as we will move into FY '26 with a very weak prior year comp. And with that matter, thank very much. I look forward to seeing you all at some stage over the next week. And Neil and Tracey -- or Neil and Jason is going out to the Baird Industrial Conference in Chicago next week as well. So, if we don't get you this week and any one meeting with Neil or Jason, they'll be in Chicago next week. Thanks, everybody. So, hope to see you soon. Thanks. Bye.

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