Steve Heapy Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm Steve Heapy, Chief Executive Officer of Jet2 plc, and I'm pleased to be taking you through our performance for the year ended 31st of March 2026, together with the growth strategy that gives us confidence for the years ahead. I'm joined today by Gary Brown, our Chief Financial Officer, who will obviously talk you through the numbers. Before that, I will start with the key highlights and the strategic context. Gary will take you through the financial results in more detail, and I'll return to cover our growth plans, current trading, and outlook before we open the line for questions. In simple terms, this has been another strong year for Jet2. We have grown passenger numbers, delivered record revenue, maintained a robust operating performance despite clear cost headwinds, and continued to return meaningful capital to shareholders. Let me begin with the headline performance. We delivered another year of record passenger numbers and record revenue. Operating profit remained resilient even after absorbing Gatwick startup investment costs and wider industry cost pressures, including incremental staff premiums and increases in employment tax. The balance sheet remains a real pillar of strength for the business. We ended the year March 2026 with over GBP 2 billion of net cash, giving us the flexibility to invest for growth, protect the customer proposition, and deliver attractive shareholder value. During the year, we flew over 20 million passengers. That's 5% more than last year, with most of that growth delivered by our newer bases at London Luton and Bournemouth. We also returned GBP 363 million to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends, more than ever before. Today, we have launched a further GBP 250 million share buyback program, which we plan to complete by the 31st of May 2027. That combination of growth, resilience, cash generation, and disciplined capital allocation is of paramount importance. It shows that Jet2 is not just growing for the sake of growth. We are growing in a way that is controlled, customer-led, and focused on long-term shareholder value. I'll now hand over to Gary Brown, who will take you through the financial results. I'll come back and talk about the strategy and outlook. Gary Brown Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everyone. I'm Gary Brown. I'm Group CFO at Jet2, and I'm pleased to present our financial results for the year ended 31st of March 2026. Starting with our key performance indicators on slide five. Overall, the group delivered a strong revenue and resilient operating profit performance this year with our KPIs illustrating how our flexible, fully integrated operating model is capable of adapting to changing consumer trends. The KPIs also demonstrate our clear focus on optimizing profitability through a combination of volume, pricing, and product mix. We've kept our focus on growing the business this year, particularly as we expand further into the south of England. Across all our U.K. bases, we added 8% more seat capacity with our new bases at Bournemouth and Luton making up approximately half of that increase. Importantly, more people are choosing Jet2 than ever before, with over 1 million additional passengers this year. Demand for our flight-only product was strong again, with growth of 15% to 7.64 million passengers, demonstrating the strength and adaptability of our business model, particularly in a market where customers were booking closer to departure and seeking those last-minute deals. We've continually stressed that both our products are of vital importance, and it's great to see customers recognizing the clear value that our flight-only offering brings: friendly flight times, an industry leader for not canceling flights, and with the added benefit of our Red Team of customer helpers providing that outstanding customer-first service. That said, we know customers still appreciate the convenience and flexibility offered by our package holiday product as customer volumes grew by 1% to a record 6.62 million. Package holiday pricing remained resilient, up 3%, of which around 1% came from more customers choosing four and five-star hotels than last year, alongside the partial recovery of supplier-led cost inflation. Flight-only net ticket yield was down 7% as we chose to invest in price by reallocating marketing monies to support load factor and optimize overall profitability. Pleasingly, we also generated 4% more non-ticket revenue per passenger, primarily driven by higher in-flight spend per passenger following the successful launch of a refreshed product range together with continued strong onboard stock availability, both supported by our retail operations center. Turning to our financial performance on slide six. We delivered record revenue this year, up 4.3%, driven by the growth in passenger numbers, the combined yields, and some mix, with package holidays representing approximately 80% of the overall revenue. Our underlying cost base, excluding London Gatwick startup investment, was well controlled and was up 4.5% and only slightly ahead of revenue growth. The main drivers of this growth were hotel accommodation, which makes up 45% of our cost base, was up just over 6.5%, reflecting supply-led inflation and more customers choosing four and five-star hotels. Landing, handling, and third-party navigation costs, which are around 8.5% of our cost base, increased by 8.6%. The growth above flying activity reflected a 4% increase in rates across airport charges, handling fees, and Eurocontrol flying fees. Offsetting this, fuel costs, which represent approximately 10% of our cost base, reduced by just over 1%, benefiting from lower fuel spot rates and unit cost efficiencies from our growing A321neo fleet. These benefits enabled us to mitigate an incremental GBP 32 million of SAF premiums incurred this year, resulting from increased U.K. and EU SAF mandates. In addition, marketing costs fell by 9% as we chose to invest marketing monies into pricing to attract later bookings in a competitive marketplace. This helped support our average load factor and optimize our overall profitability. We also absorbed an additional GBP 18 million of costs from changes to the National Living Wage and employer national insurance. In addition to our underlying cost base, we incurred GBP 11 million of start-up investment costs ahead of the operational launch of our new base at Gatwick in late March. After these factors, pleasingly, our operating profit margin remained resilient at 5.9%, whilst our basic earnings per share were stable at GBP 211.2. Our return on capital employed remained healthy at 14.4%, despite continuing to invest in growing our A321neo fleet, which are obviously long-term cash-generating assets. Moving to slide seven and our cash generation. As you can see, we continue to deliver significant operating and free cash flows, giving us the capacity to invest in value-accretive opportunities as appropriate. Our 2026 operating cash flow of GBP 900 million was slightly lower than the prior year as customers delayed their bookings in response to the conflict in the Middle East. We spent GBP 391 million on capital expenditure as we invested in our A321neo fleet and also completed construction of our second maintenance hangar at Manchester Airport last summer, which has increased our overall in-house maintenance capacity by some 50%. As a result, our free cash flow was GBP 495 million, meaning we have generated GBP 2.6 billion of free cash flow since the end of the COVID pandemic, which gives us confidence in our ability to support our strategic capital allocation priorities moving forward. Our Jolco financing increased by GBP 238 million to support the deliveries of our A321neo fleet, whilst borrowing repayments were lower this year at GBP 248 million, driven by the one-off early repayment of the convertible bond last year. Importantly, the cash generation also supported shareholder returns, with 22.1 million shares repurchased during the year through two share buyback programs, the second of which completed in early May 2026. Looking to our balance sheet on slide eight, we have one of the most robust balance sheets in the sector, with access to ample liquidity, which we believe is important in a fast-moving, capital-intensive industry such as ours. We took delivery of 10 A321neo aircraft this year, six from our long-term aircraft order with Airbus and four on 12-year operating leases to fill near-term gaps in the delivery profile. Our cost of debt remains low, helped by our decision to repay four of our Boeing aircraft loans early, these loans being more expensive than the financing currently available to us in the Jolco market. We also returned GBP 363 million to shareholders this year, primarily through the two share buyback programs plus dividends. Overall, we remain in a strong cash position with total cash up 4% year-over-year, of which GBP 1.2 billion is our own cash, excluding customer advances, plus our GBP 500 million revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn. We also took the opportunity to extend this facility by a year to October 2030, with an option to extend for a further year if appropriate. Finally, onto our medium-term targets on slide nine. We first talked through these principles at our interim results last November. Whilst we don't expect to meet these targets overnight, we believe they provide a very good indication of how our capital allocation is expected to evolve over the coming years. We believe a target of 2x net debt to EBITDA on an own cash basis strikes the right balance between adequately protecting the business and using a sensible level of leverage to support returns. We currently have plenty of headroom against that target, but as we finance a higher proportion of our new aircraft deliveries, we anticipate moving to 2x over the next three to five years. We also believe holding own cash of between GBP 600 million and GBP 700 million at our year end, which is the low point in the cash cycle, together with an undrawn revolving credit facility of GBP 500 million, gives us the right level of headroom to deal with any unexpected events. As at today, we don't expect this target to increase as the business grows and believe it remains the right level for us. We are firmly committed to our Airbus delivery pipeline with a further 124 aircraft scheduled for delivery by 2035. On that basis, our capital expenditure will average towards GBP 900 million over the next four years. We intend to fund our A321neo deliveries mainly through Jolco financing, particularly in the short to medium-term, as we look to take advantage of the competitive rates currently available. Across the full order, we plan to finance approximately 50% of the deliveries very much in line with our business philosophy of owning a healthy proportion of these valuable cash-generating capital assets, which we intend to fly through to end of life. Our capital allocation principles remain consistent: capital control to invest in and maximize the returns of the existing business in an ever-changing consumer landscape, keeping our balance sheet in good shape, and shareholder returns subject to ongoing satisfactory financial performance. As Steve highlighted earlier, in total, we returned GBP 363 million to shareholders this year, representing approximately 15% of the current market capitalization. In part, this has helped support basic EPS growth of over 120% since 2019, together with an increase in profit after tax of some 190% over the same period. As you've heard, we've announced a new share buyback program today, which will see us return a further GBP 250 million to shareholders by the end of May 2027, in addition to our usual dividend payments—a further sign of our confidence in the medium-term outlook and underlining our disciplined approach to capital allocation. I'll now hand back to Steve, who will take you through the remainder of the presentation. Steve Heapy Thank you, Gary. I'll now pick up with our growth strategy and the outlook. Our long-term strategy remains unchanged and very clear: to be the U.K.'s leading and best leisure travel business. That's not just a strap line, it guides how we make decisions every day. We focus on customer-driven flight schedules to popular leisure destinations across the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands, and European leisure cities. We retain control of our seat supply, we build long-term hotel partnerships, and we stay absolutely focused on our customer-first approach. That proposition continues to resonate strongly with customers. We are a Which? recommended provider in seven categories. Our Net Promoter Scores are in the mid-60%, and our customer satisfaction remains very high at 92%. Additionally, our flight cancellation rate is industry-leading at just 0.06%. We are also continuing to invest for sustainable long-term growth. We will have 31 Airbus A321neo aircraft in the fleet for summer 2026. Our second engineering hangar at Manchester is now fully operational, increasing our in-house maintenance capacity by 50%. Of course, none of this happens without our colleagues. They remain central to everything we do. We continue to attract, develop, and retain talented people who will deliver our award-winning customer service day in, day out, with 78% of colleagues saying they are proud to work for Jet2. In order to deliver that strategy, we focus on four key levers which underpin our profitable multi-year growth agenda. First, fleet investment. We have committed orders for 155 Airbus A321neo aircraft through to 2035. That gives us certainty of supply, meaningful unit cost efficiencies, and a strong platform for responsible, profitable growth. Secondly, accelerating growth in the south of England. We have launched three new bases in the last 18 months and a significant opportunity to build our presence in a market where Jet2 remains under-penetrated compared with our more mature bases. We continue investing to deepen brand awareness and understanding to capture this fantastic opportunity. Third, continuing to do what we do best, delivering VIP customer service that drives loyalty, retention, and advocacy, and it helps bring new customers to the Jet2 brand. Fourth, enhancing our marketing capability through data and technology. Working with Adobe, we are building a more advanced marketing platform to create a much more personalized booking experience and improve efficiency through a lower cost of acquisition. All of these levers are supported by our strong liquidity position and our disciplined approach to capital allocation. The Airbus A321neo aircraft is central to our growth and cost efficiencies plan. By securing these aircraft during the COVID period, we benefited from highly attractive commercial terms ahead of the inflationary environment that followed. For summer 2026, we will operate 31 A321neo aircraft out of a total fleet of 139 aircraft, with the fleet expected to grow to around 162 aircraft by 2032, supported by flexibility around the retirement of our Boeing 737-800s. This means that the fleet size could be higher or lower than this number, depending on the economic environment, et cetera.
This aircraft brings very clear benefits: 232 seats, which is 23% more seats than the Boeing 737-800, 20% more fuel efficient on a per seat basis, and around 50% quieter, which makes it a very attractive aircraft. That translates into an overall cost saving of around GBP 10 per seat versus the Boeing 737-800. By 2030, we expect the neo fleet to deliver annual cost efficiencies of around GBP 190 million, helping offset the incremental cost headwinds from U.K. and EU SAF mandates, rising carbon costs, and inefficient U.K. and European airspace management. Turning now to Gatwick and the south of England. Our launch at Gatwick is a major strategic milestone. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to accelerate our growth and establish a strong foothold in the south of England. Gatwick is the U.K.'s leading departure airport for beach holidays and city leisure breaks, and is a perfect fit for Jet2 and our customer base. It gives us access to a catchment of more than 50 million people within 60 minutes by road or rail. For summer 2026, we currently have six aircraft in operation at Gatwick, operating 79 flights a week to 29 popular leisure destinations across Europe, with a further aircraft planned for summer 2027. The early performance has been pleasing. Forward bookings show a higher package holiday mix than we initially expected, and the average load factor is in line with our other London bases, despite going on sale later in the booking cycle. More broadly, we believe there is a compelling opportunity to increase our market share across the south of England through our bases at Bournemouth, Bristol, Luton, Stansted, and Gatwick. Our household penetration in this region is currently less than 5%, compared with over 13% across our established bases in the Midlands, the north of England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The U.K. population is split broadly 50/50 between these two areas. That shows the scale of the opportunity. We know the model works. We've built a market-leading position in our established bases by developing and protecting the brand, delivering outstanding customer service, and creating loyal customers who choose to travel with us year after year. Our task now is to replicate that success in the south. Brand awareness in the south of England is also significantly below that of our established markets. We want to change this with targeted, personalized customer activity, greater media weighting, and a disciplined regional focus. By continuing to grow our presence in the south of England while maintaining the strength of our established base network, we see a clear opportunity to further enhance Jet2's position as the U.K.'s leading leisure travel brand. Customer choice is another important part of our advantage. Our fully integrated model allows us to offer customers exceptional choice and the flexibility to create the holiday that is right for them. We offer an extensive network of flights and hotels across Europe and North Africa, serving popular beach destinations and city leisure breaks. We continue to broaden the program with destinations and holiday experiences that reflect changing customer preferences and emerging travel trends. North Africa is a good example. Our programs in Egypt and Tunisia build on the success of Morocco and give customers access to an even wider range of high-quality holiday destinations at great value for money. Across the business, our product range now includes over 5,500 two to five-star hotels and more than 3,750 villas across 850 resorts. We are also expanding experiential travel through our partnership with Musement, and our new Eurocamp partnership will add 66 quality holiday parks across France, Italy, Croatia, and Spain. The market backdrop also remains supportive. Around a third of surveyed holidaymakers expect to take more overseas holidays over the next 12 months, and that interest in package holidays remains ahead of the levels seen at the end of 2025. Independent analysis from Mintel supports this positive outlook, showing growing interest in beach holidays alongside an increase in the number of package holidays taken by U.K. residents in recent years. Jet2 is exceptionally well-placed to benefit from those trends. We have one of the strongest and most trusted brands in U.K. leisure travel, with the highest brand awareness in the sector. That helps keep us front of mind when customers are planning their well-earned getaways. The real differentiator is service. We continue to lead the industry on customer satisfaction, loyalty, and repeat bookings because our customer service is consistent from start to finish: from the moment customers book, through the airport with support from our Red Team, on board with our cabin crew, and in resort with our Red Team of customer helpers. Customers tell us that they value that. Satisfaction scores are over 90%. Repeat booking rates are very strong at 61% for Jet2holidays and 55% for Jet2.com. Our industry-leading Net Promoter Score of 65% is 45 points higher than the European airline average. That gives us confidence in the strength of our brands, our competitive position, and our ability to deliver sustainable long-term growth. Great customer service breeds loyalty. We are focused on driving customer loyalty, building consumer advocacy, and reinforcing our position as the first choice of company for holiday customers across the U.K. 43% of our direct bookings came from customers who have traveled with us more than six times, and these bookings have increased at a 23% compound annual growth rate over the last three years. We build that loyalty through relevant communication, tailored content, and above all else, the consistent delivery of VIP customer service. As customers come back more often, we deepen those relationships with exclusive benefits and recognition, helping to convert first-time bookers into loyal customers who choose us first and recommend us to others. That matters commercially because loyal customers have a higher lifetime value, book more frequently, and reduce acquisition costs. We're also using data and technology to deepen those customer relationships. Data and technology will help us go further. Our marketing customer database now stands at 11.2 million customers, and over half have previously booked or traveled with us in the last 25 months. Our myJet2 members have increased by 45% over the past 12 months to more than 9 million. Every additional recognized and permissioned member gives us deeper customer insights and a richer data asset, enabling improved personalization, stronger loyalty, and better repeat booking performance. Working with Adobe, we are using that data to deliver more personalized marketing, improve efficiency, and strengthen customer engagement. Over time, that creates further opportunities in media and partnerships while helping us attract and retain customers more efficiently. Turning to current trading. Bookings to date for summer 2026 are encouraging. As you would expect, the conflict in the Middle East has influenced customer booking behavior, with some customers choosing to book even closer to departure than usual or choosing a destination different from their originally intended destination. However, demand for our products remains resilient. The combined booked average load factor for the first four months of the year is currently 1.2 percentage points ahead of the prior year. As we said in our April trading update, we are continuing to invest in load factor through attractive pricing to take advantage of strong late booking momentum. Gatwick is also performing well. The package holiday mix is stronger than expected, and we now plan to operate seven aircraft at the base in summer 2027 as we continue to execute our strategic growth plans in the south of England. Importantly, we also have a high degree of cost certainty, having hedged 90% of our full year jet fuel requirements at an average price of $743 per ton, along with 85% of our FX requirements. Stepping back, Jet2 is a business with strong fundamentals, a clearly differentiated business model, a compelling product proposition, strong customer loyalty, and a brand built on trusted, award-winning VIP customer-first service. As usual, we will issue a further update on peak summer trading at our AGM, which this year will be held in Leeds on the 3rd of September. Let me close by bringing this together. We remain confident in Jet2's ability to deliver sustained profitable growth through our differentiated, fully integrated business model. We have the right fleet to support our long-term growth plans with the A321neo unlocking significant cost efficiencies and giving us a strong platform for growth. We have a clear opportunity to expand in the under-penetrated south of England, including through Gatwick, where early performance is encouraging. We have a customer proposition that is trusted, differentiated, and consistently well-rated by customers, underpinned by our award-winning VIP service. We are building deeper customer relationships through loyalty, data, and technology, which should support better retention, more efficient marketing, and a higher lifetime value. We have a strong balance sheet that allows us to invest in strategic opportunities whilst continuing to return capital to shareholders. That is why we believe Jet2 has a clear competitive advantage and a strong platform for long-term, sustainable, and profitable growth. Thank you for listening. Gary and I will now be pleased to take your questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Harry Gowers of JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Harry Gowers Morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the questions. I've got a couple of questions. The first one, clearly there's been some better bookings momentum post the Middle East, and some of those volume gaps look like they're closing. I wanted to know, how aggressively are you having to stimulate on price in the late market or the close-in bookings to get the volumes through? Any numbers you could potentially give just on the pricing very close to departure. Second question, maybe one for Gary, but what do we expect for supplier-led cost inflation across the March 2027 year? How much of that do you think can be passed on or offset via higher package pricing? Thanks a lot. Gary Brown Hiya, Harry. It's Gary here. In terms of the pricing at the moment, holidays pricing is holding up reasonably well. It's in positive territory. As you might expect, bearing in mind it is a late market, flight-only tends to be more price sensitive, and we've made the point on a number of occasions, we're investing in load factor. Pricing on the flight-only is mid-single digits down year-over-year at this moment in time. In terms of the cost inflation running through the P&L in 2027, it's just over 3%, but you've also got a bit of a headwind around FX as well, so you're closer to 3.6%, 3.7%. We always look to pass on cost inflation, but it's very much supply and demand. We'll do what we can, but I can't give you any clear view at this stage other than, as I said before, holidays pricing is pretty resilient, and flight-only is a bit more price sensitive, as you would expect. Harry Gowers Great. Thanks, Gary. Operator Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Jarrod Castle of UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Jarrod Castle Thank you and good morning, everyone. Firstly, maybe one for Stem or Gary, I don't know. Any views on what a hot summer could mean? The U.K. obviously has seen some very hot weather. Does that impact your business, and do you have to work a little bit harder? Secondly, I'd like to get your comments on how you see things with the European entry system. You've got fantastic on-time performance. Is that a concern for you in terms of getting customers back? Lastly, if you can make some broad comments, just how you see the market in terms of consolidation. Obviously, you've got a proposal for easyJet, any views on that, how you see the landscape changing over the next three to four years? Thanks. Steve Heapy Hello, it's Steve here. Hot summer, not worried about that at all. In fact, it's actually a good thing. Summers are, by their very nature, hot. It is the hottest time of the year. We have seen some unusually hot periods abroad and in the U.K. At the end of the day, people want to go somewhere warm, somewhere sunny, to get away from what is the norm in the U.K. climate. I'm sure the hot weather will pass, certainly in the U.K., and we'll get back to our normal summer, which is a lot cooler. We've seen no evidence of people wanting to go to cooler destinations. Our booking profile is still pretty flat throughout the summer. It was very strong at the start and end of the season and strong in the middle. We haven't seen any noticeable trends at all of people trying to avoid the hot summer. It's still the busiest time of the year, and people still want to go away and experience some nice heat. Unlike the heat in the U.K., which is horrible and hot and sticky, it's dry overseas, and you can have a very nice time. No impact whatsoever. In terms of the European entry system, we've seen some impact with longer queues at immigration, passport control, et cetera. Our customers have been relatively unaffected. Some have experienced the longer queues. We have not left any customers behind. We've not taken off without having them all on board. One of the reasons for that is our famous Red Team of customer helpers who will identify the Jet2 and Jet2holidays customers and try and help them to get through quickly if there is an issue. We have, of course, been lobbying European governments to delay the implementation of the EES systems, and we've had some successes. The Greek government took advantage of the delay that they can implement for five months, and we've seen queue times at Greek airports improve significantly. I get a report every week of the delays that we have experienced and where we consider that the delays are bad, getting worse, etc. We write to each government in each airport advising them of the opportunity to delay the implementation of the EES scheme. Our Red Team makes sure that our customers are the least affected of customers in airports. I would hope the European government might do something in the longer term. We have written individually as Jet2 and as part of our industry bodies to Ursula von der Leyen to advise her of the issues that people are experiencing and asking her to look again at the implementation schedule. In terms of easyJet, as you'd expect, our policy is not to comment on market speculation. I'm not going to depart from that, if that's okay. There's a lot of speculation about, and I'll leave that to other people to speculate. Jarrod Castle No problem. Thanks very much, Steve. Steve Heapy Thank you. Operator Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Damian Brewer of Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Damian Brewer Yes, thank you. Good morning, everyone. Two questions from me. First of all, on capital allocation, you've now been very clear about the Jolco financing of the A321neos, the GBP 700 million minimum threshold, and the 2x net debt EBITDA. If one throws that into numbers, that opens up quite significant spare capital in the business. Can you talk a little bit about how you'd think about deploying that spare capital? Are there any opportunities to accelerate growth where it's profitable, put more back to shareholders maybe, or any other thing you could think of that would obviously generate similar high returns that you've generated in the past? The second question, you've given us a lot of detail in the presentation about customer acquisition, and your shares certainly seem to recognize that outperforming TUI and On the Beach by nearly over 30% in one case this year to date. Are you seeing anything from what you've seen, for example, at Gatwick or Luton or in the last half-decade, given Bristol is now half a decade old, that makes you confident and so confident in the outlook in terms of taking market share and winning share within the U.K. market? Thank you. Gary Brown Hi, Damian. I'll take the first one. It's Gary here. In terms of capital allocation, the framework's pretty clear. We do want to continue to invest into the existing business to deliver good return on capital employed, which I think we've demonstrated for many years. In terms of growth and where we could deploy that capital, if I look back even to 2023, you can see our flown passengers are up by about 30%. We're still very much growing. Gatwick is a significant opportunity for us, as you've seen on that presentation, in an under-penetrated market for Jet2, as is London more generally. Therefore, I do think we'll deploy more of our capital in the south of England, because that represents a great opportunity for us. I was very clear on the presentation as well that, subject to satisfactory financial performance, and as you've seen certainly more recently, we will give shareholders capital returns, and we fully expect to do that, but I will reaffirm that's subject to satisfactory trading. In terms of our strategy, we're very clear. It's about growing the business, building a business that is the strongest in the industry, and delivering long-term value creation for shareholders. Hopefully that should resonate with both customers, colleagues, and the various stakeholders, including shareholders. Steve Heapy Hi, Damian. It's Steve. On to the second question. We are confident about our ability to capture market share. You mentioned a couple of launches we've done. If we go back a little bit to Bristol, well, we've got a good program at Bristol Airport. We've captured market share. The same at Luton, Bournemouth, Gatwick. That's because people recognize our customer service, our VIP customer service, our Red Teams, both in resort and overseas at the airports. That's borne out in some of the statistics we've talked about this morning: 92% customer satisfaction rate, 62% rebook rate, 65% Net Promoter Score. I think people are attracted to our customer proposition. They don't just want a company that throws together the components of the holiday and then leaves them to their own devices. They want someone that will look after them for the whole holiday. Today, the Institute of Customer Service has announced their latest results. Jet2holidays is the highest-ranked tour operator, the fourth-best company in the U.K., up from the fifth-best yesterday, and Jet2.com the highest-ranked airline in the U.K., 14th best company, up from 16th best company. We're certainly not resting on our laurels and getting complacent. We want to improve our customer offering every year and differentiate ourselves from the competitors, and that's something that is very much recognized by our customers. When we speak to them, we ask them, "Why have you booked with Jet2 or Jet2holidays? Why are you sticking with them?" Customers consistently tell us it is the customer service that attracts them. They want to be made to feel special. And why wouldn't you? When you're going on holiday, you want your holiday to start the minute you get to the airport, and you want it to be seamless. To get back to the original question, after quite a lengthy monologue, I am very confident in our ability to capture more market share at our newer bases such as Gatwick, Bournemouth, Luton, and before that, Bristol. Damian Brewer Very clear. Thank you very much. Steve Heapy Thanks. Operator Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Ruairi Cullinane of RBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Ruairi Cullinane Yes, good morning. First question on hedging. How do you approach that in recent volatilities? Is your hedge position in full year 2028 where it would typically be at this stage in the year? Then secondly, a follow-up question following Damian's on leverage and capital allocation. I can see in the CapEx slide, CapEx peaks in 2031. That sounds significantly 2032. Is the 2x leverage target something you might hit in 2031, in what could be a year of peak leverage, or is it more of an average in an average year? Thank you. Gary Brown Hiya, it's Gary here. In terms of hedging, we haven't fundamentally changed anything, to be honest with you, because we were so well hedged, in particular on fuel. We've now moved up to about 97% for summer 2026 and over 70% for winter, so we're over 90% hedged for financial year 2027. For 2028, we're about 35% hedged in totality, particularly on fuel, which is broadly in line with where we would expect to be. We're not going to throw the hedging policy out the window because there's a lot of volatility. It's served us well for over 13, 14 years. We are taking advantage of weakness in the market when it presents itself. We're pretty comfortable with that. In terms of the second question, in terms of 2x net debt, EBITDA on an own cash basis, we've said, or I've said in terms of the video, over the next three to five years is when we expect to achieve that number. That very much depends on how many of our aircraft we finance during that period, and also the delivery profile of the aircraft during that period, which is subject to movement, albeit we've managed it well. I'm not going to go into any more detail on that because I do think we've set out our targets very clearly, and to get into the intricacies of that in terms of intra-years, I think would be not responsible at this stage. I think it's very clear we want to return capital to shareholders. We also want to continue to invest in the business, drive really good and meaningful return on equity, and return on capital employed. Thank you. Operator Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Jack Raeburn of Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Jack Raeburn Hello. Good morning. Congratulations on the results. Three questions from me, if that's okay. Firstly, could you refresh us on your medium-term package mix ambitions and how we should think about fiscal year 2027? Should we maybe expect some moderation for fiscal year 2026 with the Gatwick ramp? Then maybe if you could provide any more details on initial progress at Gatwick as well, specifically details around package mix relative to the group, pricing relative to the group, and a refresh on start-up costs associated with it from fiscal year 2027 going onwards. Finally, accommodation cost inflation continues to outpace package pricing growth. I was just wondering, how long do you expect this headwind to persist, and what needs to change for that pressure to begin easing? Thank you. Gary Brown In terms of the medium-term package holiday mix, we've been pretty clear that we would expect between 60%-65% on a full year basis. Last year was 63%. I would expect this year to be in or around the 60%, bearing in mind it has been a much later market as a result of the Iran War. We're comfortable in that range. That doesn't mean we are fixed on that range. The flights-only product is still incredibly important. We've always made that very clear across a number of years. As Steve pointed out on an earlier call today, people who take flights-only often become the package holiday customers of the future. They get all of the service for the price of a seat actually, which is great value for them, and hopefully they see that. In terms of Gatwick, the package holiday mix is a little below the 60% at the moment, but not far below the 60%. In terms of the investment into this year, well, we're sort of into BAU now. The start-up investment happened last year. We're in BAU in terms of investing in people, investing in marketing, et cetera. I think getting into pricing at Gatwick in all its detail is a little bit commercially sensitive, and I wouldn't want to do that on this call. In terms of accommodation inflation, sorry, that's the third part of the question. Accommodation inflation is somewhere in the region of about 5%, or that's what we think at the moment. You've got to remember that's initial. What we are seeing, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean, you're getting a lot of special offers from hoteliers, et cetera, which can pull that headline inflation rate down. I think it's fair to say, though, that hoteliers in Europe are having a pretty good time of it at the moment. It's not just a U.K. market, it's a European market as well. They have significant headwinds still in terms of labor, in terms of energy costs, et cetera. I'm not anticipating that coming down fundamentally over time. How we contract in the future will be very important, that's why we are, in terms of a project internally, we're looking at dynamically sourced supply, which means we get the benefit of secured rooms, we also get the benefit of rooms that are in the later market that come in at a slightly lower price as well. I think technology is going to help us there, we'll get the best of every world. Jack Raeburn Cool. Thank you very much. Operator Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Gerald Khoo of Panmure Liberum. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Gerald Khoo Morning, everyone. Can I start with package market share? What do you think happened to your U.K. package holiday market share? Package customers being up 1% suggests that you might have lost share if the market grew by more than 1%, which seems likely. Secondly, second and thirdly on Gatwick, you talk about deploying an extra aircraft there. Where are you getting the slots from for summer next year, and where are you redeploying the aircraft from? Also on Gatwick, in terms of the potential second runway, what's your view on the likelihood of that happening? It seems like it's cleared all of its legal challenges. Do you think you've got the fleet to take advantage of that extra opportunity? Gary Brown In terms of share, Gerald, it depends what you want to do, right? We've been very explicit from the beginning saying that our share will over time diminish as the BEV share among all vehicles increases, because we do not operate on every BEV electric vehicle. We select the vehicles where we want to be. If you look at the total group margin, we ended up at 7.9%. In this, as I mentioned in the discussion, there's about €480 million that comes from the fact that we stopped amortizing the assets of Horse, which is basically 100 basis points of noncash favorability. So that will not repeat. When we close the deal and we get regulatory approval, as I mentioned, we will start buying the parts from Horse. So we -- inside the price, there will be the cost of amortization, which will resume, and there will be a slight margin. So before we close, we continue to get the lift from the fact that we're not amortizing. After we close, it starts being a slight negative. In the 2024 construction, what we've assumed is that net-net, all of this is a slight negative, which means that if you look at the 7.5% guidance, it's really at least a 60 basis points improvement year-over-year. And this comes mainly from the auto parts of the business. So operationally, absolutely, the auto margin is going to continue to improve from a rate perspective. And then your last question was on purchasing and cost reductions. As I mentioned earlier, the discussions on sort of compensation of suppliers, et cetera, we're getting to the tail end of that. The impact that it had in the second half was a lot lower than in the first half. And so the progress that we're making in discussions with suppliers is starting to pay off, which means that the big change in 2024 versus '23 is that we're going to have a net gain in cost of goods sold. So that's good news going forward. Steve Heapy Thanks, Gary. In terms of the capacity, yes, we are ready to fill capacity as it becomes available in Gatwick or indeed in any other of the 13 bases that we have. Gatwick is obviously the newest base, and we do have plans to grow that. The other bases, we can put additional capacity in as well, owing to our aircraft order with Airbus. We still have well over 100 aircraft to come over the next few years. Airlines come and go, and at Gatwick, this is particularly the case, being the biggest leisure airport in the U.K. We see airlines sometimes withdraw operations, reduce operations, do some trimming, and slots will become available. We look at the slot situation on a regular basis, and we sometimes will opportunistically take those slots, again, because we have the availability of aircraft. Other than that, we will wait for the annual slot process and apply for our slots. We're, as always, pretty confident we will get those. Ava Costello Thank you. Operator Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Richard Stuber of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Richard Stuber Thanks very much. Good morning. Just a few quick ones from me, please. The first one is, you've spoken a lot about the later booking profile for summer 2026. Are you still seeing a later booking profile for this winter and even maybe next summer? I just want to see if that trend is still there. The second question is, I suppose you've spoken a lot about investing in new bases, and the headwinds to profitability from Gatwick. I see that you're also opening new destinations such as Egypt and Tunisia. Could you say if there's any financial impact from vamping up in new destinations as well? The third question, I saw non-ticket revenue up 4%, and you said that's a lot to do with the retail operating center. Do you expect to be able to sustain that sort of level of growth, i.e., is there still a lot of low-hanging fruit you can go for on that front? I'll just leave it there. Thank you. Steve Heapy Okay. In terms of the later booking profile, it's very early days for winter and for summer. Winter typically doesn't really get going until end of August, September, when people start returning from their holidays. It's too early to give a view, really. I'm not disappointed with where we are on load factors for either of them, but it's very early days. In terms of the new destinations, there's not really a big financial impact in starting new destinations. We had three new destinations this year, and we've got two destinations starting in the winter in Egypt and another couple in summer 2027. It's not a massive financial impact there, and it doesn't cost a lot to open a new destination, that's not really going to have an impact. I'm pretty encouraged by what we're seeing in those destinations in terms of new bookings. The likes of Sharm el-Sheikh, Hurghada, and Tunisia will be a good source of customers, we think, for not only the summer, but the winter. Gary Brown In terms of the retail operation center, it's performing well. We're in the first throes of dynamic loading now from various departure bases, so we're learning quite a lot around that. The more we learn, the more we'll be able to put back into the customer experience, hopefully what that will mean is an increase in spend per head. You've got to remember as well that one of the key things in terms of the business case was the fact that we won't be carrying around standard bar sets. That should be a saving on weight and therefore a saving on fuel. So far, we're ahead of where we expected to be in terms of the investment case for the retail operation center. Cutting to the chase, Richard, I'm very encouraged. I think there'll be further growth, whether it be 4%, 3%, or 5%, I don't know at this stage. Certainly, it's been very positive since we opened the center. Richard Stuber Great. Thank you. Can I ask just a quick follow-up, just in terms of the jet fuel price? I know you gave $743 as a hedged price for this financial year. What was it last year, so in terms of what the like-for-like headwind may be? Gary Brown The average rate for the full year is about 4% favorable at this stage. Yeah, 2027 versus 2026. Richard Stuber Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Operator Thank you. We'll now take our next question from James Goodall of Rothschild & Co Redburn. Your line is open. Please go ahead. James Goodall Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Firstly on distribution. In the presentation, you gave us some great color about the share of direct bookings shifting towards more loyal customers. Are you able to talk to the share of your total bookings, which are direct, how that's trending, and how you expect that to evolve as customers start to use LLMs at the inspiration stage of booking travel? Secondly, on CapEx, looking at the appendix of the slide deck, it looks like there's been a bit of a change in CapEx timing. I think GBP 350 million less CapEx for next year versus what you outlined at the interim results. What's changed here in terms of delivery timings, and is there an impact on growth? Very finally, on geographic mix, are you seeing any shift in customer demand patterns between the east and west and the Med? If so, how you're reacting to that, and does that come with any impact to your margin profile? Thank you. Steve Heapy Thanks. In terms of distribution, for holidays, just under 80% of our bookings are direct, and that's been pretty consistent over the last few years. With Jet2 seats only, the majority of our bookings are direct. We've not seen a big impact from LLMs at the moment. There's been a lot of talk about AI searches, et cetera. That will, of course, evolve. It's still very much a live issue with some of the big tech companies, how this will work for AI and how they can commercialize searches in the AI environment. We've not seen an awful lot of change so far. It's still very early days, but something we are very involved in and monitoring very closely as to how perhaps we have to change our model, our underlying data, et cetera, to allow us to be searched. It's very early. Distribution is pretty similar to last year and not really changing much.
The geographical mix: we saw a reduction in bookings in the east when the conflict started, the likes of Turkey, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and some of North Africa, the booking rate slowed down, because if you look at a map, they are closer geographically to the conflict zone, even though the destinations we're talking about are more than 2,000 km away. Nevertheless, they were impacted. We've seen those destinations come back. Obviously, the bounce back in percentage terms is bigger for those destinations. All destinations at the moment are seeing reasonably healthy demand. The eastern destinations, Turkey, Cyprus, the Eastern Greek Islands, Bulgaria, North Africa, have seen a bigger bounce back to where they were following the start of the conflict. People seem to be putting the conflict to the back of their minds and thinking about the future now, many people seem to be thinking about going on holiday and committing themselves to going away, we're ready to take that. We've had some very good offers from our hotel partners, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean, we're passing those offers on in the form of great discounts for our customers. Gary Brown Just in terms of the CapEx timing, obviously, we are reacting to what Airbus are estimating in terms of the delivery slots, et cetera. As you would expect, we built in quite a bit of slack, bearing in mind that everything's been going on there. We also have tremendous fleet flexibility anyway, in terms of when we can retire aircraft, when we can hand back operating leases, et cetera. To cut to the chase, it's timing only, it doesn't undermine any of our growth plans. James Goodall Brilliant. Thanks so much. Operator Thank you. With no further questions on the line, I will now hand it back to the management team for closing remarks. Steve Heapy Okay. Thank you very much, everyone, for attending the call this morning. I hope you found the presentation informative, and hopefully you'll leave this call as positive as Gary and I are. We're very pleased with the results we've presented to you today. We've given an update on trading within those results, and I hope you're as excited about the future as we are. Unless there's anything else, I think Gary and I will say thank you once again. We'll see some of you over the next few days, and thanks for attending.