International Consolidated Airlines Group S.A. (IAG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Deutsche Bank's Depositary Receipts Virtual Investor Conference, dbVIC. I'm [ Zach Azif ] from the Deutsche Bank team. I'm pleased to announce that our next presentation will be from International Airlines Group. Before I introduce our speaker, a few points to note. [Operator Instructions] Also, all of today's presentations will be recorded and can be accessed via the Deutsche Bank website, adr.db.com. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome International Airlines Group, that trades on the London Stock Exchange and in Madrid using the symbol IAG, and on the OTC Markets using the symbol ICAGY.

Hi, everybody. I'm Stuart Morgan, Group Director of Investor Relations at International Airlines Group, IAG, and I'm very pleased to be with you today, and I'm just going to take you through our presentation. So let's start with the fact that IAG is one of the -- or the best-performing airline group in the world in 2024. We've got a very strong business model and a strong strategy. We've got great hubs, we've got great brands, we've got a great network, and we've got some great customers. You put that together with a strong execution, it's something we've been working on over a 20-year period, and it is now fully embedded and delivering some great results. And we are delivering great value creation for our shareholders. Our strategy is a very simple one. We've got a very strong core, as I just mentioned, of hubs, networks and brands, and we're going to continue to make those stronger. We're focusing on capital-light earnings growth to complement those core businesses, and this is primarily through our loyalty business. And our financial framework, in particular, but also our sustainability framework, underpins this all and is a strong platform for the group. What does that mean in terms of medium-term objectives? We target a 12% to 15% operating margin through the cycle. And I'll come on to how all the different businesses fit into that in a minute. Given we're a capital-intense business, we have a 13% to 16% return on invested capital target. And again, that highlights the discipline we apply to our investments. We have a net leverage target that caps out at 1.8x, and that for us is a proxy for investment grade and just basically gives a level of comfort to our shareholders. What did we do in 2024? We delivered some great revenue growth. Our EBIT margins were market-leading. Leverage continues to strengthen very strongly. Our free cash flow yield was a major focus and a highlight for us in the business. In terms of a little bit more detail, so we grew revenue at 9%. Profits grew 27%. Now that's great, but it also partly reflects the business was continuing to recover from COVID. Our operating margin at 13.8%, we think, is best-in-class. Return on invested capital above our range at 17.3%. And those metrics have been driven -- have been driving great cash flow. So just under EUR 3.6 billion of free cash flow. Strong leverage. We reintroduced dividends during 2024, starting with an interim that we announced last July, and we are now proposing a final dividend for the AGM in June. And we're also returning excess capital to shareholders given the strength of leverage and the free cash flow we're generating. So again, in November last year, we introduced a EUR 350 million share buyback. And then at results, we said we were going to buy back up to 1 billion of shares -- or EUR 1 billion worth of shares in the next 12 months. So how does that all come about? IAG's business model and structure is well established and is clearly delivering great results. So IAG is effectively a group holding company and its main function is to drive performance in the operating companies, to performance-manage them and to allocate capital in a way that maximizes long-term returns for shareholders. Within the operating companies, we've clearly got the airline brands. So full-service carriers, BA and Iberia. Value carriers, specifically, this is Aer Lingus, with Iberia Express to some extent. And then low-cost, Vueling is a short-haul low-cost business in Spain. LEVEL is a long -- or low-cost business that we are just starting up or investing a little bit more in Barcelona as well. And then we have some nonflying operating companies. These are the capital-light parts of the business that I mentioned earlier. The biggest is loyalty. We also have a cargo business that doesn't have dedicated freighters but adds contribution to the group through bellyhold cargo across the passenger network. And then we have a Spanish MRO business, that's maintenance and repair. It's based in Madrid. It does mostly internal work, but also takes third-party work to some extent. And then IAG also provides a wraparound in terms of central functions, which is mainly treasury, investor relations, strategy and certain group legal functions. So let's start with the markets. Long-term trends for travel have been very strong. We have seen 50 years of growth in the demand for travel. And this is despite a multitude of events that are in the very short term perceived to be negative, but their impact is only ever very short term. And what is driving travel? The biggest area of travel is leisure. It's a very resilient part of the market. And these days, people are traveling more and more. So if you look at the stat on the top, 85% of the people in a little survey said they plan to take 2 or more leisure trips in a year. So they used to just say 1 trip. You might now take 2 in the summer -- you might take 1 in the summer, 1 in the winter, you might go for a weekend trip. So more and more people are traveling for leisure. Globalization has ended in some -- or has led to a big increase in what we call visiting friends and relatives travel. And this is sort of going to visit people who live in different countries. This is a market that is very resilient, again. And you might not do it a lot, but people always go and see their friends and family. And then finally, corporate is now about 20% of the business. It's probably more, but 20% is through our direct channels. And it's clearly a strong part of the business travel market -- or part of the travel market. But actually, it is a smaller part than it has historically been. And what that means is the business is, whilst it's cyclical, it is a less cyclical business than it has been historically. IAG operates in some of the world's largest and most attractive markets, principally the North American market. It's about 1/3 of our capacity. London to New York is the world's richest single airline route, and we are well placed in that market, particularly out of London with British Airways, but also with our group partners -- or group airlines, Iberia and Aer Lingus, and with our partners, American Airlines. The second transatlantic market we operate is LACAR, Latin America and the Caribbean. It's about 20% of our capacity. It's a newer market. It's a stronger growing market, and it's one that Iberia is currently doing very well in. And then the third core market we have is Europe, which is again about 30% of our capacity, and is mainly -- well, there are 2 factors in Europe. One is the short-haul feed that we have for our long-haul networks. And then we have some point-to-point airlines, Vueling in particular, as I mentioned earlier, but also Iberia Express, British Airways Euroflyer and British Airways Cityflyer that delivered some good profit contributions. Elsewhere, the main markets for us are Africa and the Middle East and India. And then the Asia Pacific market, which, at the moment, is a relatively small market for us, has only ever been a relatively small market. And we are keeping our exposure to that market relatively low at the moment given that it's a relatively weak market. We also work in some very large and attractive hubs. And again, the hub model is a particular strength of the business. Heathrow, as you can see, is a very large and very strong market. But Madrid is Europe's fifth biggest airport in terms of demand and travel. And Barcelona is Europe's eighth biggest. So working out of those hubs demonstrates or provides a lot of strength of the business. In terms of what makes those hubs particularly attractive, is they sit on the western edge of Europe. Sorry, I missed Dublin on the previous one. So if you look at Dublin, London and Madrid, they are the best-placed major hubs in Europe to serve the transatlantic market. The direction of travel tends to determine where people prefer to connect if they have to connect. And so you've got a dual-hub strategy in the North Atlantic, particularly from Dublin and from London, and then the South Atlantic through Madrid. And that makes us relatively, again, stronger than the other European major carriers where they are less well positioned and it's more expensive for them to connect to those markets. In terms of our framework for growth, as I said at the beginning, our major focus is on the core of the business. So we are prioritizing and strengthening the North Atlantic and the South Atlantic and the European market, but particularly the Spanish market and the Spanish domestic market. The second tier is some selective investments in historically strong markets for our group airlines. And then in the longer term, we want to selectively grow in markets, and I'll probably call out India here, where we think the group has access and some cultural links, which we think will be an advantage in the longer term. So just if I cover quickly our major markets. As I said earlier, the North Atlantic as a group. And with our partners, we fly 150 times a day across the North Atlantic. We got 46% market share, and that's Europe to North America, actually out of London. Between British Airways and American Airlines, we have 55% market share. And what's particularly important about London, and that's Heathrow specifically, is that it's a slot-constrained airport. So Heathrow is full, and that sort of maintains BA's position and strength in that market, particularly. We do have opportunities to grow. So at the moment, British Airways is still recovering from COVID. It retired its 747 fleet in 2020. That's 32 aircraft. To maintain its position at the moment in the airport, it's flying more short-haul planes than it would ideally like, but to maintain its stock portfolio. As the business transitions over the next 2 or 3 years, as it receives more fleet deliveries, every new aircraft going into Heathrow will be a large wide-body, high-premium aircraft and will be incrementally more profitable to British Airways. We will continue to increase the number of places we fly to in North America, with a point-to-point market being a particularly strong part of what we do. British Airways is a 60% point-to-point airline. And that means, again, you have to -- you have less reliance on feed traffic, and it is particularly strong in terms of catchment area, for the customer base and the corporate base that it serves in terms of who we're flying across the Atlantic. Moving on to the South Atlantic. This is a market that historically has been a smaller and less attractive market. It was more economic migrants going to work in Spain and Europe, to a lesser degree. That's now changing, and it's a more dynamic, wealthy market. I think it's important to point out that Latin America is not a homogenous market. So you do have different countries growing at a different rate, but that creates a nice balance across the group. Since COVID, Madrid to Latin America has been competitive. But Iberia has been growing its share. It's been investing in the primary markets there. So it flies 3 times a day to Buenos Aires, it flies 3 times a day to Mexico City, twice a day to Lima, twice a day to Bogotá. And airlines make more money and drive greater returns the bigger they are, the more they serve specific markets. So as I say, we see the South Atlantic as being a highly attractive, slightly higher growth market for the group. Coming on to the capital-light part of where we want to grow. We look at growing through our partnerships, and here, in particular, through Qatar, and this is driving capital-light growth for the business. So you'll find that Iberia and British Airways now both serve Doha, BA twice a day, Iberia once a day. And customers connect through Doha into the biggest network in Africa and Asia. And that works both ways in terms of growing the customer base for our group airlines. And then the sort of the core non-airline part of the business is our loyalty business. Loyalty doubled its profits in the last 5 years. It's growing at at least 10% a year in terms of its profits. And the strength of the loyalty business is both the value it drives in the airlines and the business, but also the non-airline part of what it does. So for the airlines, loyalty is all about selling Avios and then the cost of redeeming Avios. And Avios is the currency it uses. And it's driving the issuance and redemption to the extent that it incentivizes issuance to and through making it more attractive to redeem it. So for the airlines, it's about, as they grow, more Avios are issued. The link to spend is now well established, and we're also adding other airlines into the airline partnership. So Qatar, you now own Avios on their scheme, as you do with Finnair. And the model here is certainly for the airlines within the group, it just incentivizes value that accretes to the airlines. Where this business is doing particularly well is the airline -- the nonairline partners. And the sort of standout partner here is American Express, where effectively you own Avios, it's a fairly well-established model in the U.S. It's a different model in the U.S. because you can have higher transaction fees that accrue to American Express than they do in Europe, but we still make some nice money here. As I say, American Airlines is -- sorry, American Express is growing very strongly in Europe, particularly in the U.K. Since COVID, more people are using credit cards as a method of payment, particularly in relation to cash, and American Express is now accepted more widely. There are 2 ways we're growing that. Firstly, it is less stronger market. Credit card usage is less strong in other parts of Europe, particularly in Spain and in Dublin. And we're also working with other partners, Barclay Card, Bank of Ireland, CaixaBank and Santander. And again, you can earn points now through multiple different partners. We're also starting to expand other partners, so Uber, you can now earn Avios on, Royal Caribbean Holidays. And what we've also done recently is to move the British Airways holiday business out of British Airways into loyalty, where we think it's a strong driver of value. Firstly, we're going to spend a little bit of money on British Airways Holidays. That will mainly involve a new platform, and we think that will drive significant revenue growth. And then effectively, given that holidays are one of the big-ticket items of spend for a family in a year or an individual, we're incentivizing people to earn Avios through spending on their holidays or to redeem Avios to offset the cost of their holiday. So as I say, it's a nice sort of high-teen, 20% margin business that is growing nicely and complements the other parts of the group. So putting that all together in terms of a framework for the group in terms of capital allocation, our priorities are, firstly, to ensure that the business has a strong financial foundation. As I said earlier, we have got a 1.8x net debt cap through the cycle. It's a proxy for investment grade. We could potentially go through that should we need to acquire or want to acquire something large, but that's not on the horizon. And we have a position at the end of the first quarter of 2025 where we are at 0.9x. So you can see the strong deleveraging that's gone in the business for the last 2 years. Secondly, we're investing in rebuilding our fleet. We are about 600 aircraft. The average age of the fleet is about 11.5 years. We need to continue to invest. It's quite hard to spend the money at the moment given issues with aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus, and also issues with engine providers, and in particular, Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney, but to a lesser extent, most engine providers. So we are investing to the extent that we can and we will continue to do that on an ongoing basis. The flip side of the inability to invest that money at the moment is that the airline industry is a supply-constrained industry and it's a supporting element to the strong revenue performance that we've seen in the last couple of years. We also continue to invest in other parts of the business to drive sort of sustainable profit growth. British Airways, in particular, is investing EUR 7 billion over a 3-year period, which is designed to drive an improvement in its margins. We're investing in lounges. We're investing in onboard products. We're investing in -- so for example, the club suite of British Airways, we're investing in the food. We're investing in operations, which is having a great improvement in our punctuality stats. And we're investing in commercial platforms, so customer-facing stuff like apps and websites, journey support, so through the airport and through your booking journey and travel journey, and also with new revenue management and commercial platforms, which we think will help to generate longer-term revenue growth. The outcome here is to help deliver the 12% to 15% margin range that I spoke to earlier. If you have a look at how the different airlines stay within that, British Airways is at the top end. It's a premium transatlantic proposition. You've got Iberia and Aer Lingus in the middle of it, who both have attractive opportunities but are aiming to sort of stay in the middle of that range. And then Vueling is probably at the lower end of the range. But in the context of a European low-cost carrier, 12% is a good margin for that business. We delivered 13.8%, as I said, last year, and our objective is to continue to improve on that to the extent that we can. We're committed to a sustainable dividend. Obviously, as an airline, we want to demonstrate the resilience of the business. As I said earlier, we reintroduced the dividend last year. Effectively, it was about a 20% payout on earnings last year, and we would want to maintain that as a sustainable level going forward. And then finally, in terms of distributing excess cash, below the 1.8x net leverage number, we've set out a 1.2 to 1.5x range. And below that point, we are committed to returning cash to shareholders. At the moment, we're doing that through a buyback because we think that's the best thing to do given the current valuation, but we would also continue to look at other ways of doing that going forward. So again, sort of highlighting how we're creating value for shareholders, we're delivering earnings growth through our strategy and executing on that. We're delivering sustainable and significant free cash flow. So turning those high margins into high free cash flow after investing in the business. And we're returning cash to shareholders through a sustainable dividend and a share buyback program. And on that note, I will -- I'm available to take questions should you submit them offline. And thank you very much for listening to me today.