Türk Hava Yollari Anonim Ortakligi (THYAO) Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] [Operator Instructions] And with that, I will now leave the floor to our hosts. Over to you, folks.

Hello. Good afternoon, and thank you, Rob. Thank you for joining us today. During the second quarter, the global aviation industry continued to navigate a challenging and complex environment marked by geopolitical tensions, ongoing macroeconomic uncertainties and persistent supply chain constraints. Against this backdrop, international air travel remained healthy, supported by resilient passenger demand across our extensive network. On the other hand, as anticipated, global cargo market stayed soft, indicating weaker trade activity and decrease in sea freight rates. In this evolving and volatile environment, Turkish Airlines once again demonstrated its adaptability and operational agility. Our diversified revenue streams and robust hub structure enabled us to deliver a strong performance. Let me start with a highlight of our recent achievements. Last quarter, we expanded our strategic partnerships and global presence. At the IATA Annual General Meeting in Delhi, we signed a joint business agreement with Thai Airways. This revenue sharing partnership on the Istanbul-Bangkok route aims to unlock the passenger traffic potential between Turkiye and Thailand. Moreover, Turkish Technic signed an agreement with Rolls-Royce to establish a regional engine maintenance hub at Istanbul Airport. Construction of this facility will begin in early 2026 and we expect to take the first engine into shop by late 2027. Once fully operational, the facility will handle up to 200 engines annually, supporting Turkiye's high-tech export goals and reinforcing Turkish Technic's position as a regional MRO leader. To further enhance our network, we expanded codeshare agreements with several airlines. Our partnership with TAP Air Portugal now includes routes to Brazil, Morocco, Qatar, Mauritius and popular Turkish summer destinations like Dalaman and Bodrum. We also added new links to Finland and Lithuania through airBaltic. And with Icelandair, our collaboration deepens with direct Istanbul flights from the country starting in September. Reflecting our ongoing focus on improving our customer experience, in June, Turkish Airlines was honored as the Best Airline in Europe at the prestigious Skytrax Awards for the 10th time. We also received awards for best economy class in Europe, and world's best business class catering. Around the same time, we received a Sustainable Financing Pioneer Award from Ishka for the landmark transition that integrated a sustainability-linked loan into a multicurrency aircraft financing model, a first in the industry. Turkish Airlines also mandated the first financing structure to use Sompo AXIS Aviation Finance Insurance product. By securing funding for two wide-body aircraft through this instrument, we were able to ensure financial diversity with competitive costs. Most recently, in collaboration with Dubai Islamic Bank, we also completed an inaugural Islamic finance transaction in Swiss francs for an Airbus A350 aircraft, making another first in our diversified funding strategy. Turning into our results. In the second quarter, Turkish Airlines total passenger capacity rose by around 7% annually and surpassed pre-pandemic levels by almost 50%. We carried more than 23 million passengers with a load factor of 82%. These operational results highlight the continued strength of demand across our global network against substantial pressure from developments in the Middle East. Despite of the busy air traffic, we are ranked among the top 3 airlines in Europe with 83.8% on-time departures in June. During the April-June period, total revenues increased by around 6% year-on-year, reaching almost $6 billion. Passenger revenues rose by more than 7%, benefiting from the holidays in this quarter, which helped offset the seasonal slowdown seen in the first quarter. Meanwhile, cargo revenues dropped by 9% and stood at $800 million, reflecting slowing global airfreight demand due to the tariff tensions. Lower cost pressure from moderated fuel prices and decelerating inflation in Turkiye were helpful to our financial performance in the quarter. Profit from main operations exceeded $700 million, while EBITDAR increased by 12% annually to $1.5 billion, corresponding to a margin of almost 26%. It is worth noting that our operating profit for the first half of the year remained broadly on par with the same period of 2024, and it was in line with our guidance provided at the beginning of the year. Net income realized at $690 million in the quarter. Despite profit from main operations was up by almost 20% and EBITDAR was up by 12% on the quarter. Net profit was around 25% lower than last year. This was mainly due to the accounting effect of weakened U.S. dollars against euro and Japanese yen, along with the tax impact. Looking ahead, our forward bookings for the rest of the year remain healthy. Both passenger volume and unit revenue readings are above previous year. Just last week, we reached a historic milestone by welcoming more than 233,000 guests in a single day, the highest daily passenger figure in our history. Region-wise, we observe particular strength in Asia and Africa for the coming months. While we see a deceleration in the U.S. point of sales, Middle East bookings are fully recovered and climbed above the pre-conflict volumes. Given these factors, we are maintaining our guidance of flat passenger yields with a positive possible tilt. As we have more clarity about the fleet entries in the second half of the year, we are increasing our annual passenger capacity growth target by 1 percentage points to between 7% and 8%. I'll now pass the call over to Fatih Bey to elaborate on our results and provide additional insights.

Thank you, Murat Bey, and good afternoon, everyone. As briefly mentioned earlier, seasonal effects faded in the second quarter and our capacity growth aligned with our annual guidance. Even though the conflict in the Middle East posed operational challenges in June, we successfully redirected surplus narrow-body capacity to buoyant domestic markets. This agile capacity management once again highlighted the benefits of having diversified operations and our flexibility. Another key development of this quarter was the rapid adoption of our new distribution capability platform, TK Connect. As passengers increasingly seek more control over their travel plans, we have seen growing preferences for direct channels. Launched last October, TK Connect has enabled us to respond effectively to that, and the results are encouraging. Compared with the last year, ratio of bookings through direct channels increased by 12 percentage points. This shift supports our profitability by reducing distribution and customer acquisition costs. At the same time, it allows us to present more customized offers and promote ancillary services effectively, driving up the revenue growth. Together with Miles&Smiles, TK Holidays and dynamic pricing tools, we are on track to reach our ancillary revenue targets. Far East continued to be one of our top-performing regions during the second quarter. Compared to the same period in the previous year, 6 percentage higher capacity accompanied by a 13% increase in demand led to a remarkable 5 percentage points improvement in load factor. This resulted in considerably above our budget and promising for the coming months. We see particularly strong demand in Japan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South Korea. On Singapore, on the other hand, was affected from the aggressive capacity increases by competitors. Following the geopolitical situation between India and Pakistan, we swapped respective aircraft allocated to these countries to match demand. Upgauging in Pakistan offsets relative softness in India, stabilizing overall demands. Africa performed relatively well in the second quarter. The 14% increase in demand throughout the region exceeded the substantial capacity increase. As a result, we did not see any erosion in yields and load factors was up around 1 percentage point. Currently, Morocco and South Africa are the most popular destinations in the continent. While we observed increasing flows from China to West Africa, travel bans of the United States from six countries weighed on the sentiment. In the second quarter, we began to experience negative impacts of the U.S. policy changes. In line with our comments in the last quarter, ethnic travelers have started to postpone their overseas plans due to increasing immigration scrutiny. Combined with 12% higher capacity related to aircraft delivery timings, around 2 percentage points load factor was recorded -- lower load factors recorded. We already made minor tweaks in the region schedule to adapt the new demand environment. Towards the end of the summer, we are planning to transfer some capacity to China, where additional landing rights secured just recently. Our passenger traffic in Europe was supported by the robust demand to the southern parts. Conversely, northern parts were negatively affected by last year's high base due to Euro 2024 and Euro League, along with the situation in the Middle East. Despite region-wide fierce competition, our premium positioning allows us to keep revenue generation intact as we see more resilient demand in that segment. At the same time, the yields are bolstered by euro appreciation. Domestic markets remained a bright spot with 5% higher yields on the back of relative strength of Turkish lira. Currently, we are not observing any slowdown in local air travel appetite for the following quarters. During the April-June period, passenger revenues rose by 7%, driven by strong seasonality. More than 30% increase in external technical revenues also contributed to the top line growth. We expect our technical segment's performance to remain strong as production bottlenecks persist and in turn, utilization of older aircraft elevates. In contrast, increasing trade barriers and tariffs softened cargo demand, respectively, slowing global freight led to 9% lower cargo revenue in the second quarter. While we benefited from the front-loaded inventory building ahead of the tariff implementation, it proved to be short. Apart from trade tensions, supply growth through new vessel deliveries and prospects of the Red Sea opening continues to put pressure on pricing for the remainder of the year. AJet carried more than 10 million passengers in the first half of the year. Its performance was particularly strong in the Middle East, despite challenging operating conditions. Although aircraft groundings due to GTF engine issues resulted in flat capacity compared to last year, on-time performance increased by 6 percentage points to 80%. By the end of June, its fleet consists of 107 aircraft. With 17 new additions in the second half of the year, we expect around a 15% increase in annual capacity. We also anticipate a meaningful rise in load factors and yields as its operations stabilize. Our 2025 revenue target for AJet is around $1.5 billion, representing a 25% increase year-over-year. As previously stated, top line growth was driven by passenger operations, benefiting from favorable seasonality. On the cost side, lower fuel prices and easing inflation in Turkiye provided additional tailwinds. Accordingly, profit from main operations climbed by nearly 20% to over $700 million. EBITDAR also rose by 12% year-over-year, reaching $1.5 billion. With the second quarter results, the seasonal impact from the first quarter was effectively neutralized and the earlier negative impact offset. Consequently, in the first half, both profit from main operations and EBITDAR was on par with last year's figures. Net profit, however, negatively affected by accounting currency translation differences due to weaker U.S. dollars and the reversal of tax income. As a result, net income declined by around 25% to $690 million in the second quarter. We recorded around 2 percentage points decrease in the total cost per ASK in the second quarter. Looking at the unit revenue expense breakdown, main contributors to the positive performance were 13% drop in jet fuel price, lower sales expenses driven by a greater share of direct sales, reduced ownership costs due to fewer number of wet leases and slower growth in personnel expenses. On the other hand, airport unit costs increased by nearly 14%, following updated fee schedules at European airports. Similarly, aircraft maintenance CASK rose by 14% because of GTF engine groundings. While fuel prices remain beneficial, we expect to see a step-up in personnel unit expense in the third quarter, reflecting the 18% inflation adjustment applied to the Turkish lira-denominated salaries. Our free cash flow generation remains robust. During the quarter, it was more than doubled compared to the same period last year, reaching to $1.2 billion. This brings the last 12-month figure to $2.1 billion. After debt service, our on-hand liquidity increased by $400 million to $7.7 billion compared to the first quarter. Net debt rose by around $190 million, mainly due to the dollar depreciation. Still, our leverage continues to hover around its lowest levels at 1.2x significantly below the targeted interval of 2 to 2.5x. Currently, global travel appetite remains brisk. Our daily passenger sales are flowing at a solid pace as deferred income reaches record high figure of $4 billion. With downside risk from geopolitical issues and cargo down-cycle, our 2025 revenue guidance of 6% to 8% growth remains unchanged. For the rest of the year, we expect our ex-fuel unit cost to decelerate relative to the levels seen in the first half. It will be more pronounced in the last quarter of the year due to the high base. Considering these factors, we are preserving our guidance of 22% to 24% EBITDAR margin for 2025. We will continue to closely monitor our booking trends, macroeconomic developments and adjust our projections when necessary. Sustainability is at the center of our long-term strategy. We continue to modernize our fleet with next-generation aircraft, expand use of sustainable aviation fuels and improve energy efficiency. Each of these steps brings us closer to our goal of becoming a carbon-neutral airline by 2050. As a part of this journey, we developed sustainable aviation fuel strategy to define our requirements and begin evaluating offtake agreements along with investment opportunities. In the first half of 2025, we signed a letter of intent with Tupras and memorandums of understanding with Calik Renewables and DB Tarimsal, which aims to produce SAF from agricultural waste, cooking and vegetable oils. In line with our commitment to transparency and continuous improvement, yesterday, we announced our first-ever sustainability report aligned with the IFRS sustainability disclosure standards. This will allow our investors to evaluate our sustainability-related risks and opportunities in a globally comparable structure. We are also pleased with the publication of our Board of Directors' diversity policy, aiming to ensure a more inclusive and balanced Board structure. Under this policy, we aim to reach at least 25% female representation on the Board within 5 years. With this, we conclude our presentation and can now continue with the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] There are no audio questions. With that, back to our speakers. Gentlemen, over to you.

Welcome back, Murat. We got a number of questions from our analysts and investors, namely Melis Poca from OYAK, [indiscernible] and a couple of others. So we are going to start with the results. Were there any one-offs, both operational or nonoperational, in the results? If there are any, can you elaborate on them?

Sure. Thank you very much, Fatih. In the second quarter, there was nothing particular. There was no main one-offs. However, when we compare the Q2 in '24 or the same period last year, we had around $140 million one-off payments to the staff due to the -- as called as the bonuses. So that was the only one-off I could say for the '24 second quarter.

Continuing with the second question. What is the reason behind per unit ground handling CASK decline in the second quarter?

There was roughly 8% to 9% decline in handling cost. It was mainly related to AJet's incorporation expenses, which incurred in the second quarter of last year. So the base was higher in '24. That's why we saw a decline in the handling expenses.

We got question related to recent news. Have safety test been made to your wide-body Boeing aircraft? And have you grounded any?

We did not ground any 787s. And right after the incident, our technical teams got in touch with Boeing, and then they had numerous calls and then evaluated notices provided by Boeing and updates provided by them. There was nothing particular that we had to pay attention. But we regularly maintain our aircraft within the guidance provided by Boeing and the other service providers. The bottom line was based on all those evaluations, we did not have any aircraft grounded.

You disclosed a 16-percentage point increase in the direct sales ratio. Has this improvement already impacted this quarter's financials? Or should we expect the effect to be more visible in the upcoming periods?

So increase in the direct sales led to almost $30 million saving in the second quarter. And for the first half, we expect that this improvement on the cost to be around $40 million. And for the whole year, we expect it to be around $100 million as we kind of try to shed some light during the presentation, use of our direct sales channels as well as the new distribution capabilities enabled us to have significant improvements on the unit costs. So based on these two areas, we are expecting about $100 million for the full year and $40 million for the first year (sic) [ first half ], which we already observed of savings.

Murat Bey, we got a question about the persistent issue. Can you please provide an update on the current status of GTF groundings and how are the impacts?

So as I have said in the last quarter, this is an ongoing process. We still have a lot of neos grounded. Overall, in the fleet we have about 90 neos, 20 and 21s. And of this, currently, we have about 35 grounded, so roughly 30%. We expect these two numbers stay the same until the end of the year. And for the next year, in 2026, it might go up a little bit to around like 40, 45. But still, there is some uncertainty. It won't exceed that number within our projections. But from the low levels of 34 by the end of this year, it can go up to about 40 in -- by the end of 2026. And this is, of course, the Pratt Whitney GTF-related groundings. Other than this, we have two air freighters that are grounded due to the maintenance requirements. And other than those, we don't have any other ground aircraft.

Murat Bey, how did you manage capacity in response to the Middle East conflict? Did you see any meaningful impact on demand or yields? And how is the current situation?

So the crisis sort of lasted around 2 weeks and then we had to shut down our Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan operations during this time. By adjusting our capacity dynamically, we tried to allocate that surplus aircraft capacity to mostly domestic market and some more safer destinations in the Middle East region like Saudi Arabia. Overall impact on the revenue, we estimate that to be around $60 million and with about -- considering the 7%, 8% profit margin for that -- for those destinations, we had about like $5 million, $6 million profit losses. Shortly, after the end of the conflict, all of our operations in the region returned back to normal. Currently, we have our full operation there. And Middle East bookings are fully recovered, I can say, as of today, and actually, they are higher than the pre-conflict levels.

And how is your overall performance on China routes following to -- the additional flight rights, how should we see your growth in China?

For the last almost 15 years, we had -- we were constrained by only flying to three destinations in China, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. And we had weekly 21 frequencies in these three cities. After the new agreement that our civil aviation authorities mutually agreed, we were allowed to increase that weekly frequency to 49, including six cities. In addition to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, we will add Chengdu, Urumqi, and Xi'an cities. And we're looking forward to getting the final approvals and start operations, hopefully, towards the end of this year.

And could you comment on the demand trends in Americas, especially any recent reductions, and will you redeploy that capacity elsewhere?

So when we talk about the -- dividing North and South America, the picture is slightly different. In the South and Central America regions, we have seen higher load factors and higher yields compared to last year. The load factor in the second quarter on the South America was up by 1 percentage point and yields were up by about 5% as compared to last year. However, for the U.S. market, uncertainty in the -- emerged from the tariff rates and the strict immigration scrutiny in the U.S. affected the sentiment to travel in the region. And in June, on top of this, the negative impact from the Middle East conflict was felt in the North Africa -- North America region. The load factor in the second quarter was down by about 4 percentage points and yields were down by 5%. Going forward, we expect the current demand environment to take a hold in the following months, through the summer months. And considering the seasonality, we will channel some capacity from this region to Far East in the fourth quarter. And for the next year, we plan to utilize broadly similar capacity in the U.S. market.

On industry trends, could you share how premium cabin performance compared with economy during the second quarter? Are you seeing any notable shifts in booking patterns between two segments?

Well, the network-wide, we observed stronger premium segment performance than the main cabin, I mean, the economy class. Because the passenger profile of the premium segment is less sensitive both to the economic volatilities and the low-cost competition. In the second quarter, the economy class yield was up -- by roughly by 1%. On the other hand, the business class, the premium segment was up by 5% on the yield side. And the effect on the revenue on economy, it was up by about 5.5% and business premium segment was up by 8%. So there was a significant margin in the growth in two segments. Especially the demand from the Far East was a determinant factor of this difference.

Continuing with the outlook. Is it possible to provide insights into forward booking trends?

Currently, the demand environment is healthy as we see it, most notably in Far East and Africa and domestic market. Even though competitive pressure persists, yields are stable as a result of industry-wide supply constraints. Network-wide, the forward sales are above last year by high single-digit. For the third and last quarter, we expect high single-digit capacity growth. We are seeing especially a relatively strong demand for the winter holiday season as bookings are up by low double-digit levels compared to last year. If we look at the regions, in Far East, we are going to see high single-digit capacity growth and roughly 1% to 2% increase in yield growth. In Europe, we will see, again, high single-digit capacity growth with relatively flattish yields. U.S. market will have low single-digit capacity growth around like 5% levels and close to 1% to 2% yield improvement. And overall, as I said, the ASK growth -- capacity growth is going to be much higher than the first half. It will be relatively around like 7%, 8% levels and we'll see overall 1% to 2% increase in the yields.

Could you give any insights on the direct international traffic to Turkiye for August? Are you seeing any slowdown in tourism this season?

The season, the growth is going to be slower than last year, but we will continue to see growth. As you remember, Turkiye was the fourth most visited country last year with 62 million travelers. In the first half of '25, number of visitors went up by 1% and which aligns closely with the annual growth target of 4% levels from 62 million to 65 million. In respective, our direct passenger number went up by 3.5% in the first half of the year. We see an on-par performance with the last year in the growth projections.

Continuing with cargo, how would you assess your performance last quarter? And what is your outlook for the remainder of the year?

In the second quarter, the cargo performance was negatively affected by a few reasons, as I said and Fatih mentioned earlier, the tariff-related concerns affected the impact -- affected the trade flows. The conflict in Middle East, increased tension between India and Pakistan affected the aircraft type. The aircraft delivery delays and maintenance requirements which we had to ground two freighters in the second quarter, which was not in the budget. This had a negative impact on our performance. While we experienced a temporary positive momentum due to the front loading ahead of the tariff implementation, that positive effect was dissipated after the announcement of the pause on tariff escalation. And we don't expect any major substantial change going forward into the second half of the year. We will have similar revenue forecast on cargo as compared to last year, the yield erosion will continue. We will try to make it up with the increasing cargo capacity for this year.

Could you share your unit cost expectations for 2025? And how do you plan to navigate current environment?

One of the big cost items is, of course, the fuel and then we expect about 10% lower fuel CASK year-over-year in '25. Our assumption is the average Brent price of around $70.6 per barrel. On the hedge side, we -- in the second quarter, we had a very limited hedge losses, around like $15 million. And compared to most of our peers, this was substantially lower hedge loss. And on the ex-fuel unit cost, we'll see better cost performance in the third quarter of this year. As you might recall, in '23 and '24, we had low double-digit ex-fuel cost increases. However, in 2025, we are expecting low single-digit ex-fuel CASK increases. So we are seeing a big normalization here. One big factor of this improvement is the decrease in the inflation in Turkiye. In July, annual inflation was around 33%, 34%. We expect that to be below 30% by the end of the year and '26, we expect it to be around 15%. So moderating inflation in Turkiye will have a substantial improvement in our ex-fuel CASK. And we also have taken several actions. We stopped hiring, except the flying members that would go with the -- in the fleet growth -- that will go with the fleet. And we also -- as I said earlier, our TK Connect product, our new sales channel and direct sales channels and the use of NDC have also brought a significant improvement on our ex-fuel CASK structure.

On a quarterly basis, could you give us your update guidance or any changes in your guidance?

So going forward, I must start with saying that the second quarter performance -- actually the first half performance was in line with our guidance, which we have repeated actually at the end of our presentation. In the third quarter, we expect growth in revenue and capacity by high single digits with flat yields. Third quarter EBITDAR will be close to last year, between 27% to 30% levels, the EBITDAR margin. And for the full year, we'll continue to hold our 6% to 8% revenue increase. And our year-end EBITDAR margin expectation is around 22% to 24% levels. ASK will be around 8%. Number of passengers will be around 91 million to 92 million as we have expressed through the presentation.

What is your latest projection for the fleet size by the end of this year? Can you also elaborate on your future additions? And are there any medium-term targets for fleet age?

So the fleet size, we have much more comfortable, hopefully as we don't get -- hopefully, we don't get any further delays by the producers. '25, '26 and '27 fleet planning is made. In this year, we expect to finish the year with around 525 aircraft, a growth of -- net growth of around 30 aircraft on top of last year. And in '26, we would like to increase the fleet size to 583, which is about like a 50 aircraft increase. And in '27, another about 40 increase in the fleet. Of this growth, in '25 -- in the year of 2025, 25 aircraft will be for TK and 4 will be for AJet. In '26, around 29 increase for TK and 27 for AJet. And it will continue like that. So with these new entries, we would like to increase the -- we would like to increase the share of new generation aircraft in the fleet from about -- from the current levels of 36% and to past 40% levels. And also in the same sense, the fleet age is -- hopefully will come down from its current level of around 10 years.

What are the estimated CapEx and PDP figures for 2025? And accordingly, what is your yearly expected net debt level?

Gross CapEx is expected to be around $4 billion to $4.5 billion. We expect to finance around 70% of this growth CapEx because most of it is aircraft financing. And relatedly, we'll be paying around $80 million to $90 million net PDP outflow by the end of this year. And our net debt expectation for the end of this year is somewhere between $6.5 billion to $7 billion and then the multiple -- net debt-to-EBITDA multiple to be around 1.1 to 1.3x.

How is the appreciation of USD versus -- sorry, euro versus USD affecting your financials?

Well, considering our revenue and cost base, we have a net long position on euros and consequently, euro's appreciation has had a positive effect on our bottom line. On the balance sheet side, though, we are short in euros because euros constitute about 45% of our aircraft financing. And as a result, the appreciation of euro has a negative impact. So overall, within our guidance, like 1% appreciation of euro against dollar has about a $30 million positive impact on operational profit. And it has 0.5 percentage point positive impact on the yield.

Murat Bey, as highlighted at the first part of the call, could you please share more details on the expected benefits from this new engine maintenance partnership with Rolls-Royce?

In May, we signed an agreement with Rolls-Royce to establish a new maintenance center in Turkiye for serving the Trent engines, which power Airbus A350 and 330neo aircraft. And as we are the biggest -- we will be the biggest operator considering our future order book, we will be the biggest operators of A350 with our recent order, the initiative makes a strategic sense to decrease our future external dependency. At the same time, it will allow Turkish Technic to create a logistics advantage for Turkish Airlines. This facility is going to be in Istanbul Airport. It will optimize our cost base and enhance our competitiveness and provide a potential third-party revenue stream. The investment is 100% owned by Turkish Airlines, and it will cover from 2027 to 2048. It will be constructed on a 50,000 square meter facility. The facility will be ready by the end of '27. It will be expected to contribute about $1.5 billion to revenue to Turkish Technic by 2023 -- 2033 and it will be able to handle 200 engines per year.

And what is the anticipated contribution from new business -- joint business agreement with Thai Airways? And should we expect to see similar partnerships in the coming period?

We have a very long-lasting relationship with Thai Airways. They are our partners in the Star Alliance. And two cities, actually, Bangkok was the most visited city last year globally and Istanbul was the second most visited city. So it will allow us to connect these two very precious cities together. And by jointly utilizing the capacity and increasing the flight frequency, we are aiming to maximize total revenue of the route and enhancing the connectivity between these two countries. It's set for 3 terms -- 3 years and with an optional extension of further 2 more years. We are actively engaging with other Asian and European carriers to explore further mutually beneficial opportunities in line with our centenary targets.

How about Turkish Airlines Holidays performance so far? What are your expectations on growth for the following years?

Well, we are expecting with this program to leverage our core strength to capture the full travel value chain, it's going to shift Turkish Airlines from a flight touch point to architect of end-to-end travel experience, vacation experience. We pose a unit advantage here, the ability to bundle flights from 130 countries with hotel accommodations and experiences. We also pioneered advanced packaging capabilities, multicity stays, guided tours, return flights from different destinations. Since the launching in Turkish -- Turkiye market in 2022, we have expanded the product in more than 70 cities. We had a launch in U.S. and U.K. markets recently. And up until now, we have served around like 40,000 guests and targeting to reach more than 200,000 guests by the end of this year.

Is it possible to explain your approach to the share buyback program, especially during the recent conflict periods? What factors led to no buyback activity even as the share price experienced a drop?

Well, firstly, I can safely say that our shares are trading far away from its -- from their intrinsic value, taking our strong cash flow and peer multiples into account. We consider multiple factors when deciding on share buybacks. Of course, the price is one of them but not the only factor that we are monitoring. When there is a major global macroeconomic or geopolitical event, such as the one experienced in June, we tend to focus on our operations. On the other hand, when we see unwarranted share price formation due to some idiosyncratic factors, we prefer to signal the market with buybacks. For now, our main aim for the share buyback program remains to be reducing volatility and its signaling function. In the following years, though, we plan to evolve our buyback program towards being a component of shareholder returns as it offers additional flexibility and complements our dividend policy.

Murat Bey, we come to one of the most frequently asked questions today regarding Air Europa. Can you share any updates on the recent discussions involving Air Europa? What are the strategic benefits of share purchase instead of decreasing collaboration? And can you enlighten us about the process in general?

So we have -- about 1.5 months ago have made a public disclosure about our interest in Air Europa, and we provided later on a nonbinding offer. And since then, the discussions have continued, we are still very interested. We are preparing to provide a binding offer very soon. However, we have not come to that stage yet. Of course, as soon as we have the Board approval and Board decision, we will announce it publicly. What is the motivation here is as we have -- it is actually a part of our 2033 strategic goals to generate value and looking into reasonable investment opportunities where we can bring in synergies with our operations and with the counterparts we are interested in. Increasing the collaboration through share purchases, codeshares, airline JVs are all serving the same purpose to create value for Turkish Airlines. In particular for Air Europa, of course, once we have the binding offer, we'll be able to elaborate on this more thoroughly. But on the big picture, why we are interested in such an endeavor is it will complement our global network and their network. They have a very strong presence in Latin America and Iberian Peninsula on both the passenger and cargo segments. There are possible synergies in the areas of MRO, technology, seat production and loyalty programs. So considering all those potentials, we are actively inquiring in finding partners where we can combine our synergies.

We are continuing with additional questions. Despite the fleet expansion of 12 aircraft, total capacity of AJet declined by around 0.4 billion ASK terms. Could you clarify the factors behind this contraction?

Well, unfortunately, the big portion of the grounded aircraft with GTF engines belong to AJet. We were able to get -- neos are good aircraft for -- in low-cost configuration due to their large seating capacities, but the GTF engine have this issue. So last -- so this year, there were 12 net additions to their fleet, which were offset with almost 12 grounded aircraft. As a result, it -- as a result, the net ASK growth was negligent.

What were the drivers behind Turkish Technics, 31% revenue growth in the second quarter? And what dynamics you expect for the full year?

Turkish Technics is increasing its operation in parallel with our Turkish Airlines fleet and route expansion plans and optimizing and restructuring the maintenance schedules have improved efficiency. But most importantly, in this particular quarter, their third-party revenues was up significantly, which contributed to the overall -- their revenue growth.

And what effective tax rate can we assume for this year?

Well, we have started to calculate the top-up tax for the first time in '25 with respect to OECD's Pillar Two global tax reform initiative and it increased our effective tax rate in the first half of 2025. Currently, there are a few uncertainties regarding to how the global minimum tax in Pillar Two will be implemented. So we are seeking more clarity on the qualified refundable tax credit as we shorten as QRTC and substance-based income exclusions. We expect to have much more definitive implementation framework towards the end of this year. And based on our current PPI and the dollar-Turkish lira rate and the year-end profit before tax estimations, we anticipate effective tax rate to be around high single digits.

Thank you, Murat Bey. We got additional questions from our participants. One of them from Hanzade. Could you -- I might be answering this question. Can you please provide more details on ancillary revenues such as its share in revenues? And where do you see it land to the next 3 years? So currently, it's around 6% of our revenues, and we expect it to be somewhere around 8% to 10% in the next 3 years. Our long-term goal is around 15% -- reaching 15% of our revenues, close to levels that our peers are experiencing. And additional question, how much bonus payment is provisioned for the staff in 2025, Murat Bey?

Well, I mean, this year, we had significant adjustments on the salaries with the inflation, the second half in the beginning of July, the salaries in Turkish lira terms were increased by around close to 18%, 17 points, some percentage points. So as of today, we are focusing on attaining our year-end budgeted bottom-line profit levels, and we have not provisioned any bonus payments yet. But depending on the third quarter performance, if we see a stronger-than-anticipated results, then we might include some bonus payments. But as of today, we are not -- we have not made any plan yet.

Additional questions from [ Ahmed ] from [indiscernible] which challenges and risks do you foresee in the rest of financial year regarding tariffs, taxes, fuel prices, supply chain bottlenecks?

I mean these are, of course, very broad topics. But honestly, as we are now in getting into August, what is left is the last 4 months, and tariffs, given the current level of communication, and most of the countries have already settled the tariff rates against U.S. We don't expect much uncertainty there. Tax rate, as I just answered in the last question, I think it kind of shed some light. We are expecting a high single-digit effective tax rate. There is still some ambiguity, uncertainty about the Pillar Two implementation of it and how airlines will be affected from it. But we don't expect a big surprise there. Fuel prices, I mean, most recent announcement by the OPEC countries, we were expecting the Brent price to come down a little further. It did not. So it's -- but our year-end projections is around, I guess, $70. Our breakeven hedge price is around $66. So we feel comfortable. There are no big shocks. And on the supply bottlenecks, I mean, our -- the deliveries -- supply bottlenecks mostly affect our aircraft deliveries. And going forward, we have already received several postponements from Airbus and Boeing for this year's deliveries. We have already placed them in, and we don't expect any further delays on the aircraft deliveries and other related equipment and parts.

We have one last question, Murat Bey. Can you elaborate on your hedge strategy in the following quarters?

Hedge on fuel?

Hedge on fuel, most probably.

Well, our fuel hedge strategy is a strategy that complements 2 years in the future. And we are hedging, of our '25 fuel consumption, we are already hedged to 50% -- up to 50% and our '26 consumption up to 10%. And this strategy seems to be working fine as of this year, and we don't intend to change it going forward.

Thank you, Murat Bey. With this question, we conclude our fourth (sic) [ second ] quarter earnings call. Thank you for your participation, and we hope to be with you next quarter.

Thank you very much, speakers. Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the conclusion. And this concludes today's conference call, and we thank you for your participation.