Flughafen Wien AG
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Good day, and welcome to the Vienna International Airport Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded.
At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Judit Helenyi. Please go ahead, madam.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call for the Q1 presentation. The presentation will be held by our board members as usual, and it will be followed by the Q&A session.
The slide can be downloaded from the homepage, and a replay will be available most probably tomorrow in the morning, by the latest, noon.
And now I would like to hand over to Mr. Ofner. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Good morning to anybody. We published our results for the first quarter today. And in general, as you saw, we could report a very good results, and we are also in the position to improve our outlook for full year 2018. We also received recently a positive decision of the second instance court for our project of the 3rd Runway, but this does not mean that anything will happen in short term because as expected, the opponents appealed against these decisions and the constitutional court and the supreme administrative court will have to deal with the issue. And nobody can really foresee how long this procedure will take and what finally the outcome will be. So if somebody of you or anybody of you raises the question, what is the effect of this decision, there is no immediate effect except that we have to deal with the legal issues and everything we said so far is still valid.
The better guidance is based on the good development in regard of passenger numbers, especially in Malta and Kosice, but also in Vienna. You see group, plus 9%, and Vienna, plus 6.6%. Malta is 19.4%, Kosice is 19.9%. And what is very important to understand, the effects of this growth, you will see that revenue overall increased by 2.1%. But if you look at the aviation revenues, you should have in mind that some parts of the incentives that have been part of marketing and communication costs are now included in the airport revenues. So these would have to be added if you compare it with the first quarter of '17, and it's in total, EUR 2.9 million, that has been previously booked in other positions.
EBITDA is up 6.9% to EUR 64.8 million, EBIT improved by 28.1% and net profit by 35.3%, half of that is also an extraordinary result in -- from the sale of land nearby the airport.
Clearly, we could slightly further reduce our net debt position. And in regard of passenger guidance for 2018, we now expect 6% or more here in Vienna or 8% plus for the group. And this is based on the knowledge we have so far for the plans of the airlines and especially for the summer schedule.
Revenue should be above EUR 770 million, EBITDA should exceed EUR 350 million, and net profit should be more than EUR 148 million. And some of you also raised the question of cash flow development, but I will come back to that a little bit later. A major reason for this substantial improvement of the profitability still is strict cost management. And also, we saw a slight decrease of EBITDA margin in '17, which was mainly triggered by the new agreement with Lufthansa Group, compared Q1 to -- '17 to Q1 '18, shows a further improvement of EBITDA margin. And we are still working in all parts of our operations to have strict cost controls.
The one-off effect, I already mentioned. This is the deal with DHL. They bought a piece of land nearby our airport, and this was finalized recently. So it is part of the first quarter. So the effect was EUR 3 million from this deal.
You see also the improvement in the financial results, and this will slightly accelerate throughout the year because the next prepayment of the EUR 25 million installment for the EIB loan will take place very soon, so beginning of June. And the EIB case is still in court procedure. So we appealed against the decision of the first instance. Again, it is very tricky to expect when the next instance will decide. I would say most likely will take another 12 months unless we can expect their decision.
I already covered the cost issue. What is important, not only for the period of 2018 but also for the years to come, is that we have, as we think, a very successful negotiation with our trade unions. So the wage increase in Vienna for the period of 1st of May '18 to end of April '19, is 1.3%, which is very much below the average of the rate agreed in Austria in views around of wage negotiations. This is due to the fact that we added 5 more days to the vacations, but most of these we can harvest by productivity gains. So the real effect will be much lower than the roughly 3% that have been, in average, agreed for other parts of the Austrian economy. So from a long-term perspective, this should also support our improvements in regard of productivity and should be somehow lowering, long-term, also our personnel costs.
I already covered the issue of net debt position. The reduction was EUR 33.8 million since end of 2017. And if the development we see now goes on, we should end up below EUR 250 million for full year. What you should have in mind, again, is that the environmental fund will have to be liquidated later this year, and this will reduce the cash position by something of EUR 60 million-plus.
The deviation in cash flow from operating activities compared to last year is simply attributable to changes in payout, especially in regard of the incentives. So for the full year, we expect growth in our operating cash flow, and this first quarter result is no indication at all that we will see a change in the development of our cash flow. So it is -- it would be misleading to expect that. Free cash flow will be slightly damaged by the fact that we increased our CapEx, but I think should also be on a comfortable level for the full year.
Gearing, self-explaining, it is going down, and looking slightly ahead is that even if we start our investment program for the terminal improvement for Office Park 4, our net debt position will not very substantially deteriorate, so most of it can be financed from our cash flow.
The share price development still, I think, is positive. I think that the expectations in regard of a dilution of airport revenues are not correct. We are not expecting a further dilution of our airport revenues as some might expect. On the contrary, all the agreements are in a way that these incentives will be step-by-step melting down, at least part of it, in the years to come. So we are not expecting a further reduction of revenues per passenger from aviation.
In total, the sites, the heart of the airport revenues, we are already working on the project, Office Park 4, so the groundbreaking ceremony was just recently. And all the other projects are well underway, so the search for potential investors for that hotel, the laboratory work for our new health center and we are in very intensive negotiations with several well-known international companies who are keen to settle down nearby our airport. And we will inform you step-by-step once we have agreed the contract.
So again, the outlook for '18 is, from our perspective, very encouraging and fine, so revenues should be above EUR 770 million. EBITDA above EUR 350 million. Our net income should be above EUR 148 million. Net debt below EUR 250 million and CapEx should stay around EUR 175 million, including the environmental fund payout that is expected in the following month.
So that's it from my side, and I hand over to Julian.
Thank you, Günther. Good afternoon, or good morning, ladies and gentlemen. If you need more details now from my side, I would like to start with the segment, Airport. We saw the positive traffic development continuing, plus 6.6% growth in passenger volume. External revenue was growing by 2.2%. And as Günther said, there are around EUR 2.5 million, which we have shifted from the cost side, in terms of marketing costs, to the revenue. So you have to take this into account, and this effect attributed as well to the positive EBITDA and EBIT development in this segment.
EBITDA was up by 10% to EUR 30.3 million; EBIT EUR 9.9 million, more than doubling of the EBIT of EUR 4.7 million last year.
I would like to elaborate a bit on what Günther said in terms of revenue per passenger in the segment, Airport. As said in the last and probably in the one before as well, we expect that the revenue per passenger from the segment, Airport, will be somewhere between EUR 14.50 and EUR 15 in 2018. And as Günther said, it's aggressive, so for every passenger, which is a new passenger this year, we will get a certain amount of euros next year more. So it depends a lot on growth. And if we have moderate growth, we will increase our revenue per passenger in this segment. If we have exceptional high growth, yes, it might well be that we have a decrease in the revenue per passenger. But my best guess for 2019 would be if we are somewhere below 4% growth, we will have an increase in our revenue per passenger. If we are above 6% or somewhere close to 10%, in that case, yes, we would have a decrease in the revenue per passenger. So it depends a lot on the growth. But overall, I think it's a good investment, and we will see in the years, which at one point in the future will come again, where we see moderate growth, then we see the reverse effect of what we are seeing today in terms of the decrease in revenue per passenger.
So for 2018, everything is essentially as expected. I will come later on into the traffic. But still, I think we have a very high unusual uncertainty about the traffic development in 2018. There is still a lot of rumors out in terms of Anisec, a Vueling subsidiary, which might start operations mid-July, with a significant number of 5 aircrafts. But yet nothing is announced. Just yesterday, we had an announcement of Laudamotion, a very significant base from winter on with 8 aircraft. The net effect might be a bit less. So our best guess today is, as we announced, there will be an increase of 6% passengers this year. But if Anisec comes, if Laudamotion does better in terms of passengers, then we expect we might be forced in the months to come to increase this again. And again, the outlook for next year is obviously still very positive because with 8 aircraft, Laudamotion now from winter onwards, we would have a full year 2019 operating of Laudamotion, plus the increase to 5% -- 5 aircraft from Wizz Air, plus whatever Anisec might come out to do. And I would not be surprised if there's a reaction from Lufthansa Group as well. So we are very positive for 2018, but we think we will see significant growth in 2019 as well.
Handling & Security Services, we had a good quarter here. I think external revenue, plus 2.6%; Cargo handling got 7.6%; security services, plus 3.1%. We had a good de-icing season, and EBIT grew from EUR 2.5 million to EUR 2.6 million, plus 5%. But overall, I'm seeing a good result given the fact that we already see the new contract with Lufthansa Group in place, where we saw quite a significant decrease in revenues from this contract. So I think, overall, we have started to digest this new contract.
And to add on what Günther said about our collective agreement. One part of the agreement is as well that we will be in a position to significantly be more flexible in how we use our staff. And this is something, which will not affect us probably in 2018 immediately, but over the years to come, which will make our Handling operations much more efficient. And therefore, we expect some cost gains in the years to come from this agreement.
Yes, Retail & Properties. Retail is, yes, not only in Vienna, but I think at many airports right now, a bit of a problem. Shopping and F&B was up 3.1%; PRR, down roughly by 3%; rental income, more or less unchanged; parking, on the same levels as well. But I think we had a very good April here. So overall, we are not worried about parking for the full year.
In terms of Retail, we had a bad April. And as far as I am informed, I think you see this trend in Frankfurt, in Copenhagen, in Amsterdam, in Hamburg and a number of other German airports as well. I think Duty Free is under pressure. And we saw a very negative effect in Vienna on -- from the U.K. passengers, from the -- from passengers to Russia. On the positive effect, we saw from China, which is fortunately growing, but still, we -- I think that we see a mix now here, growing low-cost presence in Vienna, a strong euro, so there is a mix of effects, which will make it difficult to achieve our goals in terms of PRR.
F&B does still well. We had 5% growth in the first quarter. But probably, when we are reporting our 6-month results, we will have to decrease our target for the PRR. Overall, for the development, I'm still positive. I think we will see, not only in Retail, but overall in terms of airport operations, a rocky 2019 until end of 2021. When we are doing the terminal refurbishments, we will have to close Pier East for 2 years. We will have -- and that's at a time when there is a huge traffic increase, so this will obviously not help PRR. But I think starting from end of 2020, we will see extremely positive effect in the old part of the terminal because then the security control will be before the Duty Free shop. Right now, it is after. And this is the area where we have strong growth. Penetration is significantly lower than in the other parts. So midterm, I think we will see the positive effect we expect. Short-term, yes, we will have probably a difficult 24 months.
To add on, because I think there was a question on ground handling. I expect this year our share in ramp handling will be around 85%. There are still contracts out and then there are tenders out. So it's not entirely decided who will get which low-cost carriers. We have not taken the Wizz contract. Yes, but we would have to -- had to pay to ground handling in Wizz. There was really extremely low prices, and we decided not to go for it. Still regardless of that, we will have roughly a market share of 85%.
Malta. This is most probably a bit of a surprise to you, but this should not change your judgment on Malta for the full year. In Malta, the management has decided to do an incentive for winter traffic to support the tourism industry in Malta for the winter season. This is why you see essentially this incentive effect in only in the first quarter. You won't see these extraordinary effects in the -- in quarters 2, 3 and 4. So overall, the results in Malta will look significantly better than they did in Q1. And there, yes, there is no reason to be worried in any way about the operation in Malta. As I said, it's a one-off effect, which is that anyhow in the week, who won, but over the next 3 quarters, this effect will be diluted and Malta will bring the results, the expected results. Yes, we will see a moderate rise in the cost level. We will further invest in the terminal to increase the Duty Free shop significantly. We will see there are some positive effects in terms of Retail in the future. And the positive effect as well was that in the first quarter, we got the approval for the master plan, and we will continue the landside expansion of the Airport City in Malta.
Kosice was doing well in the first quarter. Unfortunately -- and this is an effect we will see from May onwards. We lost the Wizz base. But on the other hand, we got Eurowings to start 1 or 2 additional destinations in Germany. So midterm, the outlook is positive again, and there won't be a significant impact on the financial results. But as I said, the growth we saw in the first 3 or 4 months in Kosice will not continue at this pace.
Yes, I think you saw the traffic results. I won't use too many words for the Q1 traffic results. I think what is interesting, the growth in Q1 was driven mainly by Lufthansa Group, so an increase of 17% passenger numbers. This will change in the quarters to come because this is -- we still saw the airberlin effect in Q1, where Eurowings, Austrian and mainly easyJet were growing. Turkish grew -- is doing again very well. Vueling was growing significantly. But the big push from low-cost will follow now, essentially from July onwards, and that's why we expect traffic figures to be significantly increased in the second half of 2018. April was the expected effect of Easter, plus 2.2%, so nothing extraordinary to be expected. And as I said, we are very positive that we will have an increase of 6% in Vienna, at least 8% in the group, but depending on the developments from Laudamotion, Wizz Air, Anisec, this could be that, in August, when we talk about our H1 results, we would increase our forecast here again.
One thing which is not so much important in terms of the absolute numbers, but very important in terms of Retail and in terms of our strategic positioning is long-haul. Austrian just started now for the summer season in Tokyo and will start in winter with Cape Town. We've got, I think, 5 or 4 additional weekly flights to Taipei from EVA Air and China Airlines. We will have, from October onwards, Hainan Airlines. We will -- Air India increased frequency to daily. Ethiopian increased 3 frequencies to Addis. Thai, they just started in November, but added another flight to 5 weekly flights. We will get Saudia starting from June, 4 times a week to Jeddah via Riyadh and flying out 2 times a week to Riyadh. So all these things should contribute to our Retail sales. And as I said, just yesterday, there was an announcement of Laudamotion, and this should go on sale today for 8 planes, mainly destinations, sun and sea destinations, which will have 5 aircraft in 2019 in Vienna. So overall, a very positive development.
And in the Far East, doing very well, plus 30% so far. And I am optimistic that in the years to come or in 2019, we will get the one or other additional routes to East Asia, so overall, I think the outlook here is very good.
The last comment, what is important as well, that there's a trend reversal for starts and landings. So we see -- so as we look at the 5% increase in terms of flight movements in Vienna. I expect something similar next year. So the things happening, what we said now and in the last 3 years, that at one point, passenger growth will have to come from aircraft movement growth as well and it is not possible to increase passenger numbers all the time by bigger planes and higher load. So I think this is, overall, a positive development.
And yes, that's it from our end, and now we are happy to answer your questions.
[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Stephanie D'Ath from RBC.
I have 3 questions, please. The first one is regarding your full year guidance for Vienna Airport of 6% and the potential to increase it. Could you please walk us through the impact from Laudamotion and how many planes they have? How many they add and how many extra seats offered, you believe, there could be? And maybe specify a little bit if you're only speaking be with Laudamotion, or is Ryanair getting into Laudamotion's capital. They have been a bit more involved in the discussions.
My second question is regarding retail spend ahead. So you mentioned April was a bad month, that is true across the board for peers as well. What are your expectations towards the rest of the year?
And then my third question relates to the receivables from the incentive. So could you let us know what you expect for the full year, if you would expect to see the list to increase significantly at year-end?
Yes. To start with your first question, Laudamotion just announced yesterday that they will base 8 aircraft in Vienna starting from winter. So the effect on this year will be not, say, significant because they will start at the end of October. But there will be very significant effect, obviously, next year. We are discussing with Laudamotion, but obviously, Ryanair is present in the big rounds. So we won't feel the presence of Ryanair obviously, and I'm pretty convinced that they will simply go at 75%, so now they've got 25%. They will soon go up to the 75% after approval from the EU Commission. But the operation, or at least this is what we are told, the operation will be separated. It will be a separate airline, a separate AOC, a separate fleet. They are there flying Airbus. So it's not directly connected with the Bratislava operation of Ryanair. And this is what Ryanair is saying as well, that this is completely independent. They will start from October 22, new destinations. So from Teneriffe, Ohrid, Rome, Palma, Marrakech, Malaga, Madrid, Stansted, Palma, Larnaca, Lanzarote, Krakow, Copenhagen, Fuerteventura, Faro, Dublin, Bucharest, Bologna, Bergamo, Beauvais, Paris, Barcelona and Amman. So I think there will be quite an overlap. The interesting thing to note is that there is not a lot of overlap with Austrian or Lufthansa. There isn't some overlap with Eurowings. A bit of overlap with Wizz. And I, from what is reported, I could imagine that, obviously, Vueling with their Spain, France, that there would be a bit of overlap as well. So I think the big question will be, how Laudamotion manages to fill these planes? And the even more important question will be, what is Anisec doing? When will they start? When will they announce and how full will be the flights in 2018? So in terms of the 6%., I think the 6% are pretty safe. I think, yes, it's safe to say we are very confident that we will have the 6% growth. If Anisec is turning out, starting July, and then get decent loads, if Lauda manages to sell the seats, yes, we might see a significant increase on top of this 6%. But this is something which is too early to judge. And...
And so the 6% is for this year, but you are not giving any outlook for 2019 yet, right?
No. I mean, I think usually, you see how difficult it was to judge 2018, and still it's moving. So I think whatever we would say about 2019, definitely will be wrong today. But what we are saying is -- no -- so we are very optimistic about 2019 because whatever starts now, we will have, see, 12 months of next year, but we will not start to guide that early in the year forward -- in the year to come. But I mean, usually, we would refrain completely to comment about 2019 at this stage. We are optimistic for 2019, very optimistic, but to which extent we will see growth in 2019, I think it's too early. And in terms of Retail, you are right. April was bad. But I think, again, it's too early to give you a detailed view guidance on the PRR because in the end, we have to see now is the trend, which continues in May, June, July, and at the latest, when we announce our half-yearly results, we will come out with a -- probably come out with a new guidance. I can tell you today that it will be very challenging to meet our last guidance, but too early to announce a new one.
And the last guidance was 50% ahead in line.
Pardon?
The last guidance was to keep the retail spend hedge flat.
Yes. And I can tell you, it will be very challenging, to say the least. But I think it's too early to come out with a detailed new guidance.
But I think what you should have in mind, in general, is that our guidance for the net result includes all that factors. So once we give the guidance for the full year net result, it is including everything. So I don't think it is enlightening just to dig in on this or on that. In total, we give a clear guidance for our turnover and also the net income for '18. And this shows, I think, a very substantial improvement. And if we see even better development on traffic, it could turn out that even this improved guidance would be somehow conservative. In regard of receivables, I think we are now in the process of normalization because, again, it's misleading just to look quarter-on-quarter as it is in many other cases. Also, it's necessary to look at it. But if you go into the details, you have to know that last year, when we saw the problems in airberlin and NIKI, the system was changed to prepayment. So they have to prepay for their operations. And now this effect evaporates because now we don't see anybody close to bankruptcy, so now the normal form of payment kicks in. And therefore, you see the deviation in receivables, but that's nothing to be worried about. It's simply normalization because we don't get the same kind of prepayment then that we asked for last year when we saw the economic difficulties arising for NIKI and airberlin.
We will now take our next question from Bernd Maurer of RCB.
Most of my questions have already been -- hello?
[Technical Difficulty]
Yes. Okay. Now I'm on. Most of my questions have already been answered before, but perhaps 2 smaller ones still. First, through all this guidance wording, you talked about the upset risk to your passenger guidance in light of the developments of Laudamotion and also Vueling in the second half of this year. Would -- could this a better development of those 2 carriers or others as well and also lead to a further increase of the financial guidance, or would you say that those effects are rather small? Sorry?
Yes. The answer is yes.
Yes. The answer is yes. I got it. And a second point, to come back to the lower cash flow and F&B revenues per passenger you use, Mr. Jäger, you mentioned that it's a widespread phenomenon among European airports that these numbers are lagging dynamics at the moment. You mentioned the strong euro, which is obviously one reason for this. But what are the other effects you see behind that would argue for the lower-than-expected dynamics of the revenue per passenger in this line?
I think it's obviously a mix of effects. I think on the one hand, and this is all over -- it's the same in -- all over Europe, it's growth from low-cost carriers. So the share of low-cost carriers is rising. People are traveling more often, so -- but not necessarily buying each time when they are traveling. So if you visit your, I don't know, aunt in Berlin, instead of 2 times per year, 4 times per year, you don't necessarily buy a perfume each time. So I think this is one effect, which probably is all over the same. I think the strong euro is an effect, which -- especially airports within exposure towards Russia, towards Switzerland, we saw a very significant decrease in sales from Swiss people to the people from U.K., Russia mainly. And if there are any -- in our case, what we know as well is that we saw now a significant increase in Terminal 2, which means this is good for specialty retail, this is good for F&B because we've got good offers there. This is not excellent for Duty Free because the security control is after the Duty Free shop. This is something which will change in the foreseeable future, but right now, this is an issue. So I think it's a mix of issues. If there's any further long-term impact, I think this is difficult to judge. But what we see, and I think this is pretty much all over Europe the same, is that in the first 2 months of this year, there's a negative impact on sales per passenger.
But I think what anybody should have in mind is that the overall effect for our financial guidance is close to 0. So I mean, if it's EUR 0.04, EUR 0.05, more or less, you would not even find it if you look at our profit and loss account, where this should occur. So we are discussing this problem, I think, on a very high sophisticated level. So overall, despite a decrease and maybe decrease of several cents, it's still an increase in overall revenue and net result.
[Operator Instructions] And we will now move to our next question from [ Jean Luchsta ] of [ PC Capital ].
This is [ Jean Luchsta ] calling. I am representinG some Danish investors all holding the Vienna share. And I have a question about the dividend situation. As you know, we just had our dividend. The situation as a Danish investor is that the tax forces in Vienna are withholding some taxes on the dividends. And these taxes being withhold by the authorities, most of that we can get back later on by applying for that. It's a quite complicated process and the process at last half year or the last year being complicated a lot. We are now in a situation here in Denmark that some of the larger Danish banks have stopped working with this thing -- working with or getting back the tax refund from the Vienna authorities due to the complicatedness of this job.
So when we get our dividend, we then get taxed as well in Denmark. And the thing is that it's not an optimal situation for an international investor. Many companies are doing it this way, that they are, to some extent, not just making dividend, but maybe reducing the dividend and then instead having a share buyback program. And by having a share buyback program, there is absolutely no problem with the tax situation because then we're only taxed when we have the profits. And we don't have to reapply for some refunding.
So my question is, would it be that you, at some point of time, would consider to convert some of the dividend to a share buyback program instead?
Unfortunately, our free float is not very extensive, so by buying back shares, I mean, we would maybe negatively impact the liquidity. But what I can offer you is, and maybe we can come back to it outside of this call, is support with our authorities and especially to give them the feedback that the procedures they apply are not investor-friendly, but should, in no case, be in their interest. So thank you very much for the feedback, and we will deal with the matter. And maybe you can send us an e-mail or call again later, that we can dig in more deeply how we can support you.
Okay. And then I have some questions about the development in the earning. It's always nice with an upward adjustment, so thank you for that. But when I look at this first quarter. I really do get a feeling that while we see an improved earning of EUR 7.8 million around that level, but out of this, the EUR 6.5 million is really reduced interests, land sale, change in impairments or change in depreciation, while only around EUR 1 million is really coming from the core business of flying the passengers, only EUR 1 million improvement is coming from that, even though we see a 6.6% increase in the number of pax. And the way I see this, as investor, the main question here, the big trigger, is the question about incentives, and I'm not really sure I complete...
It's misleading because it's just a 3-month period. And as Mr. Jäger explained, if you take the example of Malta, they introduced a new form of incentivizing their customers that especially address wintertime. So I think what you want to see cannot be seen if you look at 1 quarter. So this has to be looked at on a full year's scale, where all these plus and minuses effects are equalized. And from that perspective is the message you already heard and can count on, that the incentives are slightly but step-by-step melting down, so overall, the growth then will have a, stepwise, a higher impact also on net income. But if you look at the situation 1 year ago, our second bigger -- biggest customer went bankrupt. And you cannot expect that within 12 months, you can digest that and grow at 8% without any cost. I mean, that's totally out of any reality. Of course, you have to do a lot of work and also to incentivize other airlines to fill that gap. And we had to fill the gap of the second biggest customer who went bankrupt just 1 year ago. So from that perspective, I think it's an extraordinary success that we not only could fill that, but can even improve our profitability by filling that gap and grow even beyond this gap. But let's discuss it in more detail if you look at our full year's results because 3 months are misleading. You cannot really get out of it anything.
But please don't misunderstand me, and let me also say that we are very happy with the management and the way that you handled this situation last year. But it doesn't change the fact that I would like to understand completely the situation. So this is not a critique, it's just my trying -- me trying to understand it, please. And if we recall the general meeting we had, the teleconference call in January, it was said that around EUR 14.5 per passenger would be the revenue in '17 and also '18 and '19. That was what you stated in January. And you still expect that level?
Yes.
And just -- then just one last question about this to understand it. Earlier in this call, you said that if the number of the growth in pax was less than 4%, then you really expected an increase in the revenue being a little larger than this because when the number of pax are growing only a little, then the incentives are smaller. So to understand this completely clearly, does that mean then that in April, where we saw 2.2% growth in pax in Vienna, that in reality, our revenue is growing more than the 2.2%?
No. I think we should sit down at one point and go through the details because I think you have a -- the wrong -- it's not done on a monthly basis. So right now, the traffic is coming -- the growth is coming -- in the first quarter, it's coming from airlines like Eurowings, also from easyJet. They are significantly highly incentivized than airberlin were at any point in time. And as Günther said, we had to replace 15% of our passenger numbers, and we are replacing now airberlin. They were full payers, an airline which gets certain discounts. So what I said before is that if I look to next year, if we would have next year a moderate growth, the revenue per passenger would go up. And this is -- it's, in detail, it's very difficult to calculate because it always depends who -- which airline is growing at which pace. So it's not straightforward. But the rule is, in general, if we have moderate growth, revenue should go up; if we have significant growth, revenues will go down and...
On average.
On average. On average.
Not in absolute numbers. So don't mix. And I think this is what you might not see correctly. Don't mix average revenue with total revenue.
Yes. But the average revenue, if we have significant growth, goes down. So as I said...
But could you be very specific? If it goes up 2.2%, the number of pax in April, thus what you're saying, does this mean that the revenue goes up more or less?
Okay. It's April. Look at the full year.
It's not calculated -- incentives are not calculated on a monthly basis.
I mean, it's on a full year...
It's the volume of 1 year. Finally, you make up the account. And the April is -- that is the time -- last year was in April and this year in March. So on a month-to-month basis, you will always have specific effects that are influencing that, but you cannot interpret it in a way that this supports good business or not-so-good business because it's the time always to have a lot additional traveling. So this was this year in March, we had 12-point-something-percent growth in March. You have 2 points in April. If you average these 2 months, you are exactly, more or less, in the range of the guidance and...
It appears there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back to your host for any additional or closing remarks.
So as it seems, there are no further questions. Should any other topics here arrive later on, please feel free to get back to us. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in our conference. Goodbye.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.