Jet2 PLC Annual General Meeting Statement (8227X)

TIDMJET2

RNS Number : 8227X

Jet2 PLC

01 September 2022

1 September 2022

Jet2 plc

("the Company" or "the Group")

Annual General Meeting Statement

At the Company's Annual General Meeting today, Philip Meeson, Executive Chairman, will make the following statement:

" Our Leisure Travel business continues to benefit from the significant investment we made in preparation for the Summer 2022 season, retaining over 8,000 loyal colleagues during the pandemic and substantially topping up the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme funding on a sliding scale basis up to 100% of salary for the lowest paid, recruiting and training seasonal colleagues in good time and subsequently rewarding our trusted and experienced team for their unrivalled customer service with early and meaningful salary increases. It is this focus on the long term differentiation of the Jet2.com and Jet2holidays brands that has enabled our on sale seat capacity for the season to remain approximately 14% higher than Summer 2019, with no cancellations made due to any Jet2 resource constraints.

Overall customer bookings, though a little later than normal, have remained consistently strong. Package holiday customers continue to display a materially higher mix of the total departing passengers being up 13ppts and average load factors are only 1.4ppts behind Summer 2019 at the same point (despite the 14% increase in seat capacity), whilst pricing remains robust. Pleasingly, the difficult return to normal operations experienced in early Summer 2022 due to the lack of planning and investment by many airports and associated suppliers, has abated significantly.

Winter 2022/23 forward bookings are satisfactory with average load factors matching those of Winter 2019/20 at the same point, against a 2% seat capacity increase and with pricing currently robust.

With some way still to go in the Leisure Travel winter booking cycle, we are currently on track to achieve current market expectations for Group profit before foreign exchange revaluations and taxation for the year ending 31 March 2023.

We are very confident that, Package Holidays are the Right Product for Price Conscious Customers especially in challenging economic times, and this provides further opportunity for us to grow our customer base, though as previously announced, margins may come under some pressure in the short term. Our well proven dynamic booking systems enable us to flex our offer to match consumers' changing demands and to deliver great value truly variable duration holidays. We also expect the growing Package Holidays mix to continue to benefit from our high trust ratings right across Which?, Trip Advisor, Trust Pilot and Skytrax.

We have never compromised on Customer Service and nor shall we in the future. It is the founding principle of what we do and we were delighted to welcome Jet2.com's 100 millionth customer who travelled from Manchester Airport to Fuerteventura a week ago. We very much look forward to providing our next 100 million customers with the high levels of service which our existing customers know they can rely upon and which new customers will be delighted to discover, all with the added comfort of a Group which has emerged from the pandemic in sound financial health with a very strong Own Cash (excluding advance customer deposits) position.

Finally, I would like to thank our amazing colleagues who continue to deliver this sector leading Customer Service and would ask shareholders to join me in expressing their appreciation to them in playing their invaluable part in establishing the Group's enviable standing with customers today.

The Board will provide a further trading update on publication of its interim results on 24 November 2022 ."

For further information please contact:

 
 Jet2 plc 
  Philip Meeson, Executive Chairman 
  Gary Brown, Group Chief Financial 
  Officer                              0113 239 7692 
 Cenkos Securities plc 
  Nominated Adviser 
  Katy Birkin / Camilla Hume           020 7397 8900 
 Canaccord Genuity 
  Joint Broker 
  Adam James                           020 7523 8000 
 Jefferies International Limited 
  Joint Broker 
  Ed Matthews                          020 7029 8000 
 Buchanan 
  Financial PR 
  Richard Oldworth                     020 7466 5000 
 

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September 01, 2022 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT)