TUI Talk with TUI Group CFO Mathias Kiep

Thank you, Linda, and thank you as always for having me. Now, I think the summer bookings are really good and robust. It's really a good cornerstone to get towards our target to have significantly more profit than we had last year and to deliver on the market expectations on us. You've also published the current booking figures for the winter season, 2023-24. How does the start for the next financial year look? What can you already say about it? Now, this number is really interesting because we have 15% more bookings compared to last year same time, but with a bigger program, and we are sold at the same level as last year, so this is really good. This not only shows that consumers are there, our guests continue to book, a big question in this environment of inflation, recession, questions about the consumer everywhere, but at the same time it also shows in our products, hotels, cruises, excursions, we see the same. This actually is a really good start into the new year, and we want to become more profitable going forward, and this is a real good step in that direction, and with 30% booked is also tangible enough.

Yes, very good question, Linda. I think it's not good, the share price is not making me very happy, and I'm not happy how it developed over the last weeks in particular. I mean, we had a very successful and great capital raise earlier this year; it removed a lot of concerns on the company, we became investable again. Since then we have actually delivered our results in May, we delivered Q3 in August, now the trading update plus 15% for the winter. I think it's much better than most people would have anticipated, and it is a really good step towards a normal winter for the company. It's not as bad as people may think about the consumer environment overall. But what happened? I think after the raise we had a lot of short-term investors, and many of them exited around €7. You could see that the share price always went up to €7 then it went back again. €7 was kind of a hurdle, then we got over that, and Q3 was actually quite positive, but still it went down. Some long-term investors sold the shares. We can only speculate why, but there are many reasons around us, not specific to us: less capital in equity alternatives in a high interest rate environment. Things like that made people sell our shares. The problem is we don't really see yet buyers who take up these shares. Other than delivery, I think we currently have to be patient because we can't influence what people do with our shares.

Yes, and I think this is our obligation. We must continue to deliver on our results. I think we did the capital raise, that was kind of a reset point. We promised and we have an obligation to deliver the numbers that were in the room at that point in time, the expectations. We have to meet them this year, but we also have to grow the company further. So all the initiatives in terms of delivering growth are really important, so that the share can also start to trade ahead. I would expect we need time, we need to deliver quarter by quarter to get there, so that we also build credibility again. But at the same time, I don't see a specific reason why the share price is so down. At the same time, we're lacking these buyers, and we need to build a reason that people really say, 'Okay, earnings are great, future is credible and growing,' and that's why I will buy the share again. Thank you.