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Air France-Klm Ads
3/6/2025
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the presentation of Air France-KLM's results for the fourth quarter of 2024. Today, I'm joined by Stephen Zat, Group CFO, Anne Rigay, CEO of Air France, and Marianne Rintel, CEO of KLM. I'll start with key highlights from this quarter, followed by Stephen, who will walk you through our financial performance and outlook for the year 2024, and then we'll wrap it up with closing remarks on our medium-term ambitions before opening the floor for your questions. Moving first to slide four. Okay, reviewing our key financial indicators for this quarter. The group revenue increased by 6% compared to last year, with capacity up 2%. Unit revenue growth accelerated in Q4, plus 4.4% compared to plus 1.4% in Q3, which is adjusted for the impact of the Olympic Games. The opening results stood at €0.4 billion, a significant improvement from last year's loss. This marks the strongest fourth quarter on record, driven by solid unit revenue growth that outpaced unit cost increases as well as lower fuel prices. The strong year-end performance helped offset earlier headwinds, resulting in a year operating margin of 5.1%. Despite a challenging operational environment, the group generated €300 million in adjusted recurring free cash flow, in line with the ambition set out during the 2023 capital market day. The net debt to EBITDA ratio stood at 1.7 times at the end of the fiscal year, well within our target range of 1.5 to 2.0. We made progress on our fleet modernization strategy with new generation aircraft, now accounting for 27% of the fleet as of December, an increase of seven points since the end of 2023. Now let's take a moment to highlight some of the major achievements we've accomplished together over the last year. Moving on to slide five, we're very proud to highlight the significant progress our airlines have made in advancing key strategic priorities this year. We launched a new, fully private Air France La Première ground experience at Roissy CDG Airport, elevating luxury travel with Air France to an entirely new level. In 2024, we introduced Air France Conseillerie, which is a range of tailor-made premium service available to all customers at Paris CDG, offering an exclusive and seamless experience on departure, transfer, or arrival. We also rolled out Air France holidays, providing exclusive flight and hotel packages to destinations worldwide. Lastly, we announced a new free and ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi offer with plans for fleet rollout starting this year. In 2024, we equipped all of KLM 787 and 777 aircraft with our new premium comfort cabins, doubling our capacity in this cabin class compared to last year. Meanwhile, both Air France and KLM enhanced the onboard dining experience with signature chefs crafting new menus, not only for flights departing from our home markets, but also from key international stations. These efforts were recognized by multiple awards with Air France and KLM receiving accolades for the third and seventh consecutive years effectively a testament to our commitment to excellence in both product quality and customer experience. In 2024, we spoke extensively about the Paris Olympic Games. Looking back, we can proudly say that we rose to the challenge with honor. From brand activation to the heart of Paris to the successful execution of operations, this event will remain a defining moment for our employees and leave a lasting positive impact on the entire group. I'd like to take a moment to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who contributed to its success. I'm also very proud to highlight the strong performance of our low-cost airline, Transavia, which successfully launched hand-paid luggage this year and joined the Flying Blue loyalty program. These initiatives are part of our ongoing efforts to create a seamless travel experience across the entire group that caters to the diverse needs of all our customers. Now on to slide six. Diving deeper into our commitment to sustainability, we continue to make strong progress in fleet renewal. As I mentioned, new generation aircraft now represent 27% of our fleet, seven points over and above last year. In addition, we secured a major agreement with Total Energy for up to 1.5 million tons of sustainable aviation fuel over the next decade. Another key milestone is the electrification of catering operations at KLM, part of our goal of achieving an emissions-free ground handling operation at Schiphol. The group's progress toward its environmental goals has received strong external recognition from multiple independent organizations. For instance, EcoVadis, a global provider of sustainability ratings, awarded our group the gold medal, placing us in the 97th percentile among 150,000 assessed companies. Additionally, our MSCI ESG rating improved from BBB to BBB, and we were recognized by Transport and Environment as the best among our peers for our efforts in incorporating alternative fuels. Moving now to slide seven. Over the past year, we've strengthened our premium positioning at both Alphonse and KLM. We successfully stimulated demand for premium travel across our network, particularly on North Atlantic routes, while maintaining our focus on delivering an industry-leading customer experience. Simultaneously, we have made strategic investments in our fleet and product, replacing older aircraft with newer, more premium-configured cabins, thereby reinforcing our commitment to high-value customers. Premium revenue grew 12% year-over-year, with premium cabins now contributing 26.9% of total group revenue, an increase in more than one percentage point from last year. Corporate travel continues to rebound with revenue up 4% compared to 2023, driven largely by strong demand for premium cabins, as well as strong performance on medium and long haul routes. In particular, premium and premium comfort cabins at KLM and at Air France saw a significant 29% revenue increase compared to last year, mainly thanks to additional capacity, including a twofold increase in premium comfort capacity at KLM as we completed the retrofit of all the fleet 787 and 777 aircraft families. This ongoing shift toward a more premium customer mix at both KLM and Air France remains a key driver of unit revenue growth and one of the fundamental pillars of our long-term profitability. On to slide eight, our revenue streams continue to expand beyond ticket sales with ancillary revenue increasing by 20% in 2024. Seat selection revenues saw strong double-digit growth for both KLM and Alphonse. A key driver of this growth has been the development of personalized options that enhance the customer experience. By leveraging dynamic pricing models, we are optimizing seat selection and baggage service pricing, thereby maximizing value while maintaining competitive offers for passengers. Meanwhile, Transavia's introduction of paid hand luggage has effectively adapted our product offering, improved operational efficiency, and reinforced our financial performance. On the slide nine, our cargo business delivered a solid year-end performance driven by strong levels of demand and effective capacity management. Our industry-leading online bookings stood at 80%, reflecting our commitment to digitization and operational efficiency. Additionally, we are continuing to invest in our IT capabilities, enhancing our CRM and booking tools to maximize contributions across our network and ensure a seamless experience for all our customers. Engineering and maintenance saw a strong external revenue growth exceeding 20% and significantly outperform market trends. Our long-term contracts now cover all new aircraft types, ensuring steady business expansion and substantial order book. At the same time, we've enhanced technical performance and cabin quality across our fleet while advancing our capabilities with fleet engines. Despite ongoing supply chain disruptions, our internal repair solutions have been effective in mitigating these challenges. Flying Blue is now fully deployed across all group airlines, solidifying its position as one of Europe's leading airline loyalty programs. This year, we expanded our vision beyond aviation by adding new lifestyle partners such as Revolut and Uber. Non-airline revenue grew by 22%, diversifying the program's income streams. Additionally, I'm very proud to announce that we have recently renewed our key strategic partnership with American Express, further solidifying our loyalty program as one of the most compelling in Europe and reinforcing our overall value proposition. I'd like now to hand over the presentation to Stephen Zad, our CFO.
Thank you, Ben, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to listen to us. As you can imagine, I'm very happy with the results in Q4. It is by far the best quarter we have in our history. Despite, let's say, all the breaks, we still have our performance. I know that one swallow will not make a summer, but it is a very, very strong result for the quarter. So if we go to page 10, you see that operating margins ended at 5.8%. We had an improvement of results of 450 million, for sure supported by a much lower fuel price, but we were able to keep our unit revenue up with 4%. Despite the fact that our unit costs also went up, and I will make later the link, there is a link between the strong unit revenue performance and what we invest in our products and also the premiumization of our products. So all in all, a 450 million improvement in the fourth quarter. which at the end of the day results that we are slightly below the year 2023. So strongly supported by this fourth quarter. We saw that we had year over year impacts of around 200 million year over year with all kinds of root causes. In Q1, we had a difficult operational climate, which we are improving now. In the second quarter and the third quarter, we saw the impacts of the Olympics. And now you see that year over year we are improving strongly our results. And I'm extremely happy that we have a positive recurring adjusted operating free cash flow. We know that we still have to pay back, let's say, the social wages in France and the wage tax in the Netherlands. But it's good to see that the business on itself generates a positive free cash flow despite the headwinds we had in 2024. If we go to page 11, you see that there was an extreme strong load factor. So we increased our capacity, but we increased significantly our load factor compared to last year. And especially we increased our capacity on the premium. On the left, you see that we increased the capacity by more than 4%. With that, the load factor went up with almost 2%, and the yield went also up by almost 2%. So a very strong development of the premium segment, which shows that our strategy to focus on this premium segment is paying off. If you look at the map on the long haul, you see a very strong demand on North America, capacity of 1.3%, 3% up in terms of load factor and another 3% in terms of yield. And this is excluding the currency impact. So if you would take even the dollar into account for what we sell in the US, it's even much stronger. Then if you go to, let's say, Africa, Africa, you see that we reduced our capacity. That has also to do with the geopolitical situation which started a year ago. But still there also we see an increase of our load factor and keeping our yields stable. And last but not least, we increase in Asia our capacity that even drove up further the load factor that goes hand in hand with a slightly lower yield. But be aware that this area has very strong cargo revenues. And we saw even that, let's say, our destinations in China were really in the top tens of our long haul performance. So very strong performance in terms of load factor, still keeping the yields very strong, and that drives up the total unit revenue. And last but not least, Transavia. six point nine percent increase in capacity two percent increase of load factor and a nine percent increase of yields strongly supported also by the paid hand luggage but it's good to see and i come back on that later that we have now the transavia at a positive result if we go to slide 12 i think that is a very important one we already guided that the q4 would be difficult because of the maintenance cost at the klm components business we see also an increase of crowd handling costs. And we know that the labor costs are driving up our unit costs. But on the right side, I think you should keep in mind that around 2% of the unit cost increase is to support our unit revenues. There's a direct relation by the fact that we have a higher load factor. So by definition that increase the unit cost because there's a cost per available seat. Then we saw that we grew more our short and medium haul versus the long haul. And last but not least, we have a premiumization of the cabin. So we grew our premium cabin with 4.3% versus 1.2% on the economy. And our growth in premium economy was even 23% up. And then in the middle, you see the increase of the charges, which we actually cannot fully control, which are the air traffic charges and the airport charges. which has an upward of 0.7%. So the strong unit revenue performance has also to do that we have to make certain costs to deliver that. But all in all, it pays off, as you see, over the year-over-year development of our results. Let's then go to page 13. You can imagine that a CFO with only green figures on the slide is very happy. Cargo, just take a number, is up in unit revenue 21%. As I explained, the unit revenue mainly driven by the load factor is up on the passenger list by 2.5%, which drove up the full results by close to 400 million improvement year over year on our network business. Then Transavia, I come back on it again, 6.9% increase of capacity, almost 12% increase of unit revenue, which drove up our operating result by 30 million. We know that this is always a difficult quarter because it's not the best tourist quarter for the year. So it's promising what we will see in Q2 and Q3, especially from our Transavia business. And last but not least, on the maintenance, we did a lot of shop visits. The order book is pretty, pretty full. It is almost difficult actually to sell more as we are totally sold out on this engine business. We improved our revenues with 11% and also the results went up with 21 million bringing us closer to the margins which we saw in 2019. So all in all, 450 million up in operating result and 5% operating margin and an improvement of 5.8% in margin. Let's then go to Air France and KLM. So we see a very strong, it's good to see that both carriers are improving their results. So we see an improvement of Air France more than 300 million, a very strong unit revenue Air France that they developed, especially very strong also to the US. On KLM, we saw that we are still holding back a bit on our long haul capacity. So the unit revenue growth was 22%, so not the 4.8% at Air France. And we still have the unit cost where we are working on. We already announced the additional maintenance cost and KLM announced in 2025 that they will reduce 250 non-operational roles to reach the productivity target. So good to see that both carriers are improving the results year over year. And last but not least, very stable and strong results of our Flying Blue business, generating now an operating margin of more than 20%. Very important for our revenue. 52% of our revenues are generated by the loyalty program. So that is very, very important asset for us, both for the airlines, but also for the third party revenues. And we are extremely happy, as Ben already said, that we have extended our global cooperation with American Express till September 2033. So quite a long time. to secure that we have this strong operational and financial performance from our flying blue business. Then quickly on the full year results. So it is, as I already indicated, 100 million lower than last year and strong improvement of Transavia, 100 million improvement year over year, also supported by the implementation of this paid hand luggage. Maintenance improved by 20 million. So it's gotten closer to, let's say, the levels what we have seen in 2019. And on the network, as we know, we had our headwinds both in operations, both also in cargo, especially in the first half year, and of course, the Olympics. So it shows that especially there, there will be, let's say, room for improvement for the year to come. But I will come back on that later during our outlook. We go to Air France and KLM. You see KLM, let's say in total, let's say we are 100 million down. Of course, we have to take into consideration that we moved Flying Blue towards the group, so that brought 200 million. So in general, you see that, let's say, both airlines deteriorated in results with the reasons already expected, but you have to also take into account the Flying Blue program. Last but not least for 2024, if you look at the free cash flow, very strong fourth quarter. We generated 126 million in recurring adjusted free cash flow, which is usually not a very good quarter in terms of cash and much, much stronger than what we did. last year. Of course, we had these exceptionals of 1.1 billion, but it's good to see that the business on itself is generating close to 300 million of adjusted operating free cash flow, taking out these exceptionals. And the leverage, we stabilized the leverage over the quarter, so at 1.7, we have still a very strong cash at hand. You see that the lease debt is increasing, that is partly coming from the fact that we have to extend leases because the fleet deliveries are getting slower and that is around 500 million. And we have, especially in the beginning of Transavia and KLM, we have, let's say, we support the introduction of this A320 and A321, especially also with direct leases to make sure that we quickly make the adaptation from the 737 fleet to our A320 and A321 NEOs. Let's then go to the outlook, which you can see on, let's first start on page 20. Let's go for the shorter term, which is the first quarter. So if you look at the picture, it looks like that we have a lower load factor that is completely related to the Easter shift. If you look at January, the load factor was up plus 1.3%. In February, the load factor is up 0.2%. And we still see very strong yields. In January, it was 5.9% at the passenger business. At cargo, it was 11%. And at Transavia, it was 3.8%. So very strong unit revenue development. Also for February, if you look at the network business, we see a yield of 3.1%. So at the end of the day, despite the fact that we have this Easter shift, we will have for sure a positive unit revenue in the first quarter. On page 21, you will find our capacity outlook. So it is fully in sync as what we have presented during the investor day. We will grow further our long haul and short and medium haul at 3% to 5%. and Transavia, we expect to grow by 10%. So that brings in total and a capacity increase of around four to 5% versus 2024. And then I hand over to Marjan to explain in detail what we all implemented already, let's say, for Back on Track, which brings further and result improvement of 450 million in the year 2025. If you look at the numbers, it will kick in, especially in the second half year, because it takes time. to implement, and we know that we still have the maintenance cost, especially in the first and the second quarter, which we need to get under control. But I think we are making real progress with these nine actions. But Marjan, please take over.
Thank you, Steven. So we introduced the Back on Track project last year already to deliver the 450 million in 2025 to reach the margin targets of 8% by 2026-2028. As you can see, it consists of five buckets, increase productivity and save costs, restore operational capacity, increase revenues, consider the business case and reconsider CAPEX. And on all five, we made progress so far. So we announced already we will reduce the office jobs with 250. We have other productivity measures in place already without the CLA like more seats in Embraer or handling different airlines at ground handling off-peak. but we're also busy with operational capacity. So first of all, we made a deal with the pilots until next year to secure our operation during summer and winter. We started, as you all know, the pilot on paid catering to a couple of destinations and to evaluate the pilot uh around summer time and then dependent on the pilots take next steps as well we reconsidered the business impact we took already the decision to reduce capacity at a significant and we reconsidered the real estate portfolio already but also made a lot of decisions to reduce capex and increase the free cash flow So a lot has been done already. A lot needs to be done still in the future. So we are still dependent on the outcome of the CLA discussions starting today and will proceed the next few weeks. I think that's it. Steven, you want to add some details?
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