4/30/2025

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Air France KLM first quarter 2025 results presentation. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ben Smith, CEO, and Stephen Zat, CFO. Please go ahead, sirs.

speaker
Ben Smith
CEO, Air France-KLM

Okay, thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the presentation of Air France KLM's results for the first quarter of 2025. Today I'm joined by Stephen Zad, our group CFO. We'll start by covering the key highlights of the quarter before I hand it over to Stephen, who will walk you through the detailed financial results. And then I'll close with an overview of our medium-term ambitions before opening the floor to your questions. So moving to slide three. So we're very proud to report that the group delivered an improved performance this quarter, once again demonstrating the resilience and strength of our business model. Revenues were up 8% year over year, driven by a solid performance across all our activities, including maintenance. Our operating result improved by €161 million, reaching a negative €328 million, a significant step forward compared to the same period last year. Supported by strong unit revenue, development, a more favorable fuel price environment, and an overall improvement in operational performance. I've got to apologize for perhaps some background noise. The building next door is under heavy travel work, so hopefully you can hear us clearly. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio now stands at 1.6 times, fully aligned with our midterm ambition range of 1.5 times to 2.0 times. Importantly, we generated a positive recurring adjusted operating free cash flow of 0.8 billion euros, highlighting the robustness of our cash generation capabilities even during the seasonally weakest quarter of the year. Finally, in line with our commitment to sustainability, the share of new generation aircraft within the group increased by seven percentage points compared to last year, now representing 28% of our total fleet. Onto slide four. Despite a context of political and economic uncertainty, Europe continues to demonstrate its strength as a leading travel destination. Looking at industry bookings for the coming months, Europe is holding up against the turmoil with inbound traffic from both the United States and the rest of the world showing growth compared to last year. It's worth noting that these markets are predominantly inbound towards Europe, 66% of the U.S. traffic and 51% of the rest of the world traffic are inbound flows. As you can also see on the slide, part of the missing U.S. outbound traffic may be redirected to other regions of the world where we, as a group, would be well positioned to capitalize on our extensive network of destinations. In this setup, France continues to serve as a key anchor for this momentum, maintaining its leadership position as the world's number one inbound tourism destination and also capitalizing on the positive coverage of the Olympics in 2024. Combined with our diversified network and strong exposure to international traffic, This places us in a strategic position to mitigate the impact of current uncertainties and to adapt quickly if needed. As we defined in 2019, we maintain a clear strategy of covering and enhancing all market segments to ensure we meet and ultimately exceed the expectations of our customers. and at the entry-level segment, we address point-to-point leisure and price-sensitive markets through Transavia, pursuing our growth trajectory. This strategy, already communicated previously, will culminate in the full replacement of Alphonse's loss-making domestic operation by summer 2026. Both Alphonse and KLM are simultaneously upgrading their long-haul premium offerings, focusing on capturing growth in both the premium corporates and premium leisure markets. This includes the development of economy comfort at KLM and premium comfort at KLM. Both airlines now offer a business cabin seat with a door, establishing a new standard in business class travel. At the end of the market, top end of the market, Air France has recently unveiled its new La Première suite. As the pinnacle of our premiumization strategy, This launch elevates the level of excellence across the board and brings a strong luxury halo to our brand. We will take a closer look at this product on the next slide. As I just mentioned, we're very, very proud with the successful launch of our new Air France La Première cabin, which was officially unveiled during a global media reveal on March 18th in Paris and performed its inaugural flight to New York JFK on April 8th. The new cabin offers a stunning 3.5 square meters of personal space, five windows in length, making it the longest first-class seat suite on the market, featuring outstanding amenities such as a separate armchair and a chaise longue that transforms into a fully flat bed with the option of a fully partitioned double suite for complete privacy. This enhancement complements the complete revamp of our La Première ground experience, finalized in summer 2024, together delivering seamless and exclusive service at every stage of the customer journey. La Cremielle is the ultimate expression of our luxury vision, delivering an exceptional level of experience both on the ground and in the air, and this launch marks a major milestone in reinforcing Alphonse's position as a global leader in premium travel. And I'm very happy to share that prior to COVID, this cabin, this service, was heavily loss-making. We don't break out the details. Very pleased to share that in Q1, this service is now in a very strong financial performance result, and we are profitable in that regard. Moving on now to the final slide here. So I'd like to... take a moment to thank every one of my colleagues who contributed to turning the vision behind this product into a reality for our business. With that, I'll now hand it over to Steven, who will take you through the detailed financial results.

speaker
Stephen Zad
Group CFO, Air France-KLM

Thank you. Thank you, Ben, and good morning, everybody, on this beautiful day. I said last quarter that one swallow doesn't make a summer, but you can imagine that we are happy that we have seen a second swallow before even the summer has to come. We improved our margin by 3%, but let's go to those details on page 8. If you go to page 8, you see that we had a very strong development of unit revenue, and there was, of course, the tailwind of the fuel price. In total, we were able to grow our revenues by 7.7%, 4% is coming from the capacity growth, and 3% is coming from our unit revenues, and there's around 1% coming from the currency. So the unit revenue increased by 3%, the unit cost increased also by 2.1%, but that is for a big chunk also related to our unit revenue development. So you see that the differential between the unit revenue and the unit cost brought for us an additional percentage in terms of margin. And the other 1.8% is actually coming from, let's say, the fuel price and the currency. It's around 1.9% margin improvement coming over there. And it's good to see that we have at least a cushion for the quarters to come in these uncertain times. And this result, this improvement of operating margin, we should also keep in mind, that we had last year, we had Eastern in the first quarter, and we have now Eastern in the second quarter. We don't lay out a specific number, but you can imagine that this Eastern impact will support our second quarter. If we then go to page 9, then you see the differences over the network. Let's start on the passenger business on the network, an improvement of our unit revenue of 2.8%. especially driven by a stronger yield. The load factor is slightly down, but we have seen that the steering, especially for yield in this quarter, has helped us also to increase our yield over the whole network. So as you still can remember, maybe last quarter, we started the quarter with a booking load factor of 2% gap. And at the end of the day, we closed almost that whole booking load factor, especially coming from a very strong unit revenues from the premium on which I will detail out further on the coming page. Cargo also very strong 16.2% both coming from a load factor increase of 2% and also heavy unit revenue increase from our cargo segments and that drives in total up our network performance by 163 million. Then on Transavia. Transavia we grew our capacity by close to 4%. Our unit revenue is more or less flattish, despite the fact that it has been, let's say, supported by the paid hand luggage. So let's say if you would have taken out, let's say the unit revenue is slightly down, and it's coming actually by four impacts. First, Transavia is very dependent on Eastern and holiday season. And as we move the holiday season to the second quarter, that for sure has an impact on Transavia. Second, the weather was very bad in Spain. So 44% of Transavia in the Netherlands is flying to Spain in this quarter. And you see that the bad weather and also the fact that we didn't have Eastern impacted Transavia as a whole. And we should not forget the introduction of the ticket tax in the Netherlands bringing more than 25 euros on the tickets that didn't help this business segment and that moved actually passengers towards Germany and towards Belgium. So a bad implementation actually from another additional tax on our industry. And last but not least, we don't have to forget, we grow this capacity. So for sure, we know always that the first quarter is difficult in the low-cost segment. So we are going to regain those results in the quarters to come. Then on maintenance. Maintenance, a significant step up in the revenues, supported also by a stronger dollar. We see that the engine business is actually booming. So both on the revenue side and the operating results side, It's fully coming from a very booming engine business, both in the Netherlands and in France. So good to see that we are heading towards the margins which we had pre-COVID for our engineering and maintenance, despite the fact that there are still, let's say, some difficulties in the supply chain and especially hurting our components business. But all in all, very strong results for the engine business on which we can be very proud of. If we then go to page 10, let's start with, of course, both carriers improved the results coming from the fact that the fuel price is coming down and partly that has been eaten up by the higher US dollar, which is negative in terms of our cost. So at all, let's say we have a positive impact from that fuel wind, both for Air France as for KLM. Air France has a very strong unit revenue increase coming from the premium. So the premium demand is really, really strong resulting in high yields. And on KLM you see even a higher unit revenue growth specifically coming from a very strong implementation of the premium economy. KLM increased the capacity by more than 60% on the premium economy. The yield over there was up 9% and the load factor is up 2%. So it's good to see that the revenue growth of premium economy for KLM grew by more than 80%. Then we see the first signs of back on track coming in. So especially by a better operation and also a better performance of the engine maintenance business as just explained. And of course, we had a one-off cost of 50 million last year in Q1, which we didn't have this year in the first quarter, which helped also and supported the KLM results. What is important now for us is that we get the productivity delivered to the CLAs. We are currently in those discussions, so that should happen from Q2 onwards. And we have, unfortunately, also in the second quarter, this ridiculous increase of the Schiphol tariffs by 40%. So that will kick in the second quarter. Then on Flying Blue, on Flying Blue we see a stable performance due to the fact that we have a very strong yield and we have very tight seats available. We reduced a bit the Flying Blue activity to that segment. We signed a commercial agreement with American Express which will be there until September 2033, but the results of that will kick in from the 1st of January 2026. So Flying Blue is still a very, very decent margin, but we have a little bit more tightness in our revenue management system to give access to our Flying Blue passengers. If we then go to page 11, Then you see that we have on every, let's say, if you look at the premium and the economy and the total, you see that we have a positive yield impact, very strong on the premium. We grew our capacity by close to 6%. and resulting even with a yield improvement of 7%. On the economy, we grew only by 2.2%. You see a positive yield impact of 1.7%, but that's purely coming from the successful implementation of the premium economy. We grew the capacity over there for Air France Kalium in total with 21%. percent and with a yield increase of five percent and also a load factor increase in two percent. So a lot of demand of this premium product in the economy where there is more to come. If you then look at the total long row, you see a very strong west side. So the U.S. with an eight percent increase in yield has been of course very, very strong. but also Latin America is at 4.5%, and even Asia at 6.2%. We reduced the capacity towards Asia, but that's not on the real Asia, let's say. It is a reduction of capacity of the Middle East, and we had a slight increase of the Asian capacity. Strong yield development in India, China, and also Japan, and also in Korea. So the Asian segment is developing well, especially in attractiveness in terms of yield. Then if we look at the middle, you see, let's first start with short and medium haul. We increased our capacity significantly, which is for a big chunk coming from the fact that last year we had an ATC closure, so we needed to reduce our capacity significantly, and that drove down the capacity last year. So we restored that capacity now, And that's actually representing this increase in our short and medium haul with a slight decrease also in yields, which is also coming from the fact that there was less capacity in also from the competition in 2024 first quarter. Then on Transavia, as already said, so we increased capacity by close to 14%, minus 2% in terms of load factor coming from the eastern impact and an increase of yield of 2.3%. supported by the paid hand luggage which we implemented in the second quarter. So we still had a positive in the first quarter. So in a nutshell, very strong results in the East and West and very strong results in the premium segment and I will come back to you later if you talk about the second part of what we see in the US and what we see at the rest of our network. If we then go to page 12, And I think this shows for us pretty well what is our strategy and how we are going to improve our markets. So you see the unit revenue is up 3%, despite the fact that there was no Eastern. That goes hand in hand with a unit cost increase of 2.1%. But out of this 2.1%, there's 1.1% coming back. from unit revenue related costs. Part is coming from the capacity mix, so we have more medium haul flying than long haul, so that by definition grow your unit cost. And it comes from the premiumization of the cabin where we have 3.4% more growth in the business class and 21% growth in our premium economy. And last but not least, the 0.7% of total cost increase of our total unit cost coming from our airport and ATC charges. I want to repeat it again. Also in the first quarter, the Schiphol tariffs went up and we see it again going up further with 40% in the second quarter. But then all the costs which we have in our hands, let's first say that we still have on the labor price We had a one-off payment of 50 million, so if you take that into account, the labor price impact on our unit cost was 2.3%, but it's good to see that we partly absorbed that by increased productivity, and we know that there still needs productivity to come from KLM. So it is 0.6% productivity impact on our unit cost, which is an improvement of our productivity of the staff of 2%. And last but not least, also related by, let's say, the much better operations which we have run in this quarter, that has a positive impact of 0.6% on our unit cost, and that is actually also part of, let's say, the KLM back on track part to improve the operations to make sure that we are having the right product for our customers and that we don't spend it on EU 261 compensation. If you look at the next quarter, we will probably be at the high end of our range. I already told you we have an increase of Schiphol tariffs of an outrageous 40% and we still have high maintenance costs on the KLM side. And we still have to see that the productivity comes in with the CLA, which actually we are now already, let's say, over one month after the closure of the CLA date, because it should be closed on the 1st of March 2025. So it takes a bit of a delay, but there will be productivity gains coming in in the second quarter, but it's absorbed by higher maintenance costs and also this increase of the Schiphol tariff. If we then go to the cash, so 1 billion operating free cash flow, of course, very strongly supported by 1.5 billion sales in tickets. But we are really ahead of our own internal plans in terms of free cash flow delivery, 800 million. We are quite happy with the strong free cash flow performance in this quarter. It brought down our net debt from 7.3 to 6.9 and it improved our leverage from 1.7 to 1.6. Still a very strong cash at hand. It's 9.3 billion. We reduced our liabilities with 700 million and we paid 500 million of a bond out of our own cash. So very strong cash development. in this quarter let's then go to the outlook let's go to page 15 and of course everybody is coming here to listen what we are going to tell you about what's happening in the future let's first go to the picture of the booking load factor so we see that we are down compared to last year in terms of forward booking load factor, which was also the case last quarter. So there is a gap of 3% on the total long haul. On the North Atlantic, actually, it's only 2%. So it is less on the North Atlantic than on the total long haul. And on the short and medium haul, we are very close to where we were last year. And it's good to see that Transavia sold already 71% of their So, on that side, it looks pretty good. Then, if we then go to, let's say, the situation in the U.S., what we have seen in April so far is that we actually see, and it was already explained by Ben, that we see a shift from the point of sales U.S., which is getting stronger, from the point of sale Europe. usually we have on Air France we have around 46 percent of our tickets are sold in Europe for KLM it's around 50 percent and we have seen that in the the first three weeks that 40 that is going down in for Air France in Europe to 43 percent and for KLM to 46 percent but it shifted to the U.S. So the shift is around 3% from Europe to the U.S. for Air France and 4% for KLM. And usually the point of sale of the U.S. is much stronger in terms of pricing than what is happening in the U.S. And I will come back later on the differential on our U.S. network, what we see in terms of load factor and yield. If we go to the first three weeks of April, because we have only three weeks, let's say, in our books, we see that on the long haul, the load factor is up 1%. So if you see that the forward bookings is down 3% in the April, when we get closing, we are higher than last year. We had a yield of 3.9% increase on the long haul. On the North America, we see that we have around the same load factor as we had last year. It is down 0.2%, but the yield is up still 5.1%. And if you go to Europe, the load factor is up with 1.3%, and the yield is up with 1.9%. So over the total network, the load factor is up by 1%, and the yield is up 3.6%, for sure also impacted by Eastern. So for sure that has an impact on this yield development. If we then go to the specifics on the U.S., if you look at the forward bookings for May and June, you see that the load factor in May is down 3%, but the yield is up 4%. And in June, the load factor is down also 3%, booking load factor, and the yield is up 6%. So still a very strong pricing trend. dynamics on this segment. We see very strong bookings on the premium where even our unit revenue is strongly up. We see a very strong booking also on the premium economy as we have seen also on the first quarter in the US and it is as Ben already explained in last weeks to the past we see a little bit of softening in the let's say the lower class yield But overall, we still have a positive unit revenue in May and June, and for sure in April, as I just explained, on our US segment. If we then go to page 16, and as our only Dutch philosopher always say, Johan Cruijff, every disadvantage has also an advantage. You see the fuel price comes down with 300 million in dollars compared to what we have guided previously. last quarter, so a strong decrease coming from this fuel bill, and it's even 600 million below last year. So that is a good cushion for whatever happens on, let's say, the traffic related to the US situation to, let's say, have a cushion from our reduction of our fuel bill. And also the good news, we have almost 70% hedged for the year 2025 at very favorable hedge terms. Then let's go to the outlook. So we keep our outlook. I think despite there is, of course, uncertainty, we still see that the month is, as described in the previous section, is still continuing. Of course, especially the second quarter and the third quarter are the best quarters in terms of pricing and in terms of profitability. So these quarters, and especially in the, in the high summer, in July and August, you can sell any ticket you want. So on the long haul, we are at three to 5%. We guide you the same 3.5% short and medium, 3.5. And for Transavia, we will be at the 10%. So the guidance has not been changed. We will have an agile approach on our network. If we see a deterioration coming, but we expect that it will be more coming when the winter is kicking in than when the summer is kicking in as it is a high profitable season. And then for the full year, the outlook, so we didn't change the group capacity outlook, the unit cost, we are still comfortable with the low single digit increase, although we repeat again, we will be at the high end of the range in the second quarter due to Schiphol and due to the maintenance tariffs where we also had last quarter a compensation by the way on this. So there's also one time effect which we have in the second quarter, but we will be in the third in the second quarter at the higher range of that low single digit increase and then we will further continue with the road as we have seen in this quarter. We stick to the CAPEX, which of course we will, it is still too soon to tell, but if we are going to develop our network differently, we will also, of course, will be agile in our CAPEX, and we are sticking to the NetDev EBDA, which we improved this quarter between 1.5 and 2. So I think I give

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