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Air France-Klm Ads
11/6/2025
Good morning and welcome to the Air France KLM third quarter 2025 results presentation. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Benjamin Smith, CEO, and Stephen Zat, CFO. Please go ahead, sirs.
Okay, thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the presentation of Air France KLM's third quarter results presentation. As usual, I'll start by sharing the key highlights of the quarter, and then I'll hand it over to our CFO, Stephen Zott, who will walk you through the financial results in more detail. I'll return at the end with a few concluding remarks before we open the floor for any questions you might have. This quarter, once again, demonstrates the resilience of our business model in a challenging environment. In the third quarter, Afron's KLM delivered a stable operating margin of 13.1%. with revenues increasing by 3% year-over-year to €9.2 billion, supported by a 5% increase in passenger traffic, which reached 29.2 million passengers. Passenger network unit revenue was up 0.5% at constant currency, driven by continued strong demand for premium cabins, which I will elaborate on later. Meanwhile, our maintenance business also made a solid contribution. We managed to limit our unit cost increase to 1.3% despite higher airport and air traffic control charges. As a result, operating income improved by €23 million year-over-year to €1.2 billion. Our balance sheet remains robust with leverage at 1.6 times. Year-to-date recurring adjusted operating free cash flow reached €700 million. confirming our ability to combine financial discipline with continued investment in our future. Finally, fleet renewal continues to advance, with new generation aircraft now representing nearly one-third of the fleet, up eight points compared to a year ago. I'm moving to slide five for those of you that are following the deck here. One of this quarter's key highlights is the continued success of our loyalty program, Flying Blue, which has been named the world's best airline loyalty program by Point.me for the second year in a row. This distinction reflects the trust of over 30 million members and underscores Flying Blue's growing role in strengthening our connection with customers. Flying Blue remains a powerful driver of loyalty and commercial performance, and its global recognition is a testament to the value and quality of the experience that we deliver. Let's turn now to slide five. We're pursuing the implementation of our premiumization roadmap across the group with concrete improvement throughout the customer journey. On board, we're rolling out our latest long-haul business cabins at both Air France KLM and KLM's Premium Comfort Class is now featured on more routes. Starting in September, Air France has been introducing high-speed Starlink Wi-Fi on board, available free of charge in every cabin, a first for any major European airline. Almost 30 aircraft have already been equipped, and we expect 30% of the Air France fleet to feature this service by the end of 2025. In addition, we are continuing to enhance the customer experience across multiple touchpoints, This includes upgraded premium lounges with recent improvements in Chicago and Boston and an enriched dining offer featuring new signature dishes from Michelin-starred chefs on U.S. departures and a simplified customer journey from check-in to boarding. A new exclusive ground experience has also been introduced at Los Angeles for La Première customers, and I'm also particularly proud to highlight that our fully redesigned La Première cabin will be available on the Paris CDG to Miami route starting November 10th after following a very, very successful launch on our flights to New York JFK, Singapore, and Los Angeles. Altogether, these initiatives elevate the quality of our product, reinforce our positioning in the premium travel segment, and support our path to higher value revenues. Moving to slide six, as you can see from this slide, the mix of our long-haul cabins is gradually shifting toward higher-value premium segments. At Air France, the share of La Première and business seeds is set to increase from 12% in 2022 to 13% by 2028, while premium economy, now rebranded as premium, will rise from 8% to 10%. At KLM, the trend is even more pronounced. Premium comfort introduced in 2022 is expected to expand to 10% of seats by 2028, while the business cabin segment will grow from 10% to 12%. In other words, by 2028, almost one in four seats across our long-haul fleet will be in premium cabins. This structural shift aligns with our longer-term strategy to strengthen our brand positioning, reflecting evolving customer demand, improving revenue quality, and enhancing the value proposition for long-haul travelers. Turning to our network, we are continuing to expand connectivity across all key markets. This winter, the group will operate a broad network across all regions with balanced capacity growth. In Asia and the Middle East, Air France will serve Phuket, Thailand, while KLM will add Hyderabad, India to its network. In the Caribbean, Air France will launch services to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, and KLM will introduce flights to Barbados. Across Europe, KLM is opening Kittila in northern Finland, while Transavia is launching new services from Deauville, Normandy, and Medina, Saudi Arabia, and Marsa Alam, Egypt, will also be added. And Transavia will increase flights to Morocco, Egypt, and Finland's Lapland region as well. Looking ahead, Air France will launch flights to Las Vegas in summer 2026, further strengthening our North American offerings. Altogether, these additions illustrate how Air France KLM continues to grow strategically, improving connectivity, reinforcing its position in key markets, and maintaining a well-balanced portfolio of routes. With that, I'll now hand it over to Steven, who will walk you through the detailed financial results.
Yes. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking the time to listen to us. I think we can say it was a tough quarter in the third quarter, especially from a revenue perspective. The impact of the situation in the US regarding visa and immigration rules starts to hurt our lower yield segment in the long haul. And I think also the warm summer didn't help our European network and Transavia. And then on top we had ATC strikes in July, we had ground strikes at KLM, and then all the impact from the taxes and charges which we get In France, from the DSBA, and it's tripled the charges of the lending fees and the increase of our security charges. I think we had last year, we had, let's say, the Olympics. So I think if you look at the tailwinds, which we should have from the Olympics, a big part has been absorbed by these headwinds in this quarter. If we look at the margin, you see a stable margin of around 13%, which is the same as we had last year. On the unit revenue, if you exclude currency, we are at minus 0.5%. And the unit cost, we are quite well under control. I guided you already that we will be at the lower end of the 1% to 3%. So we are very close now to the 1%. and if you include also the fuel benefit you will see that actually our unit cost is coming down with 0.2 percent so let's say unit revenues and unit costs are stabilizing each other in this quarter if you look at the left and you look at the net result you see that it looks down year over year but it comes that we had an unrealized foreign exchange result last year of more than 100 million so if you take that out on the net result we actually improved and we are now at an equity level above 2 billion. If you go business by business, and I will come back on the 0.5 unit revenue on passenger business on the next slide, you have to see at the cargo that we see a minus 5% in unit revenues. This is related to the fact that we had more freighters in maintenance, so we planned more maintenance for our freighters at Schiphol, and it extended also more than what we expected. So this is quite a big impact on our unit revenue. If you look at the cargo contribution to our P&L, it's more or less flat, so it's also, let's say, benefiting from a unit cost perspective over there, absorbing actually the unit revenue decline in the cargo. On Transavia, we grew capacity 13.8%, 15% in France and 12.5% in the Netherlands. In France, by taking over the slots of Air France in Orly and in the Netherlands by upgoaching our fleet. That had an impact on our unit revenue, which is down minus 2.8%. And I think also that the warm weather didn't help our low-cost business due to the fact that the appetite to travel, probably when it's hot, It's less when it is raining dogs and cats outside. So we have a stable result of Transavia of around 217 million. The maintenance business performed quite well, an increase of 13% of our revenues despite the lower USD. Especially on engines and components, we start growing the business. We are now at an order book level. of 10.4 billion. We increased our order book by 1.7 billion compared to the beginning of the last year. So we are strengthening this business segment and you see also that the results are improving quarter over quarter now with an operating margin of 6.3%. So a very good performance on the maintenance business where we also start to recover at the components business to drive up our margin. If we then go to page 11, let's start with Air France. Of course, there was the Olympics last year, but we also had the TSBA impact and the ATC strikes. And all in all, Air France improved the result by 67 million, having now an operating margin of 14%. KLM is especially impacted by the lower yield demand. And this lower yield, especially on the long haul, impacts the unit revenues of KLM. And on top of it, we have the increase of the Schiphol tariffs, which really hurt in KLM. including also the security charges which are going up. So I think these two impacts actually explain all the KLM decline, despite the fact that we continue with our back on track. And you see later that on the productivity side, the unit costs are getting better under control. And also we see that we are getting very close to, let's say, the low limit of our guidance, and especially a big contribution coming from the productivity side. On Flying Blue, a stable result of around 54 million. We had last year, first of all, Flying Blue is impacted by the dollar because we sell miles in the US. And on top of it, we had very cheap seats available for Flying Blue during the Olympics. It has a positive impact, let's say, on the miles cost, which we don't have this quarter, but I think it was a very strong quarter. We grew the business again with 10.5% and the business operating margin of 24% is contributing as we expected to our business model. If you then go to page 12, then you see the big difference, and we took out now also the premium economy. You see that there's a big difference between the premium traffic and the lower-yield economy traffic. So in the first in business, we increased our load factor, we increased our capacity, we increased our yield. On the premium economy, we even increased our capacity with 10%, while at the same time increasing the ticket prices by 5.4%. And then on the economy... There you see it's starting to hurt. It is minus 1.5% in terms of yield and also a lower load factor, although the load factor is still 91%. You see that it is more difficult to fill this seat. If you look, for instance, on our traffic on the North Atlantic to the US, there is minus 10% lower passengers from India, for instance, which is all related to these immigration rules in the US. If you go over the world, you see still that North America on itself is not doing that bad. We have a 2.7% increase in yield, especially driven again by the first and business class and the premium economy and also by the very strong point of sale in the US. Latin America is still strong, 2.8% up in yield. And we see also that in the Caribbean, in the ocean, we could increase our yields year over year. On the long of the outlayer is a bit Africa, where we see that we have a gap on the load factor, which is especially again related to the political situation in Africa, but also the connecting traffic to the US, where there is less traffic from Africa. to the US due to all the immigration rules. And on the right, you see a quite positive trend on Asia at 4.4% in yield. So we are doing quite well in that segment with a limited growth of 1.7%. On the right, you see again Transavia, which are already explained. So this is minus 2.7. And you see this hot summer had an impact on our short and medium haul, which was more or less flattish year over year. If we then go to page 13, you see we guided you that we would be at the lower end of the 1, 2, 3. So we are very close to the 1 now. That will also be the case in the next quarter. We see the unit costs are coming down as productivity is kicking in. But of course, the premiumization, which contributes 0.6% to our unit costs and also this increased ATC charges and the Significant increase of the airport charges, especially in Amsterdam, that drives actually the cost here still. But our own unit cost, which we can directly influence, you see that the labor price is compensated by 1.3% on unit cost on productivity. And then on the operations, it's still going up 0.8%. mainly driven also that we have expensive ground and also on the maintenance side is still quite a difficult environment so but all in all good to see that the unit cost excluding the ATC charges and the premiumization are more or less flattish and we see also a positive trend towards Q4. On page 14 you see the cash flow so a big jump positively in terms of operating free cash flow. We had 1.5 billion, where we were last year at 28 million. Then we still have in there around 400 million of deferred social charges and weight tax. And if you take these exceptionals and you take also the payment of the lease debt, you see that we are now at a recurring adjusted operating free cash flow of more than 700 million, where last year we were at 23 million. And if you look at the right, you see that the net debt is coming up. Of course, these exceptionals of 400 million are added actually at the end of the day to our net debt. And we signed a lease contract on the 787-9, where we extended the leases till the period 2033 and 2035, which had a 300 million impact. on our modified lease debt. But of course, that has not an impact in the coming period on our free cash flow because we continue to operate these profitable planes. If we then go to page 15, you see that the leverage is down now at 1.6. We have 9.5 billion of cash at hand, which is very stable over the year, which is well above the 6 to 8 billion target. We launched very successfully a bond of 500 million, pure vanilla, for five years with a coupon of 3.75%. We had the lowest credit spread ever. in our history of Air France KLM. So we are extremely proud of that. And we continue to simplify our balance sheet. So we redeemed Apollo for 500 million in July. We issued a new hybrid into the market, but we will also pay back the 300 million of our hybrid convertible bond in the market. So in total, We are reducing this hybrid stock with 300 million this year, and within that result generation, we see that we continue to strengthen our balance sheet where we are now above the 2 billion of equity. Let's then go to the outlook, and let's start with the forward bookings. We see that there is a gap of 3% in the long haul, 2% in the minimum, and 4% at trans-agri. We have seen this every quarter. At the end of the day, we were always able to almost close completely this gap. So that is also, let's say, that is a little bit the trend what we see now in our industry. To give you a bit of an indication, if you look at the first 28 days of October, we see a unit revenue increase of 2%, excluding currency impact, with a load factor gap of 1%. And we see again a difference between premium traffic, including premium economy, and the low-yielding classes in the overall long-haul network, giving confidence on our premiumization strategy. Then also I will for one time also guide you on the cargo because usually I don't do that because I think that we don't have a lot of bookings in. But we had a very exceptional situation last year where we had a positive impact of the front loading. especially related to the U.S. elections in the fourth quarter. I already indicated in our loss call that the Q4 cargo unit revenues would be negative. And for the first four weeks of October, we see a decrease in unit revenue of 11%. Although cargo has a very short booking window than the passenger business, and it's difficult to predict the unit revenues, but in our internal forecast, we expect a double-digit decline in unit revenues compared to last year for the fourth quarter. If we then go to page 18 on the hedge, so you see that we have hedged now 70% of 25% and 50% of 26%. We are quite stable in our fuel bill. I think we last time indicated $6.9 billion, and we are now at $6.9 billion. So a very stable fuel price if you look at it over quarter to quarter. It can go up and down during the weeks, but I think we are now reaching a kind of normal plateau for the fuel price. If we then go to page 19 on the capacity, so we still aim at the capacity of 3% to 5% on the long haul, 3% to 5% on the short and medium haul, and Transavia, especially because we had very strong operations in the third quarter, we expect to be above 10% for the full year. But overall, we still guide at the 4% to 5% versus 2024. On page 20, you see the outlook, and it is every quarter the same. It becomes a bit boring, maybe. So group capacity, 4% to 5%. Unit cost, I'm very confident in the low single-digit increase, where we will see in the fourth quarter that we're at the very low side of this guidance. So we are comfortable for the full year on this low single-digit increase in unit costs. Net capex between 3.2 to 3.4 billion, also probably more at the low end of the... of the bandwidth and NetApp's current EBITDA, we will keep that between 1.5 and 2. Then we strengthened further our position in Canada. We have a very strong cooperation with WestJet, which is the second largest airline with the leading market positions in Western Canada. We already have since 2009 a co-chair and a loyalty program with them. And it's interesting to see that they are the number six partner of our Air France KLM-enabled revenues. So next time when we do all a pub quiz, I will invite you to tell me who are the number two, three, four, and five. Number one, you can easily guess, but it's interesting to see that they drive really up our revenue. So we were happy that together with Delta and Corinaire, we could lock them in for our business, and we took a stake of 2.3%, solidifying our integrated way of working with Delta and securing our position in Canada. With that, I hand over to Ben for the final remarks. Thanks, Steven.
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