Finnair Oyj

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Erkka Salonen from Finnair Investor Relations, and it's my pleasure to welcome you all to this Finnair's third quarter 2025 earnings call. I have here with me our CEO, Mr. Turku Kuusisto, and our new CFO, Mrs. Pia Aldonen-Forsell. I will now turn this call over to you, Turkkka. Please, go ahead.

Thank you, Erkka, and very good afternoon to all of you joining this earnings call. The busiest season is now behind us, and we are happy to report that we did deliver a solid Q3 financial performance, especially considering the negative impact from the industrial action. As you might recall, it took until mid-July to get the final CLA concluded and behind us. Before that, the quarter was shadowed by three strike days that led into cancellation of more than 300 flights. Today, we are reporting some 18 million euros of direct impact from the industrial action. Of course, for us, it's been very difficult to evaluate the so-called indirect impact, but they are in millions of euros. If we take the comparable operating result of 51 million euros and calculate back 18 million euros plus something from the indirect side, I guess that we can all agree that we would have been in part with the last year performance or even above. The revenue increase was 2% and that was also influenced by the cancellations and the indirect impact of the industrial action and then unfortunately we faced some unexpected maintenance slash AOG issues during the quarter that continued to impact negatively due to ASK and revenue development. But it's worth mentioning that after we got the CLAs and disruptions behind us, our quality of our service and flight regularity returned to a very high level almost immediately, because the weeks followed by the industrial actions actually scored to 99.3 in terms of regularity, but now the full quarter result is somewhat lower because of the AOGs. Also from the traffic plan and summer season network planning side, it was a great success when it comes to our traffic in Far East Asia, especially in Japan. We decided to increase the frequencies and capacity so that we flew 25 weekly frequencies between Helsinki and Japan, which made us the biggest operator or carrier between the Europe and Japan and as we can see from our load factors and also yield development that has been a very strong geographical region for us during the summer season. It's not on my slide but Pia will revert to it later in her presentation but yesterday the board of directors of Finner has also decided on the second installment of the return of capital payment that is now due 7th of November if I recall it right. Still taking some remarks around the collective labour agreements. Now we have reached with all employee groups and unions agreements that are in line with the general labour market framework and policies, which is of course extremely important for us when it comes to protecting and developing our cost competitiveness, not only in the short term, but also when we take a longer term value creation roadmap in front of us. We've been working intensively when it comes to returning customer satisfaction. And as you know, the biggest contributor to the positive NPS development is the quality of the service and regularity and punctuality. Very happy to report that the NPS of the total customer base did increase from the low point of 2080s close to 40 from August to September and then the development has continued. I will come back very shortly in this seed cover issue that we faced. But anyhow, when we take a more granular view related to the MPS development and explore the core customers of ours, we are actually trending even higher. So the most frequent flyers are even more satisfied with our services as we speak. Even though it was an event after the reporting period, this seat cover issue that we faced, we wanted to take the topic also today with you because it has gained quite a lot of media attention because we needed to ground eight aircrafts of our 321 fleet two weeks back because of a question mark in the certification process of the seats and seat covers. To be very transparent, we followed the instructions of the designer and OEM of those covers and seals. But then in our own internal procedures, we found the question marks and therefore we decided to ground the aircrafts. But also very happy to report that all planes are now flying. Six of them are back in our scheduled routes. Two of them are anyhow in the maintenance shop, one being painted and then one going through a heavy overhaul process. So from that point of view the operation is stabilized back to normal. When it comes to quantifying the financial impact, especially now when we face these CLA related disruptions, this is a completely different size item it's a minor item versus the CLA disruption and impact so we are at max discussing few million euros so that's something that we wanted to very transparently discuss with you today and of course also within the range within the guidance range that we will discuss later in this call Then moving to the geographical footprint of ours, as already mentioned, Asia performing very strong double digit growth, both in ASK and revenue development and also Rusk developing positively and also the RPK yield and load factors also on a positive side. Europe and domestic are rather stable or flattish, but nothing extraordinary in these geographical regions. And the big negative numbers in the Middle East area are explained by the fact that we are not flying anymore from Copenhagen and Stockholm to Doha. So it's only Helsinki-Doha operation. So therefore we are two thirds down given that change in our scheduled traffic. North Atlantic traffic and North America, especially USA, has of course remained as a challenge I guess for all Iran companies because of various aspects and we had a plan to increase the ASK and capacity for that area and we did so. Of course we already hedged some of the capacity down given the CLA issues and also the development that we witnessed early Q2, early Q3. But anyhow, the demand and yield development didn't meet our expectations and therefore we are reporting a double digit decline in RASC and also load factor came down by high single digit numbers. But maybe with these words, I would hand it over to Pia to discuss the financials in greater detail.

Thank you, Turkka, and good morning, good afternoon, everybody. I can maybe start by saying I joined as CFO on 1st of August and I've been happy to join in a period when we have resumed normal operations, as Turka just described. So someone said to me earlier today that, hey, Pia, you had sort of the right smile when you presented the results. We are not on camera right now, so you cannot see that. And I think it's based on the fact that, hey, we have been able to operate Q3 as an important season. And you can also see that in the results that despite the really difficult periods that we had before this quarter and the long strikes, and the fact that the strike impact was still 18 million euros into the operating result of this quarter, we did land at a comparable operating result of 51 million euros. And really, if you take into account the strike impacts, we were more or less sort of at last year's level. And given some of the sort of structural changes on the cost side that I will come back to, I still think this was a good expression of the team's also ability to bounce back. So thank you to the team. And also, of course, customer trust rebounding. Thank you to customers, as Juu Turka pointed out. There's maybe a few other sort of smaller changes that are visible on this page, but I think I'll answer your questions later on if you have detailed questions on the specific lines. And I would really go to the next page, which is more about giving the holistic view of the results in the third quarter. So we already discussed the strike impacts, and I think that's maybe Just a technical note, if you look at the more detailed bridge that we have in some of the appendixes, of course there you see sort of a breakdown of all of the elements, but I really think it's important to summarize the strike impacts into one bucket. And then there are considerations relating to the closure of the Russian airspace that had led to higher navigation and landing costs in this very corner of Europe where we are operating. Obviously, we are one of the few that really remains with sort of big traffic amounts here. So we have taken some additional costs due to that. And obviously that's a topic, the Russian airspace closure, that is a fact that we have to accept, and that's where we are right now. Obviously then, is there a question, could this cost be lower? That's for the authorities to look into if that could be possible or not. Then there's another big societal change right now, which is particularly in Europe, the strive towards decarbonisation. And that's visible for companies like us in many ways, In this chart, what you see is, of course, the addition to costs. So you see it's like 10 million more per quarter. And I think that gives a good representation of what we are experiencing right now. So we are experiencing the emission rights costs now sort of being there. to the full because there are no more free allowances for us. So that change has happened during this year and that we still had maybe something, I don't want to say in our back pocket, but some reserves from previously. But that is definitely something that going forward, we know the European legislation is there. There are no more free allowances. And that's really one of the big points of additions to costs during this year for decarbonisation. And obviously the other one is sustainable aviation fuel, where there's now the mandate to buy 2% blend. And that's obviously as well increasing our costs. It's a fair representation, a quarterly addition of 10 million during this year. And I still see into next year, there will still be a little bit of a hike up because of the ETS and the emission rights sort of being full blown impact during next year. So those were those structural changes. And then you can see that we have volume growth. And that's really, you know, if I would like to simplify things, I would say that the green change here, the improvement of 17 million euros, really, the gross actually improvement on volume side is even a bit bigger than that. But obviously, if you look into the details, You can see a few other minor changes there as well. Someone asked me about the changes in yield. I think one sort of noteworthy thing is that the compensations that we have paid also for the strike, they tend to go impacting that key figure. So maybe that's just one thing to keep in mind. I also already got today a lot of questions about the impact, which, Turka, you already commented about the seat covers and whether that's a big thing or not. It's not a big thing, but obviously for our customers, it came during a period of school holidays. So, of course. That's a thing that we really needed to fix as soon as we could. And it has also been debated quite a lot. But if I look only from a financial perspective, it's a few millions, the impact will be in Q4. And that negative impact is within, when we have given the guidance for Q4, obviously that's within the limits of that. Okay, I will speed up. I only have a few more things to say. The second installment of the return of the capital, so this was something that was already decided in the AGM. Now it's kind of the formal decision about also paying the second installment, because we are in a strong enough financial position to be able to pay. That will be happening on the 7th of November. When you look at the ratios from our balance sheet, we are kind of continuously showing some improvements. And I think I will go to the next page to finally comment on a few of the things that we've done through this year. Obviously, if you look at first the operating cash flow, that's sort of the big, that's the positive here. When you then look at where have we spent and allocated some of the cash, obviously we've done a lease buyback. We have also been paying back our loans and leases according to the schedules. So I think that the same diligent work that was already started earlier to make the balance sheet healthier has continued step by step, and it continues to show as gradually also improving ratios. I think with that, Turku, I would hand it back to you.

Thank you, Pia. So a few remarks related to the way forward. you might already be aware of that in two weeks time we have a more in-depth discussion with you in form of a CMU so already now to all of you a warm welcome to our event but in the meantime what we've communicated externally that for the summer season 2026 we'll be adding new destinations and more frequencies to summer season in Europe, Catania, Florence, Valencia, and Ireland, of course, being concrete examples. And then also, I guess we already discussed that in connection with the Q2 report, that we are reopening the Helsinki-Toronto route after 18 years of not flying to Toronto. So that will be an interesting avenue also for us to explore the demand and connectivity between Helsinki and Canada. Of course a big step for us and I guess also for the whole industry is the development of new distribution capabilities but also a more modern digitalized interaction with the customers and as a first airline we did introduce ancillary combos where our passengers before the flight can select and collect various ancillaries and buy them as one bundle and get some monetary benefits out of it and I guess this is a very important milestone step for us as a company because you can see from our figures that during the third quarter of 25 the revenue from ancillaries actually bypassed the cargo revenue so that's a concrete example of that the selected commercial strategy is paying off and we are further improving our capabilities and competencies to continue that double digit growth As Pia mentioned, our company and of course the whole industry is facing this environmental compliance and also the CO2 reduction challenge and dilemma. And we are of course very proactive when it comes to contributing to the different collaboration platforms to build the availability and affordability of next generation fuels, IESAF and ESAF maybe later down the road and in the meantime of course we are engaging intensively with our customers also on the corporate side to provide them with opportunities to contribute to the co2 reduction And that's of course for the corporate customers an important topic, because if and when they have committed to their own SBTI targets, they need also that scope tree reductions in their whole value chain. And then maybe as a final remark on this slide, for the fourth year in a row, we did receive a five star rating from APEX. That is a global airline passenger experience association. And for us, these are, of course, important. acknowledgements especially given the time when we have faced for various reasons more than needed kind of reputational issues so that in the big scheme of things we need to be very humble and fix the disruption situations that we have faced, but we just wanted to push the point that nothing is broken in the platform and the underlying business and operations, so therefore we have a great platform to build on. With these words, we will take you to the outlook and guidance slide. We are today providing you with a specified outlook and guidance based on the Q3 development. And today we are saying that the capacity by ASK will increase by some 2% during 2025 and revenue will be approximately 3.1 billion euros and the comparable operating result range has been narrowed from the upper limits side. When we said in July that the range is 30 to 130 million euros, today we are saying it's 30 to 60 million euros. What led into lowering the upper end of the comparable result range is explained by a few factors. First and foremost the North Atlantic demand and yield development has continued to soften and then when we will take in the already discussed indirect impact from the industrial action the unexpected AOGs and then in July when we envisioned the potential upside scenario and to reach that it would have required a continuation of oil price decrease so therefore in connection with this report we see that it's unlikely to reach the earlier upper end so therefore we are taking it down but I want to highlight that this guidance is now in line with the previous one, because already then we discussed that we are closer to the lower end of the provided range. And then as a final remark, already something that I mentioned, warm welcome to all of you and please register if you haven't done so yet. November 13th at 13 hours Helsinki time, where we will provide you with a Finner Capital Markets update. In addition to me and Pia, you have the opportunity of meeting the full leadership team of Finnair, so it's a great engagement and opportunity to discuss with the full team. But with these words, welcome to the event and let's open for the Q&A.

Thank you, Turko. Now would be a convenient time for any questions you may have, so please follow the operator's instructions to present them.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Kurt Hoffman from Aviation Week. Please go ahead.

Yes, hello. Good afternoon from Austria. I hope you can hear me. Yes, I hope so. Yes, please go ahead. Okay, my question is a bit fleet related and then the North Atlantic. I wanted to ask you what's about the campaign regarding the future narrowbody fleet which you plan to decide by the end of the year, if you maybe have an update for us. And then I would like to ask you also regarding the wet leases to the Qantas, the A330 Qantas aircraft, how this continues, or you maybe have too many A330s in the fleet already. And then I'd like to ask you a bit about the North Atlantic.

So if I start with the 330s, The wet list arrangement or collaboration continues until the winter season of 26, so I guess it's end of March, when the wet list aircrafts and our pilots then of course will return to our own operation. We have now already deployed the two 330s on dry-lease basis to Qantas. And I guess it was last week when the second aircraft was received by Qantas. So currently four out of eight 330s are tied to Qantas collaboration. The two wet lease aircraft will return to our own network for the summer of 2026. But we need to keep in mind that one of the three 30s, the lease agreement will not be continued. So the fleet size will decrease. The total fleet size will decrease from eight to seven. in months to come. When it comes to the narrow-body campaign, we want to run a thorough and a diligent process when it comes to the campaign and we will communicate more when we have some tangible news. We are having discussions with the OEMs and of course the process has progressed since we last talked, but today we don't have any news to be disclosed.

Okay. And second part from my side, the North Atlantic. As many airlines are suffering already kind of over capacity and you also mentioned that the North Atlantic business was not doing that perfectly. Do you have some measures for this? Do you plan to reduce the North Atlantic network maybe then for next year or especially over the winter when the demand is lower?

For the winter season, we are flying less because some of the US destinations are summer destinations for us. So the winter schedule is different. And of course, when it comes to the summer schedule 26, we have still some time to evaluate how the demand will develop and we might tweak the intended summer season plan accordingly. So we are following the market development, demand development and year development extremely carefully.

Okay, thank you very much. Just for clarification, how many Airbus 330s will be then flying for Qantas or will be with Qantas?

Four now.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Jonas Ilvenen from Evli. Please go ahead.

Hi, it's Jonas Evli from Evli. If I can just return to this North Atlantic capacity question. So I always saw from your September traffic figures that your North Atlantic capacity already decreased a bit. So was this a reflection of this Transition to winter schedule, or did you already react to this rather weak situation in North Atlantic traffic?

It's both an intentional reaction, but at the same time, we have one of our 350s grounded because of this towing accident when the wingtip actually hit the hangar door. So we have downed one 350 that has also led into the capacity decrease in our totality. And then we decided to hedge the North Atlantic traffic.

All right. So when will this aircraft return to traffic exactly?

The current prognosis is early 2026, because again, we want to, of course, secure the airworthiness and safety of the aircraft. It has taken a bit longer than expected. Okay.

So regarding your EBIT guidance for Q4, basically, so this North Atlantic situation still continues to weigh on your result. And what about the, I mean, you mentioned these landing costs and environmental and SAF costs, 10 million euro impact quarterly. I think you kind of already implied that this environmental cost will increase towards next year. But what about Q4? Are they still like around? 10 million euros during Q4? Can we already see an increase in Q4?

Thank you, Jonas. Pia here. Yes, to confirm that, I think we are now on the 2% SAF mandate. It's been there since the start of the year. The end of the free emission allowances has been there since the start of the year. So it's a pretty even development during this year, about 10 million per quarter. And then going into next year, what impacts is then simply that we still had some benefits this year from, let's say, previous years relating to the EU ETS. You could say that we had hedged or, you know, you know how this works. We benefited somewhat. And that's why I say that there could still be some increase towards next year, but it's not as big as the increase year on year from 24 to 25.

That's clear. And final question. So given this rather weak North Atlantic situation, and thinking about next year, maybe you will come back to this later, but can you already like, because the Asian traffic seems to be doing rather well at the moment. So do you have already any plans to probably allocate more capacity there versus North Atlantic?

I guess that's something that we do on a daily basis, that we want to optimize the utilization of the fleet, of course within the given constraints. I guess we would fly more to Tokyo if we had more landing slots, so it's a kind of a complex topic, but something that we monitor on a continuous basis. I guess that towards the end of the year, early 2026, we can also provide you with a more detailed view that how shall we utilize the wide-body capacity. Okay, thanks.

As it seems that there are no further questions, we can conclude. Oh, one more, sorry.

The next question comes from Kurt Hoffman from Aviation Week. Please go ahead.

Hello again. Sorry, it's me again. But I found it quite interesting, your Asian network, and it's still doing quite well, despite you have to fly such a long route. I think the Americans now not allow anymore the Chinese carriers to fly over China to the U.S., Do you think you can see some improvement that one day you are able to fly again over Russia in the new future? And what do you think regarding the, in a way, unfair competition with the Chinese carriers which flying directly via Russia to Europe and you have to fly around?

So two, of course, very important and complex questions, Kurt. So when it comes to the closed Russian airspace, That's something that I can say already today, because I've discussed that with you and media also earlier. Our strategic thinking and our strategy process is built on the assumption that the Russian airspace remains closed for the time being, because we don't see any development that would change the situation quickly in a very short term future. When it comes to the kind of a level playing field, I guess that's something that the European carriers are jointly acknowledging that that's something that should be dealt with if the situation continues. But I guess that that is a kind of a bigger theme than only a national topic here in Finland or topic related to Finnair. So I would park that as a EU level discussion.

Okay, thank you.

So now there are no further questions and we may conclude the call. Many thanks for the excellent questions and joining the event. We wish you a nice day.

Thank you all and hope to see you in two weeks time. See you soon.