Eivind Roald
My name is Eivind Roald, and I am the new CEO of Norse Atlantic Airways from December last year. I am here to present the Q4 results together with our CFO, Anders Jomaas.
Before I start, I will give a quick introduction to my background, and I will also share some reflections on why I took the position as the new CEO. I have more than 30 years of experience from various executive positions in Scandinavian companies.
I've been leading the turnaround in Hewlett-Packard as Managing Director for many, many years. I was Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer in Scandinavian Airlines for for many years, and I also been leading European software companies and worked for several PE companies as as well.
When I accepted the position for for this job, I was discussing and looking into Norse, and and I'm see that this company has a very good foundation for actually becoming a very profitable company in the future. They have a very attractive leases agreement that goes for many years from now.
They have a very competitive product that reach the market, and we see that with all the the high load factor we we have during the whole all the the quarters as well. The balance model with more than 50% of the aircrafts now outsourced to Air IndiGo is also giving us an foreseen revenue stream and indirectly also hedging the fuel that is an important part of of the cost focus these days.
An industry-leading ancillary sale sales that ancillary sales that gives us an and good foundation for actually increasing the the revenue as we go in the future as well. We do also see some need for improvements when I looked into the company.
I think we need an even more clear business idea on what we should focus on. We need to optimize the network to make sure that we reach the right destinations and and also the utilization of of our aircrafts.
We need to accelerate the commercial initiatives, and we also need to ensure that we have flexible crew agreements to make sure that we we can meet the different needs in in the market. The need for a more simplified organization and also taking more cost out is also an important part of what we need to to work on.
We have seen during the last months that we're struggling a little bit on the way we communicate towards our customers, and that's need to to be a focus as as as well. Cost will be an important part of the focus going forward.
Basically, that was also the the foundation for why I think thought this was an an very interesting opportunity to to sign on. Let's look at some of the figures for Q4.
I I will try to to focus on actually what's in the important part of the Q4. The Q4 as as such is an big is an is a quarter with two months where we struggle a little bit on October, November, and then we saw the turning point came in in December.
The decision that the company took in 2025 where they decided on the ACMI agreement with IndiGo, where they decided also new network to focus on more to Asia with Thailand and as a most important part, has now started giving good results. That turning point, that came actually in December.
December was a profitable month for Norse. We also, even though that we saw some irregularities during that month and have some extra cost that is a one-time cost, that month came out as as a positive month.
The Q4 as such was an significant better revenue from $123 to $156 million in revenue. The EBITDAR came in on a -3.1 and an EBIT on -$22 million.
The load factor is still high during the whole month whole quarter. If we take a look at the the 2025 figures, we see that it's a significant improvements from 2024.
Now with an EBITDAR on +$56 million and an EBIT on -$20, significant improvement from almost -$100 million in 2024. We also have a huge impressive growth on the passenger side from 1.4 million to 1.8 million, and the load factor is still quite high.
The turning point we're talking about in December, it's an important part for investors to look into. To give you some few more data points to to have in mind, we had in December specifically an passenger growth of 22% with an production of +14%.
The TRASK growth was for that month 6%. We communicated in our traffic report for January that the TRASK increased by 20%.
Later in the presentation, I will come back to to say something about what that number is in February and also in in in March. The turning point came after the the decision that the company took in 2025.
They said they took strategic measures, they have now implemented the measures, and we now see the results. That should be the main focus for investors going forward, not to look too much into Q4 as as such, but more look into the turning point in December and look forward.
If you look at December on the TRASK side, we see that November came in on +7% year-over-year, December 6%, and then January 20%. As I said, I will come back to to indicate a little bit more about February and March later in in the presentation.
On the ACMI side, we have completed now the delivery of the sixth the sixth aircraft to Air IndiGo. As we had communicated earlier, we have an minimum revenue of 350 block hours per month.
As you see on the graph here, we are way above that for every month. That gives us an and more focus and more safe revenue side from from Air IndiGo the coming year as as well, an important part of having an and and a better understanding how the the year will will really come out.
With that, I will give the word to our CFO, Anders Jomaas, that will take us through some of the numbers in more detail.
Anders Jomaas
Thank you, Eivind, and hello, everybody. I will give you some more insight into the Q4 numbers and the '25 per se.
If we start now looking at Q4 '25 and looking at the the the passenger numbers, we see that we fly a lot more. We have record high load factors, we're seeing 96%.
Passenger numbers also increasing, we see that we go from 339,000 passengers Q4 '24 to more than 400,000 this quarter. Revenues keep coming up, although EBITDAR and EBIT are lagging somewhat, we would like to see those higher, but if we look at the quarter—no, sorry, the the full year of 2025, we see the same trends: we see increasing number of flights, we see load factor increasing, we see passenger numbers increasing, revenues are significantly up, and for the full year, we also see the improvement on EBITDAR and EBIT, where we have EBIT of 56—no, sorry, EBITDAR of $56.5 million for the full year compared to 0 for '24.
This is the trajectory we're on of of gradually increasing, and Eivind will also come back to to our outlook for for this year. Some key terms to to to note when we talk—Eivind, you talked about TRASK, which is total revenue per available seat kilometer.
This is imported important unit metric to when we when we do our reporting. Similarly, CASK is cost per available seat kilometer, and it's basically the difference between the two that is is important for us.
We see in this quarter that we improve TRASK by 3%—sorry, for this year, we see that we improve TRASK by 3%, we reduce CASK by 10%, and we do that in an environment where we fly 20% more. This is these are the important drivers for for what's ahead for Norse.
Looking at the quarter itself, we are we now see that we are able to also increase passenger revenue. The revenue per passenger is up 10% year-on-year from $343 an average per passenger to 379 this quarter.
We also have a big belly on this aircraft, and volumes have been relatively stable, a little bit lower, but we see higher prices all also on the cargo side, which which is an important contribution to the overall profitability of our company and our industry. Eivind mentioned that we fly a lot more to Thailand, Southeast Asia.
These routes have been in particularly strong in terms of cargo. We transport salmon going east, and we have a lot of e-commerce, especially around around November, December season, going back.
Looking at Q4 in particular, and focusing first on the midsection of this graph where we say that here you will see that we fly a lot more. ASK is available seat kilometer, basically how much production we deliver.
We produced 44% more seat kilometer this quarter compared to same quarter last year. The composition last year was 80/20 in terms of network and ACMI.
Now it is shifting: 62/38. Going forward, you can increase this you can expect this to balance and be even more like 50/50-ish.
We produce a lot more, but we also produce more ACMI. Why this is important is that the cost base on ACMI is lower, meaning we do not pay for the cabin crew, we do not pay for the fuel, this is, in fact, an implicit fuel hedge, and when we have six aircraft delivered to IndiGo, we actually have fuel hedged for six out of 12 aircraft, and we also do not pay for the airport charge and handling.
The lower cost base also means that we the revenue is in US dollars lower, but the margin is very healthy on the ACMI business. If you look at the the CASK, it has actually reduced from 4.5 to 3.6.
The revenue, TRASK, is also down, but the important margin is increasing from 0.3 to 0.5. Actually 70% increase in margins due to this shift we're seeing.
We are continuously working on reducing CASK. Eivind mentioned there are several cost initiatives going on in the company.
This will continue to go through the year and the coming years, continuous continuous focus. We are happy to see that that we are reducing by 19% quarter-over-quarter, partly driven by the shift to ACMI, but also we see that we are able to reduce cost on certain important areas.
If we look at the numbers, Eivind mentioned a few, I'll go a little bit more in detail on on some of them. Revenue for Q4 was $156 million, up from 123 same quarter last year.
Personnel expenses: $43 million, which is driven by higher production, some general wage increases, some special one-offs, but also worth noting that FX has gone against us somewhat in the quarter, approximately $2 million of of the of the personal expense increase is related to FX only. Fuel is a a a a derivative of how much we fly.
We have we have flown 11% more in in the quarter, but also fuel prices have been higher, 7% higher in Q4 '25 than in Q4 '24. Other OpEx is mainly technical maintenance, and again, a clear derivative of how much we fly.
There is a one-off expense in there related to the engine incident in Q3 last year of $4.5 million, which will not be there in the coming quarters. SG&A: also focus, glad to see that coming down, but there's there's further potential for further reductions also there.
EBITDA for the quarter: -$3 million, EBIT -$22, and bottom line $33 loss for the quarter. Looking just very quickly at at the full year of '25: revenues of $734 million and a positive EBITDA of $56.5 million, leading to a loss of 62—no, sorry, 61 for the year.
In terms of cash flow, we see that there is a negative cash flow from operations in Q4. Many reasons for that: we have talked about the the cost base, we have talked about the one-offs, we talked about the FX, continuous focus area.
Working capital is reducing, and that is reflecting also the differentiation to ACMI and charter. Financing cash flows of 7.5 is related to a large extent to the to the equity raise we did in October, relatively small equity raise of with net proceeds of $11 million, but that is in that that number.
Free cash end of the quarter: $18 million. Looking at the balance sheet, and for those of you have followed us for a long time, you know that one to watch is the credit card receivables, which is $72 million.
It actually means that the acquirers, as they are called, or the credit card companies, they are sitting on $72 million of our funds. We're working on streamlining the whole payment flow in in our company and to gradually reduce that.
You'll see that it has come down, but we will continue to work on good solutions to to to make sure that we collect funds even earlier as we move forward. Equity for the company is -$260 million, but keep in mind that as much as $175 million of that is non-cash lease effects.
That was a lot of numbers. Eivind, I think I'll give the word back to you.
Eivind Roald
Thank you, Anders. When I started, I was given a clear mandate from the board.
That was to accelerate the already decided changes. Therefore, together with my management team, we have launched a project called Falcon.
The Falcon project is focusing on a number of measures to secure that we now deliver a company that is profitable and where the investors can have trust in us in the future. Here is just some few examples on what kind of areas we are focusing on, and several of these have already also been decided and are under execution.
We need, for example, to look into a much more flexible way of looking at where we can have much more profitable business. We have a lot of interest for ad hoc charter.
For example, football VM in US this summer is just one example. We also have very good relationship with P&O Cruises that have also asked for even more capacity for winter in '26 and '27.
We look into all these kinds of interesting areas to put our aircrafts. To be more flexible also to find new destination is one of the things we also will be looking more into too.
We will have a more focus on our premium products, we will be able to increase the yield on that. We will also need to look into the agreements with our crews to be sure that we have a more flexible model for where we can put our capacity.
Reduction of SG&A goes without saying, it need to go down, and we work on several initiatives within that area as well. That means we also will look into what should we keep internally and what we potentially can outsource.
Every stones will be turned around and be looked into, because we think we are now in a good position to deliver a company that will be profitable in the coming months. We started in January with a traffic report to be a little bit more open on our data points.
We would like to continue that to make sure that investors have a better platform to evaluate our performance. In this graph, you see that we now give you an indication about how both the Q1 and Q2 looks from a TRASK perspective.
In Q1, we are selling our seat price an average of 40% higher price versus the same period in 2025. For Q2, we are still 20% above, and we still holding back selling of seats to make sure that we can yield up in the coming months.
That means for TRASK in February, month-to-date, we see an clear indication of 20% year-over-year growth. We already now see an year-over-year growth for March in the range of 20% to 30% for March.
In total, this says something about that the turnaround that started back in December, accelerated in January, now continue. On the revenue side, we are quite confident.
With that as the backdrop, we have also indicated to the market today that we see a full-year EBITDAR in a range of $130 to $150 million US dollar and an EBIT in a range of $20 to $40 million for the year. We have a lot of things to do, and we have a management team that is dedicated to deliver a profitable company in the coming months.
We look forward to have you on board as investors, and that you can follow us also in the next quarter to come. With that, I will open up for Q&A.
Operator
Right, we have a few questions here. We have room for a couple.
The first one is: You reduced the fleet through redeliveries and shifted half into ACMI. Is Norse becoming more of a capacity provider than a branded airline?
Eivind Roald
The question was that we have delivered three aircraft back and that we have now an agreement with Air IndiGo for 50%, and we will move toward a more capacity provider than a pure airline. What I will say is that we will focus on where we can get the most margin out of it, where we can have most profit.
If that means that we for some period will increase on having more outsourced to either if that is Air IndiGo, or is it P&O Cruises, or if it is others, that will depends on where we can get the highest margin. Margin will be the focus for the company.
We just need to make this company to be profitable, so that will be the focus.
Operator
Are you seeing a booking spike on the FIFA World Cup in the US this summer, and can Norse monetize on that opportunity?
Eivind Roald
The question is if we can see a booking spike for the FIFA World Cup this summer. We see that it's still an huge interest for the FIFA World Cup, and we see specifically on ad hoc charters.
We have tons of requests on ad hoc charters, and we are evaluating that now day by day, and will conclude if we should take some of our aircrafts and deliver as an ad hoc charters for the FIFA World Cup.
Operator
Good. Last question: With 2026 outlook, what gives you confidence this is finally the year Norse becomes sustainably profitable?
Eivind Roald
The question is what makes me feel confidence on the profitability for this year. The turning point started in December, and we have a great momentum, we see that on the TRASK both for December, January, February, and March.
We have taken important decisions like outsourcing of six aircraft that also indirectly, as Anders said, is a hedging of the fuel, that is an huge, huge cost for the company. We have put in place several actions for driving cost down, and we are underway to actually launch more cost initiatives as well.
As far as we can see into the future—and of course, it's difficult to see the 9 to 10 months from now—but we have an super interesting product that the response in the market is very, very high, and we are confident that we will deliver these numbers for 2026. Thank you so much for listening in.
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