Havila Kystruten AS (HKY) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the earnings call of Havila Kystruten AS regarding the preliminary figures of the full year report 2025. I would like to welcome the company's CFO, Aleksander Røynesdal; and Lasse Vangstein as the Chief Communication and Sustainability Officer. The gentlemen will guide us through the figures in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line and chat. And with that, I hand over to you, Aleksander.

Thank you, Ingmar, and hello, everyone, and welcome to our preliminary 2025 earnings call. As you mentioned today, I have with me Lasse Vangstein, the Chief Communication and Sustainability Officer, as Bent Martini unfortunately not able to attend today. Next slide, please. I think Lasse, first you can start off by telling us a little bit about one of our key milestones in 2025.

Yes. So as probably many of you know, last year in November and December, we bunkered Havila Polaris with biogas, 200 cubic meters in Hammerfest up north and the rest of the volume in Bergen a few days later, making this the full actual climate-neutral voyage on the coastal route with reducing CO2 emissions by actually almost 92%, showcasing that it is possible to go towards a cleaner and more green future along the coastal route and in shipping in general. We -- at this time, we got the biogas delivered from Molgas and from Barents Naturgass, produced in Sweden, most of it. Of course, going down the line, we are looking to hedge biogas from Norwegian suppliers. But as of today, there's not enough production for that. Anyway, biogas is a large step forward towards climate neutrality and in the future, maybe even zero emissions as if you get the cleanest biogas possible, you will actually become what they call climate negative, but I tend to call it climate positive because you actually reduce the CO2 emissions by more than 100% if you get the cleanest one. The gas from Barents Naturgass calls this [indiscernible] a for the environment because it is a circular economy. It is circular for the environment as you get rid of waste from farming, from fisheries, even food waste can be used to produce biogas. So you collect the CO2 emissions that you would normally just be emitted by the waste. So you get rid of the waste challenges. You produce biogas that can be used in shipping or other companies or branches. And then out of this, you also get a biofertilizer that can be reused again by the farmers. So it is circular. It will create jobs and the potential in Norway is huge. As of today or in 2025, it was produced about 0.8 terawatt hours of biogas. If we are to run 100% of biogas, we would require about 0.3 terawatt hours of biogas. But the potential is between 12 and 13 terawatt hours per year in Norway if you utilize all the waste from farms and fisheries. So there is a great potential, and we are looking to start blending biogas this year. We are in talks with our suppliers about that. And of course, also with the new fuel EU Maritime, this will probably be a good economic case when we start using biogas because we will then reduce our emissions to that extent that we will actually make money for running on lower emissions. So this is a win-win for our company going forward, and the ambitions are clear. We plan to do this, as you know, start blending this year, if possible and by '28, run 100% on biogas. So -- and this does not have to cost the authorities anything, neither in the contract or in general because these businesses can be put up and actually be profitable by producing the biogas, that should cover it? Yes.

[indiscernible] For those of you not familiar with the company, Havila Voyages, we operate the Norwegian coastal route. It runs from Bergen in the West, all the way up to Kirkenes in the north, close to the Russian border. And back again, it's approximately 5,000 kilometers. It's a huge stretch. It's probably one of the most challenging routes to operate in the world in terms of weather, in terms of navigation. We operate under a concession with the Norwegian government. It's a 10-year concession. And we provide national infrastructure for the Norwegian government, providing readiness along the coast. We transport goods along all these ports. We transport -- we act as a ferry for the local communities, and we also offer tourists to experience this route as a cruise passenger. We are owned by Havila Group. It's a family-owned enterprise located in Fosnavåg, which is quite close to one of the [indiscernible] on the West Coast of Norway. Next slide, please. A couple of words on operational performance. We operate 4 almost new vessels, Havila Capella, Castor, Polaris and Pollux, delivered in '21, '22 and '23. These are considered in terms of operation, new buildings and to achieve an operational uptime of close to 100% on new buildings. I think everyone who works in shipping can understand that, that's quite exceptional. We had 100% uptime in 2025. I think a lot of this goes back to the way we operate. We do have a quite unique agreement with Kongsberg Maritime called Power-by-the-hour, where we continuously monitor the vessels together with Kongsberg, and we do ship management in kind of a proactive way compared to the historic -- I mean, the traditional way of doing ship management, which is a lot more reactive. Next slide, please. So the highlights for 2025. On the top line, we grew by more than NOK 250 million or close to 17%. EBITDA, we delivered close to NOK 400 million in EBITDA for the year. This is up from minus NOK 200 million in 2023, close to NOK 200 million in 2024, and now we are up at NOK 400 million in 2025. For those familiar with the NPS score is a score related to the guest experience onboard our ships. 68 is world-class. It is a very high score. It means that our passengers are very happy and satisfied with their stay on board. We reduced CO2 emissions by close to 40%. As Lasse mentioned, we operated the first climate-neutral voyage on the coastal route in 2025. And we have a very low food waste. We have an average of 65 grams per passenger in 2025. And I think the average for a normal hotel on land is close to.

Close to 200. So it's about 1/3 of industry standards.

Yes. So about 1/3 of industry standards. It's exceptional. Okay. Next slide, please. Going into the commercial side, we are focusing on marketing efforts in our own channels. We have been able to grow sales through our website and through our customer service way higher than the industry standard. And in the Q4, we achieved close to 60% sales through own channels, which is a volume that has a higher profitability than the volumes through agencies and tour operators. And it also enables us to own the guests on the client throughout their experience on board. In 2025, we implemented a new CRM system, which enables us to track and support our guests pre and post voyage. It enables us to follow up in the aftermath with sales campaigns. We are also doing some upgrades to our CMS in 2026. For those not familiar with the term, it's the kind of back end of our website. We are doing improvements to our booking site online. Next slide, please. On the customer mix, historically, the guest composition has been dominated by German-speaking countries. This has changed somewhat over the years. We have had a high success in expanding our reach in the English-speaking countries, especially the U.S., Canada, U.K. and also New Zealand and Australia. And we have high growth in Southern Europe, Italy, Spain, France. And we see that this is giving us a mix of higher paying guests, and it also gives us a diversified mix of guests on board, which is positive. Next slide, please. Okay. This slide, we're quite excited about. So looking at our bookings for 2026. As of this morning, we had 63.5% booked for 2026. This is about 82% of the target for the year and it's close to 20% ahead of the same time last year. So we have put additional efforts throughout the fall of 2025 on sales and marketing campaigns. We have invested in the teams in the onshore organization. And I think we also do see some effect from a higher brand recognition as we do operate now on the second full year. The growth in bookings is coming primarily from what we call FIT individual travelers, which are more secure than the volumes that are booked through group bookings. And we do have -- we have also tightened the cancellation policies for group. So we do believe that the volume that we have on the books today is more secure than volume that we had a year ago. As for 2027, we have 11% booked for the year, which is about 2 percentage points ahead of the same time last year. Next slide, please. Then, we are moving over to the financial part. Looking at the top line, we have been able to grow the top line quarter-by-quarter throughout the operations since we had all 4 ships on water in Q4 2023. Q4 2025 was somewhat impacted by some accounting effects in the fourth quarter last year. So if you look at Q4 EBITDA for 2025, about NOK 0 million, compared to NOK 50 million in 2024. Q4 last year had some positive effects from prior period adjustments related to currency effects and change of charges. We did also book some revenues in the fourth quarter last year related to insurance settlements for Havila Pollux. So I think the underlying growth in revenues is positive year-on-year without these adjustments. In addition, we did have a delayed sales campaign for Q4 2025 last year. We thought that, that would give us a higher ACR fourth quarter. We do see that, that was not the case, and we have adjusted the fourth quarter campaign for 2026 and brought it forward. And we can see now in the bookings for Q4 2026 that we are kind of well ahead of -- what we were at the same time last year. And we have also taken some higher costs in the quarter of last year, reflecting investments in both the organization and also in commercial activities. Next slide, please. Looking at the key performance indicator, I think all of them are supporting the story of continued top line growth. The occupancy is trending upwards. We had 72% occupancy last year, which was quite good if you look at the growth in the yield or the average cabin revenue, which was close to 10%. The cabin factor is a factor of how many passengers we have on board each cabin. So we are trending towards 2 guests per cabin, which is also driving onboard sales. The more people we have on board, the more -- the higher onboard sales. And a key focus area for 2026 is to continue to grow onboard sales and not only in total but also per guest night. Next slide, please. On the cost side, our costs are quite stable. If you look at our cost base, it's quite fixed and that comes with operating this route with 4 vessels, 365 days a year, we naturally have a lot of fixed costs. So the variable element here is related to occupancy where we do staff the ship according to occupancy. So the higher occupancy, the higher the number of crew members on board. But otherwise, the administration costs, the fuel costs, et cetera, is quite fixed and quite stable throughout the year. Next slide, please. So looking at each cost category in the Q4 of 2025, we had somewhat higher manning costs onboard a ship related to a one-off settlement of 2025 adjustments. We did also have somewhat higher costs on admin OpEx payroll related to commercial investments, but also related to the refinancing process that was completed in the fourth quarter. Looking at the correlation with occupancy, you can see that we do follow a trend line correlated with occupancy. Q4 2025, slightly above this trend line. Positive on the fuel side is to see that the fuel cost has gone down, reflecting the renegotiation of our fuel supply contract in Q3 last year, where we do now see an effect in Q4. But at the same time, we also have lower spot prices for fuel than what we had last year. Next slide, please. Looking at the outlook or the targets for 2026, we are maintaining our target of NOK 600 million in EBITDA for the year. The route to 600 in 2026 is comprised of an occupancy of close to 80%. Based on the booking that we have today, the booking that is close to 63%, we are on track of achieving that. And we are on track of achieving something in the higher end of that 75% to 80% range. Price-wise, on capital revenue, we are targeting 10% to 15% ACR growth. At present, we are close to 5% based on the volumes that are booked. But these are volumes that predominantly stem from sales campaigns. So these are kind of the lower yielding volumes. And then when part of that volume converts to final bookings and when we have bookings at full pricing closer to departure, we do expect that to converge up to the 10% plus range. This, combined with a tight focus on costs -- we do expect to achieve cost savings on fuel compared to last year in 2026. We are also implementing efficiency programs on board to contain costs in operating the vessels. And we are having quite heavy targets on onboard sales with more than 20% growth compared to last year. We do think that it's achievable. Already in January, we had 35% growth in onboard sales. Going further out on the curve in 2027 onwards, we think that the occupancy in the range of 75% to 80% is kind of a sweet spot. We believe that there's room for additional growth in the ACR compared to inflation. We do believe that we offer a premium product on the route. We offer a much more environmental friendly and sustainable wage than anyone else on the route. So we do believe that there's a potential there to increase the pricing more than inflation. Adding to that, there will be a further focus on product development, but also to develop activities pre-post voyage. So we are already doing some testing on pre-post voyage activities. We are offering flights to a couple of selected destinations. We offer packages with experiences pre-voyage and we are also this year implementing a hop-off/ hop-on concept in Lofoten, where our guests can go onboard the vessels, they can hop off in Lofoten, have a nice experience in that area for a couple of days and then jump on the next ship, similar shape, and they can have the same cabin as they have had going into the city. Next slide, please. Looking at the financing side, we did complete a full refinancing of the company in Q4 last year. We managed to reduce kind of the effective interest costs from high double digit to about 10%, which is a very good achievement in itself. We have softened the covenant substantially compared to the previous agreement. And we have also improved the liquidity situation from this refinancing. And combined with a very positive booking that we have achieved for 2026, we do have a much more comfortable liquidity situation than what we had last year. So we do see that we will probably be in a position to start to service the junior facility during the year as well. Next slide, please. Looking at our value adjusted equity. If you take into account the broker value or the secondhand value of our ships, it's close to [indiscernible] . And if you do a value adjustment of the balance sheet based on that metric, we have a positive value adjusted equity of close to NOK 2.7 billion. It equals about NOK 150 per share. So we do think that the share and the equity is backed by substantial underlying values. Next slide, please. So to sum it up, Havila Voyages, we are listed on the Euronext Growth under the ticker HKY. We completed the reverse share split in November 2025, and this was done to achieve kind of a more robust price formation. We believe we have substantial assets backing the share -- backing the share price. As I mentioned, the value adjusted book equity will be close to NOK 150 per share. We will continue, as Lasse mentioned earlier, to pursue sustainability initiatives to overdeliver on environment, and we see that as a competitive advantage, not only in the next concession round and in the future, but I think in the present concession as well. There's going to be an increased focus to develop additional revenue streams to further improve top line and underlying margins of our business. And we do believe that we are well positioned for growth on the coastal route with 4 brand new vessels that can comply with current emission requirements on the route, but also stricter requirements. So we can comply with climate neutral requirements in the next concession round should it be that. Okay. So I think that concludes the review of the presentation. The key performance indicators is more for the analysts to review in [indiscernible]. So I guess, Ingmar, we can open up for questions from the audience.

Yes, indeed, thank you for the presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, we now move on to the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] We have a first participant with a question. Mr. Frers, you should be able to speak now.

Can you hear me clearly?

Yes, we can.

Nicklas here from Montega. I understand here for my colleague, Tim, which cannot be here today, but we've brought a few questions. And maybe firstly, can you explain in detail what the prior period adjustments in Q4 2024 were?

Yes. So in Q4 2024, we recognized about NOK 30 million of revenues related to prior periods. And these are revenues that is related to currency effects and also what we call changes charges effects. In addition, we had about NOK 15 million related to insurance settlement related to Havila Pollux. So I think in total, about NOK 45 million in prior period adjustments in Q4 2024.

And maybe now regarding the delayed sales campaign, can you maybe quantify the amount of revenue of the delayed sales campaign that has been brought forward to 2026? And maybe does this also imply that Q1 in '26 will be above budget?

I think it's a little bit difficult to give an exact number. But if you look at the occupancy in Q4 2025, compared to the prior year, we were about 8% lower on the occupancy. And about 5% lower in terms of passenger nights. So I think that kind of reflects the effect of the delayed sales campaign. And by delayed sales campaign, I think when we went into the fall of 2024, we decided to delay the campaign for Q4 because we thought that it would give us a better return to sell it closer to departure. That turned out not to be the case. So for 2025, when we have for 2026, when we now have run our main campaign for the year, we have also included Q4 2026. It's not really related to Q1 2026, but it's more related to Q4 and the fact that we have now included the full year of '26 in our main campaign for the year.

Yes. So just my last question for today, how confident are you to deliver an EBITDA increase, compared to 2025 in all quarters, which will be obviously needed to achieve your guidance for this year? And in this context, what exactly are your measures to taking safeguard profitability improvements in '26?

So we are maintaining the target of NOK 600 million in 2026 because we believe it's achievable. It's -- I think if you look at the -- what do we need to get there? We need close to 80% occupancy. We are on track on achieving that. If you just look at the ticket revenues that are on the books compared to same time last year, we are close to NOK 200 million above the level a year ago. So I think on the ticket side, there is limited risk of achieving the target. We have a pretty -- pretty stark growth target on onboard sales, which is where we are actively taking measures on board to drive onboard sales. And I think if you look at January, we are also already seeing effects of that. We had 35% growth in onboard sales in January. So it's something that we're actively working on and monitoring. And then I think on the cost side, it's always difficult to achieve close to 0% cost growth when you're in a high inflation environment. But we do expect on the fuel side to achieve substantial savings, not only because of the spot price compared to last year, but because of the logistic cost of the bunkering solution that we have. And we do expect to realize efficiency improvements on the onboard operations. I think the bulk of the risk is probably tied to onboard sales. But on that side, we are taking active measurements on board to achieve the target.

Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Frers for your questions. And to the participants, there is still the time that you place your questions. [Operator Instructions] I'll wait a few more moments, it's not the case that there is anything left open from your presentation. So with no further questions, we, therefore, come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much to all the participants for your interest in Havila Kystruten. A big thank you to Aleksander and Lasse and for your presentation. Should there are any further questions to the participants later date, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. I wish you all a successful day. And having said this, I hand over to Aleksander and Lasse for some final remarks.

Thank you, Ingmar, and thank you, everyone, for listening in. We look forward to seeing you again in 3 months when we hopefully present some good news in our first quarter results presentation for 2026.

Thank you.