Norse Atlantic ASA (NORSE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Very good morning, everyone, and welcome to Norse Atlantic's Q4 2024 presentation. My name is Bjorn Tore Larsen. I'm the CEO of the company. And we'll present our Q4 results together with our CFO, Anders Jomaas. So a few highlights from the last quarter. We have definitely turned the tide in many ways. And we were able to achieve a load factor over the quarter of 92%, which is an increase of 22%. So it's a considerable improvement in terms of filling the cabins. We also increased activity somewhat about 15% compared to last year, and the number of passengers went up by almost 50%, 46%. Revenues also went up considerably, 30% to $123 million. And the revenue per available seat kilometer went up by 23%. We had a net loss of $35 million in the quarter, which is a $30 million improvement year-on-year compared to Q4 '23. And December isolated also turned out a profit, which was the first winter month in our history where we were profitable. The quarter was somewhat impacted by heavy maintenance on some of our aircraft. We typically do maintenance in the low season, particularly October, November. This year, we took 4 of our aircraft into heavy maintenance which, number one, increased cost, but also reduced activity in the quarter. But apart from that, it was a normal quarter. Also, we had 2 aircraft that was allocated for a charter that started a bit late. So we had less utilization of our equipment than we typically would do in Q4. But overall, still it is a significant improvement of what we had last year. End of quarter, we had a cash [ ROE ] of $23 million, which was not including the committed shareholder loan of $6.3 million. That has -- that was not drawn at the time and it is still not drawn. Few topics about our strategic update as well. So as we have explained to our investors earlier, we signed an LOI with, at that time, an unnamed carrier for up to 6 aircraft in a long-term charter contract. We earlier this month announced that we had signed the first aircraft. And today, we announced that we now, yesterday last night, signed additional 3 aircraft that will commence operation: the first one in March, 1st of March, in other words, this coming Saturday; and the remaining 3 will be in the second half of this year. So these are contracts to a very large airline in India called IndiGo. They are the largest airline in India. They have a 62% market share, flying regionally mostly, domestic and regionally, and will now go into long haul. And they will use our aircraft as forerunners for their long-haul fleet. So it's a great contract with a great company that I think is both going to generate a secure revenue for about 1/3 of our fleet for the next foreseeable future and at good levels and also a good service for our customer here. Sales for '25 is also going very well. We have almost 60% more revenue sold so far this year, more -- almost 40% more tickets so far this year compared to the same time last year. So it means that we are both selling more tickets but we are also selling those tickets at higher prices. The cost efficiencies that we announced last quarter is in motion, and we expect to see the results from both the SG&A reduction but also the different base structure that we're going to have from Q2 this year. And all told, we are looking at about $40 million reduction in annual cost. We announced last quarter that we have agreed with the head lessor to redeliver 3 787-8s. Two of them was delivered this month, and we expect the third one to be delivered in March next month. So that is also going according to plan. And then finally there is, as you know, a possible repair offering which, if it will take place, will happen in March. Whether it will be done or not, it will depend on the market circumstances at that time. I think I already mentioned the highlights of the IndiGo contract. As I said, this is a very significant contract and it secures our revenue for 3 of our -- 4 of our aircraft for a longer period of time. It is -- the length of the contract will be subject to regulatory approvals, mainly on the Indian side. And we are quite optimistic and have good reason to believe that it's going to be well beyond the 6 months period. We think it's going to be in the times that we have previously announced when it comes to the length of the contract. That, of course, does impact our scheduled network. We have taken this into account when we have made our network. And we are going to keep the 2/3, in other words, 8 aircraft will be flying the scheduled network. And we're going to keep the 8 best lines of flying and take away the 4 least good lines of flying going forward. So in a way, it's a commercial win-win for us. And this contract with IndiGo gives us a minimum utilization of the aircraft of 350 hours per month, but it can also exceed that with a quite good margin. This slide shows you a bit about how our booking is going so far this year compared to last year. So we are well off both in terms of load factors and in terms of revenue per seat kilometer both in Q1, Q2 and Q3. So we are bound for a good 2025, and we expect it to be profitable. Cost initiatives. We are reducing our overhead costs, our SG&A quite significantly, and we are well on our way of achieving our target. The target is quite ambitious, it's 50% reduction compared to the run rate we had in October. And we think that we will hit that point sometime in Q3. The main things we are doing to reduce cost apart of SG&A is that we are relocating bases. We have changed the network over the last 12 months and now the crew bases are being aligned with where we are flying. So for example, if you have -- we are flying a lot to and from Rome, for example. And going forward, we will have crew bases in Rome rather than certain other places where we have been in the past. That will save us about $40 million a year. And we are going to continue to work hard to reduce our cost because we have the lowest cost in the industry, and we want to make sure that we take good care of that cost advantage. Q4, we had a fairly good operational performance. We completed almost every flight. 99.7% of the scheduled flights were completed according to plan, although the on-time performance was less than we like to see, particularly in December. And that was mainly driven by congestions at the big European airports and the big airports in the U.S. that we have been flying to, air traffic control and airport delays. Also the load factors are -- have continued to grow. The trend is positive. Also in '25, we have strong load factors. We announced our load factor for January of 94%. And I think we're going to hit above 90% every month this year. Revenues have hold up. When you are growing your load factor, sometimes it will come at the expense of average ticket price. But despite growing the load factor by 22%, we have been able to maintain the same pricing almost to the dollar. A little bit higher fares than last year, a little bit lower ancillary, but in total it's almost the same ticket price -- combined ticket and ancillary as we had last year, about 2% lower. So we are improving our costs. We have improved our cost base about 10%. Our CASK, or cost per available seat kilometer, has gone down by about 10% compared to the previous quarter. And our revenue per available seat kilometer has gone up by 23%. So we are on the right track basically both on the cost and the revenue side, which is comforting. And in ancillary, although it went down by 1% compared to last year, we are still best-in-class when it comes to having the highest ancillary revenues in the world among all the airlines we compare with. Anders?

Thank you, Bjorn Tore. Hello, everybody. In quarter 4 of 2024, we report revenues of $123 million, which is up 30% compared to the same quarter last year. That's mainly driven by, one, passenger revenue, which was up $12 million. But also, we increased revenues from ACMI and charter from $2 million to $21 million. So there's a significant increase also in that part of the business. On the cost side. Total operating expenses, they add up to $126 million, which is up 3%, relatively small increase compared to the last year, although it's helped by reduced fuel expenses. Even though we flew more, we had lower fuel expenses, impacted positively for us by reduced fuel prices in the quarter. Personnel expenses is up 18%, and we also see an increase in SG&A. And those two are related both to activity, but those two are also where we are really targeting the cost-cutting program that Bjorn Tore has talked about. All in all, this leads us to an EBITDA (sic) [ EBITDAR ] which is negative of $3.3 million in the quarter and, for the full year, it's negative marginally by a little bit less than $1 million. Variable aircraft rentals is now down to as little as $0.3 million. This is because we are now coming to the end of these power by the hour arrangements, which we have had with the lessors for the start of the contract. And the last aircraft went out of these arrangements of December 15, meaning that going forward we will not have these variable, but they will be fixed for the remainder of the leasing contract. And then we have depreciation and net finance, which leads us to a net loss in the quarter of $34 million which is, as Bjorn Tore pointed out, a $30 million improvement compared to same period last year. For the full year, we have losses of $135 million. Keep in mind, however, that these include a noncash portion of the lease accounting cost, which for the quarter was $5 million and, for the full year, $24 million. In terms of cash flow. We have, and that's a positive thing to note here, a positive operating cash flow in the quarter of $20 million, which compares to a negative $21 million in the same quarter last year. Main reason for the improvement is underlying performance of the business, we have done better this quarter than we did in similar quarter in 2023; but also that there are -- the working capital movements are more positive this quarter than they were last quarter, positive by $20 million compared to positive $13 million in the same quarter last year. Investing cash flows is mainly maintenance, which Bjorn Tore commented on. And financing cash flow is the net of equity raised, we raised $8.7 million in Q4, and the payments of leases to the lessors. All in all, there is a net change in cash of $2.5 million and we ended the quarter with $22.9 million. But again, important to note, we have a revolving credit facility in place for $6.3 million which was undrawn at the end of the quarter and, until today's date, still remains undrawn. Looking at the balance sheet. Again, those who follow us closely know that there are two -- especially two items to look out for here. It is the credit card receivables and, on the other side, it's the deferred passenger revenue. And we have had good bookings, good sales in this period both now, before and after Christmas and the holidays. Typically, at this point -- at this time of the year, you will see that both of these numbers increase. So now we have credit card receivables of a total of $100 million, which more or less balance out the deferred passenger revenue, meaning the unflown sales we've had. Total equity is negative $210 million. Again, worth noting that as much as $164 million of those are accumulated noncash lease accounting costs that we have booked since the inception of the company. Also, off-balance sheet, there are significant fair values in the leases which are way below market levels in today's tight market, which also leads the real value-adjusted equity into a positive landscape. So that actually concludes what Bjorn Tore and I plan to say today. So we're open to questions from the audience.

Yes. Do we have a question here?

Yes. There has been some considerable interest in the questions coming in online about the IndiGo deal. So specifically, the questions have been regarding, can you say anything about the outline of the commercial terms of the deal with IndiGo? Can you say anything about the commercial routes they will be operating? And is this a wet or a damp agreement?

Okay. Three good questions. We cannot give specifics on exactly what they are paying. But we have given you sort of the previously communicating the -- communicated the economic size of the contract and also -- which is still holding and the number of hours that we minimum will fly. The network we will be flying will be for the first few months, with the first aircraft, from Delhi to Bangkok -- between Delhi and Bangkok. And we're going to start that route this coming Saturday and fly it on a daily basis. And then from 1st of July, we will start to fly between Europe and India. We do not have the exact routes yet, but it will be between major cities in Europe and probably Delhi, Mumbai or other large cities in India. And the last portion of the question, Christina, was?

Is it a wet or a damp agreement?

It is both. So we're starting out as a full wet lease, where -- and that means that we will provide all the crew, the pilots and the cabin crew. And as we go into the contract, some of the cabin crew will be supplied by IndiGo themselves. And that means that we will reduce a few of our crew on the cabin side. All our pilots will be flying the routes for the entirety of the contract. So it will then be going from wet lease to something between a wet and a damp lease.

A couple of more questions about the IndiGo deal, if that's okay.

Yes.

Will the IndiGo contract be profitable at the minimum number of block hours, which you mentioned?

Yes, it will.

And also the original letter of intent with IndiGo was for 6 aircraft, and you have now announced 4.

Yes.

What should the market think about remaining 2?

I don't think the market should count that they will come. We don't know that yet because it's all subject to various things, including regulatory approvals. So I think today's announcement is the last announcement that we will give any hint of. It doesn't mean that nothing more will come. But we will only report when we have firm business to report, and that is the firm business we have.

Thank you very much.

Okay. Then in that case, thank you very much to everybody, and have a fantastic day. Thanks.