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Finnair - CMD notes

Finnair held its CMD yesterday where the company presented its road map for sustainable and profitable growth after a phase of accelerated growth. The company aims to grow in line with market growth, focusing on improving its market position in Asia. The company provided a mix of efficiency improvement actions in order to improve profitability. We don’t expect any short-term impacts hence we retain our rating “HOLD” with TP of EUR 6.5.

Focusing on Asian mega cities

Finnair continues to focus on improving its market position in Asia. The company’s geographical position provides Finnair a competitive advantage of transfer traffic between Europe and Asia. Transfer traffic between the two continents is essential as transfer traffic represents 62% of Finnair’s flown ticket revenue of which transfer traffic from Asia represents 73%. The company will concentrate on Asian mega cities which are providing higher yields. Japan and China are the two main markets but Finnair increases its presence also in other Asian countries, South Korea being an example as the company opens a new route to Busan in March 2020. The market growth is estimated to be some 4% between Europe and Asia. The company aims to be a modern premium airline and has renewed its website and mobile app to better serve its customers globally. The company is also renewing its ticket types and will offer a new option, premium economy class alongside with the normal economy and premium classes.

Heavy investments on fleet renewal

During the past few years, Finnair has focused on accelerated growth. The company has increased its capacity in 2015-2019 by 14 new A350 aircrafts and five more has been ordered (for 2020-2022). During the strategy period, the company aims to increase its wide-body fleet from 22 to ~30 and the total fleet from 83 to ~100. The company has estimated that the fleet investments during 2020-2025 will be some EUR 3.5b-4.0b (including the five new A350s) depending on the final fleet renewal plan. According to the company, one-third of the investments will be invested into growth and the remaining two-thirds into fleet renewal/replacement. The company aims to increase the share of its owned aircrafts. The investments will predominantly be funded by the company’s cashflow.

Updated financial targets for 2020-2025

Finnair updated its financial targets for 2020-2025 as the company is moving towards a new phase where the company seeks sustainable and profitable growth. The company’s opex (ex fuel) has increased by 6.1% (CAGR) since 2014, which exceeds the revenue growth of 5.5% (CAGR). Based on the strategy update, the company aims to moderate its growth and expects it to be in line with the market growth. Finnair guides ASK growth (CAGR) of 3-5% which is in line with our expectations (3-4% in 20E-21E). The company’s new target is to reach comparable EBIT margin of over 7.5% (prev. over 6%) over the cycle (at constant fuel and currency), after a 12-18 month build-up period. Profitability improvement will be driven by operational efficiency. Key drivers for lower unit costs are fuel efficiency, digitalization and automatization as well as improved on-time performance. Finnair targets to improve its OTP rate to 85% (2018: 78%). Also, fleet renewal should boost efficiency and updated ticket types to support margins. We see Finnair’s profitability target achievable, although we don’t expect any short-term impacts as the improvement of OTP is gradual and implementation of new processes takes time. Finnair also updated its ROCE target and expects ROCE of over 10% (prev. over 7%) over the cycle (at constant fuel and currency), after a 12-18 month build-up period. The company will provide more information of its sustainability targets in Q1’20.

HOLD with TP of EUR 6.5

We have made small adjustment mainly to our 21E estimates after the CMD. We expect revenue to grow 3-4% in 20E-21E while we expect comparable EBIT margin of 5.2% and 6.6%. The updated strategy does not impact our short-term estimates but we see the new targets to create positive outlook for Finnair’s earnings development in the future. We keep our rating “HOLD” with TP of EUR 6.5.

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