Finnair - The year started soft
Finnair’s Q1 revenue came in a bit soft relative to estimates, while earnings were clearly lower than estimated even when excluding the negative impact of industrial action. We hence underestimated Finnair’s cost items. Finnair retains its previous FY’25 guidance, however it added notes on the cost the on-going industrial action will have on figures over the year.
- Finnair Q1 revenue grew by 1.9% y/y to EUR 694.2m vs the EUR 712.7m/715.0m Evli/consensus estimates. Passenger revenue remained flat y/y.
- Comparable EBIT amounted to EUR -62.6m, compared to the EUR -13.8m/-13.4m Evli/consensus estimates. Industrial action had a negative impact of some EUR 22m on the result.
- Fuel costs were EUR 214m vs our EUR 215m estimate, whereas staff costs amounted to EUR 140m vs our EUR 134m estimate. All other OPEX+D&A were EUR 433m, compared to our EUR 407m estimate.
- Cost per Available Seat Kilometer was 8.29 eurocents vs our estimate of 7.96 eurocents.
- Finnair guides FY’25 revenue to be within the range of EUR 3.3-3.4bn and comparable EBIT within the range of EUR 100-200m (unchanged). Finnair however sees industrial action will have a negative effect of EUR 10m on EBIT in April (and EUR 15m on revenue), while there should be another EUR 10m profitability hit during the summer season (EUR 30m of revenue). Industrial action is estimated to have a negative impact of some 5% on total capacity this year in terms of ASK.