AFRAF - Air France-KLM SA (AFRAF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-05-03 23:41:10 ET

Air France-KLM SA (AFRAF)

Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call

April 30, 2024, 03:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Ben Smith - CEO

Steven Zaat - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Alex Irving - Bernstein

Stephen Furlong - Davy

James Hollins - BNP Paribas

Jarrod Castle - UBS

Sathish Sivakumar - Citi

Harry Gowers - JPMorgan

Andrew Lobbenberg - Barclays

Johannes Braun - Stifel

Conor Dwyer - Morgan Stanley

Presentation

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Air France-KLM First Quarter 2024 Results Presentation. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ben Smith, CEO; and Steven Zaat, CFO. Please go ahead, sirs.

Ben Smith

Time for the presentation of Air France-KLM's results for the first quarter of 2024. I'm joined today by Steven Zaat, our CFO. We will be available to take your questions at the end of this presentation. I'll start by sharing the first quarter highlights and then Steven will take over for a detailed presentation of our financial performance and the outlook for the quarters ahead and then after we'll conclude and take your questions.

So moving to Slide 3, looking at our performance over the first quarter. Despite a challenging start to the year marked by further geopolitical tensions, our activity was resilient. Although our operating income is down compared to the same quarter last year mainly due to both exceptional disruption costs and a slower cargo business who's facing significant headwinds, our group revenues are up 5% driven by steady capacity deployment, robust load factors and improved passenger yield.

China travel demands remain quite strong. Forward ticket sales are holding firm and point to a promising summer season generating positive adjusted free operating cash flow in the first quarter. On the balance sheet side, we maintain a disciplined approach both in terms of available liquidity and financial leverage. Our cash position remains strong thanks to particularly the redemption of the OCEANE 2026 bonds and the positive impact of deferred social charges....

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