Norse Atlantic ASA (NRSAF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

2026-02-26 16:58:05 ET

Norse Atlantic ASA (NRSAF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call February 26, 2026 3:00 AM EST

Company Participants

Eivind Roald - President & CEO
Anders Jomaas - Chief Financial Officer

Presentation

Eivind Roald
President & CEO ...

My name is Eivind Roald, and I'm the new CEO of Norse Atlantic Airways from December last year. I'm here to present the Q4 results together with our CFO, Anders Jomaas. Before I start, I will give a quick introduction to my background, and I'll also share some reflections on why I took the position as the new CEO. I have more than 30 years of experience from various executive positions in Scandinavian companies. I've been leading the turnaround in Hewlett Packard as Managing Director for many, many years.

I was the Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer in Scandinavian Airlines for many years, and I've also been leading European software companies and worked for several PE companies as well. When I accepted the position for this job, I was discussing and looking into Norse. And I see that this company has a very good foundation for actually becoming a very profitable company in the future. First of all, they have a very attractive leases agreement that goes for many years from now.

They have a very competitive product that reach the market, and we see that with all the high load factor we have during the whole -- all the quarters as well. The balanced model with more than 50% of the aircraft now outsourced to Air IndiGo is also giving us an unforeseen revenue stream and indirectly also hedging the fuel that is an important part of the cost focus these days and an industry-leading ancillary sales -- ancillary sales that gives us a good foundation for actually increasing the revenue as we go in the future as well.

We do also see some need for improvements when I look into the company. I think we need an even more clear business idea what we should focus on. We need to optimize the network to make sure that we reach the right destination and also the utilization of our aircraft. We need to accelerate the commercial initiatives, and we also need to ensure that we have flexible crew agreements to make sure that we can meet the different needs in the market. The needs for a more simplified organization and also taking more cost out is also an important part of what we needed to work on.

And we have seen during the last months that we are struggling a little bit on the way we communicate towards our customers, and that's needed to be a focus as well. Cost will be an important part of the focus going forward. And basically, that was also the foundation for why I thought this was a very interesting opportunity to sign on. So let's look at some of the figures for Q4.

I will try to focus on actually what's an important part of the Q4. The Q4, as such, is a big -- is a quarter with 2 months where we struggle a little bit on October, November, and then we saw the turning point came in, in December. The decision that the company took in 2025, where they decided on the ACMI agreement with Air IndiGo, where they decided also new network to focus on more to Asia with Thailand and as the most important part has now started giving good results.

And that the turning point that came actually in December. December was a profitable month for Norse. And we also -- even though that we saw some irregularities during that month and have some extra cost that is a onetime cost, that month came out as a positive month. But the Q4 as such was a significant better revenue from $123 million to $156 million in revenue. The EBITDAR came in on a minus $3.1 million and an EBIT on minus $22 million. The load factor is still high during the whole month, whole quarter.

And if we take a look at the 2025 figures, we see that it's a significant improvement from 2024 now with an EBITDAR on plus $56 million and an EBIT on minus $20 million, significant improvement from almost minus $100 million in 2024. We also have a huge impressive growth on the passenger side from $1.4 million to $1.8 million, and the load factor is still quite high. So the turning point we're talking about in December is an important part for investors to look into. And to give you some few more data points to have in mind, we had in December specifically a passenger growth of 22% with a production of plus 14%.

And the TRASK growth was for that month, 6%. And we communicated in our traffic report for January that the TRASK increased by 20%. And later in the presentation, I will come back to say something about what that number is in February and also in March. The turning point came after the decision that the company took in 2025. They said they took strategic measures, they have now implemented the measures, and we now see the results. And that should be the main focus for investors going forward, not to look too much into Q4 as such, but more looking into the turning point in December and look forward.

And if you look at December on the TRASK side, we see that November came in on plus 7% year-over-year, December 6% and then January, 20%. And as I said, I will come back to indicate a little bit more about February and March later in the presentation. On the ACMI side, we have completed now the delivery of the sixth aircraft to Air IndiGo. And as we have communicated earlier, we have a minimum revenue of 350 block hours per month.

And as you see on the graph here, we are way above that for every month. And that gives us a more focus and more safe revenue side from Air IndiGo the coming year as well, an important part of having a better understanding of how the year will really come out. So with that, I will give the word to our CFO, Anders Jomaas, that will take us through some of the numbers in more detail.

Read the full article on Seeking Alpha

For further details see: