Earnings call transcript: Air France-KLM Q3 2025 sees revenue growth amid challenges

Air France-KLM reported its third-quarter 2025 earnings, showcasing a moderate revenue increase despite facing operational headwinds and softer leisure demand. The airline’s revenue reached €9.2 billion, a 3% year-over-year increase, while operating income rose to €1.2 billion. However, the company’s stock saw a significant decline, dropping 13.79% to €10.10 following the earnings announcement, reflecting investor concerns over future challenges.

Key Takeaways

• Revenue increased by 3% year-over-year to €9.2 billion.
• Operating income improved by €23 million compared to the previous year.
• Passenger traffic grew by 5%, reaching 29.2 million passengers.
• Stock price fell by 13.79% following the earnings release.
• The company launched new products and expanded its premium offerings.

Company Performance

Air France-KLM’s performance in Q3 2025 demonstrated resilience with a 3% increase in revenue despite a challenging environment characterized by softer leisure demand and operational difficulties. The airline successfully increased passenger traffic by 5%, transporting 29.2 million passengers. The operating margin remained stable at 13.1%, supported by a €23 million rise in operating income. The company continued to benefit from its fleet renewal program and productivity improvements.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: €9.2 billion (+3% YoY)
• Operating Income: €1.2 billion (+€23 million YoY)
• Operating Margin: 13.1% (stable)
• Passenger Traffic: 29.2 million (+5%)

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Air France-KLM’s stock price experienced a sharp decline of 13.79%, closing at €10.10. This drop reflects investor apprehension about the company’s ability to navigate ongoing operational challenges and softer leisure demand. The stock’s current price is significantly below its 52-week high of €15.165, indicating a bearish sentiment among investors.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Air France-KLM projects full-year capacity growth of 4-5% and anticipates a low single-digit increase in unit costs. The company is targeting an 8% margin by 2026-2028 and has hedged 70% of its fuel needs for 2025. Despite current challenges, the airline is optimistic about its long-term growth prospects, with plans to expand its premium cabin offerings and explore network optimization at Transavia.

Executive Commentary

CEO Benjamin Smith acknowledged the mixed nature of the quarter, stating, "Q3 again was a mixed quarter, softer leisure demand and operational headwinds, but we’re pleased that there was revenue growth and a stable margin." CFO Steven Zaat highlighted the ongoing benefits of the Back on Track program, while Smith noted the strength and resilience of the Parisian market.

Risks and Challenges

• Softer leisure demand and operational headwinds may continue to impact revenue growth.
• Economic uncertainties and geopolitical tensions could affect passenger traffic and yields.
• Rising fuel costs and currency fluctuations pose financial risks.
• Challenges in the economy segment and African routes may hinder overall performance.
• Potential delays in fleet renewal could affect operational efficiency.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the expected decline in cargo revenues for Q4 and the company’s focus on productivity and cost management. Executives also addressed potential dividend discussions, which have been postponed, and the exploration of network optimization strategies at Transavia.

Full transcript - Air France KLM SA (AF) Q3 2025:

Conference Moderator: Good morning and welcome to the Air France-KLM third quarter 2025 results presentation. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Benjamin Smith, CEO, and Steven Zaat, CFO. Please go ahead, sirs.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Okay, thank you. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today for the presentation of Air France-KLM’s third quarter results. As usual, I’ll start by sharing the key highlight of the quarter and then I’ll hand it over to our CFO, Steven Zaat, who will walk you through the financial results in more detail. I’ll return at the end with a few concluding remarks before we open the floor for any questions you might have. This quarter once again demonstrates the resilience of our business model in a challenging environment. In the third quarter, Air France-KLM delivered a stable operating margin of 13.1% with revenues increasing by 3% year over year to EUR 9.2 billion, supported by a 5% increase in passenger traffic, which reached 29.2 million passengers.

Passenger network unit revenue was up 0.5% at constant currency, driven by continued strong demand for premium cabins, which I will elaborate on later. Meanwhile, our maintenance business also made a solid contribution. We managed to limit our unit cost increase to 1.3% despite higher airport and air traffic control charges. As a result, operating income improved by EUR 23 million year over year to EUR 1.2 billion. Our balance sheet remains robust with leverage at 1.6 times. Year to date, recurring adjusted operating free cash flow reached EUR 700 million, confirming our ability to combine financial discipline with continued investment in our future. Finally, fleet renewal continues to advance with new generation aircraft now representing nearly one third of the fleet, up 8 percentage points compared to a year ago. Moving to slide 5.

For those of you that are following the deck here, one of this quarter’s key highlights is the continued success of our loyalty program Flying Blue, which has been named the world’s best airline loyalty program by Point Me for the second year in a row. This distinction reflects the trust of over 30 million members and underscores Flying Blue’s growing role in strengthening our connection with customers. Flying Blue remains a powerful driver of loyalty and commercial performance, and its global recognition is a testament to the value and quality of the experience that we deliver. Let’s turn now to slide five. We’re pursuing the implementation of our premiumization roadmap across the group with concrete improvement throughout the customer journey.

On board, we’re rolling out our latest long haul Business Class cabins at both Air France-KLM and KLM’s Premium Comfort class is now featured on more routes starting in September. Air France has been introducing high speed Starlink Wi-Fi on board available free of charge in every cabin, a first for any major European airline. Almost 30 aircraft have already been equipped and we expect 30% of the Air France fleet to feature this service by the end of 2025. In addition, we are continuing to enhance the customer experience across multiple touch points. This includes upgraded premium lounges with recent improvements in Chicago and Boston and an enriched dining offer featuring new signature dishes from Michelin-starred chefs on U.S. departures and a simplified customer journey from check in to boarding.

A new exclusive ground experience has also been introduced at Los Angeles for La Première customers and I’m also particularly proud to highlight that our fully redesigned La Première cabin will be available on the Paris City G2 Miami route starting November 10 after following a very very successful launch on our flights to New York JFK, Singapore and Los Angeles. Altogether, these initiatives elevate the quality of our product, reinforce our positioning in the premium travel segment and support our path to higher value revenues. Moving to Slide six, as you can see from this slide, the mix of our long haul cabins is gradually shifting toward higher value premium segments. At Air France, the share of La Première and Business Class seats is set to increase from 12% in 2022 to 13% by 2028 while Premium Economy, now rebranded as Premium, will rise from 8% to 10%.

At KLM, the trend is even more pronounced. Premium Comfort introduced in 2022 is expected to expand to 10% of seats by 2028 while the business cabin segment will grow from 10% to 12%. In other words, by 2028 almost one in four seats across our long haul fleet will be in premium cabins. This structural shift aligns with our longer term strategy to strengthen our brand positioning, reflecting evolving customer demand, improving revenue quality, and enhancing the value proposition for long haul travelers. Turning to our network, we are continuing to expand connectivity across all key markets. This winter the group will operate a broad network across all regions with balanced capacity growth in Asia and the Middle East. Air France will serve Phuket, Thailand while KLM will add Hyderabad, India to its network.

In the Caribbean, Air France will launch services to Punta Cana and the Dominican Republic and KLM will introduce flights to Barbados. Across Europe, KLM is opening Kittilä in northern Finland while Transavia is launching new services from Deauville, Normandy and Medina, Saudi Arabia and Marsa Alam, Egypt will also be added and Transavia will increase flights to Morocco, Egypt and Finland’s Lapland region as well. Looking ahead, Air France will launch flights to Las Vegas in summer 2026, further strengthening our North American offering. Altogether, these additions illustrate how Air France-KLM continues to grow, strategically improving connectivity, reinforcing its position in key markets and maintaining a well balanced portfolio of routes. With that, I’ll now hand it over to Stephen, who will walk you through the detailed financial results.

Steven Zaat, CFO, Air France-KLM: Yes, good morning everybody and thanks for taking the time to listen to us. I think we can say it was a tough quarter in the third quarter, especially from a revenue perspective. The impact of the situation in the U.S. regarding visa and immigration rules starts to hurt our lower yield segment in the long haul. I think also the warm summer did not help our European network and Transavia. On top, we had ATC strikes in July, we had ground strikes at KLM. Then all the impact from the taxes and charges which we get in France from the TSBA, and it is triple the charges of the landing fees and the increase of our security charges. I think we had last year, we had, let’s say, the Olympics.

I think if you look at the tailwinds which we should have from the Olympics, a big part has been absorbed by these headwinds in this quarter. If we look at the margin, you see a stable margin of around 13% which is the same as we had last year on the unit revenue. If you exclude currency, we’re at minus 0.5% and the unit cost we had quite well under control. I guided you already that we will be at the lower end of the 1-3%. We are very close now to the 1%. If you include also the fuel benefit, you will see that actually our unit cost is coming down with 0.2%. Let’s say unit revenues and unit costs are stabilizing each other in this quarter.

If you look at the left and you look at the net result, you see that it looks down year over year. It comes that we had an unrealized foreign exchange result last year of more than EUR 100 million. If you take that out on the net result, we actually improved and we are now at an equity level above EUR 2 billion. If you go business by business and I will come back on the 0.5% unit revenue on passenger business. On the next slide you have to see at the cargo that we see a -5% in unit revenues. This is related to the fact that we had more freighters in maintenance. We planned more maintenance for our freighters at Schiphol. It extended also more than what we expected. This is quite a big impact on our unit revenue.

If you look at the cargo contribution to our know, it’s more or less flattish. It is also, let’s say, benefiting from a unit cost perspective over there. Absorbing actually the unit revenue decline in the cargo on Transavia, we grew capacity 13.8%, 15% in France and 12.5% in the Netherlands. In France by taking over the slots of Air France in Orly and in the Netherlands by upgauging our fleet, that had an impact on our unit revenue which is down minus 2.8%. I think also that the warm weather didn’t help our local business due to the fact that the appetite to travel probably when it’s hot is less than when it is raining dogs and cats outside. We have a stable result of Transavia of around EUR 270 million. The maintenance business performed quite well. An increase of 13% of our revenues.

Despite the lower USD, especially on engines and components, we start growing the business. We are now at an order book of EUR 10.4 billion. We increased our order book by EUR 1.7 billion compared to the beginning of the last year. We are strengthening this business segment. You see also that the results are improving quarter over quarter now with an operating margin of 6.3%. A very good performance on the maintenance business, where we also start to recover at the components business to drive up our margin. If we then go to page 11, let’s start with Air France. Of course there was the Olympics last year, but we also had the TSBA impact and the ATC strikes. All in all, Air France improved the result by EUR 67 million, having now an operating margin of 14%. KLM is especially impacted by the lower yield demand.

This lower yield, especially on the long haul, impacts the unit revenues of KLM. On top of it, we have the increase of the Schiphol tariffs, which really hurt in KLM, including also the security charges which are going up. I think these two impacts actually explain all the KLM decline, despite the fact that we continue with our Back on Track. You see later that on the productivity side, the unit cost are getting better under control. Also, we see that we are getting very close to, let’s say, the low limit of our guidance. Especially a big contribution coming from the productivity on Flying Blue, a stable result of around EUR 54 million we had last year.

First of all, Flying Blue is impacted by the dollar because we sell miles in the U.S. and on top of it, we had very cheap seats available for Flying Blue during the Olympics. That has a positive impact, let’s say, on the miles cost and which we do not have this quarter, but I think it was a very strong quarter. We grew the business again with 10.5 and the business operating margin of 24% is contributing, as we expected, to our business model. If you then go to page 12, you see the big difference. We took out now also the premium economy. You see that there is a big difference between the premium traffic and the economy and the lower yield economy traffic, though in the first and business we increase our load factor. We increased our capacity, we increased our yield on the premium economy.

We even increased our capacity with 10% while at the same time increasing the ticket prices by 5.4%. On the economy, there you see it’s starting to hurt. It is minus 1.5% in terms of yield and also a lower load factor, although the load factor is still 91%. You see that it is more difficult to fill these seats. You look for instance on our traffic to the. On the North Atlantic to the U.S., there is minus 10% lower passengers from India, for instance, which is all related to this immigration rules in the U.S. If you go over the world, you see still that North America on itself is not doing that bad. We have a 2.7% increase in yields, especially driven again by the first and business class and the premium economy. Also by the very strong point of sale in the U.S.

Latin America still strong, 2.8% up in yields. We see also that in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, we could increase our yields year over year. On the long, on the outlier is a bit Africa, where we see that we have a gap on the load factor, which is especially again related to, let’s say, the political situation in Africa, but also the connecting traffic to the U.S. where there is less traffic from Africa to the U.S. due to all the immigration rules. On the right you see a quite positive trend on Asia at 4.4% in yield. We are doing quite well in that segment with a limited growth of 1.7%. On the right you see again Transavia, which I already explained. This is minus 2.7.

You see this hot summer had an impact on our short and medium haul, which was more or less flattish year over year. If we then go to page 13, you see we guided you that we would be at the lower end of the 1-2-3, so we are very close to the one now. That will also be the case in the next quarter. We see the unit costs are coming down as productivity is kicking in. Of course, the premiumization, which contributes 0.6% to our unit cost, and also this increased ATC charges and the significant increase of the airport charges, especially in Amsterdam, that drives actually the cost here still. Our own unit cost, which we can directly influence, you see that the labor price is compensated by 1.3% on unit cost, on productivity, and then on the operations it is still going up 0.8%.

Mainly driven also that we have expensive ground and also on the maintenance side is still quite a difficult.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Environment.

Steven Zaat, CFO, Air France-KLM: All in all, good to see that the unit cost, excluding the ATC charges and the premiumization, are more or less flattish. We see also a positive trend towards Q. On page 14, you see the cash flow. A big jump positively in terms of operating free cash flow. We had EUR 1.5 billion, where we were last year at EUR 28 million. We still have in there around EUR 400 million of deferred social charges and wage tax. If you take these exceptionals and you take also the payment of the lease debt, you see that we are now at a recurring adjusted operating free cash flow of more than EUR 700 million, where last year we were at EUR 23 million. If you look at the right, you see that the net debt is coming up.

Of course these exceptionals of EUR 400 million are added actually at the end of the day to our net debt. We had, let’s say, we signed a lease contract on the 787-9 where we extended the leases till the period 2033 and 2035, which had a EUR 300 million impact on our modified lease debt. Of course that has not an impact in the coming period on our free cash flow because we continue to operate these profitable planes. If we then go to page 15, you see that the leverage is down now at 1.6. We have EUR 9.5 billion of cash at hand, which is very stable over the year, which is well above the EUR 6-8 billion target. We launched very successfully a bond of EUR 500 million pure vanilla for five years with a coupon of 3.75%.

We had the lowest credit spread ever in our history of Air France-KLM scaling. We are extremely proud of that and we continue to simplify our balance sheet. We redeemed Apollo for EUR 500 million. In July we issued a new hybrid into the market. We will also pay back the EUR 300 million of our hybrid convertible bond in the market. In total we are reducing this hybrid stock with EUR 300 million this year and that with a net result generation. We see that we are continued to strengthen our balance sheet where we are now above the EUR 2 billion of equity. Let’s go to the outlook and start with the forward bookings. We see that there is a gap of 3% in the long haul, 2% in the medium, and 4% at transaction. We have seen this every quarter.

At the end of the day we were always able to almost close completely this gap. That is also, let’s say, that is a little bit the trend we see now in our industry. To give you a bit of an indication, if you look at the first 28 days of October, we see a unit revenue increase of 2% excluding currency impact with a load factor gap of 1%. We see again a difference between premium traffic including premium economy and the low yielding classes in the overall long haul network, giving confidence on our premiumization strategy.

I will for one time also guide you on the cargo because usually I not do that because I think that we do not have a lot of bookings in, but we had a very exceptional situation last year where we had a positive impact of the front loading, especially related to the U.S. elections in the fourth quarter. I already indicated in our last call that the Q4 cargo unit revenues would be negative. For the first four weeks of October we see a decrease in unit revenue of 11%. Although cargo has a very short booking window than the passenger business and it is difficult to predict the unit revenues. In our internal forecast we expect a double digit decline in unit revenues compared to last year for the fourth quarter. If we go to page 18 on the hedge.

You see that we have hedged now 70% of 2025 and 50% of 2026. We are quite stable in our fuel bill. I think we last time indicated $6.9 billion and we are now at $6.9 billion. A very stable fuel price. If you look at it over quarter to quarter it can go up and down during the weeks, but I think we are now reaching a kind of normal plateau for the fuel price. If we then go to page 19 on the capacity. We still aim at the capacity of 3-5% on the long haul, 3-5% on the short and medium, and Transavia especially because we had very strong operations in the third quarter. We expect to be above 10% for the full year.

Overall we still guide at the 4-5% versus 20. On page 20 you see the outlook and it is every quarter the same. It becomes a bit boring maybe. Group capacity 4-5% unit cost. I’m very confident in the low single digit increase where we will see in the fourth quarter that we had a very low side of this guidance, so we are comfortable for the full year on this low single digit increase in unit costs. Net CapEx between EUR 3.2 billion-EUR 3.4 billion. Also probably more at the low end of the bandwidth and net apps. Current EBITDA we will keep that between EUR 1.5 billion and EUR 2 billion. We strengthened further our position in Canada. We have a very strong cooperation with WestJet, which is the second largest airline with the leading market positions in western Canada.

We already have since 2009 a code share and a loyalty program with them and it’s interesting to see that they are the number six partner of our airlines KLM enabled revenues. Next time when we do all a pub quiz I will invite you to tell me who are the number two, three, four and five. Number one, you can easily guess but it’s interesting to see that they drive really up our revenue. We were happy that together with Delta and Corina we could lock them in for our business and we took a stake of 2.3% solidifying our, let’s say integrated way of working with Delta and securing our position in Canada. With that I hand over to Ben for the final remarks.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Thanks, Stephen. Just to summarize and conclude the comments that we just made. Q3 again was a mixed quarter, softer leisure demand and operational headwinds, but we’re pleased that there was revenue growth and a stable margin, which clearly shows that we’ve got a resilient, well-balanced network, strong cash generation, and the outlook is reconfirmed. Altogether, these results demonstrate Air France-KLM’s ability to navigate challenges resiliently while building a stronger position for the future. Thank you for your time and attention. We’re now available to answer any of your questions.

Conference Moderator: Thank you, sir. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind and want to withdraw your question, please press Star two. Please ensure your lines are unmuted locally as you’ll be prompted when to ask your question. Again, to join the queue for questions, please press Star one. Our first question today comes from the line of Jarrod Castle from UBS. Please go ahead.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Good morning everybody. Thanks. I’ll ask three please. Just quite interested to get any thoughts that you might have at the moment on at least the direction of ex fuel costs going into 2026. Secondly, any impact from U.S. shutdown on your North Atlantic? I see they’re going to reduce the amount of capacity flying in the U.S. Is this more domestic in your view or will it have an impact on international? Lastly, just the current French economic political backdrop. If you could just go through some of your thoughts in terms of what these budgetary pressures might mean for your business. Thanks.

Steven Zaat, CFO, Air France-KLM: Good morning Jared. I will take the first question and then we’ll take the second and the third question. Yeah, so we are currently busy with our budget for 2026 but we, of course, you know, we have Back on Track. We have the same actually measures also at our funds. So we are driving our productivity further. Let’s see where that will end when I come back with the guidance for 2026. We are, of course, aiming if you look at the full year to be lower than where we were this year. You see every quarter the unit cost development is coming down, which is strengthening our position also for the next year. We have to define our full year budget before I will guide you on any number.

Conference Moderator: Thanks.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Hi Jared. The U.S. shutdown, from the information we received this morning, it’s only going to impact domestic flights and that international flights as of today should be business as usual. On the political side in the Netherlands and in France, the main focuses for us are will there be any additional taxes or charges imposed on customers, passengers, or us directly or airports? So far we don’t see anything different new from what we’ve seen already and what we’ve been lobbying to change or get rid of. Again, one of the big negatives that impact us in France are the air traffic controller strikes. So far we don’t have any visibility for the rest of the year. We are hoping things will stay stable. We have a new head of the government body which oversees the air traffic controllers. He is quite close to the file.

It’s our number one file today. We’re hopeful there will be some improvement because it’s cost us a lot of money this quarter and a lot of money this year. The operational impact that we’re experiencing is much worse. This is in France, much worse than any other country in Europe and so far in the Netherlands. It’s a bit too early to tell whether there will be any change in policy towards aviation. Thanks very much.

Conference Moderator: The next question comes from the line of Stephen Furlong from Davy. Please go ahead.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Yeah, good morning, gentlemen. Maybe Stephen, you can just talk about what’s going on with cargo. Sometimes historically it’s been a leading indicator, but just like to understand, because I haven’t seen that level of declines from other airlines. Then Ben, maybe can you talk about Orly, how the work is going there and obviously as you build up an entirely, largely Transavia business there, I’d be interested in that. Thank you.

Steven Zaat, CFO, Air France-KLM: Good morning, Stephen. Yeah, let’s say the booking window of cargo is very short, so that is always difficult to predict. As I gave you, I gave you the numbers for October, but I think I want to be totally transparent where we are currently, I think we will be in that range also, let’s say for the coming months. It’s very difficult to exactly explain, but we saw last year that there was a lot of upfront loading towards the U.S. in expectations for what would be the outcome of the election. That has first already before the elections it started and then of course when Trump came into the White House, or at least he was elected to be in the White House in January, there was a lot of front loading in that quarter.

Q4, if you still remember, we had a very good unit revenue on the cargo level and that is going to normalize. On itself the demand is not weak. I think it is normal and it is of course better than in the other quarters. I think the year over year reference is quite difficult due to the fact that we have this positive situation in the fourth quarter last year.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Hi Steven. Regarding Orly, if you look at the overall Air France group, so Air France and Transavia and HOP, which is the regional carrier, so excluding the rest of the business units in Air France-KLM, so just Air France group. We’re extremely pleased with the performance of the Air France group, despite all the challenges we’re having with the air traffic controllers and the rest of the operations and taxes that are being imposed specifically in France. With respect to Transavia at Orly, it has to be taken in context with the entire Air France group performance because we’ve been progressively shifting slots from Air France to Transavia.

We have half of the capacity, 50% of the slots at Orly, which is about 150 departures, and we operate about one third of those. In 2018, they were operated by Transavia and the rest by Air France, our regional operator, Air France Hop. Those slots there are being transferred to Transavia, and the totality of those slots will have been transferred to Transavia by April of next year. On many of those flights, it is a significant upgauge. You take a Hop aircraft as an example of 70 seats and you are going to a 737 or an A320neo above 180 seats, it is a big jump. We are cutting our domestic capacity by double digits, so those slots are being redirected to new routes in Europe. To start up a new route takes some time.

We do have a very, very strong position at Orly and we do have our loyalty program and we do have a cost structure that’s similar to the competitors that we are going up against at Orly Airport. The strategy we’re quite pleased with. What is difficult to measure, or to at least report out on, is how the benefits flow between Transavia and Air France. Though Air France has been able to shed the bulk of its domestic operation to date, and it’ll be the entire domestic operation in April. That, of course, will be transferred to a lower operating unit, which is Transavia, and we will significantly reduce capacity. This is being done in a very complex way. This is a project that should have been done 30 years ago. It was very, very difficult to put this into place.

Impacts a lot of employees, a lot of unions are involved with this. To be able to balance this out by saying, okay, Transavia is going to be profitable or not. I think for me, if we can get the overall Air France group along the path that we’ve committed to the market to get it to an 8% margin, we’re on the path. Is it being divided correctly between Transavia and Air France with this transfer? I’ll give you an example. Whenever there is an air traffic control strike to protect the long haul flying, which is our number one moneymaker, we try to shift the impact of the strikes to Orly airport to impact Transavia as an example. They take the brunt of, you know, an example of a negative like a strike.

I think it’s unfortunate we’re not able to put all that into our, you know, into our disclosure, into our press releases. I think that that kind of level of detail, if we were able to share that or we had the time to share that, I think it would be accepted, well understood that the strategy is the right one, but it has to be looked at in context with the rest of the Air France-KLM group performance, which, as you know, over the last two years we’ve been hitting record core results. I understand. Thanks Ben. And thanks Stephen.

Conference Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Harry J. Gowers from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead, Harry.

Harry J. Gowers, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Hi, morning gents. A couple of questions from me. First one, Stephen, I think you gave the +2% unit revenue remarks for October, which was for the passenger network. So maybe the network, the network business. Sorry. Maybe you could give us what you saw in Transavia specifically. Second question, I mean just in terms of the French ticket tax increase, the ship oil tariff increases, clearly these are external headwinds which are impacting passenger demand to a certain extent for Air France specifically. Anything you can do at all to try and offset or minimize those impacts on demand. Third question, just on the costs, do we have any idea yet or any visibility on where like airport tariff increases could go in 2020?

Steven Zaat, CFO, Air France-KLM: Harry, let me. Let’s come back on your questions and then maybe Beck will follow up on it. Let’s first start on the unit revenues on Transavia. I don’t have any number to be honest on Transavia yet. We always wait for the full closing which we are going to do. On the passenger business, because it’s the main part of our business, I get the daily reports, so I have those figures actually always up to date, but I didn’t hear any negative news for the moment. Probably as we see bigger demand in October, probably related also due to holidays, I expect that also to come from Transat on the Schiphol tariff. Yeah, it is a very terrible situation what we are seeing there. We know that Schiphol was the number nine in terms of cost in Europe.

We could develop very strongly our connecting traffic and of course the fact that they increase so much the tariff and we are a connecting airline, so we need to have lower cost than our competition. We are working on that. First, we are working on it in what we call Back on Track and you see the productivity measures are kicking in now in our unit cost to get that done also to compensate all those increased charges which we get at Schiphol. We have to review also what we are going to do with KLM, what is the right model and we are working on that. Also close with, let’s say, the Schiphol management because we cannot go on like this. The first indication which you ask, what are the airport tariffs going to do.

At least the good news is that they are not going up, but they went already with more than 40% but they are not going up in 2026 for Schiphol. I do not have the indication for ADP yet, but usually they are much more modest in the last years.

Harry J. Gowers, Analyst, J.P. Morgan: Great, thanks a lot.

Conference Moderator: The next question comes from the line of James Hollins from Redburn. Please go ahead, James.

James Hollins, Analyst, Redburn: Yeah, hi. One, two, three from me please as well. Just coming back to the 2% unit revenue increase in October, is there any color that you can give us in terms of how that’s trending by region? Secondly, coming back to that chart on page six on the increasing premium mix, assuming that that’s the flat yield over the course of the next three years, can you give us an indication of what the RASK accretion just in terms of mix would be from that premium cabin growth over the course of the next three years?

Finally, you know, with leverage now sub 2 times, liquidity is well above target, and I guess with a very positive direction for free cash flow generation as the exceptionals roll through and with EBIT expansion on the back of your medium term target, have you guys started to think about any potential use of that free cash flow? I guess you haven’t paid a dividend since, I think, pre GFC. Is there any potential in that restarting?

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Thank you.

Steven Zaat, CFO, Air France-KLM: Very good question. Let’s first start with the coloring of October. I think I already indicated that premium was doing much better than, let’s say, the lower yielding segments. We see a very, very strong unit revenue actually in North America and actually all over the world. On the long haul it is pretty strong. On, let’s say, the European side it is still going up, but it is not as strong as we are seeing on the long haul. You could say that it is, let’s say, 3% on the long haul and 1% approximately, or even 1%, on the European network. Still, the driving force is the long haul and the driving force is the premium traffic. Yeah, that’s a very good question.

We are just building again the budget for it, but I would say it is around 1% increase of unit revenues. That looks modest, but it will bring a margin up with 1%. I would say you have part which is in the unit revenue but also part which is in the unit cost. I would say if I have to give an indication in a pub quiz because I do not have exact numbers here year I would give that it would bring at least 1% in margins on those networks. Then on the cash flow. We have indeed a very strong cash position and we are driving up now our cash flow. We will use that to pay off our hybrids because the hybrids are more expensive than, let’s say, a normal vanilla loan, as you have seen what we did in August.

The first thing for the short term, and the short term is for me, 2026, is to further pay off our hybrids stock. We have EUR 500 million to pay to Apollo next year and we will pay that from our own cash flow. That is at least if the situation stays where we are today. I think the moment of dividends is more when we end actually the era that we do not have this payback of the social charges in France and the wage in the Netherlands. That is more for that time horizon, but it is not now, let us say to disclose to the whole world. We need to first discuss that with the board, because we did not have these discussions with the board so far.

James Hollins, Analyst, Redburn: Brilliant, thank you.

Conference Moderator: As a reminder, if you’d like to join the queue for questions, please press Star one on your keypads. The next question comes from Antoine Madre from Bernstein, please go ahead. Hi everyone. Two questions please. First one regarding Back on Track for KLM. You mentioned the productivity is improving, so is it going faster than what you plan? Can we still expect EUR 450 million improvement this year? Second one on maintenance outlook. How do you see the current headwinds impacting you? Tariff, FX, and chain eight.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Thank you.

Steven Zaat, CFO, Air France-KLM: Hi Antoine, how are you this morning? To start with, Back on Track. We are still seeing this contribution of Back on Track. Of course, that is also to offset, let’s say, the tariffs and all those kind of increases of cost. We are fully in sync with the Back on Track target which we announced at the beginning of the year, and we will come back on it at the full year results. Where we, exactly on the maintenance, we don’t see any real big impacts coming from the new tariffs. Usually the parts are excluded. We know that some parts where there’s a lot of metal can have an impact in terms of tariffs, but we don’t see a significant increase. You have seen the beautiful results in the third quarter from our engineering and maintenance business.

So far that impact is very, very limited and not noticeable, not material in our results.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Antonio Duarte from Goodbody. Please go ahead. Good morning Ben and good morning Stephen. A question from me just on Transavia M&A and mainly in Europe. Where do you see strengths and weakness within Europe considering this such increase in capacity? Any routes that you see special that you would like to highlight or you’re seeing particular weakness. Thank you.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: What I look at it from a different way, the strength of Paris and the fact that it’s the largest inbound tourist market in all of Europe and that the airport is very close to Paris and has now got a new direct metro line directly into the terminal, a new line 14. It’s a very attractive airport. We’ve not been able to exploit our position there in the past because the cost structure of Air France and ADP was probably one of the highest in Europe and we had a limit on the number of Transavia airplanes we could operate because of the collective agreement we had in place with the Air France pilots. What we negotiated in 2019 was not an easy negotiation to have that limit removed. We can now operate as many Transavia flights as possible.

Now with a competitive cost structure, we can really take advantage of the opportunity here in Paris. I think the Parisian market is very strong. It’s showing resilience, it’s actually growing. We are trying to position all the new capacity that we’re putting into Europe with a strong focus on inbound. This is new for us. It’s traffic we did not have in the past and of course we’re trying to deploy this traffic where also there’s a strong outbound component as well from Paris. You know, the typical markets, leisure markets in Italy and Greece, in Spain, in Portugal are all still quite strong.

Where we’re seeing very, very good growth is in Northern Africa, in the Maghreb countries of Morocco, in Algeria, in Tunisia as well as Beirut, so in Lebanon and Tel Aviv in Israel as well as a few destinations in Cairo. It’s quite a unique breadth of destinations that we’ve got. Not typical for a low cost carrier, but the fact that it’s, you know, it’s got so many opportunities to serve the Paris market with a very competitive cost structure. Plus the benefits of Flying Blue. Not all the benefits. We don’t want to bog it down with the costs that Flying Blue can sometimes entail, but there is quite an array of unique benefits that we offer to customers on Transavia.

A loyal Air France customer does have a low cost carrier option, which is quite unique, quite unique in Europe from the main base city of the full service airline that we have. Meanwhile, at Transavia Holland, we’ve been trying to manage through a situation where we don’t have full visibility on the number of slots and the curfew situations at Schiphol. Of course, the bulk of the Transavia aircraft at Schiphol do start their day early in the morning. We do have, I think, more visibility than we had three years ago now that the Dutch government has agreed to go through the European Commission balanced approach process, which is enabling us to take some decision on the deployment of our fleet at Transavia. We will be refining the network offering at Transavia Holland, and we believe that should improve in the near future.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. This is a final reminder. If you would like to join the queue for question, please press Star one on your keypad. We have a question coming from Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.

Kate Xiao, Analyst, Bank of America Securities: Hi, good morning, this is Kate Xiao. On behalf of Muneeba, I have a question on Unicast which is tracking at the lower end of FY guide. Just wanted to ask about 4Q outlook. Are you seeing, you know, the trend continue at about 1.3% year on year growth into 4Q and any kind of base effect we need to keep in mind when thinking about 4Q. Just another question on your forward bookings on slide 17, if I’m reading the numbers right, I’m seeing about 2-4% kind of lower loading factor compared to 2024. The commentary is in line booking. If you could clarify that. Am I reading the slide correctly? Thank you very much.

Steven Zaat, CFO, Air France-KLM: Good morning. Let’s first start on the unit cost. I’m quite optimistic about the fourth quarter unit cost. I already gave the indication where we would end in the second half year and I think Q4 will even be a better development than Q3. We see quite some activity coming in and with let’s say the more modest labor cost increase and also having our operations better running, we are quite optimistic on the fourth quarter but we don’t give an exact number. We have a full year guidance and you can see where we will end for the full year for the load factor. Yeah, I think that what you of course numbers are right.

If you have followed also the previous presentations, you have seen that we have every time we had these kind of gaps, gaps and at the end of the day we were able to close them. In the first quarter we were almost closing the full gap. In the second quarter we were 0.1%. In terms of load factor gap, so very close to zero, and we started almost the same and in the third quarter we also saw the same and we closed at minus 0.5%. I do not say that we will fully close this load factor gap. We saw a small load factor gap in October, but we saw quite some good unit revenues, but it is too soon to tell. These are the numbers and of course there is no mistake in it.

Kate Xiao, Analyst, Bank of America Securities: That’s very helpful, thank you.

Conference Moderator: We have a question from Alex Stasiak from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, Alex.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Yeah, morning everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two if I may. The first one is could you maybe provide any quantitative guidance on the Back on Track program contribution on EBIT for 2026? Do you still expect to be on track for the medium term guidance? The second question is a follow up actually on the potential French corporate tax proposals. We have heard a lot of things in the press last week and many legislative hurdles before any such proposals actually passed. Could you just provide any indication on how much of group PBT is related to France? Thank you very much.

Steven Zaat, CFO, Air France-KLM: Good morning Axel. Yes, on Back on Track we will see of course an outflow in 2026. I’m not yet there to guide you on the cost as you know I say that it’s coming down and coming down and coming down. If you look at the unit cost increase but we have not finalized yet the full guidance on it but the program on itself is delivering but we see now that especially the low yielding traffic is getting worse. That here especially also KLM plus the Schiphol term and we have to review what are our next steps with our KLM operations. That is where we are currently working together with the KLM management. The second question, I don’t have any.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Figures but Axel, hi, it’s Ben. From what we’ve seen over the last week we don’t have any aggregate figures on that and how that could impact us. As you know things are moving all over the place, but the current government that’s sitting, I think we have a good feeling that what we had in place last year is going to be very similar to what should be in place this year. As you know it’s not very stable here. The data items that could impact us seem to be under control and.

Steven Zaat, CFO, Air France-KLM: Coming back on the guidance because that was a question. We will come back on that with the full year results but we are still, let’s say, aiming at 8% margin in the period 2026-2028.

Kate Xiao, Analyst, Bank of America Securities: Okay, thank you very much.

Conference Moderator: There are no further questions, so I hand back over to you, sirs, for closing remarks.

Benjamin Smith, CEO, Air France-KLM: Okay, thank you everyone for joining us today. We look forward to sharing our results at the end of the year, the end of the fourth quarter. Thank you.

Conference Moderator: Thank you for joining today’s call. You may now disconnect your lines.

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