Earnings call transcript: Finnair Q3 2025 reveals operational resilience amid challenges

Finnair’s third-quarter 2025 earnings report highlighted a mixed performance, with the airline navigating operational disruptions while achieving modest revenue growth. The company’s stock fell by 2.68% in pre-market trading, reflecting investor concerns over industrial action impacts and North Atlantic traffic challenges.

Key Takeaways

• Finnair reported a €51 million comparable operating result for Q3 2025.
• Revenue increased by 2%, despite a €18 million hit from industrial action.
• Ancillary revenue surpassed cargo revenue, indicating diversification.
• Strong performance in Far East Asia, particularly Japan, with 25 weekly frequencies.
• North Atlantic traffic faced challenges, impacting future revenue outlook.

Company Performance

Finnair demonstrated resilience in Q3 2025, achieving a 2% increase in revenue despite significant disruptions from industrial action. The airline’s strategic focus on the Far East Asia market, especially Japan, contributed to its performance, although North Atlantic traffic posed challenges. The reopening of the Helsinki-Toronto route and new European destinations for summer 2026 signal growth ambitions.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Increased by 2% from the previous year.
• Comparable operating result: €51 million.
• Ancillary revenue surpassed cargo revenue.

Market Reaction

Finnair’s stock price decreased by 2.68% in pre-market trading, reflecting investor concerns about the €18 million impact from industrial action and North Atlantic traffic challenges. The stock’s movement towards its 52-week low suggests cautious sentiment among investors.

Executive Commentary

CEO Turkka Kuusisto emphasized the company’s operational resilience, stating, "Nothing is broken in the platform and the underlying business and operations." CFO Pia Aaltonen-Forsell highlighted the financial impact of emission rights costs, noting, "We are experiencing the emission rights costs now being there to the full because there are no more free allowances for us."

Risks and Challenges

• Industrial action and its potential indirect impacts on operations.
• North Atlantic traffic challenges affecting future revenue.
• Emission rights costs due to the absence of free allowances.
• Aircraft grounding due to certification issues, although resolved.
• Market saturation in certain routes, requiring strategic adjustments.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the North Atlantic capacity challenges and the A330 wet lease arrangement with Qantas. The company also discussed its ongoing fleet strategy evaluation and potential capacity reallocation to Asian routes. CEO Turkka Kuusisto assured a thorough and diligent process in addressing these challenges.

Full transcript - Finnair Oyj (FIA1S) Q3 2025:

Erkka Salonen, Investor Relations, Finnair: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, I’m Erkka Salonen from Finnair Investor Relations and it’s my pleasure to welcome you all to this Finnair’s third quarter 2025 earnings call. I have here with me our CEO, Mr. Turkka Kuusisto, and our new CFO, Mrs. Pia Aaltonen-Forsell. I will now turn this call over to you, Turkka. Please go ahead.

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: Thank you, Erk. Very good afternoon to all of you joining this earnings call. The busiest season is now behind us and we are happy to report that we did deliver a solid Q3 financial performance, especially considering the negative impact from the industrial action. As you might recall, it took until mid-July to get the final CLA concluded and behind us. Before that, the quarter was shadowed by three strike days that led to cancellation of more than 300 flights. Today we are reporting some €18 million of direct impact from the industrial action. Of course, for us it’s been very difficult to evaluate the so-called indirect impact, but they are in millions of euros.

If we take the comparable operating result of €51 million and calculate back €18 million plus something from the indirect side, I guess that we can all agree that we would have been at par with last year’s performance or even above. The revenue increase was 2% and that was also influenced by the cancellations and the indirect impact of the industrial action. Unfortunately, we faced some unexpected maintenance aircraft-on-ground (AOG) issues during the quarter that continued to impact negatively due to ASK and revenue development. It’s worth mentioning that after we got the CLAs and disruptions behind us, our quality of service and flight regularity returned to a very high level almost immediately because the weeks following the industrial actions actually scored to 99.3% in terms of regularity. Now the full quarter result is somewhat lower because of the AOGs.

Also, from the traffic plan and summer season network planning side, it was a great success when it comes to our traffic in Far East Asia, especially in Japan. We decided to increase the frequencies and capacity so that we flew 25 weekly frequencies between Helsinki and Japan, which made us the biggest operator or carrier between Europe and Japan. As we can see from our load factors and also yield development, that has been a very strong geographical region for us during the summer season. It’s not on my slide, but Pia will revert to it later in her presentation. Yesterday, the Board of Directors of Finnair has also decided on the second installment of the return of capital payment that is now due 7th of November if I recall it right, still taking some remarks around the collective labor agreements.

Now we have reached with all employee groups and unions agreements that are in line with the general labor market framework and policies, which is of course extremely important for us when it comes to protecting and developing our cost competitiveness not only in the short term but also when we take a longer term value creation roadmap in front of us. We’ve been working intensively when it comes to returning customer satisfaction and as you know, the biggest contributor to the positive NPS development is the quality of the service and regularity and punctuality. Very happy to report that the NPS of the total customer base did increase from the low point of 28-ish close to 40 from August to September, and then the development has continued. I will come back very shortly in this seat cover issue that we faced.

Anyhow, when we take a more granular view related to the NPS development and explore the, let’s say, the core customers of ours, we are actually trending even higher. The most frequent flyers are even more satisfied with our services as we speak. Even though it was an event after the reporting period, this seat cover issue that we faced, we wanted to take the topic also today with you because it has gained quite a lot of media attention because we needed to ground eight aircraft of our Airbus A321 fleet two weeks back because of question marks in the certification process of the seats and seat covers. To be very transparent, we followed the instructions of the designer and the OEM of those covers and seals. In our own internal procedures, we found question marks and therefore we decided to ground the aircraft.

Also very happy to report that all planes are now flying. Six of them are back in our scheduled routes, two of them are in the maintenance shop, one being patented and one going through a heavy overhaul process. From that point of view, the operation is stabilized back to normal. When it comes to quantifying the financial impact, especially now when we face these CLA-related disruptions, this is a completely different size item, it’s a minor item versus the CLA disruption and impact. We are at max discussing a few million. That’s something that we wanted to very transparently discuss with you today and of course also within the guidance range that we’ll discuss later in this call. Moving to the geographical footprint of ours.

As already mentioned, Asia performing very strong double-digit growth both in ASK and revenue development, and also RASK developing positively, and also the RPK yield and load. Both factors also on a positive side. Europe and domestic rather stable or flattish, but nothing extraordinary in these geographical regions. The big negative numbers in the Middle East area are explained by the fact that we are not flying anymore from Copenhagen and Stockholm to Doha. It’s only Helsinki–Doha operations. Therefore, we are two-thirds down given that change in our scheduled traffic. North Atlantic traffic and North America, especially USA, has of course remained as a challenge, I guess, for all around companies because of various aspects, and we had a plan to increase the ASK and capacity for that area, and we did so.

Of course, we already hedged some of the capacity down given the CLA issues and also the development that we witnessed early Q2, early Q3, but anyhow the demand and yield development didn’t meet our expectations, and therefore we are reporting a double-digit decline in RASK, and also load factor came down by high single-digit numbers. Maybe with these words I would hand it over to Pia to discuss the financials in greater detail.

Pia Aaltonen-Forsell, CFO, Finnair: Thank you, Turkka, and good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. I can maybe start by saying I joined as CFO on August 1 and I’ve been happy to join in a period when we have resumed normal operations as Turkka just described. Someone said to me earlier today that, hey Pia, you had sort of the right smile when you presented the results. We are not on camera right now, so you cannot see that. I think it’s based on the fact that, hey, we have been able to operate. Q3 is an important season and you can also see that in the results, that despite the really difficult periods that we had before this quarter and the long strikes and the fact that the strike impact was still €18 million into the operating result of this quarter, we did land at a comparable operating result of €51 million.

If you take into account the strike impacts, we were more or less at last year’s level and given some of the sort of structural changes on the cost side that I will come back to, I still think this was a good expression of the team’s ability to bounce back. Thank you to the team and also, of course, customer trust rebounding. Thank you to customers. As you, Turkka, pointed out, there are maybe a few other smaller changes that are visible on this page, but I think I’ll answer your questions later on if you have detailed questions on the specific lines. I would really go to the next page, which is more about giving the holistic view of the results in the third quarter. We already discussed the strike impacts and I think that’s maybe just a technical note.

If you look at the more detailed bridge that we have in some of the appendixes, there you see a breakdown of all of the elements. I really think it’s important to summarize the strike impacts into one bucket. There are considerations relating to the closure of the Russian airspace that have led to higher navigation and landing costs in this very corner of Europe where we are operating. Obviously, we are one of the few that really remains with big traffic amounts here. We have taken some additional costs due to that. Obviously, that’s a topic, the Russian airspace closure. That is a fact that we have to accept. That’s where we are right now, obviously. Is there a question, could these costs be lower? That’s for the authorities to look into if that could be possible or not.

There is another big societal change right now, which is particularly in Europe, the strive towards decarbonization. That is visible for companies like us in many ways. In this chart, what you see is, of course, the addition to costs. You see it’s like €10 million more per quarter. I think that gives a good representation of what we are experiencing right now. We are experiencing the emission rights costs now sort of being there to the full because there are no more free allowances for us. That change has happened during this year, and we still had maybe something, I don’t want to say in our back pocket, but some reserves from previously. That is definitely something that, going forward, we know the European legislation is there, there are no more free allowances.

That is really one of the big points of additions to costs during this year for decarbonization. Obviously, the other one is sustainable aviation fuel where there’s now the mandate to buy 2% blend. That is obviously as well increasing our costs. It’s a fair representation, a quarterly addition of €10 million during this year. I still see into next year there will still be a little bit of a hike up because of the ETS and the emission rights sort of being full blown impact during next year. Those were those structural changes. You can see that we have volume growth and that’s really, you know, if I would like to simplify things, I would say that the green change here, the improvement of €17 million, really the gross actually improvement on volume side is even a bit bigger than that.

Obviously, if you look into the details, you can see a few other minor changes there as well. Someone asked me about the changes in yield. I think one noteworthy thing is that the compensations that we have paid also for the strike, they tend to go impacting that key figure. Maybe that’s just one thing to keep in mind. I also already got today a lot of questions about the impact which Turkka, you already commented about the seat covers and whether that’s a big thing or not. It’s not a big thing, but obviously for our customers it came during a period of school holidays. Of course, that’s a thing that we really needed to fix as soon as we could. It has also been debated quite a lot. If I look only from a financial perspective, it’s a few millions.

The impact will be in Q4 and that negative impact is within when we have given the guidance for Q4. Obviously, that’s within the limits of that. Okay, I will speed up. I only have a few more things to say. The second installment of the return of the capital. This was something that was already decided in the AGM. Now it’s kind of the formal decision about also paying the second installment because we are in a strong enough financial position to be able to pay. That will be happening on the 7th of November. When you look at the ratios from our balance sheet, we are kind of continuously showing some improvements, and I think I will go to the next page to finally comment on a few of the things that we’ve done through this year.

Obviously, if you look at first the operating cash flow, that’s sort of the big, that’s the positive here. When you then look at where have we spent and allocated some of the cash. We’ve done a lease buyback. We have also been paying back our loans and leases according to the schedules. I think that the same diligent work that was already started earlier to make the balance sheet healthier has continued step by step, and it continues to show as gradually also improving ratios. I think with that, Turkka, I would hand it back to you.

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: Thank you, Pia. A few remarks related to the way forward. You might already be aware that in two weeks’ time we have a more in-depth discussion with you in the form of ACMU. Already now, geologically, a warm welcome to our event. In the meantime, what we’ve communicated externally is that for the summer season 2026, we’ll be adding new destinations and more frequencies to the summer season in Europe. Catania, Florence, Valencia, and Island, of course, being a concrete example. I guess we already discussed in connection with the Q2 report that we are reopening the Helsinki–Toronto route after 10 years of not flying to Toronto. That will be an interesting avenue for us to explore the demand and connectivity between Helsinki and Canada.

A big step for us, and I guess also for the whole industry, is the development of new distribution capabilities, as well as a more modern, digitalized interaction with the customers. As the world’s first airline, we did introduce ancillary combos where our passengers before the flight can select and collect various ancillaries and buy them as one bundle and get some monetary benefits out of it. This is a very important milestone step for us as a company because you can see from our figures that during 3Q25 the revenue from ancillaries actually bypassed the cargo revenue. That’s a concrete example of the selected commercial strategy paying off, and we are further improving our capabilities and competencies to continue that double-digit growth. As Pia mentioned, our company and the whole industry is facing this environmental compliance and the CO2 reduction challenge and dilemma.

We are very proactive when it comes to contributing to the different collaboration platforms to build the availability and affordability of next-generation fuels, SAF and eSAF maybe later down the road. In the meantime, we are engaging intensively with our customers, also on the corporate side, to provide them with opportunities to contribute to the CO2 reduction challenge. That’s an important topic for the corporate customers because if and when they have committed to their own SBTi targets, they need that scope 3 reduction in their whole value chain. As a final remark on this slide, for the fourth year in a row, we did receive a five-star rating from APEX, which is a global airline Passenger Experience Association. For us these are of course important acknowledgments, especially given the time when we have faced for various reasons, more than needed, kind of reputational issues.

In the big scheme of things we need to be very humble and fix the disruption situations that we have faced. I just wanted to push the point that nothing is broken in the platform and the underlying business and operations. Therefore we have a great platform to build on. With these words we will take you to the outlook and guidance slide. We are today providing you with a specified outlook and guidance based on the Q3 development. Today we are saying that the capacity by ASK will increase by some 2% during 2025 and revenue will be approximately €3.1 billion. The comparable operating result range has been narrowed from the upper limit side. When we said in July that the range is €30 million to €130 million, today we are saying it’s €30 million to €60 million.

What led into lowering the upper end of the comparable result range is explained by a few factors. First and foremost, the North Atlantic demand and yield development has continued to soften. When we take already discussed indirect impact from the industrial action, the unexpected aircraft-on-ground (AOGs), and then in July when we envisioned the potential upside scenario, to reach that it would have required a continuation of oil price decrease. In connection with this report we see that it’s unlikely to reach the earlier upper end. Therefore we are taking it down. I want to highlight that this guidance is now in line with the previous one because already then we discussed that we are closer to the lower end of the provided range. As a final remark, already something that I mentioned, warm welcome to all of you and please register if you haven’t done so yet.

November 13th at 13:00 Helsinki time, where we will provide you with a Finnair Capital Markets Day update. In addition to me and Pia, you have the opportunity of meeting the full leadership team of Finnair. It’s a great engagement and opportunity to discuss with a full team. With these words, welcome to the event and let’s open for the Q&A.

Erkka Salonen, Investor Relations, Finnair: Thank you, Turkka. Now would be a convenient time for any questions you may have. Please follow the operator’s instructions to present them.

Operator: If you wish to ask a question, please dial on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Kurt Hofmann from Aviation Week. Please go ahead.

Kurt Hofmann, Journalist, Aviation Week: Yes, hello, good afternoon from Austria. I hope you can hear me. I hope so.

Pia Aaltonen-Forsell, CFO, Finnair: Yes, please go ahead.

Kurt Hofmann, Journalist, Aviation Week: Okay, my questions are a bit fleet related. Regarding the North Atlantic, I wanted to ask you about the campaign regarding the future narrowbody fleet. Plan to decide by the end of the year if you maybe have an update for us. I would like to ask you also regarding the wet leases to Qantas, the Airbus A330 Qantas aircraft, how this continues or if you maybe have too many A330s in the fleet already. I would also like to ask you a bit about the North Atlantic.

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: If I start with the A330s, the wet lease arrangement, our collaboration continues until the winter season of 2026. I guess it’s end of March when the wet leased aircraft and our pilots then of course will return to our own operation. We have now already deployed the two A330s on a rolling basis to Qantas. I guess it was last week when the second aircraft was received by Qantas. Currently, four out of eight A330s are tied to the Qantas collaboration. The two wet leased aircraft will return to our own network for the summer of 2026. We need to keep in mind that one of the A330s, the lease agreement will not be continued. The fleet size will decrease, the total fleet size will decrease from 8 to 7 in months to come.

When it comes to the narrowbody campaign, we want to run a thorough and diligent process when it comes to the campaign and we will communicate more when we have some tangible news. We are having discussions with the OEMs and of course the process has progressed since we last talked, but today we don’t have any news to be disclosed.

Kurt Hofmann, Journalist, Aviation Week: Okay, and second part from my side, the North Atlantic, as many airlines are suffering already kind of overcapacity, and you also mentioned that the North Atlantic business was not doing that perfectly. Do you have some measures for this? Do you plan to reduce the North Atlantic network? Maybe then for next year or especially over the winter when the demand is.

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: Lower for the winter season, we are flying less because some of the U.S. destinations are summer destinations for us. The winter schedule is different. When it comes to the summer schedule, 2026, we have still some time to evaluate how the demand will develop and we might tweak the intended summer season plan accordingly. We are following the market development, demand development, and year development extremely carefully.

Kurt Hofmann, Journalist, Aviation Week: Okay, thank you very much. Just for clarification, how many Airbus A330s will be done flying for Qantas or will be with Qantas?

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: Four now.

Erkka Salonen, Investor Relations, Finnair: Four.

Kurt Hofmann, Journalist, Aviation Week: Okay, thank you.

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: Thank you.

Operator: As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Joonas Ilvonen from Evli. Please go ahead.

Joonas Ilvonen, Analyst, Evli: Hi, it’s Joonas from Evli. If I can just return to this North Atlantic capacity question. I already saw from your September traffic figures that your North Atlantic capacity already decreased a bit. Was this a reflection of this transition to winter schedule, or did you already make some, did you already kind of react to this rather weak situation in North Atlantic traffic?

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: It’s both an intentional reaction. At the same time, we have one of our A350s grounded because of this towing accident when the wingtip actually hit the hangar and hangar door. We are down one A350. That has also led to the capacity decrease in our totality. We decided to hedge the North Atlantic traffic.

Joonas Ilvonen, Analyst, Evli: All right, when will this aircraft return to traffic exactly?

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: The current prognosis is early 2026 because again we want to, of course, ensure security, airworthiness, and safety of the aircraft. It has taken a bit longer than expected.

Joonas Ilvonen, Analyst, Evli: Okay, regarding your EBIT guidance for Q4, this North Atlantic situation still continues to weigh on your resolve. What about the, I mean, you mentioned these landing costs and environmental and SAF cost €10 million impact quarterly. I think you kind of already implied that this environmental cost will increase towards next year. What about Q4? Are they still like around €10 million during Q4? Can we already see increase in Q4?

Pia Aaltonen-Forsell, CFO, Finnair: Yeah, thank you, Joonas. Pia here. Yes, to confirm that I think we are now on the 2% SAF mandate. It’s been there since start of the year. The end of the free emission allowances has been there since the start of the year. It’s a pretty even development during this year, about €10 million per quarter. Going into next year, what impacts is then simply that we still had some benefits this year from, let’s say, previous years relating to the EU ETS. You could say that we had hedged or, you know how this works, we benefited somewhat and that’s why I said that there could still be some increase towards next year. It’s not as big as the increase year on year from 2024 to 2025.

Joonas Ilvonen, Analyst, Evli: That’s clear. Final question. Given this rather, we ignored North Atlantic situation and thinking about next year, maybe you can. You will come back to this later, but can you already, like, because the Asian traffic seems to be doing rather well at the moment, do you have already any plans to probably allocate more capacity there versus North Atlantic?

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: No, I guess that’s something that we do on a daily basis, that we want to optimize the utilization of the fleet, of course, within the given constraints. I guess we would fly more to Tokyo if we had more landing slots. It’s a kind of a complex topic, but something that we monitor on a continuous basis. I guess that towards the end of the year, early 2026, we can also provide you with a more detailed view of how shall we utilize the widebody capacity.

Joonas Ilvonen, Analyst, Evli: Okay, thanks all from me.

Erkka Salonen, Investor Relations, Finnair: As it seems that there are no further questions, we can conclude.

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: Oh, one more.

Erkka Salonen, Investor Relations, Finnair: Sorry.

Operator: The next question comes from Kurt Hofmann from Aviation Week. Please go ahead.

Kurt Hofmann, Journalist, Aviation Week: Hello again. Sorry, it’s me again, but I found it quite interesting your Asian network and it’s still doing quite well. Despite you have to fly such a long route, I think is it the Americans now not allow anymore the Chinese carriers to fly over China to the U.S.? Do you think you can see some improvement that one day you are able to fly again over Russia in the near future? What do you think regarding them in a way unfair competition with the Chinese carriers which flying directly via Russia to Europe and you fly. You have to fly around.

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: Two, of course, very important and complex questions, Kurt. When it comes to the closed Russian airspace, that’s something that I already, I can say already today because I’ve discussed that with you and media also earlier. Our strategic thinking and our strategy process is built on the kind of assumption that the Russian airspace remains closed for the time being because we don’t see any development that would change the situation quickly in a very short term future when it comes to kind of a level playing field. I guess that’s something that the European carriers are jointly acknowledging that that’s something that should be dealt with if the situation continues. I guess that is kind of a bigger theme than only a national topic here in Finland or topic related to Finnair. I would mark that as a EU level discussion.

Kurt Hofmann, Journalist, Aviation Week: Okay, thank.

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: You.

Erkka Salonen, Investor Relations, Finnair: There are no further questions and we may conclude the call. Many thanks for the excellent questions and joining the event. We wish you a nice day, thank you.

Turkka Kuusisto, CEO, Finnair: You all, and hope to see you in two weeks’ time.

Pia Aaltonen-Forsell, CFO, Finnair: See you soon.

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