Financial reports

I am pleased to conclude a busy year for SAS. Some 6.8 million passengers traveled with SAS in the fourth quarter, which means that, in total, some 23.7 million passengers traveled with SAS during the full fiscal year 2022/2023. This represents a passenger volume increase of 18 percent for the fourth quarter, and a 33 percent year-on-year increase for the full fiscal year. This is a clear confirmation of passengers continuing to return to SAS, and that our ramp-up efforts throughout the year have been successful. We are also proud to have achieved a five-star rating from our customers in the 2023 APEX Awards.

We are making steady progress in our Chapter 11 process in the US and in reaching our overall targets in the SAS FORWARD plan with one major milestone reached during the quarter. On October 3, SAS announced that Castlelake, Air France-KLM and Lind Invest, together with the Danish state, had been selected as the winning bidder consortium in SAS' exit financing solicitation process. We entered an investment agreement with the bidding consortium shortly after the end of the quarter. The agreement includes a total investment in the reorganized SAS corresponding to approximately SEK 13.2 billion, including approximately SEK 5.2 billion in new unlisted equity and approximately SEK 8 billion in secured convertible debt. The investment comprises a key step in our SAS FORWARD plan, and confirms that our new investors believe in SAS and our potential to remain at the forefront of the airline industry for years to come.

We currently target receiving approval of the Chapter 11 plan from the US court in early 2024, to be followed by obtaining regulatory approvals and the implementation of a Swedish company reorganization at the SAS AB level (likely to be filed by SAS AB in 2024). As a result of that process, all of SAS AB’s common shares and listed commercial hybrid bonds are expected to be cancelled, redeemed and delisted (currently expected to take place during the second quarter of 2024). Consequently, there is no expected value for existing shareholders in SAS AB and only a modest recovery is expected for the holders of commercial hybrid bonds. SAS expects that its operations will be unaffected by such legal proceedings and that it will continue to serve its customers as normal.

I am pleased to conclude a busy summer quarter. Almost 7 million passengers traveled with SAS during the third quarter, the highest quarterly passenger figure since before the pandemic. For the first time since 2019, we also posted a quarterly profit. This is an important milestone. We still have a lot of work ahead of us with our transformation to secure long-term competitiveness, but I consider this a clear sign that we are on the right track and that our efforts are paying off. We continue our ramp-up and will increase capacity this winter, compared to the same period last year. We also noted strong ticket sales throughout the third quarter, indicating a healthy underlying demand for travel despite a more uncertain economic outlook in society as a whole.

During the quarter, air traffic control capacity issues caused considerable problems for airlines, airports and, not the least, our passengers. We know that many passengers traveling through Copenhagen Airport during the summer have been impacted and our employees have been working hard to support those affected.

We are making progress in our Chapter 11 process in the US and in reaching our overall targets in the SAS FORWARD plan. During the quarter, we started a competitive and broad equity solicitation process to secure capital that will help drive our airline forward and facilitate our emergence from the Chapter 11 process. There has been substantial interest from potential investors to participate in the process, where potential investors can place bids to take a lead position or be paired with other investors in acquiring equity interests of the reorganized company.

The summer season is approaching and we noted a continued positive evolution for passenger demand through the second quarter. 5.4 million passengers flew with SAS during the quarter, which represents an increase of 36 percent compared with the same period last year. We are pleased to see that the overall underlying demand for travel was healthy during the quarter, despite the economic uncertainties in society as a whole. We are looking forward to a busy summer season and to flying our passengers to their holiday destinations.

During the quarter, we continued to increase our capacity for the summer and autumn adding new destinations and higher frequencies to popular destinations. We have added another 10 routes for the upcoming summer and autumn, in addition to the 20 new routes announced in the first quarter. We have inaugurated three new direct intercontinental routes, from Aalborg to New York, from Gothenburg to New York, and from Copenhagen to New York. We are also resuming traffic to Tokyo in June, and as announced after the quarter ended, we are bringing back a direct route from Copenhagen to Bangkok, Thailand as well as adding weekly flights to Agadir, Morocco, starting this autumn.

We are making progress in our Chapter 11 process in the US and in reaching our overall targets in the SAS FORWARD plan. During the quarter, we took the next key step in SAS FORWARD – initiating the equity solicitation process. We are running a competitive and broad solicitation process to secure capital that will help drive our airline forward and facilitate our emergence from the Chapter 11 process in the US.

At a Board meeting of SAS AB, the November 2021-October 2022 Annual and Sustainability Report for the SAS Group and its parent company SAS AB was presented and approved.