Air France-KLM shares fall sharply after third profit warning
PARIS (Reuters) - Shares in Air France-KLM fell around 8 percent on Friday after the Franco-Dutch airline group issued its third profit warning since July and announced new belt-tightening.
The group trimmed its forecast for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) by 200 million euros (157 million pounds) to 1.5-1.6 billion late on Thursday, citing higher-than-expected pilot strike costs and weak long-haul revenues.
In late afternoon trading, shares in Europe's second-largest traditional carrier were down 8.1 percent at 7.628 euros.
Air France-KLM said the way its fuel hedging contracts are structured were also partly to blame for the downgrade in its forecasts, which would also trigger a slowdown in deliveries of 10 Boeing 777 jets due in 2015 and 2016.
Dubbing the profit warning a "return to crisis mode" after the airline predicted some recovery for the fourth quarter, the Liberum brokerage said in a note that Air France-KLM may need to go further than just deferring deliveries to get on track.
"We believe outright capacity cuts are necessary to deal with weaker demand, not just cuts to the capacity growth rate. It remains to be seen if management will be this aggressive."
Although some of the negative factors dragging down Air France-KLM's forecasts were specific to the company, such as pension costs, Liberum said the overall revenue trend could hamper the rest of the sector, including Lufthansa .
The German carrier's shares were down 3.2 percent.
Air France-KLM Finance Director Pierre-Francois Riolacci said late on Thursday that weak conditions had forced the airline to cut costs and investments. When deciding how to tackle this, lower fuel prices made the fleet an easier choice.
"Lower fuel reduces the gain which you could achieve with new planes, so for once the market is giving us some flexibility and we are able to delay the changeover of certain aircraft at reasonable economic conditions,” Riolacci said.
Asked what models would be involved, Riolacci said “We have some regional aircraft for KLM and above all long-range (Boeing) 777s in 2015 and especially 2016. The major component is 777s, with a total of about 10 aircraft over the two years.”
(Reporting by Tim Hepher, James Regan; editing by Geert De Clercq)
