By Essi Lehto
HELSINKI (Reuters) -Finland’s Finnair on Thursday reported a rise in quarterly earnings that topped market expectations and said it expects revenue to rise in 2025, sending the airline’s shares up more than 12% in morning trade.
Finnair, majority-owned by Finland’s government, seeks to rebound from the twin blows dealt by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s airspace closure that hit the group’s lucrative Europe-to-Asia business.
“The fourth quarter of 2024 was strong: the number of passengers increased by 9.1 per cent and our revenue by 7.7 per cent,” Chief Executive Turkka Kuusisto said in a statement.
The airline’s comparable operating profit for the October-December period rose to 47.9 million euros ($49.95 million) from 22.5 million euros a year earlier, above the 31 million euros estimated by four analysts polled by LSEG.
Finnair expects its full-year revenue to rise to a range between 3.3 billion euros and 3.4 billion euros from 3 billion euros while comparable operating result is estimated to remain at a range of 100 million euros to 200 million euros in 2025.
Growth in comparable operating profit would be hindered by higher costs caused by sustainable aviation fuel surcharges and rising navigation and landing charges, the company said.
The airline’s board of directors proposed that 0.11 euros per share would be distributed to shareholders as return of capital.
Finnair has not paid dividends since March 2019.
The airline said it expects global air traffic to continue growing in 2025 and plans to increase its capacity by around 10%.
Kuusisto told Reuters the increase would mean having seven planes more than in 2024, a new Airbus and six other planes back from lease agreements.
Finnair’s shares were up 12.3% at 2.86 euros at 08:45 GMT.
($1 = 0.9589 euros)
(Reporting by Essi Lehto, editing by Terje Solsvik, Tomasz Janowski and Ros Russell)
