Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) achieved adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of CHF 718.5 million for 2023, an improvement of some 58 per cent on the prior-year result (2022: CHF 456 million) and the highest Adjusted EBIT in the company’s history to date. Total revenues for the year amounted to CHF 5.3 billion, an increase of some 21 per cent on their prior-year level (2022: CHF 4.4 billion). Adjusted EBIT margin for the year amounted to 13.5 per cent.
For the 2023 fourth-quarter period, SWISS achieved an Adjusted EBIT of CHF 102.6 million, a 39.2-per-cent decline on the prior-year period (Q4 2022: CHF 168.6 million). Total fourth-quarter revenues were raised 6.8 per cent, however, to CHF 1.3 billion (Q4 2022: CHF 1.2 billion).
“The challenges of 2023 were substantial,” says SWISS CEO Dieter Vranckx. “But in spite of them, we were not just successful at SWISS in financial terms: we were also Europe’s stablest airline. So I’m very proud of the work of our entire SWISS team, and I’m delighted with this strong earnings result. With 2023 we have left our crisis years firmly behind us. SWISS today is strong, stable and competitive – which are the best credentials we could have for continuing our success. At the same time, we must improve in areas such as our punctuality and our customer satisfaction; and we must continue to help make air travel more sustainable. And to these ends, we’ll be investing up to CHF 5 billion in our aircraft fleet, our customer experience, our employees and our sustainability between now and 2027.”
A favorable market environment and high schedule stability
SWISS’s exceptionally strong 2023 Adjusted EBIT result confirms that the company has definitively mastered the corona crisis and the major challenges it posed. “We are extremely pleased that, having steered our way through the financially highly challenging pandemic years, we have now so significantly exceeded expectations and posted a record operating result,” says SWISS CFO Markus Binkert.
People’s desire to travel remained high throughout 2023. At the same time, industrywide capacity remained reduced for various reasons that included extensive personnel shortages and delays to new aircraft deliveries. “The pandemic may be behind us, but the supply and the demand within the airline sector have yet to regain the balance they had in pre-corona times,” CFO Markus Binkert explains. “Thanks not least to the extremely high reliability of our flight operations, our effective commercial steering and our competitive cost structures, we were able to achieve an outstanding earnings result in this particular market environment.”
Maintaining schedule stability and performing its timetabled flights remained a top SWISS priority throughout 2023. Various actions were taken to these ends. In particular, the company incorporated sufficient ‘cushion’ into its operations for the busiest times of the year around the school holidays, holding more crews in reserve and keeping reserve aircraft available if required. These efforts paid off: average schedule stability for the year – the proportion of flights scheduled in the previous quarter which were actually operated – amounted to 98.4 per cent, making SWISS Europe’s most reliable airline.
“Not least,” CFO Markus Binkert concludes, “our successful restructuring and our strict cost management of the past few years paid off in 2023.”
Working with its system partners to improve punctuality will be one of SWISS’s prime priorities for 2024. The actions to do so will include both short-term measures such as optimizing its reserve planning and longer-term endeavours such as improving the infrastructure of its flight operations.
Cargo business back to pre-corona levels
The demand for SWISS’s air cargo services declined substantially compared to 2022, and has now returned to broadly pre-corona levels – not least because airfreight operators steadily expanded their capacities over the course of last year and the global supply chains have now stabilized again. “Once again, though, our Swiss WorldCargo business made a significant contribution to our overall earnings result,” CFO Binkert confirms.
Just under 30 per cent more passengers
SWISS transported some 16.5 million passengers in 2023, just under 30 per cent more than it had in the previous year. Total flights operated were raised 22.5 per cent to more than 130,000. SWISS offered 28.2 per cent more capacity in 2023 than it had the previous year in available seat-kilometre terms. Total traffic volume for the year, measured in revenue passenger-kilometres, was raised 33.9 per cent. Systemwide seat load factor amounted to 84.5 per cent, a 3.6-percentage-point improvement on 2022. SWISS’s systemwide capacity for 2023 was at around 87 per cent of its pre-corona levels. For 2024, the company aims to further increase its overall capacity to some 95 per cent thereof.
In other news, Swiss will add ten new long- and short-haul services to its Zurich and Geneva networks in 2024, including new flights to Washington D.C., Seoul and Toronto
Swiss aircraft photo gallery:
