„The past year has been extremely intense. Through the solid commitment and hard work of all employees, SAS has now delivered, in line with targets, positive earnings for the full year. Despite this we are all aware that the journey toward a long-term profitable SAS has only just begun," said Rickard Gustafson, SAS President and CEO.
In the fourth quarter SAS took a crucial strategic step towards further increasing the Group's operational flexibility through the sale of 10% of SAS Ground Handling to Swissport. This paves the way for complete outsourcing of SAS ground handling and forwarding services in Scandinavia in the future. Centralization of administration is continuing to plan, and next year SAS will realize further positive effects from the change program. In September the sale of Widerøe was completed, which contributed to reducing the Group's financial net debt by SEK 2 billion. During the year SAS has unlocked SEK 2.8 billion through the sale of assets and in September 2013 successfully issued a SEK 1.5 billion bond, which underlined the market's increased confidence in SAS.
SAS has created the requisite conditions for aggressive development of the Group's offering to customers: during the year SAS completed an extensive renewal of the aircraft fleet, and the fourth quarter marked the end of an epoch at SAS when the last MD-80 was phased out. At the start of 2014 the SAS Group's aircraft fleet will be comprised exclusively of the new generation aircraft and SAS will be entering a period of increased investment in the aircraft fleet. In addition, SAS will be modernizing and upgrading passenger cabins.
SAS also continues to develop the route network with more seasonal destinations: SAS plans to launch 43 new routes in 2014, which means SAS offers more destinations and more departures than any other Scandinavian airline.
