Profits for the airline SAS fell sharply in the last quarter and now the company is looking for new savings.
One of the explanations behind the profit decline is the weak Swedish krona, says SAS CEO Rickard Gustafson.
– The Swedish krona has developed very negatively from SAS's perspective against the US dollar. It's eating away at us. We see that the fuel bill is higher this year than in the same quarter last year. And then we have the last straw from our unfortunate conflict that we suffered in the spring.
Kvartalsrapporten från SAS – som gäller perioden maj till och med juli innehåller både positiva och negativa nyheter. Till det positiva – intäkterna steg och antalet passagerare var rekordhögt under juni och juli och vinsten före skatt var högre än analytikernas förvändningar. Men vinsten, en och en halv miljard – var samtidigt en halv miljard sämre jämfört med samma period förra året.
To increase profitability, SAS is, for example, working to better adapt its operations to customer demand – which varies between days and seasons. A new single-aisle fleet – currently being introduced with only Airbus aircraft – is also expected to make operations more efficient.
But SAS needs to do more to reduce costs, SAS CEO believes. It is unclear whether this could mean that staff will be laid off.
– Time will tell. But it is clear that if you are working to automate and digitize many different internal processes that are very manual today, it indicates that it may mean that some jobs will disappear and that there will be a risk of future cutbacks.
Source: sverigesradio.se
