Viking Line becomes the largest individual shareholder of compatriot Rederiaktiebolaget Eckerö

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November 18, 2022 – Viking Line Abp acquired 17.1 % of the shares in Rederiaktiebolaget Eckerö for EUR 30/share, a total of EUR 10,269,300.

Viking Line received information that a larger stake in Rederiaktiebolaget Eckerö was for sale. To ensure that the share ownership stays on Åland, Viking Line chose to acquire the post.

Rederiaktiebolaget Eckerö is the parent company of the Eckerö Group, which consists of four business areas:

  • Eckerö Linjen operates car ferry traffic between Eckerö and Grisslehamn with ropax ECKERÖ.
  • Eckerö Line operates car ferry traffic between Helsinki and Tallinn, with FINLANDIA and FINBO CARGO.
  • Eckerö Shipping owns roro TRANSPORTER (on charter to DFDS) and inactive passenger vessel BIRKA STOCKHOLM.
  • Williams Buss has high-class buses for public transport and tourism travel.

The Group’s head office is located in Mariehamn.

During the year 2021, the annual turnover amounted to approx. 123 million euros and the group transported approx. 1.4 million passengers and approx. 166,000 freight units on its own routes.

Viking Line: Continued good demand, but record-high energy prices decrease earnings

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JANUARY-SEPTEMBER 2022

  • Sales amounted to EUR 370.2 M (169.0 M)
  • Other operating revenue was EUR 8.8 M (44.6 M)
  • Operating income totalled EUR 18.9 M (30.5 M)
  • Net financial items were EUR -7.5 M (-3.4 M)
  • Income before taxes amounted to EUR 11.4 M (27.1 M)
  • Income after taxes totalled EUR 9.5 M (22.7 M)
  • The outlook for the 2022 financial year is unchanged compared to the Half-Year Report as of June 30, 2022, which means operating income is expected to be somewhat worse than for 2021.

THIRD QUARTER 2022

  • Sales amounted to EUR 170.4 M (EUR 97.5 M)
  • Other operating revenue was EUR 0.5 M (EUR 11.0 M)
  • Operating income totalled EUR 26.9 M (EUR 26.0 M)
  • Net financial items were EUR -2.8 M (EUR -1.0 M)
  • Income before taxes amounted to EUR 24.1 M (EUR 24.9 M)
  • Income after taxes totalled EUR 19.3 M (EUR 20.0 M).

Baltic cruise ferry AMORELLA arrived in Italy

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  • Corsica Ferries’ newest acquisition —the 1988-built AMORELLA from Viking Line— has arrived in Genoa.
  • Reported sales price is EUR 19.1 million.
  • Book value as of 30 June 2022 EUR 3.2 million.
  • Length 170m, pax 2,480 and lane metres 970
  • The vessel, soon to be renamed MEGA VICTORIA, will be repainted by Zincaf Ship Repair Yard in Genoa. She follows the former MARIELLA (renamed MEGA REGINA) bought last year from Viking Line too.

Stena Line names STENA ESTELLE in Gdynia

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  • On 3 September 2022, a ceremony was held to name the Stena Line E-Flexer STENA ESTELLE.
  • Champagne was broken on the side of the Stena Estelle ferry by the Deputy Mayor of Gdynia for Economy, Katarzyna Gruszecka-Spychała, the ship’s godmother.
  • The ropax serves the Gdynia-Karlskrona line.
  • STENA ESTELLE is one of the largest ferries in the Baltic Sea. It is 240 metres long, offers space for 1,200 people and can accommodate up to 200 trucks on 3,600 metres of car decks.
  • It is energy efficient thanks to its optimised design. It can be converted to run on gas, allowing fuel to be changed to methanol or LNG.
  • During port calls, it can use shore power. A connection to the electric grid will enable future conversion to a battery hybrid system.

Godmother Katarzyna Gruszecka-Spychala and Captain Wojciech Jurgas

CEO Niclas Martensson hands over steering wheel to Captain Wojciech Jurgas

La Méridionale is the first shipping company to add a particle filter on their ferry PIANA

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  • SOLVAir Marine team facilitated the joint collaboration of three partners: Solvay, Andritz and La Méridionale.
  • The result of this collaboration is the installation of the world’s first dry exhaust gas treatment system on the vessel PIANA.
  • With its 30 years’ experience, Solvay brought technical support during the engineering, construction and operation phases, with a specific focus on the injection of dry sorbent; Solvay also supplied the sodium-based sorbent and safely managed the residues.
  • Andritz designed, built, and delivered the equipment, integrated on the vessel under La Méridionale’s responsibility.
  • PIANA is the first vessel running SOLVAir Marine Solution.
  • SOLVAir Marine teams, Andritz representatives and La Méridionale have run a trial of 6 months to test the efficiency of the solution on vessels running on High Sulphur Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) engines.

Record summer for Viking Line on its Turku-Mariehamn-Stockholm route

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  • All-time passenger record on the Turku-Mariehamn-Stockholm route: 740,000 people travelled with VIKING GLORY and VIKING GRACE between June and August.
  • New VIKING GLORY has attracted a larger share of younger adults, who in many cases are taking a ‘cruise’ for the first time.
  • Younger adults are attracted by the food and the luxurious spa and massage treatments – which have also been fully booked on many departures.
  • A total of nearly 2 million passengers sailed on all of Viking Line’s vessels during the three summer months.
  • The destination cruises with VIKING CINDERELLA and GABRIELLA to Visby, Bornholm, Ystad and Sweden’s High Coast, among other places, were also popular this past summer, and a number of departures were fully booked.
  • Service between Helsinki and Stockholm has also started to take off post-pandemic, with people showing a strong interest in experiencing the

Viking Line Q1: Gradual normalization despite a challenging environment

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January–March 2022 (compared to January–March 2021)(in EUR)

  • Sales amounted to 58.8 million (24.6 million)
  • Other operating revenue was 6.0 million (10.3 million)
  • Operating income totalled -18.1 million (-7.7 million)
  • Net financial items were -2.2 million (-1.3 million).
  • Income before taxes amounted to -20.3 million (-8.9 million)
  • Income after taxes totalled -16.2 million (-7.2 million)
  • Viking Line is not providing any outlook, above all, in view of the geopolitical situation, it is still too soon to quantify the impact on operating income for 2022, which is the same conclusion at the time the previous earnings report was published.

Viking Line looks back on a strange year

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Like 2020, 2021 was an exceptional year, with an unfavourable operating environment. At the same time, Viking Line experienced some positive events too. MARIELLA was sold in May, and in December the new climate-smart VIKING GLORY was delivered.

Traffic statistics 2021

  • +20.1% passengers
  • largest increase on Turku–Åland–Stockholm (+51.9%)
  • -11.3% on Helsinki–Åland–Stockholm
  • +81.8% Mariehamn—Kapellskär with ROSELLA
  • -21.1% Helsinki—Tallinn, with VIKING XPRS
  • +2.9% cargo units
  • +24% cars

Viking Line ended Q3,2021 with good liquidity. To further help implement Viking Line’s strategy for continued profitable growth in a post-pandemic environment, a preferential share issue for existing shareholders was carried out during the autumn, which was a success. There was great interest among shareholders, employees and the general public in the share issue, which was oversubscribed. Initially a total of 8,584,070 shares were subscribed for, which corresponds to about 132.5% of the offer shares. The final number of shares was 6,480,000. As a result, Viking Line generated proceeds of about EUR 51.8 million.