Well, good morning. My name is Tore Østby. I would like to welcome you to this presentation of the first half of 2021 and the second quarter. The presentation will be held by our CEO, Geir Karlsen. Also our Vice President, Sustainability, Anders Fagernæs, will share some thoughts on our sustainability strategy. After the presentation, we will open up for a Q&A session related to the financial report. Media will be also given the availability to ask questions related to the report. Questions may also be emailed to investor.relations@norwegian.com. With this, I'll give the floor to you, Geir.
Thank you, Tore, welcome to all of you. It's very good to be back here doing the regular quarterly presentations. I think it's a year ago since last time. I guess we can all agree that it has been a very special year for all of us, and I can certainly say that that has been the fact for Norwegian. Today, I was planning to go through a few areas and update you on the financials for the second quarter, but also give you a little bit of insight on how we are doing now into the third quarter, how the liquidity position is developing, and then trying to give you a little bit of insight on the plans going forward. I'll take you through the restructuring and how we look, more or less mostly from a balance sheet point of view.
We are coming out of the quarter with close to net zero net interest-bearing debt, and we have a cash position, as we have seen, of NOK 7.5 billion . I will take you through how we are thinking now to get back in the market, to get the passengers up in the air, and the focus that we have doing that. Looking at the financials, I would say that at least from our point of view, it is as expected. I think, when we went to market to raise capital earlier this year, we promised investors a certain balance sheet. I think we have delivered that, maybe even over-delivered a little bit in my opinion. We are planning to say a little bit about our sustainability strategy, so Anders will give us a little bit of insight on that.
I will also go through the momentum that we are seeing now in the markets when it comes to bookings. It started back in June, and it has certainly continued through July and also through August. I'll give an explanation on how we are thinking on ramp-up for the months to come and through the coming winter. Also give you some updates on the big projects that we're running internally these days, meaning to plan for a successful 2022 and to make sure that we have a company when we're coming into Easter next year that is extremely competitive, maybe as competitive as ever before. We are going to play it smart from now to then to be ready. The reconstruction is, I guess, for many of you, a little bit old news. The balance sheet is new news as per today.
We have taken out debt and forward liabilities in the area of NOK 140 billion through the restructuring. We have taken out more than two-thirds of the fleet, and we have taken out and canceled 185 aircraft orders. We have, as you know, terminated or exited the long-haul business, and we are focusing now on the Nordics, Inter Nordics, and in and out of the Nordics to Europe. Unfortunately, when we are downsizing the company the way we have, we have also reduced the workforce with more than 6,000 employees. Then we raised NOK 6 billion in capital, as you know, and we are sitting with a very comfortable cash position as per today.
We were able to negotiate with the leasing companies, what we call power-by-the-hour towards Easter next year, which gives us a massive flexibility through the remaining part of the COVID-19 situation, I would say. We did at the same time, reduce our ownership costs with more than 35% compared to pre-COVID that we will benefit from during the next years. We have also done quite a lot on the organizational side. Right now we are having 51 aircraft. We own four. We have leased the rest of them. As I said, more than 35% reduction in costs, which will make us more competitive, obviously. We were also able to negotiate a complete reset of what you call the maintenance accruals.
That is an obligation you're building up when you lease an aircraft and where you would have to pay that amount normally when you redeliver it. That was reset to zero. By that, you can treat it as we are sourcing aircraft on the market from scratch with no legacy. Again, no aircraft orders. We have approximately 3,200 employees in Norwegian today. 24% of them are still furloughed, but that won't last long. Many of these are in Spain. By end of October, we expect to have all Norwegian crew up in the air again, which is fantastic. We are still working to continue the streamlining of the company, and that will continue throughout the winter.
On the cost base, we have, as mentioned earlier, insourced the crew management, and we have worked very hard through the last year, I would say, to create better deals for ourselves from vendors, from credit card companies, and from others. We have also been talking about the so-called AOC structure over the last two, three years. Finally, I think we can say that we are very close to finalizing that project. Within the next couple of months, we will end up with more or less, for all practical purposes, one AOC, which will be a Swedish one. We have a Norwegian one as well, but then that job is done, and we can start to take out the efficiency gains from that process.
With that, I think we have created a company now that has the right fleet, the right balance sheet, the right depth, and the right cost level. The cost level will still be something we will continuously bombard every single day throughout the next six months. It takes us into a position where we can start really to focus on our customers again. We have a very attractive reward program, more than 4 million members still, only in the Nordics alone. I think we would like to have a little bit more scale, but with 50 aircraft, we are able to, or maybe to bring it up to 60, 70 aircraft. We are, after all, able to put out for sale more than 250 routes for the summer of 2022. A little bit on the financials. The P&L is really not very exciting, I would say.
We had NOK 335 million for the quarter. We have NOK 1 billion in loss in EBITDAR. Sorry, NOK 538 million loss on EBITDAR. I think it is important to say that this P&L for the quarter is including the last elements from the restructuring. We have had to let people go, and we would have to pay severance packages. Everything is now included in Q2, even if many of these employees are still with us at least for a period. This is what we call one-offs. We also have that on, let's say, on the more financial side, and with NOK 130 million in, what you say, call-off one-offs. If you take this out, you could say that the EBITDAR, excluding the one-offs, is in the area of NOK 336 million loss.
You have also the last portion of the financial restructuring, which is NOK 3.8 billion, and it is included in the NOK 3.5 billion there on net financial items, which takes us then to a profit of close to NOK 2.8 billion for the quarter and NOK 1.6 billion for the half year. The balance sheet, that is probably a little bit of news for some of you. The intangible assets there is the deferred tax asset. That is an asset that we will enjoy for the years to come, hopefully, if we do well. We have the aircraft side, NOK 5.4 billion. NOK 4.8 billion of that is aircraft, and it includes both the leased and the owned, and the rest is properties that we own and equipment related to the aircraft. We have receivables. We still have an issue with the credit card companies.
That has been easing up through this third quarter, and we do expect it to continue to ease up through the remaining part of the year. Now we are in a situation where it's not that much related to the credit, the Norwegian credits. It's more related to IT issues between us and the credit card companies or the credit card acquirers, and this is about to be solved. This is hundreds of thousands of transactions that is involved, and we do expect that this will get back to not normal levels, but we will certainly get back to 100% holdback very soon, and then we will start to work with these guys over the next months in order then to bring it back to normal levels. Down to the debt side. In debt today in Norwegian, you can see it on the right top side there.
We have NOK 4.7 billion in aircraft financing. We have the NOK 700 million, which is the new bond, NAS13. That is the bond that is having a security in the London- Gatwick slots. I'm very, very happy that we reached an agreement with the bondholders here because that could make us keep all the London- Gatwick slots. I certainly believe that as the market is coming back, these values will come up. The value of the London- Gatwick slots in our balance sheet today is listed as zero, so it's clearly an upside. If we can keep these slots for the next years, it will certainly give us value going forward. Cash equivalents, NOK 7.5 billion. Which is good. We know that we have promised to pay the creditors NOK 500 million, and that has been paid now since we raised capital and up until today.
I will come back to the cash position as per today a little bit later. You might be a little bit surprised of the equity level, NOK 1.5 billion. You might have expected it to be a little bit higher. We will convert the dividend claim in the current quarter of NOK 1.245 billion. In real terms, the book equity is close to NOK 2.8 billion. We also have this zero coupon bond, NOK 3.75 billion. That is discounted down to NOK 2.409 billion, as you can see on the right-hand side there. If you add up all these debt instruments, and take out the cash, that is why we say that we have close to zero net interest bearing debt of NOK 483 million. Other than that, we have traffic liabilities that you all know, NOK 1.122 billion, you have the NOK 4.3 billion other current liabilities.
That one includes CashPoints in the area of NOK 2.4 billion. That is CashPoints that belongs to our customers. Obviously, when we have exited long haul, quite a portion of these CashPoints might not be used, and thereby you will have a positive effect accounting-wise if that's going to be the case. I think we have a balance sheet here with NOK 17.6 billion, and then you have NOK 1.2 billion that will be converted into equity in the current quarter. Cash flow, not very exciting, I would say, but what we had done through the quarter is to repay the debt that we had on the hangar at Gardermoen, NOK 250 million. That was the old NAS09 bond. We have paid down NOK 50 million on the NAS13, and we have also paid down on a bank facility, adding up to NOK 351 million. Anders, it's you.
I will wrap it up thereafter.
Thank you, Geir. Good morning. I'll take you through our environmental sustainability strategy. I think Norwegian is well-positioned to tackle the transition to a low-carbon economy. As you can see from the graph, over the last decade, our low-cost business model has reduced fuel and resource consumption by 28%. At the same time, as we cut emissions, we cut ticket prices and costs. We measure our emissions as grams of CO2 per revenue passenger kilometer. The efficiency gains that we've got over the last decade is mainly through fleet renewal and carbon efficiency. Although that we are on the right track, we must do more to get an environmental performance at an acceptable level. In 2019, we started integrating environmental sustainability into our business. Our overall strategic goal is to use fewer resources and increase profitability.
This overall goal rests on the principle that environmental actions must deliver a profit to be economically sustainable and operationally scalable. To measure how we perform, we've decided upon three key performance indicators that you see on the left-hand side. The first KPI is carbon efficiency. In 2018, scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that to limit global warming to 1.5 degree, emissions must be reduced by 45% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels. This also forms the basis of our target. We're committed to reducing our emissions per passenger kilometer by 45% by 2030 compared to a 2010 baseline. It's an ambitious but achievable target. If we look at the numbers there, that means that we're going down from 97 grams in 2010 to 53 grams in 2030.
In 2020, we jumped up to 82 grams, mainly due to lower load factor and shorter average sector length because of COVID-19. In Q1, we emitted 190 grams CO2 per RPK, while in July we were down to 84 grams. For the Q2 in total, we landed on 119 grams, and we expect a slight increase in 2022 compared to 2019, mainly due to shorter sector length in our network. The second KPI is waste optimization. We consume large quantities of disposables and single-use plastics in our operations. These items have apparent benefits, such as low weight, which reduces fuel burn, and efficient infection control. However, we believe it's possible to improve the in-flight service we offer and reduce cost at the same time. Therefore, we will remove all unnecessary waste on board our flights and make sure that our waste resources can be used again.
We commit to stop all consumption of non-recyclable plastics by 2023, quite fast. In the same period, we will also reduce consumption of single-use plastics by 30% and make sure that all single-use plastics in Scandinavia are recycled. The third KPI is accountability. We've developed our targets so they are action-oriented and measurable, and we will be open and share our progress actively. We commit to integrate climate risk and environmental factors into corporate governance, risk management, and annual reporting. This year, we reported our assessment of climate-related risks and opportunities to the Carbon Disclosure Project for the first time. We know where we are, and we know where we want to go. The big question now is how to get there in the most cost-efficient way. This picture you see here illustrates the main levers we can pull.
We've developed a carbon efficiency model based on the actual fuel burn from our fleet. The model allows us to estimate the level of carbon efficiency each action must deliver, given full utilization of our current fleet in 2030. The number that you see there in italics refers to the potential each action has for improving our grams of CO2 per RPK in the period 2020 - 2030. Firstly, on the bottom right-hand side, operational efficiency will deliver a reduction of 5 grams CO2 per RPK, mainly through improved fuel management and improved load factor. We've started implementing a set of environmental actions that are both profitable and operationally scalable. In 2019, we started testing the SkyBreathe Pilot App, which gives our pilots feedback on how they perform on various fuel savings best practices right after they've landed. We're now intensifying training to scale and improve our performance.
We've also partnered with the Swedish company AVTECH, which delivers real-time advanced weather data straight into the cockpit during flights. This allows our pilots to adjust the altitude according to the best wind conditions. Flying in tailwind instead of headwind is much more efficient. We've also signed an LOI with MSG Aviation, a Norwegian company that plans to build a semi-automated washing machine at Gardermoen Airport. Clean aircraft reduce friction and lowers fuel burn, in turn, reducing carbon emissions. In aviation, an empty seat is considered waste, and the fuller the plane is, the more people share the environmental cost. Higher load improves both our bottom line and our carbon efficiency KPI. Secondly, on the top left corner, we need sustainable aviation fuels to reach our target.
Our NGs fleet that we have now can tank up to 50% sustainable aviation fuel today, which is more than sufficient for the 15 grams contribution we need. Thirdly, full renewal of the NGs can deliver 9 grams of CO2 per RPK. In this scenario, sustainable aviation fuels only need to deliver 7 grams. In conclusion, our strategy allows for flexibility, and we can reach our target without fleet renewal. Future projections and profitability assessments remain uncertain under current market conditions and regulatory framework. We're working to improve visibility and reduce uncertainty in key variables before deciding upon the most cost-efficient way to achieve our targets. Nevertheless, we remain committed to deliver on our targets and show our customers and investors that we deserve our current rank as the most sustainable airline brand in Norway. Thank you.
Thank you, Anders.
If we look a little bit forward and, I will also give you some insight on how this summer has been developing for us. We came in or out of the restructuring in May into June, and suddenly we saw a quite nice curve on bookings. This is seven-day rolling sales, from June up to Friday last week. You are seeing that we have been ramping up definitely into, let's say from 10 up to 30 aircraft. We have continued throughout July and into August, where we are flying more than 40 aircraft. We came out of June with 74.4% load. August, as per today, is looking at approximately 70%, so still a good load even if we have put more capacity into the market.
If you look at the very nice curve in August, we are really seeing a momentum now in the booking curves. Looking at the sales for the last two to three weeks, we see a lot of these travels are also meant for September. September is also looking very good. It's still not enough, but it's very good.
If you look at the cash position that we have in Norwegian, we came out of the second quarter with NOK 7.5 billion. NOK 500 million of that is owed to the creditors, so you have to take that out. Even then, you could say that the cash position today is more than NOK 7 billion. With the sales we are seeing now for September, we have a target of having the third quarter cash neutral on the operational side. I think the way we have organized the fall, meaning the fourth quarter, is also looking good when it comes to cash burn.
I think we could end the year with a relatively low cash burn, so to say, and that will take us into a position through Q1 next year as well, where we should sit very comfortable with a good cash position and ready to compete into the top season of 2022. If you look at the ramp-up, as mentioned, as I said, we have 30 - 40 or more than 40 aircrafts in the air today. We have power-by-the-hour throughout the winter. That means that we can fly when we want, and we will not fly loss-making routes as such. At the same time, the way we have structured the power-by-the-hour agreements works in the way that we can keep a higher portion of the fleet in the air, even if we fly it with reduced capacity.
That means that over the winter, we can cover a wider part of our markets, but still with lower capacity. This is a massive flexibility and obviously gives us help to get through the low season. We will definitely play it smart as well through this period to be ready for 2022. If you look at 2022, that is really our main project internally these days. We have just put our summer sales for 2022 out in the market. We are offering more than 250 routes. We have 50 aircraft, as I mentioned earlier. We have a plan of increasing that fleet with 10 - 20 aircraft, first of all, into the second, third quarter of next year. That will be on, let's say, on the basis that we can find good terms with the leasing companies. They are still available for us.
I think even one of them are represented here today. We are very excited now to start looking at how we can source aircraft for the years to come. We have also launched an internal program where we are going to deep dive into all parts of our organization, where we are going to look for efficiencies. I think one of my concerns since I came into the company is that we are losing way too much money in low season. I really think that the bottom line in Norwegian is not delivered during the summer, it's actually delivered through the winter. What I think you will see going forward is that we will take out much more capacity than before in the winter season. We will park aircraft during the winters.
The project in itself will be to try to get out the cost base serving those aircrafts, especially for the low season. Thereby, we are also looking into crew efficiencies. We are not good enough compared to the best in class, for sure. We are good enough in part of the markets we operate, but we are certainly not good enough in other parts of the market. This is a very high focus internally now, and we will make sure that we can, for 2022, have a better crew efficiency and more in line with the best guys in the market. We will also focus on ancillary revenue as we have, but we implemented quite a few of these kind of products, I would say, already back in 2019. It never came into action because of the COVID-19.
We are seeing now when we have started to really sell tickets, that the ancillary revenue is also coming up as an amount per ticket. The focus now is to make sure that we can play the fall, the coming winter, smart. We're going to preserve a lot of liquidity. It's looking really, really good. The business plan for 2022 is in the makings, and that's really the year when we are going to deliver results for the company, for the shareholders, and also being able then to continue to offer the really liked product, Norwegian, to our customers. By that, I think we end the presentation, Tore, and there might be some questions.
Yeah, thank you, guys. If there are any questions, please wait for the microphone because of the live stream. I think I'll start with a question from Petter Nystrøm at ABG. On the cash flow, you had a positive working capital effect on both traffic settlement liabilities and receivables. What is this related to, and how do you see the working capital development in second half?
Well, as I said, we came out of the second quarter with NOK 7.5 billion in cash. Cash position as per today is also, let's say above NOK 7 billion. I'm saying that the third quarter is, as it looks now, cash neutral. I think we can also get through the fall if we play this smart with a very limited cash burn until to the end of the year. We also have, as I mentioned, still an issue with the credit card companies. We know that has eased up a little bit now during the third quarter, and I think it will continue to ease up through the fall, which is also helpful for us. It looks good, as long as we can do the ramp up in a controlled way.
Second quarter from Petter. Your book equity is expected to increase by NOK 1.25 billion in the third quarter, as mentioned, given dividend claims. Can you remind us if there are more debt that could become more to equity in the next coming year?
We have done a legal process as well, where we are going to streamlining the legal structure in the company. Pre-COVID, we had 74 companies in Norway in the whole group. When we are ending all these restructurings on the legal side as well, we will most likely not have more than 20 - 22 companies. That gives efficiency gains in itself. I think because we are not completely fine with all those processes, I think we could say that on the debt side, there might be some reserves that could potentially be converted to equity, yes.
The third quarter, from Petter, what do you think about ticket prices post-COVID versus pre-COVID?
The bookings we're seeing today and throughout the summer is showing, I would say, really good signs. Looking at the load factors that we are seeing today as well is very promising. It's still not good enough, but it's definitely moving in the right direction. We are seeing in general, I would say, that the booking curve is getting shorter, so you have to wait longer before you start to yield up as you know, Tore. That applies more or less due to the whole market, regardless of where we are. I think Norway domestic today is performing well. The best country performing right now is actually Denmark, followed by Sweden, I would say thereafter. The booking curve and the load factors I showed you here actually applies to all markets now we are operating in.
That means Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, domestically and also international. It's not good enough still, but it's moving in the right direction.
A question from Kenneth Sivertsen at Pareto. Based on your comments, is it correct that expected cash flow for Q3, Q4 is about zero?
At least I'm saying that it's probably cash neutral for the third quarter, and I think the cash burn for Q4, little bit depending on the market as well, but it will be a very low cash burn, that's for sure.
A second question from Kenneth. Boeing compensation discussed, could you please provide an update?
We haven't really progressed that much with Boeing. We have a litigation case right now that we have a fight with Boeing, discussing where these litigations should take place, whether it should be in Chicago or somewhere else. As we have said earlier, we have $252 million paid in PDP to Boeing on these MAXs that we had on order. That's what we have. It's written down to zero in our balance sheet. In that sense, you could say that in case we should find a commercial solution with Boeing, there should be an upside for Norwegian. Difficult to say what that upside is. Ideally, we would like, and I think Boeing would like us to find a commercial solution. I think now we are out of the reconstruction, we are looking much better. We are definitely much stronger.
Maybe over the next couple of months, we will have discussions with Boeing. Let's see.
A question from Ole Martin Westgaard at DNB. How has the response from the credit card acquirers been to the refinancing, and when do you expect a normalization?
I think we have a good relationship still, obviously, with these companies. They have been very supportive throughout a very difficult period. They have been playing it very careful, as we all know, meaning that we have very low high holdbacks. You could say when we enter into the COVID situation, it was actually helpful that we had a high holdback, because then it meant that the cash that belonged to the customers was actually sitting with the credit card companies and not ourselves. That was not the case with one of our competitors. In that sense, you could say that it was okay.
I think for now it is all about getting down the holdback to 100%, which we are close to do, and then we will start to work with these guys more on the credit, which is a much better credit obviously now, and then to get the holdbacks down. That said, I think that for the industry as a whole, I think it's definitely going to take a while before we are back to the old days where you had holdbacks down in the 40%-60% area. That will probably take a couple of years.
Last question from Ole Martin. How quick can you adapt in order to bring aircraft into the market and/or reduce in case of necessary reductions or restrictions?
I'm not 100% sure I understood the question.
The fleet flexibility.
Fleet flexibility. Well, we have the 50 aircraft. We have power-by-the-hour until Easter next year. We are in the market now to try to source more aircraft. The leasing market is definitely tightening up, meaning it's getting more expensive. We have to take some decisions over the next couple of months on how aggressive we would like to be, especially then for 2022. We will be careful, not too defensive and not too aggressive. We would like to play it in line with the market. Some growth, I think you should expect into 2022 when the world is hopefully more normal again.
I have a final question from the web. It's from Jakob Skovlund. When do you expect Norwegian to again have a positive result on EBITDAR?
Well, I don't think we should guide that at this point, Tore.
I think that was an answer. Any other questions from the audience? I think not.
Thank you all.