Cost cutting and restructuring efforts at SAS led the carrier to its best annual results in several years, but higher fuel costs and tough competition were expected to weigh on profits going forward, it said. SAS has been cutting costs for the best part of a decade and is renewing its elderly and fuel-intensive fleet in the face of cut-price competition from budget carriers. “In fiscal year 2018, SAS delivered its strongest result in many years. However, in the Q4 we started to feel the effect of higher fuel prices and we expect this to continue in 2019,” the company said. For its fiscal 2019 year, SAS said it expected a positive result before tax and nonrecurring items, but CE Rickard Gustafson said a number of uncertainties meant SAS would only specify the outlook later on.“ <br/>