Status: 01/30/2023 09:37 a.m
Europe’s largest low-cost airline Ryanair has flown a record profit in the Christmas quarter. The company is doing significantly better than its competitor Easyjet, which was still in the red recently.
In the past quarter, Ryanair managed to fly back into the black: in the reporting period ended December 31, the net profit was 211 million euros. Ryanair thus surpassed the previous record of 106 million euros in the Christmas quarter of 2017. In the second Corona winter, i.e. a year earlier, Europe’s largest low-cost airline was still in the red with 96 million euros.
“With Asian tourists returning and a strong US dollar encouraging Americans to explore Europe, we see robust demand,” said Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary. The company carried 38.4 million passengers in the last three months of the year, 24 percent more than a year earlier. In the entire financial year Ryanair wants to reach 168 million passengers.
Prognosis subject to change
Sales jumped 57 percent to 2.3 billion euros in the quarter. This was mainly due to the increase in ticket prices: According to the information, flight tickets were on average 48 percent more expensive than in the same period last year and thus cost 14 percent more than before the corona pandemic. In Spain, Poland, Ireland and Italy in particular, Ryanair has gained strong market shares.
With the latest result, Ryanair boss O’Leary sees the company on course to achieve a profit of 1.3 to 1.4 billion euros in the current financial year by the end of March, adjusted for special effects. “We had record bookings in the second and third weeks of January, very robust demand into Easter and the summer,” said Chief Financial Officer Neil Sorahan.
However, the management makes its forecasts subject to the proviso that no unfavorable developments make business difficult – such as possible consequences of the pandemic or the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. Airlines around the world had suffered massively from the lockdowns and travel restrictions during the Corona crisis.
Easyjet boss is confident
The competitor Easyjet is also expecting an annual profit, even if things went less well in the Christmas quarter than with Ryanair. Despite a strong recovery in demand, the British low-cost airline was recently in the red again. The number of passengers in the Christmas quarter grew by almost half compared to the same period last year, which was affected by the pandemic, to 17.5 million.
Sales even rose by 83 percent to just under £1.5 billion. One reason for this was the significantly higher ticket prices here, too: the average revenue per ticket rose by 21 percent year-on-year. Easyjet boss Johan Lundgren sees the latest development as positive. “We expect our winter loss in the first half of the year to decrease significantly compared to last year,” he said. “We are well on our way to generating a profit for the full year that exceeds current market expectations.”
So far, according to the information, analysts are assuming on average a pre-tax profit of £126 million. Lufthansa is already expecting an operating profit (adjusted EBIT) of around 1.5 billion euros for the full year 2022.