Ryanair is back in the black with a strong wind at its tail.
The Irish airline recorded a pretax profit of €1.44 billion on revenues of €10.8 billion in the year to the end of March 2023, slightly outstripping market expectations. This compared with a loss of €430 million and €4.8 billion of revenues in the prior year, which was impacted by Covid-19 restrictions.
And that was after a “disappointing” first quarter – April to June 2022 – when traffic was “badly impacted” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This “necessitated significant fare stimulation” to encourage people to travel.
Ryanair’s shares closed up 1.3 per cent in Dublin yesterday.
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In Ireland, the airline increased its market share last year to 58 per cent from 49 per cent previously – putting it ahead of Aer Lingus and its sister airline British Airways. Ryanair generated revenue of €640.4 million from the Irish market in the financial year just gone, up from €229.6 million in the previous 12 months. That was just under 6 per cent of its total income.
Costs – at €31 per passenger excluding fuel – were back down to pre-pandemic levels but fares were “trending about 10 per cent ahead of pre-Covid levels”, its chief financial officer Neil Sorahan said.
This year, Ryanair expects its traffic to grow by 10 per cent to about 185 million passengers, although delays in the delivery of new aircraft from Boeing could push some of that increase into the lower-yielding second half of its financial year.
Still, the airline said it was “cautiously optimistic” that its revenue would grow in the current year to cover a €1 billion higher fuel bill and deliver a “modest year-on-year profit increase”.
With a new order for 300 Boeing 737 aircraft recently agreed, at a time when new aircraft are difficult to secure, the airline looks well placed to hit its target of carrying 300 million passengers a year by 2034.
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