Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has said he expects air fares, for the remainder of the summer, to be “materially” lower than the same period last year.
Mr O’Leary – who is group chief executive of Ryanair – was speaking on the back of Ryanair’s first quarter financial results, covering the three months to the end of June.
These showed the airline group’s after-tax profits fell by 46%, year-on-year, to €360m; down from the €663m profit recorded for the same period last year. Analysts had expected a first quarter profit of around €538m.
Ryanair’s share price slumped accordingly on the back of the new figures.
Mr O’Leary said: “While Q2 [second quarter July, August, September] demand is strong, pricing remains softer than we expected, and we now expect Q2 fares to be materially lower than last summer.”
Ryanair had, previously, expected late summer air fares to be flat to modestly up.
Ryanair’s quarterly results also showed a 1% year-on-year drop in revenue to €3.63bn and an 11% increase in operational costs to €3.26bn.
But, passenger numbers were up 10% on the same quarter last year at 55.5 million people and average fares were down 15% at €41.93 per person.
Ryanair expects passenger traffic for its latest financial year (which runs to the end of next March) to grow by 8% to between 198 million and 200 million passengers, but this will be dependent on the airline suffering no more Boeing delivery delays.
Full year financial performance, Mr O’Leary said, depends on numerous external factors such as ATC strikes, Boeing delivery snags and the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
