Ryanair has narrowed its full-year profit guidance after seeing a weaker than expected third quarter performance, where yields and load factors underperformed.
Ryanair’s financial year runs to the end of March, but the airline’s fourth quarter is traditionally its weakest.
The airline group has changed its full-year profit outlook from €1.85bn-€2.05bn to a range of €1.85bn-€1.95bn.
Ryanair has posted an after-tax profit of €15m for its third quarter (the 3 months to the end of December); down 93% year-on-year. Passenger levels were up 7% at 41.4 million people, and group revenue surged 17% to €2.7bn.
In the financial year to-date, profits are running at almost 40% ahead of the prior year and revenue is up by 26%, with passenger numbers ahead 10%.
Ryanair said its full-year guidance – which also continues to target a 9% growth in passenger numbers to around 183.5 million people – is heavily dependent on avoiding unforeseen adverse events in its final quarter; such as the Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas conflict and further Boeing delivery delays.
Ryanair group chief executive Michael O’Leary said: “We continue to work closely with Boeing to minimise delivery delays and improve quality control in both Wichita and Seattle. While the recent MAX-9 grounding was a disappointing setback, we don’t expect it to affect the MAX-8 fleet or the MAX-10 certification.”
Mr O’Leary added: “We expect Europe’s airlines will continue to consolidate over the next 3 years, with the takeover of ITA (Italy) and Air Europa (Spain), as well as the sale of TAP (Portugal) and SAS (Scandinavia) already underway. This, in addition to A320 fleet groundings due to the P&W engine issues and the large backlog of OEM aircraft deliveries is likely to constrain short haul capacity in Europe for the next 3 years. These capacity constraints, combined with our significant cost advantage (incl. FY25 fuel savings), strong balance sheet, low-cost aircraft orders and industry leading resilience, will (we believe) underpin a decade of profitable growth opportunities for Ryanair as we expand our traffic to 300m pax p.a. by FY34.”
