Ryanair has announced a Q1 net profit of €136.5 million, registering a €115.5 million (550 percent) increment over last year’s performance.

Published: 28 Jul 2009

Ryanair has announced a Q1 net profit of €136.5 million, registering a €115.5 million (550 percent) increment over last year’s performance.

Total revenues (€774.7 million) were flat due to an 11 percent rise in traffic being offset by a 13 percent decline in average fares.

Ancillary revenues also outpaced scheduled traffic growth and rose by 13 percent to €165.3m.

Ryanair’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, said these quarterly results are distorted by a 42 percent reduction in fuel costs.

“Thanks to a 13 percent reduction in average fares we grew traffic by 11 percent, which was a robust performance in a deep recession, when many of our competitors were cutting flights, losing traffic and reporting increased losses,” O’Leary said.

Fuel costs fell by 42% to €214m.

“We have taken advantage of the recent drop in fuel prices to extend our hedging programme for FY10 to 90 percent for the first 3 quarters at an ave. price of $620 per tonne and 60 percent for Q4 at $610 per tonne. Should we hedge the balance of our FY10 fuel at $620 per tonne we would lock in a full year fuel cost saving of approx. €460m,” O’Leary said.

Outlook

O’Leary said the group’s outlook for the full year to March 2010 remained “cautious”.

Average fares would be “significantly lower than last year - at, or even slightly above, the minus 15 to 20 per cent range previously guided”. Net profits would be “towards the lower end” of the €200m-€300m ($284m-$426m) range previously forecast - but still more than double last year’s €105m before exceptional charges.

O’Leary said Ryanair expects to carry 67 million passengers in the current fiscal year, up 15 percent.

But to achieve this, he said Ryanair would cut average fares 15 percent to 20 percent in the current July-September quarter, and more than 20 percent for the fiscal year as a whole.

“Ryanair will be the only major European airline to deliver passenger and profit growth in the current year. We will continue to expand as others fail,” O’Leary said in a statement.