Ryanair boosts full-year profit forecast

A Christmas travel take-off has prompted Ryanair to boost its full-year profit forecast to as high as €1.425 billion.

The Irish airline announced the new forecast after revealing that it broke previous December records by flying 11.5 million passengers last month.

Ryanair originally predicted that profits for its financial year, which ends on March 31st, would land between €1 billion and €1.2 billion.

The company revised this on Wednesday to between €1.325 billion and €1.425 billion following what it called strong pent-up demand for travel over the first Covid-free Christmas since 2019.

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It now expects to report a €200 million profit for the three months to end of December, a period it originally believed would be loss-making.

The company maintains that it will lose money through the final three months of its current financial year, partly due to Easter falling in April and an easing in some Irish-UK travel and fares.

Ryanair cautioned that its guidance depended heavily on adverse events, such as the war in Ukraine, which hit travel early last year, or Covid-19, which affected travel over Christmas 2021. The forecast also excludes any potential exceptional charges.

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The airline is sticking with its prediction that it will fly 168 million passengers over the 12 months ending on March 31st 2023.

Ryanair earned €1.37 billion profits in the six months ended September 30th, the first half of its financial year, as summer travel recovered strongly last year.

Earlier on Wednesday, Ryanair said that it flew a total of 11.5 million passengers last month, an increase of almost 3 per cent on its previous December record.

The figures showed Christmas traffic rebounding sharply from the last two years, which were marred by Covid travel curbs.

Passenger volumes were 21 per cent ahead of last year and 11 per cent ahead of December 2020, when Ryanair carried just 1.5 million customers due to pandemic-related restrictions on travel.

Last month’s passenger traffic levels were also some 2.6 per cent ahead of December 2019 when 11.2 million customers travelled with the airline.

Ryanair operated more than 65,000 flights last month. Its load factor — the proportion of seats sold on each flight — rose to 92 per cent from 81 per cent.