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Ryanair The company raised its forecast for annual passenger growth and said full-year profits should rise as ticket prices rise more than expected.
Budget irish The airline carried 47.5 million passengers in the third quarter, up 6% year-on-year, and said it now expects passenger numbers to rise 4% in 2025-26 to nearly 208 million passengers due to strong and earlier-than-expected demand. boeing company Aircraft delivered.
This is higher than previous guidance for 207 million passengers.
Average fares rose 4% to €44 (£38.18) in the third quarter to the end of December, and the airline said it now expects fares to rise by around 9%, compared with a previous forecast of a 7% rise.
Ryanair said it “cautiously guided” full-year underlying profit after tax of 2.13 billion to 2.23 billion euros (£1.84 billion to 1.93 million pounds).
The company reported underlying profits after tax of €1.61bn (£1.42bn) in the previous year.
The forecast came despite the company’s third-quarter figures showing a sharp drop in profits as it set aside funds for competition fines in Italy.
Pre-tax profits plunged 83% to €24.4m (£21.2m) after Ryanair was fined €256m (£222m) by Italy’s competition watchdog in December for allegedly using “abusive tactics” to thwart third-party travel agents.
In its ruling, the regulator claimed that the low-cost airline deliberately made it difficult for agencies to purchase flights on its website between April 2023 and at least April 2025.
Ryanair said it was “confident” the “baseless” fine would be overturned on appeal.
Excluding the provision, underlying net profit fell 22% to €115.4 million (£100.1 million).
Speaking about the outlook, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said: “While the fourth quarter did not benefit from Easter, fare trends are ahead of last year and we now believe full-year fares will exceed our previous guidance of 7% growth of 1% or 2%.”
He said the full-year profit result “remains affected by adverse external developments in the fourth quarter, including the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and middle Eastmacroeconomic shocks and any further impact of repeated strikes and mismanagement by European air traffic control”.
He added: “We believe industry capacity constraints, combined with our expanding cost advantage, strong balance sheet, low-cost aircraft orderbook and industry-leading operational resilience, will help Ryanair deliver manageable profit growth of 300 million passengers per annum by 2033-34.”
The update follows last week’s announcement by Mr O’Leary and Elon Musk on whether the tech billionaire’s Starlink internet system could be used to provide Wi-Fi on Ryanair flights.
Mr Musk called Mr O’Leary an “idiot” and a “chimp” after Mr O’Leary said it wasn’t feasible, and pondered over whether he should buy the airline.
Mr O’Leary claimed the “PR row” had boosted sales by 2% to 3%.