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Bloomberg
Ryanair Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest discount airline, raised its profit target for the year through March following stronger-than-expected sales during the Christmas travel period.
Annual earnings will be as high as €1.425 billion, compared with a previous target of as much as €1.2 billion, the Irish carrier said in a statement after markets closed. Profit in the fiscal third quarter ended on December 31 was close to €200 million, it said. The stock rose the most in two months.
Ryanair said that holiday season bookings and fares benefited from pent up demand, with people able to freely travel during the period for the first time in three years. The company maintained its full-year traffic guidance of 168 million passengers, indicating that the earnings increase has been spurred mostly by people paying more.
“On the strength of this evidence, demand for short-haul leisure travel in Europe remains healthy, and we are increasingly optimistic going into the next reporting season,†Bernstein analyst Alex Irving said. The stock lost 20% of its value last year, the worst performance since 2018.
The discount specialist cautioned that its guidance “remains heavily dependent upon avoiding adverse events†in the year’s final quarter, such as a worsening of the Covid-19 pandemic or a deterioration of the war in Ukraine.