Ryanair raises full-year forecast to EUR810m-830m range

Ryanair stated (04-Dec-2014) its "Always Getting Better" customer programme has delivered a stronger than expected performance in the first month of Ryanair's significantly expanded winter schedule. Despite increasing Nov-2014 seat capacity by 13% year-on-year and opening a large number of new city pair routes designed to appeal to business traffic, Ryanair's Nov-2014 load factor rose by 7% points from 81% in 2013 to 88% in 2014. Ryanair noted that it had materially exceeded its first month load factor targets across a significant number of city pair markets where it is offering business type frequencies in direct competition to longer established, higher fare airlines. As a result of this better than expected performance in month one, Ryanair has now revised its full year traffic guidance up from 89 million to just over 90 million customers, and raised its full year profit after-tax forecast from its previous range of EUR750 million to EUR770 million, to a new range of EUR810 million to EUR830 million. Ryanair noted that the final full year profit will still be heavily reliant on close in bookings and yields in 4Q (Jan-2015 to Mar-2015) over which it presently has very little visibility. [more - original PR]