Ryanair announces record profits despite fuel costs
Ryanair has announced record half year profits of €237m, up by 18% from the same period last year.
The budget airline said today that traffic grew by 29% to 18 million passengers while yields increased by 3%. As a result, total revenues rose by 33% to €946.2m.
Unit costs increased by 8% (excluding fuel they fell by 7%) as fuel costs rose by 108% to €236.9m.
As a result of these significantly higher fuel costs, Ryanair’s adjusted after-tax margin for the half year fell by three points to 25%.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said: "We have again reaffirmed our commitment not to impose fuel surcharges on our passengers and reaped the benefits of this strategy in terms of significant traffic growth and slightly higher yields during the half year.
"Excluding fuel all other unit costs were reduced by 7% thanks to the addition of more lower cost and efficient Boeing 737-800’s, new lower-cost airport and base agreements and continuing tight control over all other cost lines.
"We continue to focus aggressively on costs and anticipate that the cost reductions achieved will continue to partially offset the significantly higher oil prices."
Mr O'Leary also commented on proposed and likely charges introduced by the airport authorities in Ireland and the UK.
"In Ireland the recent decision by the Commission for Aviation Regulation to allow Dublin Airport to increase airport charges by 23% from January next to pay for a proposed second terminal, five years before it is built and without any consultation with the airline users (despite previous government assurances) is beyond belief.
"We now have the bizarre situation that an over-specified future airport development is being funded by increasing charges now even though not a sod has been turned on the facility, and there is no plan for it to be turned for quite some time."
Turning his attention to the UK, he said: "We continue to fight the levy of unjust taxes on our passengers and we welcome the recent announcement by the UK government that it would not impose a £1 tax on air tickets. This £1 tax was proposed by the CAA to cover their own failure to ensure that scheduled airlines had adequate financial resources to fly to and from the UK.
"We also oppose the £4bn (€5.9bn) BAA farce at Stansted Airport where the BAA airport monopoly propose to build facilities that the users at the airport unanimously oppose, as they are extravagant and over specified. The objective of this inflated proposal is to ensure that the BAA airport monopoly can claim a higher return on this £4bn (€5.9bn) of capital expenditure rather than the £400m (€593m) to £600m (€889m), which more accurately reflects the cost of the facilities that the user airlines actually want them to build."
