2nd Feb 2017 08:11
LONDON (Alliance News) - Central and Eastern European-focused budget airline Wizz Air Holdings PLC on Thursday reported growth in the number of passengers carried and load factor in January.
Wizz Air said it carried 1.9 million passengers in January, a 23% increase on the 1.5 million passengers carried in January 2016.
Load factor rose by 4.5 percentage points to 83.5% from 88.0%.
On a rolling 12-month basis, passenger numbers increased by 19% to 23.1 million from 19.4 million, as load factor rose 1.4 percentage point to 89.4% from 88.0%.
On Wednesday, Wizz Air released an earnings statement reporting growth in profit in the third quarter, but the company trimmed its guidance for the full year.
Wizz Air said pretax profit in the three months ended December 31 more than doubled to EUR33.1 million from EUR16.2 million the year before, as revenue grew to EUR341.1 million from EUR310.5 million.
However, despite the current year "looking like a very good year" for the company, Wizz Air noted that lower fuel prices continue to feed through to lower airfares, a "downward trend that looks likely to continue well into 2017".
In addition, the airline said its winter operations have been disrupted by "unusually severe" weather conditions, leading it to believe it "prudent" to trim its guidance for full-year net profit to a range of EUR225 million to EUR235 million.
Prior full-year profit guidance had been a range of EUR245 million to EUR255 million. In the previous financial year, full year net profit amounted to EUR183 million.
Net profit in the third quarter was a record EUR32.5 million, which was more than double that achieved a year earlier.
By Karolina Kaminska; [email protected]; @KarolinaAllNews
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