21st May 2018 07:11
LONDON (Alliance News) - Ryanair Holdings PLC reported Monday that revenue in its recent financial year on the back of lower fares and traffic growth, despite September's "rostering management failure".
The airline's revenue reached EUR7.15 billion, an 7.7% increase year-on-year from EUR6.64 billion in 2017.
For the financial year that ended in March, Ryanair said pretax profit rose 10% to EUR1.61 billion, up from EUR1.47 billion the prior year. The company said this was due to lower fares increasing guest traffic by 9%.
In the past year, Ryanair lowered fares by 3% with the average flight cost at EUR39.4, it said.
"Average fares last year declined by 3%, which was good news for our guests but bad news for competitors," the company said.
Germany, Italy and Spain were the airline's largest growth markets, and the company said it expects "above average EU capacity" to continue in the new year.
However, Ryanair said it expects prices to be affected by higher oil prices' impact, with fuel costs expected to add more than EUR400 million to the company's fuel bill.
For the past financial year Ryanair fuel bill amounted to EUR1.9 billion.
"We expect the market for experienced pilots in Europe to remain tight for the next 12 months, and accordingly, this will continue to put upward pressure on staff costs for all EU airlines," Ryanair said.
Ryanair declared itself "on the pessimistic side of cautious" for 2019, with expected traffic growth of 7% and profit between EUR1.3 billion ad EUR1.4 billion.
Related Shares:
RYA.L