Ryanair Holdings plc today (Fri, 2 Feb) released January 2024 traffic stats as follows:
Ryanair operated over 71,700 flights in Jan. Over 950 flights cancelled due to Israel/Gaza conflict.
*As previously guided, short-term reduction to L.F. due to removal of Ryanair flights from most OTA Pirate websites in early Dec.
KIWI GUARANTEE NO OVERCHARGING FOR RYANAIR FLIGHTS/ANCILLARIES
Following Ryanair’s recent approved partnership with OTA, loveholidays.com. Ryanair today (Mon 29 Jan) announced a new partnership agreement with approved OTA, Kiwi.com, which guarantees that Kiwi will now have direct access to the Ryanair.com website without screenscraping, and Kiwi agree to provide their customers with low Ryanair prices for flights and ancillaries, and will see Kiwi provide the direct accurate customer contact and payment details to Ryanair.
This new approved OTA deal means that Kiwi customers can now buy Ryanair flights/ancillaries at real prices (without mark-ups) via the Kiwi.com website, and Kiwi customers will have direct access to their myRyanair account and will receive all Ryanair flight info directly to their email from Ryanair. Kiwi customers will no longer need to complete Ryanair’s customer verification process which unauthorised OTA Pirates’ customers must continue to do.
In addition to these benefits, this deal also allows customers to enjoy Kiwi virtual interline service which allows customers to book connecting flights, but if they miss their connection flight, Kiwi will reaccommodate passengers free of charge on the next available flight.
Ryanair has long campaigned for all consumers to be protected from OTA Pirate overcharges and pricing scams, and an end to fake customer contact and payment info. This approved OTA partnership with Kiwi demonstrates how OTAs can work with Ryanair in a transparent way that eliminates the need for anti-consumer practices while giving Kiwi.com passengers direct access to Ryanair’s low prices with no overcharges or price scams.
Ryanair’s Dara Brady said:
“We are pleased to announce this new approved OTA agreement with Kiwi.com. This is great news for Kiwi customers who will now be able to book Ryanair’s low-price flights, seats, and bags through Kiwi.com with full price transparency, safe in the knowledge that they will receive all important flight info directly from Ryanair and full access to their booking through their myRyanair account.
Ryanair has long campaigned for all consumers to be protected from OTA Pirate overcharges and scams, and to eliminate fake customer contact and payment info being provided to airlines. This new partnership with Kiwi represents a significant step in achieving that protection for all Kiwi customers who will now get access to Ryanair’s low fares and ancillary services with no overcharges, which will enable Kiwi to offer Ryanair’s low prices to all its customers.”
Golan Shaked, Chief Commercial Officer, Kiwi.com said:
“The announcement today of the cooperation with Ryanair is a positive one, ending a period of friction that has impacted our customers. It reflects our commitment to establishing relationships with all airlines for the benefit of customers and our long-term business objectives.”
YEAR TO DATE (9 MONTH) PROFITS UP 39% TO €2.19BN
Ryanair Holdings today (29 Jan.) reported a Q3 PAT of €15m, compared to a bumper prior year Q3 PAT of €211m, as higher fuel costs offset revenue gains. While traffic and fares were ahead of prior year, close-in Christmas/New Year loads and yields were softer than previously expected as Ryanair lowered prices in response to the sudden (but welcome) removal of flights from OTA Pirate websites in early Dec. PAT for the 9-months ended 31 Dec. 2023 was up 39% at €2.19bn (PY: €1.58bn).
Q3 highlights:
| Q3 FY23 | Q3 FY24 | Change | YTD FY23 | YTD FY24 | Change | |
| Customers | 38.5m | 41.4m | +7% | 133.6m | 146.8m | +10% |
| Load Factor | 93% | 92% | -1pt | 94% | 94% | – |
| Revenue | €2.31bn | €2.70bn | +17% | €8.93bn | €11.27bn | +26% |
| Op. Costs | €2.15bn1 | €2.72bn | +26% | €7.13bn2 | €8.88bn | +25% |
| PAT | €211m1 | €15m | -93% | €1.58bn2 | €2.19bn | +39% |
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, said:
ENVIRONMENT:
“In Dec., MSCI upgraded Ryanair’s ESG rating to an industry leading ‘A’ (from ‘BBB’) and we remain ranked Europe’s No.1 airline for ESG by Sustainalytics. Our new aircraft technology and increasing use of SAF has positioned Ryanair as one of the EU’s most environmentally efficient major airlines. In Q3 we took delivery of 12, new B737-8200 “Gamechangers” (4% more seats, 16% less fuel & CO2). We continue to retro-fit winglets on our B737NG fleet (target 409 by 2026), reducing fuel burn by 1.5% and cutting noise emissions by 6%. We recently expanded our SAF partnerships with ENI to supply Ryanair’s Italian bases, and we remain on track to achieve our Group’s ambitious 2030 goal of powering 12.5% of Ryanair flights with SAF (10% supply now secured).
In 2023 Europe suffered 67 days of ATC strikes (13 times more than in 2022), forcing airlines to cancel thousands of flights to/from Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK while France in particular uses minimum service laws to protect French local/domestic flights. We continue to call for urgent reform of Europe’s inefficient ATC system which would deliver the most significant environmental improvement in EU air travel. Sadly, there has been no action from the EU Commission. We again call on President Ursula von der Leyen to defend the single market for air travel by protecting 100% of overflights during national ATC strikes, as is already the case in Greece, Italy and Spain.
BOARD UPDATES:
The Board recently announced that Ms. Roberta Neri (an Italian Citizen) has agreed to join the Board of Ryanair Holdings plc as a non-exec director from 1 Feb. Roberta is a former CEO of Enav (the Italian air navigation service provider) and has considerable aviation and renewables industry experience.
Both Louise Phelan (SID) and Michael Cawley have confirmed that they do not wish to seek re-election at the 2024 AGM (in Sept.) and will step down from the Board at that time. We thank them sincerely for their long service. Róisín Brennan, who has significant PLC Board experience (over 5 years on Ryanair’s Board), has been appointed senior independent director (SID) effective 1 Apr.
GROWTH & FLEET:
At the end of Q3, Ryanair had taken delivery of 136 B737 Gamechangers. We expect to have up to 174 of these aircraft in our fleet by late June for peak S.24 (+50 from S.23), which would be 7 short of our contracted deliveries. There remains a risk that some of these deliveries could slip further. We’ve a bumper S.24 schedule on sale with 169 new routes (total 2,600 routes), incl. our first 11 domestic routes in Morocco. While travel demand remains high, we expect S.24 EU short haul capacity to be behind S.23 as competitors ground A320 aircraft in Europe due to the P&W engine issues (and expect these disruptions will run into 2026). We therefore encourage customers to book early on www.ryanair.com to secure the lowest fares for S.24 before they sell out.
We continue to work closely with Boeing to minimise delivery delays and improve quality control in both Wichita and Seattle. While the recent MAX-9 grounding was a disappointing setback, we don’t expect it to affect the MAX-8 fleet or the MAX-10 certification. We visited Seattle in Jan. and met with Boeing senior management. Boeing are increasing their QA resources in Wichita and Seattle. We have run extra checks on our recent B737 deliveries and have noted improvements in quality with fewer delivery defects. However, Boeing have more work to do to improve quality, reduce delivery delays, and we fully support the initiatives that Dave Calhoun (CEO) and Brian West (CFO) are taking to improve Boeing’s performance and production.
We have reached agreement with SAP Concur to integrate their on-line travel tool with Ryanair’s website. Corporate customers who book directly with Ryanair via Concur can now benefit from significant efficiencies (incl. automated expense & invoice management) in their booking and admin. process. This, coupled with our low fares and high reliability improves our offering to business travellers. We also welcome the recent agreements with Love Holidays and Kiwi (OTAs), which will see their customers book flights directly on the Ryanair.com website, but without inflating Ryanair prices for seats or ancillary products, thereby greatly improving the customer service offering available to both Love Holidays and Kiwi customers.
We expect Europe’s airlines will continue to consolidate over the next 3 years, with the takeover of ITA (Italy) and Air Europa (Spain), as well as the sale of TAP (Portugal) and SAS (Scandinavia) already underway. This, in addition to A320 fleet groundings due to the P&W engine issues and the large backlog of OEM aircraft deliveries is likely to constrain short haul capacity in Europe for the next 3 years. These capacity constraints, combined with our significant cost advantage (incl. FY25 fuel savings), strong balance sheet, low-cost aircraft orders and industry leading resilience, will (we believe) underpin a decade of profitable growth opportunities for Ryanair as we expand our traffic to 300m pax p.a. by FY34.
Q3 FY24 BUSINESS REVIEW:
Revenue & Costs
Q3 scheduled revenues increased 21% to €1.75bn. Traffic grew 7% to 41.4m while ave. fares rose 13% to over €42, thanks to a strong Oct. mid-term and peak Christmas/New Year travel (albeit that close-in loads and fares were softer than originally expected due to the sudden removal of Ryanair flights from many OTA Pirate websites in early Dec.). Ancillary revenue increased 10% to €0.95bn (c.€23 per passenger). Total Q3 revenue rose 17% to €2.7bn. Operating costs increased 26% to €2.7bn, primarily due to a 35% increase in fuel costs, higher staff costs (reflecting pay restoration, crew, engineering & handler pay increases and higher crewing ratios as we improve ops. resilience) and the earlier timing of maintenance. The widening cost gap between Ryanair and all our EU competitors (which is further enhanced by Ryanair’s low-cost financing and net interest income) remains a growing competitive advantage.
Our Q4 fuel is almost 94% hedged at approx. $89bbl (a mix of forwards and caps) and FY25 hedging has increased to 65% at approx. $79bbl. Almost 90% of Q4 €/$ opex is hedged at 1.09 and over 70% of FY25 is hedged at 1.11. This strong hedge position protects us from current fuel price volatility and delivers approx. €450m savings on fuel already hedged for FY25.
Balance Sheet & Liquidity
Ryanair’s balance sheet is one of the strongest in the industry with a BBB+ credit rating (both S&P and Fitch) and €2.9bn gross cash at quarter end, despite €1.9bn capex and €1.1bn debt repayments. Net cash was €0.15bn at 31 Dec., boosted somewhat by the delay of aircraft deliveries into Q4. All of our owned B737 fleet (546 aircraft) are unencumbered, which widens our cost advantage over competitor airlines, many of whom are exposed to high interest rates and rising aircraft lease costs. In Nov. the Board announced the Group’s new Dividend Policy, under which an interim dividend of €0.175 per share will be paid on 28 Feb.
OUTLOOK:
We continue to target approx. 183.5m FY24 traffic (+9%), despite slightly lower Q3 load factors and Boeing delivery delays. As a result of these lower load factors and higher productivity pay (recently agreed with various pilot unions incl. Belgium, Italy & the UK) to improve operational resilience, we now expect FY24 ex-fuel unit costs to rise by c.€2.50, which still widens the cost gap between Ryanair and our main European competitor airlines. Q4, which is traditionally our weakest quarter, will also be impacted by the partial unwind of free ETS carbon credits (from 1 Jan.). While we will benefit from the first half of Easter traffic falling in late Mar., this is unlikely to fully offset the weaker than previously expected load factors and yields in late Q3 and early Q4. We are therefore narrowing our FY24 PAT guidance to a range of between €1.85bn to €1.95bn (previously €1.85bn to €2.05bn). This guidance and the full year result remains heavily dependent upon avoiding unforeseen adverse events in Q4 (such as the Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas conflict and further Boeing delivery delays).”
Notes:
CONSUMERS GUARANTEED NO OVERCHARGING FOR RYANAIR FLIGHTS/ANCILLARIES
Ryanair, Europe’s No.1 airline, today (23 Jan) agreed a new partnership with OTA loveholidays for its customers who wish to book low-cost package holidays. This deal allows loveholidays’ customers to buy Ryanair flights, seats, and bags as part of their loveholidays package at Ryanair’s low prices. It guarantees that loveholidays’ customers will not be overcharged and they will have direct access to their myRyanair account for all customer info questions.
This partnership with loveholidays also guarantees that Ryanair flight info will be provided directly to each customer’s email address, including pre-departure info on Ryanair T&C’s, and in cases of disruptions. loveholidays’ agrees that it will only display Ryanair’s real prices, without mark-ups and will only pass accurate customer contact and payment details to Ryanair. This means loveholidays’ customers will not need to complete Ryanair’s customer verification process which unauthorised OTA Pirates customers must continue to do.
This is great news for loveholidays’ customers who will now be able to book Ryanair’s low fares as part of their loveholidays package with full transparency, while still benefiting from loveholidays’ flexible payment plans and ATOL protection. Ryanair has long campaigned for all consumers to be protected from OTA Pirate scams, which includes overcharges, hidden mark-ups, and fake customer contact and payment info.
Ryanair’s Dara Brady said:
“We are pleased to announce this first OTA partnership with loveholidays, which will ensure that loveholidays’ customers can now book Ryanair flights, seats, and bags as part of their package with the guarantee that they will not be overcharged for flights, bags, or seats, they will receive flight updates directly from Ryanair and will also have direct access to their booking through their myRyanair account.”
loveholidays’ Chief Marketing Officer, Al Murray, added:
“As the UK and Ireland’s largest and fastest growing OTA, we are delighted to be the world’s first Ryanair-approved package holiday provider. Our status as an approved Ryanair partner will ensure the process of booking and managing a Ryanair flight as part of a loveholidays package is seamless for customers; something no other package holiday provider can offer.
The loveholidays-Ryanair partnership means all our customers can take advantage of Ryanair’s low fares while benefiting from our unrivalled choice of hotels, flexible payment plans and ATOL protection. Ultimately, this new partnership highlights our commitment to championing consumer choice, with the overall aim of making travel more affordable and accessible while opening the world to everyone.”
The Board of Ryanair Holdings plc today (23 Jan.) announced that Ms. Roberta Neri, an Italian citizen, has agreed to join the Board as a non-executive director effective from 1 Feb. 2024.
Ms. Neri is a former CEO of ENAV, the Italian Air Navigation Services provider, where she managed the IPO process on the Italian stock exchange. Prior to that, she was CFO of ACEA (one of the major Italian utility companies). Ms. Neri has over 30 years experience in both corporate and financial services industries. A founding member and board director of Byom (a consulting firm focused on investment funds and companies operating in the industrial, renewable energy and infrastructure sector), Ms. Neri is also currently an Operating Partner at Asterion Industrial Partners (an independent investment management firm focusing on European infrastructure).
Ryanair’s Chairman Stan McCarthy said:
“We are pleased that Roberta Neri has accepted our invitation to join the Board of Ryanair Holdings plc from 1 Feb. 2024. Roberta brings considerable aviation, regulatory and business experience to the role. As a senior Italian business figure, we look forward to Roberta making a significant contribution to our Board as Ryanair delivers more low fare services and sustainable growth across Europe for the next decade.”
Ryanair, Europe’s no.1 airline, and Enilive, a company directly controlled by Eni which holds 100% of its share capital, announced today (22 Jan) that they have signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) for the long-term supply of Enilive sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at selected Ryanair airports across Italy, further advancing the airline’s Pathway to Net Zero by 2050 decarbonization strategy. This agreement with Enilive would enable Ryanair to access to up to 100,000 tons (33m gallons) of SAF between 2025 and 2030 (equiv. to 20,000 flights from Milano Malpensa Airport to Dublin).
SAF is a concrete solution to contribute to the decarbonization of aviation in the coming decades, yet currently only accounts for a small fraction of the current fuel usage worldwide. In its biorefineries in Italy, Enilive processes mainly waste feedstock, such as used cooking oil, animal fats and agro-food industry residues, to produce Eni Biojet, a SAF that contains 100% biogenic component and is suitable to be blended with conventional jet fuel by up to 50%.
Ryanair’s Director of Sustainability, Thomas Fowler, said:
“Increasing the production of SAF is a key challenge that the industry faces over the coming years. Partnering with an industry leader like Eni will help Ryanair achieve our ambitious goal of using 12.5% SAF by 2030 and Net Zero emissions by 2050. Eni is a key supplier in our largest market, Italy, and their success in producing SAF will play a significant role as our Group grows to carry 300m passengers p.a. by 2034.”
Stefano Ballista, CEO of Enilive, added:
“We are glad to launch an agreement with such a relevant player as Ryanair right after European Union’s ReFuelEU regulations that aims to increase the adoption of SAFs by 2050. Enilive plans to boost its biorefining capacity to over 5 million tonnes/year by 2030 and it is focused in developing new projects to expand its biorefining capacity: biofuels can play a relevant role in decarbonizing mobility, including its hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation. The plants and the technologies we have developed over the last decade enable Enilive to produce the necessary amounts of SAF to meet the needs of companies as Ryanair and the requirements of the EU regulations.”
Ryanair Holdings plc today (Wed, 3 Jan) released December 2023 traffic stats as follows:
OTA Pirate Update:
In early Dec, most of the larger OTA Pirates (such as Booking.com, Kiwi, Kayak, etc.) suddenly removed Ryanair’s flights from sale on their websites. This welcome removal may be the result of pressure from Consumer Protection Agencies or a response to the recent Irish High Court ruling, which granted Ryanair a permanent injunction against screenscraper Flightbox from unlawfully scraping Ryanair.com content for OTA’s, or in response to Ryanair’s KYP (Know Your Passenger) customer initiatives such as verification.
While these OTA Pirates only account for a small fraction of Ryanair’s bookings, we expect the sudden removal of our flights from these OTA websites to reduce short term load factors by 1% or 2% in Dec and Jan and also to soften short term yields as we respond by making more low fares available directly to consumers. We do not expect this recent removal of OTA Pirate bookings will materially affect our FY24 traffic or PAT guidance.
Ryanair will respond to this welcome removal of our flights from OTA Pirate websites, by lowering fares where necessary to encourage all passengers to book directly on Ryanair.com where they are guaranteed to always get the lowest air fares without OTA Pirate overcharges, fake contact info, or other pricing/refund scams. In the meantime, Ryanair continues to make its fares available to honest/transparent OTA’s such as Google Flights, who do not add hidden mark ups to Ryanair prices and who direct passengers to make their bookings directly on the Ryanair.com website.