Ryanair on Monday warned of weakness in ticket prices during its peak summer months, but said the threat of fuel shortages was receding as suppliers adapted to the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The comments came as Europe's largest airline by passenger numbers reported a record profit for the fiscal year that ended in March, slightly ahead of analyst expectations. Ryanair said last week it did not expect a disruption to jet fuel supplies in Europe this summer but that its profit might come under "a bit of pressure" if oil prices remained high for longer.
The airline is now "increasingly confident" there will be no disruption to jet fuel supplies even after the summer as refiners increase their volumes and seek alternatives to Gulf oil supplies, Chief Financial Officer Neil Sorahan said in an interview.
The airline's suppliers this week said there would be no disruption between now and mid-July, Group Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said in a video presentation. But earlier forecasts of a low-single-digit-percentage increase in fares during the peak summer months have evaporated. Pricing fell by a mid-single-digit percentage in the April-June quarter and was "trending broadly flat" for the July-to-September period, Ryanair said.
While the airline has hedged 80% of its jet-fuel requirements for the year to March at $67 per barrel, unit costs could still rise by a mid-single digit percentage if fuel prices remained at current elevated levels, it said.
Goodbody said in a note that the forecasts implied a fall in average fares of around 1% for the fiscal year to March 2027 and the Irish stockbroker said it was cutting its forecast for profit for that year by 14% to 1.93 billion euros.
Ryanair shares were down 3% at 0705 GMT.
On Monday, Ryanair reported an after-tax profit of 2.26 billion euros ($2.63 billion) for the fiscal year, compared with a forecast of 2.20 billion euros in a company poll of analysts and up from 1.61 billion euros a year earlier.
That did not include an exceptional 85-million-euro provision related to a fine from the Italian competition authority in December that it said it expected to be overturned on appeal. Ryanair has "almost concluded" negotiations on an extension to O'Leary's contract to 2032 that would include a 10 million share option agreement, subject to share-price and profit targets. An earlier share option scheme is set to earn O'Leary as much as 100 million euros.
