Ryanair Holdings reported a full year profit of €1,002m (excl. hedge ineffectiveness), compared to €885m last year.
Highlights include:
- Traffic grew 4% to 149m guests.
- Revenue per guest rose 6% to €57 (2% higher fares & ancillary rev. up 16%).
- Over 90% of flights arrived on-time (excl. ATC delays).
- EU’s greenest, cleanest airline (66g CO₂ pax/km).
- 5 new bases & 390 new routes.
- Malta Air became 4th Group airline.
- New digital platform launched with improved, personalised, guest offers.
- Strong balance sheet & liquidity.
Sales grew 10% to €8.5bn. Scheduled Revenue, driven by 4% traffic growth to 149m and 2% higher fares, increased by 6% to €5.6bn.
Covid-19 flight restrictions and aircraft groundings in the 2nd half of March reduced traffic by over 5m in Q4.
The fuel bill rose 14% (+€335m) to €2.8bn due to higher prices and 4% traffic growth. Ex-fuel unit costs were adversely impacted by a 48% drop in March traffic (-5.2m guests) due to Covid-19 groundings and, as a result, rose by 4% (ahead of the +2% guided).
How the group airlines performed
Buzz increased its fleet to 45 B737s and expanded outside Poland with new bases in Prague and Budapest.
Lauda underperformed in FY20 with fares lower than expected, due to intense price competition from Lufthansa subsidiaries in its core Austrian and German markets. FY20 traffic, however, grew to 6.4m at high load factors.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the Lauda fleet has been grounded since 17 March. With costs running ahead of other Group airlines and Lauda’s main competitor, Austrian Airlines, expected to receive an €800m State Aid bailout, Lauda has had to completely rethink its strategy and significantly lower its growth plans.
Failure to agree meaningful cost reductions on 20 May will result in the Vienna A320 base being closed on 30 May with over 300 job losses. Lauda has already abandoned plans to operate a base in Zadar for the Ryanair Group.
Malta Air, which became the 4th Group airline last summer, grew strongly in FY20. With a fleet of almost 120 aircraft, it has taken over the Group’s French, German, Italian and Maltese bases.
Ryanair DAC performed well in FY20 and opened new markets in Armenia, Georgia and Lebanon.
Its fleet, however, has dropped to 275 B737s as both Buzz and Malta Air took over flight operations for the Group.
