Higher discounts Low-cost airline Ryanair expects lower ticket prices

At the beginning of its financial year, Europe's largest low-cost airline Ryanair earned significantly less than in the previous year due to lower ticket prices. The company is also cautious for the second quarter.

Pricing is difficult and ticket prices are likely to be significantly lower than a year ago, the Irish company announced in Dublin. The airline had previously expected prices to remain the same or rise slightly.

In the first quarter of the past financial year, ticket prices fell by an average of 15 percent, it said. In contrast to the previous year, some of the Easter holidays with their high travel demand fell in March. The airline also had to grant customers higher discounts than planned.

The bottom line for the three months to the end of June was a surplus of 360 million euros. A year earlier, the airline had made a profit of just under 663 million euros.

More passengers - but less aircraft utilization

In the months from April to June, Ryanair counted around 55.5 million passengers, ten percent more than in the previous year. The company intends to increase the number of passengers in the current financial year by eight percent to 198 to 200 million passengers.

In the three months to the end of June, the utilization of aircraft capacity deteriorated from 95 to 94 percent, and turnover fell slightly by one percent to 3.63 billion euros.

The result for the first half of the year now depends on bookings and earnings in August and September. The management around Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary did not want to give a precise profit outlook.

The share came under pressure in pre-market trading this morning. The low-cost airline had missed even the most pessimistic estimates and was now much more pessimistic than before about ticket prices in the current quarter, wrote analyst Harry Gowers from the bank JPMorgan. Accordingly, market expectations for profits are likely to fall significantly.