Ryanair Holdings (RYAAY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2022

May 16, 2022 5:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ryanair Full Year Results broadcast. I'm Michael O’Leary, the Group CEO of Ryanair. With me this morning is Neil Sorahan, the Group CFO. We're happy to communicate to you this morning our full year results for the year ended March 2022.

Over the last 12 months, we reported a loss of €355 million, a significant improvement on the full year loss of just over €1 billion the previous year. All of these losses are substantially due to the impact of COVID on our business over the last 2 years. We've covered that in some detail in previous announcements. So what I'd like to do is touch briefly on some key points, highlights of the last year and obviously, our guidance going forward for the next 12 months.

So I think some highlights there last year. We're proud that our climate protection rating has improved from a B- to a B as a part of a multi-year strategy to get to an A type of rating, which would make us the world leader in environmental and sustainable air travel. Sustainalytics has recently ranked Ryanair, the number one EU airline for environmental and social governance performance. Our traffic has recovered strongly to 97 million passengers. But that's still 35% behind or almost 50 million passengers behind where we were pre-COVID. Average fares in the last 12 months have fallen by 27% to just €27, again, due to the impact of COVID, and towards the back end of the year, Omicron and Ukraine. The business continues to be, while we're recovering, that recovering is fragile because of the impact on a much closer in booking profile, the impact of negative news flows on that booking profile.

However, we continue to invest for the future. At the year-end, we've taken delivery of 61 737 Gamechanger aircraft. These aircraft carry 4% more passengers, but burn 16% less fuel. And that's, I think, something that's going to be absolutely critical to our operating operations and to our cost going forward for the next couple of years, particularly as oil prices have risen post the Ukraine invasion to record levels. We have never seen so many growth opportunities out there.

This summer, we've announced 15 new bases across Europe, and we'll operate more than 770 new routes. I'm pleased to say that our team, thanks to the efforts of our team, we're very well hedged on fuel -- we have about 80% of our fuel bought forward through hedges or caps through March of 2023 and that prices of between $60 -- mid-$60 to mid-$70 per barrel that are significantly below current spot prices. And this gives us, Ryanair, a huge competitive advantage as we recover and grow across Europe over the next 12 months.