Ryanair Holdings plc (NASDAQ:RYAAY) Q1 2025 Results Conference Call July 22, 2024 5:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Michael O’Leary - Group Chief Executive Officer
Neil Sorahan - Group Chief Financial Officer
Edward Wilson - Ryanair DAC Chief Executive Officer
Tracey McCann - Ryanair DAC Chief Financial Officer
Juliusz Komorek - Group Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer; Company Secretary
Conference Call Participants
Stephen Furlong - Davy
Jarrod Castle - UBS
Alex Irving - Bernstein
Harry Gowers - JPMorgan
Dudley Shanley - Goodbody
Jaime Rowbotham - Deutsche Bank
James Hollins - BNP Paribas
Sathish Sivakumar - Citi
Savanthi Syth - Raymond James
Duane Pfennigwerth - Evercore ISI
Muneeba Kayani - Bank of America
Gerald Khoo - Liberum
Alex Paterson - Peel Hunt
Johannes Braun - Stifel
Michael O’Leary
Okay. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Ryanair Q1 Results Conference Call. You’ll have seen this morning, we released our Q1 results, together with an MD&A and a slide presentation on the ryanair.com website. I, therefore, won’t read the press release, but I’ll touch on a couple of key themes.
We reported Q1 profit of EUR360 million. That’s 46% down on last year’s Q1 EUR663 million. Despite strong traffic growth, traffic is up 10% in the quarter to 55.5 million customers, but this has been offset by weaker-than-expected airfares, some of which is impacted by the first half of Easter falling into the prior year Q4.
Nevertheless, traffic growth is strong, up 10% to EUR55 million, but it’s only strong at a price and we are having to repeatedly stimulate fairs and bookings and the closing fares and performance are close-in bookings has been disappointing and materially weaker than we’ve expected, particularly on the way into the peak months of July, August and September.
We have 156 Gamechangers in the fleet at the end of June. That is 20 aircraft less than we had originally budgeted. We are seeing record summer scheduled bookings but at lower prices. We are continuing to sign up multiple approved OTA partnerships, which would protect consumers and ensure that consumers get the lowest Ryanair’s lowest airfares while we get the consumers correct e-mail and payment details.
We continue to extend our fuel hedges at attractive prices. We’re now 75% hedged for FY ‘25 at about $79 a barrel, saving ourselves over EUR450 million in the current year. And we are now extending our fuel hedges for FY ‘26 to 45% of our needs at about $78 a barrel. And as of Friday, we have completed just over half of the EUR700 million share buyback. Touching briefly on our continuing environmental commitment.