Easyjet sees rise in passengers
Budget airline Easyjet has reported a 28% rise in June passenger traffic from a year ago.
The Luton-based low-cost carrier has seen its shares tumble during 2004 after profit warnings and a rise in aviation fuel costs.
Load factor – the number of passengers as a proportion of the seats available – was 86%, the same as last year.
Ray Webster, Easyjet chief executive, said: “We continue to capitalise on our market and financial strengths.”
“Last month we began new services to Cologne, announced that we would base a further three new aircraft at Berlin (bringing the total to nine) and added five new routes from London Gatwick,” he added.
Rivals
Earlier this week Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Easyjet’s founder, was linked with a possible move to take it private.
In June shares in Easyjet plunged by 15% after the carrier said high fuel prices could cut its profits this year by about £4m ($7m).
Easyjet is also facing competition from low-cost rivals and from traditional carriers who are cutting their fares.
The company’s rolling 12-month revenue to end-June was £1.03bn, up 21%, and its rolling 12-month passenger total and load factor was 22.9 million and 84%.
By: bmi-star - 8th July 2004 at 19:05
Great news for EZY
By: LBARULES - 8th July 2004 at 18:07
Ryanair reporting very similar, Taken from Reuters.co.uk
Ryanair passenger traffic soars
Mon 5 July, 2004 15:02
DUBLIN (Reuters) – Irish no-frills airline Ryanair has logged a better-than-expected 24 percent rise in June passenger traffic, spurring hopes that downward pressure on fares might be less severe than envisaged.
Europe’s biggest budget airline said on Monday it carried 2.27 million passengers in June and that its load factor — the proportion of seats filled — rose to 87 percent of capacity from 79 percent in the same month the previous year.
“These figures are in line with our previous guidance of increased load factors and declining yields through the summer,” a Ryanair spokeswoman said.
Analysts described the figures, which were ahead of expectations, as encouraging.
“I think this summer we can expect yield (average fare) erosion to come in at the lower end of the current guidance of between 5-10 percent,” said Stuart Draper at Dolmen Securities.
“As a result, there’s scope for upward revisions to this year’s earnings forecasts if this trend continues,” he added.
Ryanair has been slashing ticket prices to fill seats on its rapidly expanding network amid fierce competition.
Last month the carrier said it expected fares to fall between 5 percent and 10 percent in the first half of its current year, which began April 1, and between 10 percent and 20 percent in the second half.
Draper said evidence of fuller planes meant Ryanair would not need to cut its ticket prices so severely.
The company’s shares were up 2.35 percent at 4.80 euros on a mildly negative Dublin bourse, down from an earlier intra-day high of 4.92 euros.
Ryanair said last month it was happy with the volume of bookings it had so far for the summer, a quarter in which it traditionally makes nearly half its annual profit.
By: MANAIRPORTMAD - 8th July 2004 at 16:38
Cool, good for easyjet!…and who said low-costs are going doowwwn!?
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July 8, 2004 at 1:39 am