By Conor Humphries
DUBLIN, Jan 26 (Reuters) – Ryanair nudged up on Monday its forecast for average fare growth after bookings for 2026 got off to a strong start and predicted profits for the year to the end of March would jump by around one-third.
But the Irish airline, Europe’s largest by passenger numbers, said fare increases later in the year would be modest and warned of possible industrial action.
Ryanair shares were down 3% at 1250 GMT, with a Citi note describing the results as strong “but not quite matching high expectations”.
BEST-EVER WEEKS OF BOOKINGS
Ryanair said it had seen two of its best-ever weeks of bookings in January and airfares were modestly up.
“We think we will recover not only all of the 7% that we saw decline last year, but one or two percentage points on top of that,” Chief Financial Officer Neil Sorahan said in an interview.
As a result, Ryanair is “cautiously guiding” pre-exceptional after-tax profit to land between 2.13 billion euros and 2.23 billion euros ($2.5 billion-$2.6 billion).
That’s far better than the 1.6 billion euros it booked last year and in line with a 2.22 billion euro forecast from an LSEG poll of analysts.
But Chief Executive Michael O’Leary later told an analyst call that fare increases in the new financial year, which begins on April 1, would likely be modest with low-single-digit growth. Last week he said fares could increase by 2-4%.
CEO WARNS OF POSSIBLE INDUSTRIAL ACTION
O’Leary also warned of possible industrial action in Germany and Belgium later this year as the airline renegotiates labour agreements with pilots and cabin crew.
“Where we can do sensible deals, we’ll do sensible deals, and where we can’t, we will simply reduce capacity, we’ll take strikes and off you go,” he said.
Meanwhile, key supplier Boeing is doing a “terrific job”, with delivery delays and quality control issues appearing to be a thing of the past, O’Leary said.
The last four 737 MAX 200 aircraft of Ryanair’s current order may arrive ahead of schedule in the coming weeks, while O’Leary said he was “very optimistic” the first 15 of 150 new 737 MAX 10s would arrive on schedule ahead of summer 2027.
For the final three months of 2025, Ryanair earned an after-tax profit of 115 million euros, excluding an exceptional 85 million euro charge related to a fine from the Italian competition authority in December, the airline said.
O’Leary said he was “highly confident” that the full 256 million euro fine would be overturned on appeal.
($1 = 0.8440 euros)
(Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
