By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN (Reuters) -Ryanair on Monday struck a cautious tone about travel demand for the rest of the year and cut its passenger growth forecast due to Boeing delivery delays after its quarterly profit flew past pre-pandemic levels.
The Irish airline, Europe's largest by passenger numbers, posted a 663 million euro ($737.26 million) after-tax profit for the three months ending in June after traffic rose by 11% year-on-year and average fares jumped by 42%.
That was a four-fold increase on the 170 million euros a year ago when air travel began to take off following COVID-19 lockdowns and beat the previous high for the first quarter of its fiscal year, 397 million euros in 2017.
A company poll of analysts had expected a 620 million euro profit.
Ryanair, which flew a record number of monthly passengers both in May and June, said demand looked robust for the rest of the summer with fares expected to rise year-on-year by a low double digit percentage between July and September.
However it noted a softening in close-in fares in late June and early July and Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said the low cost carrier would likely have to stimulate demand through lower prices this winter when it will have 25% more seats to fill than in 2019.
"We're concerned about the impact of these macroeconomic trends. Consumer price inflation, higher interest rates, higher mortgage rates might affect consumer spending in the second half of the year," O'Leary said in an analyst presentation.
He added that this would ultimately be good for Ryanair's growth because customers will keep flying but become more price sensitive.
Ryanair said it remained cautiously optimistic about a modest increase in full year profit and that it hoped to be in a position to provide more meaningful guidance in November.
However, it now expects traffic in the year to March 2024 to grow by 9% to around 183.5 million compared to the 185 million originally expected, citing Boeing delivery delays.
The planemaker has indicated that some new aircraft deliveries may be delayed from April 2024 to June 2024, O'Leary said, adding that Ryanair was working closely with Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems to ensure no further delays beyond that.
Chief Financial Officer Neil Sorahan told Reuters he was not as concerned about the delays as he was a few months ago, that Boeing had improved significantly and deliveries were more recently hit by factors outside the planemaker's control.
($1 = 0.8993 euros)
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Kirsten Donovan)
