Earnings call transcript: Ryanair’s Q1 2025 profit dips, stock slides 5.3%

Published 19/05/2025, 06:52
 Earnings call transcript: Ryanair’s Q1 2025 profit dips, stock slides 5.3%

Ryanair Holdings PLC reported a 16% decline in full-year profit after tax to €1,610 million, despite a 4% revenue increase to €13,950 million. The company’s stock fell 5.3% following the announcement, closing at $21.78. Despite the immediate market reaction, InvestingPro data shows the stock trading near its 52-week high of $25.63, with a market capitalization of $26.5 billion. The company maintains a "GREAT" financial health score of 3.33 out of 5, suggesting strong underlying fundamentals despite short-term earnings pressure.

Key Takeaways

  • Full-year profit after tax decreased by 16% to €1,610 million.
  • Revenue rose by 4% to €13,950 million.
  • Stock price dropped by 5.3% in reaction to the earnings report.
  • Traffic increased by 9% to 200 million passengers.
  • Ryanair plans to expand its fleet with new Boeing aircraft.

Company Performance

Ryanair’s financial performance for the fiscal year was mixed. Despite an increase in revenue and traffic, the company faced a significant drop in profit due to declining average fares and constrained growth from aircraft delivery delays. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company holds more cash than debt on its balance sheet and maintains strong cash flows to cover interest payments. With a P/E ratio of 13.12 and robust revenue growth of 5.34% over the last twelve months, Ryanair continues to lead as Europe’s lowest-cost airline, maintaining a strong competitive position with a BBB+ credit rating and significant cash reserves.

Financial Highlights

  • Revenue: €13,950 million, up 4% year-over-year.
  • Profit after tax: €1,610 million, down 16% year-over-year.
  • Passenger traffic: 200 million, up 9% year-over-year.
  • Average fares: €46 per passenger, down 7%.

Outlook & Guidance

Ryanair expects a modest 3% traffic growth to 206 million passengers in FY 2026, with plans to mitigate the 7% decline in average fares. The company is cautiously optimistic about profit growth, despite anticipated unit cost inflation. Future growth will be supported by the expansion of its fleet and strategic capacity allocation.

Executive Commentary

CFO Neil Sorensen emphasized Ryanair’s position as the "lowest fare, lowest cost EU airline," highlighting its cost advantage over competitors. CEO Michael O’Leary noted that European short-haul capacity will remain constrained until 2030, impacting the airline’s growth potential.

Risks and Challenges

  • Boeing delivery delays could hinder fleet expansion and growth plans.
  • Potential trade tariffs between the US and EU pose a risk to aircraft costs.
  • Ongoing airline consolidation and market saturation may affect competitive dynamics.
  • Macroeconomic pressures, including fuel price volatility, could impact profitability.

Ryanair remains focused on maintaining its market leadership and cost advantage while navigating industry challenges. The company’s strategic initiatives and strong balance sheet position it well for future growth, despite current headwinds. For deeper insights into Ryanair’s financial health and growth prospects, InvestingPro subscribers can access 8 additional exclusive ProTips and a comprehensive Pro Research Report, offering detailed analysis of what truly matters for investment decisions.

Full transcript - Ryanair Holdings PLC (RYA) Q4 2025:

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Ryanair’s full year results investor presentation. As you’ll have seen this morning on the Ryanair.com website, we’ve reported a full year profit after tax of €1,610,000,000 compared to a prior year profit after tax of EUR 1,920,000,000.00, principally due to traffic growth of 9% to a record 200,000,000 passengers, but at 7% lower fares. The highlight for the last twelve months is notably traffic has grown 9% to a record 200,000,000 passengers despite repeated Boeing delivery delays. Ryanair has become the first passenger airline to carry 200,000,000 international passengers in one year.

Average fares fell by 7% and ancillary revenue is, however, has held up well, up 1%. Cost per passenger over the year has been flat as the cost gap has widened materially over competitor EU airlines. As of the April, we had 181 b seven thirty seven game changers in our six eighteen aircraft fleet. We’ve launched over 160 new routes for summer twenty twenty five. Over the last year, we bought back and canceled over 7% of our issued share capital.

And we’ve reported a final dividend of €0.227 per share, which will be payable in September subject to AGM approval. Turning to some detail on this, won’t dwell or spend a lot of time on it. I think the key feature of last year’s results was the 7% decline in airfares, but this drove strong traffic growth of 9% to just over 200,000,000 passengers. Operating costs, our key metric, were in line with our expectations. They rose nine percent to EUR 12,400,000,000.0 as fuel hedge savings offset higher staff and other costs due in part to the Boeing delivery delays.

However, the key metric, which was operating costs were flat on a per passenger basis. Our FY 2026 fuel is almost 85 hedged at $76 per barrel, a 4% saving on the $79 per barrel average cost in 2020 in FY 2025. And I’m pleased to say we’ve also moved on recent weakness in the oil markets to hedge 36% of our FY ’20 ’20 ’7 oil needs at just under $66 per barrel, which would be a 13% saving on our FY ’20 ’20 ’6 hedge rate. We think this hedging and this aggressive hedging helps to derisk our group from fuel price volatility over the next twelve months. Our balance sheet remains one of the strongest in the industry.

We have a BBB plus credit rating. At the March 31, the year end, our gross cash balance was almost CHF 4,000,000,000, but this was somewhat artificially boosted by delayed aircraft CapEx into FY 2026. Year end net cash was CHF 1,300,000,000.0. As you know, we’re preparing to repay almost CHF 2,100,000,000.0 of maturing bonds over the next twelve months from our own internal cash resources. I think that’s a key strength of Ryanair.

We’re paying down debt to effectively zero over the next two years, while most of our competitors remain exposed to expensive long term financing and rising aircraft lease costs. Turning briefly to the fleet, As I said, we now have one hundred and eighty one seven thirty seven-eight 200 game changers in our six eighteen aircraft fleet. We took delivery of five new aircraft from Boeing during the month of April. This will restrict our FY 2026 growth to just 3%. We expect to carry about two zero six million passengers.

We’re confident, however, that the remaining 29 game changers in our two ten aircraft order book will deliver well ahead of summer twenty six, and this will enable us to catch up with delayed traffic growth into FY twenty seven. Boeing still expects the MAX 10 aircraft to be certified in late twenty twenty five, And so we continue to plan for the timely delivery of our first fifteen MAX 10 aircraft in the spring of twenty twenty seven with 300 more of these aircraft, which remember offer us 20% more seats, but burn 20% less fuel due for delivery to us by March 2034. We expect European short haul capacity will remain heavily constrained for the next few years, certainly out to 02/1930, as many as Europe’s Airbus Operators are still working through Pratt and Whitney engine repairs. The two big aircraft manufacturers Airbus and Boeing are way behind on aircraft deliveries and EU airline consolidation continues. These capacity constraints combined with our very substantial and widening cost advantage, our strong balance sheet, our low cost aircraft orders and our industry leading operational resilience will, we believe, facilitate Ryanair’s controlled profitable growth to 300,000,000 passengers per annum by FY 2024.

I want to touch briefly on the ownership and control issue. As you will be aware, we carried out a review of our ONC restrictions in a manner that continues to ensure our compliance with EU regulations. Following very positive feedback from both regulators and investors, the Board resolved in March that it was in the best interest of Ryanair and our shareholders as a whole to discontinue the prohibition on non EU nationals acquiring ordinary shares with immediate effect. We do continue to apply voting restrictions on non EU nationals. Consequently, both EU and non EU nationals are now free to invest in Ryanair Holdings plc via ordinary shares listed on Euronext Dublin or ADRs and NASDAQ.

And we want to acknowledge that these changes have encouraged MSCI as recently as this week to confirm that Ryanair will now be included in the MSCI World Index at the May, an index inclusion we very much welcome. I just want to mention briefly Howard Miller. Howard has chosen not to seek reelection at the upcoming AGM when he will have served nine years as a nonexecutive director of the board of Ryanair. Howard served as CEO from 1992 a CFO rather from 1992 to 2014, a period of twenty two years and as an NED for the last nine years. And I think it you couldn’t understate his contribution over that period of time.

Without Howard, Michael and the contribution they’ve made since Ryanair first joined the stock market in in 1997, Ryanair would not be where it is today. And so I want to personally thank Howard and Michael for that contribution. Turning to outlook. We expect FY 2026 traffic to grow by just 3% to two zero six million passengers due to delayed Boeing deliveries. Following a successful year of flat unit costs, we do expect very modest unit cost inflation in FY 2026 as the delivery of more game changers, strong jet fuel hedging and cost control across our group airlines helped to offset increased route and ATC charges and higher enviro costs.

To date, summer twenty five demand is strong with peak fares trending moderately ahead of prior year. Q1 fares will benefit from having the full Easter holiday in the month of April, in the prior year only half of Easter was in April, and therefore a very weak prior year comps. And so the Q1 fares are on track to finish in mid high teen percent ahead of Q1 FY 2025. The Q1 results as a result will be very strong. With limited visibility, we’re currently expecting Q2 pricing to recover some, but not all of the 7% decline we experienced in prior year Q2.

The final half ’1 outcome is, however, heavily dependent on close in bookings and peak summer yields as we move through the months of June, July, August and September. And as is normal at this time of the year, we have zero H2 visibility. Therefore, while we cautiously expect to recover most, but not all of last year’s 7% fair decline, this should lead to a reasonable net profit growth in FY twenty twenty six. It’s still far too early, however, to provide any meaningful guidance. The final FY twenty twenty six outcome remains heavily exposed to adverse external developments, including as we’ve recently seen the risk of tariff wars, the impact of that on macroeconomic shocks, oil prices, conflict escalation in Ukraine and The Middle East, and of course, European ATC mismanagement and short staffing during the peak summer season.

And with that, I’m going to hand over to Neil Sorensen, our CFO. Neil, any comments and then we go to end Q and A.

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: Michael, thank you very much and good morning everybody. Welcome to our full year results presentation. Ryanair is the lowest fare lowest cost EU airline. The key advantage we have is our cost gap between everybody else and that is widening and will continue to widen over coming years. We’re number one for traffic and will grow to two zero six million passengers in the coming year FY 2026.

We saw a record increase in our customer satisfaction scores last year to 86% as we continue to deliver on on time performance and reliability for our customers and for our teams. Our 300 Max 10 order book will underpin a decade of growth and this coupled with our financial strength and low costs, we believe makes us the long term winner. Just a snapshot of where we are at the moment, 93 basis, six eighteen aircraft this summer, which will facilitate the growth to two zero six million passengers in the coming financial year. We’ve three thirty aircraft on order and that will allow for a profitable growth 300,000,000 passengers between now and FY24. Key slide as always in the deck, as you can see the cost advantage that we enjoy over our competitors is only getting better, that cost gap is widening.

You can see the advantage on such lines as the interest income line where we’re reporting interest income, our competitors are reporting interest expense, airports, route charges, etcetera, we’re beating everybody else. On the results themselves, we saw a 9% increase in traffic to just over 200,000,000 passengers becoming as Michael already said, the first European airline ever to carry in excess of 200,000,000 passengers. Load factors remained flat at 94%. The growth was stimulated by 7% traffic sorry, 7% lower fares at €46 per passenger and that coupled with a solid performance in ancillaries meant that we saw a 4% increase in revenue to just over €13,950,000,000 Costs as expected rose in line with traffic, up 9% to €12,390,000,000 and we reported a profit this morning of just over 1,610,000,000.00 while at the upper end of our guidance range of EUR 1,550,000,000.00 to 1,610,000,000.00 is still 16% down on last year. Our balance sheet is rock solid fortress balance sheet.

We finished the year with just under EUR 4,000,000,000 in gross cash, 1,300,000,000.0 in net cash. While that was somewhat flattered by the timing of CapEx into FY 2026, it still was a very strong performance after spending EUR 1,600,000,000.0 on capital expenditure and returning $1,900,000,000 to our shareholders, including a $1,500,000,000 share buyback over the course of the past financial year. With that, I’m going to hand over to Michael to take us through current developments.

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: Thanks, Neil. So as I said, we’re the first EU airline to carry 200,000,000 guests in one year. We are seeing slower FY ’20 ’20 ’6 growth, traffic up 3% to two zero six million due entirely to Boeing delivery delays, but the Boeing delays are improving. We are seeing robust summer twenty five demand across the network. Forward bookings are strong.

Pricing is above last year, but not sure yet whether we’ll recover. We do expect to recover some, but probably not all of last year’s 7% fair decline. We are operating in a marketplace in Europe with constrained capacity. And therefore, we’re engaged in to some degree of churn of our own capacity. We’re allocating new aircraft and growth to those regions and airports who are cutting taxes and incentivizing growth.

Fuel hedges, think, are going to be a major story for the our sector for the next twelve months. We were 78% hedged in FY ’25 at $79 a barrel. We’re now 84% hedged in FY ’26 at $76 a barrel. And we’ve taken advantage of recent weaknesses in, forward rates to hedge 36% of FY ’27 at just $66 a barrel. We’re pleased this morning to announce a follow on $750,000,000 share buyback.

We expect that will start from May 2025 and will run for up to twelve months. And I think the recent board decision to relax the ownership, restrictions, which now means that EU and non EU nationals can buy both Ryanair Ordinaries and ADRs and has paved the way for inclusion in the MSCI World Index at the May is a very notable development. On Boeing, the situation is getting better. This summer, we’ll have six hundred and eighteen seven three sevens in the fleet, including a hundred and eighty one seven thirty seven eight two hundred MAX game changer aircraft. We have been working with Boeing to accelerate the remaining 29 game changer for summer twenty six.

We will take a significant number of those aircraft before the end of calendar twenty twenty five so that we have them in place and we can plan with certainty for summer twenty six. I’m pleased to say thanks to the work that, Kelly Ortenberg, Stephanie Pope and their team are doing. The quality and the timeliness of recent deliveries continues to improve. We got all five aircraft in that were due in April either arrived on time or early. Boeing still expect the MAX 10 certification to take place in late twenty twenty five, and so we’re still planning for our first fifteen MAX 10s to arrive in the spring of twenty twenty seven.

And that would be a very exciting development. It’ll be the first of 300 MAX 10 aircraft we expect to take up to March 2034, And those aircraft have 20% more seats. They burn 20 less fuel, and they will transform Ryanair’s cost advantage and leadership over every other airline in Europe. We set out here how we now see the orders will roll in. And as you can see, reasonably controlled growth to 300,000,000 passengers by FY 2024.

So as Neil alluded, we have strong shareholder returns. We bought back and canceled EUR 77,000,000 in FY 2025 at an average price of EUR 19 just over EUR 19 per share. That brings to 36% the issued share capital that we bought back and canceled since 02/2008. We paid a €400,000,000 dividend in 2024. There’s a €480,000,000 dividend likely to be paid in 2025 subject to AGM approval.

The follow on GBP $750,000,000 share buyback starts in May 2025. We’re able to fund this because of the Boeing delivery delays, which means our short term cash is has been boosted. And I’ll hand back to Neil for the 2026 outlook. Neil? Thank you, Michael.

Well, just based on what we

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: know at this point in time, we’ve six eighteen aircraft in the fleet. So that will enable us to grow now by 3% to two zero six million passengers in line with what we guided back with the Q3s, but still slower than we would have hoped prior to then. We’re seeing strong summer demand, as Michael has already said, all across our network. Q1, which benefits from a full Easter in April just gone and from weak prior year comps is going to be a solid quarter for the group. We still don’t have huge visibility into Q2 at this point in time, so it all hinge on the close in fares and bookings for the all important Q2.

But we would be at this stage cautiously expecting that we’ll recover most, if not all, and I emphasize not all of the 7% for a decline that we saw in the prior year FY 2025. This of course depends on whether there’s any economic downturns into the second half of the year and beyond due to tariffs or other macroeconomic shocks. We’re not seeing them at the moment, but you can’t rule them out and that could have an adverse impact on demand and fares into the second half of the year. We’re only guiding modest unit cost inflation this year. We’ve good cost control across the business.

Our swaps are locked in at attractive levels, but we are seeing double digit increases in rates for route charges and ATC. We’re also into the first year now of no ETS allowances and we’re into the first year of the SAF blend mandates. So we would expect to see modest unit cost inflation over the course of the next twelve months. So looking at all of that, what does it mean? We would expect to see reasonable profit growth over the course of the next year.

It’s just too early, however, to put numbers on it at this point in time. This of course depends on, as I said, no adverse shocks in the system. And then when you look beyond that, we’ve got the lowest cost of any airline in Europe, the cost gap between us and everybody else is widening. We’ve got a fortress balance sheet. We’re returning funds to our shareholders and we’ve got a low cost order book, which is going to enable Ryanair to grow profitably, we believe, to 300,000,000 passengers over the next ten years.

Thank you.

Analyst/Interviewer: Michael, Neil, good morning. Starting with your full year results, you reported PAT of 1,610,000,000.00, down 16%. What were the key drivers?

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: Yes. Well, we saw a 9% increase in traffic over the course of the year despite all of the the Boeing delivery delays and this enabled us as as we already said to become the first European airline to carry in excess of 200,000,000 passengers in a single year. Now this growth was stimulated by a 7% reductions in fares. We didn’t have a full Easter in Q1. We didn’t have an Easter in Q4.

As we all remember, the OTAs boycotted Ryanair in the spring of last year, which led to some softer close in pricing into the peak summer. And then we saw consumers, not an issue now, but in the first half of last year struggling with higher for longer interest rates and inflation measures. When we turn to the ancillary revenue, they put in a solid performance last year, rising 10% ahead of traffic growth of 9%, potentially just over €4,700,000,000 Costs, as previously guided, we’re very pleased about this. Saw our unit costs come in flat on a full year basis last year.

Analyst/Interviewer: Have you advanced your fuel hedge cover?

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: Yes, we have. As you see, we’ve taken advantage of the recent oil price tips to lock in very significant savings with ATE’s five percent hedged into FY 2026 at $76 per barrel, about a 4% saving per barrel compared to our FY ’20 ’20 ’5 hedge. And we’re now 40% hedged for the first half of FY 2027 at about $66 a barrel, about a 13% further fuel cost saving on the prior year.

Analyst/Interviewer: And moving on to your balance sheet, what are the highlights of Ryanair’s strong balance sheet?

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: Yes, it’s a fortress balance sheet. We’ve got an industry leading BBB plus rating from both Fitch and S and P. We finished the year with very strong liquidity with gross cash of just under €4,000,000,000 and net cash of €1,300,000,000 despite €1,600,000,000 in CapEx and €1,500,000,000 in share buybacks last year. We also further enhanced our liquidity in March just gone where we increased our revolving credit facility from €750,000,000 to €1,100,000,000 and extended it out to 2,030. I think uniquely Ryanair owns all of its aircraft.

We’ve got five ninety plus 737s fully unencumbered at the balance sheet and this puts us in a very unique position at a time when our competitors are out there raising expensive bonds, raising expensive debt and leases. We’re planning to repay our maturing bonds over the next year out of our own cash. We’re reporting net interest income at a time when our competitors are reporting net interest expense.

Analyst/Interviewer: Do you still plan to pay down the CHF $850,000,000 bond maturing in September with cash?

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: Yes, we do. And the principal reason is that’s why we’ve been building up cash over the last twelve months. The cost to refinance those bonds at the moment, even for Ryanair with our balance sheet, be about 3.5 percent. So a significant increase in financing costs. We also, therefore, plan to repay the 1,200,000,000.0 bond that’s due in May 2026 from our own cash resources unless there’s a big fall in interest rates between now and May 2026.

Analyst/Interviewer: What is FY ’26 CapEx guidance?

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: Yeah. As we already said, last year’s CapEx was somewhat flattered by the timing of of aircraft delivery, so that now moves into FY ’26. So we’re looking at a number in and around 2,000,000,000. It could be a bit more than that. It very much depends on the timing of aircraft deliveries.

It depends on whether we make some moves in relation to engine shops or indeed adding additional spares into the fleet over the coming months. So the number may move slightly, but at the moment, we’re looking at 2,000,000,000 possibly a bit above that.

Analyst/Interviewer: Moving on to shareholder returns. You announced a follow on CHF $750,000,000 buyback this morning.

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: Why? Well, firstly, we have more cash on the balance sheet at year end than we expected, primarily due to the twelve month delay in the delivery of Boeing aircraft. We will start that buyback in later this week. It’s likely to run for about twelve months, so it’ll probably run out to about April of twenty twenty six. And I think it’s what’s important is that when it’s completed, Reiner will have returned more than €10,000,000,000 including dividends to shareholders.

When is the next ordinary dividends?

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: Yeah. Well, having paid an interim dividend in February just gone of about 240,000,000, we’re now looking at a €22.7 per share, $240,000,000 dividend after the AGM subject to shareholder approval. And then of course based on the €1,610,000,000 profitability today and our 25% payout ratio, we would anticipate somewhere in the region of about 400,000,000 being paid out over the course of the next twelve months or so.

Analyst/Interviewer: Shifting to fleet and growth. What is the latest update on game changer deliveries? Well, we got the five scheduled delivery during the

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: month of April. That brings us up to 181 game changers in the fleet at the April out of a total fleet of 618 aircraft for the summer twenty twenty five. That certainty, however, does mean we can plan for summer twenty twenty five now without the constant chopping and changing of schedules we suffered in summer summer twenty twenty four due to the Boeing delivery delays. The quality and the timing of Boeing’s production is improving. All May deliveries were either on time or early.

And we are growing increasingly confident that the last 29 game changers will be will take delivery of those well in advance of summer twenty twenty six. We, in fact, we expect to take the majority of them before the end of this calendar year, before December, working closely with Boeing so that we can be absolutely certain we have that capacity, which we will need to recover that growth into summer twenty six, FY 2027.

Analyst/Interviewer: Is there any update on MAX 10 certification?

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: There’s no real change. Boeing continue to expect certification somewhere towards the back end of this calendar year 2025. We then expect them to start producing the aircraft very soon thereafter. So that gives us, you know, confidence and we’re planning on the basis that we’ll receive the first fifteen aircraft as contractors before the summer of twenty twenty seven.

Analyst/Interviewer: What is your view on intra European capacity over the next few years?

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: We think capacity was gonna certainly, short haul capacity will continue to be heavily constrained out to 2030 due to the Pratt and Whitney engine repairs on the Airbus fleet, which is the predominant aircraft in Europe, manufacturer delivery delays from Airbus and Boeing that are running years behind their delivery the possibility of tariffs, but also M and A. Ryanair itself is slowing down our growth because of Boeing delivery delays, we’d only grow by 3% this year, which will be our slowest rate of growth in many, many years. And airline consolidation is continuing. Ita has now been acquired by Lufthansa or at least a significant has control of Ita. And TAP, we expect, will be the next legacy airline to get involved in M and A.

Analyst/Interviewer: You mentioned Ryanair has only grown 3% this year. Where is this capacity being allocated?

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: Yes. We’ve scarce capacity, as you said, only 3% growth. So we’re rewarding regions and airports where they’re removing the likes of aviation taxes or stimulating growth steals with Ryanair over the course of the next number of years. I’d point to the likes of regional Italy into Sweden over into Hungary and indeed some of the Polish airports where we’re growing on the back of the initiatives that they’ve taken. We will hopefully catch up some of the growth that we’ve lost this year with the two ten game changers in the fleet.

It’s interesting this summer, we’ve only got 160 new routes and no new bases. But I would hope as we get to two fifteen million passengers in FY 2027, we recover some more of the opportunities that are available to us.

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: On tariffs, what impact will tariffs have on Ryanair’s aircraft deliveries? We don’t think it’ll have much impact, but it’s too soon to call. We don’t know yet whether they’ll happen or not. We welcome the ninety day pause period, which runs to the July. And clearly, the experience with the Chinese trade deal recently announced is the threat of tariffs is hopefully receding.

Clearly, Europe and The US need to do a deal on trade. We would continue to count or to call for the 1979 civil aviation aircraft agreement, which exempt all civil aircraft and parts and sims from tariffs will be respected or incorporated in any tariffs. It’s to the benefit of U. S. Manufacturing, Boeing and European manufacturing Airbus.

And really nobody, I think none of the manufacturers want to get involved in an aircraft tariff war between The US and Europe. So we would call for the 1979 agreement to remain in place.

Analyst/Interviewer: Will Ryanair cancel bombing orders if tariffs are applied?

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: Look, we have to reserve our right to cancel if we saw a significant increase in the cost of our aircraft. As things stand, we’re very much off the field. We’ve got an agreed fixed price with Boeing, so it’s really more of a Boeing supplier issue than it is a Ryanair issue. That said, we will happily work with any of our suppliers to help them reduce the impact of tariffs on their business as they move forward. But I think we have to be cautious of the fact that we do have a 300 aircraft order in place with Boeing.

Our working assumption and our plans at this point in time is that we’ll exercise 150 options that we already have left remaining. But if we were to see Airbus aircraft, if we were to see Comac aircraft coming in significantly cheaper than Boeing, then we would have to look at all the options available to us. But hopefully, tariffs won’t come to pass.

Analyst/Interviewer: Moving on to ownership and control. You lifted the prohibition on non EU nationals buying ordinary shares in March. Is there any update on index inclusion?

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: Well, clear there is. MSCI announced last week that Ryanair were going to be included in the index were in their world index at the May. We welcome that inclusion. We think that will be the first of a number of index inclusions that Ryanair will qualify over the next six months. We do believe we meet the criteria for index inclusion in other indices, but it’s not our call.

We are working with other indexes to ensure that Reinhard Holdings is included in their index, hopefully, before the end of this year.

Analyst/Interviewer: Let’s see. On ESG, what are Reinhard’s ESG highlights?

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: Yes, was another good year. We continue to execute on the plan. We took in 30 more game changers, 4% more seats, 16% less fuel and CO2. And we accelerated the retrofit of Scimitar winglets onto our older NG aircraft. Again, 1.5% fuel burn saving and 6% quieter.

So all of that helped us retain our industry leading ESG ratings. We saw the likes of the CDP A minus MSCI A rating and indeed for the third year in a row, we were rated number one large cap airline by Sustainalytics. We were also pleased that back in the autumn, the science based target initiative SPTI validated our 2,031 midterm targets of significantly reducing CO2 per passenger kilometer at 50 grams of CO two, which is a 27% reduction. And of course, we’ll continue to execute on these credentials with another 29 aircraft coming into the fleet over the next number of months.

Analyst/Interviewer: Moving on to outlook. How are summer twenty five bookings and fares tracking?

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: We’re seeing robust summer twenty five or peak summer twenty five demand across the network. Bookings currently for the remainder of the summer running about one percent ahead of prior year. Now we’re balancing that by maybe closing off some cheap seat availability. Q1 fares have undoubtedly been boosted though by having the full two halves of Easter in the month of April and weak prior year comps. And I think we will report strong Q1 results, I think, in late July or early August.

I would caution everybody that was just Q1 will be slightly distorted by the weak prior year comps. Q2, we still have limited visibility. The outcome remain and the outcome for both Q2 and H1 heavily depends on the strength of closing bookings as we move through June, July, August, and into September. But at the moment, I think we will be cautiously optimistic that we’re going to enjoy a strong summer twenty twenty five trading period.

Analyst/Interviewer: Lastly, what is the group’s FY twenty six outlook?

Neil Sorensen, CFO, Ryanair: It was a bit too early to give profit after tax guidance at this point in time. As Michael said, we still don’t have visibility on the close in Q2 bookings and fares and we’ve almost no visibility, which is the case at this time of year, every year in relation to the second half of the year. Looking at what we do know, we have six eighteen aircraft, which will facilitate 3% traffic growth to two zero six million passengers. This year, we would expect just modest unit cost inflation as we see our strong fuel hedges help offset increases in route charges and environmental taxes coming in over the course of the next year. Bookings, as Michael said, are robust into the peak summer period and fares are running modestly ahead of last year.

And so we would expect reasonable profit after tax profit growth this year, but we just can’t put numbers on it. It’s way too early for that at this point in time. The final outcome is going to be very much dependent on no economic or geopolitical shocks over the course of the balance of the year. And then beyond that, we’re looking at more returns to our shareholders with the CHF $750,000,000 buyback. We’ve got an ever widening cost advantage over everybody else and a CHF 3 hundred aircraft order book, which will enable us to grow profitably to 300,000,000 passengers over the next decade.

Michael O’Leary, CEO, Ryanair: We have an extensive roadshow. We have over 10 teams on the road for the next week running through Ireland, The UK, Europe, North America, East Coast, West Coast, Canada. If any of would like a meeting with Ryanair, just ask your broker or contact us through Jamie here in the IR team in Ryanair. We’d be happy to set it up and give you an in-depth briefing on what we hope will be an exciting period of growth, an exciting period of profitable growth from Ryanair between now and 02/1934. Thank you very much.

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