Traffic rise lifts Ryanair share price above €10

Ryanair’s share price jumped by almost 3% at one point yesterday to an all-time high, on the back of the company kicking off a week of airline traffic updates with strong growth figures.

The airline reported a 20% year-on-year rise in passenger numbers for December, from just over five million to 6.02m users.

Load factor for the month, which measures the amount of seats filled rather than simply sold, was up by 7% on the corresponding month for last year, to 88%.

As well as its price offering, management attributed the ongoing impressive winter showing to a stronger forward booking strategy and its ongoing ‘Always Getting Better’ customer service improvement programme, which has delivered better-than- expected load factors during the period.

“With our new routes, increased frequencies, improving customer experience and Business Plus service, Ryanair continues to deliver so much more than the lowest fares in every market we operate in,” said chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs.

The strong December data followed on from Ryanair reporting a 22% annualised increase in passenger numbers for November.

The figures also led to the airline’s share price — which is up by 56% in the past 12 months — breaching €10 for the first time and approaching the €11.50 full-year price target set by Goodbody Stockbrokers.

The gains retreated in late trading, with the price closing at €9.91, still almost 1% up on Friday’s close.

“The surprise in the numbers was that capacity growth came in at only 10.4%, at 6.84m seats offered, with this translating into a second consecutive month of a seven percentage point improvement in load factors, to 88%, with this obviously very positive in terms of lowering unit costs,” said Goodbody’s Mark Simpson.

“Given this outrun, we continue to expect Ryanair to report a net profit of €32m for the third-quarter period, ended December, and a further €15m for the last quarter ending March 2015; this compares to losses in the same periods last year of €35m and €62m, respectively,” he added.

In the calendar year of 2014, Ryanair’s passenger numbers rose by 6% to 86.4m people.