Central banks tipped to raise interest rates to 15-year highs this week; Ryanair profits surge – business live

Ryanair says it grew its market share in several key EU markets during the last quarter.

Most notable gains, it says, were in Italy (from 26% to 40%), Poland (27% to 38%), Ireland (49% to 58%) and Spain (21% to 23%).

Overall, Ryanair operated at 12% above its pre-Covid capacity over the last nine months.

Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary said in a statement that demand is strong:

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}With Asian tourists now returning and a strong US dollar encouraging Americans to explore Europe, we’re seeing robust demand for Easter and summer 2023 flights.

Turmoil in the airline industry is an opportunity for Ryanair to keep growing, O’Leary adds:

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Over the past 3 years, numerous airlines went bankrupt and many legacy carriers (incl. Alitalia, TAP, SAS and LOT) significantly cut their fleets and passenger capacity, while racking up multi-billion-euro State Aid packages.

These structural capacity reductions have created enormous growth opportunities for Ryanair.

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Strong trading over Christmas and the New Year have helped budget airline Ryanair to triple its profits in the last quarter, compared with pre-Covid levels.

Just two days after UK regional airline Flybe ceased trading and cancelled all its scheduled flights, Ryanair has reported that its profits jumped in the last three months of 2022

Ryanair says “strong pent-up travel demand” over the October half-term holiday and the Christmas/New Year holiday season had stimulated strong traffic and fares across all markets, with “no adverse impact from Covid or the war in Ukraine”.

It has reported a profit-after-tax of €211m in October-December 2022, compared to €88m in the same quarter pre-Covid. A year ago, it made a €96m loss in the quarter, when pandemix restrictions and the Omicron variant hit demand.

During the quarter, traffic jumped 24% to 38.4m passengers – 7% higher than pre-Covid levels, while fares were 14% higher than before the pandemic.

Ryanair expects the current quarter to be loss-making, as Easter falls in April this year. But it is sticking with its recently upgraded forecast of an after-tax profit of between €1.325bn and €1.425bn for the full year to the end of March.

Chief financial officer Neil Sorahan says demand is strong, telling Reuters that:

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Bookings are showing no signs of recession at this point in time,”

“We had record bookings in week two and week three of January, very robust demand into Easter and the summer without fare stimulation.

The agenda

• 9am GMT: German Q4 2022 GDP report

• 10am GMT: Eurozone consumer and business confidence report for January

• 3.30pm GMT: Dallas Fed index of US manufacturing for January