Shares of Ryanair Holdings plc (RYAAY Quick QuoteRYAAY – Free Report) scaled a 52-week high of $117.69 in the trading session on Nov 22, 2023, before closing a tad lower at $117.53.
The company’s shares have gained 57.2% year to date, significantly higher than the 1.5% growth of the industry it belongs to.
Let’s find out the factors supporting the uptick.
Passenger volume has been robust at Ryanair over the past few months owing to the rebound in air traffic. The company’s second-quarter fiscal 2024 (ended Sep 30, 2023) revenues of $5,361.3 million beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $5,137.7 million. Revenues improved year over year driven by upbeat passenger volumes.
Improvement in Ryanair’s traffic from the pandemic-led slump is encouraging. Traffic grew 11% to 105.4 million during the first half of fiscal 2024. Ryanair expects its traffic view for fiscal 2024 to be 183.5 million. On the back of the buoyant traffic scenario, RYAAY’s profit after tax grew 59% year over year during the first half of fiscal 2024. Load factor increased to 95% in the first half of fiscal 2024 from 92% in the year-ago reported quarter.
Meanwhile, Ryanair recently reported impressive traffic numbers for October 2023, driven by upbeat air-travel demand. The number of passengers ferried on RYAAY flights in October was 17.1 million, implying that 9% more passengers flew than a year ago. The load factor (percentage of seats filled by passengers) came in at 93% in October 2023. RYAAY operated more than 96,700 flights in October 2023.
Ryanair’s measures to expand its fleet to cater to the improvement in air travel demand are encouraging. RYAAY’s total fleet included 536 aircraft as of Sep 30, 2023.