Ryanair quarterly profit below expectations, warning of weaker summer fares

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ryanair on Monday reported a 46 percent drop in after-tax profit for the April-June quarter from a year earlier, missing analysts’ expectations and warning that fares for the key summer months would be “significantly lower” than last year.

After tax, profit for the three months to the end of June, the first quarter of Ryanair’s financial year, was 360 million euros ($392 million), well below the 538 million euros profit expected in a survey of analysts for the company.

Average fares per passenger fell 15% in the quarter from a year earlier as the airline was forced to “apply more price incentives than we previously anticipated,” CEO Michael O’Leary said in a statement.

“While demand in the second quarter has been strong, prices remain lower than we had anticipated. We now expect fares in the second quarter to be significantly lower than last summer (previously expected to be flat or slightly higher),” O’Leary said, referring to the July-September quarter, when Ryanair typically makes the most profit.

He said it was too early to make a profit forecast for the full fiscal year, which ends March 31.

The Irish airline, Europe’s largest by passenger numbers, has already seen its shares fall 24% from their April 8 peak, largely due to weak fares.

($1 = 0.9184 euros)

(Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Jamie Freed)