Ryanair recorded a profit of €1.24 billion in the year to the end of March - up 43% on last year's figure. The airline charged passengers slightly less to fly - with the average fare down 1% to €46.67 - but it carried significantly more of them during the 12 months as passenger numbers rose by 18% to 106 million. The cost incurred to carry each of them also fell - down 6% - meaning the airline was making a healthier margin each time someone stepped on board.
Ryanair's chief commercial officer David O'Brien said that passengers were also getting more from the airline each time they flew. "It's a combination of continuing cuts to our fares, but very importantly, the continued success of our 'Always Getting Better' programme," he said. "The 106 million passengers we welcomed on board last year enjoyed revisions to our fleet, upgrades to the interiors of our aircraft and last October our passengers will have seen significant improvements to our app and website."
These improvements would continue into the coming year, he said, while air fares are also set to fall further.
That Is in no small part thanks to Ryanair's decision to hedge fuel costs, which means it will pay a lot less per barrel of oil this year than it did last year.
Having hedged in 2014, the airline ended up spending around $90 per barrel in the year to the end of March 2016 - well above the the going market rate. However Mr O'Brien rejects the suggestion that they made a mistake to do so. "Hedging gives certainty, and the only reason certain competitors didn't hedge is because they didn't have the balance sheet to support the hedging," he said. "And the good news for customers is that we're hedging in for the coming year at a significantly lower rate at around $64 per barrel. Most of that savings we expect to go back to the customers in the form of lower fares."
Ryanair had a number of other factors running in its favour over the past financial year - for example the timing of Easter in 2015 and 2016 meant that the holiday fell twice in its financial year. The flip-side of that, though, is that this year will have no such holiday at all - which means the extremely positive performance of the airline will be hard to match. "We won't repeat this performance - the profits grew by 43% last year, in the coming year we expect profits to grow by 13%, which is still well ahead of 9% passenger growth," Mr O'Brien said.
Other challenges on the horizon include potential threats to the schedule in the form of strikes, as well as the ever-present risk of terrorist threats. The airline also expects its rivals to begin reducing prices as they come out of unfavourable oil hedges of their own. Ryanair's CEO Michael O'Leary had previously predicting the "mother and father" of all price wars as a result.
However Mr O'Brien is confident that they still have an edge over the competition - which will put them in good stead in the year ahead. "Nobody offers the range of routes that Ryanair offers," he said. "If you take Dublin, for example, Ryanair offers 86 routes out of Dublin - the next nearest to that would be close to half of that. The competitors simply don't have the service to compete," he added.
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MORNING BRIEFS - Diaspora-focused website IrishCentral.com has been sold to a consortium for €2.7m.
The website, which was founded by publisher Niall O'Dowd, is being taken over by a group of investors led by venture capitalist Liam Lynch, who was previously involved in theatre ticketing website Broadway.com.
*** Europe's biggest asset management firm Amundi is to acquire a majority stake in Dublin-based Kleinwort Benson Investors. KBI - which manages €7.6 billion worth of assets - employs 62 people across its offices in Ireland, Boston and New York. Meanwhile Amundi, which is a subsidiary created by Crédit Agricole and Société Générale, manages around €1 trillion of assets and is one of the biggest asset management firms in the world. Under the terms of the deal, it will acquire an 87.5% stake in Kleinwort Benson Investors, with the management team of KBI acquiring the remaining 12.5%
*** Two Irish colleges have made it into the Financial Times' executive education rankings for 2016. The Irish Management Institute has risen to 52nd in the customised programme providers category, an improvement of 12 places on last year's ranking. Meanwhile UCD's Smurfit Executive Development came in at 69th on its open enrolment programme providers category - the first time it has appeared on that list. The FT's executive education rankings aims to identify the best-performing educational facilities for executives, and this year the lists were topped by Lese Business School in Spain and IMD in Switzerland.
