Eastern European-focused budget airline Wizz Air today reported a 67% jump in annual profit and said it was confident of further profit growth this year as it continues to expand capacity.
In its first results as a London-listed company, Wizz Air said underlying net profit came in at €146m in the twelve months to the end of March.
This compared to the €87m it made in the previous period.
Wizz was launched 11 years ago by a small group of Hungarian airline executives and floated in February.
For its 2016 financial year, it has guided to post-tax profit in the range of between €165-175m.
Wizz said profit growth last year was driven by expanding its network and capacity across its key central and Eastern Europe area, at the same time as lowering costs, and the same tactic would help drive profit in the coming year.
Wizz, which carried 16.5 million passengers last year, is dwarfed by Europe's largest low-cost airline Ryanair, which had 91 million passengers.
Ryanair yesterday forecast a 10% rise in profit and passenger numbers in the current financial year.
For the current year, Wizz said trading was robust, but it did not expect that its earnings would benefit from the decline in fuel prices as lower fuel prices would feed through to lower air fares.
