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LONDON (Alliance News) - EasyJet PLC Tuesday said it expects to report a smaller first-half loss in its current financial year, after it said revenue rose on the back of strong demand from business and leisure travellers and fuel costs fell in the first quarter.
In a trading update, the low-cost airline said it expects to report a pretax loss of between GBP10 million and GBP30 million in the first half of its financial year, narrower than the GBP53 million loss it reported in the first half of last year.
EasyJet's first half ends on March 31. Airlines and travel companies traditionally make a loss over the winter months, switching to profit in the summer months when they do the bulk of their business.
The airline said revenue in the first quarter to end-December rose GBP34 million on the year to GBP931 million, as revenue per seat grew 0.8% to GBP56.16. The per seat revenue increase was 3.7% at constant currencies.
The airline flew 14.9 million passengers in the quarter, up 4.1% on the year, while it increased capacity by 2.9% to 16.6 million seats flown. Therefore its load factor rose 1.0 percentage point to 89.7%.
"We enjoyed a strong October across the network - particularly on UK leisure flights to beach destinations and on French domestic routes where we continued to build passenger numbers after a busy September," Chief Executive Carolyn McCall said.
"We further strengthened our network in the quarter adding around 500,000 seats, the majority of which are from airports where easyJet has a number one or number two position. This combined with our new TV ads aimed at business travellers enabled easyJet to sell record numbers of seats to business travellers in the first quarter," she added.
It said its cost per seat excluding fuel fell 0.2%, but rose 3.7% on a constant currency basis. Including fuel, cost per seat dropped 2.0%, but rose 1.6% on a constant currency basis. The airline stuck with its guidance that cost per seat will be up by 2% on a constant currency basis for the financial year as a whole.
"The increase at constant currency was primarily driven by anticipated increases in charges at regulated airports, mainly in Germany and Italy, crew costs associated with building a resilient operation ahead of base openings, the phasing of marketing expenditure on the business traveller punctuality campaign and an increase in maintenance costs associated with the planned ageing of the fleet," easyJet said.
By Steve McGrath; stevemcgrath@alliancenews.com; @stevemcgrath1
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