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LONDON (Alliance News) - easyJet PLC on Friday said it expects to deliver a strong performance in final quarter of 2018 financial year and profit for the year will be the upper at end of the company's guidance, partly helped by one-off events such as the bankruptcies of rivals Monarch and Air Berlin and the flight cancellations suffered by Ryanair Holdings PLC.
The British low-cost carrier added, however, that disruption across Europe continues to be an industry wide issue and is having an impact on revenue, cost and operational performance, with the main causes being European industrial action and air traffic restrictions.
easyJet expects headline pretax profit for the year to September-end to be between GBP570 million and GBP580 million and revenue, including Berlin Tegel airport, to be around GBP5.89 billion.
easyJet bought some assets from insolvent German airline Air Berlin in December last year, and commenced flights from Tegel in January.
Passenger numbers for the financial year, excluding Tegel, are expected to increase by 5.4% to 84.6 million, driven by an expected increase in capacity of 4.2% to 90.3 million seats. The capacity was kept lower than originally planned due to the flight disruptions. Load factor for the full year is expected to increase by 1.0 percentage points to 93.6%.
Total headline cost, excluding fuel and including Tegel, is expected to be around GBP4.14 billion. easyJet's total fuel cost, including Tegel, for the financial year is expected to be around GBP1.19 billion, including an additional GBP15 million cost relating to dollar movement and carbon emissions costs.
easyjet, in addition, expects to record a GBP65 million exceptional charge relating to investments in improving its commercial technology platform
For 2019, the airliner predicts capacity to grow by 10% to around 105 million seats. Revenue per seat for the first half of the new financial year at constant currency is estimated to fall by the low to mid-single digits due to the absence of one-off revenue benefits recorded in the previous period.
easyJet's fuel bill for 2019 financial year is likely to increase by GBP55 million to GBP105 million, with the total bill expected to be around GBP1.48 billion. Forex movements are expected to dent adjusted pretax profit for the new year by GBP10 million.
easyJet intends to declare a full year dividend consistent with its stated policy of paying a dividend equivalent to 50% of headline earnings per share.
The company is slated to release its 2018 financial year results on November 20. Shares were trading 0.2% lower at 1,322.50 pence each.
