Budget airline easyJet managed to increase both its passenger numbers and load factor in last month, the company announced on Monday morning.
Passenger numbers, which represents the number of booked seats flown (irrespective of whether or not the customer turns up) increased by 4.9% to 4,339,836 in December 2012, compared with 4,135,562 the same month the year before.
This pushed up the rolling 12-month passenger number over 59m, up 6.7% year-on-year.
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Meanwhile, the load factor - a key measure that airlines use to calculate how full their planes are - improved by 2.3 percentage points (pp) from 85.6% in December 2011 to 87.9% last month. The rolling 12-month load factor rose 1.4pp to 88.9%.
The airline reported in November that full-year revenue for the year ended September 30th 2012 had risen 11.6% to £3,854m, while pre-tax profit jumped 27.9% to £317m, after an average 7.1% increase in passenger numbers over the period.
The company more than doubled its dividend per share to 21.5p.
easyJet, with a market capitalisation of around £3.23bn, has seen shares surge by around a third (+32.18%) over the last three months.
-
Going part-time could leave a £58,000 hole in your pension: how to plug the gapThere are many reasons for switching to part-time work, but some savers don’t consider the impact on their pension until it is too late
-
Three bargain investment trusts to add to your portfolioThese three investment trusts are bargains compared to their net asset value (NAV), but one fund analyst thinks the deep discounts are unwarranted.
