EasyJet Plc passenger plane on the tarmac at London Southend Airport in Southend-on-Sea, UK, on Friday, Could 3, 2024.
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Shares of EasyJet fell greater than 7% on Thursday after the low-cost airline posted a barely larger-than-expected loss within the first half of the fiscal 12 months and introduced the forthcoming departure of its CEO.
Pre-tax losses got here in at £350 million ($443 million) for the six months to March, increased than the £340 million anticipated by analysts, in line with a LSEG ballot cited by Reuters.
The determine marked a narrowing from the £411 million pre-tax headline loss reported a 12 months earlier, because the airline continued to emerge from a Covid-19-era journey hunch.
The corporate additionally introduced that CEO Johan Lundgren might be stepping down in January 2025 after seven years on the helm of the enterprise. He might be changed by present chief monetary officer Kenton Jarvis.
EasyJet shares pared losses barely to commerce down 5.9% by 10:53 a.m. London time.
Lundgren advised CNBC that the corporate sees “optimistic momentum” coming into the summer time journey season, with shoppers persevering with to spend on journey, notably to traditional European locations similar to Spain, Portugal and Turkey.
“Individuals are actually prioritizing holidays and journey, so we do not see that there is a distinction within the demand sample that we have seen because the restoration of the pandemic,” he stated.
The CEO added that he doesn’t anticipate EasyJet schedules to be impacted this journey season, regardless of wider considerations about provide constraints throughout the business.
“I believe we’re in all probability one of many few airways right here, at the least in Europe, which can be getting the entire deliveries that we had been anticipating from Airbus,” he stated. “It definitely might be lower than some airways had been anticipating, however we aren’t affected by that.”
