EasyJet Plc passenger aircraft on the tarmac at London Southend Airport in Southend-on-Sea, UK, on Friday May 3, 2024.
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Shares of EasyJet fell greater than 7% on Thursday after the budget airline Posted posted a rather larger-than-expected loss in the primary half of its fiscal yr and announced the upcoming resignation of its CEO.
According to an LSEG survey cited by Reuters, pre-tax losses totaled 350 million kilos ($443 million) within the six months to March, exceeding analysts’ expectations of 340 million kilos.
The figure represented a discount from the general £411 million pre-tax loss reported a yr earlier, because the airline continued to emerge from a Covid-19-era travel slump.
The company also announced that CEO Johan Lundgren will step down in January 2025 after seven years on the helm of the corporate. He will probably be succeeded by current Chief Financial Officer Kenton Jarvis.
EasyJet shares pared their losses barely and were down 5.9% at 10:53 a.m. London time.
Lundgren told CNBC that the corporate is seeing “positive momentum” in the summertime travel season as consumers proceed to spend money on travel, particularly to classic European destinations equivalent to Spain, Portugal and Turkey.
“People are placing a lot of value on vacations and travel, so we don’t see any difference in the demand structure that we have seen since the recovery from the pandemic,” he said.
The CEO added that he doesn’t expect EasyJet’s schedules to be affected this travel season, despite broader concerns about supply shortages within the industry.
“I think we are probably one of the few airlines here, at least in Europe, that is getting all the supplies that we expected from Airbus,” he said. “It will certainly be less than some airlines expected, but we are not affected by it.”
