Ryanair (RYAAY)
Reading Ryanair's FY2025 filings: a 94% booked load factor, yield per passenger mile against cost per seat mile, and net cash of €1.30B at 31 March 2025.
Educational analysis for professional use. This profile is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and it is not personalised.
Snapshot
ULCC Density at 94% Load Factor
Ryanair, the European ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC), files numbers that need three adjustments before they sit beside a US airline's: its load factor counts bookings, its yield is per passenger rather than per seat, and its year ends in March.
Its FY2025 load factor, for the year to 31 March 2025, was 94%. That is a booked figure, seats sold as a share of seats flown, so no-shows count as filled; the other five carriers in the Airlines Sector Primer set count passengers actually flown. It is still the highest of the six by a wide margin. Southwest filed 77.4% and IAG 85.6%, and IATA's Europe average for FY2025 was 84.8%. The load factor guide treats it as the ULCC extreme, out of reach for network carriers.
It kept seats full while growing fast. Capacity in available seat miles (ASMs: one seat flown one mile) rose 9.2% to 166 billion, where Southwest grew 1.6% and lost 3.0 points of load factor.
European Unit Economics
Ryanair's revenue measure is per passenger mile and its cost measure per seat mile, so the two cannot be subtracted. Its 20-F, the annual report foreign companies file with the US SEC, gives yield of €0.0889 in Appendix A: total revenue, fares plus ancillaries, divided by revenue passenger miles (RPMs: one paying passenger flown one mile). Cost per ASM (CASM) was €0.0746.
To compare the two per seat mile, derive revenue per ASM: €13,948.5 million of total operating revenue over those ASMs gives about €0.0840 to set against CASM. Taking out fuel (€12,390.5 million of operating expenses less €5,220.2 million of fuel) gives CASM ex-fuel of about €0.0431. The RASM and CASM guide leaves Ryanair out of its US comparison for this reason.
All figures are in euros, and FY2025 runs from April 2024 to March 2025, nine months behind the US carriers' December 2025 year end, so it misses the later 2025 fuel and demand conditions they capture. Ryanair has since filed its FY2026 20-F (year to 31 March 2026); this page uses the prior year. Comparing it with Delta or United means matching fiscal calendars as well as currency.
Net Cash Balance Sheet
Ryanair is the only one of the six with net cash: €1,303.8 million at 31 March 2025 (20-F Note 23). Free cash flow, computed as operating cash flow of €3,415.7 million less capex of €1,552.5 million, was €1,863.2 million; Ryanair publishes no FCF line of its own.
For contrast, American reported −$83 million of FCF on its own definition, with $30.7 billion of net debt, and Southwest's computed FCF was −$831 million. The FCF guide sets Ryanair's computed figure beside the US definitions.
What to Watch in the Financials
Watch whether load factor holds as capacity grows. A quarter where ASM growth speeds up but load factor slips below the low 90s would point to fare or schedule pressure.
Ex-fuel cost. European labour and airport cost inflation that outruns unit revenue squeezes margin before fuel moves.
Yield is the pricing signal to track each quarter.
Growth depends on Boeing deliveries, which FY2025 capex paid for. Delays would slow ASM growth without immediately moving load factor on existing capacity.
Valuation Framework
EV/EBITDAR screening (EBITDAR: EBITDA before aircraft rent) works if the model stays in Ryanair's own units: euros and a March year end. Ryanair reports under IFRS 16, the lease standard that puts aircraft leases on the balance sheet, so its EBITDA is already struck before lease costs. The ~4–7× house band was set with US network carriers in mind.
Net cash puts enterprise value below market capitalisation, so screening on market cap alone overstates the multiple. Market cap was about $29.1 billion on 10 June 2026 in NASDAQ-listed American depositary shares (1 ADS = 2 ordinary shares), against net cash of €1.30 billion at 31 March 2025: two figures on different dates.
Key Risks
Ryanair's costs rest on flexible labour arrangements and airport charges that European regulators periodically challenge. It flies one aircraft family, the Boeing 737, which brings fleet commonality but leaves a delivery delay or safety grounding undiversified.
With nearly every seat already sold, there is little utilisation left to gain. Margin from here depends on yield and ex-fuel cost.
Peer Context
In the Airlines Sector Primer set of six, Ryanair is the ULCC density case. Southwest, with a 3.2¢ ex-fuel spread, is the US low-cost comparison. IAG reports as a European network group, in euro cents per available seat kilometre, with €5,948 million of net debt.
EBITDAR builds from a thin unit margin on seat miles, the leases are capitalised into net debt, and the value moves on what a small load-factor drop costs.
The Excel model is the primer's airline build live across 11 sheets: EBITDAR from seat miles and unit margin, leases capitalised into adjusted net debt, a through-cycle EV/EBITDAR valuation for a network carrier and a low-cost carrier, a load-factor downturn, a lease-adjusted leverage screen and a sensitivity grid. Change the unit revenue, fuel or leases and the value moves.