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Ryanair (RYAAY) Stock Slides on Bearish Traffic Forecast

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Shares of Ryanair Holdings (RYAAY - Free Report) dipped 1.6% to $108.16 on Jan 7 following lackluster projections for January, February and March air traffic as well as for fiscal 2021 (ending Mar 31, 2021). The renewed lockdowns in the UK, Ireland and some other countries in the EU following the surge in coronavirus cases with a new strain being found in the United Kingdom last month induced such dull predictions. Experts believe that the new variant of the virus is potentially more contagious.

What Did Ryanair Say?

The Irish carrier perceives that the fresh lockdowns and other travel-related restrictions will shrink air-travel demand further, thus forcing it to cut its flight schedules from Jan 21. Following this decision, only a handful (if any) of flights will operate to/from Ireland or the UK until the removal of the travel embargo.

As a result of the constraints, the low-cost carrier expects its traffic in the current month to be less than 1.25 million. The expectation is much less than the air traffic of 1.9 million recorded in December. The effect of a fresh shutdown is expected to be more pronounced on the traffic numbers of February and March. This European carrier expects traffic in each of the two months to be as low as 500,000.  

Naturally, the carrier trimmed its traffic forecast for fiscal 2021. It now expects the metric for the period in the 26-30 million range compared with its earlier prediction of below 35 million. However, Ryanair does not expect a material impact on its net loss for fiscal 2021 due to the lockdown-induced revisions. This is because many of the flights cancelled would have run at a loss.

The “slow pace of vaccine rollouts” in the UK and Ireland clearly left Ryanair frustrated. As a result, management appealed to the governments in those countries to accelerate the same. In fact, Ireland’s sluggishness irked the carrier’s executive leadership so much that the latter demanded an explanation from the former at an administrative level on why Denmark, which has a population equivalent to Ireland’s 5 million, could complete vaccinating 40,000 people as of Jan 6, which is 10 times more than what Ireland could achieve until now.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Ryanair currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Investors interested in the broader Zacks Transportation sector may consider stocks like Ryder System (R - Free Report) , FedEx Corporation (FDX - Free Report) and Herc Holdings (HRI - Free Report) , each presently sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Shares of Ryder, FedEx and Herc Holdings have jumped more than 78%, 57% and 140% over the past six months, respectively.
 

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