EasyJet saw pre-tax profits jump 27.9% to a record £317m for the full year to September, prompting the Board to increase its dividend pay-out to give shareholders a total of £85m.
Chief executive Carolyn McCall said: "These results demonstrate that easyJet is a structural winner in the European short-haul market against both legacy and low cost competition. The strength of easyJet’s business model and strategy coupled with the hard work and dedication of the easyJet team has delivered record profits as well as a significant increase in returns for shareholders during the year.
"As evidence of its confidence in easyJet’s current position and future prospects the Board proposes to increase the dividend from 10.5p to 21.5p for the year ended September 2012 which will see our shareholders benefit from easyJet’s success with £85m of dividends.
"Whilst there is always the potential for unexpected events to temporarily impact financial results the Board of easyJet is confident that its business model, strategy and people will consistently continue to generate superior returns and growth for shareholders."
Pre-tax profit margins were up by 1 percentage point to 8.2%, despite a £182m increase in unit fuel costs. Total revenue per seat grew by 5.9% to £58.51 driven partly by improved load factors, the careful targeting of capacity to markets with the strongest returns potential, improvements to easyJet.com, the success of the ‘Europe by easyJet’ campaign, and from capacity constraint in the market.
Seats flown grew by 5.5% to 65.9m, load factors increased by 1.4 percentage points to 88.7% and passenger numbers rose 7.1% to 58.4m.
Cost per seat excluding fuel fell by 1% for the full year due to shorter average sector lengths, the the easyJet Lean programme delivering significant savings in ground handling and non-regulated airport charges, by the increased proportion of larger A320 aircraft in the fleet and by the exceptionally low levels of disruption in comparison to previous years.
