Ryanair floats prospect of resuming dividend with Covid in past

Ryanair Holdings Plc dangled the prospect of paying a dividend should the Irish low-cost airline extend its strong performance over the next year.  

“If we have another strong year and we have significant net cash balances, then we’ll return those to shareholders,” Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “I think it’s coming, not yet, I mean we’re paying down debt at the moment.”

For now, debt repayment and capital outlays remain the priorities for Ryanair’s cash flows, O’Leary said. He prefers dividends to share buybacks, the CEO said in a separate interview. 

Ryanair has been among the airlines quickest to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, reporting on Monday that it had reached a net-cash balance after working down debt taken to help it survive the Covid-19 crisis. The carrier, which ferries more passengers through Europe than any other, is poised to gain from surging fares during the busy summer holiday season.

Aircraft deliveries from Boeing Co. and Airbus SE will likely remain constrained over the next 4 to 5 years due to supply-chain kinks, limiting airline industry capacity and putting a floor under fares, O’Leary said. Ryanair ordered up to 300 of Boeing’s largest 737 Max 10 single-aisle jets this month to press its expansion.

Net debt reached €2.3 billion ($2.5 billion) in March 2021 as Ryanair, like other carriers, borrowed money to get through the plunge in air travel during the pandemic. Net cash was €560 million as of March 31, Ryanair said Monday.

O’Leary spoke after Ryanair said it would increase passenger numbers 10% to 185 million in the financial year that began April 1, and posted near-record annual profit to reverse two years of losses. 

The company last paid a dividend in 2015. The shares advanced 2% as of mid-afternoon in Dublin.

“I would like to see us in the next maybe 12 months begin to formulate a kind of a dividend policy, some percentage of net profits that would be returned to shareholders every year,” O’Leary said. “We went to shareholders during Covid. They put in €400 million in additional equity at a time when nobody was invested in airlines, and they’re entitled to get some of that back.”