Wizz Air, Ryanair Descend While Passenger Numbers Climb
Budget airlines Ryanair RYAAY and Wizz Air on Tuesday both reported annual growth in passenger numbers and load factor for June.
But while Irish carrier Ryanair's share floated down to €11.44 ($12.74) in late morning trading, off 1.4% compared with Monday's close, Wizz Air plummeted 6% to an early low of 1,552 pence ($20.35) and was still down 3.33% at 1,595 pence mid-morning.
Ryanair said it carried 10.6 million customers in June, an 11% increase on the 9.5 million passengers carried in June 2015. Load factor rose by 1 percentage point to 94% from 93%.
Its rolling annual traffic to June grew by 16% to 109.6 million customers.
Wizz Air, which serves mainly central and eastern Europe, said passenger numbers increased by 16% in June to 2.0 million from 1.7 million in the same month the year before. Load factor rose from 91% to 91.7%.
Wizz Air's rolling annual passenger tally grew by 21% to 20.9 million from 17.3 million, while load factor was up from 87.1% to 88.4%.
Unlike fellow budget airline EasyJet (ESYJY) and British Airways and Iberia owner International Consolidated Airlines (ICAGY) , neither airline issued a profit warning in the wake of the June 23 Brexit referendum.
The two airlines are in increasingly intense competition in Budapest, Hungary-based Wizz's eastern European home region.
But Wizz is a relatively illiquid share while Ryanair is, in the words of one person close to the industry, is "gushing with liquidity." A relatively small share transaction will affect the price more dramatically than when a large number of Ryanair shares changes hands.
Wizz Air shares rallied late last week when it announced long-term incentive share awards to its top managers, which it said would be based both on total shareholder return relative to competitor airlines and absolute growth in underlying earnings per share up to March 2019.
The company's biggest shareholder is still aviation-focused U.S. private equity house Indigo Partners, which has 19% of the stock, while the free float is 60.4%. Indigo also holds debt in the company, which allows Wizz Air to manage its shareholder register to stay below the 49.9% threshold for total foreign equity ownership of European Union airlines