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Here's How Much a $1000 Investment in Ryanair Made 10 Years Ago Would Be Worth Today

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How much a stock's price changes over time is important for most investors, since price performance can both impact your investment portfolio and help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.

The fear of missing out, or FOMO, also plays a factor in investing, especially with particular tech giants, as well as popular consumer-facing stocks.

What if you'd invested in Ryanair (RYAAY - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to RYAAY for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?

Ryanair's Business In-Depth

With that in mind, let's take a look at Ryanair's main business drivers.

Ryanair Holdings is the parent company of Ryanair Designated Activity Company (formerly known as Ryanair Limited). Ryanair, which commenced its flight operations in 1985, is based in headquartered in Swords, Ireland.

This ultra-low fare carrier offers scheduled-passenger airline service in Ireland, the UK, Continental Europe, Morocco and Israel. Also, it serves short-haul, point-to-point routes. In fact, Ryanair is growing steadily in Germany, Italy and the UK.

Ryanair's new Polish charter airline, Ryanair Sun (now rebranded as Buzz), commenced operations in April 2018. In December 2018, it purchased the remaining 25% of Austrian airline Laudamotion.

In Jun 2019, Ryanair purchased Malta Air — a start-up carrier — in a bid to expand its presence in Malta. Apart from strengthening the carrier’s foothold in Malta, the acquisition has allowed the company to operate flights from Malta to non-EU markets (North Africa).

The company is also making constant efforts to expand its fleet size. The carrier already boasts of a large and efficient fkeet. Ryanair operates a fleet of over 450 Boeing 737-800 and 29 Airbus A320 aircraft. Ryanair aims to take delivery of more than 200 B737 "Gamechanger" aircraft over the next 5 years.

With recovery in air-travel demand in the European Union, Ryanair’s fiscal 2022 traffic soared more than 200% year over year to 97.1 million (but still down 35% from pre-pandemic levels).

Revenues jumped more than 100% year over year to €4.80 billion in fiscal 2022 due to improvement in air-travel demand. Scheduled revenues accounted for bulk (55.2%) of the top line. Ancillary revenues accounted for the balance.

In February 2019, Ryanair announced a structural overhaul. The carrier announced that it is moving to a group structure with each group having its own CEO and management team.

Michael O'Leary is the group’s CEO. Eddie Wilson is the CEO of the group’s biggest airline, Ryanair DAC.

The company’s fiscal year ends on Mar 31.

Bottom Line

While anyone can invest, building a lucrative investment portfolio takes research, patience, and a little bit of risk. If you had invested in Ryanair ten years ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in January 2014 would be worth $2,770.66, or a 177.07% gain, as of January 2, 2024, according to our calculations. Investors should note that this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.

Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 158.06% and gold's return of 62.01% over the same time frame.

Going forward, analysts are expecting more upside for RYAAY.

Improvement in Ryanair’s traffic from the pandemic-led slump is encouraging. Traffic grew 11% to 105.4 million during the first half of fiscal 2024. Ryanair expects its traffic view for fiscal 2024 to 183.5 million. On the back of the buoyant traffic scenario, RYAAY’s profit after tax was €2.18 billion during the first half of fiscal 2024, up 59% year over year. Load factor increased to 95% in the first half of fiscal 2024, from 92% in the year-ago reported quarter. Measures to expand its fleet to cater to the rising travel demand are encouraging. On the flip side, rising operating expenses owing to high fuel costs, staff costs and higher air traffic control fees, have the potential to limit RYAAY’s bottom line. During the first half of fiscal 2024, total operating costs grew 24% to owing to higher fuel cost (up 29%).

The stock has jumped 9.80% over the past four weeks. Additionally, no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 2 higher, for fiscal 2023; the consensus estimate has moved up as well.

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