Dublin
Ryanair brought lower:
Profits at Ryanair plummeted 93% in the last three months of 2023 from a year earlier, brought down by the Irish airline – Europe’s biggest – having been “kicked off a string of travel agents’ websites”, says Chris Price in The Telegraph. Ryanair also blamed higher fuel costs for its €14.8m quarterly profit and cut its maximum profit forecast for the year by €10m to €1.95bn. That will come as a personal blow to chief Michael O’Leary (pictured), who is in line for a €100m bonus if the company posts a €2.2bn profit or it can maintain a share price of at least €21 for 28 days – it is at around €19 now.
Ryanair had repeatedly branded travel agents’ websites as “pirates” for taking a cut of its revenues – the airline has now warned it will have to slash fares to win new business. Boeing, the maker of almost all Ryanair’s planes, is another “potential source of turbulence”, says Oliver Taslic on Breakingviews. Last week, the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, banned Boeing from expanding production of its MAX line of aircraft after an incident in January when a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines MAX 9 mid-flight. O’Leary is “characteristically bullish”, however, offering to take on any orders cancelled by US airlines.
Redmond
Tech rivals square up: Microsoft posted its highest quarterly profit growth in two years, largely thanks to demand for its Azure cloud business, fuelled by interest in artificial intelligence (AI), says Tom Dotan in The Wall Street Journal. Net income rose by a third to $21.9bn in the three months to the end of September from a year earlier. Rival Alphabet also reported rising revenues, up 13%, driven by an 11% increase in total advertising sales – a figure that still failed to live up to analysts’ high expectations, and the shares tumbled. Both tech giants have invested billions in AI, their valuations benefiting as a result. But it is Microsoft that is “moving quicker and more decisively to turn those big bets into gold”, says Anita Ramaswamy on Breakingviews. Even though Alphabet, the parent of Google, has finally unveiled its long-awaited, powerful new AI model, Gemini, it’s not yet widely available and, for now, its cloud unit “pales in comparison” with Microsoft’s Azure. The fact is Microsoft can “deploy AI more widely and with more profitable prospects”. The gap between the companies’ valuations is widening. Amazon will be watching, says Dan Gallagher in The Wall Street Journal. W
