Jet2 expects to report a profit of almost £400 million for the year to March 31.
The airline and tour operating group forecast a profit before foreign exchange revaluation and taxation of between £387 million and £392 million in a trading update – up on its previous range of £370 million to £385 million.
The company described forward bookings to date as “encouraging” with summer capacity up by 7.2% to 15.26 million seats over last year with a 0.7 percentage point improvement in load factors.
The mix of package holiday customers represent more than 75% of total departing passengers and five percentage points higher than summer 2022 at the same point.
The company’s total cash position at the end of March was £2.62 billion, while its own cash balance excluding customer advance deposits was £1.12 billion.
Jet2 said: “Although the group is facing input cost pressures including fuel, carbon taxes, a strengthened US dollar and wage increases, plus investment to ensure our colleagues can thrive and have a balanced lifestyle, pricing for both our package holiday and flight-only products remains strong and margins per booked passenger are encouraging, with customers eager to take their much valued holidays.
“Just as we did last year, we invested well ahead of the summer season to ensure we have adequate, fully trained resources to operate with our normal high standards of customer care.
“In addition, we have increased our operational resilience by taking control of handling operations at a further two of our UK bases – Bristol and Newcastle – meaning we now self-handle at seven of our ten UK bases and are therefore not reliant on third parties for these aspects of our operations.”
The group added: “In summary, we are pleased with the current position, but with the new financial year having only recently commenced, the continued threat of summer European air traffic control disruption, and over 40% of the summer ’23 season plus the majority of winter ’23/’24 still to sell, it is too early to provide definitive guidance as to group profitability for the financial year.
“We remain confident that with our customer focused approach and right product for these tougher times, our customers will continue to be keen to travel with us from our rainy island to the sun spots of the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands and to European leisure cities.”
The group is due to issue results for the financial year ending in March on July 6 when a fuller outlook for the “all-important” summer 2023 trading period will be provided.