Proactive Investors - Shares in Wizz Air Holdings PLC (LON:WIZZ) bounced over 9% on Friday, ahead of half-year results the following Thursday and after more than halving since the summer.
Recent pressure has come from investor worries over the effects of the Israel-Palestine conflict, adding to concern about problems with the Pratt & Whitney GTF engines, where thousands of the engines used to power Airbus A320neo jets face recall due to manufacturing issues.
Wizz Air is among those affected, having received 12 of the affected Pratt & Whitney-powered A320 variants between 2015 and 2021.
An update in the coming week on capacity and profit expectations will be one of the key issues, with the budget airline having so far indicated the GTF issues could hit capacity by a “mid-single digit” but reassuring strong demand and higher pricing would still ensure profitability.
Analysts at Liberum have said they think the company will be able to mitigate potential problems.
On the Middle East tensions, Barclays (LON:BARC) said Western European travellers have been relatively sanguine about flying amid other conflicts such as the war in Ukraine but some weakness is expected, cutting its profit forecasts 7%.
For the full year to March 2024, Wizz forecast a net profit of €350-450 million at the time of its final results in June, having delivered an expected reported loss of €535.1 million for the past year.
For the second quarter, the City consensus is for revenues of €1,845 million and net income of circa €509 million.