Bachelor Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Accounting and Taxes, grade: 50%, Oxford Brookes University, language: English, abstract: The aim of this research is to analyze the business and financial performance of Ryanair by focusing on financial and non-financial performance such as financial management, business strategy, future prospects and ways of achieving its objectives in its competitive environment from a stakeholder point of view. In 1985, Ryanair was set up by the Ryan family with a share capital of just £1, and a staff of 25. The company launched its first route in July with daily flights from Waterford in the southeast of Ireland to London Gatwick. Since then, the company has grown considerably and became one of Europe’s largest low-fare airlines.
Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,0, University of the Sunshine Coast Queensland (Business Faculty), course: Marketing Management, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this report is to provide a Marketing Plan for Ryanair, which is developed to strengthen the company’s position in the market. It is precisely tailored to the company’s actual organizational situation and its market environment. The report deals with analyses of Ryanair Holdings plc and its core business – low cost flights – with regards to get a status of its performance and the actual market situation in order to develop a suitable and successful marketing strategy. Ryanair offers low cost passenger flights within Europe. The airline serves short haul, point-to-point routes between Ireland, the UK and Continental Europe. Our idea is it to keep the product as simple as possible. Passengers travel ticketless without any frills in one class without any seat – it is simple air transportation from A to B. The external environment in Europe favors Ryanair and the entire low-cost airline market with an air traffic growth of up to 20%. Regarding the competitive environment Ryanair - with a clear strategy and structure - gains in importance and already became the market leader in the intra-European low-cost airline market – closed-packed with Easyjet and followed by Air Berlin. With its 35 Mio passengers in 2006 and an excellent profitability on a high level of 20% is growing healthy and shows strong financial reserves of more than €2 billion. Our customer is anyone within Europe in the age between 15 and 64, who wants to save money and still be able to travel by air to attractive destinations. This awareness of different passenger types requires marketing campaigns that cover all categories of potential customers. With this in mind we developed a Marketing Plan with specific tactical marketing activities. We have ambitious goals and objectives for further growth and market penetration in Europe within a time frame of 6 years till 2012. On the one hand we plan to raise the market share within the low cost sector up to 40%. With our growing fleet of 200 airplanes in 2012, we want to double our annual passenger transportation to 80 million by then. On the other side we plan to eliminate the rest of our costly call centers and base the distribution only on online booking. These concrete plans base on a realistic financial plan.The included best and worst case scenarios illustrate clearly that with implementing and executing all activities properly, the airline can quadruple its annual profit up to €1,230 billion in 2012.
Air transport industry finance, with its complexity and special needs such as route rights, airport slots, aircraft leasing options and frequent flyer programmes, requires specific knowledge. While there are numerous financial management and corporate finance texts available, few of these provide explanations for the singularities of the airline industry with worked examples drawn directly from the industry itself. Revised and updated in its third edition, this internationally renowned and respected book provides the essentials to understanding all areas of airline finance. Designed to address each of the distinct areas of financial management in an air transport industry context, it also shows how these fit together, while each chapter and topic provides a detailed resource which can be also consulted separately. Supported at each stage by practical airline examples, it examines the financial trends and prospects for the airline industry as a whole, contrasting the developments for the major regions and airlines. Important techniques in financial analysis are applied to the airline industry, together with critical discussion of key issues. Thoroughly amended and updated throughout, the third edition reflects the many developments that have affected the industry since 2001. It features several important new topics, including Low Cost Carriers (LCCs), fuel hedging and US Chapter 11 provisions. The sections on financial statements and privatisation have been expanded, and a new chapter has been added on equity finance and IPOs. New case studies have been added, as well as the latest available financial data. The range and perspective is even greater than before, with significant expansion of material specific to the US and Asia. The book is a key resource for students of airline management, and a sophisticated and authoritative guide for analysts in financial institutions and consultancies, executives in airlines and related industries, and civil aviation departments.
The Art of Company Valuation and Financial Statement Analysis: A value investor’s guide with real-life case studies covers all quantitative and qualitative approaches needed to evaluate the past and forecast the future performance of a company in a practical manner. Is a given stock over or undervalued? How can the future prospects of a company be evaluated? How can complex valuation methods be applied in practice? The Art of Company Valuation and Financial Statement Analysis answers each of these questions and conveys the principles of company valuation in an accessible and applicable way. Valuation theory is linked to the practice of investing through financial statement analysis and interpretation, analysis of business models, company valuation, stock analysis, portfolio management and value Investing. The book’s unique approach is to illustrate each valuation method with a case study of actual company performance. More than 100 real case studies are included, supplementing the sound theoretical framework and offering potential investors a methodology that can easily be applied in practice. Written for asset managers, investment professionals and private investors who require a reliable, current and comprehensive guide to company valuation, the book aims to encourage readers to think like an entrepreneur, rather than a speculator, when it comes to investing in the stock markets. It is an approach that has led many to long term success and consistent returns that regularly outperform more opportunistic approaches to investment.
Essay from the year 2005 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 72 % - A, University of Sunderland, course: Global Corporate Strategy, language: English, abstract: Ryanair was founded in 1985 as a family business that originally provided full service conventional scheduled airline services between Ireland and the UK. The airline started to compete within the confines of the existing industry by trying to steal customers from their rivals, especially the state monopoly carrier Air Lingus, outlined by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (2004) as “Bloody or Red Ocean Strategy”. Ryanair seemed to follow a “me-too strategy”; according to Osborne, K. (2005), they “tried to be all things to all people”. Even they started restructuring; their strategy was not enough differentiated and their cost advantage was too low to be profitable. Ryanair then created a competitive advantage through the alignment of the three components of business systems; 1)Creating superior value for their customers (outside perspective) 2)Supplying their superior value-adding activities in an effective and efficient manner (which jointly form the “Value Chain”) 3)Possessing over the resource base required to perform the value-adding activities, (inside perspective) According to Porter (1987), “corporate strategy is what makes the corporate whole add up to more than the sum of its business unit parts.” It is seen to be concerned with the overall purpose and scope of the organisation and to meet the expectations of major stakeholders. All aspects of Ryanair’s value chain are important to the company and their shareholders as Ryanair’s decisions add value to both. The following report outlines the three perspectives of shaping Ryanair’s business system. The value creation dimension of Ryanair’s business model will be outlined, considering the theories of Porter and the more recent authors Kim and Mauborgne (2004). Further, the linkages in the airline’s value chain and their resource base will be analysed, considering Hamel and Prahalad’s (1990) core competency model (inside-out approach). In section 2, the future challenges of the airline are considered. Ryanair’s strengths and weaknesses will be analysed, internal value creating factors such as assets, skills or resources, to consider how the airline can create alignment to its opportunities and threats, external factors. An stronger “outside – in” approach for Ryanair’s future corporate strategy will be considered, applying Porter’s five forces model, placing the market, the competition, and the customer at the starting point of the strategy process.
The second edition of Rigas Doganis' book brings the airline industry story up to date, exploring airline mergers and alliances, price wars, the impact of disasters and the future prospects for the industry as a whole.
"And you thought the passengers were mad. Airline employees are fed up, too-with pay cuts, increased workloads and management's miserly ways, which leave workers to explain to often-enraged passengers why flying has become such a miserable experience."—New York Times, December 22, 2007When both an industry's workers and its customers report high and rising frustration with the way they are being treated, something is fundamentally wrong. In response to these conditions, many of the world's airlines have made ever-deeper cuts in services and their workforces. Is it too much to expect airlines, or any other enterprise, to provide a fair return to investors, high-quality reliable service to their customers, and good jobs for their employees?Measured against these three expectations, the airline industry is failing. In the first five years of the twenty-first century alone, U.S. airlines lost a total of $30 billion while shedding 100,000 jobs, forcing the remaining workers to give up over $15 billion in wages and benefits. Combined with plummeting employee morale, shortages of air traffic controllers, and increased congestion and flight delays, a total collapse of the industry may be coming. Is this state of affairs inevitable? Or is it possible to design a more sustainable, less volatile industry that better balances the objectives of customers, investors, employees, and the wider society? Does deregulation imply total abrogation of government's responsibility to oversee an industry showing the clear signs of deterioration and increasing risk of a pending crisis?Greg J. Bamber, Jody Hoffer Gittell, Thomas A. Kochan, and Andrew von Nordenflycht explore such questions in a well-informed and engaging way, using a mix of quantitative evidence and qualitative studies of airlines from North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Up in the Air provides clear and realistic strategies for achieving a better, more equitable balance among the interests of customers, employees, and shareholders. Specifically, the authors recommend that firms learn from the innovations of companies like Southwest and Continental Airlines in order to build a positive workplace culture that fosters coordination and commitment to high-quality service, labor relations policies that avoid long drawn-out conflicts in negotiating new agreements, and business strategies that can sustain investor, employee, and customer support through the ups and downs of business cycles.
"If you look at Southwest Airlines, and I admire what they do, they've been the most successful airline in the industry." --Gerard Arpey, CEO, American Airlines "Through extensive research Jody Hoffer Gittell gets to the bottom of what has sustained Southwest Airlines' positive employee relations and high performance through good and bad times." --Thomas A. Kochan, professor, MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Global Airline Industry Program In an industry with losses in the billions, Southwest Airlines has an unbroken string of 31 consecutive years of profitability. The Southwest Airlines Way examines how the company uses high-performance relationships to create enormous competitive advantage in motivation, teamwork, and coordination among employees. It then goes further to show how any company can foster these powerful cooperative relationships and explains how to: Lead with credibility and caring Invest in frontline leaders Hire and train for relational competence Use conflicts to build relationships Make unions its partners, not its adversaries Build relationships with its suppliers
In this pathbreaking book, Michael E. Porter unravels the rules that govern competition and turns them into powerful analytical tools to help management interpret market signals and forecast the direction of industry development.
