Leading shares slip slightly amid continuing Greek uncertainty after weekend electionAirlines are helping to keep the market steady despite the continuing uncertainties over the outlook for Greece in the wake of anti-austerity party Syriza winning the weekend’s election.Easyjet has jumped 69p to £18.25 after it reported a 4.1% rise in first quarter passenger numbers to 14.9m. Total revenues grew by £34m to £931m, helped by carrying a record number of business passengers. It intends to pay a dividend of 45.4p a share.We enjoyed a strong October across the network - particularly on UK leisure flights to beach destinations and on French domestic routes where we continued to build passenger numbers after a busy September.The first quarter trading statement is encouraging with the yield performance notably strong. We understand that consensus pretax profit for 2015 is £637m. Our forecast, which we are not changing today, is for pretax profit of £693m. We expect consensus upgrades.In our opinion, investors should be encouraged by a positive outlook statement in which management points out that it sold record numbers of seats to business travellers in the first quarter and that easyJet is well positioned to continue to deliver strong returns and growth to shareholders. Continue reading...
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