The Luton, southern England-based airline said revenue for the three months to end-June grew 23 percent to 935 million pounds ($1.5 billion), also boosted by growing passenger and ancillary revenues.

The budget carrier, which acted last year to lure more corporate passengers, said the number of business travelers flying with it jumped a fifth during the quarter, and the outlook was positive — it has already sold around three quarters of the seats for its summer flights.

Chief Executive Carolyn McCall said that, assuming normal conditions and a 10-12 percent return on capital employed, it expected a full-year pretax profit of 200-230 million pounds, at current fuel and exchange rates.

EasyJet said it carried 14.4 million passengers in the June quarter, up 17.3 percent. Its load factor — a measure of how well it sells available seats — rose 0.2 percentage point to 86.3 percent.

The company had been expected to report a 2010/11 pretax profit of 184 million pounds based on estimates in a 160-268 million range, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Societe Generale analyst Jonathan Wober, who has a ‘buy’ recommendation on easyJet shares, said that with the mid-point of the carrier’s forecast range well above the market consensus: “On our current forecasts, the stock looks good value.”

Shares in easyJet, which had fallen a quarter in value in 2011, were 15 percent up at 359.7 pence by 0830 GMT, a two-week high valuing the business at around 1.5 billion pounds.

Despite a recent rebound in economy class travel, rising fuel prices continue to cause trouble for the industry and could wipe out airline profitability in 2011, hindering the industry’s recovery, industry body IATA has said.

Fuel cost rises tend to weigh more on price-sensitive flights used by tourists and individual travelers.

EasyJet said it would look to forward buy up to 85 percent of its fuel requirements for the coming 12 months and around two thirds of its 12-24 month requirements.

The carrier said it had hedged three-quarters of its fuel requirements at $812 per metric ton until its fiscal year-end.

Earlier this month easyJet’s largest shareholder, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, said he wants to force a shareholder vote over the airline’s plans to by new aircraft from Airbus, resuming a long-running dispute with the company he founded. ($1 = 0.613 pound) (Editing by Sarah Young and Dan Lalor)