Air Transport Services Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATSG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Quint Turner: Yes. Thanks, Michael. It’s Quint. The — we’ve kind of said, because maintenance CapEx can move based on the timing of scheduled maintenance from year-to-year, I think we’ve kind of said it’s around a couple of hundred million dollars of our CapEx in any given year. But you’re right, ’23 is a little bit higher. Now ’22 was, I think, what we say, $187 million. So you can see it came in a little lower. ’23 is higher than that $200 million sort of trend — long-term trend line mainly because of the timing of some engine overhauls. We maintain a pool of engines for some of the lessee’s one of the engine types. And it’s just based upon their shop — their expected shop visit timing. We’ve got more of those this year.

I mean, you are correct. Inflation, as we said, I don’t think any of us can probably think of any cost that it doesn’t affect, but it has more to do with the timing of scheduled maintenance as to why we’re looking at a higher number for maintenance CapEx in ’23.

Michael Ciarmoli: And then just the last 1, if I may. Any update on your kind of contracts with your pilots, just kind of watching the news here seeing what’s going on at FedEx? How are you kind of handicapping or thinking about that risk?

Mike Berger: Yes. So we’ve got pilot contracts open or amendable, I should say, with both ATI on the cargo side and on — in our passenger operator, Omni. And both those contracts are — have been in negotiation and the — both sides are meeting multiple times per month now and trading information and going forward. And so the — things are progressing. Just based on where they are individually and they’re both in different places, but we don’t believe that we’ll get to anything very quickly. We have always taken the position that we need a pilot contract that pays the pilots well enough that we can retain and attract pilots but also gives us the cost structure required that we compete for business. And we’ve always been able to make those 2 positions meet at some point, and we’ll continue to pursue the contract negotiations with that perspective.

Operator: Our next question comes from Frank Galanti with Stifel. Your line is open.

Frank Galanti: I wanted to follow up on that last question on pilots. Can you sort of talk about availability of pilots. Have you — considering the kind of new EBITDA guidance and expectations for low block hours, does that sort of alleviate some of the pressure from a pilot perspective? And can you talk about how variable that cost is with block hours?

Mike Berger: So a couple of things. One is that we’ve been able to attract pilots without a problem over the past year. And any attrition that we’ve had, we’ve been able to stay ahead of the curve in terms of getting the training done and getting them able to be able to fly and preserve all our schedules and et cetera, et cetera. So that’s been a good thing. Our average hours are way over the minimum of the new pilots coming in. So we’re in good shape as far as the pilot situation goes. But in terms of the variability of pilot cost as it relates to block hours, I mean, the pilot cost is really — it’s under contract. So it’s — the pilots will go through the — increase their pay as they go through scales, it doesn’t really change that much on an average cost basis per block hour. And the contracts that we have, there are escalations that address cost on an annual basis.