Alaska Air Group, Inc. (NYSE:ALK) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Shane Tackett: Yes. Thanks, Steve, I’ll — I’m not going to hypothesize too much, but I will tell you that the fuel prices in Hawaii are significantly lower than you see in the Continental U.S.

Stephen Trent: Okay, very clear. Super. Thank you for that. And just one quick follow-up. I mentioned 90 days ago about what you guys are doing and the nice work you’ve done and having that investment grade credit rating. Could you refresh my memory sort of what the push might be to get an investment grade rating from all three agencies?

Shane Tackett: Yes, Stephen, good question. I think we deserve it and we are hopeful that they review us soon and reconsider their ratings. We are not actively out talking with the other two agencies right now. We’ve got a lot going on, and we are really focused on, hopefully closing the proposed acquisition of Hawaiian, we’ve got to go to market potentially and raise some money to do that. So that’s our focus right now. We will get that behind us and then I think we’ve got really good debt metrics, credit metrics. I think we are definitely deserving of reconsideration by the other two agencies, and we will keep making our case over time to them.

Stephen Trent: Oh, great. I appreciate that, Shane, and thanks everybody.

Shane Tackett: Thank you, Steve.

Operator: And we will move next to Conor Cunningham with Melius Research.

Conor Cunningham: Hey, everyone. Thank you. As you talked to Boeing, are you looking to completely rework the order book? It just seems like — the comments today seem like you’re more focused on ’24, but is there an opportunity to kind of, I don’t know, stabilize that over the next couple of years? I just — I’m just trying to understand what you want in a new delivery stream from them going forward? Thank you.

Shane Tackett: Yes. Thanks, Conor. I think — yes, look, there’s two or three moving pieces, their own ability to get back to production rates that support a consistent and reliable delivery stream, which most important to us is the quality and safety of the manufacturing process. So we’ve got to sort that out. We also prefer the MAX 10 at this point. It’s not certified yet. We’ve got to make decisions about when to expect that. I think it’s going to come later than we had expected, which was second half of next year. And then again, if the proposed transaction is able to proceed, we’ve got another 60 to 65 aircraft to think about, along with 330 or so we have today. So we just need to take some time, look at all of these variables and put together a new skyline for the Boeing MAX deliveries.

I think, directionally, it will probably be less than we had been thinking about even a year ago. So it should be good for CapEx story, good for a free cash flow story over time, but we need another quarter or two to really work through that on our side and then with our partners over at Boeing.

Conor Cunningham: Okay. That’s helpful. And then on this — on the Premium revenue and then versus your Saver, I’m just — it seems like there’s a pretty huge spread going on. And I don’t know if there’s anything to glean into like your main cabin Saver Fare option. Is — I’m just trying to understand how you think about that spread over the long-term. And then maybe as — sorry, as an incremental follow-up to that, your — I think your inventory — you didn’t sell your inventory as far out as you initially did and you talked about closing. Are you thinking about changing how you — how your inventory sits going forward to try to capture more of the close in demand given your premium offering. Sorry about that. I realize it’s like nine questions, but thanks.

Andrew Harrison: Yes. That’s all right. I’ll answer by just high-level. I think the Saver Fare has been a very good product for us. In fact, we’ve made it significantly more available than we did last year. We’ve also seen significant increase in revenues buying out of Saver. And it’s a — at a very valuable tool in the seasonality, given where our network moves around. I think we are focused on and probably, historically, we’ve pretty much chased loads to some respect. And I think as we are seeing where the industry is and where we are, we are putting more focus on yields and how we structure the pricing of our cabins, both Main and Premium and the Saver. And I think what I can tell you is that we are more than ever getting more deliberate about how we manage our product set up in our cabin. And I think there’s only good news to come from that.

Conor Cunningham: Very helpful. Thank you.

Ben Minicucci: Thanks, Conor.

Andrew Harrison: Thanks, Conor.

Operator: And we will move next to Mike Linenberg with Deutsche Bank.

Mike Linenberg: Hey, good morning, everyone. Hey, Andrew, you probably have better than anyone a good sense of this evolution of close in leisure. I really feel like it was something that hit the scene big time during COVID. A lot of it had to do with just last minute re-openings and the like. I sort of feel pre-COVID, it was either a bereavement fare [ph] or I don’t know, maybe your pal scored you a ticket to the Taylor Swift concert and you found out about last minute. But it’s becoming a bigger piece. And I don’t know if it’s 5% of kind of your — when you look at your various segments, corporate, discretionary, whatever long haul international, can you talk about that evolution? Because I don’t think it’s a category, but maybe it’s become a much bigger category than what I realize, and it can have a meaningful impact on RASM.