Alaska Air Group, Inc. (NYSE:ALK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Ravi Shanker: So another follow-up on corporate, I’m afraid, I think you said that you were — the tech customers of yours are giant corporations and they’re eventually going to come back, which I guess it’s true, but then we can’t be 100% sure of that kind of given the way to do business. So are you happy to wait for them to kind of come back on the corporate side? Or — are you looking to maybe expand your corporate customer footprint? Maybe chase some more SMB customers? And is there anything you need to do from either a marketing or a network standpoint differently if your corporate customer base is likely to change going forward?

Shane Tackett: Andrew can speak quickly to the sort of composition. I just Ravi, one thing I’d say, tech tends to have some of the best discounts. It’s sort of lower-yielding business traffic. And I think the point we were trying to make is they haven’t been traveling much all of last year. So there’s not even though you have these headlines of layoffs, it doesn’t really mean that there’s like another downward step in terms of their travel. And I do think that at historically low travel volumes, they may never go back to where they were pre-pandemic. I think they’re going to be above where they are today. I’m very confident about that. I just don’t know when.

Benito Minicucci: And then maybe Andrew on the sort of pursuing SMB and all.

Andrew Harrison: Yes. I think we’ll obviously adjust. We obviously would love high tech to get back to the — where they were. But at the end of the day, this is about using your channels and the timing and when we sell and when we don’t sell. And I think there’s just a lot of opportunity to relook about who we’re selling our seats to and when and where, and we will manage through this.

Ravi Shanker: Got it. And maybe as a quick follow-up. I mean, obviously, you guys have come a long way kind of in the last couple of years and kind of where your balance sheet is right now. and with kind of the biggest boxes checked on the cost side and the fleet transition side and everything else. How are you thinking of the pace of shareholder returns or cash returns through the year maybe as your confidence in your own numbers and the cycle maybe kind of build through the year?

Shane Tackett: Yes. Ravi, I think — so we announced the sort of dilution offset program. I think we’ve ranged it from $75 million to $100 million. We’ll put a grid in place assuming the stock sort of price is somewhat consistent throughout the year, it should be ratable throughout the year. But we’ll buy more if the stock goes down and obviously a little bit less if the stock goes up. But we’ll get through the entire $100 million by the end of the year, my guess is it’s fairly ratable across the quarters. And that’s sort of our plan at this point.

Benito Minicucci: All right. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Ravi. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our first quarter call. Look forward to following up with anybody out there, and we’ll talk to you on the second quarter. Everyone, have a nice day. Thanks.

Operator: And this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for attending. Goodbye.

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