Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Glen Hauenstein: Well, we are pretty excited about hitting a $6.5 billion number. Hopefully, there’s upside to that. I think its January. We don’t want to commit to that. But we are ahead of our long-term goals for that and we continue to find ways to accelerate our long-term goals. And I think next year or maybe even in June we are going to give you what’s beyond the $7 billion, because our first market was how do you get the $7 billion, and when we said that, I think, it was a dawning task for us, it was a dawning task for the team, we are there, right? And I think the question really for us and I was investors, okay, you are at the $7 billion, what’s next, and that’s what we have got to be working on showing you that we are not done here.

Ed Bastian: Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing — Conor, this is Ed. It’s not driven by capacity, as you can appreciate, it’s driven by the spend on the portfolio. So that’s a pretty sizable increase in portfolio spend as well.

Conor Cunningham: Good problem to have. Thank you, guys.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Helane Becker from Cowen. Your line is live.

Helane Becker: Thanks very much, Operator, and hi, team. Thank you. Sort of a question about TechOps, pre-pandemic, you guys were building that business out, it was going to be a more than $1 billion revenue business at some point. How are you thinking about that coming out of the pandemic and into sort of the middle part of this decade into the end or is that something that is another focus or is that being supplanted by the other revenues that you are talking about?

Ed Bastian: Hi, Helane. How are you? This is Ed. We are

Helane Becker: Good.

Ed Bastian: incredibly excited about your question and the MRO, and in fact, we made great progress during the pandemic to continue to accelerate that vision when we sign a deal to acquire the LEAP as part of the MAX deal. So we now have basically all the new engine technologies on our platform with exclusive arrangements and opportunities for third-party work that will extend over the next 20 years. Obviously, in the short-term, our focus is on — to every extent we have labor and we have supply challenges focusing on the Delta metal and continuing to get the airline itself back up and running. So the MRO has taken a little bit of a backseat over the short-term. But we continue to make the investments where we have got the commitments from all of our partners on the engine side and this is something you are going to hear a fair bit about in June when we look at the strategic discussion that we are looking to create.

Helane Becker: Right. In June. Okay. That’s going to be really helpful. And then, Ed, can I please ask you in June, if you will also update us on your diversity and inclusion targets. We talked a lot about that pre-pandemic and then during the pandemic, you have obviously hired 25,000 new people. You mentioned that in your prepared remarks. Can you also at some point update us on how that’s going and whether you are meeting your own internal goals? You don’t have to share those with us, but if you can share with us how it’s coming along? That might be helpful.

Ed Bastian: We will certainly do that, and that was already in the plan, Helane, to go through that in June. The good news is that we are making great progress and we will share our targets, because we share them publicly.

Helane Becker: That’s helpful. Thanks so much, team.

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