SkyWest, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYW) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Savi Syth: Got it. And then just on the chartered, a quick follow-up. What’s the seasonality like on the charter side? Is it a bit more counter seasonal so it gives a nice offset? Or is — just curious.

Chip Childs: Yes. I think honestly, Savi, this is Chip. We’re kind of still learning ourselves. I mean what I do know is that from now through the spring is extremely busy. And we’re hearing, I mean to a certain extent, we’re like, okay, this is basketball and is that what this primarily is? And if it primarily is basketball and we start to look at what happens after spring and summer and there’s also other sports of baseball and other ones where there’s a lot of other things that happen with this. We’re new to this. And to a certain extent, like I said before, the industry is new to an entrant that can do this reliably and predictably. Because that’s the number one shocking thing for us getting into this space is how bad the competition is to be candid.

It may be unfair but just to be honest, we can deliver a product that a lot of people haven’t seen before in this space. That having been said, it is a bit seasonal that we see today. We’re looking at what things can happen next summer to keep the seasonality strong throughout the summer. But obviously, we’re going to, as we said before, we’re going to continue to pursue commuter authority. And when you get to that level of seasonality on that side of the business, it could offset very nicely. That’s kind of the process that we’re going to take with it.

Savi Syth: Is that still like 100 pilot type operation? Or does that need to grow?

Chip Childs: No, that would need to grow. If we are sitting here, we typically assume we need about 10 pilots per aircraft. We have the needs of 13-plus today. And like we said, there’s a fair amount of small community service we could do on top of that, so we’ll continue to need to grow the pilot element of that business model. Which, to be candid, has some very, very attractive prospects. We have some amazing pilots joining and we have a long list of pilots that would love to be involved with it.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Chip Childs for closing remarks.

Chip Childs: Thank you again, everybody, for your interest. We appreciate the amazing work that our people have done this last quarter. I can’t speak highly enough of what our performance does with the opportunity it in turn provides for our people and shareholders and all of our stakeholders. Quite candidly, we’re grateful for the sensitiveness that everyone is moving forward in the world we’re living in today and keeping safety the utmost paramount priority that we have and we continue to have what we hope is a very good, well executed and safe holiday season and we will return back and report on the fourth quarter in 3 months. Thanks again for your interest.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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