Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE:LUV) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Bob Jordan: Well, Sheila, obviously we have the — as we talked about at the Investor Day, we’ve got the contribution from our initiatives that we described there, which is $1 billion to $1.5 billion in EBIT. You got on top of that. The $500 million that we’ve described in the value of the network changes that occurred during the first quarter and are in place again by March, we have some other things that we’re talking about here relative to opportunities. So, all that is obviously a desire to lead you to margin expansion again here in 2024. But, we’re working on our plan. We don’t have a plan to share with you yet. That’s coming later, obviously, in the fall. But yes, margin expansion is absolutely the goal. Tammy, I don’t know if you want to add anything?

Tammy Romo: I think you covered it.

Julia Landrum: Okay. That concludes the analyst portion of our call. I appreciate everyone joining. Have a great day.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our media portion of today’s call. I’d like to first introduce Ms. Linda Rutherford, Chief Administration and Communications Officer.

Linda Rutherford: Thank you, Anthony, and welcome to the members of our media on our call today. We’ll go ahead and get started with our media Q&A. So Anthony, if you would queue folks up to begin asking questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] You may now go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi everyone. Thank you so much for the time today. I wanted to revisit the conversation earlier about the pilot contract, because obviously, we saw United come out with their tentative agreement, and that ultimately brought American back to the negotiating table to try and meet those pay standards and benefits. Wanted to ask if there’s an update there and if Southwest is committed to kind of meeting those new pay standards and benefits and where you all are at with that.

Bob Jordan: Thanks for the question, Andrew, you can chime in, too. So obviously, we are — negotiations are complex. We are eager to reach agreements with all of our groups that have opened contracts right now. We’re meeting very regularly with SWAPA and very hopeful for progress there, but nothing new to report. You’ve heard about the strike authorization vote. Obviously, that is a NMB defined process, mediation is a defined process. So, it’s — I’d say there is no strike or an imminent strike. There are a lot of steps that would lead up to that. And obviously, we want to make progress well ahead of any of those, but there’s no threat of an imminent strike or anything like that. There are many, many steps that would have to occur first. No, we have a desire to get all of our contracts closed up, obviously, including that with our pilots to get them taken care of. They do a fantastic job, and we certainly want progress there.

Andrew Watterson: I’d say that if you look — it’s a strong pilots market. So it’s a great time to be a pilot. And you see that reflected in the wage rates, which often gets the headlines. But I think what’s characterized by all the agreements I’ve seen so far is it’s not so much so wage rates. It’s the other the non-wage portions or the scheduling rules and such, which increases the quality of life for the pilots, can also increase costs for the company. And so those rules can be complex and difficult. So, you spend lots of time then to go through it. Wage rates is defined — is a defined matter, you know that, but the scheduling rules and implications take longer to write out and to model out and agree upon it. So in my opinion, that’s what makes the timeline longer than you would like with regards to our current negotiations.

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