Sun Country Airlines Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNCY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Dave Davis: I think it sort of more broadly €“ in answer to your question, the thesis that we had in place when we went public remains, and we think we can generate either the top or one of the €“ very near the top in industry margins on a go-forward basis. And our 2023 plan reflects that. As Jude said, some temporary things out there. Growth, as we can continue to hit our growth targets, there’s plenty of opportunities out there. We don’t think we’re at sort of marginal fair levels yet. And there’s plenty of growth opportunity for us. We actually think the 2023 growth plan is achievable, and actually somewhat modest. And if we hit those numbers, we will be, we believe, near the near the top of the industry again.

Brandon Oglenski: Maybe just a quick follow-up on the Amazon comment. Do you guys have built-in cost indexes there? So, like, if your pilot wages go up, then the Amazon contract will adjust? Or is that just the normal rate increase that you guys had negotiated previously?

Jude Bricker: It’s normal. And pilot escalation has been lumpy. So, they eventually will align, but sometimes we’re ahead, sometimes we’re behind.

Dave Davis: Exactly.

Operator: Our next question will come from Christopher Stathoulopoulos of Susquehanna.

Christopher Stathoulopoulos: Jude, the comment in your prepared remarks on the 20 aircraft that are contracted out of the active fleet of 55, do you have a target level for that piece of the fleet that you want to keep on contracted or charter? Or is that just going to move around in response to the market? And then, could you just remind us of the economics here? What utilization minimums are there, if any, and escalators that are built into those contracts?

Jude Bricker: I would look at it on a block hour basis and we would be optimized at around a quarter of our block hours allocated to fixed fee contracts. And that’s because of the mins and maxes associated with our pilot contract. So, if those contracts service minimum hour obligations to our crews, then we’re optimized for being peak to off-peak on our sched service. So, we want to keep it around 25. Now, those opportunities aren’t reliably presented to us. And we can’t just pluck them out whenever we want. So we’re going to continue to take those opportunities as they come and build up that side of the business and try to keep scheduled service growing as we can. And that’s basically the philosophy. So, about a quarter of our block hours.

Now, each of these contracts are different. We were talking about economics. In the case of the Amazon contract, for example, there’s a fixed component and then a variable component. So, margins expand as utilization goes down, actually. Most of our fixed fee contracts have something similar where there’s a minimum hour obligation from the customer and then a variable component beyond that, and that variable component, in many cases, actually gets cheaper for them to incentivize more flying. All these businesses are going to produce really high margins, and the stability of that operation is really what we’re after. Chris, I don’t know what else I can tell you on those.

Christopher Stathoulopoulos: On a follow-up, you said utilization driven growth this year, could you just put a finer point there on the moving pieces, stage gauge, departures and then peak versus off-peak?