United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:UAL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

So we’ll watch that closely. I want to be clear that what we are giving is our expectation. Our expectation builds in some hedge that production rates don’t increase at the rate that Boeing hopes. There is — so there’s upside risk and downside risk to CapEx as a result. I think we’re going to be managing that $7 billion to $9 billion range, and that’s why we wanted to share that with all of you today.

Duane Pfenningwerth: And then maybe just a quick one for Andrew. And I’ve asked this before, I’m sorry if it’s a little waste of time. But on international inbound or maybe a different way to say it, ex-US point of sale, where does that stand today? And as you think about your entities or geographies, are any of those starting to pick back up in terms of ex-US point of sale, are you seeing any inflections?

Andrew Nocella: I would say, yes, we are seeing progress. The one place we look to the most is Germany and core Europe, and that’s still trails. So hopefully, that will continue to move forward. But I think we’re seeing really progress across the whole globe on rebalancing and being a little bit less dependent on the US consumer to drive the global network.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Savi Syth from Raymond James.

Savi Syth: I was just wondering on that 100 narrowbody aircraft per year. Just what’s the thought on the mix of growth versus replacement? And I guess, asked another way, I appreciate, Mike, you mentioned kind of taking into account macro realities. But what’s the right level of kind of domestic growth as you kind of look over the next three to four years, assuming you can get the aircraft delivered?

Mike Leskinen: And for our growth rate in 2025, ’26 and ’27, you’re going to have to wait for Investor Day later in the year. The 100 aircraft, we have the ability to fly some of our older aircraft longer. And given the delays from Boeing and Airbus, I would expect again, macro economy dependent that we would continue to fly our existing fleet until end of life when they’re at heavy checks. But we always have the optionality. If yields are not strong to early retire some of those aircraft and it’s an economic decision when an aircraft is late in its life to early retire some of those aircraft that are less fuel efficient and very heavy maintenance. So I think of that as flexibility we have in the event of a macro event. But if there is absent a macro event you should expect us to sweat our assets until end of life.

Savi Syth: And just a follow-up, Mike, to a comment you made earlier on — I appreciate the 2Q unit cost color. But as you think about the year just high level, I’m wondering what are the kind of the year-over-year headwinds that might kind of step down from now or maybe step up? I know your capacity is moderating a little bit from the levels in the first half. But just curious, given that you have more time, are you able to address more of the fixed cost as you get into the second half?

Mike Leskinen: I would say you need to think about labor costs and when we lap and annualize some of those labor costs. So that would be the number one factor you should put into your model around differences quarter-to-quarter. Number two, the CASM ex impact of flying 40 less aircraft than we planned for this calendar year, you should expect those costs to linger. As we get into the back half and particularly in the fourth quarter, some of those costs begin to moderate, but you should think about Q2 and Q3, those costs continuing to weigh us down. Again, we will offset with the great operation we’re running as we see completion factors move up we’ll offset partially. But those costs don’t go away overnight. And I’ll use this as an opportunity to also to talk about some longer term cost initiatives that we’ve started since I’ve taken over in the CFO seat.

Number one, tech ops, there are significant opportunities for us to drive efficiency in our tech ops driving efficiencies in our supply chain by optimizing the volume of parts we purchase and improving the rates we pay for those parts. So we’re undergoing a significant initiative there. I think the run rate you’ll see from that initiative is more like 2025. We’re also undergoing a significant procurement bottoms-up evaluation. We’re going to go through waves going through different vendors to make sure we have best pricing in the industry. I think this is going to be in the fullness of time, measured $100 million-plus and cost efficiencies. Again, that’s more like ’25 and ’26. But when I talk about unique United opportunities, I would put this in that category.

And then finally, I’ll highlight that we’ve got significant opportunities within our technology organization to help drive efficiencies throughout the full airline. But one that I’ll highlight is moving a lot of our mainframe computing into the cloud, that’s something that you don’t save the cost of moving to the cloud until you shut the mainframe down. So many cases, we’ve moved 70%, 80%, 90% to the cloud, but we still have to maintain that mainframe with 10% or 20% of the systems on that mainframe. So there’s a little taste. We’ll give a lot more fulsome answer at our upcoming Investor Day.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Scott Group from Wolfe Research.

Scott Group: So that was sort of helpful color on back half CASM a little bit. Maybe just a similar thought on back half RASM, comps get easier. Is it fair to assume we see RASM accelerate in the back half of the year, is there any other puts and takes to be thinking about?