United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:UAL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Catie O’Brien: Thanks so much for that color. And live in New York, can definitely confirm on the Uber versus the airfare of late, so somewhere there. And obviously, a lot has changed, as we just talked about since the original United Next plan, particularly how the capacity bottlenecks we’ve been talking about have played out. How should we think about capacity growth over the next couple of years? Are you still targeting to be about 40% bigger in 2026 based on that 4% to 6% CAGR or help us reset the bar? Thanks so much.

Andrew Nocella: I’ll try that. I don’t think we’re going to reset the bar here. Obviously, this is really dynamic. And the OEM delivery delays, both on engines and aircraft have been really unprecedented. So, we’re not going to reguide today to what 2026 looks like, other than we’re plotting our course in very bumpy skies when it comes to the availability of aircraft. And there’s not a quarter that goes by where I don’t get an update with obviously disappointing results from what our outlook looks like for aircraft deliveries. So, we’ll continue to monitor that. And at the appropriate point in time, we’ll update the guidance.

Scott Kirby: I think, the important point is we have real confidence in achieving our 14% margin under sort of all the plausible scenarios for aircraft deliveries.

Operator: Next, we have Jamie Baker from JP Morgan.

Jamie Baker: Gerry, a question on the labor cost assumptions, the pilots in the 4.5-point headwind. Do you expect the pilot economics to be backdated to January 1st, or are you using some other date? And also related to this, the EPS guide, do you also consider Delta’s profit-sharing formula to be market?

Gerry Laderman: Jamie, nice question, but neither one of those we’re going to be able to talk about on the call. You’re asking for too much information regarding potential negotiations.

Jamie Baker: Okay. Second question for Scott then. On the topic of cost convergence, I think you said that the ability for discounters to maintain a significant wage arbitrage is narrowing or impaired. I didn’t quite get your language. But if we look at the Spirit and JetBlue TAs, yes, they’re incrementally expensive, but the resulting wage advantage to, let’s just go with Delta here. It’s still pretty much the same. So, were you implying that the arbitrage has to narrow even more, or did I misunderstand?

Scott Kirby: I’m saying, not implying, that I don’t think a world where they pay meaningfully less and still hire and successfully fly and complete their schedules. I think that’s an offset. I don’t think they can do it. And one of the other ULCCs has really been struggling this year with a completion factor, which at least had us internally wondering if they had pilot shortage issues because system’s been really pretty good. There was a one-day FAA outage, but the weather has been good, and they’ve been consistently having problems. And then 8 or 9 days ago, they put out a $50,000 signing bonus for pilots. And look, however you want to calculate it, however you want to look at it. And if you’re interested, I can give you some more real-time facts, like I’ve watched the data closely.

And it’s not happening. I mean what happened over the holidays wasn’t just at one airline. And at all the airlines that had challenges, you can look at our data that we put out. And if you want data for what’s happening right now, I can tell you some more stuff. But, there are a number of airlines who cannot fly their schedules. The customers are paying the price. They’re canceling a lot of flights. But they simply can’t fly the schedules today. Maybe it’s pilots, maybe it’s something else, maybe it’s technology, maybe it’s infrastructure, but what I’m confident of the big three — and by the way, I think JetBlue has invested in this, the big three and JetBlue are operating at a different level than everyone else for whatever the reasons are.

Operator: Next is Ravi Shanker from Morgan Stanley.

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