聯合航空 (UAL) 2002 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning and welcome to the United Airlines conference call. Your speaker today is Mr. Jake Brace, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Mr. Brace, you may begin, sir.

Thank you, Operator.

Good morning, everyone and thank you all for joining us today. Joining me on today's call are Rono Dutta, our President, and Patty Chaplinski, Director of Investor Relations.

Let me start by giving you a brief outline of the call this morning. I'll start out reviewing our financial results for the first quarter, and then Rono will talk about first quarter revenue and the current revenue environment.

I'll come back to review first quarter expenses and cash flow, and then I'll also provide you with guidance for the second quarter on expenses and capacity.

Now before I begin, I'd like to remind everyone that we will be discussing our expectations for future capacity, cost unit revenues, load factor, yield, and net earnings.

This information is forward-looking and actual results could differ materially from expected results. The factors that could cause such a difference between actual and expected results are noted in the 8-K that we filed yesterday with the SEC.

Now let me start out by saying that things are clearly getting a lot better. The difficult actions that we took in response to the September 11th tragedy are paying off, but we and the industry still have a long way to go.

The good news is that for UAL, we've seen a steady improvement in our financial results on an absolute basis as well as relative to our competitors over the last six months.

Our past new unit revenue performance has improved each month as we've gone from a year-over-year decrease of 29 percent in October to a decrease of nine percent in March.

Excluding special items, the company incurred a first quarter operating loss of $629 million, and a net loss of $487 million, which translates into a loss of $8.81 per basic share, significantly better than the first call consensus of $10.24.

I should remind you that it is required by GAAP in periods of loss, our earnings per share calculation is based on the 56 million shares of common stock outstanding, and excludes the $60 million, 60 million shares of 60 million common stock equivalent

preferred shares.

If those

shares were included in the calculation the first share loss would have been roughly half.

Let me take just a moment to point out the two special items that are detailed in footnotes two and three to the financial tables in this morning's press release.

The first item is a $29 million gain net of tax related to the sale of descendents shares that we acquired with the, we received from our, the acquisition of

. The other item is a $52 million charge net of tax in conjunction with the closing of

, our fractional jet operation.

Now I'll hand the call over to Rono to discuss the revenue environment, and then I'll come back to talk about first quarter expenses.

Good morning, everyone.

I will begin by giving you an overview of our

revenue performance for the first quarter including details of the various markets, and conclude with some comments on the second quarter.

First quarter

revenue was down 28 percent from last year compared to a 59 percent decline in the fourth quarter.

Those factors that contributed to a system risk factor for the first quarter was 72 percent, four points higher than last year.

have shown some recovery, unfortunately their still at unacceptable levels.

for first quarter was down 15 percent from last year, which is an improvement of the 21 percent decline we saws in the fourth quarter.

Overall first quarter

revenue was 11 percent below last year compared to a 24 percent decline from the fourth quarter. As it moves to the first quarter, unit revenue includes month-over-month.

January was down 14 percent from last year. February was down 11 percent, and March was down nine percent.

Compared to the rest of them, the previous

unit revenue graph. During fourth quarter our year-over-year change in system unit revenue trailed industry average by five points.

So January and February, and we don't have March data yet, we only trailed industry average by one point in unit revenue.

Now let's look at how the individual markets performed during the fourth quarter.

Domestic back unit revenue for the quarter was 13 percent lower than last year driven by a 16 percent decline in yield, and a two point increase in load factor.

International unit revenue was down seven percent from last year at a 16 percent

decline was somewhat offset by load factors that were eight points higher than last year.

The Pacific performance was exceptionally good. We clearly outperformed the industry in January and February.

Unit revenue was actually up one percent year-over-year, the result of a 15 percent decline in yield, and a 14 point increase in load factor.

As we moved through the quarter, results continued to improve in the Pacific.

And I think several factors contributed to our Pacific performance. There was prudent capacity reductions by United and our competitors, and we shifted our point of sales away from the Pacific into the U.S., and we had very strong results in China as well.

In particular, sites between the U.S. and Japan were particularly strong. In the Atlantic, unit revenue was down 11 percent from last year.

Yields declined 16 percent, while load

were four points higher than last year. Our result in the Atlantic were negatively impacted by our exposure to London.

Unit revenue in London was down 20 percent, and this compares to the rest of Europe being down only four percent.

Latin America also appears to be weak.

Unit revenue for the quarter with load factor was four points lower. Our comparative results in Latin America are affected by exposure to South America, and we have relatively no presence at all in the Caribbean and Mexico.

In summary, while load factors continue to improve, yields are increasing at a much slower rate. Now while our financial results are slowly recovering, our operating performance I must line out have been very strong.

During the first quarter our completion rate of 99.1 percent was on the highest United has ever recorded. Compared to the domestic industry, United's completion for January and February was about average.

Our fourth quarter on time departure performance was the best United has seen in the last 10 years. Our on time departure performance was also above industry evidence.

We are also improving the airport experience for our customers. We have enhanced EasyUpdate, our Proactive Paging system that provides customers

information.

has seen about 1,000 travelers per day sign up for this

.

Easy check in has also been expanded.

Interlying E-Ticket capability has been expanded and now includes four other carriers. We have added equipment to three dozen security checks, and at a hub airport, we have increased security lames by 50 percent.

And now let's look briefly as to how the second quarter is shaping up. Our system book load factor for the quarter is about a point lower than last year.

However, we are seeing two trends in the booking patterns.

There's a shift in the booking cost for

and the no show rate as well has dropped. We think these two factors will offset the lower

factor that we had

right now.

And with that I will turn the call back to Jake.

Thanks, Rono.

Let me finish out the revenue story by touching on cargo and other revenue. Cargo revenue was down 27 percent on 22 percent lower volume.

Other revenues were down seven percent, and that was driven by the revenue performance of our fuel trading subsidiary.

Turning to expenses, overall our expense performance continues to be excellent.

This performance is a result of the efforts by thousand of employees across the system, and I'd like to take a moment to thank each of them for working so hard, and being so diligent on reducing cost. Their efforts have resulted in our expenses, excluding special charges and our fuel subsidiary, declining 19 percent year-over-year.

Since our

were down 19 percent as well, our unit cost in the same bases were flat.

Salaries and related cost decreased 14 percent on a 21-percent decrease in manpower.

We continue to see good performance on the salary expense line as we move forward. Since 9/11 we've

workforce by 22,000 employees, as a result we've seen a positive trend in productivity.

For the quarter our productivity was up impressive when you shrink capacity nearly 20.

Fuel expense is down 40 percent on a 23-percent decrease in volume.

Fuel price for the first quarter was 70.6 cents per gallon including taxes, down 23 percent. Excluding the

from both years, fuel price is down 26 percent.

Commissions were down 44 percent with a decrease in both revenue and rate. The rate was down because of the commission actions taken last August, and to a much lesser extent this March.

As well as an increase in Internet sales, we think the elimination of base commission domestically will provide savings of between $100 and $150 million per year. Revenue generated over the Internet reached nearly $300 million, order a 30-percent increase over last year, and represented 16 percent of domestic passenger revenue for the quarter.

Purchase services were down 20 percent due to lower volume driven fees, mainly credit card and CRS fees. The other large decreases in aircraft maintenance and other expenses were driven by lower volumes as well as our supplier cost reduction program.

Last by not least, insurance and security costs, which I know a number of you are interested in, those costs for the first quarter increased from $28 million in 2001 to $81 million in 2002.

Now let me take a moment to talk about our cash position.

Our cash burn rate was halved from $10 million a day in the fourth quarter to less than $5 million a day in the first quarter, and we are expecting it to improve in the second quarter as well.

During the first quarter, our cash flow remained good.

Of course we had to repay $284 million in deferred transportation taxes in January back to the government. But early in the quarter we also closed on a private debt financing which brought over $250 million.

We received about $140 million from the sale of the remaining Cendant shares, and over $600 million in income tax refund. As a result of all this, we ended the quarter with $2.9 billion in cash, up $300 million from the beginning of the quarter.

Now let me remind you about our capital spending, which is another positive

. As we said in the past, the 24 aircraft we are taking delivery of this year are already fully financed.

So for 2002 we are only exposed to a cash outflow due to our non-aircraft capital spending, which will total $400 million. During the first quarter we spent -- we're not taking delivery of any planes.

Our aircraft capital expenditures will be zero, which will be great for cash flow and the balance sheet as well.

Now let me turn to labor.

The IAM 141 M membership ratified a tentative mechanics agreement, and it was signed on March 14th. This put our mechanic's rate a few cents

and resolved our open mechanics contract.

We continue to negotiate with IAM district 141, which represents our airport reservations personnel. They set some kind of negotiations from the timetable established by the National Mediation Board.

The negotiating teams will now be meeting again this Monday, April 22nd, and we're hopeful this early start will help bring this process to a conclusion quickly.

Now let me give you an update on our financial recovery plan.

Our goal since last fall for them to get the airline back on the road to financial stability. As many of you are aware, last quarter we talked about a four plank recovery plan that we'd already begun to make some headway on.

Since that time, we've continued to make progress on three of the four planks. We've successfully reduced our operating and capital budgets for control of expenses.

We've improved our financial position, we're running a great operation as Rono mentioned, and we're seeing the results in improved revenues.

However, we've made less progress in the fourth area, which we term shared sacrifice.

Our negotiations with the IAM on their open contracts have slowed us down in that front. However, there is no question that we must get our costs in line with our revenues.

Our CEO, Jack Creighton is calling in all of the union leaders next week to discuss the employee part of United's recovery plan.

But even beyond that, we're continuing to work with all employees to increase productivity and reduce costs in all areas of our business, and to build on the significant progress we've already made in those areas as I mentioned earlier.

Now let me summarize our expectations going forward.

Capacity for the second quarter is expected to be down 16 to 17 percent. On the cost side for the second quarter we expect unit cost, excluding our fuel subsidiary, to be up five percent year-over-year.

That's based on a second quarter fuel price, which is projected to be down 11 percent year-over-year to 78.3 cents per gallon. And although we have seen positive revenue trends, we expect to report a significant second quarter loss.

In addition, we expect to report a loss for the full year. With that, operator, I'd now like to open it up for questions.

If you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star and one on your touch-tone phone, star and one. Our first question comes from

with Merrill Lynch.

You may go ahead, sir.

Yeah, hi, good morning, gentlemen and Patty.

A couple questions, I guess this question's

about London being down 20 percent, and I was curious what was driven that, only because, you know, a year ago we had the, you know, hoof-and-mouth disease, which I think, you know, depressed travel. I would have expected that it wouldn't have been down as much.

Can you, you know, elaborate on that?

London seems to be weak to begin with compared to continental Europe.

But on top of that there seems to be some

from the American carriers. We've seen that in

away from us, and the American in particular.

I think both

.

OK.

And then I guess another sort of network type question, I know a lot of the service on the west coast that used to be operated by shuttle aircraft has been replaced with regional jets operated by some of your affiliates. What, you know, how has that changed, I guess the profitability of those markets?

I mean, are you seeing some meaningful improvement with those slots?

The west coast is, first of all, is used to be very weak, and we told you before about the regional differences that we're looking at.

And we keep tracking that very closely, to which it is doing well, with it is not doing badly. And from the industry as a whole, San Fran, LA, San Jose, they keep showing up on the bottom quarter, in the bottom 10 percent of the cities in terms of revenue performance.

So having said that I'll move away to shuttles to

that have been good for us. Because clearly again we're looking at the collecting traffic.

We're not trying to make money in the local segment if you will. And so we're all very pleased with that move away from shuttle into

.

OK, thank you.

Our next question comes from

from Lehman Brothers.

Good morning, guys. Rono, I just wondered if you could give us, you talked a little bit about what's going on on the west coast, if you could give us a sense of, you know, just general trends across the domestic network, you know, Chicago, Denver, et cetera.

Again some cities of that show up as being particularly weak. And just to give you the numbers again, if you will, San Francisco for the industry has ...

Right.

... down 15 percent in the first quarter of last year.

This is down a quarter of 29 percent. So San Francisco appears to be wavy.

If you look at cities that are strong at the upper end, it would be smaller cities, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, those show up as being relatively stronger, if you will.

In that domestic network, I'd say that transcon is the one place where we're doing relatively better than other places.

So not too much differences, but transcon's one area of strength domestically.

Can you also just give us the, you know, the business mix numbers that you've typically, you know, provided on?

Domestically, the business mix is down about two points, with yields down 14 percent. Internationally, the business mix is down six points, but yields are down only five percent of the newest revenue.

Just quickly, Jake. Could you give us a little bit more color on, you know, sort of what was -- it seems like the expense control in the -- in the, you know, categories that I would call sort of other was quite a bit better than, you know, than I would have expected, you know, despite having significant hikes in insurance and security.

Can you give us a little more flavor on what was going on there?

There are really two really bit things in there.

First of all in our other category is food. And our food expense for the quarter was down quite substantially.

Partially volume, partially the food that we took off the airplanes. Second also in that category are what we call layover and meal expense, which are fundamentally the expenses of our flight crews as they travel and as we have reduced the operation, those expenses have gone down as well.

So that was really what drove that down.

Could you -- one last one, I mean in your 8-K of late March, I think you'd eluded to, you know, unit cost performance that would be, you know, positive three percent.

Right.

... percent.

And, you know, March 31st actuals have came in quite a bit better than that. Was there something that -- you know, what was it that crept up on you?

Yeah, we were -- we were a little surprised. And what happened there were a couple of things.

First our -- when we gave that guidance, we were fundamentally looking at January and February expense data. And March unit cost really came in strong, and there were a couple of reasons for that.

One is the expense performance that I mentioned earlier all around our system continues to be very, very strong. And the as Rono mentioned, our operating performance has been very good as well, which has increased our completion factor, which increased our AFMs higher than what we expected.

So those things really, quite frankly, surprised us a little bit in March, and drove down our unit costs beyond what we were forecasting even, you know, mid to late March.

Was there any, you know, in the fourth quarter you had some lower than expected personnel expenses.

You had some senior people with leaves of absence. Did any of that carry over into the first quarter?

A little bit did, but we actually saw the reverse, some reversing of that. So we had some people in the fourth quarter where we had done those emergency leaves that we mentioned.

That got some fairly senior people out. We also did a number of voluntary leaves, both in a lot of areas, but one of the areas that there was a lot of usage of those voluntary leaves was flight attendants, and we had a number of senior flight attendants taking leaves.

And in the first quarter some of those people started returning, so we still had some benefit of that, but what we actually saw quarter over quarter was something of a reversal of what we saw, so we had a higher average salary.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from

with Morgan Stanley.

You may go ahead.

Thank you.

Question for Rono. The weakness in the

to a shift to Oakland?

No, we're looking at all three airports.

And no, I don't think it's

because of, the most biggest factor causes again, the regional weakness in the economy.

Did you not put in some additional flights from Dulles into Oakland?

Yes we did. Yes we did.

Well if things are weak, why did you do that?

Well, we again, from a Dulles point of sale it's strong.

Dulles is a very strong hub for us particularly from a European standpoint, and we've consistently last three or four years gone into smaller markets on the west coast out of Dulles.

The June 28th deadline for the negations.

We, as I mentioned, we're going to call in the labor folks next week in order to meet that. And obviously we haven't decided whether or not we will be participating in a loan guarantee, or you know, filing a loan guarantee application.

But we are mindful of that June 28th deadline, and may be -- it may be useful, it may be part of the financial recovery plan, it may be helpful with, you know, putting

together with the unions and others. So we are mindful of that, and part of the thinking of the timing of the meeting next is in fact that.

Like on temporary concessions versus permanent, will there be some mixture of the two? Or could you actually see a serious change in your business model?

I think it's premature to talk about that. I think we're going to get the labor leaders in next week, we're going to talk to them, you know, frankly about the situation.

And we're going to explore with them, you know, anything and everything to attempt to address the situation in as creative a way as we can. But I think describing it any more specifically in that is way premature.

Thank you, Jake; thank you, Rono.

Our next question comes from

from Deutsche Bank.

Yes, hello. I have two questions.

One is next week when labor comes in, will you be addressing the

issue with respect to lifting up the cap?

Not necessarily specifically next week, but that is clearly something that we have been in fact talking to, obviously we're focused on -- they know we're focused on, and we're going to talk to them about it between now and whenever.

But we are aware of the situation and they're aware of it, and it's something that we are going to be discussing with them, not necessarily next week, though.

OK, and then on the fare action side, there does seem to be a difference of opinion among the airlines with respect to how broad an increase the market can bear.

Can I hear your thoughts as to, you know, what you think?

Well,

, I think part of the problem in airline pricing today is various carriers have very precarious beliefs about how the pricing structure should look.

Some airlines think that we should just price

into the last two

, and then let the go rate go. Some airlines believe that you should just

structure phase, because when you do that it leads to fear of discounting, we're discounting from a higher base.

Some airlines think destructive fares are not spinning anywhere, so why don't we go along and say, what's the common ground that we can build upon? And we put in our fare increase about two days ago I believe.

Which is just trying to look at everyone's fillings and saying that there's a commonality of action here, and that seems to be have

already

. So I'm optimistic at least that piece of it will hold.

Right and then just last, fuel hedging, I don't think you're hedged going forward. Could you verify that for me?

we were basically 20 to 25 percent hedged. The period's a little bit quarter to quarter, but for each of the next three, or the second quarter, third and fourth quarter, hedged 20 to 25 percent at $24 a barrel.

Terrific, thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from

with Buckingham Research Group.

Thank you very much, Operator.

Hi, Jake, Rono, and Patty.

Hi.

Jake, you had a really good quarter with weather. Is there a number you could ascribe to benefit from that?

No,

. We did have a very good quarter with weather.

I mean our operating performance, as Rono mentioned, was truly superb. We didn't make an attempt to quantify that.

Obviously it helps both on the cost side and on the revenue side.

OK, and then the other question is, two questions, with respect to the tax rate and income tax refund.

So now you've received all the income tax refunds including the five

back, and in terms of the tax rate I think it was down about a point on the year-on-year basis. Is that the rate we should use going forward?

Two questions in there are in effect, and yes that's the rate. We'll likely have another tax refund next year.

I'm sorry, another tax refund when?

Next year.

From next ...

As resulting from the same five year carry back issue.

OK, but in terms of all the cash in for this year, that's ...

For this year we're done.

OK. Great, thanks.

And I just want to say I actually had an occasion to fly United recently and their flights were actually early.

Well, we like that.

Both were about 15 minutes early, so thanks very much.

Thank you.

from Goldman Sachs, you may go ahead.

Good morning. Two question please.

First if you, there, why should that get worse?

A couple of things going on there

.

The first is in the second quarter we have some of our labor contracts have sort of kicked in at higher rates.

So the pilot contract has an April increase. The mechanic contract had a date of signing increase.

So those -- the flight attendants' contract has -- had an increase in the -- in the quarter as well. So that's -- so that's what's driving that on a non-fuel basis.

And then on an -- on an absolute basis, obviously fuel drives it up also.

And how much will those wage increases cost?

I guess we haven't disclosed that, you can -- we can -- let us deal with that also, I'm with you, because I don't -- I don't have that number right here.

OK.

In terms of millions of dollars.

Second of all, can you go over in the summer when your capacity -- or what is your summer capacity going to be down versus last year -- but also just how that compares for each hub?

We don't give it by hub, but we can give you by market or by region if you will. The domestic will be down 13 percent.

International will be down 21, and the international 21 is pretty much pretty close to Pacific, Atlantic, and Latin America, roughly equal to each other.

And I know Chicago ...

At least on the West Coast, but other than that roughly nine.

And finally, how are you doing relative to the other low-fare carriers in terms of recapturing the business traffic you might have lost?

Business traffic is down, as we said, a couple of points.

I'm not sure it's necessarily a shift to low-cost carriers. Low-cost carriers continue to grow across the whole country.

But it's not like there's been a market shift of business travel from us to low-cost carriers.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from

with Salomon Smith Barney.

Hi, a question for Rono.

I think American -- and I'll paraphrase here in their conference call, was mentioning that something about they're having more corporate accounts than you folks do in Chicago, implying that they've been picking up some major accounts there.

You know, both of you have been, you know, putting back some more capacity in Chicago than other markets.

And you also have Southwest, and to some extent ATA adding a lot of capacity out of

can you just discuss all those issues and, you know, what's the -- what's the prognosis for Chicago?

OK. Chicago is clearly very important to us, and we've added some capacity to regain some market share, you know, ratio 10 to one or some huge number.

And I think they might be talking more about shift of business or corporate accounts.

And even there I've gone through the numbers, and believe me there's nothing to the story about us losing corporate accounts in Chicago. Clearly there's some churn, but if anything we've gained more than we've lost.

So I'm not sure where that is coming from. In terms of overall share in Chicago, I clearly think the summer 2000. At that point, we lost about two points of share, and we've got only a fraction of that back.

So we lost some shares, we're not continuously losing shares, and at this point we are holding our own and getting some of it back slowly.

So it was most of that loss today in

, or are you counting in anything you've lost to

?

I'm counting everything.

OK, and then what about

?

How does that fit in? Is that starting to such a lot of traffic out of O'Hare in general, or?

clearly is a problem.

is growing, and their moving some traffic over from O'Hare, but we've also been quite aggressive on pricing. We have last a lot of

fares.

So we, again, even there, we've got some share back over the last few months.

Any comment you'd have regarding the new Detroit facility that's going to be able to process more international traffic than O'Hare?

Do you have concerns that's going to also siphon traffic out of O'Hare?

Not really.

You know, Detroit has always been a pretty good hub. To the pacific it continue to be a good hub.

But we are competitive I think. So I don't see any additional concerns there.

OK, thank you.

from UBS Warburg you may go ahead.

Yes, good morning, everybody. This shared sacrifice notion, who's sharing what with whom?

I mean if you take labor -- is it just labor? I mean, what else are you looking for?

Well,

, I'm not going to get into all the specifics on that, but clearly labor is a piece of it. But we are working with lots of vendors to reduce operating cost, and other areas as well.

So it is not something that is strictly focused on labor, although labor makes a, obviously is a big component of it, because labor costs are, you know, a huge chunk of our overall costs.

The CEO of your primary competitors suggested that the high fare business travel

, if not broken needs some serious rethinking or reworking.

You know, any general thoughts on that?

, I think we are all looking at that issue very seriously.

And clearly our revenues are way below our costs. And yes, we're doing everything we can on the revenue side, but clearly we need to take a very serious look at the cost side.

So all I can tell you is that we are going through everything, we're looking at distribution costs, we're looking at our utilization, we're looking at tier density, we're looking at airport productivity, we're looking at everything we can in terms of what progress we make on the cost side.

So I mean we don't have any visibility of -- I think it's a little bit of everything to bring our costs more in line with our revenue.

And lastly a small point, your purchase services were down, oh 10 percent almost, from the fourth quarter to the March quarter.

I guess you got

fees and credit card fees in there, I think, and parts of those -- you know, those are going to have a revenue dependency to them. That's our volume dependency, which was up from Q4 to Q1.

What's moving around in there?

I'm looking at it here,

, and I don't -- you're talking about Q4 to Q1?

Yeah, I'm showing 364 to 336.

I don't have -- I don't have that analysis in front of me.

They're clearly, you know, year-over-year credit card fees and

fees are driving it, obviously that would have had an effect in the fourth quarter. But in addition, we're seeing, you know -- you know, lower purchase services in terms of, you know, technical fees, and there's some maintenance and repairs expenses in there.

But we -- I don't have the analysis here in front of me quarter-over-quarter,

.

Yes, we'll take it up later, thanks.

Yeah, OK, thanks.

Our final question comes from

with JP Morgan.

Yeah, good morning. Question on fares -- United has traditionally been fully competitive with Southwest.

You appear to be fully competitive with Jet Blue in the Dallas market that

mentioned earlier, and you can see that even in Chicago you're winning back some share from a low-fare competitor there.

Given this, I'm surprised to see that you continue to charge a significant premium in Denver for closed in travel.

What would United to compete differently with some low fare carriers versus others, or you know, what makes Denver different?

I'm not sure I want to talk about that on -- in this call.

Maybe we can discuss that separately,

.

OK.

I mean fair enough, I need to fly to Denver on Monday and I'd be more than happy to, you know, give the $500 price to United, but they're asking for $1,100. So at least in one example I'm being forced to fly somebody else.

So I was just kind of curious about it. But yeah, maybe we can take it up offline, that's great.

OK, thank you.

OK, well thank you all for calling in and speaking with us, and we look forward to speaking with you in the next quarter.