Alaska Air Group, Inc. (NYSE:ALK) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Group: Okay. Helpful. And then I’m just curious, how does the JetBlue Spirit ruling change your views on success of approval with Hawaiian? And just any thoughts or color on just when you go through the Hawaiian proxy, some of the cash burn there, if that’s all sort of incorporated in everything you laid out for us when we did the…

Ben Minicucci: Yes, Scott, thank you. It’s Ben. Our view is that these deals are completely different. The JetBlue Spirit was blocked by the judge essentially because it would limit a low-cost competitor. In our case, between Hawaiian and Alaska, these are two very similar business models. The networks are very, very complementary. In fact, when you combine the networks, there’s only 12 overlap routes through the combination. So it’s very pro consumer, and it’s also very pro-competitive customers in Hawaii will have an expansive network to fly to the United States and internationally, our customers on the West Coast will have more options to fly to Hawaii and international. So it’s very different from the JetBlue Spirit. And look, after the deal would become a little bit larger airline to compete stronger against the network carriers and now we have a strong domestic network with a strong international network.

So we feel our case is differentiated, and we’ll work through the DOJ on that process

Shane Tackett: And Scott, I’ll first mention very quick on Hawaiian cash burn since you also asked about that. It’s — in everything we’ve laid out, the cash burn is really principally tied to the delivery stream. And I just note that there’s an asset behind that that has value that we want. And so we’re not funding significant or material operating cash losses. The negative cash flow is really about the CapEx right now. And we think that, that business is going to recover over the next couple of years as Asia comes back and as they get Amazon up in the 787 up and Maui recovers.

Scott Group: Awesome. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

Ben Minicucci: Thank you. Thanks, Scott.

Operator: Your next question comes from Duane Pfennigwerth with Evercore ISI.

Duane Pfennigwerth: Hey, thanks. I guess other than the lost ASMs from flight cancellations. Can you just talk a little bit more about maybe deliveries that you think could shift, or what other pieces there are that could influence where you ultimately end up for the year?

Shane Tackett: Yes, Duane, on capacity, I really think it’s at this point, the deliveries. I think given the guidance we got yesterday, we have a good sense of when we can get the full MAX-9 fleet back operating and it really just comes down to the 23 deliveries. We did have some planned retirements. And we had some allocation for work to refurbish some interiors. So we’ve got some moving parts and pieces we can sort of, flex around to get to the right capacity number. But as we mentioned, as we look at it today, it’s going to be below the range we had originally thought, which was 3% to 5%. And it could well very well be below 3% at the end of the day.

Duane Pfennigwerth: Thanks. And then just relatedly, have you made any changes with respect to hiring? Have you paused hiring? Have you paused training, resulting from this event?

Ryan St. John: Hey Duane, this is Ryan. We already came into the year, given the low growth profile with not much hiring required. I mean, some, of course, to backfill any attrition, but we’ve sort of left some optionality on the table. We’ve got a couple more months to make some decisions on that relative to our summer schedule. So we’ll be talking about that the next few months, obviously, if there’s any delivery delays or anything, maybe we don’t need some of those last training classes in the spring. But we’ve still got them available if we need them if we can find the capacity.

Duane Pfennigwerth: Okay. Thank you.

Ryan St. John: Thanks Ryan.

Operator: And we’ll move next to Conor Cunningham with Melius Research.

Conor Cunningham: Hi everyone. Thank you. Sorry to go back to the $150 million headwind, but I’m not quite clear — it’s not quite clear on what actually has lost revenue versus cost impact. I don’t know if you could provide any clarity there that would be helpful.

Ryan St. John: Yeah. Hey Conor, this is Ryan again. So the majority of that $150 million is revenue cost, I would say, are kind of a wash because obviously, all the canceled flights, we saved on fuel and landing fees. But as you can imagine, we’ve incurred significant overtime as our operational employees are working around the clock to keep the new schedule going. A lot of passenger remuneration and things like that. So it’s mostly been revenue. I mean, as Shane sort of mentioned, small assumption for maybe some booking challenges in February, as we get the fleet back operating. But we’re sort of assuming by March, we’re back on the original trend there. So that’s kind of what it breaks down, as it’s pretty much mostly revenue. And the point being that it’s at least $150 million because obviously, any changes to delivery streams or capacity might further impact that. But it’s pretty much cancels to-date plus the small amount of booking impact in February.

Conor Cunningham: I got you. Okay. That’s helpful. And then, you mentioned the 30% profit improvement on network changes in 1Q. Can you just — can you just provide some details on what that actually means? And what’s driving the change? Because it seems like a pretty significant long-term impact for you guys. So any help there would be great. Thank you.

Andrew Harrison: Conor, its Andrew. Yeah. Essentially, it’s the reshaping of the network. I mean we have significant double-digit increases in certain regions of our network, which performed very poorly last year due to the lack of business and just a change in behavior. And then we have some very high double-digit growth in some of our sun destinations and other core routes. So it’s really just — 2022 is obviously an interesting year with all the huge demand surge and we’re now in a normal place. So — and as we’ve looked at it, it’s really revenue driven. It’s just reshaping and flying where the demand is getting better day of week seasonality, California versus the Pacific Northwest. So we’re very, very happy with the results.

Ben Minicucci: And Conor, I’m going to add that, remember, our goal is to reduce losses in Q1 and get to breakeven or better. So that is the long-term objective.