Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HA) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Dan McKenzie: I see. Okay. And then a separate question here, and this is kind of a question I’ve been asking all the airlines here is about the shift to the cloud. So I guess, I’m curious, first, is Hawaiian shifting to the cloud? I guess first off, or if you’ve already started, how far along are you at this point? And I’m just curious, if you can provide some perspective around the cost to make this switch or what the savings might look like once that transition is completed?

Peter Ingram: Yes, I’ll take that one, Dan. We don’t have our IT experts here in the room with us, but I think the way we have focused on this is not to think about the evolution of our technology stack as being something that is immediate, and we’re trying to cut overall at once. But as systems evolve and as we bring on new systems in different part of the business, we are always focused on moving to more modern architectures, and that means moving to, in a lot of case, cloud-based applications. There are a number of areas where we use software as a system as well. And so, the storage on things like that is not only cloud-based, but it is provided by our vendors. So it really for us is more of an evolution than a revolution and something that we are continuing to pursue as we modernize the technology stack around the whole business.

Dan McKenzie: I see. Okay. And if we were to look at it today, what percent of the IT is switched over, and where would you expect that to be say in three years or five years longer term?

Peter Ingram: I don’t have a percentage that I want to be quoted on today, Dan, but maybe we can follow-up with you offline on that one.

Dan McKenzie: I see. Okay. Thanks so much for the time, you guys.

Peter Ingram: Thanks, Dan.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Chris Stathoulopoulos with Susquehanna International. Please proceed with your question.

Chris Stathoulopoulos: Okay. Thank you, operator. So, Peter, you cited the headwinds around FX and lodging inflation as it relates to Japan. If Japan does take longer than expected to return for whatever reason, could you walk us through, how we should think about your other international point-of-sale markets and potentially some of the levers that you could pull to offset that longer ramp-up? Thanks.

Peter Ingram: Yes. I’ll start, and then, again, see if Brent wants to add anything to this. In terms of our overall footprint in Japan post this adjustment, we’ll have three Tokyo flights. We’ll have our Osaka flight. And we have lessen daily frequency to Fukuoka. So each of those flights is about an aircraft worth of flying, so call it about four and a half airplanes worth of flying that are dedicated to Japan going into the summer. There’s really nothing in terms of the international markets that rivals the importance of Japan to Hawaii. It really is far and away, the most significant source of international visitors to our state. So I think in the hypothetical, which we don’t envision, where we were looking to deploy some of that capacity elsewhere, it is probably into the larger domestic market.

But again, at this point, that is, as we said earlier, is not what we’re foreseeing. We’ve got some other sources of revenue in terms of U.S. point of sale and international points of sale, the benefit, the other flights that we have into Japan. And so, right now, we expect there to be a gradual ramp-up. We will certainly be cheering for some appreciation of the yen, which would be helpful, but obviously, we can’t count on that. We’ve got to forecast based on what we know today, but that’s our plan going forward as we sit here today.

Brent Overbeek: Yes. I think the only thing I would add is, we’ve made good progress on increasing traffic beyond Japan into other points of Asia. We’ll continue to pursue that. I think that is a market where we’ve matured a lot, but there’s still some more opportunity there — excuse me. Then likewise, I think we’ve got the opportunity to continue to grow traffic connecting from the mainland to Japan as we’ve seen strong U.S. point of sale and some business that traditionally we didn’t pursue, but we’ve been more active in pursuing that as well as, obviously, Hawaii point-of-origin traffic getting to Japan. So I think we’ve done a good job in those spaces where we haven’t traditionally had to search for as much traffic, but I think we’ll continue to look for ways to continue to grow that business.

Chris Stathoulopoulos: Okay. And as a follow-up, if you could just break down the moving pieces of the capacity guide for 2024 stage gauge and departures. Thank you.

Brent Overbeek: Chris, we’ll have Marcy follow-up after the call, because we don’t have the detail on that for 2024.

Chris Stathoulopoulos: Okay. Thanks.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Catherine O’Brien with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Catherine O’Brien: Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for the follow-up. Appreciate it. Maybe just one more for you, Brent. You called out that international PRASM comps get harder into 2Q. Does that mean that you expect year-over-year international PRASM performance to be sequentially worse in 2Q versus 1Q as it stands? And if that’s the case, do you expect North America and neighbor island PRASM to offset that, or should we expect that system PRASM year-over-year in the second quarter is sequentially tougher than 1Q just given those tough international comps? Thanks so much for the extra time.

Brent Overbeek: Yes. I don’t think we’re at a point where we’re ready to guide to 2Q, Katie. So I just wanted to point out that, yes, Japan gets a little harder comp as we head out, and certainly, we had the ramp-up that improved as we got out of 1Q last year. So we’ll give specific entity guidance either for 2Q, but I think international will be more likely to see kind of more flattish unit revenue as we add a little more — as the industry adds a little capacity back there in 2Q and beyond as opposed to some of the improvements that we’ll still see in the first quarter.

Catherine O’Brien: Got it. Thanks so much.

Operator: And we have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. And I’ll now turn the call back over to President and CEO, Peter Ingram, for closing remarks.

Peter Ingram: Hallo again for joining us today. We’re excited about the opportunities ahead of us in 2024 as we integrate the initiatives of the past couple of years into our day-to-day operations. I look forward to sharing our progress with you again in a few months. Aloha.

Operator: This conclude today’s conference. And you may disconnect your lines at this time.

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