Republic Airways Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:RJET) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Republic Airways Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:RJET) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript April 29, 2026

Republic Airways Holdings Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.73 EPS, expectations were $2.19.

Operator: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to RJET Q1 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Keely Mitchell. Please go ahead.

Keely Mitchell: Thank you, Cara, and thank you, everyone, for joining our earnings call. On with me today are David Grizzle, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Matt Koscal, President and Chief Commercial Officer; and Joe Allman, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In the Investor Relations section of our website, you will find the earnings press release and slide presentation to accompany today’s discussion. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay on our Investor Relations website. Today’s discussion will include forward-looking statements regarding Republic Airways future performance, strategic initiatives, and market outlook. These statements reflect our current expectations and beliefs based on information available to us today, but they are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our projections.

The aviation industry operates in a dynamic environment with inherent risks, including regulatory changes, economic fluctuations, weather-related disruptions, and evolving market conditions that can significantly impact our operations and financial performance. Additionally, our business is subject to the operational and financial health of our major airline partners, labor market conditions, aircraft availability, and other factors beyond Republic’s direct control. For a comprehensive understanding of the specific risks and uncertainties that may affect our business and financial results, I encourage all participants to review the detailed disclosures in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 10-K on file with the SEC.

These documents provide important context and detailed information that supplement today’s discussion and are or will be available on both the SEC’s website and in the Investor Relations section of Republic’s website at rjet.com. Throughout this webcast, we will also present and discuss non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measures, to the extent available and without unreasonable effort, appear in today’s earnings press release and accompanying presentation, which are available on our Investor Relations website. And now I will turn the call over to David.

David Grizzle: Thank you, Keely, and good evening. Before we get into our prepared remarks, I’d like to update everyone on the anticipated leadership changes. The Board promoted Matt to the position of CEO effective June 15. Additionally, effective at the same time, the Board promoted both Joe Allman, our CFO; and Paul Kinstedt, our Chief Operating Officer, to the position of Executive Vice President, and I will continue in my role as Chairman. This completes our succession plan for Republic following its merger with Mesa and return to the public markets. We are blessed to have such a seasoned leadership team. I’ve had a chance to work very closely with these talented executives during the last year. I have tremendous respect for them and Republic is well positioned for the future.

Our people and our culture are the backbone of our success, and we have an outstanding team. The first quarter of 2026 marked a couple of significant milestones for our company. First, this is our first fiscal quarterly reporting period following the merger with Mesa last November. And as a reminder, our quarterly results from Q1 2025 do not include any Mesa results. We reported Q1 2026 adjusted net income per diluted share of $0.73. Revenues were $527 million, and adjusted pretax income was $47 million, or an 8.9% pretax margin. These strong financial results demonstrate the resiliency of our business model to weather the storm. The first quarter is generally our lowest quarter of block hour production due to seasonality. This year, our operations were impacted by severe winter weather in January and February.

Winter Storms Fern and Hernando had a direct impact on our operations in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. As an example, during 1 day of Fern, we were unable to operate 87% of the airline because of weather, which in turn created large crew positioning disruptions. I want to thank our frontline crew members and operations center associates that worked tirelessly through these multi-day disruptions and still delivered an exceptional product to all of our passengers and partners. While our full-up completion factor was 3 points lower, or 94%, versus the prior year Q1 result of 97%, our controllable completion rate remained exceptional, and we were still able to achieve 80 days, a perfect — that is to say, 100% controllable completion factor performance in the quarter.

I am continually impressed by the professionalism and dedication of our team as they serve our partners and passengers. The second significant milestone is the conclusion of our fleet transition efforts at United. We took delivery of the last 3 new E175 aircraft to conclude our fleet transition by swapping 38 new E175s for the 38 E170s at United. We started this fleet transition program back in November 2022, and we now have all of the new aircraft in position and in service with United. 31 of the 38 E170s removed from service have been redeployed to another partner, either in revenue service or under long-term leases. The last 7 E170s removed from United are currently unallocated, meaning not assigned to any of our partners, and will be used for ad hoc charters and other support.

As a reminder, substantially all our revenues are generated from capacity purchase agreements with our 3 airline partners, American, Delta, and United. Our business model also protects us from fuel price increases as our partners are responsible for fuel, ground handling, and managing the passenger ticket pricing and demand management. We are responsible for providing safe, reliable, and cost-efficient operations. Now I’d like to turn the call over to Matt to provide an update on our strategic focus and the ongoing integration efforts related to the merger. Matt?

Matthew Koscal: Thank you, David, and good evening, everyone. I want to begin by expressing how deeply humbled and grateful I am for the opportunity to lead our more than 8,400 dedicated Republic associates. It is a tremendous privilege to serve alongside such an exceptional team that shares a steadfast commitment to our culture of excellence, a culture that has defined who we are and enabled our continued success. As we look ahead to our next chapter of growth, I am fully committed to building upon this strong foundation and further strengthening it together. I would also like to sincerely thank our Board of Directors and David for their trust and confidence in me and our executive leadership team as we carry Republic forward.

Turning our direction to the demand environment. Despite the uncertainty that persists in the broader market and its effects on oil prices and ultimately jet fuel costs, the demand signals from our partners are cautiously optimistic and focused on smart capacity deployments. As such, the demand for large multi-class regional aircraft remains strong, particularly in the high-value hubs we service, and we don’t expect that to change. Historically, our aircraft have actually seen increases in utilization even during uncertain economic conditions. Our aircraft provide our partners the flexibility to deploy a lower seat density aircraft to right-size or match expected passenger demand and still capture business, premium, and basic economy fares.

Earlier this month, an FAA order capped daily flights at Chicago O’Hare at 2,700 beginning in June. This presented another example of our agility and how we work closely with our partners. While we expect to see some adjustments to our O’Hare schedule in June, we don’t expect any material long-term impacts to our flying, as many of those hours will be redeployed in other areas of our partners’ networks. We remain in constant communication with our partners to ensure we are ready to shift flying where they desire and protect the expected block hour production and schedules. Before I move to discuss the status of the integration, I think it’s important to acknowledge that while the Northeast bore the brunt of winter weather this year, it was helpful for us to have some new geographic diversity in our network.

The addition of Houston to our network as a result of the Mesa merger helped offset some of the lost flying days we had in the Northeast, and we look forward to expanding positively on this trend as we increase utilization at Mesa over the next couple of years. Now let me turn my attention to our integration efforts. We’ve made substantial progress during the quarter on integration. We remain focused on executing our 4 clear workstreams: consolidation of the back-office functions, IT systems integration, fleet harmonization, and regulatory operating certificate harmonization. Regarding the first 2 workstreams — consolidation of corporate functions and the integration of our IT systems — we have made great progress on both fronts in the quarter.

We are slightly ahead of plan on the back-office integration, and we expect that work to be substantially complete by Q4 of this year. On the IT front, we continue to make investments across legacy Mesa to further enhance both hardware and software capabilities, and we believe these investments are already providing tangible benefits across the airline. This workstream is a multiyear process that doesn’t fully wrap up until we complete the operating certificate harmonization process in 2028. Lastly, we were pleased to receive approval from the FAA to recognize our Carmel training campus as an approved Mesa training facility. This puts us 1 step closer to being able to train all of our crews at our state-of-the-art training campus in Carmel, Indiana.

On the fleet side, we are in the early stages of moving the Mesa fleet onto our standard maintenance cycle with full harmonization of our E175 programs. Completion of this process will allow us to drive maximum utilization, compliance consistency, and improved maintenance and inventory management across the combined fleet. In Q1, we achieved our first milestone on reduced heavy maintenance turnaround times, which is an early example of how legacy Republic can leverage planning and supply chain resources to unlock future value across the Mesa operation. This early improvement gives us increased confidence that we will achieve our target of completing the fleet harmonization work in late 2027. The fourth workstream, the process of bringing 2 operations into a single harmonized airline with the FAA, coupled with associated technology and systems alignment, is expected to continue into 2028.

The process will involve the filing and approval by the FAA of 5 revision cycles. The first revision cycle addresses the alignment of our safety systems and processes, and we anticipate submission of this in early May. The overall goal of the harmonization process is to create a unified airline from an FAA perspective, with aligned manuals, maintenance programs, training, and operational oversight. Lastly, let me speak to our progress with our labor unions. In December, we reached a joint collective bargaining agreement or JCBA, with the 2 flight attendant labor unions, and the teams have spent considerable time on preparing for implementation of the JCBA throughout the first quarter. I want to acknowledge all the work and support that both the IBT and AFA provided to deliver an agreement.

We appreciate the focus and energy those teams demonstrated in achieving the joint collective bargaining agreement. With respect to the pilots of IBT at Republic and ELPA at Mesa, we continue to have productive dialog and negotiations. I would like to thank everyone for their continued hard work in this area, and we look forward to providing you updates on our progress in the future. On the staffing side of the house, we entered this year with slightly elevated staffing levels to ensure that we could deliver an excellent operation to our partners while we work through Mesa’s integration. We are well positioned to meet the needs of our partners, both now and in the future, and we are reaffirming our block hour guidance that we will produce more than 865,000 block hours this year.

2026 continues to be a transformational year. Our investments in training infrastructure, technology, and our future aircraft delivery positions with Embraer put us in a position to serve our partners’ needs well into the future. To recap, we are on track with our integration targets and remain focused on continuing to deliver an exceptional operation for all of our partners. Once the aircraft maintenance harmonization process concludes, we expect to see an improvement in aircraft availability for schedule as heavy maintenance normalizes. We remain committed to successful execution of these initiatives and look forward to sharing updates with you as we progress throughout the year. We believe the end state will support greater operational efficiency, which will drive stronger margins and shareholder returns.

Now I’d like to turn the call over to Joe to walk us through Q1 financial results. Joe?

Joe Allman: Thanks, Matt, and good evening, everyone. Total revenue for the quarter was up 34% to $527.4 million due to a 30% increase in block hour production. This was our first full quarter of Mesa’s operations. We incurred $9.5 million of merger and integration related costs during the quarter. These are the costs associated with the integration and harmonization efforts that Matt just covered. We will continue to separately report these costs, and as the integration and harmonization activities begin to subside, we also expect the associated costs to subside. Our adjusted pretax income was $47.1 million, up 15% over Q1 2025. And adjusted EBITDAR for the quarter was $100.1 million, up 14% over the prior year period. The improved Q1 2026 financial performance is attributable to the growth in operations from the Mesa transaction, as well as the growth of Republic’s fleet following the fleet transition David highlighted earlier.

Focusing on cash flows and our balance sheet, we generated $58 million in cash from operations this quarter. Our cash outlay from investments in aircraft, property and equipment, including predelivery deposits, increased to $95 million, driven by the acquisition of the 3 E175 aircraft. We received proceeds from new debt of $64 million and made scheduled principal repayments of $49 million during the quarter. Our adjusted net leverage was flat from year-end 2025 at 2.7x. We expect our net leverage to continue to improve over the balance of 2026 as we remain focused on our initiatives to reduce net leverage below 2.2x by year-end 2026 and with a longer-term target of below 1.5x. We believe it is prudent to continue to strengthen our balance sheet and reduce debt as this will best position our airline for the future.

We recently reached an agreement with Embraer to reschedule our aircraft delivery positions. Originally, our next delivery was expected in February of 2027. With the adjustments from Embraer, we now expect our first delivery in April of 2028. This revised delivery skyline timing allows us the opportunity to match deliveries to expected demand from our airline partners. We appreciate the longstanding partnership and relationship with the team at Embraer. Turning our focus to guidance. We issued full year 2026 guidance 8 weeks ago on March 4. At that time, the conflict in the Middle East was 3 or 4 days old. Since that time, we have seen an escalation of hostility and more volatility and uncertainty. Meanwhile, our discussions with our airline partners have been very positive and indicate a strong demand for our products.

Therefore, we are reaffirming the guidance we previously issued. We expect revenues in excess of $2 billion and adjusted EBITDAR in excess of $380 million on block hour production of at least 865,000 hours. Capex is anticipated to be $170 million, which is mainly driven by aircraft and engine CapEx, the completion of our campus and training center construction projects, and other general maintenance CapEx. We expect to repay $165 million of principal and receive proceeds of new debt of approximately $75 million. Despite the uncertainties that exist in the broader market, we remain confident in our ability to achieve these targets. Lastly, we are focused on ensuring an efficient integration and harmonization of the Mesa operation and continuing to deliver on our brand promise of industry-leading operational performance and outstanding customer service to our airline partners and their passengers we carry.

We are well positioned for the future, and now I’ll turn the call over to David.

David Grizzle: Thank you, Joe. I’m very proud of the whole Republic team as they’ve been able to maintain our impeccable operating performance and deliver strong financial performance despite the challenges that come with winter weather. In addition to improving weather, which will allow us to fulfill our flight segments as scheduled, the demand signals from our partners for the remainder of the year remain quite strong. We believe that the headwinds faced this quarter will continue to subside and the company will be in a position to achieve positive momentum and significant growth throughout the rest of 2026. We appreciate the support of our associates, our partners, and our shareholders, and we look forward to continuing to deliver our commitments and promises to all our stakeholders. Thank you again for joining us today and for your interest in Republic. Cara, we are ready to open the line for questions.

Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Savi Syth with Raymond James.

Savanthi Syth: I know it wasn’t controllable factors, but I was curious with these severe weather impacts that you’ve had this quarter. Was there a notable impact on earnings that maybe is not normal that we should consider as we think about the earnings power here?

Matthew Koscal: Savi, it’s Matt. Thanks for the question. Thanks for joining the call. You’re spot on. The impact was significant over what we saw last year, about 3 — a little over 3 full points. That’s not typical for us in a quarter. We didn’t break out the impact. But in a more typical seasonal environment, we would expect the business to perform more robustly.

Savanthi Syth: Understood. And maybe on the — United has shown some creative thinking with the CRJ-550 a few years back and now the CRJ-450. Just wondering if there’s an opportunity to do something like that with the E170s or even the E145s that you’ve operated in the past.

Matthew Koscal: Great question. So as you look at it, I think we have a history of being a solution provider for our partners, right? And that has evolved throughout the years. We are positioned incredibly well. We’re sitting here today with a strong plan for 2026 going into 2027. It’s fully focused on a successful and flawless Mesa integration. Today, as you heard on our prepared remarks, the team is just performing exceptionally well in that regard. We’re ahead of schedule on each of our workstreams, and we could not be more proud of their efforts there. As we continue to deliver on that and we strengthen our balance sheet, we believe that positions us incredibly well to continue to have flexibility to respond to our partners’ needs, and we’ll continue to have those conversations with them and be ready to respond to their needs as they evolve.

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

Duane Pfennigwerth: Just wondering longer term, I appreciate the commentary on the deferrals, but how are you thinking about putting the order book to work? And would you think about those in terms of growth? Or do you expect them to be primarily for fleet replacement by your customers?

Matthew Koscal: Duane, thanks for the question. And if you look at our past deployment, I think it’s been a combination of both, right? We’ve found opportunities to deploy certain aircraft in a purely growth positioning. And then we’ve also found ways to do fleet replacements and then redeployment of other aircraft to other partners, just as we’ve done in this completion of the E175 order at United. The beauty of the order book that we’ve had as we’ve had it for several years now is we’ve got ultimate flexibility. We’ve got a great relationship with Embraer, and we continue to be in dialog with our partners to find the best deployment of those assets as opposed to just a deployment in the original order slots. And that’s what we think that this deferral allows us to do, is it allows us to find that ultimate best solution with our codeshare partners on a future deployment for them.

Duane Pfennigwerth: And then just for my follow-up, the presentation is very clear with the expected debt paydown over the balance of the year. But I wonder, as you look out longer term, do you see opportunities to refinance a portion of that debt as well, now that you have probably a different and improved credit profile?

Joe Allman: Duane, this is Joe speaking. It’s a great question. Look, our focus right now is on just continuing to strengthen the balance sheet. We have a lot of unencumbered assets, though, as you referenced — as we referenced in the presentation. 70% of the fleet today is free of financing. Now some of those aircraft come from our partners, but we have a number of E175s and E170s that are debt-free at this stage. So we believe that flexibility as we move forward will put us in the best position to find unique and strategic ways to work with our airline partners and find the solutions that Matt referenced in his response just a second ago.

Operator: Your next call comes from the line of Michael Linenberg with Deutsche Bank.

Michael Linenberg: Congrats, Matt, on your promotion. Question here just on the guidance for the year. When you look at what you have for block hours and what you have for EBITDAR, I mean, it looks like despite all the intensity and complexity of the March quarter with the weather, it looks like that you’re actually running well ahead of plan. And so the question is, are you ahead of plan? Do you feel like you’re ahead of track? Are there things that we need to consider in this year where maybe you take a temporary hit to block hours or maybe there’s some seasonality piece, even though I know historically you don’t see as much seasonality with the regional carriers? Something for us that maybe I’m not looking at because it does seem like you’re well ahead given what was a challenging quarter for everybody.

Matthew Koscal: Michael, this is Matt. Thank you very much. Appreciate the congratulations. And it is a great observation, a great question. And look, in any other environment that we’re sitting here talking to you today after the quarter that we put together and what we’re seeing in our block hour demand going into Q2, Q3, we would be taking up our guidance. Considering the macro uncertainty today, we just think it’s prudent to get a little bit further into the year and see how things develop and go from there. But we had an incredibly strong quarter, you’re right, a lot of challenges, and we’ll provide you updates as we get further into the year.

Michael Linenberg: And then just my second question, as we think about the improvement in your leverage, it does look like that the CapEx should come down because of the deferrals or the next airplane coming in the spring of 2028. I realize you’re still on the hook for predelivery deposits. How can we think about CapEx, though, as it trends where we are today over the next, I don’t know, 3 to 4 quarters? It does seem like it’s going to slope down, and maybe it actually hits a bottom sometime in early ’27 before starting to pick back up again.

Joe Allman: Thanks, Mike. This is Joe speaking. You’re correct. We should see CapEx subside as we move throughout the year. The first quarter was our heaviest quarter, predominantly related to the aircraft deliveries. We’ll come up on the conclusion of the construction in our Carmel training campus. And just general maintenance CapEx — and I should say the CapEx associated with the investment that we’re making at Mesa. And those opportunities will come and continue to present themselves as we progress throughout the year. But you’re right, it’s a downward slope from the first quarter.

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

Savanthi Syth: I was curious, I think a couple of months ago, when you talked, you were expecting normal levels of attrition versus an abnormal year last year. And I was wondering what you’ve seen, especially as some of the mainline airlines are cutting capacity here. And just related to that, just what your plan is for the LIFT Academy in terms of how much of your needs that pipeline will deliver?

Matthew Koscal: Savi, thanks. This is Matt. I’ll answer the second part first. LIFT Academy is positioned to satisfy about 20%, 25% of our hiring needs in a normal hiring year. So nothing changes in the throughput that we’re planning to put through LIFT this year. It’s been a great program, and the candidates that come through that perform exceptionally well and are incredibly loyal to the airline and their career path. As we look at the attrition trends, very much a status quo to the update we provided to you just a few weeks ago. Attrition remained through the quarter at normalized trends, going back to a pre-COVID standard, healthy level of attrition, going to the [ career ] carriers that we would like to see, healthy captains attriting on to our codeshare partners and the like.

We would expect to see, and we’re seeing just a little bit of the beginning of a slowdown in the attrition, just a seasonal slowdown as we go into the summer months. So right on plan. Our attrition curve and our hiring curve have been right on plan for us.

Operator: We’ve reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to David Grizzle, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks.

David Grizzle: Thank you, Cara. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. As you’ve heard, we are very pleased with how our people are working to execute our plan and achieving results of which we are very proud. We are grateful to all of you for your continuing support. Have a great evening. Thank you very much.

Operator: That concludes today’s call. Thank you, everyone, for attending. You may now disconnect.