Wheels Up Experience Inc. (NYSE:UP) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Wheels Up Experience Inc. (NYSE:UP) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 9, 2023

Wheels Up Experience Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-3.09 EPS, expectations were $-2.3.

Operator: Welcome to Wheels Up Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Webcast. It is my pleasure to introduce Keith Ferguson. Mr. Ferguson, you may begin the conference.

Keith Ferguson: Thank you. This morning we announced our third quarter financial results. The earnings release with its supporting tables, as well as a copy of today’s presentation can be found on our Investor Relations website at wheelsup.com/investors. Please refer to the slide with our disclaimer. Today’s presentation contains forward-looking statements based on our current forecasts and expectations of future events. These statements should be considered estimates only and actual results may differ materially. During today’s webcast, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures as outlined by SEC guidelines. Unless otherwise noted, all income statement-related financial measures will be non-GAAP other than revenue. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures and definitions of non-GAAP financial measures are found within the financial tables of our earnings release and appendix of today’s presentation.

And with that, I’d like to turn that over to Wheels Ups’ Chief Executive Officer, George Mattson.

George Mattson: Thank you, Keith, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. In October, I eagerly took this role for one simple reason: to position Wheels Up as the best run global private aviation company in the world that provides unmatched flexibility and accessibility to its customers, and not only within private aviation, but across Delta’s commercial offerings and our global charter subsidiary Air Partner. For the first time customers will be able to choose their optimal mode of travel trip by trip, business or leisure, domestic or international, short medium or long haul exclusively private or commercial, or a private commercial hybrid. My recent customer interactions have reinforced the need for our industry to deliver unique solutions that enable customer choice.

And as we realize the potential of our strategic partnership with Delta and our other alliance shareholders, we expect to build and deliver an even more compelling and distinctive value proposition and to do so profitably. Over the last several weeks, we have worked to integrate our corporate sales teams and marketing initiatives with Delta. I have personally participated with the joint teams and dozens of prospective customer discussions and I’m pleased with the reception to the broad set of solutions we can deliver together. On October 31, we launched our new up for business corporate program focused on Delta’s 45,000 small- and medium-sized enterprise or SME customers. We are actively engaged with 150 new prospects within the first six business days after launch.

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Q&A Session

The opportunities to collaborate with Delta span across both our traditional Wheels Up member business as well as our Air Partner Global Charter business. Under Todd Smith’s leadership as interim CEO, the company took significant steps to align on the right goals. We have improved our execution and value to our members. A direct result of our adjustments we made to our programmatic offering in June. We have shifted our focus from growth to prioritizing performance fleet optimization and reliability. Our work to regionalize our programmatic flying and focus on our network strengths provides both a cost advantage to Wheels Up and better pricing to our members. 80% of our programmatic fly is in our new primary service areas, East of the Mississippi, the Western area of the country and transcon trips between those regions, where we have a significant network and cost advantage to drive utility and efficiency and improve our asset utilization.

Customers flying in those regions will continue to take advantage of our guaranteed capped rates and benefit from our ability to dynamically price down during off-peak times. That is a significant value proposition for our customers flying in those regions, that is a direct result of our fleet density. These changes enabled Wheels Up to shape demand and reduce empty repositioning flights simultaneously. Outside of those primary service areas, where we lack density for our controlled fleet, we are still providing service to our customers at a market-based rate. Those flights leverage, both our controlled fleet and air partners’ industry-leading asset-light charter capabilities to offer competitive rates using safety verified third-party operators.

Air Partner is already playing an increasingly vital role including in our Delta partnership and complementing and extending our footprint, both domestically and internationally, as Wheels Up members and our growing base of business customers fly globally. There are many additional steps we are taking to improve the performance of our business and drive operational excellence. For most of its 10-year history, Wheels Up was focused on growth to build scale. And today it is one of the largest and most recognized private aviation companies in the world. Over the last couple of years, operational performance was challenged, exacerbated by the pandemic-driven demand spike. We appreciate our members’ patience and loyalty through this transition. And over the last year, we have built a strong foundation for our operation to propel us forward, a journey that will be a central focus for the company.

To further improve our operations, Delta has and will continue to share its expertise with Wheels Up in maintenance and operations, revenue management and network planning and optimization. In May, we consolidated multiple facilities into a new state-of-the-art member operation center or MOC in Atlanta modeled after the Delta operations customer center and with nearly everyone under one roof. Our communication and coordination have greatly improved. Our MOC is led by Dave Holtz, a veteran operations leader instrumental and Delta’s rise to today’s reputation of best-in-class operational excellence. We are applying that same leadership and measurement-driven approach that Wheels Up and are already seeing the results. The MOC operation should be fully ramped by the end of this year.

We are already seeing operating benefits from the consolidation of six FAA operating certificates into three this year with improved scheduling ability, faster recovery times, more efficient operations and lower overhead and travel costs. The move to all operations on a single certificate which is expected next year should provide further improvements to our efficiency, productivity and margin profile. All of these actions have contributed to stronger service metrics over the past year. Our completion rate is approaching 99% with almost 90% of our flights departing within 60 minutes of the scheduled time, inclusive of ATC, weather, maintenance and customer delays. In the month of September, we exceeded all of our internal operating targets across the board for the first time.

While we are proud of the improvements we’ve made to date, we know we still have much work to do to give our customers the level of service they deserve. Importantly, our goals will not remain static, as the flywheel of operating improvement accelerates, we will reach for more ambitious targets and a continuous process of improvement. Our improvements in commercial engagement and operations are well underway, and have been further advanced through to the company’s improved financial position with the recent cash infusion from Delta Airlines and our new investors Certares, Knighthead, Cox and others. We closed the $350 million term loan from Delta and our new investors in September which also included an additional undrawn $100 million credit commitment from Delta.