ualratt

Sorry for the long multi post but some good questions form the investment community...

UAL Executives

Irene E. Foxhall - Executive Vice President of Communications & Government Affairs

Sarah Murphy

Jeffery A. Smisek - Chief Executive Officer, President, Director, Member of Executive Committee and Member of Finance Committee

James E. Compton - Chief Revenue Officer and Executive Vice President

John Rainey - Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President

Peter D. McDonald - Chief Operations Officer and Executive Vice President< /p>

Analysts

Michael Linenberg - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Jamie N. Baker - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division

Hunter K. Keay - Wolfe Trahan & Co.

John D. Godyn - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Glenn D. Engel - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

David E. Fintzen - Barclays Capital, Research Division

United Continental Holdings (UAL) Q2 2012 Earnings Call July 26, 2012 10:30 AM ET

Sarah Murphy

Thank you, Jeff. First, we will take questions from the analyst community, then we will take questions from the media. Please limit yourself to one question and if needed, one follow-up question. Operator, please describe the procedure to ask a question.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

[Operator Instructions] From Deutsche Bank, we have Michael Linenberg online.

Michael Linenberg - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

I have 2 questions. I guess and I think actually both of them are for Jim. Jim, when I look at your investor update, and I look at th e forward bookings and I look at where the loads are, they seem to be up pretty healthily on one hand, on the other hand you gave us your view for July PRASM. Is there a bit more stimulative type fare activity going on in sort of the August, mid-to-late August timeframe? What accounts for those differences?

James E. Compton

It's Jim. I think, yes, as you mentioned in our investor update, we talked about actually some pretty good bookings, strong demand as we look forward over the next 6 weeks and so forth. The pricing environment, although stable, I think we are seeing some fare sell activity, both in bringing close -- some competitive carriers bringing the AP in closer as well as fare that's putting some pressure on us. But from a demand perspective, we actually feel pretty good. And as a matter fact, we led an increase last week, $2, $3, $5 that had a match. The question on that is always due to sale fares under how much o f that you realize given that the sell fare activity is out there. So I think we feel good about demand and managing the yield environment.

Michael Linenberg - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Okay, very good. And then just my second question, this is just a data piece. Last year, with the FA shut down, what was the estimate of the benefit, the revenue benefit, that you got over this, I think it was like a 3, 4-week period?

James E. Compton

Yes, it was about -- it was a couple week period, I think July 23 to August 8. And we talked about, about a $60 million impact from that last year. And clearly most of that fall in the third quarter.

Operator

From JPMorgan, we have Jamie Baker online.

Jamie N. Baker - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division

First question for John. Just wondering if you could be any more forthright than your predecessor in terms of addressing whether or not you're accruing for higher labor costs?

John Rainey

Jamie, that's a tricky one. And I don't mean to be coy in any way. The way I have to answer that question is to the extent that it's we believe it's going to occur, we're accruing for our expectations. I think you've seen a number of different ratified agreements occur this year. Obviously, those were -- are reflected in our second quarter results. We clearly want to move in a direction where we will have joint collective bargaining agreements, and we have to make some assumption about when those will occur, as well as how much they are. And to the extent that, that's in our guidance then -- to the extent that's in the time horizon that we're guiding to, it's in there.

Jamie N. Baker - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division

Okay, excellent. And second, probably for Jim, but anybody can take it, as it relates to corporate contracts, my understanding is that most tend to run on a calendar year. They're typically more than a single year in duration. I'm just trying to assess whether some of the operational difficulties as of late, might have exposed you to any potential loss of corporate customers. Or is that more of a year-end type negotiation. I always tend to consider book a way, to be kind of a short-lived phenomenon, but I do have to wonder if it could prove longer-term, if it does impact the corporate negotiating aspect.

James E. Compton

Hey, Jamie, couple of thoughts on that. Corporate deals, I think your general kind of -- the contracts are a little bit different depending on the corporation or when they start up and other things like that. But I think that's a -- your summary's kind of a good general way to think ab out it. I'll point to the 16% growth of corporate revenue in the second quarter. We have had a challenging quarter. And from an operational perspective, and we don't see loss in share today. I would say that we've been improving our share as people see the value of the network that it brings to them, the great loyalty program and so forth. So my anticipation is that our investment in our operations and reliability that we are doing right now, many of the products that Jeff talked about in his comments that were -- as the operation improves and the power of the network which we can see at -- a market level in the second quarter that we don't anticipate any loss in corporate revenue going forward. And I will tell you this, our salesforce is out there with the corporations all day, every day, working hard. They bring in senior management as the issues come up to work with them. And we're working through that. But I don't see any loss in share today, and don't anticipate any.

Jeffery A. Smisek

This is Jeff. Let me just add in as well. Look, we know what we did to get us into the operational issues we've had. And we know how to get back out of it. And we will. We've got a lot of focus and attention throughout the organization. And I believe that we'll restore our operational integrity in fairly short order. So we're very focused on it.

Operator

From Wolfe Trahan, we have Hunter Keay online.

Hunter K. Keay - Wolfe Trahan & Co.

I just want to push a little bit on this execution issue that we've been seeing here, and Jeff or anybody, I'm wondering if you can just give us a specific benchmark now that we can look for from you guys to achieve, say maybe before the end of this year, or over the next 12 months. It doesn't necessarily -- you don't necessarily have to answer this question right now on th e spot, but maybe at some point in the near future, whether that's PRASM outperformance well over the peers, a joint labor contract from a major workgroup, a target debt level, just something that we can maybe put a marker down and say, "This is our goal, and this is a reason to be excited about owning the stock right here."

Jeffery A. Smisek

Hunter, this is Jeff. No, I appreciate that. And I'll tell you operationally, it's very clear we have 80% on-time performance as our goal. We haven't made that lately. We're going to work hard to achieve that. We've stumbled a bit on some of our completion factors, as well as we brought down the spares on our United subsidiary, as we were funding some preventative maintenance and we over rotated on that, and we are going to -- and we're reversing that. We're going to add the spares back. That's -- it's more costly to us to do it, but the first thing about running an airline is you've got to run a really good airline, and we've got to restore that, we know how to do that. In terms of debt, I'll put that back to John. But we clearly have a focus on improving our balance sheet, we're overlevered, as this business generally is, and we need to reduce that and reducing debt is a gift that keeps on giving. And in terms of our joint collective bargainings, we're very focused on that. These things do indeed take time. We're in a lot of simultaneous negotiations. I can't talk about our pilot negotiations because of the NMB has asked us not to do that, and I want to honor their request. But as you can see from the individual deals that we've got, and we know how to do them, we know how to get them. Those the cost of those are already in our numbers, and we're very focused on moving forward and getting joint collective bargaining agreements because I think that's -- it's important for our coworkers, it's important for bringing our coworkers together, it's important for developing the culture of the combined airline.

John Rainey

This is John. I'd just follow up Jeff's comments on the net debt capital structure. I'd certainly want to be a little more transparent, and that's my intention over the course of the balance of the year, is to help let you guys know how I'm thinking about this. But if you look at the progress we've made, just in the last 2 years, and I know there's a lot of people focused on net debt, we've reduced our net debt by $4 billion over that time period. And when you talk about the effect that has on the P&L, that's -- we've got $200 million of interest expense that's gone away over that period of time. And the way that I think about that, those are savings that go to the bottom line that are not dependent upon some load factor assumption or take rate, those are recession-proof savings that are there year-in and year-out. It's the gift that keeps on giving, as Jeff says. So it's clearly what we want to continue to do. If you could at our maturity profile over the next 4 or 5 years, we've got a significant amount, $3.5 billion to $4 billion of non-aircraft debt that we need to pay off. And so I think we can vastly improve the quality of our balance sheet over that period of time by generating cash flows to pay off that kind of debt, and get down to a more reasonable capital structure for our company. I don't necessarily have a target that I want to share with you in terms of debt-to-capital, but I think we all know directionally, that, that number needs to go down.

Hunter K. Keay - Wolfe Trahan & Co.

Yes. Okay. So just to follow-up, and I'll ask a true follow-up, I guess is, in that same vein, John, I mean, if you put out a debt target, or some sort of ideal capital structure ratio, I realize that things change. And I think most people can accept the fact that oil ca n go up or terrorism can happen or something bad can happen, but why should an equity investor feel comfortable -- your stock is trading at like 4x earnings, why should an equity investor feel comfortable sticking their neck out and saying, "I'm going to invest in this over the long run. I think that multiple is going to go higher than 3x to 4x." If you guys aren't willing to stick your neck out and say, "Three years from now, if everything kind of unfolds as we expect it to, our net debt level is $8 billion." Or something like that. Because I don't think the equity markets will reward you with multiple expansion until you feel comfortable putting that out there yourself. Would you disagree with that?

Jeffery A. Smisek

No, it's a very fair point, Hunter. I mean, I certainly don't want to put out numbers that I think allow you to back into what we're projecting for our free cash flow and therefore P&L. But I think, being more transparent in letting you guys understand how we're thinking about this, and I think more important, perhaps, prioritizing, how we think about this. I think from an equity investor's perspective, when we talk about multiple expansion, one of the best things that we can do right now is delever and take a lot a lot of the risk out of the business and so, very clearly, in terms of prioritization, that's what we want to do first. Going forward, as our thoughts evolve, and as there becomes more certainty in this business and less volatility, we'll feel more comparable with providing more specific details.

Operator

From Morgan Stanley, we have John Godyn online.

John D. Godyn - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

First, just one for John, and then one for Jim. John, you had this comment in the release about earning a good return on invested capital versus y our cost of capital, which is a great result. I know there's a lot of debate out there on how to calculate ROIC in airlines. Just want to get a better sense of how you do it and how conservative you are in it. Do you consider cash as working capital? And do you take into account the unfunded part of the pension?

John Rainey

Okay. A lot of questions there, John. Let me first say that we recognize there's a lot of questions in this area. And I think going forward, we're going to just actually put this calculation in our earnings release, and that will address a lot of the concerns. But I'll quickly try to hit on most of your questions there. We take on an invested capital perspective, we simply take the total assets and add back non-interest-bearing liabilities, and then we capitalize our operating leases. Importantly and it gets to your other question, by calculating it that way, that effectively assumes that our pensions are part of our debt, and we treat that just like any other interest-bearing liability that we need to earn a return on. Was there another question you asked that I missed?

John D. Godyn - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

No, that makes a lot of sense.

John Rainey

No, the cash. Yes, so in terms of cash, we think that the right way to think about that in this business is there is not an excess cash that we should not have to earn a return on. Said differently, we need to burden ourselves with earning a return on all of that cash.

John D. Godyn - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Okay. And can I just ask a clarification on demand trends from Jim? You mentioned the economic environment remains tepid. But also that demand remains strong. Was the -- so far, throughout earnings, we've heard some airlines calling for continued streng th, even in the face of ugly headline macro. But others actually acknowledging that they've seen macro weakness hit the bookings. Just to make it clear, where do you stand on that? And can you give us a sense to what extent July PRASM reflected macro weakness first, maybe one-time? Or it's like July 4th placement effects, any shrinks with tough comps, things like that?

James E. Compton

Yes, John. This is Jim. We're seeing demand being relatively stable. But when we talk about the economics -- the economy tepid, we are very much aware of, particularly Europe and so forth and keeping our eyes on that, which is why some of our capacity reductions in the fourth quarter have been a recognition of that already. So that -- the kind of that softness is in the economy is, is some of the things that we've seen. We're obviously watching to see where that turns. But we do see the leisure bookings over the next 6 weeks, which is really s till the summer time period being quite strong based in our investor update with book load factor. As in terms of July, the Wednesday Fourth of July that you mentioned is an impact of July RASM year-over-year. We have -- when it's at Wednesday, there is significantly less business traffic that happens, and it's very much a leisure week more so then when that Fourth of July falls more towards the end or the beginning of the week. Also, I mentioned the FAA issues last year where ticket adds at the end, kind of last week of July. So year-over-year, that's a comp. And then lastly, although I will take this opportunity to wish the best to the U.S. Olympic team, which we partner with the United States Olympic Committee, the Olympics are a leisure week. And they're in London, they're a leisure couple weeks. And they are in London, and we obviously have a significant business presence in London, that also is putting pressure on our RASM year-over-year.

Opera tor

From Bank of America, we have Glenn Engel online.

Glenn D. Engel - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

If I'm looking at your RASM relative to the industry, Latin America, you underperformed 7.5 points this year, after outperforming 2 last year. Domestically, you underperformed 5 points this year after outperforming at 1.5 point last year. Transatlantic, down 3 versus the industry versus flat last year. If you're not losing share, why are you underperforming the industry so much? And in Latin America, is there something about perhaps your mix like Mexico that's holding you back?

James E. Compton

This is Jim. I think very strong comps last year, and particularly in Latin America beginning in kind of the second quarter period, May period --

Glenn D. Engel - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

That was true for the industry, and they were up 18 7 so if dilution accounts for a 7-point gap?

James E. Compton

Yes. I think that -- I think if you went back last year, with our 20% growth was significantly better than some of our competitors in Latin America. So I think our comps are actually a little -- are stronger. The difficult comps are stronger for us this year in the Latin division. On some of the other carriers actually our length of haul RASM versus the industry on a system basis, kind of at a margin relative to first quarter. We continue to close that, relative to the industry. We actually see good progress. Again, the challenges that we talked about in the second quarter are there. But the network, we see benefits coming from the merger as in the individual hubs, and see them making progress on there. But some of that underperformance, quite frankly is the really strong comps last year.

Glenn D. Engel - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

And within regions, Atlantic, Latin America, is there any -- within region differences among countries and stuff like that from closure performance to be different?

James E. Compton

Yes. I think we're seeing a little bit more softness in London, relative to some other parts of Europe and so forth. Latin America, we had some very strong comps, particularly in Central America last year. And so that's where some kind of the waiting down and terms of that you kind of dig into those amenities.

Glenn D. Engel - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

And the other revenues that were so strong, are we going to see continued strength in the second half on that line?

James E. Compton

We're obviously we're very optimistic. We're seeing great take on our Ec onomy Plus and the front cabin upsell. We're taking somewhat of a conservative approach of selling Economy Plus, so that as we work with the ops group and rollout that reconfiguration, as we mentioned we're at 86% done. So we actually, given the kind of the trends that we've seen and the acceptance and the value that the customers sees on that are very optimistic, both at Economy Plus and our upsell products.

Glenn D. Engel - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

I'm sorry, does that show up in passenger revenue or other revenue?

James E. Compton

That's in passenger revenue.

Irene E. Foxhall

That's in passenger.

John Rainey

Yes, Glen, this is John. I would just add to -- in the last call, I talked about the accounting effect of 2008, the IETF 2008-1. That creates a geography issue where some of the, what was formerly booked in passenger revenue is now in other revenue. And that's some of the effect that you're seeing. And you should expect a continuation of that as well. Not to takeaway though, from what Jim was saying that we are seeing, in all aspects of our ancillary revenue, a good uptick.

Operator

And our last question, from Barclays, we have David Fintzen on the line.

David E. Fintzen - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Appreciate that there's a lot on the plate in terms of integration, but I'm just curious now with Delta now moving to upgauge your regional. I'm just curious, as you look out over the next few years, do you need to rethink sort of the shape and scope of the regional operation? Or are you happy kind of with where it sits?

Jeffery A. Smisek

This is Jeff. We're in negotiati ons with our pilots, and I don't want to talk about that, but we have said previously that part of those negotiations are having a competitive contract, and competitive contract includes competitive scope. It is the larger regional jets that's on a United subsidiary A, for example, are a very attractive product offering, offering both first class seats, Economy Plus and Economy, and it's important that we have a competitive scope provision, that's part of our negotiations, and that's all I can really talk to you about right now.