2Q 2025 Earnings Call - Aug 5
 

Earnings Call on Aug 5, webcast link: https://ir.flyfrontier.com/

Any predictions?

What will Barry tell us this time ?

we had weather delays and tarried impacts from our sector of patrons. We had ATC delays. We had delays in deliveries from airbus. We didn’t make a profit because of all those things. We have promoted a culture of caring which cost us nothing and we expect it will eventually pay off… lol. Also we expect double digit margins and profitability by the end of the year. lol. Just like we say every quarter. I just signed a contract to be ceo for another couple of years a couple of months ago. So I know I’m not losing my job even though we have continued to not even break even quarter after quarter. Feel free to ask questions while I deflect answers.

This.

Also, add in that "we expect labor contracts to affect 2026 numbers"

I expect

JAX Center's fault for whatever

remain laser focused on [insert whatever]

price / cost is king

"in the end" our model always wins

"Look, let me just say this...." responding to any question

"kudos to the management team" (for doing whatever)

proof is in the pudding / when the chickens roost / you don't know till you know it / etc folksy BS-isms

pilot contract: "just can't comment, I think we are where we need to be" (see above folksy BS)

"absolutely no" pilot shortage / staffing issues

Prediction:

We lost money

we’re doing great.

F9 released revised guidance (May 1st) in conjunction with the 1Q results from a loss of 0.23 per share to 0.37 per share.

On May 20 they reaffirmed that projected loss.

My prediction is said loss will be even worse than what they forecast. Either that or some creative bookkeeping to make it look otherwise.

We’ve got 30 planes arriving this year and next, yet we can’t even fill the ones we have now. Increasing our lease obligations under these conditions feels reckless. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up trying to offload aircraft.

Sale-leaseback only works if you can actually fill the planes and cover the lease payments on the planes you’re taking.

next year 9 returns and we can sell these planes to other carriers we don’t have to do the sale lease back model. We buy the planes cheaper than delta or United do the deal we have is through indigo partners which has the steepest and is the largest airbus purchaser in the world. We can sell these planes that are to be delivered to competitors and make a profit while they purchase the plane cheaper than their original agreement more than likely. Worst comes to worst we can always sell some of these aircraft after taking the delivery.


another thing to note. Just because we have orders even confirmed orders doesn’t mean we will take them. There are fees associated with refusing them but indigo has carriers all over the planet we can sell to those carriers if they’re better positioned.

indigo can string along frontier however they see if. Between the ownership of indigo partners and frontier holdings and BF ownership rights of individual stock. Even though we are labeled as not majority owned by a single entity we very much are.

to keep this concise. The order book doesn’t matter to our future. We don’t have to take all the planes for us to use. In the mean time we are the pawns of the master plan. We are underpaid compared to our peers.


we deserve a full contract equitable to the passengers quantity move and increased risk relative to our peers. if they decide to close shop because we got a fair rate then they’ll have some losses too.

Was thinking about this today, it’s debatably the smartest thing right now. They’ll continue sale lease back to hedge the losses atleast for Q3, Q4, and Q1. They’ll do funny book math to make it look like a ok loss, or good forecast.

This is all in the hopes of the company making a profit Q1, Q2 next year.

It’s really a Hedge against the immediate term losses. That and between selling older planes they’ll do ok….

I think what people need to realize is at the end of the day Frontier is in an OK position as long as indigo is on board… to management it’s not an airline… its a Hedge fund. As long as it continues to work for Indigo we’ll be puttering along. I just hope all the goodwill and brand value isn’t gone before they decide to sell or divest their shares.

They are absolutely ok in continuing the business as usual.

Everything could change overnight if Spirit vanishes.

We don’t sell older airplanes as they aren’t our airplanes to sell. It actually costs us money to give them back to the lease holders since they need to be in near perfect condition. They have been extending leases and showing that as a profit. Investors have openly questioned that math on quarterly calls.

We own a couple… like a small amount, a handful of planes. The 200s…Those are the ones I was talking about

We lease everything. Please reference page 12 of the 10-Q. It also discussed how we saved money by extending leases.

https://ir.flyfrontier.com/static-fi...e-e05535ce1ac7

Now if you are talking about Spirit? They do own about 20 aircraft but had them for sale for some time.

Not sure what Frontier "owns" in all honesty. Most everything is leased or outsourced.

I think we own 3 or 4 airplanes. They are the classic 320s.

Please reference post #13

When NK goes under, it will be the worse thing that could happen to us given:

Spirit is the ONE airline most people think is worse than us. Whether it's true or not, there won't be any question who is.

Also, JB will probably merge (out of survival) w/ a profitable airline leaving us as the only unquestionable ULCC. With the softening demand (due mostly to Gen Y, Z and Millennials "requiring" at least basic services that we don't offer - read this a wifi), the only people who will take F9 will be poorer Gen Xers (over 50 crowd) who really don't care about wifi or service. And, there's just not enough of them to go around - plus, if you burn them once, they'll leave and won't come back.

The only way forward for ANY American airline in terms of survival is to provide at least basic customer service (which we don't) AND be cheap. We're a LONG WAY from customer service in that it would take a completely different model.

We need to become a different airline.

So we can basically fill airplanes with two LCCs but if as soon as one leaves there suddenly won’t be enough demand?

Stayontarget is correct. F9 owns absolutely 0 aircraft.

Demand is softening already. We don't "automatically" get NK customers - especially the ones in their rewards/flight miles programs. Remember, they at least had wifi and big front seats. I'll believe our "first class" when I see it.

And of those customers that do still try and go the cheap route, I don't know how many would be likely to pay to join another rewards/credit card program from us for fear we go Tango Uniform as well. We're not really making that much money now so the Big 4 can afford to scale down their prices in the few markets we serve (they wont have to do the same for NK since they'll be gone). Overall, we may get a few but probably not enough to make us much more profitable.

ULCC as currently implemented is dying regardless of who's doing it.

This take is off… If NK disappears it would open up more gates and expansion opportunities for frontier allowing them to offer more profitable routes.
JB is not merging with anyone in the near future. Even this republican DOJ would not go for a JB merger with anyone bigger…

But lets say you are right… lets say AK wants to expand its horizon east with more european destinations and scoops up JB in addition to their HAL takeover.

That leaves us, WN, G4, SY, XP, and MX

Next to WN, frontier would be the biggest LCC in the country and WN isn’t even LCC anymore... I believe you are underestimating the need people have for low cost travel, Necessity travel as I call it. If you take over every route with cheaper fares some people will choose accordingly. The reality is there’s always someone willing to travel on F9… with spirit out of the picture, it just adds more. If people truly think NK is worse than F9, and NK still has customers, it says something.

As much as we joke, Greyhounds are still running for a reason.

There's one problem that you seemed to "assume" away and that's that we can expand. There's a reason why we don't have more gates in major cities - it's not because of NK. If their gates go out to the highest bidder (or worse, AA, UA and DL use their local political power to block anyone else), then we're still the same size (and they're bigger). ULCC has always had a real estate problem.

Overall, I hope you're right. But I don't think so. ULCC is broke. There is no way around it. Not spending on your employees or your gates or your gate agents doesn't work anymore. It had a good run, but now it's time to change/adapt.

BTW - Greyhound really doesn't have competition (is there an upscale nationwide bus service)? And to think, there are people that will take that over F9...

You have Megabus and Flixbus, but I think they're only somewhat better than Greyhound.

You want nice buses you'll need to go to Europe or Asia.

I rode Amtrak once and it was a fantastic experience. Love train travel.

maybe with the exception of the north east, trains are fine as long as you have at least twice the amount of time as it would take to drive.

Definitely concerned we aren't doing very well at all.

How about you just wait till the earnings call. People need to take a breath and not just equate a company who is losing a billion dollars a year to what frontier is.

The reductions in block and reserve/line holder distribution among other things is pretty concerning.

like Barry said before… stop doing things that lose money. In order for us to furlough the far term has to look worse not just a couple of months.

I would rather reduce any losses over September and October by not flying planes half empty then reduce the schedule and break even. That’s not a bad strategy and I don’t see why people are screaming the sky is falling. They have said this over and over we are going to be more disciplined on not flying off-peak days. That is exactly what they are doing.

To be be honest this is a smart move from our airline to not hemorrhage money and end of like the next NK. People need to understand we are not close to where they have been for the last 3-4 years. Can things get worse of course, but there has been 0 8-K’s put out on suggesting earnings not in line with what they had reaffirmed a little bit ago.

all that being said, I just want to wait and here what the near term looks like come the 5th.

all that being said it drives me crazy how they run the airline but I would much rather them be proactive with halting classes and reducing block hours to tread water then take on significant debt.

Obviously my feelings aren't brought on by off-peak months being slower. But let's look at a few facts:

We had a large number of COLAs during the peak travel season
We have seen softening demand for domestic leisure travel - especially on the cheap end
ULCC and Basic Econ (legacy) seats are overabundant
Our peers (JetBlue, Spirit) are either in dire straights or only recently *maybe* turning the corner
We have an indefinite suspension in hiring
We are apparently overstaffed

I am not saying the sky is falling, but the shades aren't super rosy right now. It's definitely time to be concerned, and yes we will find out a lot more come August 5th.

What magic are you expecting to happen during the earnings call?? There are no earnings. We have lost money. Likely, significant money and we are overstaffed.

We may not declare bankruptcy but we will be in the same condition as Spirit. Furloughs and clinging to the last bits of life until indigo decides what they want to do with the carcass.

we are still expecting to take deliveries till end of next year per last earnings call. If we did not hire and kept the same amount of pilots till end of next year we would have a pilot to plane ratio of 9.7 which is insanely low. Factor in maybe 100-200 people leaving between now and then due to 5,000 plus hires projected by AA and UA next year and I think we are in decent shape.

just take a breath and see if earnings falls within guidance…

looking at number of departures significantly reduced 15% over the last year. Which is significantly down. I do not expect them to keep the aircraft but instead sell the aircraft after delivery.

Where are you getting this data?

FFTpilots.com it’s unofficial. But if you look at top 15 departures for 2024 versus 2025 it’s mighty shocking.


month | 2024 | 2025 | difference | % change YoY

may | 12,881 | 11,530 | -1351 | -10.48%
june | 13,540 | 11,803 |-1,737 | -12.82%
july | 13,787 | 11,924 |-1863 | -13.5%



Now it could be they’re making this up with newer destinations. But I doubt it. We are constantly told we are overstaffed. This shows not only do we have less departures than we did the previous year. 10% less at minimum. Which would not only mean all the new guys are redundant but so are many of the people hired last year.


At add insult to injury we haven’t had any filings which equate this reduction in aircraft utilization with increased profit. We have people being paid who don’t have places to fly to. I imagine many of these flight attendants hired are also being underutilized because of the current over staffing. More planes isn’t the solution when you have people not being utilized. The problem is we’ve made an experience so cheap that it isn’t worth the price of admission. We don’t have repeat customers to build frequency from many city pairings.


the solution is change top down. Or realistically. Start paying your face of the company the gate agents and increase the standards required for the position. No more yoga pants. Put them in Pant suits that are uniform and pay people to manage the gate agents and operations at hubs and out stations.

Correct the image problem and you maybe can save the company.


But you have a moral problem of people who are working the same job as other carriers but for less income because of mismanagement at the top.


canary in the coal mine is the 5 years of maybe this year we’ll hit profit while our peers like jetBlue and Spirit fail to bring in their usual margins.

we are a dying model.

we are a dying model.

Investment at this stage is likely too late and two wrongs don’t make a right. Meaning a merger with another failing business just hastens our fuel burn to bingo.

See, This is where its confusing, because of all this data you posted, we should be all sitting around with 70hr lines and not getting paid? Meanwhile premium out the whazoo, reserves getting used every day and doing 55+hrs a month, and plenty of lines.

I sat on short call in July and got called a whole 0 times!

Im jealous... Everyone I know and the bases I looked at, all the CAs were getting used like 45-70hrs a month.

Must be an FO thing I guess.

100% correct. Honey the Badger is never going into service for us

You mean aircraft 671? The one that flew passengers for the first time today? Yeah it's already in service...

nope...at least not if you are a DEN FO. used almost every single day.