US POSTS PROFITS

Not sure if ST is still with us, but he did one heck of a job with the fuel contracts. At times during the year, he would have fuel shipped up to the NE via the Buckeye pipeline from the Gulf of Mexico and other times,mainly the winter months he would have the fuel purchased directly from the vendors saving US tons of cash. So in general terms, at time us would have their own inventory in the NE and other times US would not. He knew is XHit !!!! Plus the awesome job the Fight crews do conserving fuel !
 
From a poster on Airliners.net about the earnings call:


[size="-1"]FINANCIAL

o Net profit $324 million - phenomenal performance
o Pretax profit excluding net special items $409 million, highest in company history - 10.6% margin
o Rev up 2.9% to $3.9 bil on 3.4% more ASMs
o RASM 16.22 cents down 0.5%
o CASM 12.88 cents down 2.0%
o Still not hedging, even as forward fuel price forecast rising.
o Disciplined approach to cost management help maintain its relative cost advantage
o Forecast mainline CASM x special items, fuel and profit sharing to be flat in 2013
o Express CASM is forecasted to creep up approx 2.4% in 2013.
o Raised approx $870 million net cash in financing transactions including refinancing of term loans
o $4.0 billion in total cash and investments - $350mil which was restricted.


TRAFFIC / NETWORK

o Load factor 85.1% up 1.7
o Outstanding operational reliability despite challenging weather conditions in Q2
o Best DOT operating metrics in industry for 4-years now
o Saw domestic RASM down 1%, but seeing stronger business demand
o Atlantic RASM up 4% - much better job in getting business traffic to fly US. Envoy demand up 16% yoy
o Latin RASM down 8%, but primarily due 25% capacity growth year over year
o Demand environment remains "good"
o Government revenue in the quarter was down 37% due sequester. Could hurt other industries like defence companies or contractors that do work for government
o CLT "very important" to US


FLEET

o Received 4 A321 and 2 A330 in Q2. 11 more A321 due this year.
o Complete Gogo wifi installs on 270 Airbus and E190 fleet
o Agreed with Skywest to swap 4 CRJ-200s for 3 CRJ-900
o 18 Airbus aircraft scheduled to be delivered through June 2014 are financed via EETC transactions
o See a lot of benefit in up-gauging to a large regional aircraft.


OTHER

o Focused on getting the merger completed and closed. Its going very well. On track to close late Q3.
o Once merger closes, US labor groups will get approx $400mil annual raises to bring them inline with AA per MOUs
o Plan to use similar playbook that has made US succeed applied to a larger network
o Transition to oneworld by the beginning of next year
[/size]
 
just for a comparison on fuel prices now that most of the largest carriers have reported, AS paid an astounding $3.28 per gallon for jet fuel and WN paid $3.05, also higher than any of the legacies.

based on this quarter's year to date expenses, the $400M in labor cost increases will amount to almost 15% of US' labor expenses and 3% of their total expenses.

UA, US, and WN - all with large DC area operations - reported impacts due to the sequester.
 
Here's an interesting article that shows that US' strategy to not hedge has helped it keep its fuel prices lower than its competitors and helps explain why they still do it.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/07/30/why-do-airlines-hedge-fuel-costs.aspx
 

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