Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) Q2 2021 Earnings Call
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Corrected Transcript 22-Jul-2021 Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) Q2 2021 Earnings Call Total Pages: 37 1-877-FACTSET www.callstreet.com Copyright © 2001-2021 FactSet CallStreet, LLC Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) Corrected Transcript Q2 2021 Earnings Call 22-Jul-2021 CORPORATE PARTICIPANTS Ryan Martinez Thomas M. Nealon Managing Director-Investor Relations, Southwest Airlines Co. President, Southwest Airlines Co. Gary C. Kelly Michael G. Van de Ven Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Southwest Airlines Co. Chief Operating Officer, Southwest Airlines Co. Robert E. Jordan Linda B. Rutherford Executive Vice President and Incoming Chief Executive Officer, Executive Vice President People & Communications, Southwest Airlines Southwest Airlines Co. Co. Tammy Romo Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Southwest Airlines Co. ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... OTHER PARTICIPANTS Hunter Keay Alison Sider Analyst, Wolfe Research LLC Reporter, The Wall Street Journal Ravi Shanker Tracy Rucinski Analyst, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC Reporter, Thomson Reuters Stephen Darrell Trent Leslie Josephs Analyst, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. Reporter, CNBC Duane Pfennigwerth David Koenig Analyst, Evercore Group LLC Reporter, The Associated Press Catherine O'Brien David Slotnick Analyst, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC Reporter, The Points Guy Savanthi Syth Dawn Gilbertson Analyst, Raymond James & Associates, Inc. Reporter, USA Today Helane Becker Mary Schlangenstein Analyst, Cowen and Company Reporter, Bloomberg News 2 1-877-FACTSET www.callstreet.com Copyright © 2001-2021 FactSet CallStreet, LLC Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) Corrected Transcript Q2 2021 Earnings Call 22-Jul-2021 MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION SECTION Operator: Good day and welcome to the Southwest Airlines' Second Quarter 2021 Conference Call. My name is Chad, and I will be moderating today's call. This call is being recorded and a replay will be available on Southwest.com in the Investor Relations section. After today's prepared remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Ryan Martinez, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Ryan Martinez Managing Director-Investor Relations, Southwest Airlines Co. Thank you, Chad, and thank you all for joining us today. In just a moment, we will share some brief remarks and then open it up for Q&A. And you will hear from our Chairman of the board and CEO, Gary Kelly; Executive Vice President and Incoming CEO, Bob Jordan; Executive Vice President and CFO, Tammy Romo; President, Tom Nealon; and Chief Operating Officer, Mike Van de Ven. We also have a few other senior executives with us for Q&A, including Andrew Watterson, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer. We will make forward looking statements today, which are based on our current expectations of future performance and our actual results could differ substantially from these expectations. And we also had several special items in our first quarter results, which we excluded from our trends for non-GAAP purposes and we will reference those non-GAAP results in our remarks. So, please see our press release from this morning and our website for more information on both topics, our cautionary statement, and a lot of helpful information about our results and trends. And before we get started, I want to let you all know that we are planning an investor event in December, and I will send out more information soon, so stay tuned for that. Gary over to you. ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Gary C. Kelly Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Southwest Airlines Co. Thank you, Ryan, and good morning everybody and thank you all for joining us for our second quarter earnings call. We're obviously very delighted at the turnaround in our business from the previous four quarters of billion dollar losses, and our revenues nearly doubled in the second quarter from first quarter levels and that was on a capacity bump of 44%. Our revenues were much stronger than we had been forecasting just 90 days ago, and all of that of course flowed through to better margins and better cash. Yesterday's cash was over $17 billion and that's plus $1 billion line of credit, well in excess of our $11.4 billion of debt. So, while our bookings and revenue trends are even better than the month of June, and certainly better than second quarter as a whole, we're very well prepared to manage and muddle our way through if the Delta variant affects our business. And so far, we're not detecting any impact at all. Again, very strong bookings and revenue trends in the third quarter. So, right now I'm very pleased with all of that, very pleased with our revenue, our July business and the outlook for the rest of the quarter. 3 1-877-FACTSET www.callstreet.com Copyright © 2001-2021 FactSet CallStreet, LLC Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) Corrected Transcript Q2 2021 Earnings Call 22-Jul-2021 This has been a long struggle to get to this point of profitability in the month of June. Pandemic, of course, turned everybody's world upside down and it's still not completely right side up, but I must thank our employees once again for their heroic and very hard work. A normal summer demand is always a challenge to manage and it's, of course, even more so here in 2021, especially in June when we had technology issues and bad weather combined, it made it very difficult. Things are much better in July. Starting – still not where I want us to be, but we'll continue to improve and I'm very confident that we'll adjust as necessary and if necessary. So, our immediate focus is on running a very high quality on-time airline, and then gradually restoring our traditional efficiencies that are attendant with our low fare, point-to-point high utilization business model. And given the revenue recovery, obviously, our next focus is to sustain our profitability that we've achieved here in June and maintain stability going forward. Next year, we plan to resume new aircraft deliveries with the desire to restore our route network as needed to pre- pandemic levels. And clearly, the network restoration will depend upon travel demand, which may in turn depend upon the state of the pandemic. So worst case, we'll reduce our growth and early retire our oldest aircraft, which will be accretive to earnings with the trade out with the MAX. So we're very well positioned and very well prepared to manage pretty much any scenario here in the next couple of years. Though things aren't back to normal yet, but clearly they have stabilized and are much improved. And we're at a point now where we can actually plan and work on managing and spend less time on surviving the intensive care unit. And then finally, I did want to congratulate and welcome Bob Jordan, he'll be our next CEO come February 1 of next year, and the reception so far has been terrific. The transition work is well underway. Bob is very busy, and he may comment on that. But it's going very, very well. Very proud of Bob. He's going to do a terrific job. And I'm going to hang around to support our team in any way that I can. So with that, Bob, let me just turn it over to you. ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Robert E. Jordan Executive Vice President and Incoming Chief Executive Officer, Southwest Airlines Co. All right, Gary. Hey, thank you and good morning everybody. It's really good to be with you today, and I'm looking forward to reconnecting with many of you over the next few months as I began to attend more investor relations activities. I'm going to make just a few brief remarks, but I'm just – as Gary said, I'm just super excited for the opportunity to serve Southwest as the next CEO, beginning in February. And I'm very glad that Gary will continue to serve as Executive Chair. Many of you know Gary has been my mentor and friend for over three decades, and the two of us along with Tom and Mike are already working very hard to ensure that the transition will be a smooth and orderly one. Since the announcement on June 23, I've had the chance to visit and talk with hundreds of our employees around the company. As an example, I was got to spend the day in Atlanta yesterday with our wonderful team there, and I'm just amazed by their spirit, their enthusiasm, their heart for each other and for our customers, and I'm just energized by being with them. 4 1-877-FACTSET www.callstreet.com Copyright © 2001-2021 FactSet CallStreet, LLC Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) Corrected Transcript Q2 2021 Earnings Call 22-Jul-2021 I'm also focused on continuing to work with our leadership as we