American Airlines Group, Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to American Airlines Group second quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. I would now like to hand the call over to Scott Long, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Developments. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lateef. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the American Airlines Group second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. On the call this morning with prepared remarks, we have our CEO, Robert Isom, and our CFO, Devin May. A number of our other senior executives are also in the room for the Q&A session. Robert will start the call this morning with an overview of our performance, and Devin will follow with details on the second quarter and will outline our operating plans and outlook going forward. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for analyst questions, followed by questions from the media. To get in as many questions as possible, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Now, before we begin today, we must state that today's call contains forward-looking statements, including statements concerning future revenues, costs, forecasts of capacity, and fleet plans. These statements represent our predictions and expectations of future events But numerous risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ from those projected. Information about some of these risks and uncertainties can be found in our earnings press release that was issued this morning, as well as our form 10Q for the quarter ended June 30th, 2023. In addition, we'll be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures this morning, which exclude the impact of unusual items. A reconciliation of those numbers to the GAAP financial measures is included in the earnings press release, which can be found on the investor relations section of our website. A webcast of this call will also be archived on our website. The information we're giving you on the call this morning is as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation to update the information subsequently. Thank you for your interest and for joining us this morning. And with that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Robert Isom.

Thanks, Scott, and good morning, everyone. The summer is well underway, and the American Airlines team is firing on all cylinders. We continue to build on the strong foundation we have laid over the past year and remain focused on reliability, profitability, accountability, and strengthening our balance sheet. That focus is showing up in our results. Everything we have said we would do at the start of the year, we have done. Our operation is performing at historically strong levels. In this morning, we reported adjusted pre-tax earnings of approximately $1.8 billion for the second quarter. These earnings were well above the high end of our latest EPS guidance range, marking our fifth consecutive quarterly profit. At the start of the recovery, we told you that returning to profitability hinged on running a reliable airline. American continues to run a strong operation in an evolving environment in which we are very well positioned because of the hard work our team has done in recent years. Our sustained profitability is tied to our leading network, rewards program and operation. We have a tremendous network and we operate in a reliable and efficient way, and we reward our customers for using it. Now, let's talk more about our financial results. We produced total revenue of $14.1 billion in the second quarter, the highest quarterly revenue in our company's history. This was driven by broad-based demand across all entities, with a particular strength in demand for international travel leading into the summer. Throughout the recovery, we have made structural changes to enhance our customers' travel experiences and position the airline for success. We have simplified and harmonized our fleet to create a more nimble and more flexible network that's focused on our most profitable flying. American strength is our network, which is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the demographic changes in the US. More people have moved to the Sunbelt region, which is where some of our largest hubs are located. DFW, Charlotte, Miami, and Phoenix are very well positioned now and for the future. Our strong regional network provides service to smaller towns and connects them with our hubs across the country, and our global partnerships are a great complement to our own flying. As a result, we are able to offer customers the most comprehensive network of any U.S. carrier. We continue to adapt our offerings to our customers' evolving preferences. We are taking customers to where they want to go and meeting them where they want to do business. We are servicing more of our customers through our direct channels and driving engagement in our advantage program and credit card portfolio. Our travel rewards program is the largest among the U.S. network carriers, and it continues to grow. We are making terrific progress in training our pilots and improving the utilization of both our mainline and regional fleet. Our young fleet and low near-term CapEx requirements enable us to generate free cash flow to reinvest in the business and strengthen our balance sheet. Now, turning to the operation, the American Airlines team has delivered strong operational results over the past year, and it continued as we achieved record second quarter completion factor. We operated nearly half a million flights in the quarter, with an average load factor of approximately 86%. In the second quarter, we also delivered 11 more combined zero canceled days than the same period of a year ago. The summer peak started strong with our team delivering our record Memorial Day weekend mainline completion factor while operating our largest mainline Memorial Day weekend schedule ever. The momentum has continued into July. We delivered the best Independence Day holiday operation in our history with traffic levels we haven't seen since July of 2019. At American, we're focused on taking care of what we can control. Our purposeful approach to planning, along with our investments in our team, fleet, and technology, has set us up for success during the busy summer, travel season, and beyond. And now, I'll hand it over to Devin, who will share more about our second quarter results and the outlook for the remainder of the year.