Allegiant Travel Company

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Allegiant Travel Company's fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. As a reminder, today's program may be recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's program, Sherry Wilson, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jonathan. Welcome to the Allegiant Travel Company's fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings call. On the call with me today are Maury Gallagher, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, John Redman, the company's president, Greg Anderson, our EBP and chief financial officer, Scott Sheldon, our EBP and chief operating officer, Scott D'Angelo, our EBP and chief marketing officer, Drew Wells, our SVP of revenue and planning, and a handful of others to help answer questions. We will start the call with commentary and then open it up to questions. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. The company's comments today will contain forward-looking statements concerning our future performance and strategic plan. Various risk factors could cause the underlying assumptions of these statements and our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. These risk factors and others are more fully disclosed in our filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements are based on information available to us today. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of future events, new information, or otherwise. The company cautions investors not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which may be based on assumptions and events that do not materialize. To view this earnings release, as well as the rebroadcast of the call, feel free to visit the company's investor relations site at ir.allegionair.com. With that, I'll turn it over to Maury.

Thank you, Sherry, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. We were profitable again in the quarter just ended. The model and our personnel continue to shine in these very difficult times. Operations were returning to normal in December when Omicron took over, but it's trending down and hopefully will be just a bad memory by March. You'll hear an overview of our performance and what we believe the coming months hold in just a moment. I want to take some time and reflect on some of our history. We have completed Our 20th full year at Allegiant, first year was 2002. We early on understood we could not copy existing carriers and attempt to beat them at their game. So in early 2002, we began experimenting and implementing this model you have come to appreciate and admire. It was developed and refined during the next three years, and 20 years in, it continues to differentiate us. During these 20 years, we have led the industry in operating margins as well. averaging 15% during this time, while the next closest, Southwest and Alaska, averaged 10%. That's a 50% difference in margin. We also led the industry during this time with 69 consecutive quarters of profitability through the first quarter of 2020, including remaining profitable during the 2008-2009 period when all others were falling underneath the zero line. The end of 2021 completed our 15th year as a public company. We've had 60 of these quarterly calls. This is our 61st. Our market cap on December 8th, 2006, our first day as a public company, was approximately $400 million. Today, we have a $3.2 billion market cap or an 800% increase in value for our shareholders during these 15 years. No one in the industry has had anywhere close to this wealth creation. In the past years, as we have emerged from COVID, we have made the necessary strategic moves to position us for the coming years, including a terrific order we recently placed with Boeing, an international relationship that will allow us to enter the international markets in the next years, investing in branding tools, including Allegiant Stadium and soon Sunseeker, necessary components of our branding for Allegiant 2.0, our continued development of our incremental ancillary and third-party revenues, and lastly, a greatly enhanced balance sheet with almost $1.2 billion of cash. Legion Travel Company is extraordinarily well-positioned. Our airline and our unique competitive model continue to be the backbone of our success. 75% of our routes, by the way, are still not competitive. We have years of growth left with as many as 1,400 new routes that we feel strongly will provide us that growth opportunity. And why have I told you this history? Because this team, this company, has proven year in and year out they can execute. And while at times history has not been a reliable prognosticator, this time I believe it's very much very reliable. Lastly, this management team is the best in the industry, in my opinion. When combined with the best team members who have proven themselves continuously for the past 20 years, we will continue to lead the industry in our rightful place at the head of the pack. John?