United Airlines Holdings, Inc.

Good morning, and welcome to United Airlines Holdings earnings conference call for the third quarter of 2019. My name is Brandon, and I'll be your conference facilitator today. Following the initial remarks from management, we will open the lines for questions. At that time, if you have a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phones. This call is being recorded and is copyrighted. Please note that no portion of the call may be recorded, transcribed, or rebroadcast without the company's permissions. Your participation implies your consent to our recording of this call. If you do not agree with these terms, simply drop off the line. I will now turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Michael Eskinen, Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Brandon. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to United's third quarter 2019 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release and separate investor update. Additionally, this morning, we issued a presentation to accompany this call. All three of these documents are available on our website at ir.united.com. Information in yesterday's release and investor update, the accompanying presentation, and the remarks made during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements which represent the company's current expectations or beliefs concerning future events and financial performance. All forward-looking statements are based upon information currently available to the company. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Please refer to our earnings release form 10-K and other reports filed with the SEC by United Airlines Holdings and United Airlines for a more thorough description of these factors. Also, during the course of our call, we will discuss several non-GAAP financial measures. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, Please refer to the tables at the end of our earnings release, investor update, and presentation, copies of which are available on our website. Joining us here in Chicago to discuss the results and outlook are Chief Executive Officer Oscar Munoz, President Scott Kirby, Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer Greg Hart, Executive Vice President of Technology and Chief Digital Officer Linda Jojo, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nacella, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jerry Laderman. In addition, we have other members of the team in the room available to assist with Q&A. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Oscar.

Thank you, Mike, and my thanks to all of you for joining us today. Before I start, as we always do, we want to thank each and every one of our United colleagues for their determination and passion for serving our customers. It truly is their dedication that has helped us build a track record of delivering on our financial targets and returning a solid value to our investors that we have. So to the results, we have another strong quarter of results. As you can see on slide four, we reported adjusted pre-tax earnings of $1.4 billion with an adjusted pre-tax margin of 12.1%. Our adjusted earnings per share of $4.07 was 33% higher than the third quarter of last year. And that reflects 250 basis points of adjusted pre-tax margin expansion in the third quarter. It is our best so far this year. It also reflects the third consecutive quarter that our pre-tax margin has grown in the fourth quarter on an adjusted basis. This strong performance gives us the confidence to raise our full year 2019 adjusted EPS guidance to a new range of $11.25 to $12.25. We are now ahead of pace towards achieving our 2020 adjusted EPS target of $11 to $13, which we set nearly two years ago. We extended this quarterly streak of pre-tax margin expansion despite the obstacles like historically severe weather, volatile global market, and of course the grounding of the MAX aircraft. We didn't overcome these obstacles by cutting back on the value we provide to you, our customers. In fact, just the opposite. We continue to invest in a variety of improvements to the United experience that are benefiting our customers and elevating the value proposition of Flying United. Here are just a few items. Our connection saver, which you've heard about, has already saved over 50,000 customers from missing their connections year-to-date, which is accruing customer gratitude and appreciation over time while ensuring each aircraft arrives on time. We are also now selling flights on the new CRJ-550 aircraft. which will transform regional flying and give us a uniquely United advantage serving customers in our spoke city as they connect to international destinations. As we've told you before, we'll offer a first-class cabin, economy plus seating, Wi-Fi, and more amenities than any other 50-seat regional aircraft operating today. So from the award-winning refreshed United app to expanded complimentary snack options, we are continuing to invest in our customers' experience across the board. But ultimately, what makes all of those enhancements truly come to life are the people who deliver them and serve our customers every day. And that is why our backstage event for our flight attendants is so pivotal. It's proven to be an absolutely game-changing experience for our employees. I believe the reason for their enthusiastic response is that backstage brings our core four principles to life in a variety of tangible ways that authentically resonate with our employees and our customers. It's been really satisfying to travel the system since we introduced Core 4 and witness how our employees have embraced this framework of safe, caring, dependable, and efficient. And it's inspiring to see how they've taken personal ownership of the concept, finding creative, compelling ways to embody it. Every customer, every flight, every day. In closing, when you look at the sum of all these efforts, what you see is a picture of what proof not promised looks like in practice. And so we have less than a quarter left of 2019, and we believe our momentum remains strong. But I promise you, and I use that word with earned confidence, we expect the best lies ahead. I look forward to welcoming journalists from around the world to our first ever media day here in Chicago on October 24th and 25th. It will be an excellent opportunity to showcase what is driving our confidence and the bright future of United Airlines and the new spirit of United. So with that, I'll turn it over to Scott.