United Airlines Holdings, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to United Airlines Holdings earnings conference call for the second quarter of 2020. 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 1 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 permission. 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, Christina Nudos, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to United's second quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release, which is available on our website at ir.united.com. Information in yesterday's release 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 10-Q, 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 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. Joining us on the call today to discuss our results and outlooks are Chief Executive Officer Scott Kirby, President Brett Hart, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Adrian Sella, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jerry Letterman. In addition, we have other members of the executive team on the line available to assist with Q&A. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Scott.

Thanks, Christina, and thank you all for joining our call today. This obviously was not the environment that I expected for my first call as CEO, but I have to say that I've never been more proud than I am as a team at United, and I want to thank everyone for their leadership, support, and dedication to the company that we all love during what is the most difficult time any of us has both for our airline and our families. Our front line hasn't allowed dramatic reductions in our schedules or headlines about potential furloughs or new mask requirements to interfere with their commitment to taking care of our customers and each other. In fact, our customer satisfaction scores in June improved nearly 30 points year over year. There's just no better evidence of our determined commitment to care for our customers and keep them safe. It's what being united together is all about. And Brett will talk in some more detail about how our core four values have informed our industry-leading commitment to the safety of our customers and employees. The second quarter of 2020 was historic for the airline industry for all the wrong reasons. At the beginning of April, we saw the sharpest, deepest drop in demand in history, far worse than 9-11 or the Great Recession or any other stress test scenario that anyone had modeled. And near the end of the quarter, just as optimism about a recovery was beginning to build, We watched demand fade once again as COVID-19 spiked in the Sun Belt. But when we make it through this crisis, and I've never been more confident that we will make it through this crisis, I think we'll look back on the second quarter of 2020 as an extraordinary three-month period filled with achievements that weren't even sure were possible when we started back in April. We can't control the course of the pandemic, though we are doing our part to help by leading with safety. And the United team has been doing an exceptional job of controlling what we can and generating what we expect will be the best, or in this case, least bad financial results of any of our network competitors. Some of the achievements this quarter included the fastest, most realistic, and accurate assessment of the demand environment, completing the largest debt financing in the history of the airline business backed by our loyalty program, dramatically reducing our cost structure and implementing a variety of industry-leading measures designed to protect our customers and employees from the spread of the coronavirus. While some of you have noted that previous strengths, including our high exposure to international and business demand, would create larger headwinds for United, those of you who have joined these calls before will not be surprised to hear that our no excuses philosophy is not suspended just because times are tough. In fact, that philosophy is more important than ever in times of adversity, and it has served us well. because in spite of what could have been easily explainable excuses, the United team pulled together to overcome them, and we expect to deliver the best financial results to the network carrier. As Andrew and Jerry will discuss in more detail, we expect that our realistic, smart, and opportunistic commercial strategy, backed by a dynamic and thriving cargo business, combined with other dramatic cost-cutting and transfer companies, resulted in United's losses and daily cash burn being lower than either of our network competitors in the second quarter. And that's important because, as we've discussed before, minimizing the depth of the hole we dig in this crisis is critical to preparing United to thrive on the other side. I look forward to the day when we're past the pandemic and can stop talking about cash flow. But the country, the world, and aviation are where we are right now. I remain confident that the virus will be defeated, and when it is, I'm very bullish about our future because I believe the current headwinds related to international and business travel will once again return to being important and unique strategic advantage for United Airlines. And if we can produce leading financial results, even with these larger headwinds right now, just imagine what we'll do in a healthier operating environment. My recap of the second quarter would not be complete if I didn't mention how conversations about confronting systemic racism reverberated through our society, including here at United, like never before. As a company, we'll have much more to say, and more importantly, do, on this topic in the future. But for now, let me reiterate that I'm personally committed to using the influence and visibility of my new role at United to put our values, especially our commitment to equity and inclusion, into action. Now, if you doubted just how busy Q2 was for United, let me remind you that we also named Brett Hart as our new president. Brett's been a trusted colleague, valued advisor, and a good friend since I joined United almost four years ago. He's been a widely respected leader at United for much longer than that. It's my honor to introduce him as my partner for the first time on an earnings call in his new role as our president. Brett, over to you.