United Airlines Holdings, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to United Airline Holdings earnings conference call for the third quarter 2024. My name is Krista and I will be your conference facilitator today. Following the initial remarks from management, we will open the lines for questions. At that time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. And if you would like to withdraw that question, again press star 1. 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 Edwards, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Krista. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to United's third quarter 2024 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. All forward-looking statements are based upon information currently available to the company. A number of these 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. Unless otherwise noted, we will be discussing our financial metrics on a non-GAAP basis on this call. Please refer to the related definitions and reconciliations in our press release. 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 Customer Officer Linda Joja, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Mike Leskinen. In addition, we have other members of the executive team on the line available to assist with the Q&A. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Scott.

All right. Thanks, Christina, and good morning, everyone. Before we start, I want to acknowledge the devastation that has occurred in the southeast due to the severe hurricanes that impacted the region. The United team has been working overtime to get our customers and employees safely in and out of the impacted areas. We've also raised hurricane relief funds and transported humanitarian aid to the region. Turning to the quarter, the inflection we spoke about on our last call has happened, and we're seeing unprofitable capacity begin to exit the market, leading to the expected domestic yield improvements. We once again delivered a solid quarter, and I want to thank the United team for taking care of our customers and producing these strong results, all while strengthening a culture that puts the safety of our customers and employees first. Today's results are another proof point of what we've been outlining was going to happen on these calls for several years now, both at United and in the industry more broadly. So how have we gotten here? Over the last several years, United has worked hard to improve the customer experience. That starts with a great culture and great people that are proud to be a part of United and want you, our customers, to feel the same way. Over a multi-year period, we've also made significant product investments that are important to our customers, like new aircraft with seat-back screens and power in every seat, expanded clubs, and the fastest Wi-Fi in the industry with Starlink. United is also the clear innovation leader in global aviation, and our technology is now, without question, the best of any airline in the world and by a wide margin. One of the most common comments I get from customers now is about how much better the United app is than any other airline. But no investment has been more important than the almost $10 billion investment we've made in our people over the last four years. During this time, we also reached industry-leading contracts with four of our five major work groups. We're currently in federal mediation with the AFA. We're committed to reaching the same kind of agreement for our flight attendants. But we knew that doing all of that following COVID would be difficult. We couldn't just hope that the world would revert to pre-COVID norms. That's allowed us to be consistently ahead of the curve and often move opposite the consensus, and we've been consistently right. All of these actions and investments, combined with our United Next plan, have propelled United to a leadership position operationally, financially, and for our customers and employees. All these actions position United to provide benefits to all of our stakeholders, financially stable, secure careers for our people, improved experience for customers, and now that we've done those two things, we can return value to our shareholders. This success has led to our strong financial results that have facilitated our ability to restore our balance sheet and position us to take the next step in solidifying our leadership position in the industry. Our board of directors has approved a $1.5 billion share repurchase program. Mike will go into the details about our capital allocation frameworks, But this is a critical next step for United as we work to create value for all of our stakeholders. We're proud of our current results and excited about the innovation that we have ahead for customers. But we're also glad to see that the industry inflection point, which we've been predicting, has actually happened. We believe that all sets United up to expand margin in the years to come. And with that, I'll hand it to Brett.