United Airlines Holdings, Inc.

My name is Regina, and I will be your conference facilitator today. Following the initial remarks from management, we will open the lines for questions. To ask a question during that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one a second time. 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, Regina. Good morning, and welcome to United's fourth quarter and full year 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, which 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. 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 today on the call to discuss our results in Outlook are Chief Executive Officer Scott Kerbede, President Brett Hart, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Stella, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Mike Luskinen. In addition, we have other members of the executive team on the line available for Q&A. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Scott.

Thanks, Christina, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. I want to begin by saying that our thoughts are with those affected by the wildfires in the Los Angeles area. We've been in close touch with our employees and communities in the area to offer them support. We'll continue to monitor the situation to see if there are more ways that we can help. Turning to earnings, 2024 was another solid proof point on our way to double-digit margins. By the fall of 2020, several months after COVID struck, we at United had a clear vision of how our airline and the industry were going to evolve. And 2024 seems to have been the year that we gained broad recognition from others that the vision is playing out as we expected. Our outlook has always been based on a realistic view of how the economics of the industry were going to change and how those changes had the potential to drive structural, permanent, and irreversible changes in the entire industry. Our 2024 plan developed from that vision, and our results were the culmination of years of thoughtful planning, bold action, and strategic investment. I'd like to thank our employees for these stellar results, and I'm proud to say that we'll be paying out $713 million in profit sharing this year. In 2024, United continued to make progress with our United Next plan and once again delivered earnings within our original range. Our investments over the last several years have further differentiated United from the rest of the industry and led to strong customer preference for the United brand. But the bigger point here is that the changes that have led to this moment are structural and durable. Cost convergence, which we first talked publicly about on this call in Houston two years ago, combined with effective revenue diversity at United for the first time ever, and industry-leading product and service causing customers to choose United are just irreversible structural changes that have created a competitive moat for United. Answering an analyst question two quarters ago, I talked about how this feels very much like 2012 to 2014. But today, I'll add that there are two additional tailwinds this time around. The international environment, which Andrew will discuss in more detail, is going to be far stronger for longer because of the structural supply constraints that are going to last at least for the rest of this decade. Wide-body supply, both airframes and engines, is even more challenged than narrowbodies. And second, domestically, the seeds of the 2012 to 2014 era's demise were being sown at the time with 15% to 20% growth from the ULCC. It's very hard to see that happening again. Importantly, all of this means that the industry is evolving into an equilibrium where each airline, driven by economic necessity, will be primarily focused on flying where they have a competitive advantage. Different airlines have different competitive strengths and weaknesses in the post-COVID era. Cost convergence has been the most impactful at the big, high-cost airports in the country. The cost per passenger in the three New York City airports is $48, compared to the average ULCC fare of $67 in those three airports. When an airline is spending 72% of their fare on airport costs, it's hard for me to imagine that they could ever be profitable in those airports. At the same time, LCCs do have an advantage and will always be able to be more profitable than United in point-to-point, low-cost airports. It really is a transformed industry, and United, more than anyone, is leading the way. We have seven great hubs. We got well ahead of the curve in investing for the future, and we're focusing all of our efforts and growth in our hubs where we have the competitive advantage. The combined virtues of our size and our innovative culture make us a competitive chagrin. We know who we are. We know our strengths. We also know our weaknesses, and we're going to focus on our strengths and nothing else. But we won't rest on our laurels, and we'll never be complacent or satisfied with our results. We'll continue to be an airline where good leads the way by focusing on ways to be an even better airline for our customers. Starlink is one of the most obvious high-profile investments for customers, but it's really just the visible tip of the iceberg. Our digital team is expanding our best-in-the-world technology by making further improvements to make the airline even more transparent and easy to do business with. And our ops team is focused on changing the unchangeable and trying to solve problems that no other airline in the world has ever even tried to fix. and we'll continue to invest in a brand that inspires pride in employees and customers alike. This year, we expect to grow our EPS by approximately 18% at the midpoint, and we'll deliver strong free cash flow while continuing to invest in the future. That includes signing industry-leading contracts with our United team, which is made up of the best aviation professionals in the world. We are the best airline in the history of aviation, and we're going to continue to raise that bar. That's been and will continue to be increasingly good for our employees, customers, and our shareholders. And with that, I'll turn it over to Brett.