United Airlines Holdings, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to United Airlines Holdings Earnings Conference Call for the second quarter 2026. 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. At that time, if you'd like to ask a question, simply press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. In order to get to as many questions as possible, we kindly ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Kristina Edwards, Managing Director of Investor Relations

Thank you Regina. Good morning everyone and welcome to United's second quarter 2026 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 and 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, and historical operational metrics will exclude pandemic years of 2020 to 2022. Please refer to the related definitions and reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures at the end of our earnings release. Joining us today to discuss our results and our outlook are Chief Executive Officer Scott Kirby, President Brett Hart, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Mike Leskinen. We also 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.

Thank you, Kristina, and good morning, everyone. I want to start by thanking the United team for staying focused on taking care of our customers and running a best-in-class airline and not letting the conflict in Iran distract from the consistent execution we've become accustomed to. 2026 is once again demonstrating the durability and strength of the United Business Model. Our focus on building brand loyalty is evident in our strong top-line performance with second quarter revenues of 16%, recovering about half the increase in fuel price for the period. The significant increase in fuel in just the past week is also proof that our strategy is resilient. At this time last week, I was planning to tell you that we had a good line of sight to growing earnings year over year based on what we expected our guidance to be at the time. But fuel has gone up a lot in the last week, and we've decided to once again be a leader by changing our guidance policy on fuel. We feel we owe it to investors to update our practice and provide guidance to reflect the most current fuel prices. The fuel price spike this month is equal to $1.12 of EPS, so if fuel goes back to where it was earlier this month, we expect to be above the high end of the guidance range. Thank you for joining us. I expect yields to continue returning to reasonable pre-COVID levels that will ultimately allow the industry to earn its cost of capital. The impact of structural changes are just now beginning to be felt. Demand remains robust as we expect both 3Q and 4Q RASM to grow faster than 2Q's 12% and yields for fourth quarter are currently booked about 14 points higher for 4Q than at the same point in time for 3Q. Demand is strong and the overall cost pressures continue forcing fares higher. United has proven that our brand loyal strategy is working and we're using today's environment to accelerate our investments in all aspects of the customer experience from nose to tail. My conviction in building a brand loyal airline is stronger than ever and I'm encouraged by the consistent share gains we've seen across the board and the corresponding financial results. The more brand loyalty we have, the stronger we expect our earnings will be during good times and the more resilient our earnings will be during industry shocks events. And I can already see and hear from customers that getting Starlink on all our aircraft is going to be a step function increase and are attractive to those customers.