Air Canada

Hello and welcome to the Air Canada second quarter 2024 results conference call. All lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Valérie Derain, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Sustainability at Air Canada. You may begin.

Thank you, Sarah. Hello, bonjour, et bienvenue à notre deuxième revue trimestrielle de 2024. Welcome and thank you for attending our second quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining us this morning are Mike Russell, our President and CEO, Mark Gallardo, our Executive Vice President of Revenue and Network Planning and President of Cargo, and John Deibert, our Executive Vice President and CFO. Other executive team members are with us as well. Mike will begin this call with an overview of the quarter. Mark will speak on revenue, network updates and trends, and John will provide comments about our financial performance before turning it back to Mike. We will then take questions from equity analysts. I remind you that today's comments and discussion may contain forward-looking information about Air Canada's outlook, objectives and strategies that are based on assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from any stated expectations. Please refer to our forward-looking statement in Air Canada's second quarter news release available on aircanada.com and on CEDAR+. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Valerie, and good morning. Bonjour, and thanks for joining us. Our second quarter results were solid, although they did not achieve our internal expectations. We achieved second quarter operating revenues of $5.5 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was $914 million in the quarter with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.6%. And we generated $1.5 billion in free cash flow on a year-to-date basis. We demonstrated progress in several areas. On-time performance improved 10 points on 4% more operated flights and 3% more passengers carried versus the same quarter last year. I was also very pleased that Air Canada won more awards than any other Canadian carrier at the 24 Skytrax World Airline Awards and that Star Alliance was named the best airline alliance. Skytrax rated Air Canada among the top 30 airlines in the world and the best in Canada by a wide margin. Credit for this recognition and our results goes to our 39,000 employees. I thank them for their hard work and dedication in taking care of our customers and transporting them safely. As 2024 progresses, we can see that 2023 was truly a unique year. The rapid post-pandemic surge in demand combined with constraint capacity resulted in very strong yields and load factors last year. We recently revised our full-year guidance to reflect the impact of the changes in market conditions. Mark and John will discuss this in more detail. But before I turn this over to Mark, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our customers. We are grateful for your trust and loyalty. You are the reason for which we fly, and we look forward to serving you with excellence. Over to you, Marc.