Derek Kerr
Analyst · Stifel
Thanks Doug and good morning, everyone. We filed our 10-Q and earnings press release this morning and in that release, our third quarter 2016 GAAP net profit was $737 million or a $1.40 $1.40 per diluted share. This compares to our third quarter 2015 GAAP net profit of $1.7 billion or $2.49 per diluted share and if we exclude the special charges, we reported a net profit of $933 million in the third quarter of 2016 or $1.76 per diluted share versus the third quarter net profit of $1.9 billion in 2015 or $2.77 per diluted share. Our GAAP third quarter pretax profit was $1.2 billion, equating to a pretax margin of 11.2%. Excluding special charges, our third quarter pretax profit was $1.5 billion, which resulted in a pretax margin of 14%. Excluding the effects of special charges and the non-cash tax provision of $449 million our third quarter 2016 adjusted fully diluted EPS was $2.80 per share, compared to $2.77 in the third quarter of 2015, reflecting a 22% reduction in our fully diluted average share count during the quarter. We continue to see sequential improvement in the revenue environment during the quarter, which Robert will talk more about for the quarter. Total operating revenues were $10.6 billion down 1.1% year-over-year. Passenger revenues were $9.1 billion, down 2.2%, driven by a 0.6% decline in yields. Cargoes revenues were down 5.1% to a $171 million due primarily to a decline in international and domestic yields. Other operating revenues were $1.3 billion up 8.5% versus the same period last year due to the impact of the new credit card deal signed with Barclays U.S. City and MasterCard on July 12, 2016. Total GAAP operating expenses were $9.2 billion up 5.2% versus the same period last year. This increase was driven by investments in our people through contractual increases and the introduction of profit sharing plan, investments in our product, investment which includes our fleet as Doug talked about and investments in our operation. These investments were offset in part by lower fuel costs, our average mainline fuel price including taxes for the third quarter of 2016 was down 12.4% year-over-year to $1.46 per gallon. Third quarter mainline cost per ASM was 11.96 up 5.6% year-over-year, excluding special charges and fuel our mainline CASM was 9.32 up 8.9% year-over-year. Regional operating cost per ASM in the third quarter was 18.85, which was down 5.2% from the quarter in 2015, excluding special charges and fuel, regional CASM was 15.08, a decrease of 4.4% due to the continued shift to more efficient large regional jets. We ended the third quarter of 2016 with approximately $9.2 billion in total available liquidity comprised of cash and investments of $6.8 billion and $2.4 billion in an undrawn revolver capacity well in the excess -- well in excess of the $6.5 billion minimal liquidity we seek to maintain for this foreseeable future. The company also had 635 million classified as restricted cash during the quarter. We did generate $1.1 billion during the quarter of cash flow from operations and made $372 million in debt payments. We continue to believe it is important to retain liquidity levels higher than our network peers given our overall leverage and the fact that we have not yet completed our fleet renewal program, which will be substantially complete in 2017. During the quarter, the company took advantage of favorable market conditions and completed several financing transactions including a re-pricing of the company's 2014 term loan collateralized by our London Heathrow flights which reduced interest by 25 basis points and the issuance of $814 million EETC consisting of both AA and A tranches which priced at a blended rate of just over 3%. In the third quarter of 2016, the company returned $669 million to its shareholders including quarterly dividend payments of $53 million and the repurchase of $616 million of common stock for 18.2 million shares. Since our capital return program started in mid-2014, the company has returned $9 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. Including share repurchases, shares withheld to cover taxes associated with employee equity awards and share distributions and a cash extinguishment of convertible debt, our share count has dropped 31% from $756 million and merger closed in December 2013 to 519.2 million shares on September 30, 2016. At the end of the third quarter 2016, the company had approximately 555 million remaining on its current share repurchase authorization. Turning to our guidance for the remainder of 2016, we continue to monitor our capacity plans and in our IR update issued last week, we lowered full-year 2016 system capacity guidance by 0.5 point and are forecasting it to be up approximately 1.5%. For the fourth quarter of 2016, we expect our mainline capacity to be 57.5 billion ASMs and our regional capacity to be 7.84 billion ASMs. So our consolidated capacity will be flat year-over-year in the fourth quarter. On the cost side, we're forecasting year-over-year mainline CASM excluding special items and fuel to be up approximately 5% to 7%, while regional CASM excluding special items and fuel is projected to be down approximately 3% to 5%. For the fourth quarter of 2016, we expect our mainline CASM excluding fuel and special items to be up between 8% and 10%. This year-over-year increase is driven primarily by investment in our people of about six points, maintenance timing of two points and DNA from new aircraft and to increase CapEx of one point. Regional CASM excluding special items and fuel is expected to be down by approximately 3% to 5% in the same period. As we look forward for the first time since mid-2014, year-over-year fuel prices are expected to be higher through the remainder of the year. Based on the forward curve as of October 17, our mainline fuel price forecast for the fourth quarter of 2016 is $1.59 to $1.64 per gallon, while our regional fuel forecast for the fourth quarter is $1.65 to $1.70. Despite these higher fuel prices, we expect the full-year 2016 consolidated fuel expense to decrease by approximately $1.2 billion year-over-year. Using the midpoint of the guidance we just provided along with the revenue guidance that Robert will give, we expect our fourth quarter pretax margin excluding special items to be between 4% and 6%. For capital expenditures, we still expect total gross CapEx to be approximately $4.4 billion in 2016. We've 20 deliveries worth approximate $1.1 billion, which will occur in the fourth quarter and we expect to invest $300 million in non-aircraft CapEx in the quarter, which is $1.2 billion for the full year, which includes continued integration work and investments to improve our product and operations, some that Doug referred to in his comments. Looking out to 2017, we are taking a disciplined approach to matching our plan capacity levels with anticipated levels of demand. We're still in the process of developing our operating plan, so our formal capacity guidance will come out when we report fourth-quarter earnings, but we currently expect our year-over-year system capacity be up approximately 1% in 2017. We expect full year 2017 domestic capacity to be flat while our international capacity is expected to be up approximately 3.5%. Our international growth is driven primarily by our Pacific entity as we annualize the new routes added in 2016. We'll also know more about our 2017 unit cost projections after we complete our operating plan, but as Doug noted, we now have the bulk of our cost increases behind us. As we look to 2017, we expect the full-year impact of our labor agreements will add approximately two points of CASM, but otherwise our core CASM growth should be around 2% on a very modest 1% growth in ASMs. And as Doug also noted, with the integration nearing completion, we will be able to begin the process of eliminating some redundancies in 2017, which will help our unit costs in 2018 and beyond. So in conclusion, we couldn't be more proud of more than 100,000 team members who continue to deliver outstanding results. We continue to make great progress integrating our airlines, most recently with our flight operating system cutover and we've already seen some positive results. We are also excited about the commercial initiatives our team is working on and looking forward to reporting on their continued success on future calls. Thanks again for your time this morning and with that I'll turn it over to Robert.