Earnings Labs

Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV)

Q3 2008 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 16, 2008

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Southwest Airlines third quarter 2008 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) We have on the call today Mr. Gary Kelly, Southwest’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Ms. Laura Wright, the company’s Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, please be advised that this call will include forward-looking statements. Because these statements are based on the company’s current intent, expectation and projections they are not guarantees of future performance and a variety of factors could cause actual results to differ materially. This call will also include references to non-GAAP results. Therefore, please see our earnings press release in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.southwest.com for further information regarding our forward-looking statements and for a reconciliation of our non-GAAP results to our GAAP results. At this time I’d like to turn the call over to Mr. Gary Kelly for opening remarks.

Gary C. Kelly

Management

Thanks everyone for joining us this morning on our third quarter earnings conference call. We are of course very pleased to report our 70th consecutive quarterly profit excluding special items which Laura will cover. While we had a profit, we’re never satisfied to report lower year-over-year earnings. We were faced with some pretty significant operating cost pressures during the quarter. Our unit cost ex special items was up 16% and of course that was driven by very significant fuel cost increases. Our jet fuel price per gallon increased 44% to $2.44 a gallon. The good thing is of course for Southwest and all airlines that fuel prices have come down dramatically and at least for the fourth quarter we’re expecting around $2.00 a gallon. Our third quarter results included a very significant hedging gain of $448 million in cash. I think in addition to the fuel story of course the big news is we made very strong progress on the revenue front. We have slowed our capacity growth, we’re growing today at about a 1% clip, and we’re going to slow that further when we get to January. We have continued to prune our flight schedule of unpopular and less productive flights and will pick up the pace with that also in January. We’ve had for the last year some enhanced revenue management, technologies and techniques. We think that that is producing very well for us. I’m very proud of our revenue management department. I think they’re doing an exceptional job of reacting to a challenging environment. Of course we know that with those kinds of cost pressures that I mentioned, we’ve got to get our fares up. We’re trying to do that modestly, we’re trying to do it gradually, and once again I’m very proud of our marketing and…

Laura H. Wright

Management

Our earnings this quarter are quite confusing due to the complicated accounting rules under SFAS 133. Our GAAP results included special noncash charges of $247 million which were related primarily to mark-to-market adjustments on our future periods’ fuel hedge portfolio as required under this complex accounting standard. Excluding these special charges and other special items, our third quarter 2008 net income was $69 million or $0.09 per diluted share which exceeded Wall Street’s mean estimates of $0.07. This represented our 70th consecutive quarter of profitability excluding special items. On a GAAP basis we reported a net loss of $120 million or $0.16 per share. Under SFAS 133 we’re required to mark-to-market any hedges that do not qualify for hedge accounting. Most of our portfolio qualifies for hedge accounting but for those hedges that do not qualify in any given period, we’re required to record the change in mark-to-market and any ineffectiveness in our income statement. In periods of rising fuel costs we generally record unrealized gains on contracts settling in future periods. As you may remember that in the second quarter our GAAP earnings included $361 million of noncash gains as we saw energy prices soar, and we recognized these large unrealized gains in our GAAP earnings. With the drop in oil prices during the third quarter we essentially had to rebirth a large portion of these mark-to-market gains that we recognized in prior periods, which is what drove the GAAP net loss. As you all know we have a successful hedging program that has been managed carefully over the years and hedging continues to be an integral part of managing our costs related to jet fuel purchases, and we believe it is more meaningful to evaluate our performance including the impact of the true net cash settlements which totaled…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Kevin Crissey - UBS.

Kevin Crissey - UBS

Analyst

What oil price roughly would you have zero fuel hedge collateral? I know you probably have a lot of different contracts. When would 1.1 become zero?

Laura H. Wright

Management

As of yesterday we were holding about $1.1 billion in cash collateral and the value of the hedge was about $550 million. The cash collateral associated with that $1.1 billion is probably around $700 million so when we do simulations of collateral, I think we gave you where our floors were and every counterparty agreement we have is different. So we have some agreements that don’t require us to post collateral because of our credit rating. When we look at really where we might have to put up a meaningful amount of cash, we’ve probably got a good $20 off from yesterday’s closing prices. Again that’s something that we manage for and we’ve managed for that in the past and you can expect that we are actively managing that risk today.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jamie Baker - J.P. Morgan Securities, Inc.

Jamie Baker - J.P. Morgan Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Following up on Kevin’s question, a rough estimate as to how much cash you’d have to post if oil settled around $60 a barrel? And as a follow up in that scenario, how do you envision potentially topping off cash? I mean, would it be sale lease-backs, more bank debt? I’m just curious what forms of potential capital raising you might prefer on a go-forward basis.

Laura H. Wright

Management

I think at a $60 range that you’re talking about we’d feel pretty comfortable that anything we would have to do is very manageable with the cash that we have today and what we’re doing in the market. With respect to your other question, I think that is an open-ended question with the markets where they are today. Clearly there is capital available to Southwest Airlines. I would admit that is not as attractive as it was two weeks ago or clearly a month ago. But we can look at bank financing, private markets, clearly [inaudible] sales as you mentioned.

Jamie Baker - J.P. Morgan Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Again just back to the first topic, you said a $20 drop you might have to post something sizable. Any more detail on what your definition of sizable is?

Laura H. Wright

Management

I’d say within a few hundred million dollars.

Gary C. Kelly

Management

The only thing I would add to that is that we’re actively lightening our hedging position so that we help mitigate that exposure as well. The hedge percentages that Laura has provided in the press release, what I’m trying to clearly communicate is that you should expect that they will come down. Because this is a moving target and because it’s not a promise to keep them down, we may make a judgment to increase them back in the future and take advantage of this opportunity. There’s some exposure here but we’re not close at $70 a barrel to any material collateral requirement. It’s the opposite at this point.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Ray Neidl - Calyon Securities, Inc.

Ray Neidl - Calyon Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Going forward it looks like you’re actually doing capacity cutback in the first quarter of 5% to 6% I think you said on ASMs. Is there any chance if the economy remains weak, some economists are saying it’s going to be a four to six quarter recession, that we may see for the first time Southwest actually shrink in 2009? And if that’s the case, surplus aircraft, what would you do with those? Because in that type environment I imagine the value of even new aircraft are going to go down.

Gary C. Kelly

Management

Starting with the fleet, at this point our plan is to grow the fleet no more than 10 airplanes. And like the second quarter, that’s pretty much what we said. We haven’t decided how many airplanes we’ll actually add to the fleet next year and it could be zero. Under that assumption that the fleet growth is somewhere between zero and 10, it’s possible that we could put more flights per aircraft back into the schedule later on into the year but I think something would have to happen for us to change our minds there. I think that it’s possible that the full year capacity for 2009 will be down in available seat miles compared to 2008. Essentially what we’re doing is with the same number of aircraft, we are flying fewer flights per aircraft on a daily basis beginning in January and the image that you should have in your mind is that we’re going in to our daily flight schedule and eliminating unpopular flights which tend to be at the off-peak times of the day. The easiest illustration is just to suggest a late night flight that has very few people on it. It’s unproductive activity for us and not that many customers use it. That view would have to change with the fleet plan that I described for us to have increased capacity next year, and I don’t see that again as a probable change that we would make. We’re trying to take this one schedule at a time. This is Gary’s opinion, this is nothing that I can use any empirical data to convince you with, but I feel like we’ve been pretty aggressive with our January schedule changes and my guess is that all else being equal, in other words no change in the economy, that we might have if anything gone a little bit too deep. But the point being that we wanted to make a fairly significant statement here with our schedule and we want to evaluate those results. Of course what is also happening around us is our competitors are reducing capacity much more aggressively. We’ve got reductions that are occurring in the fourth quarter of this year and there are more reductions planned for next year. We’ll just have to see given all these moving parts whether we’ve got our schedule at the right place. Odds are, long story short, we’ll have less available seat mile capacity in ’09 than in ’08 when it’s all said and done.

Ray Neidl - Calyon Securities, Inc.

Analyst

It looks like in bad times we go for both yield and load factor, which is probably a good move. The other thing that you’re working on because you’re trying to get additional traffic is not charging for the first bag. How is that working? Are you seeing that stimulating traffic?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

Can’t tell but I can, as we did, say that we had 14% unit revenue growth in October on top of a capacity increase and I feel really good about that. Anecdotally we can tell you all kinds of stories about customer reactions to our low-fare no-fees approach. I think it remains to be seen whether that will move a large number of passengers Southwest’s way. We’re certainly not going to lose passengers in this environment and as you know, in a recessionary environment we always do better than the industry because of our overall low-fare brand. This helps us reinforce that, so I feel very strongly that the timing couldn’t be better for this opportunity to come our way. It’s a gift and we’re trying to take full advantage of it. But in the end the customers are going to tell us what they want. If they want fees and they want fares unbundled, we’ll do that. It’s just based on our knowledge of our customers, and we carry more customers than any other airline in the world. We don’t think that’s the right thing to do and so far I feel like we’re being rewarded for it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Daniel McKenzie - Credit Suisse.

Daniel McKenzie - Credit Suisse

Analyst

Looking ahead at the portfolio fuel hedges, it appears that you do have a chance to reset some of your hedge levels and hedge positions. I’m wondering how you’re thinking about that. Is that a possibility to go and dig back in say for the next several years out? And if so, how do we think about that from a cash perspective?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

I think both Laura and I probably should take a swing at answering your question. Volatility is bad in terms of planning. I don’t think anybody really knows where fuel prices are going over the next three months, and all I have to do as evidence is look back at the last three months and then the previous three months to that to see the wild swings that the market has gone through. Here in North Texas we have a major natural gas development project underway which is in essence being suspended because of the radical swing in natural gas prices. So we’re all concerned from a longer-term perspective about crude oil supplies and that’s certainly not helped with this wild swing in prices, and therefore we’re very concerned about a sharp spike that blows right past $150 a barrel when we run into supply/demand imbalances. So we’ve got to protect against that and then the art of this now is trying to figure out exactly how and when to do that. Right now in October prices have no bottom so we can’t be oblivious to that; we have to manage to that. At some point we’ll want to adjust our strategy and continue to be adequately hedged into the future. Right now we need to have a lighter hedge and find some confidence in how low prices go. So yes, as I said in my opening remarks, low fuel prices is a good thing for Southwest Airlines and this is an opportunity that we’ll want to take the best advantage of that we can. I’ve got a lot of confidence in our finance department. They’ve been doing this a long time and the results are stellar. But I can’t tell you exactly how this will play out, exactly what levels we’ll want to cap, all of those things. The cash position is much improved going forward. In fact, Laura let me let you speak to that.

Laura H. Wright

Management

I think that the recent decline in industry prices is actually quite exciting as we look in the near term. Just in August we were forecasting a fuel headwind for Southwest in ’08 of $900 million to $1 billion versus last year and we were anticipating our fuel costs next year were going to be another $700 million to $800 million higher than ’08. So the good news is that the decline we’ve seen in energy prices assuming they stick here for a while. That softness or headwind this year is down in the $700 million range and the headwind over ’09 is down to $150 million range. That two-year increase is basically then cut in half. We’re optimistic about that and to Gary’s point we’re going to have to figure out when’s the right time to shore up future years. But we want to protect for the downside in the near term.

Daniel McKenzie - Credit Suisse

Analyst

I would be remiss to overlook that it’s been two years since the labor contract became amendable. I know you guys generally don’t like to talk about that, but I just wondered if you can share any perspective about the pilots’ contract?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

We reached the two-year mark in September of ’08 and I think every day that goes by we get closer I think to a resolution there. It’s been at this point now 14 years since we last negotiated under Section 6 a pilot contract, so it’s taken awhile. There was a lot of cleanup to do. I hope that we’re getting close but I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to make a lot of predictions there. I need to honor the negotiation process and let it run its course.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Duane Pfennigwerth - Raymond James & Associates. Duane Pfennigwerth - Raymond James & Associates: I’m wondering if you can just tell us by your numbers what competing capacity was in the third quarter versus the 15% to 20% that you think it is in the fourth quarter.

Laura H. Wright

Management

During the third quarter when we started the quarter, our competitor’s seats were down about 7% in July and August in our direct markets. That grew to about 18% in September and for the fourth quarter in our direct markets, our competitor’s seats are going to be down in the 17% to 18% range. Duane Pfennigwerth - Raymond James & Associates: Do you happen to have the monthly split given what was month-to-date you were seeing RASM up 14%? What do you see capacity at October, November, December?

Laura H. Wright

Management

It’s down to 18% for the quarter and the best I remember it’s right in that 17% to 18% for each of those three months. So it’s pretty steady in October, November and December. Duane Pfennigwerth - Raymond James & Associates: So why wouldn’t the month-to-date RASM trend continue for the quarter based on what you can see?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

I think it’s for the obvious reasons. In other words, the world has changed here in the last six weeks and I think it would be inappropriate for us to not recognize that. Looking at the bookings for November and December, we have to look at them by the way on a combined basis because the calendars don’t match up very well for Thanksgiving travel, you can’t draw any real meaningful conclusions this far out. If we use October as an example, we’re seeing strength in our bookings much later than normal. On the other hand we are not promoting and discounting and offering sales of seats this year, which is the first time in my recollection that we’ve ever done that. So one would expect that the booking curve would be later but all that is a long-winded way of saying that there’s no way to get comfortable in this environment that future booking trends will be strong because it is such a different operating environment. We know that fares are higher compared to a year ago. We know the economy is in a complete recession. The one shock absorber that’s in place is the reduction of seats and capacity, and it’s a darn good thing or I think we’d all be talking about something different. I’m not trying to argue you out of your view. I’m just trying to honestly tell you that in this kind of environment, we’ve got to be prepared for a weak economy and weaker demand which I think is destined to happen. Whether it happens in November or December or January, I couldn’t tell you but I think it’s bound to happen and particularly with business travel. Duane Pfennigwerth - Raymond James & Associates: Thank you for that color Gary. I guess the question is, is it based on your conservative nature and your need to be prepared or is it based on something that you can currently see?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

It’s based on the former. There’s nothing that we can point to today that would suggest that our revenue momentum will stall but in fairness again to answering your question, we don’t have enough evidence to draw a meaningful conclusion. Laura, if you go out to December, what percentage of bookings do you even have in place at this point? 15%? It’s just a very small number. I was talking with Dave Ridley earlier this morning, our Senior VP of Marketing, and we have several bookings per flight booked out in the first quarter which you just can’t draw any conclusion from. There’s just no way to be confident about revenue trends in this kind of environment. We would be foolish to be bullish in this environment in my opinion.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from William Greene - Morgan Stanley & Company, Inc. William Greene - Morgan Stanley & Company, Inc.: Gary, I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about the revolver draw-down. Was there a clause in it that caused you to think you were going to lose it for some reason, either some mac clause or something? And if not, why would you draw it down and sort of take the interest expense?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

I think that’s a very fair question. There is no scientific answer other than I think I mentioned this earlier today. I’m an old CFO as you know. You get cash when you can; not when you have to have it. In this kind of a world that we live in with the financial disaster that we have to contend with, it makes no sense to me not to boost our cash target in what could become a very difficult scenario. At the beginning of the year I didn’t think some of the venerable Wall Street names that we know would go away this year. I just don’t see that there’s any upside to being aggressive with that view. Now all we’ve done is simply accelerate our financing for next year’s capital spending. What we’ve told you all for years is that our cash target is somewhere between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. If you go back 90 days, because of the extraordinary rise in fuel costs, we had near $6 billion in cash. So one way to think about this is that if you look at it in that environment and you go, “Why would you need to do any more financing when you’ve got far more cash than you really need?” The fact that fuel prices have collapsed has dramatically changed our cash balance so I think Laura and I both feel like we need to boost that $1.2 billion up to the $1.5 billion to $2 billion range. It’s just not any more complicated than that. I want the money in our bank account; not somebody else’s.

Laura H. Wright

Management

Bill, on your first question in terms of the need to draw, there’s no truth to any of that. We have no issues with respect to any of our covenants or mac clauses that caused us to draw. [Inaudible]

Gary C. Kelly

Management

No, there is no issue there. I will admit to you, and I mentioned this earlier, the timing around the earnings call was straight forward because we’re all gathered together and we assumed that it might raise some questions. It just provides an easy way for us to explain to you what our logic is all combined. There is no covenant issue or anything like that. William Greene - Morgan Stanley & Company, Inc.: You have $200 million left but I guess by the same logic we shouldn’t assume that’s actually available?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

You should absolutely assume it’s available. Of course it is.

Laura H. Wright

Management

It’s completely and very much available. William Greene - Morgan Stanley & Company, Inc.: But you didn’t draw it down.

Gary C. Kelly

Management

No. We’re trying to kind of split the difference there. We didn’t feel like we needed all $600 million of it and $400 million we thought was a good enough number. William Greene - Morgan Stanley & Company, Inc.: Gary, let me just turn to a different issue. You mentioned the CASM advantage over the industry and that’s in fact true, although on a labor CASM basis, not so much true anymore. I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you think about that, because historically when we’ve had an airline with among the higher labor costs in the industry, it’s been a tough position? How do you think about managing that?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

For our Southwest Airlines people and our customers we want to be the best in every single category. We want to have the best customer service, we want to have the best employees, and we want to have the lowest cost structure and that also means up and down the line in every single category. We have an enormous cost advantage ex fuel, ex labor and I see that as a very sustainable cost advantage prospectively. I think most everyone who follows the industry would agree with that hands down. We do have more parity on the unit labor cost component of our structure and I think over time I would want us to beat our competitors on that line item as well. I think with the overall economic environment and our need to slow our growth and just to be cautious about the kind of commitments that we make, whether it’s buying airplanes or whether it’s committing to hiring employees or compensation, we’ve got to be very cautious and very conservative. There’s nothing new with that thought or that statement. We’ll hopefully execute according to that view. I will say that once again if you look at our performance here that our employees continue to deliver and I’m very proud of them. They are the best in the industry and our productivity continues to improve quarter after quarter after quarter, and of course they’re the ones that are delivering the great customer service that we have and producing the 3% to 4% fuel consumption gains that we’re getting. I just couldn’t be more proud of them so we’re going to do our best to take great care of our people.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Gary Chase - Barclays.

Gary Chase - Barclays

Analyst

Two questions for you. The first is on the capacity plan. I wondered if you could just elaborate a little further. The down 5% to 6% for the first quarter, at least I don’t think is new and previously you’ve been saying things like, “Well, we may not grow at all during ’09,” which kind of implied to me that there was going to be enough seasonality in the schedule where down 5% to 6% for the first quarter wasn’t going to translate into that kind of number for the year. Is that still the right read? On the one hand you see that and you kind of wonder why capacity wouldn’t be down 5% to 6%. Would that be just because the economy is stronger than people now fear it is? Can you just help us with that?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

We’ll sure try. Are you asking why wouldn’t the down 5% to 6% for the first quarter extend through the whole year?

Gary Chase - Barclays

Analyst

Yes. Say in order for it to be even flat for the year, you’d need to have the second and third quarter presumably up a good bit. Is that the idea?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

Yes, I’ve got your question. First of all we have not admittedly, it’s still October, we haven’t locked down on how many airplanes we are going to deploy into the schedule next year. So that’s one part of the answer. We don’t know yet. Number two is we do have opportunities to, even if the fleet is zero next year, we could put more flying into the schedule after what’s published either on a daily basis or on the weekend. So that could create more trips and more available seat miles. I don’t think that will happen and I would admit that. I don’t think that it would be unreasonable to extend the assumption of down 5% to 6% into the second quarter, third and fourth. I’m just telling you the truth that we have not made decisions yet certainly for the second half of the year. Pretty soon we’re going to have to publish our schedule out through May and that’ll give you more insight. But I don’t think anybody’s working any harder in our company than our schedule planning department. They are evaluating a variety of scenarios to try to optimize our profits with our schedule and we do have opportunities to add a substantial amount of flying. But we need more airplanes to do that and of course we’re trying to weigh the risk of that versus the opportunity in those markets. It’s very possible that our capacity next year will be down in the 5% to 6% range but I’m not willing to commit to that yet.

Gary Chase - Barclays

Analyst

Just to clarify something you just said. You said you haven’t yet locked down on the net aircraft additions, that’s a function of your choice, right? It’s not that there’s uncertainty around the Boeing strike or something that’s preventing you from knowing that? It’s you guys have not yet determined how many you’d like to have. Is that fair?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

I think that was the assumption that Laura laid down for us. It was assuming that we get the aircraft delivered by the end of next year for the ’08 and ‘09s, the three and the 10, then yes I agree. But to be practical here, we don’t know how long the strike’s going to be. One of the things that Laura has been I think sharing for several quarters is that we are continuing to probe the aircraft market for buyers. The odds are if we find a healthy buyer at a healthy price, we’ll sell a handful of aircraft. That would be our desire in this point. We don’t plan to sell a whole bunch of airplanes but that’s part of the answer here right now. We don’t know exactly how many airplanes we will have next year, and obviously we prefer not to have them just sitting around doing nothing.

Gary Chase - Barclays

Analyst

I want to congratulate you by the way on a very clever ad campaign around the new fees.

Gary C. Kelly

Management

Well, thank you. It was all my idea if you liked it. You know that’s not true.

Gary Chase - Barclays

Analyst

Philosophically you talked a few quarters back, I mean as little as a few quarters back, about the need to drive a lot of additional revenue. Obviously the fuel dynamic has changed dramatically since then and I guess what I’m asking is, as we look at this campaign you have to go towards no fees should we be thinking that you’ve decided you’re not going to pursue as deep an opportunity set there as you had been thinking when the numbers were as high as $1 billion and $1.5 billion of extra revenue? Or was it never really the plan to go down this path and there are other opportunities that you’re going to pursue to drive that same magnitude of revenue opportunity?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

Our revenue goal is still very ambitious. The $1.5 billion is in my opinion the minimum target that we have. We have multiple initiatives underway to hopefully ensure that that target remains doable and reasonable. No, you shouldn’t read anything into our activities thus far as backing off of our target, and obviously our target may have to change according to operating cost levels and fuel cost levels. But the no fees campaign should work and our revenue performance in the third quarter and thus far in the fourth quarter is very encouraging. I’m very proud of those results that our people have produced, and that’s with no fees. There’s this assumption I think that people are making that the fees are additive and there’s certainly no evidence yet that that will be the case. If we discover that you’ve got some price insensitive customers that are willing to pay add-on fees, that’s still an opportunity for us to pursue and I’m not guaranteeing that we will never ever charge fees. I think that that also would be foolish, but we think we’ve got a great opportunity here to differentiate Southwest Airlines once again in a very positive way. It’s part of a bigger brand opportunity that we have. We carry more customers than any other airline and we want to continue to grow that, and we think we have opportunities to move customers over to us. We carry more business customers than any other airline and we’re making significant investments there. It’s not the be all end all. It’s just one part of a larger plan that we have to drive revenues: Southwest.com, enhanced rapid rewards, extending into co-share relationships internationally. More new enhanced revenue management techniques are in front of us, and we think have very significant opportunities. I think the biggest thing that’s going on in 2008 and 2009 is the schedule optimization. We have high hopes for the adjustments that we’re making in January to March that that will produce some significant load factor boosts and revenue gains per available seat mile basis. So it’s going to take every one of those and we think that the no fees approach will also earn us more customers that will more than pay for what incremental fees would be. That’s our view and we’ll know. We’ll know in a year or two or maybe sooner or maybe later whether that was the right choice or not, but the way we see it this is just a gift from our competitors and we’re taking full advantage of it.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from Michael Linenberg - Merrill Lynch & Company, Inc. Michael Linenberg - Merrill Lynch & Company, Inc.: When we think about the planned capacity reduction in the March quarter of 2009, the 5% to 6%, and as I think back I can’t think of a time where Southwest has cut capacity in the past. And yet we have seen some cost headwinds on an ex fuel CASM basis. What type of CASM increases, I realize the potential upside on the revenue side but what’s the early read on ex fuel CASM and maybe where are the opportunities to bring down costs in the March quarter?

Laura H. Wright

Management

We gave you some guidance on fourth quarter ex fuel CASM. Our capacity ASMs are going to be up about 1% in the fourth quarter and we expect that our year-over-year ex fuel ex special CASM’s going to be up in the same range in the fourth quarter that it was in the third quarter. Clearly as we go into the first quarter of next year with ASMs down 5% to 6% versus up 1%, that’s going to put continued pressure on our first quarter ex fuel CASM. Gary talked about the rest of the year next year. We have not locked in on the ASMs for the second through fourth quarters so I really don’t have any color there. We expect that we’ll continue to see actually more pressure in the first quarter with less capacity. Michael Linenberg - Merrill Lynch & Company, Inc.: I think it was maybe Gary who had answered this when asked to characterize what a sizable hit or a sizable impact would be regarding posting of additional collateral to the counterparties if oil prices fell another $20, and I think Gary you should $200 million. Is that a net number? Are you including any potential cost savings that you would get for lower fuel prices on call it the small piece of unhedged although it sounds like going forward you’re going to have more and more exposure? Does that include the benefit there? And I’m assuming that if oil goes to $60, we’re sort of looking at the same revenue environment although things could definitely change on the revenue side?

Gary C. Kelly

Management

No, it does not. I’m glad you asked for that clarification. That’s the risk associated with having a hedging portfolio that extends out for four and five years. It creates that potential leverage. It works well when prices are going up and we have to be careful with that when prices are going down. The drop in fuel costs would overwhelm that number but they wouldn’t be realized of course. It would be over time. All of the questions that have been asked about the cash collateral are very appropriate. I think my net answer at least is that we’re managing that aggressively, which you have to do. You can’t just sit still and let that happen because it could put a short-term crunch on a company. The only answer is to reduce the leverage and that’s exactly what we have underway, and I feel confident that our folks will do that very expertly.

Operator

Operator

At this time I’d like to turn the call back over for any additional or closing remarks.

Laura H. Wright

Management

That concludes this portion of the call. Thank you everyone for listening in. Our IR folks will be ready to take your calls. Have a great day.