United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (UAL) September 16, 2026 Conference Transcript

Okay, let's keep flying high. Sorry, I'm going to work all the airline analogies in. With United Airlines next, and very happy to welcome back to Laguna CFO, Mike Lefkinen. Mike, welcome back to Laguna.

Thank you, Ravi, and good morning. It's a great time in the airline industry. This industry is continuing to decommoditize. You're seeing the winners in this industry really create a value proposition for the consumer that's differentiated, and that's creating, I think, healthy financials through cycle. We're starting to see that in the valuations for our stocks and I'm thrilled to talk a little bit more about it today.

That's awesome. We will get to the long-term value prop in a second, but if you can just start with maybe a lay of the land as you see it, obviously a lot going on in the space. The airlines had a very strong summer, obviously transitioning from summer to the fall. How do you see the world today?

Let me start with demand, because demand is incredibly resilient. This is an industry that historically has kind of priced to the lowest common denominator. But the American consumer is becoming a lot more sophisticated, and they care about the quality of the product, the resiliency through regular operations, whether you have Starlink or not, et cetera. The consumer has to maintain profitability, has had to push through some price to offset rising fuel prices. prize. It was our expectation, but it's proven out that demand is incredibly resilient. We have not captured price as an industry for the last 5, 10, 20 years relative to other categories in the travel spend bucket. And I think we have finally put together a product and a service that is demanding some recapture of that. It is nice to see that resiliency.

I will say that Scott Kirby you were spot on when he said that he thought that you guys saw that fuel prices would remain elevated for longer. How has kind of having that longer term view that this is going to be a sustained issue helped you with planning capacity, planning yields, and maybe kind of given you an advantage over your peers?

Look, I think at United, it's we have a philosophy. It's a no excuses this philosophy, and we have a business plan, a culture of driving profitability in all And so when the world changes, we change. We don't kind of stick our head in the sand. And so you saw that as fuel prices spiked, we expected them to be higher for longer. We made some adjustments to our schedule because every airline has a bell curve of profitability if you look across the routes, and there are some routes that were on the lower end that get pushed into not profitable when fuel spikes. like this. Not a lot, because, as I said, the consumer has been incredibly, incredibly resilient. But there's some marginal routes that don't make sense in a higher fuel environment, so we cut them. And you should see us continue to behave that. You will see us continue to behave that way. So as you look into the fourth quarter, there'll be some flights in December that we won't fly that we thought we were going to fly. If fuel remains high, we'll make some adjustments into the first quarter and beyond into 2027. And so you always will see United do that. We are not flying to maximize market share. We're flying to maximize profitability and free cash generation. So we'll make those adjustments.

As you look at the fourth quarter as well, do you have a sense of what demand is shaping up? As you kind of said, demand is being very resilient. Through the third quarter, do you have a sense of what holiday season booking curve is looking like and kind of how much are you booked so far?

It's really strong. In the third quarter, there's been some calendar items, the The Jewish holidays, when Labor Day fell, it caused a little bit of, I think when you look at the TSA data, it caused a little bit of a false indicator. But as we look into the fourth quarter, bookings are tremendously strong. We talked about that on our conference call. Bookings have continued as we expected. That piece of the equation is resilient. I mean, if you squint at some of the lower price tickets, you might be able to find something there, but very small for United Airlines. And then the premium cabins just along very nicely. Corporate business has been ticking up a little bit. We're still back from what we think trend line is, but we've seen a little bit more of an uptick in corporate and premium. But economy also very, very strong.

Garth, just a couple of follow-ups there. Just on the yield curve, obviously you guys had a very strong first half of the year, and you have been able to, both as United and industry, kind of pass through that jet fuel. With getting back up close to the high watermark on fuel prices, is there room for further jet fuel pass-through, do you think, for yourselves?

Absolutely. Jet fuel price gets passed through with a lag, period. We were talking about 100% recovery in the fourth quarter. Fuel prices have spiked pretty rapidly. We've got about 35% of our tickets booked already in the fourth quarter. So you can't go back and reprice those tickets. So there's a lag. And you all should think about that when you run your models. But there is nothing that is changing that causes us to not be able to pass through 100% of fuel with that lag.

And you briefly mentioned corporate. If you can unpack that a little bit. It's going to be still four and a half points below what you thought would be baseline. There are many baselines here. So is that a pre-pandemic baseline? Is there where it should be given GDP? Is there where it should be given where fuel is?

It's a pre-pandemic baseline. And the point of sharing that is there's, while corporate has been very, very robust and we're seeing volumes pick up, there's plenty actually more room to run there. That's the point you should take away, but incredibly robust. In fact, the premium cabin in corporate has been very strong for quarter after quarter after quarter. It's economy that has caught up through that with some really strong pricing in the economy cabin as well. But I would say it's just kind of caught up to parity. It's not like it's getting on top of premium.

On main cabin, that has been a source of weakness for some time now for the entire industry. Very encouraging to hear you say it's kind of caught up on the yield side. How are load factors in main cabin and kind of do you guys have a sense of why and how that's catching up? Because I think one of the themes of this conference has been just how resilient the customer has been. Clearly seems that you're seeing that as well. So any color you have on kind of how and why that's catching up?

You know, I think that it has to do with differentiating the product and consumers really choosing to fly on United for what we're bringing. And it's not just that we're making the premium experience better. We're making the experience better from those detail. And I think it's also a secular trend in society where customers care a lot more about experience than hard product. So more of their wallet is shifting in that direction. If you look at what, and I talked about it a little bit earlier, but if you look at what consumers pay for hotel nights, frankly, this conference, you can't even get a room here right now. But even hotels, I understand the Marriott, you're paying $1,000 a night for the Marriott. Uber prices to and from the airport often cost more than the airfare. The percentage of the trip cost that is dedicated to airfare has shrunk over the years because this industry has often competed in irrational ways, and you've got players that have almost permanently lose money. And I think that the industry structure is moving in a way that as that low-hanging fruit, as those kind of worse actors are forced to produce at least a positive return, certainly not their cost to capital, but a positive return, that's creating this opportunity to get a return, not just a pre-tax margin, but a return on capital. And so we're determined to do that at United Airlines. We've made great progress. And, you know, as I said, as we pass through fuel with a lag, we're completely on track.

Three months ago, when you guys were doing your 2Q calls, we thought the biggest debate at Laguna would be we would see evidence of how resilient pricing was going to stay in a lower jet fuel environment. That obviously didn't happen. But if we were to eventually go back to that debate again, kind of you guys said about 90% of the recent pricing improvement is structural cost inflation and harmonization rather than short-term capacity actions or jet fuel. Can you give us a little more color on kind of how that thinking has evolved since and kind of how confident you are that this is a new baseline for pricing?

I love the question, Ravi, and as I think about the setup, there's two ways we can win. You can see fuel prices rapidly stabilize and hopefully fall as we start to see traffic move through the straighter moves. I've got no special insight into when that may or may not play out. And I think in that environment, we'll be able to maintain a heck of a lot of the price and our margins expand. And that could have happened three months ago. It could happen three months from now. I don't know the timing. But that is absolutely a path to getting to the double-digit margins we've been talking about for so long. And by the way, double-digit margins for United, really, I think right around 9% margin is when we get to investment grade as well. So it really is the key to a whole lot of goodness financially for United Airlines. But the second path is actually pretty favorable as well. And the second path is that fuel prices stay higher for longer, maybe go higher for now in the short term. And if that plays out, you're going to see more and more structural change in this industry. You're going to see there's such a bifurcation between the players that have positive margin and the players that have negative margin. And the balance sheets between those two players is becoming more and more stark. So the longer this difficult environment with fuel price plays out, the more structural change that plays out. and the stronger our margins are on the other side because we will be in an even more differentiated position versus those weaker players. So, you know, I think it's kind of a situation where heads we win and tails we win.

That sounds like a good setup. Just kind of on that note, I mean, I've said this a few times so far this conference already, but I'm going to be a greedy salesman analyst and kind of say that, hey, you just pointed out that there is so much room to normalize on yields for yourselves and as an industry to kind of real adjusted inflation levels. So this is not just about keeping jet fuel pass-through that you've already done because you need to offset structural costs and such. There is more room to come on yields over time. So let's assume that jet fuel goes back to something in the high twos, low threes, and stays there.

There's more room for the airlines that are providing a differentiated customer experience. You have to invest in the customer. This is not getting something for nothing. This is providing a better product, a better service, a more reliable airline, Starlink Internet, better segmentation, et cetera. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

No, no, no, that's exactly where I was going. It's key to it.

This is not just pushing price and giving nothing back to the consumer.

Let's talk about giving back to the consumer. kind of you introduced kind of base fares in premium cabins kind of you're doing the segmentation there earlier this year in 2q you said that the buy-up rate on standard polaris was significantly higher than initially expected what have you learned from that rollout so far and kind of is this bringing the if I was in the middle of the plane to the front of the plane or kind of how is that shifting dynamics within the cabin yeah

I I love your questions this morning thank Thank you for that question. Madison came up with them. When I left Wall Street to come to United Airlines, I was very cost-focused. Like, you win by having low cost. And what this most recent iteration of segmentation with the basic Polaris, the customers love our clubs.

They love our clubs.

And, by the way, the club's pretty expensive and take a long time to build. And we have a huge head start on much of the competition in that. But the buy-up is an indication to me, it's not an indication, it's a proof point. The customers love the club experience and they're willing to pay for it. And so it shows that we're not done with segmentation. And segmentation is, in the end, it helps us drive yield, but it's customers paying for what they want. It's giving the customer choice. And the customer is choosing to have that full premium experience.

Got it. So you're seeing buy-ups within that premium cabin as well. with post-segmentation. It's not a case of people are saying, hey, I'm just, okay, flying in the front of the plane, kind of, I need the club, too. That's incredible to know.

And in fairness, it continues to surprise me, but it is what the customers want, so we're going to provide it.

I want to say that you guys have been one of the most, if not the most, innovative airlines in terms of new products out there. You mentioned Starlink, but also the main cabin product where you can put the three seats down and kind of make it a flatbed. I mean, that was insane. I want to experience that at some point. Great for families. Great for families. Great for families. Abe, what is the product ideation process within United like? How do you come up with ideas like that? And how much more runway do you have to do innovative things within the cabin?

Well, you know, we've got just an incredible commercial team. And Scott, starting with Scott Kirby, we've got this culture of having a five-year startup within a 100-year-old airline. And so we are encouraged as, you know, the entire officer corps and down through managing directors and directors, encouraged to be creative and try new ideas. And the idea works great. If it doesn't, we fail fast. And I think nowhere do you see that more than in what we've done with the hard product. And as I said, it's from nose to tail. You know, what we're doing in the economy cabin is pretty incredible and differentiating for United, and I don't think that's going to end. And so we've proven that. We've proven that. You know, Starlink, I'll use that as an example. When we first started to think about Starlink, look, it was more expensive than the other options. But we thought about what customers, what could really different, especially in long-haul flights, what could really differentiate the experience. And so we kind of took a little bit of risk, incredibly reinforced, incredible bet for United to make. And you've seen a lot of the industry trying to catch up. They'll be a few years behind. But a lot of loyal customers coming to United. And once we get those customers and put them in our loyalty ecosystem, I think that they're going to be permanently united. More and more bets like that to come.

Another big change from your fleet and premium perspective was the XLR Coastliner, kind of elevated 787 coming in the fleet. What does that mean? Obviously, probably the first time I think you're flying a narrowbody, but a full cabin, a full suite product to Transatlantic as well. How has the customer reaction in the early days to that announcement been like? And just overall, if I can ask you a bigger picture premium question, it feels like the entire industry is becoming more premium, which I think is a, I don't even know if it's a high-quality problem, but it's not going to be a good trend for the industry to have. Do you think there's room for this much premium across the industry?

All of society is becoming more premium. This is not just an air travel experience. This is hotels, cruise lines, car service, et cetera. And we're just jumping on to that trend. Andrew Nacella, Patrick Quayle, 321XLR into the United Ecosystem. You've got to see it. If you haven't seen it, you've got to get on board and see the experience. The Polaris suites on those aircraft are incredible. If you think about living on the East Coast, it's such a special competitive advantage for United Airlines to be able to fly direct to so many cities. It's going to be high margin, and it's going to be a unique opportunity for United because we ordered those aircraft, and we're configuring them a way to fly those routes. You don't have to fly to Paris and they have a connecting flight to go straight to these destinations. They're going to be incredible for these new cities on the map, too. So I think yet another example of the creativity of our team in driving a differentiated network to match the differentiated product is going to lead to continued strong financial results.

Got it. You mentioned high margins there. So with your CFO's hat on, how do you think about the margin profile of these aircraft versus a kind of a more traditional transatlantic product or a more traditional long-haul premium product? Obviously, new planes, so it should be cheaper to operate, more fuel-efficient, et cetera. But overall, do you have a sense of how the profitability changes?

Well, for these smaller cities, you need to have a lower trip cost to make it work. And so this XLR is just a special machine. You know, if you compete head-to-head with the same routes, with the same hard product, that's a commodity. And that's going to devolve into commodity-like returns. That is not the strategy you're seeing from United Airlines.

Got it. Understood. Let's switch gears and talk about co-brand here. So I think you said that new co-brand accounts increased 22%. Card spend increased 14%. and mileage plus enrollment increased 9% in 2Q, all kind of incredible numbers off of not the easiest comp in the world. You made a bunch of changes to the card program. How much runway have you already made before you consider a new agreement in the coming years?

We've got a ton of runway in front of us. The team's doing a great job. We've made some tweaks to the program. If you are a loyal United customer, you should have the United card in your wallet. There are some alternatives that get you some of the benefits of the United Card, and we need to make sure that those loyal United customers have a United Card. And so those tweaks are paying dividends, and you've seen a lot of customers shift to the United Card and bring that United Card to the front of the wallet. And so those results you just cited are evidence of that. We are on the right path, but we have so much runway, Because if you benchmark our program versus some of our competitors, we've got a lot more opportunity. Now, a lot of that is on United. Some of that is the relationship with Chase. We've got a strong partner in Chase, and we need to figure out how to make the pie larger and get a larger slice of it at the same time. And so we're going to work on that over the next couple. Hundreds of millions of dollars of opportunity and upside into our loyalty ecosystem. The foundation of that is running a better airline, a differentiated airline. It's a loyalty program, after all, and you want to be loyal to a company that has a product and service that's differentiated.

I think you've described the existing contract as in the sunset phase. Obviously, you're going to be coming to the end of it. What can we see in terms of potential changes? You alluded to the economics here. So changes, timing, what does that look like for the short term?

Yeah, you know, the contract is in the sunset phase. But after every sunset, there's a sunrise. And the sunrise is going to be really special, I think, for United. The opportunity is to drive more card acquisitions. You know, we have a gap in our acquisitions, if you look back in time over five years, where our acquisitions didn't keep up with the level that I think that our business deserves. And so that means that kind of the flywheel of number of customers that have the card in their wallet, and it's the front of the wallet is smaller. But that means that I've got all those customers to go out and capture and entice with a great product. And so part of that's going to be a new contract to drive card acquisitions. Part of that's going to be the rate we make on the spending. And so I think there's a big opportunity there. It's going to be a combination of a new contract and making sure that we make our card really attractive for the customer. And that will spool up, so that takes a few years. But a big, big opportunity. As I think about taking our, you know, industry, you know, top of industry margins and making it absolutely industry-leading, this is one of the biggest levers we have.

Makes sense. Let's be sure you're talking about the network a little bit. Scott Kirby has been one of the most vocal over the last several years about the need to make air traffic control changes and a throttle and a takeoff landings at kind of key airports. Obviously, you guys had some disruption in Newark last year. You've lapped that brilliantly this year. There was a cap announced at O'Hare. But again, it seems like these changes may actually be benefiting you rather than the other way around. Can you talk about how you guys have built that into the network, what the net changes to economics have been at these hubs? Are there any other hubs that you see these changes potentially coming at?

Well, firstly, let me compliment the administration, Sean Dufty, Brian Bedford. They have done so much to try to improve air traffic control for this industry, and they've really made great progress. There's a lot more progress to go and a lot of work to do. But it's kind of a simple math equation. And if you have an airport that the physical facility allows for 80 operations per hour and you schedule it for 85 or 90 operations per hour, and there's weather on top of that occasionally, it's not going to be a great experience for the flying public. And so I think common sense reform to bring airports and limit the amount of scheduled flights has happened at Newark. That is what is happening in Chicago, and I think it's not just about United Airlines. It's about the experience for the flying public to minimize preventable delays. And so I think the teams have done a really great job. They've made smart decisions. There's more to come. There's a lot more work to do, but really pleased with some of the progress. And that does help profitability for United, without a doubt.

I was going to say, it may kind of limit your frequency, but at the same time, potentially gives you fewer IROPs, better pricing opportunities, kind of so the net is a positive change. Especially when you're a connecting hub. Okay, got it. Maybe kind of switch gears a little bit again and kind of pause these for a couple of short-term questions here. But with what Fuel is doing, obviously Fuel has moved since your initial 3Q guidance. How are we thinking about the range today? Is it just a case of plugging in $6 jet fuel for a month? Or how do we think about some of the moving parts there?

Yeah, we'll update guidance in the normal course. If there was something around costs, we're not going to be shy, and we're going to update you very quickly. With fuel, it's very public. You can look at the price. You should make adjustments. Make no mistake, fuel does get passed through with a lag, and so we're going to work hard to do that. That's going to bolster revenue trends over time. but with a lag. But you all can see the fuel price just as easily as I can. And so you're going to want to make the adjustments appropriate for what is a very public fuel price.

You guys are very famous for including one, if not two, acts of God in your guide. Is fuel an act of God?

Fuel moving higher by a dollar with the speed that it's moved is a big act. I'll just leave it at that.

Fair enough. I think you also said that 3Q represents peak chasm pressure and reiterated 2% to 3% core chasm X for 2027, helped by the gauge that we've discussed already today. So how much of the improvement next year? Well, first of all, is the 26 chasm X, to your point, just now still running on track? And second, how much of the improvement next year simply a denominator given idiosyncratic gauge opportunity versus other actions that you're Well, firstly, costs are on track.

We do an incredible job at United of managing a very efficient airline. We are also investing in the product, as I've talked about, and that's very deliberate, and that adds to cost, but it is a margin creative to do that, so you're not going to see us change anything around that. Q3 remains the peak for as far as I can see for Kazamax, and so we'll see a peak in Q3. It will come down in Q4, and I think in 2027, as we're building the budget, it will be lower as well. We continue to target the core CASMEX to the 2% to 3% range. There will be things that ebb and flow. As you pull out capacity closer in, there's a headwind there, but, again, profit accretive when you make decisions like that. So I feel really good about the cost trajectory, United, the efficiency, which we're running the airline and what that means for long-term profits. Got it.

So maybe to tie this all together, given all the levers you have, let us assume for the moment in normalized jet-fed environment, again, high twos, low threes, what is the ultimate margin opportunity that you guys see over time?

We have eyes on 10% margin plus with a stabilization of fuel. I don't actually care if it stays high. I just need it to stabilize. That's a good start. and we'll move towards that double-digit level. Longer term, absolutely still believe in the mid-teams opportunity. We've got work to do. That will take some years to achieve, but I think that's where this business model is headed. If you look at United, you didn't ask this, but I'll offer it. Look at United. For us to justify the capex we spend in this business, I think a return on invested capital exceeding our cost of capital is something we're going to work towards. Something around 89% pre-tax margin gets us there. So we're right on the cusp of very strong returns on capital exceeding our cost of capital. For some of the have-nots in the industry, you need 5 or 10 points of yield just to get to a break-even operating margin. And so I think that that must happen. You can't continue to borrow money to fund operating losses. It is shocking to me how long the capital markets have patience for airlines that burn the furniture to keep the lights on. So I do expect that to resolve itself. When that resolves itself, that's a big piece of what drives us to mid-teens. But I don't have a lot of control over that. Absolutely. Understood. Any questions in the audience?

Madison, do you want to go first?

Thanks for the time. I was just wondering, with United, it's been one of the more visible airline backers of eVTOL through its investments in Archer and EVE and conditional aircraft orders. As those platforms move closer to commercialization, how has your thinking evolved on the role of eVTOLs could ultimately play in United's network?

Now, how amazing is this technology and what Archer's done in particular is pretty incredible. If you guys have not seen some of the test flights of this aircraft, I mean, go and get on YouTube and check them out. I mean, it's an incredible aircraft. United in particular operates hubs in very congested airports and very congested ground traffic. I mean, it can take upwards of an hour to get out to Newark or to get out to JFK from Manhattan. And so in the long term, that's where I see this being very special for United and want to make sure that we're front-footed on providing that opportunity for our customers to create a much more 7-, 10-minute trip to the airport instead of what could be half an hour. So I think that's where it heads eventually. But the air traffic control is a difficult problem. And so in those congested places where you're going to get the most utility for the customer from eVTOL, those are also the most difficult places to bring eVTOL into a congested air traffic control. We've worked with the companies. There are some very clever solutions and some good ideas around how to do that. I do think initial adoption is going to be in less congested airspace. And so how has it evolved? We want to look for some less congested airspace where there's also good consumer utility for these aircraft. But we're right on the cusp of these aircraft flying and being a product that we can offer to consumers. And then how we evolve that into congested airspace is something that's going to take a few more years. But our excitement and enthusiasm has only increased for what this does.

Michael, you mentioned excitement and enthusiasm. Kind of United has a history of being a leader and making investments here. I think you personally as well kind of have directed some of these, kind of almost running like a VC, if you will, eVTOL, supersonic, SAF. I think this morning you had an announcement there. Do you still have the time and bandwidth to kind of look at this stuff, this long-term stuff with everything going on, or how do you not lose track of that?

So I think a lot of folks in my position, they take up hobbies like golf. My hobby is the venture capital team. I mean, I just, I love this stuff. I mean, it's what, you know, I was an investor for 20 years, and I just, I love it. It just, it gets me excited. So I make the time for it. And, you know, we're very thoughtful about how much capital we allocate, and we're nimble. We try to create options. And so, you know, we've had a portfolio where this isn't just about creating strategic knowledge for United, which it does, but we make money off of these investments as well. And so we've got a great team. They're doing a great job. You know, right now I spend a lot of time thinking about air traffic control modernization because we know we've got some good investments in eVTOL, but to integrate that into airspace, you've got to modernize airspace as well. And so, you know, that's part of our DNA. It's baked into United. We're going to see more of it. We've got a couple of pretty cool ones in the works that I'm not ready to announce today, but it is – I have less time than I used to, but I love it. I understand.

Any more questions from the audience? If not, let's talk about free cash flow, which is typically not a question airlines used to get in the past, but you do now. So obviously you've talked about 50% of free cash flow conversion over the next few years, pushing to 75% towards the end of the decade. What are the kind of potential targets for free cash flow and capital usage? A, can we talk about the CapEx score over the next four or five years? And also, what are you going to do with the excess cash? Wow, a whole lot in there.

First of all, healthy companies generate free cash flow. I mean, the best measure of earnings quality is free cash conversion. And so I feel passionate about that. We can sit as an industry and we can gripe about our multiple. What's going to drive the higher multiple is free cash conversion. And so I will recommit today that we're on this path to the 75% free cash conversion. We do have heavy CapEx investments, but that's because we are going to – all these investments are driving returns well in excess of our cost of capital. If you're getting yield for it, why not? And so it makes sense. And so 50% going to 75, I'll recommit to that today. But I also say that if you break our CapEx into maintenance CapEx and growth CapEx, maintenance CapEx delivering something like a GDP growth in ASMs, and you take the CapEx above that, we're not headed to 75%. It's above 100%. And it should be for a healthy company. And so as you also, as you ramp up profitability in the loyalty ecosystem, that's capital light. So we've got plenty of levers to continue on that path to a higher free cash conversion. And again, adjusting for...

So maybe really quickly to bring us home here, outside of refreshing our fuel chart every five minutes, what can we look forward to in 2027 from the United States?

I think that we've got to prove the case. But you ought to, all of you in this room, anyone on the webcast, you ought to think about this industry and what has made it kind of cyclical in the past, the financial return cyclical in the past, kind of boomed the bust. And you should see that this massive spike in fuel, how this industry has handled that differently. And that tells you that the industry is different. And if we can continue to prove that, you should continue to be willing to pay a higher multiple for the business because it's a healthier business. And it's proof, not promise in that regard. So let us continue to prove it. I think there's tons of opportunity for earnings expansion as our margins expand. And I think that what is special about this investment opportunity is, on top of that earnings expansion, you're going to see multiple expansion as well. So lots of opportunity in the industry and, I think, even more in United Airlines stock. Let's just hope macro cooperates in the near term.

All that would be is a pause. It doesn't change the trajectory.

It changes the timing only. Mike, thank you so much for the talk today. Thanks, Ravi.