Alaska Air Group, Inc. (NYSE:ALK) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call January 25, 2024 11:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Ryan St. John - Vice President, Finance, Planning & Investor Relations

Ben Minicucci - President & Chief Executive Officer

Andrew Harrison - Chief Revenue Officer & Chief Commercial Officer

Shane Tackett - Chief Financial Officer

Nat Pieper - Senior Vice President, Fleet, Finance & Alliances & Treasurer

Conference Call Participants

Ravi Shanker - Morgan Stanley

Savi Syth - Raymond James Financial

Scott Group - Wolfe Research

Duane Pfennigwerth - Evercore ISI

Conor Cunningham - Melius Research

Andrew Didora - BofA Global Research

Jamie Baker - JPMorgan

Helane Becker - TD Cowen

Catherine O'Brien - Goldman Sachs

Mike Linenberg - Deutsche Bank

Stephen Trent - Citigroup

Dan McKenzie - Seaport Global

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Alaska Air Group 2023 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Today’s call is being recorded and will be accessible for future playback at alaskaair.com. After our speakers’ remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session for analysts. I would now like to turn the call over to Alaska Air Group’s Vice President of Finance, Planning and Investor Relations, Ryan St. John.

Ryan St. John

Thank you, operator and good morning. Thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. This morning, we issued our earnings release along with several accompanying slides detailing our results, which are available at investor.alaskaair.com. On today’s call, you will hear updates from Ben, Andrew and Shane. Several others of our management team are also on the line to answer your questions during the Q&A portion of the call.

This morning, Air Group reported our fourth quarter GAAP net loss of $2 million. Excluding special items and mark-to-market fuel hedge adjustments, Air Group reported adjusted net income of $38 million. As a reminder, our comments today include forward-looking statements about future performance, which may differ materially from our actual results. Information on risk factors that could affect our business can be found within our SEC filings. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted earnings and unit costs, excluding fuel. And as usual, we have provided a reconciliation between the most directly comparable GAAP and non-GAAP measures in today's earnings release. Over to you, Ben.

Ben Minicucci

Thanks, Ryan, and good morning, everyone. Alaska Airlines closed out another great year in 2023. Before we get to those results, I want to address the recent grounding of our 737 MAX 9 fleet. I am deeply sorry to everyone on board Flight 1282 for what they experienced on January 5 and to all of those who have seen their travel plans disrupted by cancellations. We are looking forward to returning to the reliable service you know and expect from us.