UAL Corporation Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-01-21 13:33:14.0

Tags: Revenue, Call Transcript, Liquidity, Earnings, Morgan Stanley, UAL Corp., CapEx, Investment, Finance, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions). And we'll take our first question from William Greene with Morgan Stanley.

William Greene - Morgan Stanley

Yes, question for John. John, can you comment on the January to-date RASM trends? Specifically I want to know, too, if the international is being pretty negatively affected by some of these efforts we've seen out of Virgin over the Atlantic?

John Tague

Well, as you know, we don't provide guidance and certainly not within the monthly period. These times are challenging, and clearly demand is under pressure across the industry. The one thing that I do, know is that we and many others are better positioned to deal with this recession than we likely have ever been before. We've made significant capacity cuts as Kathy outlined a 14 point reduction in mainline capacity in the first quarter.

So we're in good shape in terms of capacity, and we're clearly in good shape with the success we're having on the cost side. I know that’s not satisfying, but as you imagine that, the visibility relative to revenue trends is less than desirable. And most of the downward pressure on unit revenues has been within closed-end bookings. So we're a little cautious about either providing too firm of an outlook.

I think there's a possibility that the first quarter may be one of the more difficult quarters this year, but again we're doing what we can to introduce new products and services and we are cautiously optimistic about how revenues will perform relative to prior recession, but it is challenging.

William Greene - Morgan Stanley

Kathy, maybe I can ask you about liquidity. Can you talk a little bit about the options you might have from here? You talked about the deals you've already closed, but what are the unencumbered assets? Is there more to get from Chase? And in that context as well, is there much you can do on CapEx? CapEx is already pretty low. My assumption is as we look to 2010 and beyond you are going to have to start to up that as well. So I would think there's going to be a growing need for cash on capital segment. Maybe you could comment on those?

Kathryn Mikells

I'm happy to comment on those. I'll take those one at a time. First, with respect to liquidity and incremental initiatives, I think we've done an extraordinarily good job at showing how we can continue to build liquidity through liquidity actions in what's a very tough environment in a sustainable way. As we look at what other initiatives we have underway.

 

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