Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
Thanks,
Ed. Welcome everybody and thanks so much for coming. I have the opportunity to
talk a little bit about the great network opportunities that the merger of these
two companies present. And one of the questions recently, from Bill I believe,
was do you expect to outperform the industry in 2009.
And I
would like to start out by saying I would be incredibly disappointed if we did
not outperform the industry. Because if you look out on the landscape of who
could do what to their network and who has new opportunities in their tool chest
that they didn't have just a year ago.
I think
you'd all have to agree that nobody has more tools in their war chest to
increase their relative performance versus the industry than a combined
Delta/Northwest does today. And if you look at our history here, you'll see that
over the past few years Delta has certainly outperformed the industry and has
the most revenue momentum going into this year.
And I
think, back to what Richard said earlier in his comments, which is really at the
crux of why you would want to merge these two companies, certainly you take the
lowest-hanging fruit in the early years when you start with a new management
team in restructuring an airline. It gets more and more difficult as you move
through the process in that you've taken the low-hanging fruit off the
tree.
And the
merger now presents a huge opportunity for the combined company to have a lot
more low-hanging fruit for us to go out and harvest over the next couple of
years. And so I'd like to talk a little bit about the piecing items in
harvesting that fruit, when we can get to which ones occur naturally and which
ones we have to go actually out and pick.
And if
you think about what happened here, you took a carrier which is the operated
Northwest side of the equation which had an incredible Asian franchise but had a
very de minimis domestic product offering. And you're bolting that on to now the
largest legacy domestic carrier with an incredible Transatlantic
franchise.
So what
does that provide to shareholders? What are the network benefits that are going
to accrue to shareholders over the next couple of years. I think what
immediately happens naturally is that in places in the east coast, without
touching anything like Boston and Washington and all the way up and down through
Raleigh, the new Delta with the old Northwest Asian franchise becomes much more
relevant and we have a much better shot at attracting a better mix of traffic
day one in bolting on the presence and the frequent flyer program of Delta on
the east coast. That comes automatically.
What
happens to Delta's network automatically from adding Northwest and the domestic
presence in the upper Midwest and the north-central region is that that
strengthens our historical strength position in the Transatlantic. And we really
don't have to do anything for that to occur, that just occurs
naturally.
So what
do we have to do to that network to improve the value proposition moving forward
is we need to restructure it. And that's the exciting part for me because that's
my job. And what we have here is just an illustration of what the tools are in
our war chest.
We now
have diversified the Delta portfolio from essentially an 80% domestic carrier to
almost a 50/50 split domestic and internationally. And then when you look across
the international regions you'll see that there is no more diverse portfolio
than the new Delta portfolio.
And the
relevance here is really in the "I don't have to do anything" category. But
Northwest, on a stand-alone basis, was very susceptible to problems that
happened in Asia, whether or not it was an Asian economic meltdown, whether or
not it was SARS. Likewise, Delta was very sensitive to issues in the
TransAtlantic marketplace.
And now
you've created a portfolio that really can move the assets around where the
money is flowing. And right now it's a recessionary environment you'll see in
the next slide that we're contracting across-the-board. But as we continue to
expand, we will be able to expand in those regions that are generating the most
profits for us. And that's everywhere, really, in the world.
And we
have no single dependence on any individual marketplace. So unlike some of our
competitors that are heavily vested in markets like Heathrow, which we know has
taken a devastating reduction in revenues because of the financial crisis, we
have a more diverse portfolio than any other carrier.
So our
plan for network discipline next year, and this is really the first year that
Delta over the last five years will have contracted internationally, we had
double-digit run ups in capacity for the last four years in a row compounding on
each other, so quite a dramatic international growth strategy over the last four
years to achieve that diversified portfolio.
But this
year we are actually going to restrain capacity across every international
entity. But within those entities we are growing some of them. For example, we
are going to grow in Africa, Africa has been an incredible success story for us.
We're the only US carrier operating in Africa.
We will
also be continuing to grow in the Middle East. We serve more cities in the
Middle East and are the largest carrier from the US to the Middle East. And
those markets continue to outperform, despite the fact that oil is $43. They
seem to have a lot of residual in the Middle East and attractions that people
want to go see, like Dubai.
But we
are redeploying the bottom 10% of assets. So if you look across the network
we'll be growing. And this is what I call the year of scope not depth. So if we
had 2,500 seats a day into the London market, this year we'll only have 2,000.
If we had 800 seats a day into Istanbul we'll have 500. If we had 5,000 seats a
day into Italy we'll have 4,000 seats a day.
And so
we're taking down the incremental seats across the network and then we're
redeploying the assets to more scope. So you'll actually see that we've
announced some new cities and we have one or two more to go. But we're taking
the same asset base, we're grounding several airplanes internationally and then
we're taking the remaining assets and we're distributing them out to give us
less density and more scope across the network.
And we
think that's the strategy we should employ as we go through an economic
contraction because the first dollar of revenue in a new market is much more
valuable than the last dollar of revenue in an existing market is the theory
behind that. And so across every international entity we will shrink, which is
the first time, as I said, in the last five years.
A lot of
people have asked us why would you operate seven hubs. And I think I want to
focus not on operating but what the up side is in the short run for operating
seven hubs. If you think about it, as Delta and Northwest last year were
operated as independent carriers, Detroit competed head on with Cincinnati,
Memphis competed head on with Atlanta. Those are two examples of hubs that were
scheduled for the convenience of the operating carriers.
And now
that we're putting them together, the upside I believe is incredible here
because, if you take what we've done in Cincinnati starting in January, so these
are things that we are taking real time right up front and moving on them.
Cincinnati had timings that were exactly identical to those in Detroit and
served almost all of the same cities that Detroit served.
So now we
have retimed the Cincinnati structure, we've reoriented it to give it unique
flows and we've changed the timing of the Cincinnati banks to complement Detroit
as opposed to compete with them. So instead of having two 5.00 p.m.s going from
Buffalo west, now we have a 3.00 p.m. and a 4.00 p.m.
And that
happens throughout the day, so instead of to 6.00 a.m. Buffalo west, we have a
6.00 a.m., a 7.00 a.m., an 8.00 a.m. an 9.00 a.m. And we have time of day
coverage and we've taken these hubs that have historically competed in the exact
same time channels, we've created separation and uniqueness and concentrated the
flows around the geographic pole of each one of the hubs.
This to
me is by far where we can outperform the industry hands down in the domestic
arena over the next year as we reorient not only the timings of each one of
these hubs but the cities that they serve. So for example, you saw us just a
couple of weeks ago announce Memphis into some secondary Texas
cities.
As we
looked out into the marketplace we saw that Memphis east was totally redundant
with Atlanta so the people on the third flight from Memphis to Charleston, for
example, were competing for the exact same flows that Charleston-Atlanta was
competing for. So we have redeployed those airplanes out and created
uniqueness.
So if you
look and say, okay into McAllen, Texas for example, we had no outlet. We're the
world's largest airline, we're the largest domestic airline, yet we didn't serve
some relatively large domestic markets. So we take the airplanes that are
redundant out, reorient them and create new and unique flows into the
market.
So I
think those are the big upsides. We're going to do that over and over and over
again and take the exact same asset base, actually many fewer airplanes that
will fly, and create much more utility for our customers by taking these hubs
that on paper look redundant but using them to enhance each other as opposed to
compete with each other.
A little
bit more detail on the Transatlantic joint venture, and I think just to get into
a little bit of history on this, as most of you in this room know, Northwest and
KLM have a very tight and historic joint venture that has produced incredible
returns for both carriers.
We at
Delta prior to the merger had had joint venture envy if you will, so we
structured a joint venture with Air France that looked very similar, not
identical but very similar, to the joint venture that Northwest had with KLM.
Now we have a situation where Air France has acquired KLM and Delta has merged
with Northwest.
So we
really have two two-way alliances that over the next three to four months we
need to combine into one two-way alliance. And this is one of our very highest
priorities in the alliance department is to get this structured so we can start
unlocking the value that we believe is embedded in this joint venture with
Anti-Trust Immunity.
And if
you think about what are the cornerstones of value here, we think that the
cornerstones of value are we operate four of the top seven hubs in the
Transatlantic. We have a 30% market share and we have the largest frequent flyer
program in the US to now we're the largest frequent flyer program in
Europe.
And so if
you think of the power of that as we move forward and now having Anti-Trust
Immunity being able to coordinate pricing, scheduling, putting the right
airplanes in the right markets and leveraging each other's hubs for the right
traffic flows, we believe that there are hundreds of millions of dollars as we
move through this year and into next year and we really bring this into
maturity.
And I
think one of the advantages we have here, you've heard a lot of other carriers
talk about their joint venture that they're planning on starting or the ATI
applications that are pending at the Department of Transportation. And I think
the thing is here, we are years ahead of them in terms of having ATI already, in
terms of having a joint venture that already works and having the model that
works.
And we
also have four of the top seven hubs and the biggest frequent flyer program on
either side of the Atlantic and that can't be replicated. So it's not only a
structural advantage but it's really a timing advantage. And we will be working
very hard over the next three months to make sure that equates to shareholder
value.
Northwest
hub in Narita gives us immediate opportunities here. And if you think about the
Achilles' heel of Northwest, back to the historical problems they had, they
operated well below the average in Transatlantic revenues, I believe. If you
look at their unit revenue performance in the Pacific, I believe it was the
bottom in the aviation industry.
That is a
symptom of a lot of problems and one of the problems was their airplanes were
too big, the 747-400s flying from points of weakness, so Los Angeles, which
historically had not been a point of strength for Northwest with the 747-400.
The combined fleet allows us to accomplish several things.
One is an
immediate down gauge so we can take our two daily flights from Atlanta to
Honolulu, for example, and we can combine that on to one 747-400, which we offer
essentially the same level of seats at a much lower cost. And then we can take
the planes that we're flying on those markets and cascade them down to right
size the Transpacific for Northwest.
So when
you talk about the tools that you have in your chest and whether or not you can
outperform the industry over the next 12 to 14 months, I think who has these?
What other carrier has these options coming into play at this point in
time?
And I
think the answer is clearly nobody. If you're American or if you're United or if
you're Continental, you've kind of already optimized your network. You don't
have a step function variable here that you can get over the next 12 to 14
months. And that I think is what's so exciting about the revenue side and the
network side of Delta's story.
So not
only will we right size the Transpacific, but we will also add in some other
points. Of course we're the largest operator in Kennedy with over 210 daily
departures combined. And interestingly enough, several years ago Northwest left
Kennedy.
If you
talk to the people at Northwest, the reason they left Kennedy is two reasons.
One is because of the rotations of the Narita hub. You had to park an airplane
for 23 hours, that's a scheduling issue. But it essentially took an extra
airplane, it took airplanes to fly that because they had no beyond points, they
couldn't go anywhere from JFK. And it was beyond the scope of Detroit, which is
where the banks were based.
The
second issue was, the only thing they could fly was a 747-400 and they had no
connections beyond JFK. So if you think about starting in April when we connect
Kennedy to the Narita hub, not only will we connect it with one airplane that we
can use now to flow beyond Narita, we will now have 210 flight connections on
the New York side and we'll have all of Asia connections on the Narita
side.
So
starting April 1 we will go from being a non-presence, although we're the
largest carrier in New York, we'll go from having a non-presence in New York to
Asia to being the preeminent player in New York to Asia, connecting 86% of the
Asia-New York traffic with either a non-stop or single-connect service out of
New York. And I think those are the kinds of things that are embedded in the
power of this combined airline.
We'll
also add Salt Lake City. That will not be a daily service, that will be serviced
five times a week. And we are able to do that with an A330-200. And we will also
be rebanking and adding some Atlanta services. We will go from 7x Atlanta/Narita
to 11x Atlanta/Narita, they will be connecting to the Narita bank.
Right now
the existing flights do not connect to the Narita bank so there's no way to get
on Delta from the Southeast through Atlanta to the beyond points of Narita. So
that would be another big plus, we think, in the network as we move
forward.
The last
part of the Narita restructuring is really a reliance on inter-port travel.
Inter-port is really those points beyond, and I'll go back to that slide just
for a graphical presentation, the points to the west of Narita.
So if you
look today at what Northwest flies, they are more reliant on generating traffic
in Tokyo to get to fill their beyond seats when they are on the Transpacific
flight. So they have more flights going west than have seats coming in at the
east.
And that
makes it very difficult to fill because Narita, of course, is not a point of
strength for Northwest point of sale. They are not the flag carrier of Japan, we
are not the flag carrier of Japan, Delta's not. So filling those seats, we're
tending to fill them at the bottom of the spectrum of distribution.
And so
now we have rebalanced and reoriented so that it is much more point of sale US
We'll be adding some points west like Ho Chi Minh City and some other points in
to fill it out but actually rebalancing the hub to be more point of sale US
origin oriented, which we think is our point of strength now.
If you
think about going back to this slide, a little known fact is now Seattle,
Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, which are the four primary gateway
cities on the west coast, if you combine the new Delta and Alaska, we are the
largest carrier in three out of four of those cities.
We would
be the largest carrier in Los Angeles, the largest carrier in Portland and the
largest carrier in Seattle. And so we're taking from a point of weakness, flying
from the west coast, downsizing the airplanes and adding scope. And I think
that's a kind of shame on us if we can't outperform the industry RASM as we move
forward with all these tools in our chest.
I want to
mention a little bit about New York City. I talked about Asia and I think that's
a very exciting piece of our New York City. But if you think about what we've
been doing over the last four years, Delta has kind of had half foot in and half
foot out historically, since the acquisition of PanAm in I believe 1991. Not
really a commitment of all in with our chips in New York City and not really
able to decide if they wanted to get out.
And we
have, over the last four years now, we're four years into this project, that we
are all-in in Kennedy. And we have systematically been eliminating those reasons
why you would not want to fly Delta. And I think if you look at the in-flight
service data, you'll see that Delta always exceed its competitors in in-flight
service.
And I
think the issue we have moving forward is, to be honest, is the terminal which
we haven't talked about. But we are working hard with the port authority and the
governments to find a good solution for that. Next year we will be operating in
terminal four, we'll be operating all of our flights to Los Angeles, all of our
flights to Middle East, all our flights to Africa will depart from Terminal
Four, as well as Prague because our partner CSA Czech is there.
And we
are committed to finding a long-term solution for Kennedy. Potentially it would
be a lot of public works projects on the docket for the next four years, maybe
we can get some help from our government on that. But an increased network with
unique destinations in Europe and Africa. Nobody flies more unique places than
we do out of New York.
And one
of the historical problems we have had is we've not had a good product to London
and not had a product to London first. So the first thing was to acquire the
Heathrow slots and the second thing would be to have the premier products. So
next year we will have two evening flights, all with lie-flat
seats.
Again,
that's an upside for us because right now we have one morning and one evening.
We were able to obtain slots to find two evenings. The evenings are the
preferred time channel and they have the much higher unit revenues than the
morning time channel does. So we think with the lie-flat product and the evening
schedules we will be able to make even more inroads to London
Heathrow.
And
improve our performance, I wouldn't say performance, I would say our schedule
reliability, our dependability into Los Angeles and San Francisco. Right now we
only have 3.5 San Francisco. So we will have all the major time of day coverage
in all the major markets out of New York. And I think if you look at our
portfolio of offerings you'll see it really is pretty incomparable versus
JetBlue, which is more focused on the leisure Caribbean, Florida markets and
American, which really only has 93 departures a day in Kennedy.
Richard
and Ed both alluded to this, but our fleet is amongst the most flexible in the
industry moving forward. And to give you a sense of the timelines on all this,
we are not able to accomplish the most valuable fleet changes in the next year,
because we do not have a single res platform or a single operating
certificate.
And we
did not want to put the customers at risk because having the systems talk to
each other, and a lot of this would have been a manual process and there was a
good chance that passengers or, even worse, planes could get lost in the system
during irregular operations and the crews wouldn't follow the
airplanes.
So this
is that kind of US Air blowup they had with their res system after the
integration. We have systematically gone through and made sure that we are not
going to have those kinds of blowups. And so we've deferred the ability to have
cross fleeting across the entire system over the next nine to ten
months.
But by
the end of the fourth quarter of 2009 we're committed to having that in place
where we can essentially flow the fleets between the carriers without regard to
metal neutrality or to which carrier is operating them. And if you look at this,
we have an incredible number of gauging opportunities. And there is a cost to
operating a complex fleet. But, as Richard said, there is also a huge revenue
benefit.
And no
carrier has more flexibility in its fleet in terms of gauge than the new Delta.
And both carriers, Northwest and Delta, had shortcomings in certain aspects of
their fleet. So for example, Northwest, despite it's small domestic footprint
and small domestic gauge, had incredibly big international
airplanes.
Everyone
of Northwest airplanes, with one exception for the international rating was
bigger than Delta's biggest airplane. And so you had a small domestic airline
with these very big international airplanes and you had Delta with a very small
gauge international fleet and a very large gauge domestic fleet.
And as we
move through this process of integration, we're going to be able to unlock more
and more of this value moving forward as we find what sticks and what works and
what doesn't. And this again is very unique to the combined delta. Nobody else
is getting all this flexibility in their network next year, they're
theoretically all optimizing their existing networks today.
Lastly,
nobody likes a recession, it's not fun to work through. I know for most of you
in the financial community, this is not a fun time for the financial community
either and it's really not -- air lines like to grow, airlines like to fly new
markets. But I think this is a very interesting time because airlines have
exerted an incredible amount of capacity discipline and moving forward we're
hopeful that they will all continue. We certainly will do our part.
But our
fleet has an incredible amount of flexibility in both utilization and our
ability to ground airplanes. So we have the very lowest capital costs than any
of the major carriers. We have a very flexible fleet with an incredible amount
of gauge.
And I
have this saying in the network, yesterday's trash is today's treasure. And that
relates to the fact that we are changing or evolving to whatever the current
economic conditions are. And if you think about what the current economic
condition was just six months ago, we had fuel at $140 a barrel and we had
demand that was relatively solid.
And now
six months later the whole world has flipped upside down and we have fuel in the
40s and we have a very weak demand set out there. And so different planes work
well in different scenarios. And if you think about it, the DC-9s, this is a
typical example of yesterday's trash is today's treasure, the DC-9s with $140
fuel were not very good economic airplanes because on a per-seat basis they tend
to burn a lot of fuel.
Now you
fast forward and you say, oh, that is now a treasure for me because fuel's $40 a
barrel, I have no ownership costs, I can flex the utilization up and down and
it's 100-seat airplane. In a declining demand environment I want to cascade down
demand to fill up the airplane and not have to scrape the bottom of the barrel
for seats on the yield curve.
And so
this fleet provides an incredible amount of stability and flexibility moving
forward to really weather any economic storm because, depending on what happens
over the next six to nine months will depend on which one of these we tend to
favor in utilization or in groundings. So at the end of the day, the punch line
of all this is nobody else has more tools in their network for continued revenue
improvement and continued revenue momentum.
And we
fully believe that, with those tools that are available to us, that we will
execute on them and we will continue the revenue momentum we've experienced over
the last four years. And we will achieve 105% of industry average revenues that
were a two- to three-point gain, depending on where we close out 2008 or 2009
relative to the industry.
And then
beyond that, as we continue to get to be able to unleash the power of the fleet
flexibility with single-operating certificate and single-res platform, that we
will be able to achieve our goal of having 110% industry RASM in 2010 and
beyond. So with that I believe I've ended my presentation and if there are any
questions, I think we're running just a few minutes behind. Bob?
QUESTION
AND ANSWER
Unidentified
Audience Member
You
talked about putting 747s into Sao Paulo and into Rome and whatever. What's the
timing of that? And did you say by April you'd have RITA largely restructured
around? Or how long does it take to get those restructurings done?
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
It phases
in between April and June.
Unidentified
Audience Member
And the
changes Cincinnati versus Detroit, is that --?
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
Cincinnati
happens in January. So this is all happening in the first half of the
year.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Thanks.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Hi. What
evidence is there that broader, more diverse and larger airlines earn a higher
return on invested capital or any other financial metric? I just don't see it
from the history of the industry.
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
Well and
I think that's why I was talking about specifics because I don't necessarily
think that size in itself makes that -- you can make that leap of faith from
size. But I think you have to put it in context of the whole offering
here.
What
usually happens with size, if you look historically, they usually have the
highest costs in the industry. Now you've got for the first time ever not only
something that's never been assembled before, so if you go back in the history
of aviation, not to go that far back, but PanAm had all the international loops
but it had no domestic network.
So this
is the first time anybody has really assembled all this together. Oh and by the
way, we have the lowest unit cost of any major carrier. So I think it's that
combination that will provide for improved shareholder returns, not the network
per se.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Yes hi,
just a point of clarification on Terminal Four, if you could just remind us how
many gates Terminal Four has. I believe you have 25 gates at Terminal Two and
Terminal Three, will you be taking over the entire Terminal
Four?
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
No we're
working with the port on a permanent solution. This is a temporary solution and
we will only take the furthest west concourse of Terminal Four. So that's
between us and our partners that six gates.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Just two
points of clarification, on the 200 million in revenue from the joint venture,
is that Delta revenue or joint venture revenue? And secondly, I think you
recently talked about moving more into 777s from the 787s in your order, can you
talk a little bit about that trade off in terms of returns on
capital?
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
Well what
was your first question again?
Unidentified
Audience Member
The joint
venture revenue.
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
The joint
venture is Delta's.
Unidentified
Audience Member
The
incremental 200 million?
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
No that's
separate from the 2 billion, that's pre -- is that correct?
Unidentified
Company Representative
Most of
that is (inaudible - microphone inaccessible)
Unidentified
Audience Member
Okay.
Glen Hauenstein
- Delta
Air Lines, Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
And I
don't think we've disclosed in our Form 10Q on the 787 program yet so I think
we'll withhold that and see what happens over the next few
months.
Unidentified
Audience Member
But the
capital costs are materially different are they not?
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
The
capital costs are materially different, but you know you don't necessarily need
as many airplanes as Northwest needed. That's the beauty of this is that
Northwest had to replace over the next generation all of their 747-400s. And I
think that we have 777s in our fleet that we could use in order to offset the
requirement of 777 versus 787s.
Unidentified
Company Representative
I might
be able to give just one clarification on that. When Hank does his walk through
of three-year CapEx projection, Glen is exactly right, we don't quite know where
the 787 is right now in terms of it's delivery. And we've read the same reported
information that you have, we do not have that capital in our three-year
plan.
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
One more
question?
Unidentified
Audience Member
Glen,
could you maybe comment on these unique markets, the ones to sort of what I
would call non-traditional Europe and Africa. You've got a forecast for down 8
to 12 industry revenue, presumably embedded within that, if international
erosion. Is there anything special about the way you're viewing those markets
versus what we might consider more traditional international?
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
Yes I
think the more unique it is the more unique it is. What we see in Africa to date
is we see still an incredible growth in Africa revenues. So it hasn't followed
the trend of Western Europe for example.
And do we
have a crystal ball on how these are decoupled or whether or not they move in
tandem, you know we don't. And our pledge to our shareholders is that we will
respond to consumer demand. The more unique the market these days the more it
tends to not follow the trend.
You know
I think if you look at it, even in Europe there's good news and bad news. And
you know generally the more developed and the heavier the reliance on the
financial community the more dramatic the fall off in traffic is.
So those
markets that we're heavily reliant on, high fares and the financial community
traveling, you guys aren't traveling as much as you used to and that's readily
apparent. And some of the more ethnic markets have not been as impacted or
generally not as impacted to date as the higher-end markets like
Heathrow.
Unidentified
Audience Member
(inaudible
question - microphone inaccessible)
Glen
Hauenstein - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - EVP - Network Planning and Revenue Management
They are
outperforming and our expectation is they will continue to outperform on a
relative basis. Okay well thank you very much, I appreciate your time. We're
running a little bit behind. So with that I'll turn it over to Jim
Cron.
PRESENTATION
Jim
Cron - Delta Air Lines, Inc. -
SVP - Global Sales and Distribution
Well good
morning, everybody. What I'd like to do is just speak briefly and try and give
you a little flavor for why the story that you're hearing today is going to be
so meaningful for customers and why I believe and we believe in the future it
will create greater sustainability of the revenue premiums that the industry
talks about but that can be so elusive at times for the individual
carriers.
For those
of you that don't know me - I'm new to the Delta team but not new to the airline
industry, I've been in marketing at Northwest for the better part of 19 years.
And I think I possess a very good knowledge of what's important to the business
customer and why customers choose airlines, particularly in the higher yield
category.
And you
know it really is the total marketing package in terms of price, amenities,
network. But when you really break it down, and there's a but there. And you're
going to get a little tired, maybe, of seeing this slide but we don't. Schedule
and network really do matter most. I mean it is the number one attribute for the
business traveler of why they choose an airline.
And we've
said it before, but the non-stop wins and the best connect wins and to the
extent you've got competitive advantage versus your competitors, obviously
that's a good thing. And why it matters is when we talk to the business customer
it's just about time. It's about saving their time, it's about convenience and
it's about being the broadest possible network that we can.
And when
you have that advantage, this is where you'll hear a lot of things about how
airlines generate revenue per ASM premiums, but the history is where you have
the true schedule advantages versus the industry, especially if that capacity is
right size, which Glen I think gave a lot of assurances that Delta's very good
at doing that. That's where the revenue premiums are generated in this
business.
There's a
lot of other variables, but if you want to look at consistency over time, it's
where true schedule advantage exists that airlines generate the premiums. I saw
that very clearly at Northwest in regions of the country when we were number
one, and I'm already seeing it at Delta and we're going to continue doing that
in the future. I mean if you really think about it, both airlines have revenue
premiums that they bring forward from their stand alones. There's no reason that
I can see that those don't continue to exist and grow.
And the
way they present themselves, just so you know, is airlines will publish and ATA
will at times publish the revenue per ASM gaps within North America. And you'll
also see them show up in your positive booking and revenue gaps on your
corporate contracts. And it's really the amount of revenue that you take in
that's in excess of what your schedule would naturally drive.
And how
an airline gets paid for this schedule advantage is when you look at your
traffic and your revenue composition. It's essentially that you have a richer
mix of business versus leisure traffic. And as you can see from the chart,
Delta's clearly delivering in that regard.
One
thing, as we talk about capacity reductions and I'm not going to go into a lot
of detail on exactly what's going on because I think Glen covered it very well,
but we're much more effective at dealing with a capacity reduction, especially
with our business customers at Delta, than either airline would have been stand
alone.
What I
remember going through these kind of exercises at Northwest, it was always very
difficult. Because when you were at an airline and you operated a bunch of
relatively low-frequency markets, maybe service to only one hub, one frequency a
day to international markets, when you started to get into what the capacity
pull down was going to be that you needed to do, it was very hard to do that
without creating a pretty sizeable gap in your schedule.
And when
you looked at it, you knew that there was a pretty significant amount of risk
that, when you took the morning Minneapolis/LA trip out to right size the
market, there was an element of the market there that you knew you were going to
be potentially losing as a result of that.
With the
combined airline, and Glen showed all the hubs on the map, we have so much
flexibility within this structure to pull capacity without the customer losing a
morning departure that they really need, without the customer losing a frequency
to international departure. So we're at a much better position than either
airlines was in a stand-alone world.
And most
exciting I think is that Glen's still able to find ways to add the unique
international markets. So my message to the business customer is, yes we're
pulling this capacity to this capacity to this capacity, but we're also adding
this unique market to Africa or South America.
So it's
not just a good story for customers, but when you remove that capacity out of
say the marginal domestic or the marginal Europe and reallocate it to something
that's bringing in more unique revenue flows, that's a good thing.
Fleet
also matters in this world. And again, I think Glen said it but it's the fact
that Delta now has the ability -- you know at other airlines, if you don't have
the fleet diversity, your only option may be to exit a market or exit a
frequency. At Delta there's enough fleet flexibility that we can look at down
gauging, up gauging, whatever we need to do to right size the
market.
When you
think of other aspects of the business that Delta's delivering on, and I sort of
categorize these as the other most important needs of the business customer, but
it's basically reliability, differentiation of what I'll call a competitive
product throughout the travel process.
Reliability,
Steve Gorman's going to share more with you about that, but the airline's
running very well. Both airlines were leading up to the merger and the combined
airline continues to run very well. Customers have noticed that, we see it every
day in our customer complaint data and our Res contacts. And that's obviously a
good thing for cost and revenue.
On the
differentiation side, you're going to hear a bunch of stuff about the frequent
flyer program, the elite benefit, the corporate relationships that we have. All
of those things are things that we do in the area of elite customer
differentiation that drive revenue.
And then
finally, competitive product throughout the process. I mean this is really your
customer service and your amenities, but Delta does a very competitive job at
working those through the system. And again, customers matter and I think
there's upside there as well.
Let me
talk just real briefly about the distribution side of the house. We're a little
early in some of these processes from an integration standpoint, but just a
couple of facts that are important. Delta is the largest producer of segments
within, the stat is, really the MIDT data, which is really the traditional
agency world.
And
what's important about that is the traditional agency channel is the channel
that generates the greatest yield premiums within the industry. So again,
there's evidence there. You look at the relationships with the travel management
companies that both airlines bring. And with the corporate customers that's a
good fact to have on our side.
We've got
GDS agreements that run through 2013 that lock in savings per transaction year
by year. And those are in the various baselines that you've seen. There's
nothing new there but the agreements are in place through 2013. And then the
direct channels are still low cost and they're growing.
So
opportunities that we see on there, Delta.com will continue to grow not just as
a selling tool but as a total travel tool. I mean when you talk about trying to
get more people to your website and drive more business through the site, a big
part of it is people rely on that website for more than just purchase. They rely
on it for all aspects of their travel journey.
Within
the Res arena, you know the ticketing fees that airlines have implemented over
the last 12 months or so have really changed the face of a reservations
department. Reservations is now an extremely competitive low-cost channel. It
tends to focus on selling and service.
So
selling it tends to deal with your more complicated transactions, particularly
international. The service tends to answer difficult questions for customers
and, again, all in the vein of driving deal premiums within the
airline.
Just an
interesting story, during the run up to the merger I was running the World Ports
Program at Northwest. And once we answered the question that your miles and your
elite benefits were safe, the next question that continually came up was, is
anything going to change with your elite reservations agent lines.
Because
they were the link, they were the one-stop shopping tool for your business
customers to your reservations group. So Res continues to play a very impressive
role within the company. There's a ton of know how and expertise within airline
reservation departments and we'll continue to capitalize on that.
And what
you'll see, it's not on the page, but there is a chart that shows that in spite
of service levels going up and getting better, Res costs per employee minute at
Delta has actually been trending down for the last five six years and will
continue to do so in the future. But again, it was really the $15, $20, $25
ticketing fees that truly matched the value that Res provides with its cost
structure.
On the
corporate deals, again we're just getting into this. What we're finding is we've
got a couple of different techniques from the two airlines of evaluating
corporate deals. We're currently in the process of aligning those and in the
first quarter we'll be rolling out a new sort of best of both airline
tool.
We're not
waiting, as deals come up for renewal in the interim we're handling those on an
interim basis. But there's a lot of good very analytic, very rigorous in terms
of how we develop the best possible corporate contract to drive share and
revenue premiums.
And then
finally on the global alliance world, and we've touched on the Delta/Air France
stuff, but a unique perspective coming from the Northwest/KLM. I mean as you
integrate these joint ventures, there are real opportunities to reduce
distribution costs.
You can
go as far on the Northwest/KLM side as having a single salesforce in the US,
single sales force in Europe, ticket stock at Northwest/KLM, basically the KLM
stock left North America and the Northwest stock left Europe, which again took a
bunch of redundancies out of the system.
We have
to figure out whether or not we can get to that point in the Delta/Air France
relationship, but again, just to point out that there is upside in that
relationship, not just on the revenue side but also on the distribution cost
side. So that is a brief introduction to why this stuff matters to the customer.
I'm now standing I think between you and a break, but if there's a couple quick
questions I'm happy to take them. Yes?
QUESTION
AND ANSWER
Unidentified
Audience Member
Hi, Jim,
I wonder if you could just share the biggest objection that you get from
corporate customers. It seems to me as Delta having the most superior network in
the industry that you should be winning the corporate contracts left and right.
What are the objections that you're getting today? And then just as a follow up,
if you could provide some perspective around the auto industry in Detroit and
how corporate travel trends are turning around the system.
Jim
Cron - Delta Air Lines, Inc. -
SVP - Global Sales and Distribution
Sure. You
know as far as objections from corporate customers and, again, we're brand new
on this with Delta so we really haven't had objections yet on the combined
airline front.
But it's
typically just a negotiation. I mean corporations would rather pay less for
their travel and they're going to talk to multiple carriers. But in the end, it
tends to be the schedule advantage. But price will always be generally the issue
that they will raise most. But, if you've got the schedule advantage, you can
typically drive the revenue premiums.
And then
the second question was on the auto industry. I mean clearly Detroit, if you
look at the 8 to 12%, Detroit is going to be down more than that. And so that's
baked into that line of thinking and probably the biggest impact we're just
seeing is in the business class up front on international.
Domestically
the planes are still very full, we're seeing -- you know probably the most
common reaction is just more and more of the companies, instead of buying inside
14 days, are buying outside of 14 days to try and keep their costs
down.
But when
you get into the business class, it's a little more difficult because clearly
the trade down is more significant. But it's in the 8% to 12% that Ed and Hank
will probably talk about. Yes?
Unidentified
Audience Member
Operators
at GDS companies have said that business segments are off anywhere between 15%
and more recently close to 20%. How should we be equating that to let's say
declines in traffic?
It's
suggested here through Delta.com that a little bit over a third of your bookings
come through Delta.com. So does that mean that we should be thinking that it
should up 10%? Is there an equation there just so that we can get to a traffic
drop off or an increase at some future point?
Jim
Cron - Delta Air Lines, Inc. -
SVP - Global Sales and Distribution
Yes you
know I'd have to look at the data. It depends on which piece of the GDS. I mean
clearly at the higher yield, which can easily be double the average yields, the
traffic loss could be somewhere in the 50% range of the revenue
decline.
But what
you'll see is I think there's also a big leisure component within the GDSes
saying that their bookings are off 15% to 20%. So I really think it gets back
fairly close to the 8 to 12 that Ed was talking about. I mean 50% of the
bookings are still coming through the GDSes. So I think it's in line with the 8
to 12.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Thanks.
What percentage of sales do the OTAs represent for you?
Jim
Cron - Delta Air Lines, Inc. -
SVP - Global Sales and Distribution
OTAs are
in the 15% range.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Okay. And
just a point of clarification --
Jim
Cron - Delta Air Lines, Inc. -
SVP - Global Sales and Distribution
And
that's of volume, revenue is less.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Okay
thanks. And just a clarification, those Delta.com figures, are those growth
rates or are those percentage of sales, the 26, 30 and 36?
Jim
Cron - Delta Air Lines, Inc. -
SVP - Global Sales and Distribution
Those are
percentage of sales.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Okay
thanks.
Jim
Cron - Delta Air Lines, Inc. -
SVP - Global Sales and Distribution
Okay I
think we're done. Thanks, everybody.
Unidentified
Company Representative
We'll
take a ten-minute break and start back up at 10.15.
(BREAK)
PRESENTATION
Tony
Charaf - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- President - Technical Operations
Good
morning. I'm Tony Charaf, I'm the President of Technical Operations for Delta
Air Lines. And I'm going to try to do my job today, being that I'm an engineer,
to stay on time. First let me start by sharing with you a bit of history on
Technical Operations and the MRO business and how we have been able to
successfully grow this business to where it is today.
Prior to
1999 MRO Delta Air Lines was basically a hobby. At that time I was Director of
Engine Maintenance and it was clear to us that we had a golden nugget here that
needed to be taken care of. So we began to recognize the value and the
competitiveness of our workforce. And I will be hammering that point quite
heavily during my presentation. You've already heard it already from
Richard.
So in
order to leverage this position we established a technical sales and marketing
group to start competing in the MRO market space. Basically our focus started by
paying attention to our core competencies and develop products that the market
is looking for that are futuristic in nature that could be sustained for
growth.
And we
had to be very competitive in our product offering to make sure that when we are
in the market place competing against our MRO providers that we had something to
offer to the marketplace. As such, we started to rationalize our footprint. And
I'm sure you'll remember the days when we were closing bases. We closed three
bases right after we made the decision to go for the MRO. One was in Dallas and
one was in Tampa and a Delta North facility that we had next to our main
hangars.
Basically
here the footprint rationalization was to control cost. And we also outsourced
heavy maintenance on our airframe because we knew then that this is an area
where we are not competitive. This was a very tough decision, however it was a
decision that needed to be made. And it's the still the right decision today. If
we have to make it again, it will be done again today.
Then we
started to look at our non-union workforce and we started to pay a lot of
attention to their training. We made sure that we brought in continuous
improvements so we started with Six Sigma and then LEAN and then theory of
constraints. We have a tremendously flexible workforce today that gives us a
tremendous advantage when it comes to competing against other
suppliers.
And we
also took advantage and built on Delta's brand reputation, the reputation that
stood for many years for quality, for integrity, for safety and for customer
service. And this branding transitions to Technical Operations today in the
marketplace and we take full advantage of that.
The other
piece that we paid attention to was, as Delta is subject to the same economic
pressures as our customers, we really understand the airline business. We are
forced to be very creative, we are forced to be innovative, we are forced to
really continue to take cost out of our operation. And by the way, this
expertise in what we have done inside of our walls is also shared with our
customers. And that has been tremendously advantageous for us.
So now
let me take you through how we built this business and what are the pillars that
we have used to build our business. And the four that we have used here are
engines, components, line maintenance and airframe. You will note that engine
maintenance is by far our mainstay, 80% of our revenue is generated from engine
maintenance.
So you
say, well how do you diversify your product offering if 80% of your business is
coming from engine maintenance? And that's a very fair question. However, I will
tell that within engine maintenance we have diversified our product offering
because we do all the CFM-56 lines, the CFMs that are connected to even the
military we're looking at.
So the
Dash 2, Dash 3, Dash 5 and Dash 7, which is absolutely the future engine of our
business, we do the Pratt & Whitney products that have staying power. And
those are the PW2000 and PW4000. And we do the CF34 engine, which goes on the
RJs. And we also do all the CF-6 products that GE puts out.
Now in
addition to that, we built our diversity by looking at customers that are not
only in the United States. So we are global in nature. We have over 100
customers worldwide. We are diverse in both type and geography
here.
So when
you look at the type, as I said, we have international and we have domestic. We
also have freighters that we work on, we have the cargo business that we pay
attention to. We also are paying attention to the military business and we
definitely nowadays we are joining hands with people like ILFC and Banc of
America, who are the lessors that are repossessing airplanes today that they
need them turned around really quickly so they can lease them out
again.
And we
offer those wonderful partners of our quick turn and one-stop shop. So the
airplane comes in, we do nose to tail. If they need to paint that aircraft in
different livery we can do that, if they want us to work on the engines we can
do that, components we can do that, APUs, landing gears, whatever it takes. So
it's a one-stop shop. And the cycle time and the quality of the product is far
superior to anything that they can get anywhere else. And for that, we do
double-digit returns on that business.
Now the
other thing that is very important to us is our merger with Northwest. Our
merger with Northwest will provide us opportunities to expand internationally.
Now as all of you have noted already, the Amsterdam and Tokyo hubs now will
provide the infrastructure and labor capabilities for us to grow line
maintenance and support component, engine maintenance that we could ship
basically through a one-stop delivery to our shops in Atlanta.
Northwest
also provides us with increased presence in China and the Philippines and more
of Asia. The market for MRO services in this region is continuing to grow at a
very high pace and that business is going to from $8.9 billion in '08 to $17
billion in '018.
In
addition to that now, as you have noticed also from Glen's presentation, that we
are going to be in the Middle East basically big and we are in Africa big and
that is also a one-stop shop. We have a non-stop flight, for example, from Dubai
to Atlanta and that is in our backyard. So that engine or that component can
come straight to our shops. And now geographic distances are not a challenge for
us any longer.
So how
well is the business doing and where do we see it going forward? I will tell you
up front that you're seeing here that there is a 30% CAGR that we have been able
to sustain in the last several years. However, I am not going to stand up here
and tell you that this is sustainable and maintainable in the long run. This is
not something we can sustain.
However,
we believe that a 12% to 15% CAGR is very realistic over the next five years for
us and this business will continue to grow. You will say to me, well how are you
going to protect your double-digit margins and how are you going to sustain this
growth? There are so many things that we are doing internally. I will share some
of them with you so you can connect to the strategy.
Production
improvements, for example, that we have in our shops, right now we are
undertaking cycle time reduction in our engine maintenance to take our products
to a level that is unprecedented in the industry. And we are basically
connecting with our suppliers and our vendors.
And we
are really changing the way that the industry is doing business today, meaning
that for a long time we have been contracting with vendors on a cycle time that
they have to maintain for us on certain parts that they deliver to us. No longer
are we going to do that.
What
we're going to do from here on is, we are not interested in the cycle time, we
are interested in them providing the parts to us exactly when we need those
parts. And they must have the inventory necessary within their walls to
absolutely support that. And by doing so, we can take our cycle times and reduce
our cycle times by 50% if need be. And by doing so, we can take a lot of the
assets that are on our balance sheet, we can lease them or we can cannibalize
them so that we can get parts out of them.
The field
here is absolutely magnificent for all of us. We continue to invest in our
automation, so we can capture the granularity that we need in our businesses, so
we can absolutely bill properly and capture our costs in our shops.
I talked
about the customer and the product diversity, we will continue pay a lot of
attention to that. The other piece that I didn't mention is the repair,
innovation and creativity within our walls today. We have the capability of
re-manufacturing. When you have some parts that are really in the business
process, they are very expensive and they come in and they have wear and tear,
let's say, on the lugs or the rails, and the tendency in the industry is to
scrap that part.
You can
talk about a $0.5 million part or a $0.25 million part and because of our
creativity and the engineering intellect that we have within our walls, we are
capable of developing repairs internally, where we can take that part and repair
it for 10% of its cost and put it back in service. And the rest is basically a
competitive edge that we create.
We will
continue to join hands and support PMAs. PMAs are the parts manufacturing
authorization that the market has and just in this case, the PMA providers will
create cost synergies for technical operations and those cost synergies will be
shared with our customers and we have already done that. And our customers seem
to be very receptive to that.
So to
really summarize what I just talked about, we have tremendous platform and a
strategy that is built on the pillars that I shared with you. But what really
anchors our success and how we go forward and how do we sustain our position and
how do we sustain our double-digit returns? This strategy is built on, well you
heard that already, many times, the people.
The
people of technical operations are very skilled, they're motivated, highly
trained, very flexible and when there is a need for us to support our customers
for example, in Line Maintenance, I will share with you a little story that Air
Berlin is one of our customers and they needed assistance. They are in the
backyard of Lufthansa technique, and whenever they needed help, we used to get
no more than 20% of their business. And when they needed help, they would call
Lufthansa technique.
However,
the technicians that they send are very class and craft, basically connected and
if the problem was hydraulic and it turned out that the problem was electrical,
it stops. And now they have to send other folks to really fix that airplane.
Long story short, they started calling us from Frankfurt or Paris or Atlanta,
for that matter, and we would send two of our best technicians. And no matter
what the problem is, the problem will be fixed. And today we get 100% of the CFM
56 dash 7 removals.
This is
the story. This story is built on people that are skilled, motivated, well
trained. And we pay a lot of attention to processes and measurements within our
walls. The second pillar, the second platform, that's really connecting our
business, and that's why we believe that there is a tremendous amount of upside
on that, is the product offering that we have, the diversity in our customer
base and how global we have become. That is absolutely phenomenally superior
because we can basically support a soft demand in one region and one product by
having other regions and other products that are continuing to grow for
us.
Customer
service will always be our connection to our customers and we are known for
that. So when people do business with technical operations, at Delta Airlines,
they know that they are getting a quality product that is connected to people
that have integrity and they have their best interests at heart. And with that
said, I think I have maybe a minute or two for a couple of
questions.
QUESTION
AND ANSWER
Unidentified
Audience Member
Thanks.
You talked about your -- the flexibility advantage you have with your labor, but
yet how much of that could potentially go away or how much of that is at risk if
labor is able to unionize after the North close -- after the Northwest
acquisition. Is that a risk that you have on your radar screen? Is that going to
be a potential cost advantage that would go away? Could you quantify that
potentially?
Tony
Charaf - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- President - Technical Operations
Let me
give you some statistics so you can see where that's going to play. Today, at
Delta, we have over 5,200 AMTs. At Northwest, we have about 900 AMTs. And I will
also tell you that for maybe about 90% of them are pay dues. So when you look at
the NMBs and the rules, we believe that that's not going to be an issue for us.
Because the 65%, 35% rule will apply here. And we are already negotiating
basically to integrate our seniority list as we speak.
That's a
non-issue for us.
Unidentified
Audience Member
On your
forecast for the next five years, on the MRO industry, it's about 6% over the
last five years. What do you see for the next five years? Just for the industry?
Given all the economic issues and downsizing, et cetera.
Tony
Charaf - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- President - Technical Operations
For
awhile, it looked like the industry is going to not sustain that kind of growth.
However, where the market is today, and I know you know that people are looking
now at keeping all the aircrafts longer, that is good news for us. I think that
is definitely sustainable and it's showing now that is sustainable. Because even
today, when we are losing airlines, small airlines are a customer of ours,
because of bankruptcy or whatever, now the lessors are coming into the picture a
lot more than every before.
So now
we're doing more business with the ILFCs of the world and the Banc of Americas
and the GCAS because they repossess those aircrafts and they want to turn them
right back and lease them. And that has become a major source of revenue for us.
And by the way, that's double-digit return. We will not do it
otherwise.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Yes. As
you look at your strategic weaknesses, looking ahead, how do you see yourself
working through those? Is M&A scale potentially a possibility or is it --
could there be a desire to grow internally? If you could just provide some
perspective about how you think about what you need to do to take the
organization forward?
Tony
Charaf - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- President - Technical Operations
Well I
will be glad to answer that. I think I'm going to repeat something that Richard
has said many times over, is that when you have the business like the MRO at
technical operations today at Delta, that is right there and it's steady and
it's double-digit return one quarter after another, why would you sell it? This
is a business that is going to support Delta when Delta has downturns. So this
is basically strategically what we have decided we're going to do
internally.
So the
growth will be organic for the time being, because we still have quite a bit of
capacity internally. In most of our shops today, we run 1, 1.5 shifts, so we
still have a lot of brick and mortar. The one thing that's probably going to be
a constraint for us down the line, especially in the mainstay of our business,
which is engines, will be test cells. Because as you know, the EPA issues and
all that. So when we test engines.
However,
we still have plenty of room to go up. Right now we do about 650 engines a year.
We can easily go up to 800, 900 engines before we can -- before we have to look
outside. In addition to that, with our merger with Northwest, now we have test
cells in Minneapolis that we can also use and reach out to if we need
to.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Just how
much of your growth is volume versus price?
Tony
Charaf - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- President - Technical Operations
Our
intention is we will not grow revenue at the expense of margin. So we are paying
a lot of attention to that. We will continue to pay a lot of attention to that
going forward. My answer to you is that we must maintain a cost structure
internally that must absolutely remain very competitive at a global level and by
doing so, we will protect our margins. So this is my answer to you. It is that
we will not do business at the expense of margin.
One more
and I think I need to get off the stage.
Unidentified
Audience Member
At one
point, there was an engine shop in Atlanta that was part of a -- of Northwest
through another acquisition, earlier acquisition. Is that still a part of
Northwest? Did that come into -- is that -- had that gone to somebody else along
the way?
Tony
Charaf - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- President - Technical Operations
Actually,
that hangar is empty as we speak.
Unidentified
Audience Member
This was
an engine overhaul place.
Tony
Charaf - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- President - Technical Operations
Yes.
Unidentified
Audience Member
It's a
hangar too?
Tony
Charaf - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- President - Technical Operations
Yes, it
is. But it is empty as we speak.
Thank you
very much, ladies and gentlemen.
PRESENTATION
Jeff
Robertson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - VP - Loyalty Programs
Good
morning, everybody. I'm Jeff Robertson, I oversee the Loyalty Programs of
WorldPerks and SkyMiles, the two loyalty programs, and I want to thank you all
for coming out today first off, and allowing me to share a few minutes around
the loyalty program, which I obviously am so passionate about, our loyalty
programs I'm so passionate about.
Last
year, I think I talked to a few of you here about the loyalty program. It feels
like a lot of things have changed in the last year to year and a half around the
frequent flyer program. So let's start off this morning with American Express.
It's probably the hottest topic on the list this morning for the loyalty
program.
And by
the way, there's a lot of people I need to thank. There's some folks here in
American Express, a lot of the Delta folks, we were all up very late last night,
we finished this thing around 5 AM, got it signed and just in time for our 7.30
announcement, so congrats to the AMEX team and thanks to the Delta people that
were up late last night.
Okay. A
couple of things around the contract. First off, and Ed has shared a lot of
this, I'll sort of go into a little bit more detail. $2 billion in incremental
liquidity associated with the new deal. It comes from two places, basically. $1
billion in a purchase of frequent flyer miles. And $1 billion, which is coming
in new value that we will achieve as a company throughout 2009 and
2010.
That
value comes basically in four components. The first is rate improvement. For the
last contract that we negotiated, co-brand contract, was back in 2000, early
2000. So the rates have obviously dramatically changed since then. So we kind of
went from a weaker performer, in terms of rate, to basically best-in-class
rates.
Secondly,
volume improvements. The volume improvements come in a couple of areas. One is
co-brand growth. The second is membership rewards and our participation in
membership rewards and the ability for our customers to be able to earn
membership rewards points into the Northwest operations.
Thirdly,
it comes from mitigated conversion costs. I'll get a little bit more into that
as I talk about specifics around the AMEX relationship, but basically if you
think about it, when we have two portfolios today, we've got to move to one,
we're able to mitigate our conversion costs by moving a smaller portfolio into
the larger portfolio than having to have a completely new issuer and having to
convert the two card portfolios into a completely new issuer.
Thirdly,
there's a small signing bonus attached to it. And fourthly, there are some new
program enhancements, which we'll be announcing as two companies during 2009
that will provide more color to the complete $1 billion.
For us,
AMEX was the right partner. And several reasons. One, I talked about it,
reducing the portfolio conversion risk. Secondly, it guarantees only one
conversion. This was important to us as we went through the contract negotiation
process, but having one conversion was critical to us, than to actually have two
portfolios converting into a new issuer. AMEX, no doubt, industry leader and
powerful marketer who invests, in our opinion, very heavily in our co-brand and
I think it shows in the performance of our co-brand over the last 13 years
actually.
In
addition, our participation in membership rewards is very valuable to Delta.
Membership rewards, the powerful loyalty program of the American Express card
product, we actually partner with, obviously, as a transfer partner. Those
customers have the ability to use their frequent flyer miles, transfer them into
Delta and burn them on Delta.
That
partnership provides incremental value beyond the actual transfer revenue that
we have received from American Express. It's membership rewards customers, it's
the corporate card customers, it's the proprietary product customers, it's the
small business cardholders, all a part of American Express's proprietary
business, it participates more in Delta's program as a result of that
relationship.
So,
overall, again, $2 billion in incremental liquidity, a billion in the purchase
of frequent flyer miles and a billion in new value that we'll deliver in 2009
and 2010.
Today I'm
going to show you some specifics around the growth in revenue of our loyalty
programs. Today we are forecasting a 2008 consolidated revenue of $1.5 billion.
That is the gross cash sales of selling frequent flyer miles. It does not
include deferrals of -- the accounting deferrals.
As we
move into 2009, we are anticipating delivering $2 billion in total gross sales
from our frequent flyer programs. That is a through a consolidation of the two
programs as well as the new American Express contract. The current 2008
forecasted revenue of $1.5 billion is up roughly 6% to 7%
year-over-year.
In
addition, we looked at a couple of opportunities around the loyalty program that
we're working on right now. First, integrating all of the hundreds of partner
contracts right now, there's tremendous opportunity for us to attract synergies
associated with those partner contracts. You've got two, you basically look at
the two, you take the best of both and you move forward with that. That
generally drives greater value in terms of synergies.
In
addition, we've looked at the Northwest loyalty platform. I've had the thrill of
being able to look at other airlines' loyalty programs, and take a look at the
Northwest program and take a look at it and Northwest customers and find out
what's going on with the Northwest customers. Well a couple of things sort of
resonated for us. One was today we actually drive $100 of non-transportation
revenue. Just over $100 of non-transportation revenue for every active customer
in our database.
On the
Northwest database, we took a look at that, they are driving roughly $40 in
non-transportation revenue for every active member in their database. The
opportunity to drive that $40 to $100 is significant for our company. It's in
the hundreds of millions of dollars a year that we believe we can drive over
time associated with that type of movement.
In terms
of program membership, today the SkyMiles program has roughly 43 million members
on the database, Northwest has 36 million members. We've done a preliminary
de-duping of the database, fairly complex, I won't get into the detail, but
basically there's about a 6% to 7% overlap of the databases.
The
reason why that overlap is surprisingly lower than we had expected, it looks
like a lot of the customers, just because of the way the route network is and
the way the locations -- customers reside geographically, there's not as much
overlap as you would have thought. The reason is because you're taking the
strong strength of the Delta SkyMiles database that's in the east coast and the
south with what is a strong strength in the Northwest database, which is located
in Northwest, and the Midwest part of the country.
There
just isn't that much overlap in the database, which we think provides tremendous
value for us longer term in bringing the two databases together. In addition, we
anticipate that we will likely now drive, post-merger, we will have 40% more
active customers than our second biggest competitor -- than our next biggest
competitor.
In
addition, the size of the Delta program at 74 million customers, at the revenue
that we're generating will, for the first time in the 28 years of airline
loyalty programs, put Delta into a number one position, knocking somebody else
out of the competition -- somebody else out of first place.
Size is
important to us. There's no doubt. We talked about -- there were a lot of
questions asked around the size of the airline and the size of things, but
basically the size of the loyalty programs is important to us. It's important in
many ways. It's a huge database. It's a database that our partners can access.
And the power and size of the loyalty program is what drives partners to want to
come to us.
In fact,
I have had several examples of partners over the last couple of years that we've
approached as Delta being the third biggest airline or that Northwest approached
at that time being the fifth biggest airline, who were not interested in doing
business with us. Now being the biggest airline in the world, they are
interested in doing business with us.
So in
summary, overall, it's a world class loyalty program. It's the largest loyalty
program, 74 million members, 24 -- 20% more members than the second largest
loyalty program. We believe, 40% more active members than the largest -- than
the second largest loyalty program.
In
addition, there's incremental revenue opportunities. The largest program will
attract higher quality partners and improved rates. We've seen tremendous upside
moving from 2008 to 2009 in the margin of the business. Not just in gross sales,
but the margin is where we're really attracting a lot of the value between '08
and '09.
In
addition, we've struck a new affinity card agreement, as we have talked about,
and a significant upside as I have mentioned in increasing Northwest's revenue
per active member to the Delta levels that we're current
experiencing.
The other
thing I wanted to highlight quickly here was just some facts that I know our
customers and all of you as customers are really -- care a lot about, is sort of
the integration of the program and what's going to happen. We intend, as we've
talked about, to integrate the two loyalty programs by the end of 2009. The
databases will be integrated and we will be using one platform.
That will
be the Northwest loyalty platform. Our loyalty program was introduced -- our
loyalty platform was actually introduced back in the '70s and early '80s and we
built on that and band-aided that puppy over and over again. Well, now we get to
choose the -- we get to be able to pick between the two and the Northwest
platform was actually developed in 2000. So we're taking the Northwest platform
basically in a plug-and-play environment and putting it into the Delta
systems.
In
addition, we will be introducing a best-in-class elite program in 2009. We will
be announcing it in 2009, effective January 1, 2010. So we talked a lot about,
we've made some announcements right now to basically align the two elite
programs as fast as we possibly can, effective January 1st, 2009. We've made
those announcements, we're in play around that and we will be announcing a new
elite program in 2009, effective in 2010.
So
holistically, the loyalty program, it's bigger, it's broader, it provides
customers more opportunities to earn frequent flyer miles, it provides customers
more opportunities to burn frequent flyer miles, and it will be and it remains
to be a significant driver for RASM improvement for Delta as we move from 2008
moving forward. I've got a couple -- a little bit -- a couple of minutes for
some questions or so around that. Yes? Go ahead. Sorry. Three in a row. You're
all there, right in a row.
QUESTION
AND ANSWER
Unidentified
Audience Member
Two quick
questions. First of all, is the incremental revenue opportunity from active
members on the Northwest side factored into the $2 billion in synergies for the
entire combined operation? And then secondly, what is the low-hanging fruit with
respect to getting that incremental revenue from $40 up to $100?
Jeff
Robertson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - VP - Loyalty Programs
Sure. In
the $2 billion in synergies, there is a portion of that $2 billion that's being
driven by the loyalty program. That is roughly $500 million. It comes from a
combination of the American Express deal as well as synergies that we will
obtain through integrating the two programs. Those synergies come from aligning
fees, partner contracts, that type of work. So it totals around $500
million.
With
respect to the $40 per member, the $40 per member, it appears as though, to us,
it's lower penetration, specifically around potentially credit card, around
partner activity and we believe we can improve with the American Express
contract, with improved merchant acceptance in the Midwest, and with improved
marketing that we believe we can pull off as the larger airline at this point.
Okay.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Can you
discuss or maybe Hank will discuss this afterwards, the accounting treatment for
the $2 billion from American Express, the $1 billion in miles obviously is an
asset and then what's the liability offset to that on -- and how should we think
about that going forward and modeling our numbers?
Jeff
Robertson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - VP - Loyalty Programs
Yes, I
have to admit that I'm not the accounting expert, but maybe Hank or you can pull
Hank or I aside a little later -- or Ed, and we can talk about
it.
Ed
Bastian - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - President
(inaudible
- microphone inaccessible) there's $1 billion prepaid. So the $1 billion is a
prepaid. So that's cash up front that we received today. That won't get
amortized against our cash streams until '11 and '12. So that's going to stay on
the balance sheet for the next several years.
The
incremental improvements that Jeff's talking about, the $0.5 billion a year of
incremental improvements, is the gross cash inflow from the program. Yes, from
an accounting perspective, some part of that gets deferred and amortized over
the life of the mile.
We can
follow-up with you with respect to that -- because it's a pretty complicated
formula in terms of how much gets recognized and at what point in the process.
So we've been talking cash numbers here. So the $2 billion per year is cash. But
there's -- the accounting numbers are somewhat reduced.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Hi. To
what extent should we attribute this to the merger versus would have happened
anyway? Other airlines have done forward mile sales and you said the contract
was from 2000 anyway. Had you updated the contract, maybe you would have gotten
to market rates anyway. So to what extent can we attribute this to the merger
versus, you know?
Jeff
Robertson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - VP - Loyalty Programs
Yes. Some
of the contract language is obviously confidential, but basically I think in
summary, it's fair to say that the merger is what drove this contract to be
struck today. The contract actually may have been struck down the road. It would
have been a couple of years before we actually were able to extract that value,
potentially, in a new deal.
I do
believe the deal, however, is a best-in-class deal, driven by the merger,
primarily. And being the largest loyalty program in the world. So basically it's
a combination of moving money forward for a couple of years as well as what I
think is greater value that we were able to work and partner with American
Express because of the size of the loyalty program compared to where it is
today.
Unidentified
Audience Member
I think
you had it in the release, but can you just go through AMEX side and kind of the
percentage of seats that are available? Or kind of what the give-up was from
your side?
Jeff
Robertson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - VP - Loyalty Programs
Again,
the contract language and sort of the contract terms are confidential, but today
we award basically, I think it's around 7.5% to 8% of our RPMs are actually
award RPMs. And getting into exactly what percent of that goes to American
Express cardholders or American Express customers is somewhat
confidential.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Hi.
Thanks.
Jeff
Robertson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - VP - Loyalty Programs
Yes.
Unidentified
Audience Member
In Ed's
prepared remarks, you know -- you discussed 500 million of enhancements to the
cash flow over the next two years.
Jeff
Robertson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - VP - Loyalty Programs
Yes.
Unidentified
Audience Member
For 2009
and 2010. As I look at this projection, I think I see that it goes from $1.5
billion to $2 billion, but then it levels off. Was there some kind of pull
forward that should expect disappears in 2011? In other words, it was enhanced
by $500 million in 9 and 10, and therefore you start paying some of it back
through maybe less favorable terms to Delta beyond that? Or does -- is the $500
million just a run rate benefit that starts in 9 and 10 and continues through
the rest of the contract?
Jeff
Robertson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - VP - Loyalty Programs
Yes, I
can share that. The $500 million of incremental values that were pending in 9
and 10 is attributable to, I think, it's 90% of it will continue moving forward.
So when we look at the actual run rate synergies, especially with the American
Express contract, it's roughly $425 million to $450 million firm, however, there
is some upside possible as a result of growth. So we forecasted -- we're
relatively conservative in the $450 million and there's additional $50 million
or slightly more in the frequent flyer program integration value to get us to
$500 million.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Nothing
particularly special about 9 and 10? That's just the terms of the
contract?
Jeff
Robertson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - VP - Loyalty Programs
It
is the terms of the contract, yes.
Tim? Very
good. Okay.
PRESENTATION
Steve
Gorman - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- EVP, Chief Operating Officer
Thanks,
Jeff. Good morning. Very much like my day job, I've been told, we need to get --
as the head of operations, we need to get this back on track from an on-time
standpoint. Jill's back in the back going. And so I'll do my best to do
that.
I really
just had -- oh, I had three messages, primarily, that I wanted to deliver today.
One, and you've heard Richard talk about it, and you've actually heard Jim Cron
talk about it earlier, regarding the operation and the really top of the
industry results that both Northwest and Delta have continued to deliver,
despite all the distractions that could have occurred with regard to all the
rumors about a merger and then the actual announcement and then they're working
towards close.
The --
our movement towards a very smooth merging of operations with minimal customer
disruption and then give you a little bit of detail about the single operating
certificate, the progress we've made so far and our plan to achieve that by the
end of '09.
Again, to
the credit to all of our folks in operations, they have not let any of the
potential distractions get in the way of delivering top performance. By the DOT
stats, from a completion factor, which we think is one of the most important
factors, if not the most important factor, was -- is did the flight get -- fly.
It did not get cancelled. From that standpoint, Northwest in the October
year-to-date, through the entire year, is number one.
From a
completion factor standpoint, Delta's a little further down the chart, in the
middle of the pack, primarily because we've made some proactive decisions
earlier in the year, due to some pretty severe weather in Atlanta and JFK to do
a much -- a further out accommodation of our customers, to reaccom them, to let
them know that they can get to where they need to go, despite the weather, on a
planned basis.
But I
think here, an important factor and a big advantage we have, you've heard
earlier, a couple of the earlier execs, talk about our low-cost capital of our
fleet. And what that allows us to do from an operational standpoint,
particularly during peak times, when we have the highest stress and when the
system is wound the tightest, is to use the advantage of that low-cost fleet,
fully depreciated fleet, the DC9, the MD80 and even the 757 to add a few spares
to the process.
That we
would not be near as -- we wouldn't do it near as eagerly if that was a very,
very high cost asset. And so it would take full advantage of that. And we'll
continue to do that and have over 99% completion factor as we look forward, as
we have over the last few months.
From a D0
and A14 standpoint, so departures within zero and then arrivals within 14, which
is the second piece, do you get there on time when you need to for the meetings,
particularly for our premium customers, and from that standpoint, for that
second leg, we are both -- we are in the top three, we're basically essentially
tied for third in the DOT statistics through October. I will tell you, one of
the moving pieces here that's been very dynamic in the industry through the
course of '08 has been the block time.
We both
operate, if you look at year-to-date, the most efficient block time in the
industry from the DOT stats. There has been a lot of change between the
different network carriers this year. Earlier in the year, from what we could
see in the stats, it looked like US air had added a double-digit block time.
After the summer, in the fall, they have -- it looks like they are pulling that
out.
On the
other hand, United and American appear to have added double-digit block time
since the summer pull down into the Fall schedule. The important thing here in
how we look at it is very disciplined around departure within zero and be at the
top of the industry. A good efficient block time and block time reliability that
results in a top of the industry arrivals within 14.
We can
learn from that. Northwest has very disciplined standard operating procedures
that Delta can learn from and adapt in that countdown to departure within zero.
And we are committed to do that. The third leg of that stool, the flight goes,
it arrives on time, with bags. From that standpoint, again, at the top of the
industry for Northwest. A couple of things here. I just want to put a little
perspective. When we're talking the bags, the statistics you see are claims per
1,000 passengers.
So when
you see a 3.5, which is what per 1,000 passengers, that's 99.65% of the bags
being delivered in a fashion that do not get claimed. Or in Delta's case, a 5.5.
Again, you're talking about a 99.5% success factor. So just to put that in
perspective, but here again, Northwest really, really mature technology with the
scanning technology in all the systems that can monitor the baggage, track and
trace, very, very solid infrastructure at the two major hubs in Minneapolis and
Detroit. And really good processes for dealing with the transfer of bags from a
standard operating procedure standpoint.
Delta has
improved 25% year-over-year. Still not where we need to be in the competitive
rankings. A couple of key factors there, technology. We introduced scanners just
this year. February through June, rolled them out in 205 stations. Have just
started to use the monitoring software that tells you when you're loading a bag
that's going onto the wrong flight or to the wrong destination. Infrastructure.
Tremendous challenge in Atlanta.
That's an
-- a baggage infrastructure in Atlanta that was built around 1.5 concourses for
250 to 300 flights a day. Needless to say, we're operating over 1,000 flights a
day today with over six concourses, and so we are three-quarters of the way
through a $100 million capital project to upgrade the infrastructure in the
Atlanta baggage facility, throughout the Atlanta airport.
Even as
minor as the conveyor belts are 33 inches wide instead of 39 inches wide, so we
have had over 300 jams a day and for seven day coverage over 70 people, all they
did is they were jammers. They got rid of the jams. Well all of the conveyors
have been expanded to 39 inches, put a high speed conveyor out to concourse B
and then from B to C to add about 40% more capacity to the infrastructure in
Atlanta. So from that standpoint, I think you can continue to see improvement
and then we can adopt and have begun adoption of the Northwest software using
the information we have from the scanners.
We have
very diligently, both kind of behind the curtain and in front of the curtain,
begun merging the operations. I'll start behind the curtain. We still have two
certificates. So we still have parallel operations that are staffed by very,
very capable people at both of the certificates at both airlines, from the
executives all -- at every -- and all -- at every layer, every employee
group.
That is
continuing to occur and we -- that just keeps -- that's what's producing those
results that you're seeing reported in the DOT. It's two real solid operations
running in parallel. We are collaborating much more than we did, obviously,
before, when we do have particular instances where we need each other's help,
but pretty much parallel operations.
At the
same time, we're starting to centralize some of the functions, even within those
parallel groups, that we can consolidate as quickly as possible. Those are
things like the resource planning, catering, the training group so that as we
move along the single operating certificate and have more training, we have a
single training group that's developing that training. The air traffic control.
Even in tech ops, in terms of the engineering and quality assurance
organizations, we really started to pull those together as quickly as we can,
even though we still have the two certificates.
Finally,
I just wanted to mention, in two areas we've already consolidated. Safety and
supply chain. Really, unrelated reasons. Safety, when we did a review with the
FAA of the learnings from the US Airways merger, one of the things that became
very clear is you can't get to a single operating certificate in an efficient
fashion and develop one set of safety procedures and policies and metrics if you
have two different safety organizations trying to do that, competing with each
other so to speak.
And so we
have named one Head of Safety, one safety organization that is everything from
aviation safety to workplace safety and then also environmental compliance and
security. And that particular point, the Director of Safety for Delta
certificate is the Head of Safety for the overall airline and then of course
Northwest has a Director of Safety for their certificate that still is the
primary interface and leads the entire safety effort still in Minneapolis on the
Northwest certificate.
So that
was one of them. The other area is in supply chain and operations. To get as
quickly as possible at developing plans and executing on those plans to start
working on the synergy savings from the supply chain. We have immediately after
close put together one supply chain organization and by the different commodity
verticals and they are full speed ahead on trying to achieve that.
A lot of
good opportunities there. Just to give you a little bit of insight in terms of
the kind of the things that we're looking at in hotels. We have 82 common
hotels. Both hotels are using -- both airlines are using the same hotels. In
technical operations, 16 -- about two-thirds of our vendors on engines, what we
send out on engines, either engine types or components, are common.
60% of
the components that come off the airplane go to common vendors. So there's a lot
of opportunity there. We have 229 kitchens around the system, 42 of those are at
common stations. So we are prioritizing those and really attacking those to
start delivering the synergy benefits that are a part of the benefits that Ed
was referring to earlier.
Finally,
I just wanted to step back in front of the curtain. From a customer standpoint,
for the minimal disruptions. A couple of things. We have -- overall, there's 390
stations. 70 of them Northwest-only, 150 Delta-only, so then we have 170
stations that we need to deal with where we need to consolidate those stations.
We already have a definitive, specific plan for 50 of those. And every week
we're adding another five to six or seven of those.
We have
already begun implementing in some cases. In the States, we have 23 airports
where we had what we'll call a constrained airport where the -- where we were in
separate terminals. And in those we have a short-term plan of having bussing
between the terminals, having dual kiosk capability where you can go to the
kiosk, it just went in this week, and you can go check in on either airline at
the kiosk.
We have
terminals at the different ticket counters of the different airlines for the
other airlines, so you don't have to go to the other terminal. You can get your
pass and then a lot of direction signage and a lot of extra help just to help
direct some of that and minimize our customer confusion.
And then
over the course of time, in those 50, for all 20 of those, we have a specific
plan for consolidation and those are airports like Washington DC, Boston,
Chicago, LAX and those are nearly all but a handful of those will be
consolidated before summer. And it goes either way. Chicago, we're moving Delta
from Terminal Three into Terminal Two. Boston, moving Northwest from E into
Delta in -- or in A, except for the International.
So that
is all going on from a customer standpoint and then at a very high level, trying
to already make it as seamless as possible for the customers from the standpoint
of a couple of things. Harmonizing the fees, that as Ed talked about earlier.
Reaccommodating agnostically when we have irregular operations due to weather.
To reaccom agnostically on either carrier. Already balancing the calls between
the res centers, have auto-redirect on the different websites if somebody is
going into the different website.
So very
focused on the customer and making it as seamless as possible for the customer,
that we think is a dramatic differentiation from maybe some of the other mergers
in the past in this industry. Finally, a little bit on the single operating
certificate. We -- as Ed mentioned, we had a plan that was submitted that a
preliminary plan of all the processes, submitted it to the FAA, they approved it
a couple of weeks later, so in mid-September, we had the plan.
This
isn't really mystery. It is just hard detailed work that takes a lot of effort.
We've got about 115 processes that we've identified in that plan. And they range
from relatively simple processes to very complex processes. How you handle your
ETOP software operation. Of course dispatch and flight relief, engine condition
monitoring and training, air worthiness directive management, there's all those
different kinds of processes.
For each
one of those, we analyze the differences in the processes, look at them, cross
reference them to all the manuals, decide which one of those processes we're
going to select. Because we're not going to invent a third one. We're going to
select one or the other of the approved processes on the certificate already
because that way we have subject matter experts at one of the airlines and we
only have to train one airline or the other in terms of the people. We don't
want to have a new process where we have to train everybody and we don't have
the expertise.
So from
that standpoint, then, we look at the differences, we decide that, we develop an
implementation plan, we go to the FAA now with that, here's what we're going to
do and here's our implementation plan. They approve, we go back and execute,
then we come back and we say we're done with that and we know what the training
is, we've done the training and they'll approve again from that
standpoint.
That's
the second approval. And then when we get out to near the end of '09, all of
that will have been aligned and happening along the way for these 150 processes.
We've already submitted six. Two have been approved. We plan to have 15 more --
15 total submitted before the end of the year. If we just sit there and turn
that crank on those 115 in a very disciplined way, with a every two week review
process on the progress on a very, very specific gantt chart by
process.
And when
we get done, the FAA validates and says, okay, it's all done. And we have a
Delta single operating certificate. FAA has been extremely cooperative in
dedicating resources with a team of, a dedicated team, of seven people, three
from each of the certificates, from the principals and the one team leader. And
so we -- that will not be a constraint on this process either.
Why is
that important? I mean, there -- I mean, we heard earlier, Brian talk about the
seniority list. I mean, we can't take really -- that senior effect -- list
doesn't go into effect for bidding until the first bid period after we have a
single operating certificate. And if you look at it from the standpoint of you
heard Glen talk and you heard -- I mean, a couple of different phrases. You
heard Ed say free flow the fleet.
You heard
Richard say right airplane on the right route. That doesn't happen until we have
a single operating certificate, so we can have a single bidding system for the
pilots bidding a crew planning, scheduling, tracking for the flight attendants
in addition to the pilots.
So we
have one single operation control center, all those particular things that you
heard Glen say earlier were -- we cannot do scale of that manually. Because so
much of that is automated and so much is with automated tools and managing the
daily operation of that dispatch and that release and all the aircraft swaps
that go on to efficiently run the airline every day.
And so
from that standpoint, all that gets released and then Glen, well he won't get
any sleep at all because he will be ready to go where he can just swap and free
those airplanes and move them around, literally, every schedule change and every
dynamically between the schedule change.
Operationally,
again, all those parallel operations will collapse into one, will have -- be
able to fully utilize the efficiencies. I'll tell you, frankly, on the supply
chain, I think most -- that is primarily dependent on just prioritizing
opportunities, which we have, analyzing them, putting them together and
negotiating strategy, then putting out the RFP and selecting the
vendor.
That will
pace that much more so than the single operating certificate, but there is still
some, for example, one maintenance program in technical operations will
definitely help us from a leverage standpoint in the supply chain when we talk
about those engines that have a 66% common vendor and those components that have
a 60%. With that, I think I have a few minutes for questions. She's bringing a
mic.
QUESTION
AND ANSWER
Unidentified
Audience Member
How long
after single operating certificate, would you anticipate the final legal merger
would take place?
Steve
Gorman - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- EVP, Chief Operating Officer
The whole
legal merger. I mean, we will have that certificate and we -- and it will happen
right away. Ben, do you want to help on that?
Richard
Anderson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - CEO
Well
--
Steve
Gorman - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- EVP, Chief Operating Officer
I don't
--
Richard
Anderson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - CEO
Yes, I
think we've got to look at where the timing falls out. In terms of single --
I've got a view on -- thank you, Shannon. We haven't quite planned out where
that will ultimately be. Because we're focused on getting the single operating
certificate done. I mean, the key from an investor perspective is regardless of
when the entities come together, the value gets unlocked from the single
operating certificate. I would expect that we'll -- the Northwest subsidiary
will be there for awhile thereafter, a good while thereafter. But we won't let
that be an impediment to our getting to the synergies.
Steve
Gorman - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- EVP, Chief Operating Officer
And back
to the value, one of the important things is on the single operating
certificate, the processes, in those 115, the training in each of the different
areas, whether it be in the technicians or the flight attendants, whatever that
might be, we're front-loading those processes so that we can have the approved
training programs and actually be implementing those training programs so that
when it happens, the single operating certificate, we're ready to go to
completely unlock those synergies right away. Yes?
Unidentified
Audience Member
Two quick
questions. How are you managing the runway shutdown at JFK at the end of '09? I
understand the FAA's working with the Port Authority. In your view, what's the
solution there?
And then
I guess just a second quick question, unrelated, but your competitors in the New
York market have conditioned travelers here to check in 30 minutes beforehand or
30 minutes or greater and for Delta it's 45. What's holding you back from
matching your competitors' with baggage checking time in the New York
market?
Steve
Gorman - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- EVP, Chief Operating Officer
I'll
answer your second first. The -- from that standpoint, the -- one of the things
we're looking at as we compare the best practices between two airlines is the
time prior to check in. And they're different between the
two.
And I
will say there, from that standpoint, when we look at the processes,
particularly in terminal three, that -- and the security process in terminal
three, that we think we need that cushion in terminal three so that people do
not -- are able to arrive at the gate prior to us closing the door. I mean, so
it's primarily around, from a customer standpoint, not having people cut it too
close and miss that flight. But not so much probably terminal two, which is --
moves much slower, obviously, if you've done both, than terminal three. But we
just want to have one standard there.
And from
the closure of the runway, I mean, obviously we work closely with the FAA and
provide our input into the best we can. I mean, we had that whole issue of there
are just the whole air traffic control in general in the northeast. And the 77
initiatives and prioritizing those 77 initiatives. And how we go about improving
-- I mean, that's the biggest thing we can do to improve the operation,
obviously, in New York, is to do a -- have a much more efficient air traffic
control system from the standpoint of both inbound and outbound.
Unidentified
Audience Member
I forgot,
what -- the single operating certificate drives how much of the 2 billion in
synergies?
Steve
Gorman - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- EVP, Chief Operating Officer
Oh, I
don't think we ever really have categorized it that way as
such.
Richard
Anderson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - CEO
What
we've published is 2 billion in run rate by 2012. That's what we've published.
And I think the number that we've characterized for 2009 and -- Jill, you should
-- or Shannon? Cathy, help me on this. I think the number that we've published
for 2009 is about 0.5 billion of synergy realization?
Which we
described earlier, Ed described in his slide presentation, in his presentation,
as being hit by the AMEX deal. Because of the incremental -- at least on a cash
basis, we've got to get to the accounting issues. But for the audience here and
all the people that are going through budget right now, at Delta, it doesn't
change. I mean, in terms of the cost synergies that -- and the revenue synergies
that Glen has to produce, regardless of the end.
So we're
sort of -- the way we're budgeting the airlines, so you know by year, we've got
every organization has three buckets in their budget. They've got the Delta
stand alone operating certificate, the Northwest stand alone operating
certificate and the synergies. And in each of the operating budgets, you've got
to get your normal annual 3% to 4% productivity target and you've got to hit
your CapEx number.
And then
the synergies are separately bucketed because we don't want the synergies to get
mixed in with running the business, the way the business ought to be run. And
the synergies belong to the shareholders, not to the operating departments, to
make their budget.
Steve
Gorman - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- EVP, Chief Operating Officer
The other
thing I'd say, on my synergy slide, somebody else was saying -- I mean, the
biggest piece of that is the full benefit of them from a network standpoint to
free flow that fleet.
Richard
Anderson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - CEO
And if
you'll recall back to the merger announcement, I believe our -- or when we
updated our synergies, I believe the full network effect of fleet
simplification, Ed help me on this, is about 300 million to 400
million?
Ed
Bastian - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - President
Yes. 300
million to 400 million, once you completely flow the fleet.
Steve
Gorman - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- EVP, Chief Operating Officer
Okay.
I'll turn it over to Hank.
PRESENTATION
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Hey, good
morning everyone. I'm the last presenter, I'm also in between the Q&A and
the lunch, so I'll try to go quickly, but at the same time, I want to make this
as meaningful as it is for you.
You heard
this morning, you saw a lot of presentations. Richard started, then Ed, Glen,
Steve, Tony, Jeff. Delta is building a strong financial foundation. We're
enhancing our bottom line through top line revenue growth, unit revenue
improvement, cost reductions, productivity. We're managing risk, a systematic
fuel hedging program. We're investing prudently into building in the business.
CapEx spending, it's minimal. And it's minimal for the right reasons. We'll
invest when it's appropriate to invest and we'll be prudent at all
times.
And we're
preserving and growing liquidity. I'll show you operating cash flow that is
growing, it's sufficient to pay for CapEx. It's sufficient to pay for debt
obligations and maturities coming due. And most importantly, Delta's positioned
for long-term success.
Solid
revenue performance is definitely strengthening our position. We're also
focusing on all aspects of the business. When you look at top-line revenue
growth, Delta has delivered double-digit top-line revenue growth this year,
approximately 8% to 11% for 2008 each quarter. And we are doing that also with
growing unit revenue performance.
By 2008,
Delta's unit revenue performance is in excess of the industry average on a
length of haul adjusted basis, 102%. And this represents Delta and Northwest
combined. And look where we were just in 2005, up from 95%. So as Delta is
growing its top-line revenue, it's not compromising its unit revenue
performance.
Unit
costs. While Delta's improving its top line and its unit revenue, its RASM, it's
also the best-in-class unit cost performance and it shows up here quite easily.
If you look at Delta and unit cost is best-in-class for the network carriers,
and it's very close to the low-cost carriers, the LCCs. Any business has to be
the low-cost leader.
And that
goes for any business, airline, any capital intensive business. You've got to be
the low-cost leader because that's what you can control. And it's your peers
with the lowest costs that are helping set the revenue environment and that's
why it's critical for Delta in this environment in particular to have the lowest
cost structure.
If you
look at the progress we've made over the years, we're very, very close to
Southwest now and when you consider the cost structure of Delta, this slide
doesn't show the revenue premium, the revenue advantage, we have, over those
low-fare carriers.
You heard
a lot about the various pieces of revenue this morning from the different
presenters. When you look at Delta, we're obviously very focused on passenger
revenue. Obviously that's a significant portion of our business, that's what
we're in business for, is flying passengers.
But we're
also capitalizing and continue to maximize opportunities from the non-passenger
areas of our business. We call this the ancillary areas, ancillary businesses
and third-party revenue. And when you look at 2009, we're going to have over
$5.5 billion of revenue value coming from these third parties and ancillary
areas.
Cargo,
for example. Our cargo business will deliver revenue in excess of $1 billion
under the direction of Neel Shah. That business has been delivering 35%
year-over-year revenue improvement from the Delta side this year and will
continue to do so going forward. You heard from Tony Charaf recently on the
MROs, the maintenance, repair and overhaul business. And that's gone from, as
Tony described it, a hobby to one where that business is now the largest airline
North America provider on the MRO space. And that's Tony's organization. It's
$0.5 billion on an annual basis.
And most
recently, Jeff was up here talking about SkyMiles, $2 billion of value. Value
coming from the world's largest frequent flyer program and in partnership with
American Express. And then now, charging customers for value-added services, the
services they use, the fees and charges along with codeshare and joint venture
revenues, those are in excess of almost $1.5 billion, $1.4 billion projected for
2009.
And the
list goes on. What it shows is at Delta, we're capitalizing on every aspect of
our business. Every revenue stream that presents opportunity, we're going after
it and we're delivering on that. And we'll continue to deliver on
that.
Let's
show some math here and look at what opportunities face us in 2009. Obviously
fuel prices have been falling and as Ed mentioned earlier, each dollar change in
the crude price per barrel is worth about $100 million annually in fuel expense
at Delta. This year, in 2008, our all-in price per barrel was approximately
$100. Next year, we're targeting $50 to be the market price for crude oil.
That's a $5 billion benefit year-over-year 2009 run rate versus
2008.
On top of
that, we recently announced capacity reductions of 6% to 8%. Delta's going to
get $1 billion of cost savings from that. And something I didn't emphasize on
the earlier slide, talking about CASM. Delta's CASM is a function of getting
costs out of the business. We do that very, very well. It's what we can control.
So this latest cost reduction or, excuse me, capacity reduction of 6% to 8%, we
will get this $1 billion out.
Look at
what we did just earlier this year. We announced in March a capacity reduction
for 2008. And by the fourth quarter, our capacity is down on the domestic side,
12% to 15%. But when you look at our non-fuel unit costs, it's going to be about
flat year-over-year. And that's the evidence of Delta's ability to get the costs
out.
We're not
going to let our unit costs grow just because we're reducing capacity. And we
might not be able to get it out immediately, and as Ed mentioned it will take us
several quarters to get that cost out, but we're targeting flat CASM
year-over-year absent that pension cost impact in the fourth quarter of '09
versus '08. And that's a testament to getting the costs out.
So on top
of that, we've heard a lot of talk about the merger synergies. That's $500
million of benefit. So when you add up the left side of the page, in terms of
opportunities, there's $6.5 billion of opportunities facing us in 2009, this
compared to 2008.
And then
when you look at the revenue environment, it is down. Revenue is weaker. The
demand environment is weaker and as a result, we will see lower revenue. But it
would take in excess of 20% of passenger revenue declines to offset the savings
of $6.5 billion, the $6.5 billion of opportunity that we have facing us in 2009.
And that would be an unprecedented level of passenger revenue reduction in one
year. And on top of that, if the numbers were approaching that level, we would
go and pull additional capacity out of the system and then go after more cost
reductions to offset that.
Let's
talk a little bit about Delta's fuel hedging program. As I mentioned, Delta
follows a systematic fuel hedging program. We're in the market purchasing hedges
when fuel prices are rising as well as when fuel prices are going down. And our
portfolio currently consists of call options, swaps and collars. But as you can
see from the charts, each quarter through 2009, most of the swaps and collars
will be out by the end of the second quarter.
Looking
forward, for the full year, we're 37% hedged and that will give us an all-in
price of $2.19 per gallon. And also, very important, is downside participation.
Nearly 80% of our fuel consumption will participate in downside participation,
should fuel prices continue going down. So once we're beyond the June quarter,
the margins and the collateral we've been posting, related to our hedges, will
be behind us. And we'll have full downside participation by third quarter and
into fourth and beyond. And then you can also see we're in the process of buying
hedges for 2010.
Obviously
we're much more hedged closer in. We strive to the upcoming six month period to
be about 50% hedged. And then going out, the number steps downward. But what it
does is allows it to continue building hedges on in a systematic fashion, we're
not out trying to beat the market, but rather we're out trying to reduce
volatility and that's what's critical and part of our risk management objective,
it's to reduce volatility in the numbers.
Another
aspect of CapEx, it's something very, very critical at Delta and a philosophy
that we hold firm to. And that's investing prudently in the building, in the
business. In 2009, we expect CapEx to total $1.6 billion. That consists of
approximately $1 billion of aircraft, $300 million of parts modifications,
inventory, $300 million of ground and technology CapEx.
And of
that $1.6 billion, about $800 million of that will be cash CapEx. For the
aircraft for which we have firm orders, we have secured financing that will
cover substantially all of that cost. So in terms of modeling cash purposes our
CapEx for 2009 on a cash basis is about $800 million.
You can
see on the left side we've got about 20 aircraft on firm order, 777, 737-700s,
the next-generation aircraft and two class regional jets CRJ 700s and -- excuse
me, 900s. All of these aircraft are focused on our international strategy and
premium revenue. We're not going to invest CapEx for the sake of just spending
money and growing the airline. We're going to invest prudently and in doing so
we're positioning Delta for long-term success.
One of
the things that we use to follow our CapEx strategy, and one that limits our
aircraft purchasing is when we look at fleet rationalization. Fleet
rationalization is something that Delta has unique to it going forward because
of the merger with Northwest and now the different fleet types that will allow
us really lengthen the fleeting horizon.
So you
won't see Delta in the near term announcing the massive aircraft re-fleeting,
that's not going to happen for us, and the economics here we believe don't
support it. You know, you see other airlines when they announce large capacity
orders replacing existing fleets, they're bragging about the young age their
fleet will be, they brag about the fuel efficiency, in many cases brag about the
maintenance efficiency.
One thing
they're not talking about is the cost of ownership and what we're doing here is
showing you the difference between a MD88 aircraft, a pre-owned 88, versus a
brand new 737-800. Both can be configured with 150 seats, same crew members, but
at the end of the day you can see there is a significant cost advantage by
flying a MD88, a used MD88 that we currently have, 114 of them to be exact,
compared to going out and re-fleeting with the new aircraft.
There
will come the day when you do need to re-fleet aircraft but it's certainly not
in the near-term horizon, not with this kind of advantage. That's a $2.5 million
advantage per year, per aircraft by flying a current owned aircraft versus going
out and doing a massive order for new aircraft. In terms of liquidity for 2009,
we expect to end 2008 with about $6.7 billion of unrestricted liquidity, that
includes the proceeds from the American Express agreement that was announced
this morning.
For 2009
we're projecting operating cash flow in the $3.2 billion range. We'll use that
$3.2 billion to fund CapEx, cash CapEx which is $800 million as well as fund
upcoming debt maturities. So, I had mentioned earlier total CapEx is 1.6 which
the slide shows here, a portion of that the $800 million of financing for that
is captured in the net debt maturities. But at the end of the year we expect to
end 2009, despite a weakened economy and slow demand environment, growing our
liquidity balance to $7.5 billion by the end of 2009.
Let's
look forward, 2009, 2010 and 20ll, the next three-year horizon. We're expecting
operating cash flow of $11 billion to $13 billion. Cash flow to be sufficient to
fund our capital expenditures as well as our net debt maturity. And there will
be cash left over to restore the balance sheet and improve the health of the
balance sheet.
Looking
at adjusted net debt you can see that we project to end this year at $15
billion, 12/31/08. And over the course of the three years, based on the strong
operating cash flow, the prudent investment we will make in the business, as
well as upcoming net debt maturities, we'll have an adjusted net debt figure of
approximately $6.5 billion at the end of 2011.
That's
the power of this business, that's the power of the unit revenue growth, the
other business growth in the revenues, such as MRO, such as SkyMiles. It's the
power of cost leadership and cost discipline. It's also the power of prudent
investment in CapEx. That's what's delivering the strong liquidity balance, and
that's what's also enabling us to reduce our adjusted net debt over this
three-year horizon.
Net
operating losses is also a significant asset for Delta. As a result of the
merger, combining the net operating losses that Delta previously had with the
NOLs that Northwest carried we now have approximately $15 billion of net
operating losses that can be used to offset future taxable income. So while
Delta does project to be significantly profitable going forward, the cash tax
obligation will be fairly minimal because of the $14.5 billion of net operating
losses that we anticipate to be able to use going forward.
So this
morning again, you've heard from the various presenters, speaking about the
pieces of our business, the revenue, the cost, the productivity, the various
ancillary areas, and all are focused on the same objective, building on the
strong financial foundation for Delta and positioning for long-term
success.
We'll
continue growing on our revenue streams, all revenue streams. We're going to be
keenly focused on cost, cost discipline, cost leadership. Productivity is always
a mantra at Delta and that's productivity not from synergies, that's from just
running the business smarter and focused on the bottom line.
We will
invest prudently, no massive aircraft re-fleeting orders to be announced at any
time soon, but yet, we will invest where it makes sense in the business, using
our liquidity wisely and consequently, that liquidity can be used for various
functions, at the end of the day, hopefully reducing our adjusted net debt and
improving the health of the balance sheet. Delta truly is positioned for
long-term success. I thank you for your interest in Delta Airlines and I'll be
happy to answer any questions you have.
QUESTION
AND ANSWER
Unidentified
Audience Member
These are
numbers, your -- for free cash flow, your numbers here for free cash flow, how
much of it you assumed for the refinancing of aircraft notes?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
There is
some moderate refinancing. When you look at the aircraft, we've got -- for the
aircraft on order, we've got financing in place for substantially all of that
purchase price. And then for the debt coming due, we've got an exit facility and
such that we anticipate refinancing in that in the couple billion dollar range
tops. Most of the debt obligations coming due we will pay with cash from the
business.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Okay. And
instead of about a 50% LTV that you've assume for a
refinancing?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Yes.
Thereabouts.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Okay, and
then just so that I understand the net maturities, the net maturities is that
change in unrestricted cash, that gross debt maturities less that change in
unrestricted cash. Would I be correct there?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Right,
the adjusted net debt would be the debt balance plus aircraft rents, the
operating rents, seven times aircraft operating rents, less the maturities that
we're paying off during that period, add back any debt we're taking on for
aircraft for example, and then less the unrestricted cash
balance
Unidentified
Audience Member
Thank
you
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Sure
Unidentified
Audience Member
Just a
couple of quick questions. On the cost saving numbers that you show, are those
gross cost savings, so net of integration costs, net of regular cost inflation
that you have there, or is that gross cost savings?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
The cost
savings from the synergies, the $2 billion -- the $500 million in 2009, growing
to $2 billion?
Unidentified
Audience Member
The $1
billion that you show on the slide from capacity cuts plus $500 million, the
--?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Yes.
That's a gross number. Now the net number, it's fairly -- I tell you what, it
really approximates on a net basis, because when you think about the payback
period, the payback of the capacity reductions is very short. So for instance,
we'll offer a, what we did in March, a voluntary program to exit individuals
that were interested in leaving early, that paid for itself in six
months.
Unidentified
Audience Member
And then
in liquidity numbers that you show, can you just touch on how much cash
collateral you posted now, but also what's your assumption for pension funding
that you'll make over these three years, is that in here?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Yes, that
is. The collateral that we have posted for margins is included in that liquidity
balance, so the balance at 12/31 of about $6.7 billion, I think, as 2008, that
includes just north of about $1 billion of liquidity posting on the
hedges.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Okay. And
the pension is?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
The
pension obligations for 2009, those numbers do include a small pension funding
obligation. Based on the measurement date of when Delta's pension measurement,
for funding purposes occurs, we expect our 2009 obligations to not be
significantly different than 2008. Going forward the re-measurements will
obviously drive more liquidity funding in 2010 and beyond. But the '09 number
really represents a partial year because of where our measurement date
falls.
Unidentified
Audience Member
(inaudible
- microphone inaccessible) cash flow for the next three years, what kind of fuel
assumptions and other critical variables, obviously PRASMs, right, one of them,
but anything you want to share with us?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Sure, in
terms of fuel prices, we've got that growing $10 a year. So for 2009, we're
modeling $50 with a $20 dollar refining cost. Then we'll grow that $10 a year on
the crude price and then we'll grow our refining costs $2.50 per barrel. So $60,
$22.50 in 2010 growing to $70 and $25 in 2011.
In 2010
in terms of what we've modeled here, and again, it's just a model, we're
constantly refining our projections, we're looking at stabilization in 2010 in
terms of capacity. Obviously we'll watch that closely should the situation
warrant itself to further be able to reduce capacity in '10 we'll do that and
then a slight increase in capacity in 2011. Obviously as you heard from Glen and
the other speakers, in terms of revenue opportunities, there is continued
revenue opportunities from the synergies from the ancillary businesses so those
will continue generating value for us in 2010 and 2011.
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Yes. Hey,
Gary.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Hey, just
a quick knit and then a follow up. First, on the $1 billion that you point out
in capacity related cost savings, does that include fuel burn or is that in the
$5 billion?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Yes. No,
the fuel burn is just the -- excuse me, the first number, the $5 billion, is
price only. And in the $1 billion, you've got obviously a very large piece of
that is fuel consumption, you've also got the other variable savings, including
headcount and landing fees and all the other variables that go with that, plus a
fixed cost component. I mean the one thing the other airlines fail to get out is
something we're intent on doing, is getting the fixed costs out of the
business.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Okay. And
then when I look at that slide that shows the net debt balance going down to
$6.5 billion, if memory serves, you think about the earnings that are going to
be required to generate the cash flow to get there in the first place, it's a
very substantial reversal in what the way the balance sheet looks. Pretty much
turns it upside down. Is that a target, is that what you think, the position
that you think you need to manage to in terms of long-term balance sheet? Or is
that just what the numbers tell you today and it will be adjusted along the
way?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Yes. No,
it's what our models are currently projecting. I wouldn't say that's a target,
and to be honest, I think, looking at 2011, we need to spend more time on that
target and obviously reviewing it with our Board, and other constituents, is
important, before we come out with a defined target. But what the numbers do
project is that with a substantial liquidity increase, looking at the balance
sheet, that just goes right against your net debt.
We may
choose to do other things with it, but at the end of the day, that's what the
models are currently projecting. And like any models, you know in the airline
business, especially looking forward, anything beyond 2009 obviously we'll be
looking to revise assumptions as the world continues changing.
Unidentified
Audience Member
(inaudible
- microphone inaccessible). What I'm more interested in, well you might be more
than right, wrong because you're more than right.
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
There you
go.
Unidentified
Audience Member
That
happens every once in a while in airlines, once a century or so. I guess what
I'm really driving at more, is as you think about investing in the business, in
changing the stance that you have now, around capital deployment and other
things, do you need to get to the kind of balance sheet or closer to the kind of
balance sheet that would suggest than the one you have today, before you would
do that. So it's more of a longer term?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
So in
other words your question is, will we be investing before or after we get to
that kind of balance sheet with these numbers? I think, you know, we will
continue investing, I mean, look at the aircrafts we are buying this year, they
are very targeted aircraft purchases. At some point we will need to re-fleet
certain aspects of the Delta fleet, but we know that that's not part of this
planning horizon.
When we
chose to do that, we will obviously look at the balance sheet where it stands.
At this point, I wouldn't say that one is tied to the other. Obviously we're
going to invest where we can get the greatest return. If there's not a return,
we're not going to invest. That's really the judge of whether we make a purchase
or not. Hey, Dan
Unidentified
Audience Member
Yes, hi.
You know, unadjusted for stage length, the Northwest side of the merger has a
higher non-fuel chasm than Delta. So I actually was modeling higher than the 3%
to 5% non-fuel chasm. Where is that non-fuel chasm cost savings coming from to
get you to the 3% to 5%?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Yes, it
comes from the productivity in the business. You know Richard mentioned just
briefly, when we have cost pressures, we go and fund those cost pressures. So 3%
to 5% productivity at both companies, Northwest, Delta, is being budgeted right
now and it's what Delta did a year ago and what we've done in prior
years.
As we get
the capacity reductions occurring, we will get the fixed costs out. Look what we
did in March, we reduced capacity there. That capacity came out with, people, it
came out with fixed costs, obviously fuel burn, it's a -- you know, we're
talking about non-fuel CASMs, but all the variables that go along with flying an
aircraft come out of the equation including those fixed costs.
And
that's really the difference, and that's how Delta is able to have such flat
unit costs and maintain the leadership is by getting every aspect of that cost
out when capacity changes.
Unidentified
Audience Member
(inaudible
question - microphone inaccessible)
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
I'd go to
all the line items. I mean, as you think about modeling, we offer voluntary
programs and we're kicking off another voluntary program in relation to this
latest capacity reduction. But you look at the landing fees, the airport costs,
you look at the supplies, all those things that go with flying a passenger. I'd
go to every line and look at the variableness because that is directly
attributable to flying a plane.
But then
you also have to look at the aircraft ownership and the rent and things. I mean,
we will get the aircraft out, you know, it won't be right within the same
quarter but if you look at what we did this year, fourth quarter CASM is flat,
year-over-year, or about flat and that's a function of getting all those costs
out.
So, I
would really literally go line-by-line and that's what you need to do to model
it, and then just apply some timing assumptions as to when you think Delta can
get the costs out relative to when the capacity declines.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Could you
talk a little bit about your assumptions for revenue recovery in 2010 and 2011,
and how it is affected by your route structure and the changes you are making in
terms of -- and that will result in changes in mix in your business?
Thanks.
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Yes, I
can talk high level, but you know this is obviously a very good question for
Glen, and his side. But when you look at the revenue environment, we are
assuming that 2010 will start to stabilize. These models are projected on not
having a further capacity reduction in 2010 relative to '09, very, very modest
unit revenue growth. So -- and that's largely coming from the synergies and the
opportunities we are getting from the merger. 2011 we do have some slight
capacity increase in there along with some additional unit revenue
improvement.
Again
that's also a function of the synergies as well as starting to see improvements
in the market place in terms of unit revenue. But we're not seeing, come 2010,
an immediate uptake in the world is back to normal, if you can describe what
normal is. It's clearly really at best a 2010 stabilization. And again, we're
watching the environment, just like you are, every single day, and that
assumption could change literally as we go forward.
Unidentified
Audience Member
Hello,
could you talk about the magnitude of your unencumbered assets to date and
(inaudible - microphone inaccessible).
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
In terms
of, I'm sorry?
Unidentified
Audience Member
Unencumbered
assets.
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Encumbered
assets?
Unidentified
Audience Member
Unencumbered
assets.
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Unencumbered
assets. As the debt maturities come due there will be assets that are freed up
and then in terms of going forward, what we do, whether we do additional
refinancings on debt that comes due or whether we keep those assets unencumbered
and just use free cash for debt as is yet to be seen. We'll analyze that as each
maturity comes due as to what's the best use of the cash, whether it to reinvest
it or to refinance.
Unidentified
Audience Member
So you
did say today the -- what is the size of your unencumbered asset, are they
largely -- minimal?
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
What do
you mean encumbered. Okay.
Ed
Bastian - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - President
That's
it.
Hank
Halter - Delta Air Lines, Inc.
- CFO
Thank you
very much. Richard?
Richard
Anderson - Delta Air Lines,
Inc. - CEO
Just in
summary, this slide is self explanatory, and we believe that what we've
presented to you today, really presents the premier position in this
industry.
And
candidly, as you look out into 2009, for probably one of the first times in
history, this investment is a lot better than a lot of the investments in a lot
of other industries because the one interesting thing that if you go back to
Ed's slides that were very instructive about revenue decline for the industry
and the corollary pull-down in capacity, in all those times, the constant was
the fuel price of about $20 to $25.
But going
into 2009, you have an airline that has come off of a hardening process, if you
will. You will recall our business plan in 2008 worked very well at $80 to $90
fuel and in fact at $100 fuel, we were going to generate cash.
So now
you're in a world where you have a rapid decline in fuel price, which I think
Hank's slide was very instructive on where the opportunities lie for us. But we
do have a management team and a Board that is incredibly committed to
shareholder value and creating shareholder value.
So we
appreciate the opportunity. Rather than do Q&A here, we want to end a little
bit early and just go right to lunch. The whole management team is going to be
with you at lunch, and we'll take the Q&A during lunch on the fifth floor,
and I think during the Q&A, we're going to try and get some of the other
executives engaged in the Q&A process on your specific questions. You do
need to get a good feel for the rest of our management team. But we do really
very much appreciate your attention and your time today, and we want to be able
to answer all your questions whether it's at lunch today, or just contact our
team.
Now if I
could right before I leave, I really do need to thank Cathy, Shannon and Jill. I
mean they do all the real work, we present the slides, but they really do a lot
of the really good work that gets this whole conference together so we really do
appreciate your contributions.