Sun Country, Inc. (SNCY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Sun Country Airlines Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Christopher Allen, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I'm joined today by Jude Bricker, our Chief Executive Officer; Dave Davis, President and Chief Financial Officer and a group of others to help answer questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during this call, the company may make certain statements and constitute forward-looking statements. Our remarks today may include forward-looking statements which are based upon management's current beliefs, expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. We encourage you to review risk factors and cautionary statements outlined in our earnings release and our most recent SEC filings. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. You can find our fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings press release on our website at ir.suncountry.com. With that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Jude.

Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Our diversified business model is unique in the airline industry. Due to the predictability of our charter and cargo businesses, we are able to deliver the most flexible scheduled service capacity in the industry. The combination of our scheduled flexibility and low fixed cost model allows us to respond to both predictable leisure demand fluctuations and exogenous industry shocks. We believe due to our structural advantages, we'll be able to reliably deliver industry-leading profitability throughout all cycles. We have much to be proud of in the way we finished 2023. Many of the challenges of the post-COVID period are fading as we move into 2024. Our operations in the third quarter showed significant year-on-year improvement across every major operating metric, D0, A14, completion factor and mishandle bag rates. For completion factor, we only canceled one scheduled service flight during the entire quarter. A14 increased 13 percentage points year-on-year without an increase in target block times. In 4Q, we produced a declining year-on-year CASMx for the first time since COVID. One of the main contributors to our improving cost and operational performance is that we've been able to staff the airline closer to optimal. In fact, we've seen better staffing metrics across every major labor group. Improved staffing has allowed us to allocate additional peak capacity in scheduled service and to take advantage of close-end charter demand. Maintaining peak schedule allocations has allowed us to fly almost 15% more ASMs in 4Q with adjusted TRASM declining only 8%. We continue to operate in a strong demand environment across all 3 segments of our business with scheduled service continuing to receive the majority of our growth capacity, a trend we expect to continue into 2024. Congratulations to the entire Sun Country team that delivered record full year 2023 revenue, full year passenger volume and full year operating margin. I wanted to highlight a few things that I'm excited about in 2024. I feel like we have good control of our unit costs. While we will continue to face headwinds, particularly with the heavy check cycle of our fleet, we should be able to continue to lead the industry in cost trends going into 2024. Demand is holding up really well. For 1Q, we faced challenging comps as we lapped the exceptional yield environment of winter '22-'23. For 1Q, we are currently scheduled to fly over 15% more ASMs than prior year with only an expected mid-single-digit decline in unit revenues. These positive revenue trends are mostly a result of growth being heavily weighted to peak period due to lessening staffing constraints. A few examples, in December 2023, we flew 120% more ASMs in scheduled service during the last 14 days of the month as compared to the first 14 days. Industry capacity shifted about 3%. In 1Q 2024, March will have about 60% more scheduled service ASMs than January. This was 47% in 1Q of '23. This scheduled variability, along with our cost structure, is the moat around our business and is made possible by our multi-segment model. On the fleet side, we have 3 aircraft in various stages of delivery. These aircraft will be part of our controlled fleet of 63 airplanes by the end of 2Q. We expect to be able to grow ASMs by around 40% versus 2023 levels with lease returns, utilization increases and upgauging in addition to these airplanes. That should give us 2 to 3 years of growth while simultaneously producing exceptional free cash flow yields. That combination rarely happens in our industry. We have many projects that should help us keep momentum on operational costs and revenue trends into 2024. To highlight a few, in 2024, we are able to rebid our credit card agreement, which we expect to result in materially better economics. In 2023, we launched bag scanning technology that has had a material impact on MBR. That solution will be rolled out to outstations in the coming months. We automated our passenger recon process, which allows us to take more scheduled service risk during peak periods. We'll launch our app in a few months. Our crew rostering system will transition to PBS later this year and all the investments we've made in crude training are starting to pay off with the lowest training footprints we've seen since COVID. Finally, our growth trends have very little risk. We have high confidence in our Minneapolis expansion based on prior success. Further, based on ongoing discussions with charter and cargo customers, I expect those segments to be able to keep growth pace with our scheduled service opportunities. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dave.

Thanks, Jude. We're pleased to report strong Q4 results, including an adjusted operating margin of 7.4%, which was well ahead of our guidance. Both our quarterly and full year 2023 results again demonstrate the resiliency and earnings power of our unique diversified business model. 2023 was the third consecutive year of profitability for Sun Country and on an adjusted net income basis with one exception, we've been profitable in every full quarter since going public in March of 2021. We believe we finished the year with the highest or among the highest adjusted pretax margins in the industry at 9.9%. This result was very similar to 2019 despite fuel being 38% higher this year. It's important to understand that our operating model is almost the opposite of the high-utilization carriers. Our passenger business flies when demand and unit revenues are highest, and we fly much less and off-peak periods. The modest increase in unit costs this produces is more than offset by the resulting improvements in unit revenue. Additionally, our diversification across scheduled service, charter and cargo operations leads to resiliency through business cycles. Our strong 2023 results allowed us to return $68.6 million to shareholders in the form of share repurchases. Since 2022, our share repurchases have totaled $93.6 million. I'll turn now to the specifics of our fourth quarter and full year results. First, revenue and capacity. In the fourth quarter, total revenue grew 8.1% versus Q4 of 2022 to $245.5 million. Scheduled service revenue plus ancillary grew 4.6% to $163.8 million. Scheduled service TRASM decreased 9.1% to $10.73 as scheduled ASMs grew by almost 15%. For the full year, total block hours increased by 9.8% versus 2022 and our total revenue was $1.05 billion, which was 17.3% higher than prior year. 2023 scheduled service plus ancillary revenue grew 15.7% to $730 million. Full year scheduled service TRASM increased 7.6% and an increase of 7.2% scheduled ASMs. Looking forward to Q1 of '24. We're anticipating scheduled service ASMs to grow approximately 15% versus Q1 of '23 with scheduled service plus ancillary revenue growth outpacing the 4.6% year-over-year growth we saw in the fourth quarter. Charter revenue in the fourth quarter grew 8.8% to $46.9 million on block hour growth of 7.8%. A portion of our charter revenue consists of reimbursement from customers for changes in fuel prices as we do not take fuel risk on our charter flying. Q4 fuel prices dropped by 14% year-over-year. If you exclude the fuel reimbursement revenue from both Q4 of '23 and Q4 of '22, charter flying revenue grew 11.1% during the period, easily exceeding block hour growth and producing a 3.1% increase in charter revenue per block hour versus last year. For the full year, charter revenue was $190.1 million, 17.6% higher than full year of '22. Charter revenue under long-term contracts was 80% of the total charter block hours as contracted charter flying grew 25.7% versus 2022. Fourth quarter cargo revenue grew 3.6% to $25.3 million on a 1.8% increase in block hours. For full year 2023, cargo revenue grew 10.4% to $99.7 million on a 5.8% increase in block hours. As you can see, we are continuing to grow at a profitable measured pace. Q1 of '24 total block hours are expected to grow between 8% and 11%, while total revenue should be between $310 million and $320 million. Turning now to costs. Fourth quarter total operating expenses increased 7.7% on a 10.4% increase in total block hours. Adjusted CASM declined by 2.2% versus Q4 of '22. During the quarter, we saw solid cost control across the company. As our pilot availability issues have eased, we've been able to achieve our growth plans, and we're benefiting from the operating leverage in the business. Importantly, more pilot availability means fewer hours paid at premium rates and lower unit costs. For the full year, total operating expense increased 9.9%, in line with total block hour growth of 9.8%. Full year adjusted CASM increased 6.4% to $7.5 with increases in the first half of the year driving this increase. Regarding our balance sheet. Our total liquidity at the end of Q4 was $205 million, which reflects $13.5 million in share repurchases during the quarter. As of January 31, our total liquidity was $234 million. In 2023, we spent $218 million on CapEx, almost $200 million of which was for aircraft and engines. We expect these aircraft to provide the bulk of the passenger lift we need through 2025. As such, we anticipate our full year 2024 CapEx to be approximately $100 million and our 2024 year-ending in-service passenger fleet count to be 44 aircraft. In addition to these aircraft, we expect to have 3 aircraft being inducted into our fleet and 4 aircraft on lease to other carriers, which we expect to redeliver to Sun Country throughout 2025. We anticipate strong free cash flow generation in 2024. We continue to maintain a very strong balance sheet. Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio at the end of 2023 was 2.2x, down from 2.7x at the end of 2022. Since we do not have a significant debt burden, we have flexibility in how we deploy our cash. Turning to guidance. We expect full quarter total revenue to be between $310 million to $320 million on block hour growth of 8% to 11%. We're anticipating our cost per gallon for fuel to be $3 and for us to achieve an operating margin between 17% and 21%. The fundamentals of our unique diversified business remain strong and our model is highly resilient to changes in macroeconomic conditions. Our focus remains on profitable growth. With that, we'll open it for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth with Evercore ISI.

Just on this improved utilization and your ability to flex back up again in the peaks, which segment would you say is most constrained or maybe asked differently, how would you characterize margins or margin opportunity across the 3 segments?

Scheduled service is by far the highest margin and most affected by staffing constraints. So think about it like an S curve or a sign wave. And if we have staffing constraints that pushes the peaks down because we can only produce a certain amount of block hours in any given period, so monthly is typically the constraint. And that yields, these really expensive opportunity costs during peak periods that's sort of becoming less of an issue as we staff the airline appropriately.

That's helpful. And so the percentages that you put out there for March versus January, is that optimal or do you think as we roll through the year, there's maybe even more peak capture you could realize?

The latter, there's definitely more opportunity in March. So a good comp would be to look back at utilization in 2019 when we weren't constrained. And there's still about 2 hours per aircraft per day of production that we aren't able to achieve in 2023 or 2024 versus '19. Now the fleet is older than it was then there's a little bit different dynamics as it relates to congestion in airports and things like that. So we won't achieve what we achieved then, but there's definitely plenty of opportunity for incremental flying. And the important aspect of that is that as we add more flying, it's coming mid-week March, but as you compare that opportunity to the average yield for the quarter, it's still above average. So we're increasing volume and unit revenues by growing peak period capacity.

Yes. That makes sense. And then just for my follow-up, I don't know if there's any way to frame it, but in terms of premium pay or over time that you incurred in 2023 that you feel like you won't incur going forward? Any way to size that order of magnitude?

I'm not sure I can give you order of magnitude. I would just say that this is what our current outlook is as we go forward. There's a minimum level of premium pay just because of the way that our contract works in any given month. So we'll need to pay that in '24, just like we did in '23, just like we did in '22. We only have 2 months right now dialed in at higher levels of premium pay in 2024 than the minimum amounts. So I think, I'll just comment on the overall staffing situation. Things have gotten significantly better. We've talked now for several quarters about the initiatives that we've undertaken here to try and improve the availability of captains in particular. I would say that those are bearing fruit and we're seeing the kind of growth that we need and the kind of attrition levels that continue to occur favorably for us. So I think premium pay is where it needs to be as well as our levels of upgrade and attrition. Now we could use more because as you just talked about, there's more opportunity for growth here, but I think we're seeing really steady progress.

Our next question comes from the line of Catherine O'Brien with Goldman Sachs.

I was just hoping to get some high-level puts and takes on 2024. How should we think about scheduled capacity growth through the rest of the year or just capacity growth overall following that 15% growth in 1Q, just in the context of you already aircraft locked in. It sounds like pilot availability is getting much better. And then on the cost side, I did some quick math, and it looks like to get to the midpoint of your operating margin guidance. I'm getting the cost ex-fuel on a block hour basis up about 4%. Is that the right level to think about through the year or should we see efficiency build or if easier, I know you guys made the comments about you think you're going to lead the industry on a CASMx basis. I wasn't sure if that was a cost GAAP comment or year-over-year performance. I know there's a couple in there.

Yes. Let me start with the cost question for next year. I don't have the block hour numbers off the top of my head, but let me give you just some CASM indicators, which I think are probably very similar to block hour. On the CASM front, I think what we're expecting now is CASM to basically be flat to up low single digits and here's the rationale. I think I mentioned last quarter, we have a program underway of accelerating some maintenance spend into 2024 which will have a modest bump to CASM, but paid significant dividends in 2025 and 2026 in terms of reduced unit costs by sort of bringing some more activities forward and packaging and then into the current checks. So that's going to be a little bit of a cost bump. But I think right now, looking forward, we're seeing, like I said, flat to low single-digit CASM growth. And my comment around relative CASM performance was mainly to point out that we're not subject to the major challenges particularly on the fleet side that the rest of the industry is dealing with. So we don't have your turbofan. We're not subject to new aircraft delivery delays. We don't expect to do any engine performance restorations, aren't subject to OEM escalation in 2024. We don't have MAX 9s. There's just not that much pressure on our costs relative to the industry. So I think we'll continue to produce better trends, maybe not on an absolute basis. And then on your question on capacity growth, like generally, we would think about mid-teen block hour growth, most of that will be allocated to sched service.

Got it. Super helpful. And then a lot of your competitors have spoken to stronger domestic trends as capacity has come down. I know your model is more immune to overcapacity in the troughs, which has been the roughest periods when capacity is out of whack. But has this had any impact on pricing in the peak where you flex up your flying? Any early reads on spring break or summer that you want to call out that you find encouraging?

Yes. I mean as I mentioned in my comments, spring break of last year was spectacular and probably not repeatable. And so we've seen a bit of a settling consistent with comments that you've heard other carriers make in the Mexican and Caribbean markets. But this year, we'll produce substantial TRASM premiums to pre-COVID levels as consistent with my comments in the last several quarters. The domestic market is doing really well. I think we're seeing a rebound in Florida, which is important to us. As we lap in the Ian challenges that West Florida was facing last year broadly, I think things are really good, consistent with other folks' comments. Grant's here with me, anything?

No. That's absolutely the case. And the airline is digesting well, 20% capacity growth in March. So it just speaks to how the brand has been built in Minneapolis, we definitely continue to be and worked very hard to be the leading leisure airline in that marketplace that I think our results speak to that point, and we're going to compete aggressively for that title going forward.

Our next question comes from the line of Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley.

This is Catherine on for Ravi. I was just curious about you mentioned this on your last question, but as the floor of CASM across the industry is expected to potentially push RASM up. I was curious if that helps you guys take price or share in that scenario.

Yes. I mean generally, yes, but the things that make us less subject to capacity effects also reduce the impact of unexpected grounding of the GTF fleet, for example. For good and for bad, we're just not as exposed to the industry machinations. But capacity out of the system is a net positive, but we'd be like the secondary tertiary effect of like reallocation of capacity to backfill will pull on the margin, some capacity of our network maybe from ROAS, but it's not material.

And just as a quick follow-up. So I know close-in bookings across the industry were really strong in last year and even probably 2021 and then dropped off in '23. What is that looking like now? And I'm curious if you guys, what normal behavior might look like for close-in bookings at Sun Country.

It remains really strong. The shape of the booking curve, which is like aggregate bookings made at any given time, it's very similar to pre-COVID levels, but at a higher fare. So it's -- I think the future looks a lot like the past in passenger behavior, I think things are really positive. Grant, anything else that?

No.

Yes, it's good.

And our next question comes from the line of Mike Linenberg with Deutsche Bank.

Just a follow-up. I actually have 2 questions here, but one follow-up on Duane's question where you've talked about really being able to take advantage of, call it, the marginal opportunity here. I think in the past, you've characterized that being able to now take advantage of the fact that you can have the fixed cost base, you're able to capitalize on that. I think you've characterized it as like a 40% operating margin, incremental operating margin as you better utilize your asset base. You did backtrack and say, well, we're still going to be off about 2 hours from where we could have been or where we were back in 2019. Is that magnitude on, call it, the incremental opportunity here? Does that still come at -- is my math right, somewhere in the 40% range or so. Is that how we should think about it?

Yes. I mean, so what we're talking about there is not an operating margin, but rather a contribution margin. So profits in excess of variable cost, revenue in excess of variable cost. And yes, I mean our March VAC variable contribution is in excess of 40%. So is it in July, so it is in the back of December. So as we grow those markets, grow those periods of time in the calendar, we would expect that level of contribution for those incremental flights absolutely.

Yes. Mike, I think one of the things on the utilization comment, 2019, there were some unique things, particularly around military flying was really strong and other things that we were able to pick up. We're not saying that there's not 2 hours of opportunity. There's opportunity, we're just not maybe going to get back to the 9-plus hours that we did in 2019 because there were some unusual things. But there's plenty of opportunity on the utilization front to drive high variable contribution flying. Downward pressure on utilization is going to come from the check cycle that Dave mentioned earlier. We have a higher sparing ratio than we've had in the past, we're going to make sure we execute real well in operations, and that requires a little bit of conservatism on utilization.

Great. And then just my second question. As we go back to fleet and procurement and the like, and I appreciate your point about that you're not dealing with the issues that a lot of other carriers are, whether it's the GTF or the grounding of the MAX 9. But now it does seem like that going forward, one of the large OEMs basically will really only have one airplane that people care about. As you know, there's not a lot of interest in the MAX 9. It's going to be all about the MAX 8, and it seems like that, that's probably going to be the primary airplane of choice over the next couple of years, which will probably put a lot of upward pressure in the used market for 800s and even use 900 ERs or maybe even 700s. What are you seeing in the market, and it was obviously encouraging to see that you picked up 2 more 800s from fly to buy, so that plus the flights from Oman. So you have 7 shells of growth. Have you identified additional shells out there that you're working on right now? And what are you seeing on the pricing for these used airplanes. It would seem like that the bid for those types of airplanes have actually moved up given the constraints of the OEMs. Any color on that would be great.

So Mike, I think you covered the operating lessors and every quarter, they say how strong the market it is for residual value. This is one time that they're right. We're going to -- I mean, so all the challenges that the OEMs are having is trickling into the used aircraft market and availability and pricing are both moving in the favor of owners of aircraft. And we are comfortable then not having to do any deals for a few years and just cash flow and we remain in the market. We're very active. If an airplane is out there trading hands, we're at the table, but the bid ask for us has really widened over the last several months. And we only originated one aircraft over the last 12 months, and we may continue on that trend for the foreseeable future, say, 2 years. The point I was making, though, is that we could grow this airline 40% without any incremental originating aircraft deals.

Our next question comes from the line of Brandon Oglenski with Barclays.

Can you talk to us looking into April in the second quarter because you guys do have, just based on the model and your peak scheduled out of Minneapolis in the first quarter, 2Q can be a little bit softer. So how do you see at least the first half of the year playing out from a profitability perspective?

So just a little bit of expectation setting. I mean Easter is a lot earlier this year than it was last year. And so that will have a negative effect on April on a year-over-year comp basis, which is expected. We had a really spectacular April of last year. As I mentioned, the winter of last year was really special and that won't repeat itself. But the trends that we've seen as we lap the COVID recovery, have broadly maintained themselves. I mean we're looking at 25%, 30% TRASM broadly over '19, you got to adjust for these calendar shifts. But generally, fares have reset themselves at a stable but a much higher level. 2Q for us is not nearly as good as 1Q, and that will obviously be the same this year, but we're certainly really bullish about where we're booking right now. Grant?

Yes. And I would also say that you've seen a continued ability of us to add capacity where we know we're going to be profitable throughout the process, and we work really closely with the operating team. So I would say there's a lot of work going on to understand where we can add some incremental capacity in the second quarter. So those keeping score with DO and those sorts of things, it's not all in there yet. And I would echo a huge sentiment. We understand what the world's going to look like in the second quarter, and we have a plan for it.

That's a really good point. I mean our scheduling philosophy is one where we hold back some capacity and allocate it as bookings matriculate. And I think that's the right way to run our business. Many airlines schedule above so that competitors notice and then they cancel down as bookings happen, we have the opposite. So we'll have this a little bit a couple of percentage points of capacity to allocate as we get in closer, which will help as well.

I appreciate that, too. And then, Dave, maybe on expectations and the offsets. I know you mentioned maybe lower premium pay this year, but what else do you have going on in the cost side that you can speak to?

Well, I mean, I think cost control across the company has been very solid. So there's a lot of operating leverage here as we grow. Like we talked about a minute ago, here on the aircraft side, we've basically got the shells we need to fly the 2024 level. So that's operating leverage kicks in and we get a CASM benefit from that. We've also got a number of IT projects that we've been working now that I think are going to contribute to a lower CASM as well. With the exception of this maintenance issue, which is a decision that we've made, costs are well in control. I can't point to any one initiative. I just think across all of the areas of our company right now, costs are well in hand.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Christopher Stathoulopoulos with Susquehanna.

What percent of your charter is currently under contract? And how much is up for renewal this year?

We have about 85% of our charter revenue right now is under long-term contract. As these pilots and other staffing issues resolve themselves, we want to drive a little more ad hoc revenue. But right now, like I said, 85%-ish or so is long term. I think we have any significant contracts up.

No, and we're working closely with any of that. So we feel really good about the portfolio, and they like what we're doing and we like being connected with them.

Okay. And the second question, the sequential decline in block hours and cargo. Is that just reflective of a weak peak or perhaps a regional shift in Amazon's network between carriers. It's just a little stupid...

That's a result entirely of the C-Check cycle and some weather disruptions that we had. It has nothing to do with -- I mean I can't comment on anything about what Amazon's plan.

Our next question comes from the line of Catherine O'Brien with Goldman Sachs.

Dave, maybe just one quick one on the share repurchase program. You guys were pretty active the last 2 years. I think you've got like $11 million or $11.5 million left and CapEx is stepping down materially. I guess any comments on, are there any changes to how you're thinking about capital allocation or should we just stay tuned on the shareholder returns front?

Yes. First of all, your comment on the free cash flow generation is spot on. I mean CapEx at the company will drop by more than half between '23 and '24. If we deliver the results that we think we're going to deliver, we're going to generate a lot of free cash and then we'll have to decide what we're going to do with that cash. There is more share buybacking that we would definitely look at. We don't have a lot of debt that's economical to pay down. We don't have a lot of debt period. We don't have a lot of debt that's economical to really pay down early with one exception. So what I think is, as we go forward here, there will be decisions around do we do share buybacks? Do we pay down this one piece of debt that we can? We're going to fully fund and we have been fully funding cost-reduction and revenue-generative initiatives, particularly on the IT side. We'll continue to do that. But that should be reflected in the $100 million I talked about for '24 CapEx. So we're in a good position to have a lot of flexibility on how we deploy our cash in '24 and '25.

Thank you. I'm currently showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Bricker, Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks.

Well, thanks, everybody, for joining us today. Have a great day, and we'll talk to you in 90 days. Thanks.