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Fortune 500

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This is the 40th year for our annual Fastest-Growing Companies list, which ranks companies based on growth in revenue, profits, and stock returns.

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The corporations on our annual list of the world's 500 largest companies combined to generate $41.7 trillion in revenue over the past year.

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The corporations on our annual list posted aggregate revenues of $41 trillion for the second year in a row.

Industries included in the sector are airlines, transportation equipment, logistics, mail and freight delivery, railroads, shipping, and trucking.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Transportation

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The 26th edition of the list shows how much esteem Big Tech giants command among other business leaders.

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The corporations on our annual list of the world’s largest companies delivered a record $41 trillion in aggregate revenues.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

F500-2023-096-United Airlines

United Airlines, one of the largest American airline carriers by revenue, has jumped 50 spots on this year’s Fortune 500, securing a spot within the top 100. 
<ul> 
 	<li>The Chicago-based company benefited from the post-COVID travel rebound, bringing in $45 billion in revenue in 2022, an 83% increase from 2021.</li> 
 	<li>United, like its rivals, faced a number of challenges through 2022—from high fuel costs and staffing shortages to delays in airplane deliveries. But the company’s 2022 fourth-quarter profit outstripped Wall Street estimates as consumers proved willing to shell out money to take trips.</li> 
 	<li>As travel demand continues to recover, United has purchased 100 new aircraft (with an option to buy 100 more) to support its growth. It also added new routes over the summer, including some that it dropped in previous years. The airline has yet to finalize a new contract with its pilots after five years of negotiations.</li> 
 	<li>United’s flight training school, United Aviate Academy, graduated its first class in January 2023, and boasted that 80% of the graduating class was made up of women or people of color.</li> 
</ul>

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This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-200-United Airlines Holdings

One of the most recognized airlines in the country, United is based in Chicago and offers national and international flights. While business travel remains depressed, leisure bookings are recovering faster from the pandemic than expected.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $33.3 trillion in revenues and $2.1 trillion in profits.

G500-2020-276-United-Airlines-Holdings

United overcame international and aircraft-related challenges to flourish in 2019. Despite the grounding of its Boeing 737 MAX jets and the impact of Hong Kong protests on its flights there, United increased its passenger revenue and benefitted from low fuel costs; overall revenues rose 4.7% to $43.3 billion, and profits jumped 41.3%, to $3 billion. CEO Oscar Munoz, who spent years helping United recover from its troubled merger with Continental, last June dropped the latter’s name from the combined company. J. Scott Kirby, who had been president of the company succeeded Munoz as CEO in May 2020. But the airline’s large international business meant that United was one of the first U.S. carriers to feel the effects of the coronavirus pandemic; by April, it had accepted government aid, slashed capacity, given voluntary unpaid leaves of absence to more than 20,000 workers, and reported $1.7 billion in first-quarter losses. The pain continued in the second quarter as sales plummeted 87% compared to the year before and United reported a loss of $1.6 billion.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-076-United-Airlines

United overcame international and aircraft-related challenges to flourish in 2019, gaining two spots on the list. Despite the grounding of its Boeing 737 MAX jets and the impact of Hong Kong protests on its flights there, United increased its passenger revenue and benefitted from low fuel costs; overall revenues rose 4.7% to $43.3 billion, and profits jumped 41.3%, to $3 billion. CEO Oscar Munoz, who spent years helping United recover from its troubled merger with Continental, in June dropped the latter’s name from the combined company. J. Scott Kirby, who had been president of the company succeeded Munoz as CEO in May 2020. But the airline’s large international business meant that United was one of the first U.S. carriers to feel the effects of the coronavirus pandemic; by April, it had accepted government aid, slashed capacity, given voluntary unpaid leaves of absence to more than 20,000 workers, and reported $1.7 billion in first-quarter losses.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2019 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.7 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

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This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.6 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

The world's 500 largest companies generated $31.2 trillion in revenues and $1.7 trillion in profits in 2014. Together, this year's Fortune Global 500 employ 65 million people worldwide and are represented by 36 countries.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Global business is back. After limping through a worldwide financial crisis and economic slowdown, the 500 largest companies ranked by revenues shattered all sorts of performance records in 2013: They racked up combined revenues of $31.1 trillion, up 2.5% from 2012, and profits soared 27% to nearly $2 trillion. China’s 95 companies (up from 89 last year) posted $5.8 trillion in revenues. The U.S. has four fewer companies on the list than last year but remains (for now) the country leader, with 128 corporations on the list—including No. 1 Wal-Mart Stores—reporting $8.6 trillion in revenues. 

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

Fastest-growing Companies

Revenue 3 Yr Growth Rank

Revenue 3 Yr Annual Growth Rate

EPS 3 Yr Growth Rank

EPS 3 Yr Annual Growth Rate

Total Return 3 Yr Rank

Total Return 3 Yr Annual Rate

Beat S&P 500 3 Yr Return

Current Streak

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Current All-Star Rank

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Incorporated in 1968, United Airlines Holdings is one of the world’s largest airlines. It transports both people and cargo internationally. It also provides third-party services, including maintenance and ground-cargo handling.

Q2 2026

Q1 2026

Q4 2025

Q3 2025

Q2 2025

Q1 2025

Q4 2024

United Airlines Holdings (UAL): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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United Airlines Holdings

united airlines holdings

Good morning, and welcome to United Airlines Holdings Earnings Conference Call for the Second Quarter of twenty twenty five. My name is Krista, and I will be your conference facilitator today. Following the initial remarks from management, we will open up the lines for questions. This call is being recorded and is copyrighted. Please note that no portion of the call may be recorded, transcribed or rebroadcast without the company's permission.

Your participation implies your consent to our recording of this call. If you do not agree with these terms, simply drop off the line. I will now turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Christina Edwards, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to United's second quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release, which is available on our website at ir. United dot com. Information in yesterday's release and remarks made during this conference call may contain forward looking statements, which represent the company's current expectations, which are based upon information currently available to the company. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations.

Please refer to our earnings release, Form 10 ks and 10 Q and other reports filed with the SEC by United Airlines Holdings and United Airlines for a more thorough description of these factors. Unless otherwise noted, we will be discussing our financial metrics on a non GAAP basis on this call. Please refer to the related definitions and reconciliations in our press release. For a reconciliation of these non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to the tables at the end of our earnings release. Joining us on the call today to discuss our results and outlook are our Chief Executive Officer, Scott Kirby Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer, Toby Inquist Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Andrew Nocella and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Mike Leskinen.

In addition, we have other members of the executive team on the line available for Q and A. And now, I'd like to kick the call over to Scott.

Thanks, Christina, good morning, everyone. Second quarter was yet another proof point that the United's next strategy continues to work and that the two brand loyal revenue diverse airlines continue to generate the bulk of industry profit. I'm extremely proud of the team for executing a strong operation and navigating through a volatile macro period and unique short term issues that impacted United at Newark, while still managing to grow earnings and margins for the first half of the year. Newark faced unique challenges this quarter. With the help and partnership with the FAA and DOT, it has rebounded stronger and has been the best performing airport in the New York City area.

But I know that everyone, including us, cares more about the future than the past. So I'm going start today with the two macro drivers of our industry, supply and demand. From a supply perspective, it's deja vu all over again. This is almost the exact same setup that we had a year ago at this time with weak RASM results across the industry leading to supply cuts starting in mid August leading to better margin results, which then led to strong stock price performance. But demand also matters in this equation and demand while it stabilized was about five points weaker in the first half of the year than we were expecting at the start of the year.

As we look closely at the data, we've had a hypothesis that seems increasingly correct. Demand was weak for the last five months due to high levels of uncertainty for both businesses and consumers. I'm sure that's not a shocking thesis, but in the past few weeks, the level of uncertainty has declined. The tax situation is settled after the reconciliation bill passed. The geopolitical situation in The Middle East appears to have stabilized.

And while tariffs are not yet certain, I think the market and most businesses have a much better read on how they'll manage in a narrower range of outcomes. And encouragingly, that higher level of certainty has translated into a meaningful inflection point in demand. It's only three weeks worth of data, Andrew will give you more detail, but as uncertainty has declined, we've seen an improvement in booked revenue including a double digit acceleration in business demand. So to summarize the macro, supply is adjusting once again just like it did last year. Demand feels to us like it is inflected upward and is returning toward the normal trend line we expected at the start of the year.

And bigger picture for United, the industry and United industry specific transformation we've been discussing over the last few years continues to play out. One, revenue diversity and that includes basic economy just as well as premium is the only formula that works in The U. S. To have industry leading margins. Two, the two brand loyal airlines continue to just gradually win share quarter over quarter and the advantages that we have are structural, permanent, irreversible and they're growing and it's simply not practical to copy them.

Three, cost convergence, specifically at the high cost airports is making the economics of flying at those airports for low cost carriers very challenging. For what it's worth, the only remaining successful LCC around the globe in my view is Ryanair. And guess what? That's because they're the only LCC that stayed true to their founding principles and don't fly to high cost airports like London Heathrow or Charles De Gaulle. Four, and all of that is gradually leading airlines to focus on their comparative advantages.

It's often two steps forward and one step back, but the trend continues to be towards each airline flying more and more in places where they have relative strength and shrinking in places where they're at a disadvantage. That of course is just basic economics, but it's happening. And because it's just basic economics, that trend is going to continue for years to come. So to conclude, I'm proud of the team for overcoming the macro and Newark environment in the first half of the We had high confidence that the supply changes were coming, but it's good to actually see them. But I'm also encouraged that the demand environment appears to have inflected back towards the trend line we were expecting to start the year.

Typically, would now leave it to Brett to speak next, but he's not able to join us for the call today. He recently had a preplanned surgery and is on the road to recovery. We're looking forward to having him back soon. So for today's call, I'll hand it off to Chief Operations Officer, Toby Inkris.

Thank you, Scott. I'm really proud of our United team and our operational performance in the second quarter. Before I detail our top tier system wide results, I'm going to start with the hub that got the most attention this quarter, Newark. Located in the largest media market in America and the most crowded airspace in the world, Newark will always get outside attention. Even this past week, when all the New York City airports were hit with severe weather, it disrupted a lot of travel plans and got a lot of airtime.

Thunderstorms are gonna happen, especially in the summer. That's why cementing the progress we have made over the last couple of months to improve the resilience of our New York operation is a huge priority for United. At the start of the second quarter, our New York team was thrust into the middle of a perfect storm. A string of FAA technology outages combined with Newark's ongoing runway construction and the FAA staffing shortages drove cancellations and delays impacting customers' perception of the reliability of the airport. Those perception and the extensive negative news coverage of the situation at Newark Airport drove meaningful book away and load factors dropped 15 points following the event.

As a result of the book away and capacity reduction, Q2 margins were impacted by approximately 1.2 points. We expect that the impact will linger into Q3 with an approximately one point margin impact. But here's the key takeaway and it's really good news. We have already seen a dramatic turnaround in Newark. Bookings have largely recovered and we don't expect any impact in q four because Newark isn't just back to normal, it's running better than ever.

In fact, United's operation at Newark had the few cancellations and most on time flights of any airport in the New York area in the month of June. The airport now is actually operating within its capability, and our team is back to running an operation that delivers a great experience for our customers. These are the changes that made it possible. Thanks to the great work of the Port Authority and numerous runway construction was completed two weeks early and the runway reopened on June 2. The FAA was able to upgrade their fiber optic technology.

And perhaps the most importantly, the FAA implemented badly needed hourly flight caps to prevent the airport schedule from exceeding its capacity. Lyrica's had a schedule and capacity problem that we have been urging the FAA to fix for more than a decade. And thanks to their leadership shown by Secretary Duffy, we now have the line of sight to a longer term solution to this problem. It's likely we'll look back and find that this long term capacity fix is the most important and positive outcome for the traveling public. What happened in New York and April is also evidence of the broader need to improve our nation's ATC infrastructure.

United was deeply engaged with secretary Duffy and the FAA who successfully advocated for the $12,500,000,000 in funding that congress just passed earlier this month to begin the long overdue process of rebuilding our outdated ATC infrastructure. Much of this funding will go towards upgrading copper wire to modern fiber optic cables to help reduce the hundreds of outages the FAA experience across the ATC system. We look forward to working with Secretary Duffy and leaders in Congress for the additional funding needed to fully update our ATC technology. I actually ran Newark Airport for United from 2011 to 02/2014, so I know the airport really well. And I'm more optimistic about United's future there than I've ever been because Newark never been better positioned to operate reliable and profitable than there is right now.

From the FAA to secretary Duffy to governor Murphy to the New Jersey congressional delegation to the Port Authority of New York, New Jersey, lots of people deserve credit for this turnaround. But our team on the ground at Newark deserve the most. They're professional, resilient, focused, and committed. Despite challenges that were out of their control, they showed up day after day and delivered for our customers and one another. All across the system, United operation continues to fire on all cylinders and continues to be a big reason why our airline is thriving, ranked number two in on time departure among the top eight US carriers even though we operate in the toughest markets in the world, all while managing record high customer volumes, including the busiest travel day in United's history with over 611,000 passengers on June 22.

We also had one of the lowest second quarter seat cancellation rates in our history. This operational strength played a key role in supporting our strong NPS performance in the quarter, our highest Q2 NPS since the pandemic. Thank you to the entire United team for delivering a fantastic second quarter result. I will now hand it over to Andrew to talk about the revenue environment.

Thanks, Toby. United's top line revenue increased 1.7% to a record $15,200,000,000 in the quarter. Consolidated TRASM for the quarter was down 4% on a 5.9% increase in capacity. Adjusted for events at Newark, we believe United TRASM would have been down 2% to 3% and our EPS would have been at the high end of our guide. This outcome for Q2 comes during the highest level of geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty we have seen in years.

International flying outperformed domestic yet again with a RASM decrease of 1% compared to a domestic decrease of 7%. United specific operations continued their impressive results with positive RASM growth in Q2 across most destinations. We look forward to new service to Thailand, Vietnam and The Philippines starting later this year subject to government approval. The Atlantic, which had an incredible run of 23% RASM growth since the pandemic, did have negative RASMs year over year, Unlike in off peak quarters, pushing Atlantic RASM higher in peak period has proved more difficult in part due to the spread of leisure demand to usually lower demand periods. Margins in these historically off peak periods are up, while margins in peak months, which are still high, are down.

Premium cabin revenues were again strong in Q2, increasing 5.6% year over year, while the economy cabinets was negative. Overall premium RASMs were six points better than non premium. It's nice to see once again that the premium capacity remains resilient. Given the consistency of these results, we plan to further lean into premium products and capacity in the coming years. Cargo performance is strong with revenue up 4% year over year on record volumes and loyalty revenues had another strong quarter with revenues up 9%.

Now turning to our outlook for Q3 and the rest of the year. New York's negative impact on bookings in Q2 for future travel are expected to have a temporary impact on revenue results in Q3 of about a point. The good news is Newark's share of New York City sales has now largely recovered in July along with the reliability of our flight operations. Passengers can now book with confidence. Newark sales returning to normal for United are critical to our revenue performance.

However, in addition to normal New York sales volume, we are seeing a step down in published industry capacity later this summer that we believe will be a positive for United. Published industry domestic capacity for August and September indicate slightly less capacity year over year when just a few months ago it was published at up almost 4%. Low margin airlines without strong brand loyalty and diversified revenue streams are cutting unprofitable flying. We believe this is always an inevitable outcome, an outcome that we expect will be uniquely beneficial to brand loyal airlines with much higher margins and well diversified networks and products. A great reset we see from the low margin airlines today makes sense for them, but in no way do we expect them to match what we offer consumers today plus what we have planned in the future.

We have a large lead and we intend to maintain that with further innovation. Combining normalized New York sales along with less overall industry capacity sets up an improved revenue backdrop. However, the most important development for revenues is that the overall demand environment. Recent United and industry sales data confirms a demand environment that has inflected positively in recent weeks due to this less macroeconomic uncertainty. Just as quickly as demand stepped down in early February due to this uncertainty, it appears that demand is now stepping up.

This step up is a six point positive swing in sales to date in July versus the second quarter, but even more importantly a double digit swing in higher yielding business revenues in the same period. Domestic ticket sales are now also showing positive year over year yields reflecting this improved demand environment for the first time since February. For us, we believe these four factors of New York performance, industry capacity, demand improvements and positive domestic yields makes the setup for post summer twenty twenty five very similar to the period in 2024. As you will recall, the 2024 setup created a very good outcome for Q4 and a nice run up in our stock price. This significant positive momentum in sales in recent weeks is nice to see, but it is really important to draw a distinction between bookings and flown revenue as we look at Q3.

Recent booking strength does not change the fact that 50% of third quarter sales were sold as of July 1 prior to the change in sentiment along with the unique impact of temporary lower demand for Newark on United sales. The setup for Global Flying also looks much better as we head into Q4. For United, Q3 relies the most on the segments of the business that have been the weakest in 2025, offshore shells and main cabin sales. As we head into Q4, we historically rely more on onshore business and premium demand, which makes Q4 have a better outlook in the current environment. Our early look at Q4 global yields and bookings supports our view, but we still have a long way to go and Q3 RASMs will likely be negative year over year.

In summary, bookings strength is now translates into stronger flown revenues and RASMs later in Q3 and Q4. This recent sales momentum along with about a point of negative impact on Newark on Q3 RASM gives us confidence that the implied RASM step up from Q3 to Q4 we have in our internal outlook is quite achievable and maybe even conservative. We're hopeful that cooled Middle East tensions will allow a full schedule to Tel Aviv soon. We plan to resume Tel Aviv service initially just from Newark on July 21 and hope to include other gateways later this year. Building domestic connectivity at our hubs continues to be one of our largest focuses for 2025 and 2026 as we create winning schedules and ultimately larger premiums versus others in the process.

We believe this connectivity effort combined with larger gauge near body jets with more premium seats will narrow significantly the margin gap between our domestic and international clients. United has grown its relative TRASM by seven points more than the industry since 2019 and faster than any other carrier since the pandemic as evidence that our plan is working and not all capacity is created equally. Brand loyalty for United is increasing with documented share gains in Q1 in each of our hubs. United's revenues are more diverse than ever and in the process our product choice range gives customers more choices for the experience they desire. United plans to introduce the Polaris Studio Suite later this year, another step in increasing our premium capacity and revenue diversity.

We also look forward to building our Blue Sky collaboration with JetBlue later this year to help create a more competitive alternative for United customers and MileagePlus members in New York City along with Boston. We also look forward to returning to JFK in 2027 after a long absence with a competitive schedule and a built in frequent flyer base. In summary, we remain bullish about the future given less macroeconomic uncertainty we are seeing plus scheduled capacity changes by the low margin airlines later this summer. The inflection in bookings and yields we've recently seen gives us great confidence. With that, I want to say thanks to the entire United team for running a great airline in Q2, and I will hand it off to Mike to discuss our financial results.

Thanks, Andrew. I'm very proud of United team this quarter. We faced several geopolitical challenges that impacted both fuel prices and customer demand, while also managing through the Newark difficulties Toby discussed earlier. And despite all of this, we delivered earnings per share of $3.87 well within our guidance range and ahead of Wall Street expectations of $3.81 I'm very pleased with these results and want to highlight that if we excluded the financial impact of the Newark disruption, we would have been above the high end of our range. This is another proof point that our United Next plan is working.

In fact, I'd go as far to say that our plan has worked. The industry has transformed into a healthier industry where customers are brand loyal and increasingly choose to fly not just based on the schedule, but also based on their preferences for reliability, for clubs, for technology and for loyalty programs. The industry now has two brand loyal, structurally profitable and revenue diverse airlines, which which has driven much of the rest of the industry to cut money losing capacity to return to profitability. This is irreversible and will lead to stable double digit margins for United Airlines. Turning to costs.

We continue to run better than planned and I'm pleased with the 2.2 CASM ex growth we delivered in the second quarter. You've heard me say that the best way to manage costs is to run a reliable airline and this team continues to deliver. I expect similar cost performance for the remainder of the year. As we look to the third quarter, we expect continued stabilization in the geopolitical environment. This is already driving stronger bookings and as Andrew discussed, we're optimistic those trends will continue.

Taking that into account along with the continued strong cost performance, we expect third quarter EPS to be between $2.25 and $2.75 Consistent with what happened last year, we also expect the industry to continue to reduce money losing capacity in domestic markets beyond September. This adds to our confidence in the fourth quarter and may even lead to upside as we continue to believe in our path to double digit pretax margins longer term. For now, we expect full year EPS to be between $9 and $11 Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the second quarter with $18,600,000,000 in liquidity, including our $3,000,000,000 undrawn revolver. We generated over $1,100,000,000 of free cash flow.

And importantly, on July 7, we paid down the remaining $1,500,000,000 balance of our MileagePlus bonds two years early. This was our most expensive remaining fixed rate debt. This prepayment along with the prepayment of the MileagePlus term loan a year ago fully unencumbered the MileagePlus business, a crown jewel asset of United. With this prepayment, we have unencumbered assets that exceed $40,000,000,000 Strengthening the balance sheet remains a top priority and we target net leverage below two times and continue to work towards investment grade. With this prepayment, we've now reduced our gross debt by almost $11,000,000,000 since the peak debt level of COVID.

Our average cost of debt is now 4.7%. On the buyback, we repurchased $235,000,000 worth of shares at an average price of $66 during the quarter, leaving $829,000,000 in authorization. We will continue to take a balanced approach to our capital allocation strategy. Our shares continue to trade below our view of intrinsic value. Therefore, we are balancing the level of buyback while also pursuing our leverage target.

We ended the second quarter at two times net leverage. Free cash flow generation also remains a priority and we now expect to generate over $2,000,000,000 in free cash flow for the year. In conclusion, I remain excited about the future of United Airlines and we will continue to work to deliver on our financial commitments. Despite the headwinds we faced in the first half of the year, we delivered significant growth in EPS and we feel very good about the core fundamentals of our airline in the 2025 and beyond. Now back to Christina to start the Q and A.

Thanks, Mike. I echo that excitement. We will now take questions from the analyst community. Please limit yourself to one question and if needed, one follow-up question. Christa, please describe the procedure to ask a question.

Thank you. The question and answer session will be conducted electronically. And your first question comes from Todd with UBS. Please go ahead.

Yes. Good morning. It's Tom Wadewitz from UBS. So wanted to ask you a bit on the cost side performance. Mike, I think your comments were pretty favorable.

Obviously, the 2.2% CASM ex in 2Q is very good. How do we think about that going forward? And then I think there was one particular expense item that seemed a bit lower than kind of normal. Distribution expense was down quite a bit year over year in sequential, which seems different than normal. So I don't know if there's something that's kind of one off helping you there or just more on the cost side and how you keep the strong performance going on that? Thank you.

Hey, Tom. I appreciate the question. I am really proud of the cost performance better than I certainly expected back in January. I want to be clear, we expect similar cost performance to q two in both q three and q four. For '26 and beyond, we'll have you'll have to wait as we continue to work on budgets.

Distribution expense does continue to come down as more customers are choosing to go through the direct channel. So I do expect that long term trend. We did get some benefit this quarter, that that had some puts and takes that brought that down even more in the second quarter. But longer term, distribution costs are headed lower, and we're really proud of that result as well.

Okay. Yes, that's great. And then for the follow-up, just on demand, you had some really helpful commentary. Are we back to January levels on demand or we're kind of on the way back there? Or how do we kind of reset to say okay in July with Newark recovery and a little bit of stabilization kind of just where are we at?

Hi, it's Andrew. Look, we said is there's been a six point inflection versus Q2. It's an even stronger inflection for business traffic during that time period. There's a lot of machinations with the numbers prior to that. But I just think from where we are standing today, we're really pleased by that change in direction of bookings combined with less capacity starting in August and September and then some more favorable Q4 environment.

So we do think it's nice step up and hopefully conservative based on where the bookings have recently been, but it's a good change in direction.

Your next question comes from the line of David Vernon with Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning and thanks for taking the question. So Mike, the last time we spoke, you put out kind of two guidance ranges, one that would be intact if things are stable. Now we're coming down to a kind of a little new lower midpoint. Can you kind of walk us through kind of where we're settling in or what's changed, from stability to where we are now? And then talk about kind of what's baked into that second half guidance, particularly around the acceleration of demand.

Are we baking that kind of into the guidance range? Or is there an ability to kind of maybe do better than what we're laying out here in the second half? Thanks.

Thanks, Dave. Really appreciate the question. Look, we've had a philosophy here at United to guide conservatively to build in one act of God because this industry, things happen. Fuel prices spike, there's an ebb and flow in tariffs. There's lots of things that change.

And so it is important to us we deliver on our commitments. And so as you look at that nineeleven for the full year and what's implied by the second half, we are consistent with our philosophy of building in that act of God. If you go back to the end of the first quarter in the call, we talked about the two ranges. The world was highly uncertain at that time, and I was very clear at that time that the higher range, the $11.50 to $13.50, that there was no contingency left. That that that piece of the guide was not consistent with the with any more acts of god that would would impact us.

But I'm very excited. The bookings over the last three weeks have been very strong. And if everything continues on that trajectory, I think the nineeleven will prove conservative.

All right. Thank you for that. That's helpful. Andrew, you mentioned sort of looking at the implied RASM step up you're getting from 3Q to 4Q. Also being a little bit on the conservative side.

Can you kind of frame kind of what the levers are in there that you're thinking might actually do better than what we're seeing right now? Is it in main cabin? Is it an acceleration of business? Kind of help us think through like what that what are the drivers of that step up from 3Q to 4Q? And where are the things you're more versus less certain on? Thank you.

Well, the most certain thing is what the other airlines have published for schedules in August and September, which now, just a few weeks ago, were showing plus four, now showed negative for domestic. And so I think the demand environment, I just talked about, the ability for business traffic to rebound which kind of changes the yield profile. I said, we were booking negative yields for a majority of the year and those have now flipped positive for domestic. So when you take lower demand, positive yields and this pretty strong inflection in business demand for United, that that's the reason I feel really great about the setup for q four. You know, as as we said earlier, it's very deja vu in some of these circumstances to what we saw last year, which was a pretty significant step up.

So we we anticipate the same based on what we see in published schedules, based on demand, based on yields and based on business traffic.

All right. Thank you guys. Thanks for the time.

Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Baker with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning everybody. This one is probably for Scott. Your primary U. S. Competitor has a significant non union labor construct.

It's got one of the most efficient hubs in the country. It's got a sizable MRO. It's got perhaps the most evolved relationship with its loyalty partner. And, you know, to to your credit, Scott, I mean, you've spoken publicly about, you know, holding Delta in high regard. So my question is, what are the catalysts that potentially allow United to overtake Delta margins in coming years?

Is it structural? Is it simply brand preference? Or or perhaps you reject the premise that you can have the industry's highest margins, but I doubt that that's going to be your answer.

I appreciate the question. But what I'd say is I do respect Delta. In fact, on a conceptual level, much of what we I've been trying to do for the last fifteen years with the airlines I've been at, is win brand loyal customers. And I think they were the first airlines, maybe the first in The US to really prove that that winning brand loyal airlines was the winning formula winning brand loyal customers was the winning formula for airlines. But my focus is entirely on returning United Airlines to solid double digit margins and higher absolute margins as opposed to what we do relative to Delta. I think we are the only two airlines that have a shop we're the only two brand loyal revenue diverse airlines.

I think that is structural. It is permanent. We can talk in more detail about why. It is not copyable by anyone else. And we already generate the bulk of the industry profit.

I suspect when you hear earnings results next week, despite the challenges that Delta had last year at CrowdStrike, where we have this year, there's gonna be those ups and downs that our margin gap to the end the two of us, our margin gap to the industry is going to continue to expand. And I think we're going to wind up in the same ballpark on margins. You mentioned some of their advantages. We have some advantages as well. Our hubs are better.

Atlanta is a great hub, but collectively our hubs, think are better. They're bigger cities. We have better international gateways in San Fran, Newark, and Dallas in particular. So I think those are gonna largely balance out. We're gonna wind up with similar margins, but I'd much rather us have 13% margins and Delta have 13 and a half than us have 10 and Delta have nine and a half.

And everything we're doing is a 100% focused on winning brand loyal customers and creating a great airline that customers are going to choose to fly because that is going to maximize our absolute margins. And this quarter is another like this first half of the year, it's remarkable to me everything that's happened this year that we've grown earnings and margins for the first half of the year. And our guidance is for earnings to be down a little bit this year given everything that has happened. But we have a shot at actually growing earnings this year which would be a truly incredible result and proof point that winning brand loyal customers was the right strategy. We started it a long time ago.

You can't flip it overnight. The two of us have the right strategy and we are going to generate the bulk of the industry profits.

Excellent. Thank you. And then quickly for Mike on the loyalty pay down. Streeter and I certainly get that it was your highest cost prepayable debt, makes total sense from a financial perspective. But we keep circling back and asking ourselves if we should be thinking about that recent transaction through more of a strategic lens.

Can you afford any perspective on that? Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the question Jamie. Milos Plus is a crown jewel asset for us. And we're absolutely thinking about the value of that business. The multiple of business with the resiliency of earnings that our loyalty business has is significantly higher than the historical average for the airline industry and that's not lost on me. My focus at this time is to provide segment disclosure, so there's more transparency on the earnings, the resiliency, the earnings growth of that business.

And we're working very hard to get that segment disclosure to the market at some point next year. That's my focus. If the value is not recognized, we certainly will take more drastic steps. But the focus right now is only segment reporting. The unencumbered of the business does give us optionality.

Your next question comes from the line of Connor Cunningham with Melius Research. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Maybe to piggyback on Jamie a little bit here. Scott, last third quarter or last year's third quarter, you talked a lot about the industry being on a path of the twenty twelve to 2014 cycle with margins doubling. Clearly, environment kind of started off more challenging this year. And some of the so, you know, some investors kind of abandoned that narrative.

But I was just curious on how you view your thesis now and and what may may have changed, since the start of the year or really what you've learned, and how that's been applied to to that thesis in general. Thank you.

Sure. I think the thesis is intact. What's different is is what changed with demand this year. The thesis is really a supply thesis. That's what you can control and that's what happened in twenty twelve to twenty fourteen.

The twenty twelve to twenty fourteen was in a backdrop to of a a stronger demand environment. This year, demand has changed. Demand inflected downward certainly for the first six months of the year Given everything that's happened, you know, all the uncertainty in the world, at least that's my theory of what happened. And it started to inflect back positive. Now it's not all the way back to what it was.

You know, the business managed to cover it. It's not all the way back, but it is certainly inflected in a positive direction and, you know, sort of my read of the economy and talking to other CEOs and just watching the data is that the economy hit a turning point, did hit an inflection point at the June and I expect it to continue, that to continue. I think the supply portion of that 2012 is firmly intact. I think demand is on the road, demand has ups and downs that always happens. It is on the road to recovery.

I think one thing that's becoming even more clear though is is also the strength the the dispersion of results in the industry and the strength of the two brand loyal airlines really winning and everyone else losing. And if I dig deeper into it and I look at every airline that's not named United or Delta, I can find, you know, at every single one of them, a double digit percentage of their route network that loses money. And the only way for them to get margins that are anywhere close to their whack is to stop flying places that lose money. And that is going to ultimately I don't think it's gonna happen tomorrow. I don't think it's gonna happen in the near term, but I can look at how much money is being lost route by route and know that economic gravity is ultimately gonna win.

So I I think actually the results are gonna in total, the industry is gonna go in the same place for supply, But the results for the two winning airlines are going to be outsized in that environment.

Awesome. Appreciate that. And then maybe Andrew, last quarter you talked a little bit about taking the reins on industry spill traffic. Obviously, just given the changes in yield and opened up basic economy a little bit sooner. But you're being pretty clear about what you're seeing in July.

So I'm just trying to understand how you're managing basically economy versus other products out there just from a couple months ago. Thank you.

Sure. I think the demand environment is what we said it was over the last ninety days. This inflected much positive much more positive today. But that did create a setup for Q3, which means, more open RM systems. I don't think that's going to be unique to United, particularly in the domestic environment.

And that has created some more lower yields and it's created, I think, ultimately, when we report more penetration of basic economy passengers in our numbers for the next ninety days this quarter. So expect a higher percentage of basic is my take as we go through the next ninety days.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Didora with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. I guess my first question probably for Andrew. I never think of summer as being the time for corporate demand to meaningfully accelerate. So any kind of color you can provide on what you're seeing there?

Any specific geographies or industry verticals driving this? And are you seeing the level of corporate bookings return to the level seen at end of twenty twenty four, early twenty twenty five right now? Thanks.

Well, first of all, you know, we're comparing year over year. So we're comparing summer over summer, and and we're seeing that strength in the numbers, which is nice to see. So I think it is consistent, with a summer environment, which is, again, I see. Second point, which I think is particularly important is the strength we're seeing is across all of our hubs and different verticals. So we're seeing a rebound across the board, which I think reflects the commentary earlier about less macroeconomic uncertainty.

So we have obviously a very strong recovery in New York. We're not fully recovered yet from a business point of view, but that's moving along. But the fact that the non New York business for United over the last few weeks has been almost as strong as New York is one of the reasons I'm particularly excited. I I do think, this reflects customer choice, corporation's choice, and our relationship with travel agencies, that we're being chosen more and more often. But the fact is and the most important part of this question or answer is the fact that the growth we're seeing in business traffic is across the board. It's not in any singular hub.

Great. That's helpful. And then my second question for either you Andrew or Scott if you want to chime in. Just on this whole industry capacity dynamic, why do you think we've been in this position a lot over the last few years basically sitting here in the peak summer and seeing the need for capacity cuts coming in sort of the off peak once we hit post August into Labor Day. Why do we not see more of this capacity, call it, more in the first half of the year or in other off peak periods? Just curious your thoughts on that. Thank you.

Sure. I'll give it a try. Look, there's as we've said a lot now, there's really distinct carriers out there with distinct demand situations. And so for the leisure oriented carriers that are also spill oriented carriers, which is a lot of them, I think it's become really obvious very, very quickly that in the lower demand off peak periods, it doesn't make a lot of sense to push the aircraft very hard. And a lot of airlines across the industry, I think, just simply have lower utilization.

Given that, I think there's a desire to offset that. It's just natural in our business across the board to see to push the aircraft harder in q two and q three when demand normally seasonally turns. And I think that's the output that's occurred and we'll see where it goes next year. But I think it's pretty obvious in off peak periods. It's hard to push aircraft.

It's hard to push aircraft on red eyes. It's hard to push 5AM flights or 10PM flights. And it's pretty obvious that we at United do not do that. I've talked about the golden hour flying, is 7AM to 8PM. I think our golden hour percentage is the highest of any US carrier over a twelve month period.

United Airlines Holdings (UAL) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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