The companies on the Global 500 employ 70.2 million people, and their revenue represents more than one-third of the world’s GDP.

Fortune Global 500

With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

AI is a major force shaping this year’s list—but it’s far from the only story.

World's Most Admired Companies

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

100 Fastest-Growing Companies

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.

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Leaders in all industries rely more than ever on Big Tech—and appreciate the giants that deliver, at scale, without drama.

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.

The 25th Fortune World’s Most Admired Companies list suggests that tech giants’ peers respect them as much as ever.

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>

Just as it dominates our economy, Big Tech now dominates Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

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.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2017 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

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

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2016 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

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

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Current Streak

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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 4th Quarter and Full Year 2024. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference facilitator today. Following the initial remarks from management, we will open 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.

Thank you, Regina. Good morning and welcome to United's 4th quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release, which is available on our website at ir.united.com. Information in yesterday's release and the 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 direct fully comparable GAAP measures, please refer to the tables at the end of our earnings release. Joining us today on the call to discuss our results and outlook are Chief Executive Officer, Scott Kerberty President, Brett Hart Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Andrew Fella and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Mike Luskinen.

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

Thanks, Christina, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. I want to begin by saying that our thoughts are with those affected by the wildfires in the Los Angeles area. We've been in close touch with our employees and communities in the area to offer them support. We'll continue to monitor the situation to see if there are more ways that we can help. Turning to earnings.

2024 was another solid proof point on our way to double digit margins. By the fall of 2020, several months after COVID struck, we at United had a clear vision of how our airline and the industry were going to evolve. 2024 seems to have been the year that we gained broad recognition from others that the vision is playing out as we expected. Our outlook has always been based on a realistic view of how the economics of the industry were going to change and how those changes had the potential to drive structural, permanent and irreversible changes in the entire industry. Our 2024 plan developed from what that vision and our results were the culmination of years of thoughtful planning, bold action and strategic investments.

I'd like to thank our employees for these stellar results and I'm proud to say that we'll be paying out $713,000,000 in profit sharing this year. In 2024, United continued to make progress with our UnitedLex plan and once again delivered earnings within our original range. Our investments over the last several years have further differentiated United from the rest of the industry and led to strong customer preference for the United brand. But the bigger point here is that the changes led to this moment are structural and durable. Cost convergence, which we first talked publicly about on this call in Houston 2 years ago, combined with effective revenue diversity at United for the first time ever and industry leading product and service causing customers to choose United are just irreversible structural changes that have created a competitive moat for United.

Answering an analyst question 2 quarters ago, I talked about how this feels very much like 2012 to 2014. But today, I'll add that there are 2 additional tailwinds this time around. The international environment, which Andrew will discuss in more detail, is going to be far stronger for longer because of the structural supply constraints that are going to last at least for the rest of this decade. Wide body supply, both airframes and engines, is even more challenged than narrow bodies. And second, domestically, the seeds of the 2012 to 2014 era's demise were being sown at the time with 15% to 20% growth from the ULCCs.

It's very hard to see that happening again. Importantly, all of this means that the industry is evolving into an equilibrium where each airline driven by economic necessity will be primarily focused on flying where they have a competitive advantage. Different airlines have different competitive strengths and weaknesses in the post COVID era. Cost convergence has been the most impactful at the big high cost airports in the country. The cost per passenger in the 3 New York City airports is $48 compared to the average ULCC fare of $67 in those 3 airports.

When an airline is spending 72% of their fare on airport costs, it's hard for me to imagine that they could ever be profitable in those airports. At the same time, LCCs do have an advantage and will always be able to be more profitable than United in point to point low cost airports. It really is a transformed industry and United more than anyone is leading the way. We have 7 great hubs. We are well ahead of the curve in investing for the future and we're focusing all of our efforts in growth in our hubs where we have the competitive advantage.

The combined virtues of our size and our innovative culture make us a competitive juggernaut. We know who we are. We know our strength. We also know our weaknesses. And we're going to focus on our strength and nothing else.

But we won't rest on our laurels and we'll never be complacent or satisfied with our results. We'll continue to be an airline where good leads the way by focusing on ways to even better airline for our customers. Starlink is one of the most obvious high profile investments for customers, but it's really just the visible tip of the iceberg. Our digital team is expanding our best in the world technology by making further improvements to make the airline even more transparent and easy to do business with. And our ops team is focused on changing the unchangeable and trying to solve problems that no other airline in the world has ever even tried to fix.

And we'll continue to invest in a brand that inspires pride in employees and customers alike. This year, we expect to grow our EPS by approximately 18% at the midpoint and we'll deliver strong free cash flow while continuing to invest in the future. That includes signing industry leading contracts with our United team, which is made up of the best aviation professionals in the world. We are the best airline in the history of aviation and we're going to continue to raise that bar. That's been and will continue to be increasingly good for our employees, customers and our shareholders.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Brett.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning. 2024 was an exceptional year for United. The investments we've made to improve our operational reliability and resilience have driven top tier results. We served a record nearly 174,000,000 customers last year and finished the year first in on time departures at all 7 of our hubs. We had the busiest December in our history, flying on average 511,000 people a day.

And when so many of our customers were counting on us to get them home safely for the holidays, we closed out the month of December ranked number 1 in on time departures. I want to thank the incredible professionals at United who worked through the holidays and through tough weather to deliver for our customers. Thanks to enhanced processes for recovering crews during our regular operation events, we achieved an 82% reduction in crew related cancellations compared to 2 prior years. Additionally, we continued refining our aircraft turn process, focusing on key components such as aircraft cleaner time and boarding efficiency, driving improved turnaround speed and overall operational performance. In 2024, we had the company's best post pandemic turn execution, reducing cancellations and improving efficiency, both meaningfully cut costs and results in a much better experience for our customers.

Despite that progress, staffing at the FAA remains a challenge for the airline industry and most importantly, the traveling public. In 2024, even on clear Blue Sky days, 66% of United's delays were driven by ATC challenges in technology and staffing. We remain engaged with leaders in Washington and in both parties to get the FAA the resources they need, and we'll look for opportunities to work with the new Congress and new administration to achieve that goal. Over the last several years, our culture of innovation has fueled countless advancements in technology and empower our employees and improve customers' experiences. In just the last several months, our team has developed new capabilities for our award winning app, like integrating Apple AirTag data to help us reunite customers with their bags and allowing customers to select seat preferences, so they can get moved to the seat they prefer automatically as soon as it becomes available.

Translating our entire app into Spanish drove usage even higher and now nearly 90% of customers engage with our digital channels on the day they travel. In 2024, these and other app enhancements enabled half of our customers who experienced a cancellation to utilize a self-service or automated method to get back on their way, a 28% increase year over year. Our industry leading app has led to happier customers who have more control over their travels and employees who have more time to help customers who most need it. At United, we're proud of this culture of innovation because it's central to our effort to differentiate our good leads away brand and give our customers even more reasons to choose United. With that, I'll hand it over to Andrew to review our strong revenue performance in 2024 and discuss our expectations for revenue environment in 2025.

Thanks, Brett. The 4th quarter revenue environment materially improved as the capacity backdrop for the industry became more constructive. United's Q4 TRASM increased 1.6% year over year on a 6.2% increase in capacity. The Sunday after Thanksgiving was our best revenue day in history, shattering the former record by 25%. United's domestic capacity increased 7.8% in Q4 with RASM down 1.9%.

We project domestic RASM will turn solidly positive in Q1. The domestic pricing environment is improving as underperforming airlines remove unprofitable capacity at an increase in rate and business traffic growth accelerates. Industry fare sales are less prevalent with lower discount rates as airlines are prioritizing profitability. All United hubs were profitable in Q4 and for the last 12 months with only a 7 point pretax margin difference between the best and the worst performing hub, the narrowest spread we've recorded in a quarter since 2016. Our network health is very strong with room for margin expansion as we continue our United Next plan.

After years of waiting, we're also finally starting to gain a critical mass of larger narrow body aircraft, which allows us to execute on our plans to increase gauge. United's international capacity was clearly the star of the quarter in terms of RASM growth relative to Q3. As a result, international margins continue to outpace domestic margins in 2024. United's plan during the pandemic was to double down on international flying and it's proven to be the right move. Q4 Pacific capacity moderated and China headwind slowed versus Q3 resulted in PRASM flipping from down 15.7 percent to up 4.1%.

Pacific PRASM was up high single digits for the last 2 thirds of the quarter versus last year. United has profitably digested a 31% increase in Pacific capacity in 2024, and we have now fully reinstated our pre pandemic capacity levels across the region with margins that are now above system averages. In the past, the Pacific margins routinely lagged. We plan to moderate our Pacific growth as we head into the first half of twenty twenty five, letting capacity added in 2024 mature. During 2025, we are excited to launch a new initiative to operate 737s on a small number of Narita feed flights to destinations in Asia that do not support nonstop service to the U.

S. We anticipate this unique initiative made possible by our Guam base will extend our lead as the largest transpac carrier, build an unmatchable network scope. We're going to redeploy underperforming assets and efficiently grow load factors from Japan to the U. S. Where local origin demand still is not fully recovered from the pandemic.

2024 was also a great year for United's Atlantic network and Q4 was no exception with PRASM up 7.1% on flat capacity. We entered 2024 pausing capacity growth for the year in the Atlantic after rapid growth in the region post pandemic. Our plan for 2024 worked extremely well. All months in Q4 are PRASM positive year over year with December RASM up double digits. United is the largest U.

S. Carrier flying over the Atlantic by ASMs. And in 2025, we plan to have low to minimal capacity growth in Q1 to support continued PRASM strength. From what we see today, we expect Q1 to be our best Atlantic Financial result in the company's Q1 histories. Latin America trailed the other regions throughout 2024.

However, it's important to note that United continued to operate profitably in the region despite these challenges. PRASM was up slightly in Q4 and the outlook for early 2025 is positive. Overall, the momentum for international flying in the Q4 was exceptionally strong. We believe the panderecera global long haul reset, along with a sluggish delivery rate of new wide body jets sets up the industry really well for years to come in international flying. Cargo also had a very strong showing in 2024.

Cargo revenues for the year were up nearly 17% and up almost 30% in Q4 versus last year. It was a very good quarter and year for Cargo. The business traffic recovery was a nice tailwind in Q4. Results in Q4 and our outlook for Q1 clearly showed this strength in higher yield corporate traffic volumes. Flown business revenue grew 16% in Q4 year over year.

We expect that trend to continue in Q1, which is a tailwind for our business focused network. Contracted business sales in the quarter for all future travel were up 14% year over year. Premium passenger revenues increased 10% year over year and premium cabin unit revenues were positive, both trends that persisted throughout the year. We see no change in consumer behavior seeking out increased premium experiences, but we also remain committed to our most basic products. In Q4, basic economy passengers increased 21% year over year and now represent 15% of domestic passengers, up 2 points versus 2023.

Loyalty revenues grew at a healthy pace at 12% in 2024. Co brand spend was up 9% with 1,000,000 new card acquisitions. Turning to the product. We reached a milestone of deployment of our signature interior with nearly 50% of the fleet work complete as of year end 2024. With installation work moving quickly now, we expect to be at 70% by the end of 2025.

Across the entire United network, we expect to have 150,000 seatback screens full of rich content available to all of our passengers with a better ability to personalize everyone's experience by the end of 2025. As you can see from our Q1 outlook, we continue to make progress on improving the financial performance of that quarter. Changes to our capacity deployment across hubs, days of week and time of day have been very effective. Return to more corporate traffic and the desirability of Southern European vacation in the winter is also a tailwind. As we announced a few weeks ago, we're tracking ahead of our schedule on Starlink installation, which we think will be a material advantage versus slower 4 ks Wi Fi services offered by other U.

S. Carriers. United's StarLink plan is yet one more action to elevate our product, creating a brand customers choose more and more often. We will share more on product innovation, merchandising and capacity optimization in the coming year further in our lead. We will also talk about how we believe STARLINK will unlock a host of new digital benefits for our customers and shareholders.

We believe that creating more choice, more segmentation and enhancing our products is the winning formula. Merchandising, selling and managing the complexity of these multiple experiences is our proven expertise. With that, I want to say thanks to the entire United team for an amazing 2024 and I'll hand it off to Mike to talk about our financial results. Mike?

Thanks, Andrew. We delivered record 4th quarter earnings with earnings per share of 3 point 26 dollars ahead of expectations and a 4th quarter pre tax margin of 9.7 percent, up 3.5 points year over year. These strong 4th quarter results brought our full year earnings per share to $10.61 above the midpoint of our initial guidance range of $9 to $11 Much of this success is due to the strong revenue performance that Andrew just discussed. But the foundation of our success is a strong operation and I'm incredibly grateful for the tremendous efforts of our operations team this quarter. Our hubs are in some of the most congested airspace in the world and still we delivered industry leading operational performance during the quarter.

Importantly, an operation that runs on time and with few cancellations is also a more cost efficient operation. Finally, I'd like to celebrate our stock performance over the last 12 months. In 2024, we were the 4th best performing stock in the S and P 500. I've long believed in the potential for a stock to rerate given the structural improvements in our business. It's nice that the market is beginning to recognize the shareholder value we've delivered.

For the Q1 of 2025, we expect earnings per share of $0.75 to $1.25 and approximately $400,000,000 improvement from the Q1 of last year at the midpoint, implying an approximately 3.5 point improvement in pre tax margin. The commercial team has done a great job of continuing to shape the network to match demand in what has historically been our seasonally weakest quarter. Further building off Q1 momentum, we expect full year 2025 earnings per share to be between $11.50 $13.50 At the midpoint, this represents 18% growth in earnings per share versus 2024. We expect a similar pace of earnings growth is sustainable as we march toward low double digit pre tax margin. We have decommoditized air travel.

Our operation is strong and the United Next plan continues to deliver both higher and more sustainable profits. Airlines with less competitive offerings are cutting money losing routes and frequencies. The industry setup has never been better and we believe United is uniquely positioned to succeed. On costs, CASM ex was up 5% on 6.2% capacity growth versus the Q4 of last year. As we look ahead to 2025, we are focused on driving efficiency improvements throughout the business, while also improving the experience for our customers and enabling our employees to be more effective at their jobs.

For the year, we continue to expect 2 to 3 points of CASMex pressure from our labor agreements not yet signed. Shifting

to the fleet. In the Q4, we took delivery of 5 Boeing MAX Aircraft, 14 Airbus A321neo Aircraft and 3 Boeing 787s. In 2025, we are planning to take delivery of 71 narrowbody aircraft and 10 widebody aircraft. Recall, we had been planning for approximately 100 narrowbody aircraft deliveries in 2025, but due to the OEM production delays, we are planning for less, which leads to our expected full year CapEx spend to be below $7,000,000,000 That's below the low end of our $7,000,000,000 to $9,000,000,000 multi year guidance. Turning to the balance sheet.

We ended the year with $17,400,000,000 in liquidity, including our undrawn revolver. We generated $3,400,000,000 of free cash flow. In 2024, we paid down $7,400,000,000 of debt, dollars 3,600,000,000 of which we voluntarily prepaid. We've now prepaid or refinanced our remaining high cost COVID error debt, bringing our total cost of debt down to 4.6%. Our net leverage was 2.4 times at year end, an improvement as we make progress to our long term net leverage target of less than 2 times.

On the buyback, in the quarter, we repurchased $81,000,000 worth of shares, leaving over $1,400,000,000 left in the authorization. We remain firm believers that United stock is undervalued as we continue to grow earnings and margins year after year with further room for multiple expansion. Finally, I want to reiterate the consistent and growing free cash flow generation remains a top priority. And in 2025, we are targeting free cash flow around the $3,400,000,000 we delivered in 2024. The future at United Airlines has never looked brighter and I'm excited as we continue to build upon our competitive advantages in 2025 and beyond.

Now back to Christina to start the Q and A.

Thank you, Mike. We will now take questions from the analyst community. Please limit yourself to one question and if needed, one follow-up question. Regina, please describe the procedure to ask a question.

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of David Vernon with Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning guys and thanks for taking the question. So Mike, maybe could you talk a little bit about how much of the trend improvement you're seeing in 1Q and how that extends kind of into the full year guide? I'm trying to get a sense for whether the range that you're putting out there for us for the year contemplates things continuing to get better from where we are today or kind of just a reflection of where we are today?

Hey, thanks David. I love the question. We've had a long standing policy of setting guidance with a no excuses philosophy and that has served us well. We delivered over 3 points of margin expansion in Q4 and I expect to deliver 3 points to 4 points of margin expansion again in Q1. We'll continue to build a single act of God into our longer term guidance so that we deliver even in imperfect conditions.

That's kind of a hallmark of our guidance strategy. It's pretty easy, however, for us to sit here and think there's opportunity in the back half of the year and then we could do even better than our full year guide.

right. Thanks for that. And then, just to be clear about the guidance range as well, that includes the incorporation of some potential flange in the deal in the course of the year, correct?

All right. Thanks very much for the time guys.

Our next question comes from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Congrats team on great results. So, Mike, maybe this one's for you since you entered your script with the stock is undervalued, but bought back only $81,000,000 in Q4. So great free cash flow in 2024, dollars 3,400,000,000 The guide is for 20% earnings growth and CapEx is up less than expected. So it would suggest free cash flow north of $2,500,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 in $25,000,000 How are you thinking about your deployment priorities towards your leverage targets with the voluntary prepayments as well versus share repurchases?

Thanks, Sheila. And let me remind everyone that over the last 4 years, we've also invested $32,000,000,000 in our business and our people, which has been central to our success. The strong performance in our valuation, it was a steep increase just as soon as we announced the share buyback authorization late last year. And so this Q1 out of the gate regarding the buyback, we started conservatively. It seems like a reasonable approach.

Right now we have to balance our improvement in our balance sheet and repurchasing shares. And so I think that was the right approach. We're really pleased to see the stock moving so strongly. We were number 4 out of the S and P 500 last year. I mentioned that in my script.

And you'll continue to see an opportunistic repurchase of shares as we move forward through 2025. I'll remind you that we've got $1,400,000,000 in authorization, expect continued multiple expansion. We're going to be really, really deliberate about that. I'll also add that the deleveraging, that we this journey that we're on, we expect to reach below 2 times net leverage during this calendar year.

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

Hi, everyone. Thank you. On basic economy, can you talk a little bit about,

I mean, in the script you talked about how the industry is discounting a lot less and there's obviously a big move in premium from the low cost guys. Can you just talk about how you're going to deploy basic economy? Is there an evolution in how that changes? It just seems like there's going to be the barbell approach that you had this last couple of years before the industry really structurally changes, maybe that evolves on how you deploy the basic economy side of the equation overall? Thank you.

Thanks, Connor. It's Andrew. I would say as we look out into the 12 months, we don't intend to change that, that we're incredibly happy with the effectiveness of basic economy, particularly as we grow our gauge as a competitive tool. It's done exactly what we wanted it to do. And it does seem to me the more of it we do, actually the better off we are.

Obviously, there are points. We are clearly balancing multiple product types in our quiver here and many of it premium, but also basic. And we truly believe that a broad spectrum of choice for consumers and being able to offer the lowest possible fare to flying United where you get a signature interior, seat back entertainment, free Wi Fi is the win in recipe and we're not going to change that recipe as we go through 2025.

Okay. And then maybe big picture, your relative margin performance obviously speaks to your willingness to adapt to the environment overall. But the United Next Day, we talked a ton about up gauging and obviously there's been a lot of delivery delays and so on. So I'm just trying to understand on your conviction level around the up gauging strategy. Do you have a lot of that baked into 2025?

It just seems like there's still multiple margin points that you have from these uniquely United opportunities that you have going forward. Just any thoughts there? Thank you.

Yes. Look, I think gauge is it's not a secret weapon, but gauge is I think really important to us. For 2025, gauge is not moving a lot. The delivery delays have been extensive and our ability to put RJs back to full utilization proved to be the right decision for 2025. What I can say is as we look out through the end of the decade, I believe we have the highest gauge possibilities, which is going to be great for the business, great for our unit costs and great for our customers because these new aircraft have incredibly high NPS scores as we bring them online.

So we think there's an incredible amount of runway related to gauge. We obviously operate in hubs that are gigantic from local population base, but they're also now some gigantic from a connectivity base, allowing us to use these larger gauge aircraft. We're behind on this. I think this summer we had 12 A321s that see 200 people. Next summer we have I think in the mid-40s.

And that's probably still 150 aircraft behind our nearest competitor. And as we said over and over again, the large gauge narrow body aircraft are the highest margin aircraft line in the country. And that is going to be a meaningful tailwind to United's margin acceleration as we head into 20262027. So 2025 is a bit of a pause year, but we look forward to getting back on the Gauge bandwagon in 2026 and beyond.

I just want to add an extra point there. As we look into 2026 and 2027, as Andrew said, the gauge really starts to accelerate. And so it becomes an idiosyncratic CASM ex benefit for United in 2026 and it really starts to kick in, in 2027. So you're not seeing the benefit of that in any of our guidance for this calendar year, but you will see it in coming years.

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

Hey, congratulations team on what was a great year and obviously a good outlook here. And Mike, maybe just following up on that, I presume with that comment about Gauge looking out years ahead, that's including some expectation that MAX 10 is in the mix?

We are becoming more hopeful that the MAX-ten will be an important gauge for United. We like the MAX-nine. The MAX-nine is a great aircraft, but we are with Boeing starting to make some real progress in improving their business. We're becoming more bullish on

I'll just add whether it's the MAX 9 or 10, our gauge is going to increase a lot. So the 10 would be great, but I'm counting on the 9 and the A321 to do what I described a few minutes ago. If we have the 10 available to us, that only helps it even further.

Well, and Andrew, maybe for my follow-up, on those lines, your domestic capacity growth is a little bit elevated here. What are the priorities in the network as you look in 2025 domestically, especially with those constraints on Gauge? And it looks like the solidly positive PRASM comment on domestic is pretty bullish for 1Q. So can you elaborate on those?

Sure. We've been working really hard, particularly for off peak months and quarters like Q1 to readjust how we deploy our capacity, whether it be by day a week or hub. And I think it's been incredibly effective and you see that in the guidance along with the fact that business traffic is coming back. So we're pretty optimistic that this is moving in the right direction and we can really close margin gaps by making the off peak periods better. As we think about 2025, and I've said this in the past and I'll say it again, we're really focused on building connectivity in our bank structures, particularly in Chicago, Houston and Denver, where our hubs are fantastic, but they lack the same level of connectivity that we see at some of our larger OA competitor hubs.

And So we're going to be able to close that gap materially in 2025, which I think is going to be really good for our relative RASM results as we go forward. So that will be our focus in 2025 at this point.

Your next question comes from the line of Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just a question on StarLink. Obviously, you guys mentioned that a couple of times in your prepared remarks.

Any thoughts on kind of ruling that out? How much of a differentiator do you think that will be? What the initial performance has been like and maybe how we can monetize that?

Sure. It's an excellent question. And I have to say, this is one of the things we are absolutely most excited about at United. We did a ton of research on this product and all the alternative products and feel 100% convinced that this is going to be a game changer, fast and free Wi Fi available to our customers, including the ability to game to have games on the on your personal device is going to be amazing. But look, I think the big question here is with Connective and our ability to grow MileagePlus.

And you're going to see us, I think, unleash a lot of really unique things on this front. And in particular, I think we see an opportunity maybe where others don't. And I think that comes from a number of factors that are probably unique to United. One is we have advanced screens on the vast majority of our fleet. We need advanced screens to be able to personalize service and deliver content in the way that we're going to be doing in the future, which we can obviously make service for our customers better, travel with less friction, but also monetize some media sales.

2nd, with StarLink Connectivity, which we'll have, which I don't think any of our major competitors will have, it allows us to do that in a way that really older WiFi services could not do. And then you combine that with the size of MileagePlus, the legacy program size, and I think our innovative spirit here at United, it is a very good recipe. I think we need to prove out this as we go forward. But we're very excited to do this. We're very excited that it's United being unique on this front.

And we hope to show you in the coming quarters years what can be made possible with these investments.

That's really helpful. Thank you. Maybe for a follow-up, obviously lots of momentum with the story, stocks doing great, everything is going to set up pretty well. Can it possibly be greater? You guys hinted last year at potential creative options with the loyalty program.

Obviously, it's been a long time since you gave us United Next and a lot has changed with the world since. Any thoughts on hosting that Investor Day potentially at some point this year? Or kind of how do you think about giving us updates on some of those big picture items?

Hey, Ravi, thanks for the question. And we still we continue to see tremendous value in the loyalty program, but we're going to start to disclose data on that when it makes sense for the business. We're still discussing the timing of an Investor Day. However, we've been really effective giving our message to all of you during these earnings calls and investor conferences. Unlike other airlines, our investor calls are much closer to many Investor Days.

We give you a long term guidance. We're giving you a lot more free cash flow commentary as well. We manage our earnings calls like we manage our business with a focus on the long term and today's call is a good example of that. So stay tuned, Investor Day is an important tool, but no update on precise timing today.

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

Hey, good morning everybody. So Andrew, in the past, I think it was last summer, you talked about that life cycle for discounted airlines. Obviously, since that time, we've seen a bankruptcy, domestic capacity has tightened. We're seeing discounters experiment with new Lopez. Do your original comments still stand?

Or has there been enough evolution in that particular business model that maybe the outlook from United's perspective is a little bit brighter than what you articulated last year? Any thoughts on that?

Look, I think it's largely still stands. I think as Scott said earlier, we each have our expertise as what we're great at and what we're less great at maybe. At United, we think we were great at a lot of things, but there's a few things we don't do and we don't intend to do. But we manage the complexity of many product types from basic to premium and I think do very well in the premium space. And it's because of generations of investment that came before me and the management team here in the room today.

And you just can't snap your fingers and make those generational investments overnight. So I'm a bit surprised by the amount of change, but the effectiveness of that change remains to be seen. The effectiveness of what we've been putting into place for years now has been proven. We're going to do more of it in 2025. So I think that life cycle I went through still holds.

And I don't expect that we're going to see airlines compete at the level of United in terms of this broad range of products and experiences anytime soon.

Thank you for that. And then quickly for Scott, it was several years ago, I think it was at a conference that I asked you, if you could clear up one analyst or investor misperception, what would it be? And I don't remember your exact words, but basically you said that you'd confront the idea that all capacity is created equal and all capacity is equally bad. You and Mike spend a lot of time in front of clients. I know I have my opinions on this, but where do you think you are in terms of addressing that capacity topic?

And would your answer be the same if I had simply asked the question the second time? Thanks.

United Airlines Holdings (UAL) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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