Allegiant Travel Company - Earnings Call - Q1 2020

Transcript

Speaker 0

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Sherry Wilson, Director of Investor Relations.

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Sarah. Welcome to the Allegiant Travel Company's first quarter twenty twenty earnings call. On the call with me today are Maury Gallagher, the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Redmond, the company's President Greg Anderson, our Chief Financial Officer Scott Sheldon, our EVP and Chief Operating Officer Scott DeAngelo, our EVP and Chief Marketing Officer Drew Wells, our VP of Revenue and Planning and a handful of others to help answer questions. We will start with some commentary and then open it up to questions. The company's comments today will contain forward looking statements concerning our future performance and strategic plan.

Various risk factors could cause the underlying assumptions of these statements and our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by our forward looking statements. These risk factors and others are more fully disclosed in our filings with the SEC. Any forward looking statements are based on information available to us today. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward looking statements, whether as a result of future events, new information or otherwise. The company cautions investors not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements, which may be based on assumptions and events that do not materialize.

To view this earnings release as well as the rebroadcast of the call, feel free to visit the company's Investor Relations site at ir.allegiantair.com. With that, I'll turn it over to Maury.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Sherry, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. It's been a while. First, let me thank all of our team members, their spouses and families as we continue to fly our passengers during these difficult and disturbing times. Thank you all very much. As I said in our press release, these are unprecedented times we are living through.

Most of you have been listening to calls from the different carriers the past two weeks. And the story from each of them is more from TRASM, CASM, CapEx and capacity changes to liquidity, liquidity and more liquidity. To that end, we'll provide you with some thoughts on where we are today and going forward, and you'll hear from our management team on the specifics regarding liquidity as well as how we are managing our schedule and how we're responding to our customers. Over the years, we prided ourselves on being different. You will hear today how we continue to differentiate ourselves from our industry.

A critical component for us has been our model. It's always been a core strength. Based on our model, our management team and our terrific team members, we believe we will emerge stronger from this life changing experience in the coming months and years. Clearly, none of us has ever seen an environment where booked revenues as well as future revenues disappeared in less than a month. During the last three weeks of March, each week's falloff was so much worse than what we thought it might be.

I tell my our team members that fear is a lack of knowledge. The lack of knowledge was definitely the case from the March through April. We are starting to have some clarity, some knowledge and beginning to understand the path out of this calamity that we find ourselves in. There are three main types of traffic, in my opinion, in this industry: international, business and leisure. I believe the first two will be slow to return.

In our case the case of our business, you're seeing another important evolution. The world is learning to do things online to work from home. In our specific case, we've had multiple board meetings by video conferencing and plan to do it for the foreseeable future. This would not have happened but for COVID. Will it change our habits?

Some think it will. Historically, coming out of downturns, leisure customers have been the first to return. In January 2009, with the onset of the GFC, we found leisure traffic responded very quite well in that first quarter. We believe that will be the case with respect to this downturn that leisure traffic will respond faster than business in international. And while we do not have any specific forecast to make, we are seeing some increases the past few weeks.

I want to stress to our audience that how fortunate I feel to be involved with such a quality management team. This group has done extraordinary work the past eight weeks. Not only are they talented, but just as important, are working very well together. I'm comfortable stating this group will continue to shine for us in the coming months, and you'll hear from most of them today, so judge for yourself. We believe we are among the first to react to the COVID situation, recognizing quickly this was not a passing phenomenon.

We immediately began shrinking our schedule, cutting expenses and capital investments, working with vendors on delaying payables and renegotiating our relationships with them as well. We have approximately twenty five percent of our team members participating in some form of pay reduction program to date, and I want to thank them for that effort. We quickly ceased all construction expenditures on Sunseeker. Scott DeAngelo, our CMO, since late March has been focused on how we are going to recover. He's been surveying our customers weekly for the past eight weeks about their opinions on the pandemic, how they feel about it, when they plan to travel next and other key questions.

He'll provide you with some further detail in a few minutes. I would never wish for an event such as this pandemic, but be that as it made it is here. It has dramatically altered the economic landscape. Bankruptcies have begun, as I'm sure you're aware. Avianca this past weekend, who operate approximately 45 A320s with CFM motors, our type, recently filed Chapter 11.

Others will follow. U. S. Carriers, as you know, have or will park over 2,500 aircraft in the next few weeks. In the space of thirty to sixty days, what was once a robust seller's market for airplanes and equipment of the sort has been turned on its head.

The most powerful liquidity tool we have today is to stop cash from leaving the building, both operating expenses and capital expenditures. But for some aircraft, we agreed to purchase for delivery in the back half of this year and a few in the first quarter of twenty twenty one, we have dramatically reduced our CapEx. Beyond the early twenty twenty one deliveries, we do not have any further aircraft commitments. As a result, we will be able to exploit one of our core competencies, our ability to trade in the aircraft marketplace. We have a long history in trading used aircraft.

Regarding our fleet, near term, we are looking at what is the right size. As a cash saving move, we want to retire a number of aircraft, perhaps as many as 10 to 15 because of upcoming expensive maintenance work. We will put these retired aircraft to good use. In addition to saving capital for repairs, we will benefit from parting out the aircraft, particularly the motors. We are facing a great deal of expense in the coming years, particularly in motor overhauls.

Now, however, between our motors from retirement and the inevitable availability of teardown aircraft, we will substantially reduce cash outlays, in my opinion, for planned motor work and other parts cost in the coming years. It's my belief we will begin to see numbers of older 320s and 319s in their motors available as part out opportunities in the not too distant future and prices will begin to react accordingly. Furthermore, we will be one of the few players, I believe, in the market with the wherewithal to purchase these assets. As you've heard repeatedly in the recent calls, companies are planning for the worst and hoping for the best. You will hear today our version of this truth.

We are definitely planning for the worst. To that end, near term, we are reviewing parking as many as 10 aircraft because of demand softness. However, I believe you can conclude from our release and our comments today that our financial strength is among the best. This strength gives us the flexibility to respond if the market snaps back. The combination of the purchased aircraft I mentioned earlier for the rest of this year and into early twenty twenty one and the return of our parked aircraft that we'll put down here shortly to service will give us a fleet for 2021 roughly the size it is today.

Should we want to grow or take advantage of opportunities, we believe there will be a wide variety of reasonably priced aircraft that we can pursue and purchase. As I mentioned a moment ago, our model has always been one of our core strengths. First and foremost, we maintain optionality with our parked aircraft. Annually, we expand and contract our network based on seasonal demands. We also have a simple network out and back.

It's the ideal approach when one has to cancel so much of their so many of their operations given the dramatic reduction in demand that we have been seeing. By trading in used aircraft, we also have an inexpensive model. Over the years, no one has been able to match our combination of a low cost structure and low utilization. In the coming months, you will see our costs come in noticeably as we refocus on operational efficiencies. As I said previously, reducing cost and capital expenditures is the best way for a carrier to husband their liquidity.

One of my favorite sayings when we operated MD-80s was, we were a noncapital intensive business competing in a capital intensive industry. I believe we will be able to use this description in the not too distant future. I'm the largest shareholder in this company with almost 20% position. I want to assure you all that we are doing the necessary things to guarantee our future. We are still the same hard nosed, disciplined company and industry leader you're used to seeing.

We are rightsizing the company. We are managing expenses and capital outlays. We have sufficient liquidity. Our flexibility in managing capacity continues to pay dividends. 80% of our markets do not have any competition.

We will continue these traditions. In closing, I have been amazed at the varying options one sees and how to act during this pandemic. In my own family, I have those who don't want to come out, they want to stay locked down. They believe there's a virus on every hard surface and floating everywhere in the air. Others are ready to rumble, looking to get back out and resume their lives.

One were to choose 100 person sample, perhaps 40 to 50 would want to return to normal times while the balance do not. We as an airline have to be able to cope with this level of uncertainty, be able to rightsize ourselves to service those 40 or 50 looking to rumble in the coming months and hopefully see the remaining 50 return later this year and in 2021. In my opinion, we have the ability to size ourselves better than any other carrier. This flexibility will serve us well in the coming months and years as it has the past nineteen years. Lastly, I want to personally thank each one of our team members for all they have done during this trying past six to eight weeks.

You are the backbone of the company. And while we are still in the woods, the sunlight is shining through a bit more each day. Thank you. John?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Morianna. Good afternoon, everyone. Over these unprecedented times, there have been comments made by most, if not all companies across industries, how they

Speaker 4

will come out at the

Speaker 3

end of this a different but better company. You have to ask yourself what exactly does that mean? Our answer, I'm sure, is much different than most and probably the least expected given the earnings season commentary. It's a better balance sheet. That's right, a better, stronger balance sheet.

The steps to get there are difficult, painful and not without emotion, but required in order to come out the other side, better positioned, greater financial flexibility and more options. One of these difficult but required decisions was to shut down the Sunseeker resort development. We have said from the outset, the most important component of our model is the airline. We have to do everything we can to preserve the cash register and the earnings release outlines numerous additional steps that have been taken to date. We will not put any more capital into the project for at least the next eighteen months as we deliver on our expectation to have the strongest balance sheet when we come out of this.

The Allegiant model has been well tested over its history and there is no doubt COVID-nineteen is the ultimate hurdle. Having said that, the financial discipline, the willingness and creativity to adapt and change and our dedicated passionate Allegiant team will create opportunities this model never dreamed of. Furthermore, the power of the model and the speed at which the team has reacted to date have put us in a position to not pursue equity dilutive transactions at this time given what we are seeing to date. And with that, I'll turn it over to Scott Sheldon.

Speaker 5

Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone. First, I'd like to thank our 4,500 plus team members across the network for their outstanding service and professionalism in the face of this global COVID-nineteen pandemic. Your efforts have been tremendous. I realize this call is mostly entirely about liquidity, capital raising efforts and cash preservation, but our team members and partners across The U. S.

Are the backbone and the face of our organization, and our unwavering commitment and loyalty to our customers is why our organization has and will continue to be successful in the future. You've embraced the uncertainty. You've remained flexible in incredibly challenging times, and for that, all of your senior leadership thanks to you. From the onset of the pandemic, we had three immediate focus areas. First was to ensure the safety of our passengers and Allegiant team members.

Second is the rapidly adjusting of our daily operations to reflect a near zero demand environment, while also positioning our operational cost structure for a long term slow recovery. And third was to develop an aircraft storage program for potential fleet management scenarios as the recovery curve progresses. As indicated in our release, we began to experience some booking softness in late February. And although we hadn't experienced a COVID-nineteen related flight cancellation, we activated our ECC, which is our Emergency Command Center on March 6 to coordinate all aspects of our emergency response program, an anticipatory step that proved to be invaluable from an execution standpoint over the next sixty days. Without going into too much detail, this group was responsible for developing many of the COVID related safety and health strategies, policy and procedure enhancements and overall operational execution in the first hours days of the pandemic.

Some of the key highlights: co champion along with the marketing team, Allegiant's going the distance for health and safety, revamped our cleaning program for all aircraft to include scheduled and deep cleaning procedures, implemented hospital grade standards across the system, established routine treatment schedule for all aircraft with advanced antimicrobial protectants that kills viruses, germs and bacteria on contact. We were the first to provide customers with a complimentary health and safety kit upon boarding, which included a single use face mask, disposable non latex gloves and sanitizing wipes. We deployed VOC filters on our aircraft, which exceed HEPA air quality standards. Social distancing practices have been put in place wherever possible during check-in and at our gates and onboard aircraft. Health acknowledgment certification during online mobile check-in.

Also, we've extended our voucher redemption policy from one year to two years from initial booking. And that's important because for basically the sixty day period beginning March 1, we have returned $235,000,000 in vouchers to consumers. So that allows them to extend for an additional year. Moving on to our near term scheduling philosophy. We wanted to create as much selling opportunities as possible coming out of the negative to net zero demand environment.

This meant keeping as wide of a selling footprint as possible. In this case, this means maintaining 18 operational bases, fully staffed for a baseline of activity that we could reasonably be flying. Basically, initial schedule reflecting a relatively free excuse me, full pre COVID selling profile with few exceptions to take advantage of potential opportunities as states and communities come online, travel restrictions are eased and nonessential businesses and entertainment experiences present themselves. This is in no way the most cost effective approach. There are lots of obstacles and challenges in executing to a public schedule that will largely go unflown and it creates significant costs that could otherwise be mitigated, but we feel the trade off is worth it in the near term.

A byproduct of this is the micromanaging of our flight schedules by our network team on a weekly, if not daily basis, looking at individual dispatch decisions based on cash profitability. At the end of the day, we ultimately have to get back to flying the schedule we publish. There has to be schedule integrity given the traditional frequency profile we fly. But as loads and demand slowly build, we can continue to execute on this strategy, basically low load cancellations equals minimal passenger disruptions. Overall, it's proven to be successful, relatively speaking.

And as we and we are capturing more flying than we would have otherwise captured. Drew and Scott will speak more on that in a second. And lastly, our fleet, aircraft induction and maintenance and engineering teams have done a tremendous job launching an Airbus aircraft storage program on the fly to accommodate any number of fleet scenarios as we progress through the back half of the year. Our teams have done a great job at positioning majority of our fleet to be ready on short notice. This is particularly important given how we are over scheduling the airline in the near term.

Long term, as indicated in the release, we expect to retire and or store as many as 25 aircraft, which can be actioned based on any number of different scenarios. Once again, thanks to all involved. You give the network and planning team the tools that they need to navigate a very troubling environment. And with that, I'll turn it over to Scott Bianzalo.

Speaker 6

Thanks, Scott. As Maury alluded to, since late March, our commercial approach has been focused tightly on executing a recovery roadmap that leverages our robust monitoring of the COVID-nineteen situation in order to lay the foundation for recovery and the next generation of air travel post COVID-nineteen. And ultimately to drive a recovery that capitalizes on new opportunities that may arise. Our direct to customer distribution model and moreover the direct customer relationship it enables us to maintain has been invaluable during this period, both in terms of gauging customer sentiment in these uncertain times and in terms of capturing customer demand as it returns to the market. We stay close to our customers and we've been continuously gauging their sentiments through proprietary tracking surveys that we filled at each of the past eight weeks.

As of Sunday, our customers are telling us they overwhelmingly believe things are getting better. And while most expect it will take more than six months for life to return to normal, nearly two thirds plan to travel by air before the end of the year. Also promising news for the leisure travel sector overall is that about half say they plan to stay in a hotel or vacation rental property, while nearly one third plan to visit friends or relatives and the remaining 20% plan to travel between their primary residence and a second vacation home. Also, in close partnership with our corporate intelligence and data science teams, we've been able to monitor health, economic and other factors impacting the cities we serve. To date, both the personal health and the economic health, as well as the overall sentiment for most of our key origin cities in the Midwest and Mid Atlantic have been consistent with a near term recovery scenario for much of our network.

The foundation for recovery, as Scott mentioned, has been going the distance for health and safety, an integrated holistic approach to fundamentally enhancing our cleaning health and social distancing practices, complete details of which can be found in deletion.com and have been shared far and wide across national media, thanks to industry leading measures such as providing each and every passenger who boards with a free health and safety kit. Building off this strong foundation, our data driven direct to customer marketing approach has enabled us to surgically identify and capture demand on a route by route basis, which began to lift off the bottom in mid April. Since then, we've seen steady growth in the number of qualified flight searches being conducted by web users at allegiant.com, with some time periods in markets at levels even higher than last year. More importantly, we've seen this elevated web traffic begin to translate into an uptick in bookings for select markets over the past few weeks correlated with beaches opening on Florida's West Coast and Panhandle. That being said, our two largest summer travel destinations, Orlando and Las Vegas, will need to reopen their flagship theme parks and casino resorts and for that matter, Annabel Stadiums for us to see the next step change in demand recovery.

Finally, as we continue up the recovery curve, we're also benefiting from other aspects of our unique business model, namely the proprietary booking platform, which is enabling us to fast track development of contactless or touch free elements of the customer travel journey as well as offer hotel land only booking capabilities for those looking to drive to Las Vegas or Florida resorts. Drive market travel is expected to recover faster than air to these destinations and we've been working closely with the leading agencies and bureaus in both regions to play a role in their comeback. Remaining true to our purpose, even while flexing during these challenging times, we're exploring all natural options to capture greater share of leisure travel spend as it returns to the market. And with that, I'll turn it over to Drew Welds.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Scott, and thanks everyone for joining us this afternoon. I want to build a bit on what you've heard so far and expand briefly on our approach and our differences from the industry at large. We have taken to this environment with largely the same detailed processes that we use to assess capacity in a normal state, just at a significantly more frequent rate. We have maintained a very broad network and selling presence and all future round trips are assessed for cash profitability. While most carriers offer less than 30% of their schedule for May, we held about 75% of flights available.

We made some hard decisions on entire routes and got in front of some low hanging fruit such as lower demand Tuesday flying or consolidating flying in the event we have multiple daily flights on the same route. For the remaining 75%, we are monitoring net bookings and making decisions on a round trip basis as we get clarity into the final strength of the flight a week or more in advance. As Maury mentioned, our business model is set up to quickly and appropriately respond to any level of demand. Like all others, our capacity was significantly reduced in April, as we operated just 12.6% of the expected departures. However, we completed weeks flying as well as 9.6% of the original expectation and as high as 24.6%.

Our out and back routing structure and relative simplicity of scheduling provide a tremendous benefit when making very granular decisions. While this certainly drives a lot of work in the short term reviewing and forecasting flying that is likely to be canceled, I believe strongly that it puts us in an advantageous position to have both the visibility and more importantly, the ability to react immediately whenever and wherever demand begins to return, whether in a one off or sustained form. Bookings are not there yet. However, as you heard today, we are seeing mild sequential improvement. There's a long way to go still, but leveraging the flexibility of this business model will put us in a remarkable position when system wide demand does return.

And with that, I'd like to turn

Speaker 2

it over to Greg.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Drew, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. For the first quarter of twenty twenty, we reported a consolidated GAAP net loss of $2.08 per share, and this was due to an impairment charge of over $160,000,000 related to our non airline subsidiaries. On an airline only basis, we recorded over $50,000,000 in op income or a 12.6% op margin. This is despite seeing a precipitous drop in revenue during March, our busiest month of the year, and is a testament of the earnings power and flexibility of our unique model. Rather than discuss the puts and takes of these results, we felt it appropriate to focus on the metrics that matter most in the current environment, maintaining sufficient liquidity and minimizing cash burn.

Due to the impact from COVID-nineteen, we took quick and aggressive action to cut costs and preserve liquidity. This is outlined in our earnings release. So far, we estimate these actions will result in nearly $375,000,000 of total cash outflow reductions to our initial full year 2020 plan, with approximately 80% of the reductions in the form of CapEx and the suspension of our quarterly dividend. The remaining balance is attributed to the removal of nonflight relating operating costs, including, but not limited to, marketing, contractors, travel, subscriptions, non airline labor and renegotiating contracts with vendors. Perhaps worth noting, the $375,000,000 reduction in cash outflows does not take into account further cost reductions we achieved by pulling back capacity, such as variable costs associated with airline labor, fuel stations and maintenance.

Regarding liquidity, in February, we went to the market to reprice our Term Loan B facility and achieved 150 basis point reduction to our rate. Due to strong demand, we also upsized the facility by $100,000,000 At the time, it was unclear the importance of this move as a short couple of weeks later, the impact from COVID-nineteen began to put pressure on the capital markets. Including this upsize, we ended the March with the $464,000,000 in total cash. In April, we obtained financing of $31,000,000 secured by two A320 aircraft at a very low interest rate. Also in April, we received our first installment of the CARES Act payroll support for $86,000,000 and our monthly cash burn was reduced to $65,000,000 or $2,100,000 per day.

The cash burn partially offsets these two liquidity inflows to bring our ending April total cash balance to $516,000,000 In addition, Allegiant's portion of the payroll support under the CARES Act is $172,000,000 half of which we received in April and we will receive the bulk of the remaining amount in the second quarter. As we look ahead, we expect the cadence of average cash burn for the second and third quarters to approximately 2,100,000.0 and $1,500,000 per day respectively. These average burn rates assume gross bookings per day of $750,000 for both quarters, which is based on booking trends we saw mid April. We have continued to see modest improvements in bookings since that time as Drew mentioned. This is down more than 85% from 2019 levels.

In comparison, a year ago, this amount would have been approximately $5,500,000 per day in gross bookings. For reference, our low point in gross bookings during the last two months was about $250,000 per day. So to be clear, the $750,000 average bookings per day is not our forecast. It's just simply held constant to highlight the area we can control, our costs. However, should demand stay at these low levels in the fourth quarter, we estimate an average cash burn of well under $1,000,000 per day.

Reducing our cash burn is the most efficient liquidity strategy we can affect. Another efficient mode of increasing liquidity comes through our federal tax refunds as afforded to us by the CARES Act. This legislation allows for a five year carryback on tax net operating losses. So for Allegiant, this means a $94,000,000 cash refund on our 20 eighteen-twenty 19 NOLs. In early April, we submitted these NOL carryback claims with the IRS and expect to receive this cash refund in the coming weeks.

We expect an even larger cash refund, more than $100,000,000 to come in for our estimated twenty twenty NOLs early next year.

Speaker 3

We also applied for a

Speaker 4

portion of the CARES Act loan of up to $276,000,000 We are currently evaluating our need to tap this program for liquidity. A terrific benefit of the loan program is the optionality it provides. Not only does it serve as a backstop through September, it has the added benefit of being a benchmark that is proving helpful for us in discussions with other lenders for additional financing. I would like to add my most sincere thanks to the Treasury Department and their advisors at PJT and Cleary. They have been working tirelessly around the clock to ensure quick access to this much needed liquidity.

The CARES Act alone has provided up to nearly $650,000,000 in available liquidity to Allegiant via NOLs, PSPs and loans. Of this amount, $350,000,000 pertaining to the NOLs and PSP does not have to be paid back. This $350,000,000 of non debt liquidity would cover more than 85% of our total cash burn from April through December. This assumes that down case scenario previously mentioned of daily bookings down 85% with an average of $1,500,000 in daily cash burn throughout the period. This example helps illustrate why our number one priority in terms of liquidity is further reducing our costs.

While there have been many tough decisions to date and likely more and many to come, doing so is the best defense of our balance sheet and proved vital in coming out as healthy as possible on the other side. As it relates to the additional alternative sources of liquidity, we have several levers available and we are keeping all options on the table. However, based on our current numerous scenario planning, at this time, we think it is unlikely we will need to pull any of these levers. As noted earlier, the optionality of the treasury loan provides us additional time to continue monitoring this environment. The available amount of up to $276,000,000 through September provides us confidence we have the access to ample liquidity to make it to the other side.

Turning to CapEx. For the remaining nine months of 2020, gross CapEx is now under $200,000,000 This amount includes the potential acquisition of up to seven three twenty aircraft and four CFM engines. We are in ongoing discussions with the respective counterparties of these assets, but any we may take will be financed. Regarding fleet, no one knows when demand will return, therefore fleet flexibility is critical. Accordingly, we are working on plans to strategically park up to 25 of our existing aircraft depending on the demand environment.

Our current expectation is up to half of these aircraft may be permanently retired. We intend to maintain flexibility with the other half by either retiring or reinstating based on the recovery timing of travel demand. Retiring and or parking these aircraft allows us to meaningfully optimize spend on engine maintenance down the road. By way of example, we now expect our 2020 and 2021 heavy maintenance CapEx to be reduced by 60,000,000 and $75,000,000 respectively. Additionally, strategically parking aircraft now will provide optionality for us to bring some of them back beginning in 2021, should travel demand warranted.

We have commitments for only two future aircraft next year and if we purchase, we expect to finance them. Including these two aircraft, we would expect total gross CapEx for 2021 to be less than $150,000,000 Core to Allegion Travel is our airline. Our number one priority is to ensure its survival and long term success. In order to make this happen, we have suspended construction indefinitely on Sunseeker and restructured TSNAP and Nonstop to be self sufficient in terms of cash flow. As a result of suspending construction on Sunseeker coupled with no current plans to complete, we have recognized $137,000,000 impairment over its related assets, writing them down to a fair market value of roughly $35,000,000 A focus of ours coming out of this environment will be to quickly restore our balance sheet.

We are planning to maintain our regular debt servicing schedule during the crisis and make nearly $300,000,000 of principal payments from now until the end of twenty twenty one. These principal payments should help to offset the incremental debt added as a result of COVID-nineteen. In closing, we are a nimble airline uniquely built on a flexible capacity strategy. We believe this will help us during this crisis. However, we will continue to maintain discipline in further rightsizing our cost structure to support any demand environment to help restore our earning powers earnings power as timely as possible.

And with that, I'll turn it over for Q and A.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Mike Linenberg with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Speaker 8

Hey, good afternoon. Actually two questions here for Greg. So Sunseeker, no CapEx tied to it, basically nothing for the next eighteen months. And yet there isn't there some debt or is there any sort of liability? Is there any sort of cost associated with it over the next eighteen months keeping it in sort of this more blunt state?

Is there going be cash out the door? Any sort of charges? It's not completely zero or is it?

Speaker 4

Hey, Michael. Thanks for the question. As far as debt, there's no debt that we've drawn on that. So there's no debt obligation at this point. In terms of additional costs, now there is some outstanding payables that we've committed to before stopping down that we're bleeding out over the next few months.

So we intend to make those payments. And but that's built into our cash burn number that we provided. And then there's some minor investments or there's some minor costs, I'd say nominal, to just secure our investment in that property, but nothing to write home about.

Speaker 8

Okay. And like tax payments too, right? You have to pay or maybe there's none. There's nothing there. I'm just thinking of property tax or maybe there's actually none in the state of Florida now that I think about it.

Speaker 4

Yes. And everything is pretty minor. It's not meaningful investment or not a meaningful Okay. Amount of

Speaker 8

That's helpful. And then just my second question. When we think about unencumbered assets and anything that you could potentially sort of pledge to secure additional financings, whether it's the loan program under the CARES Act, What do

Speaker 7

you

Speaker 8

currently have? And can you give us just a rough estimate of what available unencumbered collateral would be?

Speaker 4

Sure, Michael. So all of our non aircraft and engine collateral that's pledged to the term loan. So really the dry powder we have for the most part is our unencumbered aircraft and engines. And then I'd also add we have a lot of equity in our aircraft because it's currently under secured financing because we're paying it off so quickly. But in total, our unencumbered assets aircraft and engines, I think we have about 28 aircraft, eight spare CFM engines that are unencumbered.

So that gives us $36,000,000 I think the fair market value currently is about $430,000,000 to $450,000,000 on these assets. And so depending on the LTVs between 50% to 75%, you could probably raise $215,000,000 to $250 or so

Speaker 8

That's fantastic. Thanks for all that detail, Greg. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Sure.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Catherine O'Brien with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Speaker 9

Hi, good afternoon everyone. Thanks for the time. Sure. Thanks. So maybe just a couple on the cash burn.

I guess first, are you including the impact of the CARES grants in that cash burn? Just wasn't entirely clear. And then I have a couple of others on the cash burn as well.

Speaker 4

Sure. No problem, Katie. No, we are not. Those are the impact of the PSP grants are excluded from our cash burn number.

Speaker 9

Okay, perfect. And then just on the $750,000 daily gross bookings, is that offset at all by refunds? And so maybe the net revenue assumption is lower. And then how does that net assumption compare to what you're seeing right now? And then lastly on the cash burn, what's driving the improvement on the cost side from 2Q to 3Q since you're assuming revenue assumptions are static?

Thanks.

Speaker 4

Sure. Yes, the $750,000,000 gross that's a gross number. The so there would refunds would net that down. We've seen, I think, to others and I don't want get into the exact amounts relative to other carriers, I think we have modest cash refunds out the door. And then as far as the cost reductions that you're seeing in the cadence, I would say a lot of the efforts that we outlined in the release that have taken place, that's kind of the driver from where we've seen the second quarter average to go down to the third quarter average.

But what really is driving that down are just we have outstanding payables. Maury mentioned this in his opening remarks. Once this started in early March, we reached out to all of our vendors, put it started working on deferred payment plans, and it was a it was a monumental effort across the board. We appreciate our vendor partners and everyone. But we're committed to paying all our vendors.

And so you're seeing us fleet that outstanding payables out over the next few months. And then we'll get back to a normal rate. So that's worth about, I guess, 500,000 per day, if you do the quick math. And then I think the fourth quarter drop that we're alluding to is that would be just the rightsizing of our cost structure, just based on where demand is at. And so that $750,000 gross booking numbers, we're just trying to keep that constant to show you a down case scenario and just to really highlight where the cost puts and takes would be.

Speaker 9

Okay, understood. And then maybe if I could just sneak a couple in on Sunseeker. So just to be clear, all these impairments were noncash. And then on the future of Sunseeker, you're saying not going receive any funds from Allegiant for at least eighteen months. Two on that, if you can't find a strategic partnership, would you be able to just pause construction for that entire period?

You know, are there any costs to locking down the site? Know, I think you kind of already answered a bit on that to Mike. And then second, if you do find a strategic partner to continue construction and start up costs, would you move forward with that? And I guess if you do move forward with that, would you only consider a partner that would allow you the same flexibility and bundling packages, etcetera, that you would have had without a partner? Thanks so much.

Speaker 2

Katie, you're like seventeen months ahead of us right now. We just had

Speaker 7

to keep up with that part.

Speaker 2

So it's shut down. It's not what we're doing. We had to pick a number. It's an asset. We got to do something eventually.

But like I said, that's moons ahead of us.

Speaker 4

And the impairment is non cash, Katie, just to answer that your first part. Impairment, yes, that's a non cash impairment.

Speaker 9

Great. Thanks for the time.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth with Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.

Speaker 10

Hey, thanks. Thanks for the time. So one, I just wanted to say that the commentary on declining cash burn with no improvement in underlying demand is perfectly clear and I think that's a really interesting perspective. Regarding demand, you said it got as low as I think 250,000 a day and you're seeing 750,000 per day at some point or it recovered to that. Where is that now?

Is it better than the 750,000?

Speaker 4

No, I think that's this is Drew. That's a

Speaker 7

pretty good look at where we're at today.

Speaker 10

Okay. And then big picture, 2021, obviously, guys can flex up, flex down depending upon how you think this is going to play out. And my guess is July is sort of a pivot month into the rest of the year. But can you just give us a range of outcomes into 2021? And then just as a follow-up, how confident are you in your ability to sort of resize the cost structure to those various scenarios?

Speaker 7

This is Gerard. I'll kind of kick it off with, I guess, scenarios and it will be kind of a non answer that anything is pretty much still on the table. You're right that July is a pivot month, but to be able to give a lot of insight into what's going to happen in 3Q and 4Q depends on, I guess, what you think about second wave, what you think may happen with Orlando and Vegas. And I think there's just so many moving parts that the spectrum of possible scenarios is gigantic, at least from my vantage point. I'll look to others around the table if they have different things.

Speaker 2

Well, let me just make a macro comment, Duane. This is all about cash management. And what Drew is doing right now is we're cash forecasting each flight literally. And if it makes sense, we're running it certainly at a point once you get to be big enough, have to be more discerning and canceling flights with impacting customers and things like that. But we're certainly in the transition.

So for the foreseeable future, it's going to be a cash call on just what we're going to do going forward. And that's the whole liquidity burn. The things we can control, the CapEx, the all those investment types of things, I think Greg put in the numbers $375,000,000 we've taken out this so far of this onetime and ability to do that. We're going to continue to focus on that and we'll slowly but surely react to the marketplaces that presents itself. We're I'm personally optimistic.

Like I said in my comments, I know a lot of people that just want to get out and I use the tongue in cheek rumble. People are tired of sitting at home and we just we travel amongst ourselves on the weekends and John can speak for coming out of Southern California. Just people are on the beaches. Somebody told me they were down in Laughlin this weekend as the river runs through there. The place was packed with people, just wall to wall people.

Social distancing was not in their lexicon according to him. So you're getting all kinds of signals. And the thing that I see personally is there's really no hard data you can point at in many ways, it's opinions. And some people have an opinion that they're going to go out and other people, they wouldn't be caught outdoors if God came down and said it was all clear. So it's just going to be a wait and see as we kind of feel our way through this.

Speaker 3

Think Duane, the only other thing that worth commenting on in your question was had to do with the confidence around rightsizing our cost structure and whether or we're confident about doing that. And the emphatic answer is yes. We've demonstrated that in the past and we'll demonstrate that going forward. So that's a you've heard it in our commentary and you can see the language in the release, but we're very confident about being able to do that.

Speaker 10

Thanks, John. If I could sneak one more in, not that you're a Vegas story, you are there. And I think in many respects, the airlines are somewhat ahead of the resorts and the hotels. What are you hearing from Vegas? What is your view of the reopening plan?

And how far before customers can sort of confidently book vacation packages in Vegas? And thanks for taking the questions.

Speaker 3

Well, I mean, don't know that there's any visibility in that regard. I mean, I think when you look at a lot of the Vegas hotels, they were hoping to open early, as you can see just by their booking windows. A lot of them are allowing people to book into Memorial weekend. That didn't happen. Having said that, the governor made pretty quick announcements when it came to opening up some of the local elements that we have here, didn't give a lot of advanced notice in that regard.

But I'd imagine, at least maybe our hope would be that when it comes to the Strip and the Resort Corridor that there would be a lot of advance notice on that realizing that people need that advance notice to be able to book and react to it properly, especially the operators. So my guess would be that that would happen. But trying to predict anything would be very difficult in this environment as to when that would happen.

Speaker 7

Okay, very clear.

Speaker 2

Well, we've had some operators, Duane, I think, the win, the gentleman, Matt Maddox. He suggested he wanted to open on Memorial Day weekend. I talked to him personally. And but you've had not had the powers to be throw the switch so they could do things. Other people have suggested they wanted to open May 15.

So they're I think chomping at the bit. We talked to one hotel who said he was fully booked for June.

Speaker 3

Well, you look at it too in a lot of jurisdiction, hotels are open. What the wrinkle here in Nevada is you have gaming, which is a privileged license, right? So it requires not only the governor, but we tried the Gaming Control Board to approve that. So that's the added wrinkle that you have here in Nevada. I would imagine both parties will act in concert and they arrive at that decision.

And I would hope that happens sooner rather than later, but predicting a date would be impossible.

Speaker 2

Well, our two weakest, if you want to pick our big five or four markets, the two tougher ones right now are Orlando and Las Vegas. And they're trailing the others that we're seeing pretty good activity on. So we've got upside. We're looking forward to that. And I would think Disney World in Orlando is going to be they just they opened Shanghai, so they've got to be in the power or moving towards that date.

It's coming. I think we all understand that. It's you just can't pick date certain as when it's coming. But I would be absolutely astonished if these hotels here in Vegas aren't open within the next thirty to forty five days.

Speaker 3

I would too. And I think when you look at Florida, they've been out in front of this opening the state, so to speak. And Disney, know has they're taking bookings on the Disney World Resort beginning with July 1. So that's somewhat of a statement that they're kind of making that they think they're going to probably open up around that time frame. They've started to open up their retail locations already.

So I'm sure Disney is in conversations as the operators are here. So I would agree with Maury that this is probably in that thirty to forty five day time frame.

Speaker 10

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Blaine.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joseph DeNardi with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Speaker 11

Good evening, guys. Laurie, can you

Speaker 3

just maybe opine on what you

Speaker 11

think this means for air travel demand longer term? Like is this going to lead to any structural changes in your business? I mean, obviously, you've placed some pretty big bets on kind of the resiliency of travel and the secular drivers of growth behind that. Does this change how you view any of that longer term?

Speaker 2

Well, I think you've got two fundamental issues. It's how long does people's memories last and how fast does this disappear. We are a very predictable species, I think, in many cases of wanting to do things and the like. I think the main structural change in many ways is going to be in the business world where you've proven that you can do a lot of work with the Zooms of the world. Having said that, when times get good, people, they forget these things.

I mean, you look back at the mentality going into March 1 in this country and the mentality on April 1, it was a sea change. Can you get back there? Well, it was twelve years getting to March 1. Does it happen this week or next? Obviously, no.

And I think you'll just go back and study your history. It's going to be structural, I think, around those types of things. As far as sizing and the like, who knows? I like our prospects because we are niche and we can play in places that other people can't or aren't comfortable. Reminded our folks in 02/2005, Northwest came after us and put airplanes on top of us from Fargo and Des Moines and the like into Vegas.

And they stay around for a year, but they just didn't work for them because they're not built to work like we are. So that's a plus. Is there short term problems with people coming downhill? Maybe. But long term, I don't think it works that way for us.

But the industry, it's got to shrink, obviously. But I'm reasonably bullish that as a population, we're going to grow. We're going to be I think right now, I don't see any material weakness in the economy that other than we're spending like drunken sailors and whether

Speaker 6

or not

Speaker 2

that'll have any problem. But there'll be short term problems with unemployment certainly. But we're not Scott D'Angelo probably better than this. It doesn't seem from our surveys that it's like, my god, people are doing nothing.

Speaker 6

That's right. In fact, the majority of people in our surveys report their personal financial situation has largely stayed the same and or gotten better. Obviously, most of those have stayed the same, getting better the ones that might have But got the bigger the fact is in the Midwest, Mid Atlantic, the Upper West, I got to tell you, they don't share the opinions that the evening news is putting out there. And we see and hear that one more step for you, Paul, most tracking surveys out there have asked the question about do you go all in for public health or do you balance public health with the needs of the economy? The nation as a whole has been fifty-fifty.

The Allegiant customer base has been 70 five-twenty five every time we've asked that question in favor of you balance public health with the needs of the economy and you get out there. So our footprint just so happens to mirror one where the sentiment is very different than a general pop survey that captures New York, Dallas, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

Speaker 11

Okay. Yes, that's helpful. And then maybe one for Greg or Scott. One of the key differences you guys have is the ability to flex up and down. And so can you just maybe quantify a little bit more like if you shrink the fleet by 25 aircraft, what does your OpEx do in that environment?

If you shrink it by 35, like what does it do? Are there certain pain points along the way where it gets harder to scale up and down? Can you just maybe quantify that a little bit? Thank you.

Speaker 4

Hey, Joe, it's Greg. I'll kick it off and Scott will jump in. And just wanted to say real quick, we enjoyed your spirited debate with Hunter the other day moderated by our good friend, Mr. Davis. That was interesting information on the loyalty program.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Greg. Just

Speaker 4

given our cost structure, Joe, and I think just maybe just a tagline or punchline as a good example is, like September, we just we don't fly in September. So we've built a cost structure around fleet, buying used fleet and low ownership costs. And if we think about the current environment we're in, say, ownership costs were just were pretty much variable. And we'll kind of right size that as we come out. So and by that, I mean, the fuel, obviously, variable.

We're seeing low fuel costs. We're seeing on the labor for the next couple of quarters, that's the pass through if you kind of want to think about it that way. Our stations, our airports, we don't have evergreen or long term contracts with our airports, very small cost, I think, relative and, again, variable. On the maintenance side, same thing. The vast majority of that's variable.

Advertising sales, if you think about that, the pretty much we pulled all our marketing spend. And so the cost going through that will be our interchange, which is variable. And then other, I think there's some of that is fixed and variable, but we've done a good job of pulling a lot of that back, as we've alluded to in that $375,000,000 number. And then I think perhaps worth mentioning too is just our compensation strategy. Maury and team have set this up in the beginning is for a lot of our particular corporate overhead folks, we keep low base salaries and pay high variable on the upside with bonuses.

And to put that into perspective, I think last year, Joe, we paid roughly 10% of our total labor costs for profit sharing and bonuses. So that obviously, in this type of situation, meaningfully move down. But and Scott, I didn't know if you want to add anything else on that. Yes. I think the only thing I would

Speaker 5

add, there's been a conscious effort to grow kind of small and midsized cities. To Greg's point, we don't have much of a long term expensive facility footprint. It's largely variable. But these commitments to grow in small cities is relatively expensive. Obviously, you

Speaker 3

don't get

Speaker 5

much or very good productivity out of flight crews. So those come on as those cities grow. So assuming demand does not snap back in any meaningful way, if you're going to get efficient on the cost structure, you would like to you'd likely reduce some of the really small cities that you do have and consolidate those into larger bases where you can drive productivity. But labor is a big piece of this, and we're going to see this suit for the in the near term to see where demand shakes out, but that's definitely a lever that we're going have to look at longer term.

Speaker 4

Thanks guys.

Speaker 2

Thanks Joe.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Savi Syth with Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Speaker 12

Hey, good afternoon. I was just wondering, I know you're being very tactical with the planning currently, but I was wondering if you can give some high level thoughts on how you're thinking about 2Q in terms of capacity and OpEx? And then also just a clarification on 2020 CapEx. With the reduction, does that are you expecting business spend around $380,000,000 this year?

Speaker 7

Sure. So this is Drew. I'll kick it off with kind of capacity and maybe turn it over to Greg. Like we mentioned, we're trying to keep as broad of a selling footprint as possible. We still have about 75%, 70% of June available for sale, and we'll monitor those as we get closer in.

May has obviously come in as roughly half a month has passed, we've actioned some of those cancels. But for Memorial Day weekend beyond, I think we still have over 50% on sale. So we're watching these closely. That will come down, but it's hard to give a lot of guidance as we're going to be following these to seven, fourteen days out before making final calls on anything.

Speaker 4

And Savi, on the CapEx question, yes, it's about just over 300,000,000 for the full year. Kind of what's remaining left is about $200,000,000 The vast majority of that is through aircraft and engines, which we expect to finance. And then there's some minor amounts on the other kind of what we call our other CapEx with IT and things like that. And then there's just some minor trail off on the heavy maintenance spend.

Speaker 12

Got it. And then if I might follow-up on a question as we think about costs going forward. Is there kind of the changes that you're making related to COVID, the stuff that might kind of linger on such as cleaning procedures and things like that, is that a significant cost burden? Or is that pretty minor when you kind of think about the grand scheme of things?

Speaker 4

I'll kick it off, and I think Sheldon might want to jump in too. But I think what we've done, particularly with the kind of personal safety and the masks and the kits and everything we've done, was a good investment by our company. While I wouldn't say it's not minor, minor, I mean there's a decent amount of it. It's not going to meaningfully impact our numbers moving forward, and that is built into the cash burn that we've provided. Yes.

I think the only

Speaker 5

thing I'd also add is maybe not in these times because there's relatively not a lot of flying, but the actual cost of product substantial. But if you're building extra time, if you're doing kind of midterm cleaning, so if you're going to increase the duty day, it's going to it's really going to change your profile and your staffing models. The art of the possible is how do you do this while still maintaining kind of a crew productivity metric in mind. And so we're not looking at that yet, but that's something that we're mindful of as we move forward.

Speaker 12

That's helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Hunter Keay with Wolfe Research. Your line is now open.

Speaker 13

Hey, thanks. Hey, Greg, who won the debate, dude?

Speaker 4

I thought it was a draw. Was very well done. Well, good.

Speaker 13

Very good. Hey, what actually Greg, what triggered the $137,000,000 write down? Was there some sort of accounting test that that was just a subjective call? Just from a pure accounting perspective, what triggered that?

Speaker 4

Yes. So the triggering event was the suspension of construction. And so and I guess kind of the way to think about it is because we have no clear line of sight of when that resumes. When you go through an impairment analysis, you'll do like a cash flow recoverability test. But without the clear line of sight, it's we're unable to kind of come up with, I think, an appropriate number, if you will, just because there's so much uncertainty right now.

And so what you do is then you rewrite that down to the current fair market value.

Speaker 13

Okay. And then Maury, I'd ask you to dream a little bit on this one with me here. Is there a way to totally rethink how you pay your frontline people? Maybe you give them like higher pay on an hourly basis, but you take away minimum guarantees. Or maybe you even put some of these frontline folks on annual salaries and you give them an annual bonus based on company performance.

Is there anything like that that you can affect pay wise that could give you even more variability that works out both for you and for the company? Obviously, I realize this also be done in collective bargaining, course, but is there anything that you can think about long term about affecting long term change as it relates to compensating people out of this thing, particularly the frontline?

Speaker 2

Well, you hit the nail on the head. It's all tied to contracts and the way that people are paid and we're creatures of habit. And we're used to thinking the way we think just and there's these contracts get built up. Some of them are fifty, sixty years old that are built up of all the overarching little things that the average person would look to. I'd like to think that the nice thing about our model is we don't interchange a lot of people.

So an Orlando is a contained base. It goes out and back and the like. One of the constructive things I'd like to see us do is work with the pilots, flight attendants in particular, to see about what's a better way to compensate you in a base and test it. You got to go back, you got to go out and test it and you got to schedule and pay the two fundamentals for these folks and appropriately. If you want to do some things that enhance for both sides, you got to just it's hard to sit across the table and just say, let's try this because it's usually for the whole group and that's a hard sell.

But I would recommend to our folks that let's pick a base, let's try some ideas and we should be testing something all the time. It's just a good way for businesses and organizations to be continually checking what they're doing and could we do it better. But there won't be anything short term, I don't think, this point, Hunter, with people looking to change. Candidly, to their defense, they're scared to death, too. I mean, on February 1 had your choice of jobs if you were a pilot.

And I think we did an internal calculation that showed there'd be as many as 25,000 pilots out of work here in the not too distant future. That's a life changing for a lot of these folks that have never seen anything like this. It's that's a pretty tough pill to swallow.

Speaker 13

Okay, Maury. Thanks a lot. Sure.

Speaker 0

Thank you. This concludes today's question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back to Lori Gallagher for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you all very much. Appreciate your time, and we'll see you in July, I would guess, at this point. Thanks again. Bye bye.

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.