SkyWest - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, welcome to the SkyWest Incorporated second quarter 2023 results call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. I will now turn the conference over to Rob Simmons, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Rob Simmons (CFO)

Thanks, everyone, for joining us on the call today. As the operator indicated, this is Rob Simmons, SkyWest Chief Financial Officer. On the call with me today are Chip Childs, President and Chief Executive Officer; Wade Steel, Chief Commercial Officer; and Eric Woodward, Chief Accounting Officer. I'd like to start today by asking Eric to read the Safe Harbor. I will turn the time over to Chip for some comments. Following Chip, I will take us through the financial results, Wade will discuss the fleet and related flying arrangements. Following Wade, we will have the customary Q&A session with our sell side analysts. Eric?

Eric Woodward (Chief Accounting Officer)

Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements that represent our current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions regarding future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Actual results will likely vary and may vary materially from those anticipated, estimated, or projected for a number of reasons. Some of the factors that may cause such differences are included in our 2022 Form 10-K and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now I'll turn the call over to Chip.

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

Thank you, Rob and Eric. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call again today. Today, SkyWest reported net income of $15 million or $0.35 per diluted share. Reflected in those results were $60 million of deferred revenue. Halfway through 2023, we're making strong progress on all of our strategic objectives, including: One, enhancing our partnerships and ensuring we continue to deliver on our partners' needs. Two, effectively and efficiently utilize our industry-leading flexible fleet. Three, maintaining a healthy, strong balance sheet. Four, continuing to ensure that we take care of our people and create value for our shareholders. We are pleased to exceed all of these internal targets for the first couple of quarters in a row now. The second quarter was the first full quarter reflecting our updated partner contracts, helping to offset our new pilot costs.

We appreciate the confidence that each of our partners have in our product and their continued support of our efforts in the new environment. We remain committed to working with them to evolve, adapt, and provide strong solutions to their needs. During the second quarter, we purchased 3.3 million shares for $94 million under our previously communicated share repurchase plan and have acquired 17% of total shares outstanding year-to-date. captain availability remains an industry-wide constraint, and we are making good headway.

We also continue to work with our pilot group to ensure SkyWest remains a career destination and not just a stepping stone for exceptional pilots. We are prioritizing upgrades. While prioritizing upgrades, we continue to fill new higher pilot classes. Additionally, captain attritions continue to stabilize, although we've seen a slight increase in first officer attrition.

Overall, attrition was slightly lower than planned for the quarter. These improved metrics continue to improve our outlook on block hours for 2023, which are now expected to be about 11% lower than 2022. It will take some time over the next couple of years to regain our crew balance and restore production and full utilization of our fleet.

I would remind you that as we do so, our ability to restore even a portion of production becomes accretive with our existing fleet mix. Our existing fleet can accommodate large future growth without additional CapEx spend. We invested heavily in our people over the past year and continue to believe it is our most important investment. To that end, SkyWest became the only regional and second airline ever to implement flight attendant boarding pay during the second quarter. This is in addition to last year's pay increases.

We're fortunate to have a positive working relationship with our labor representatives that enables us to move quickly on behalf of our teams. This unique relationship continues to benefit our people and helps us consistently deliver an outstanding product. Constant, strong operating performance is a key differentiator for SkyWest, and we remain disciplined in ensuring we deliver on our commitments. Our teams began the second quarter by ranking number one in the Department of Transportation's On-Time Performance list for April and producing over 99.9% adjusted completion for the quarter. I also want to mention that so far this year, SkyWest has recorded over 160 days of 100% controllable completion. This feat does not happen without extensive planning and resource allocation to manage through challenges.

Our people continue to do a tremendous job as we adapt and lead the industry, and I want to thank them for their commitment to reliability and great service. SkyWest Charter, or SWC, has continued to successfully complete on-demand charter flying as we await the DOT's approval of a commuter authority. It is unclear to us why this approval has taken longer than similar applications. We are committed to seeing this application through to completion. SWC has completed all requirements necessary to provide what is already available to numerous operators within the existing regulations and well-established precedent.

Additionally, we've committed that SWC will enhance safety in the Part 135 space by hiring ATP pilots in both seats, active flight dispatching, Advanced Qualification Program training, SMS, FAR 117 rest rules, and many more enhancements to Part 135 requirements, even above what is being done at some Part 121 carriers, particularly low-cost carriers. We are committed to doing the right thing regardless of what is required.

Small airports have suffered with the loss of connectivity in recent years, and we continue to believe SWC is the best possible answer for small community air service. While SWC will be a small portion of our overall business, we look forward to continuing to raise the bar for the national airspace and utilize existing assets to deliver critical service in small and underserved communities. Overall, demand for all of our flying remains exceptionally strong.

As we deliver on our business fundamentals, we remain laser-focused on executing reliably for the long game and ensuring we are best positioned to respond to opportunities. We're putting solid components in place and have set ourselves up to be a fundamentally better company by focusing on the core areas of our business that will set us up for growth in 2024 and beyond, and ensure we have a solid, sustainable future. Rob will now take us through the financial data.

Rob Simmons (CFO)

Today, we reported a second quarter GAAP net profit of $15 million, or $0.35 earnings per share. Q2 pretax income was $18 million. Our weighted average share count for Q2 was 44.2 million, and our effective tax rate was 13%. First, let's talk about revenue. Total Q2 revenue of $726 million is up 5% sequentially from Q1, and down 9% from Q2 2022. Q2 revenue breaks down, with contract revenue up 5% from Q1 and down 9% from Q2 2022. Prorate revenue was $82 million in Q2, up 6% from Q1, and down 13% from Q2 2022. Leasing and other revenue was down $3 million sequentially and flat year-over-year.

These GAAP results include the effect of $60 million of revenue deferred this quarter, compared to $63 million deferred in Q1 and $16 million that was released in Q2 2022. As of the end of Q2, we have $248 million of cumulative deferred revenue that will be recognized in future periods. As indicated last quarter, we expect to defer revenue of approximately $60 million per quarter in Q3 and Q4. We anticipate we will begin to recognize previously deferred revenue in Q1 2024 and beyond. Let me move to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with cash of $862 million, down $74 million from $936 million last quarter.

The $74 million reduction in cash this quarter includes the accretive actions of, number one, repaying $114 million in debt, and number two, buying back 3.3 million shares of SkyWest stock in the open market for $94 million at an average price of $28 per share. During the first half of 2023, we repurchased 8.4 million shares, or approximately 17% of the outstanding shares of the company, for $194 million at an average price of $23 per share. Our CapEx during the second quarter was $31 million. We ended Q2 with debt of $3.2 billion, down from $3.4 billion as of year-end 2022. These cash-related numbers tell an important story about the quarter, that we continue to generate positive free cash flow from operations despite production constraints.

Our positive free cash flow also benefits from a lower investment in CapEx than in prior years. We also continue to have well over $1 billion of unpledged collateral that could be deployed for additional liquidity if ever needed. Our strong balance sheet and strong liquidity continue to be powerful tools to create shareholder value, tools that have helped us repay over $200 million in debt and repurchase nearly $200 million in stock just in the first half of 2023. Consistent with our policy and practice, we are not giving any specific EPS guidance at this time, but let me give you a little color. We now anticipate achieving GAAP income both in the second half and for the full 2023 year, driven by improved production forecasts resulting from favorable attrition trends.

We're pleased several elements of our model have improved in the last 90 days. We expect Q3 pretax income to be flat to up from the Q2 results announced today, and we would expect Q4 to be seasonally down from Q3 as usual. Our outlook for block hour production that we expected last quarter to be down 14% in 2023 from 2022 has improved, which Wade will discuss in a minute. We now expect block hours to be down approximately 11% for 2023, based on improving captain attrition metrics. As I mentioned earlier, strong cash flow enabled us to buy back 8.4 million shares, or approximately 17% of the company's outstanding stock, for $194 million during the first half of 2023 under our repurchase plan.

This is an important data point as analysts rebuild their EPS targets for the second half of 2023 and 2024. Total shares outstanding as of June 30th were 42.4 million, down from 50.6 million at year-end. As of June 30th, we had $186 million available under our current repurchase authorization. There are four points I would like to call out regarding our return on invested capital trajectory. Number one, the fleet in place today can accommodate 20%-35% future growth in block hours without incremental capital investment. Wade will give more quantification around this in a minute.

Number two, the 17% reduction in shares outstanding in the first half of the year will set the stage nicely for EPS growth, as we expect to generate GAAP profitability in the second half and full year of 2023 and beyond. We expect CapEx to be down over $300 million year-over-year in 2023 compared to 2022. This year's CapEx reduction, along with our improving production outlook, although still negative year-over-year, could drive the best free cash flow in 2023 that we have had in the last five years.

We believe that our strong cash position and the actions we are taking now to prepare the way over the next couple of years for incremental utilization of our fleet to work through the pilot shortage affecting the industry, and to preserve the optionality of monetizing strong demand opportunities over time, will position us well to drive total shareholder returns. Wade?

Wade Steel (Chief Commercial Officer)

Thank you, Rob. I'll provide a fleet and production status update, as well as an update on our SkyWest Charter and prorate businesses. As discussed last quarter, we are nearing completion of our strong delivery schedule. We have four remaining E175s on order. We anticipate taking two of those in the fourth quarter of this year, one in 2024, and the last E175 in 2025. We also returned one partner-owned aircraft to that partner during the second quarter.

This will bring our E175 fleet total to 239 aircraft. As we previously discussed, we worked with each of our mainline partners to address the increased pilot pay agreement ratified last year. The second quarter was the first complete quarter to include the full impact of all partner reimbursements. We appreciate all of our partners' support and continued confidence in our product with this additional cost reimbursement.

Let me review our production. The second quarter block hours increased by approximately 2% as compared to the first quarter of 2023. Based on the current schedules we have from our major partners for Q3, we anticipate that our block hours will increase by approximately 2% in the third quarter as compared to the second quarter. We have seen a positive trend in our captain attrition. With the captain attrition lower than planned, we anticipate that our 2023 block hours will be down 11% as compared to 2022, which is an improvement from the down 14% we communicated last quarter. As we look into 2024 and beyond, we can add approximately 20% more block hours to our ERJ fleet without any additional aircraft.

This same number is over 35% for our CRJ fleet and makes each additional block hour very accretive to the model. Given our conversations with our partners, we are very engaged in supporting our efforts to restore production. Let me give a brief update about the status of SWC, our new charter business. During March, we completed all proving runs and received all the approvals necessary from the FAA to operate as an airline.

During April, we operated our first on-demand revenue charter flight. We are pleased with the progress of our on-demand charter business and look forward to the fall when the sports charter demand increases substantially. We still have not received commuter authority from the DOT. The commuter authority application is meant to demonstrate the fitness of the carrier in terms of financial, managerial, and operational matters, among other things.

We believe SWC is a well-capitalized entity and has some of the best operational leaders in the industry. We have provided the DOT with all the information they requested and are still waiting for them to approve and issue the commuter authority. Once granted commuter authority, SWC will be able to better serve small communities. Regardless of the status of our commuter application, we are moving forward with our plans for SWC to operate on-demand charters. As far as our prorate business, the demand remains extremely strong. Just like the rest of the industry, we have seen very strong yields and great community support.

We will continue to work with the communities on the best way to continue our service. We have spent the last several years reducing risk and enhancing fleet and financing flexibility to ensure we're well-positioned. This flexibility will continue to be a differentiator for us, and we are committed to continuing our work with each of our major partners to provide creative solutions to the continued exceptional demand for our products.

Rob Simmons (CFO)

Okay, operator, we're now ready for the Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star one again. One moment for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Duane, perhaps your line is on mute. Duane, are you there? Move on to the next question. Your next question comes from the line of Savi Syth of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Savi Syth (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Thanks. Hey, good afternoon, everyone. The, the point about-- and congratulations on, on the results here. I, I was kind of curious on the, on the point about kind of being able to increase your block hours, you know, 25%-30%, without incremental investment. I'm curious if you can share a little bit more about, do you have the pilots needed to kind of get to that level of increase? Like, how long would it take, you know, to, to get that increase into, into your block hours, and, and what kind of, kind of-- Is there any kind of OpEx cost investments that need to be made as we try to figure out what your-- You know, once you have a full utilization, you know, what your cost of block hour might look like?

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

Yes, Savi, this is Chip. That's a great question. We appreciate it. I think from our perspective, I mentioned a little bit about it in the script. You know, we have a lot of underutilization within our fleet today, and we do need pilots to get the utilization back up. As I mentioned in the script, we believe that this is going to take place over, you know, at least an 18 months to two year period. I think we've also indicated we're gaining, you know, some optimism about what's going on with the trajectory of, of, and, and rates of attrition. Look, we're hopeful. I, I would also add, we are keeping a very close eye on what's gonna happen this fall.

As we've seen some trends compared to the previous years and 18 months, look, we're gaining an optimism that even that is gonna take a while to produce captains. We think we've got a good, stable base. We've got some good, you know, things in place to make sure that we, you know, maximize what we can do relative to the fleet, but it's gonna take two years still to, to get to that, you know, pre-pandemic, very high utilization among our fleet, which has even increased, you know, since 2019 as well. Look, we're hopeful, but we, we still have to continue to be patient and hope that some of the, the, the rates and trajectory turn around as well.

Savi Syth (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Maybe without asking kind of a specific cost of the block hour, is it that given where you're at, you should be able to get, once you're at full utilization, you should be able to get a kind of similar pre-tax margin as 2019? Is that right or?

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

You know, we'd have to see what it looks like because it's gonna take a little bit of investment to get there, but we're optimistic that we would be back to the pre-, pre-pandemic margins by the time we get our, our fleet fully utilized.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Helane Becker of Cowen. Please go ahead.

Helane Becker (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, thanks very much, operator. Hi, everybody, and thank you for the time here. Just a point of clarification: On the share repurchase program and what you have left, are you thinking of getting the whole program done this year then? Is that how we should think about that?

Rob Simmons (CFO)

Hi, Helene, it's Rob here.

Helane Becker (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, Rob.

Rob Simmons (CFO)

You know, the $185 million or $186 million that we've got left on the current program does not have a specific timeframe for executing it. You know, we intend to be somewhat opportunistic about this, but no timeframe. Again, as in, you know, many years in the past as we've, as we've demonstrated, you know, typically when we get a Board program approved, it's executed.

Helane Becker (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. That's very helpful. Thanks, Rob. Then just for my follow-up question, unrelated, maybe even a follow-up to Savi's. Have, have you guys looked at, you know, what happens if the pilot retirement age is successfully raised from 65-67 in terms of the number of pilots who, who avoid, you know, avoid retirement, and, and what that does to the ability, you know, to, to continue to, you know, get those captains in, in the left seats, A? Then B, the other part of the question is on the charter business. Is there a political element to the DOT not giving you the approval, do you think?

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

Well, just again, Helane, thanks. This is Chip. I'll address both of the issues. you know, I think, I think to, to your first point, we've evaluated the Age 65 Rule in several different factors. To us, in our situation with Charter and SkyWest Airlines, and what our major partners are hiring, we're largely neutral on what the data is showing. I know that there are some special interest groups that are talking about the biggest concern about it is the fact that, you know, it does some things internationally with seniority of the list, which complicates it from the major carrier perspective. From our perspective, you know, we're in favor of it, you know, from a, from a pure perspective, should someone older than 65 fly an airplane?

You have to understand, we're coming from the point of view where we probably have one of the best pilot training, you know, training and monitoring programs in the entire world. From our perspective, we have our own bars you have to meet, we have our own programs that monitor all these things. We don't believe a birth certificate is necessarily the, the key element that's gonna make somebody a safe pilot or not, just like we're not sure that, you know, 1,500 hours is gonna do the same thing. We believe in the programs, and the safety programs, and the training programs that are gonna find out, you know, how, how good and how safe pilots are.

You know, there's a lot of 1,500 young 1,500-hour pilots that do not cut the bar every month here at SkyWest. From our perspective, it's a view that we are quite candidly supportive of because of the confidence we have in our training and monitoring program. I think net, net, it's largely, you know, we think it would be good for SkyWest. On the charter side, do we think that it's political? You know, I would suspect it is. I fundamentally do believe that the Department of Transportation has a very strong internal priority, and they want to solve the solution with small community service. From that perspective, you know, us and the DOT are absolutely perfectly aligned, you know, in what that overall objective is.

There, there's no doubt that, that, you know, there's a lot of special interest group that don't want us in this space. We-- Our, our objective here is, you know, as Wade said, the on-demand charter business is doing really well. We are flying a lot of wealthy individuals as well as sport teams around right now, and it's not what we necessarily want to put our priorities at. We, we, we-- 50+ years ago, SkyWest was built on small community service. We fundamentally have a passion for that, and that's why we're gonna do and continue to pursue what we need to, you know, relative to charter. I think generally we're aligned. There's obviously...

Probably our biggest problem is that we're probably the most qualified applicant in this process that the DOT has ever seen from a capital perspective, a safety perspective, and an operating, reliability perspective. We thought that it would be easy, but, you know, it's definitely harder than what we thought it would be, but we're gonna continue to pursue it.

Helane Becker (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Okay, thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from line of Michael Linenberg of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Michael Linenberg (Managing Director and Senior Airline Analyst)

Yeah, hey, good afternoon, everyone, nice results. Just a couple quick ones here. The block hours going from down 14 to down 11, just remind us, at the start of the year, the initial guide, we were looking at, what? I think it was minus 19. Is that, is that where our starting point was, and we're at minus 11 now?

Wade Steel (Chief Commercial Officer)

Yeah. Michael, this is Wade. Yes, you're right on. It was 19. We have seen as we said in our scripts. You know, we've had some positive trends in our captain attrition, and we've been able to benefit from that, so.

Michael Linenberg (Managing Director and Senior Airline Analyst)

Okay. Then, Wade, on the attrition front, I think I did hear you say that first officer attrition, though, went up, or maybe it was Chip who said that. Curious, what, what's the dynamic there, on first officers going up?

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

I think, Michael, I think as, as we go through this pilot shortage process now, and we talk about pilot shortage, it is absolutely real. Otherwise, our results would be higher than what it is today, which we like. To the extent that we go through this journey that, you know, we started post-pandemic, as time goes on, the demand for pilots sort of change. There, I don't think there's any doubt what we're trying to do with captains at SkyWest is certainly motivating them to stay. As that happens, then I think that the recruiters of the low-cost carriers and others have to go, you know, down a little bit further from our seniority list, and we're seeing some things hit from a first officer perspective.

From our perspective of that, it's very easy to replace a first officer at SkyWest. Honestly, our cadet program and our long-term classes can be full for several, several months based on the candidates we see out there. We don't like as much churn as what we have. Look, we're doing some things internally and with some various programs, you know, with our partners, to make sure that we have people that are gonna be willing to stay here longer, if their eventual, you know, objective is to go to our major partner. Which, by the way, that will be our long-term objective for both captains and first officers, is to make sure that we have programs aligned with directly from SkyWest directly to a major carrier.

Admittedly, it's taken us some time, but I think there's gonna be some very cool things come out here in the next month or two. It's just a journey, and I think the fact that first officers are, you know, a part of the thing that we see an uptick, it does give us confidence that we're at least on the right pathway, although we're not done, making sure we're, we're retaining the captains, you know, in, in a better fashion than we want, 'cause we're very, very invested in that.

Michael Linenberg (Managing Director and Senior Airline Analyst)

Great, thanks, Chip. Just if I could sneak in a quick tax question for Rob. I heard that effective tax rate of 13%, how should we think about that for the rest of the year? Rob, when you gave us the earnings guidance for the next two quarters, you're, you're referencing a pre-tax number, right? Not, not a after-tax or an EPS. You're looking at pre-tax, just to, just to clarify. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions.

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

Sure. Yeah, Michael, the, the comment, you know, on next year is that, you know, we expect to be GAAP profitable in the second half and for the full year, so that would be pre-tax and EPS, both. On the tax question, you know, as you know, when your, when your numbers, you know, go from negative to positive during a year, it's a little funky with tax rate.

You know, the tax rate for the second quarter was 13%, you know, which is obviously a little below what a, a normalized rate would look like. We expect that Q3 will also be unusually low, Q4 will pop back up. You know, 2024 and 2025, you know, we, we think that we'll start to get back to a more normalized tax rate. For now, 13%, you know, is a little lower than expected, but that's why some of the volatility there.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Catherine O'Brien of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Catherine O'Brien (VP and Equity Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for getting me on. Maybe just first a follow-up to Savi's question on upside to block hours at full utilization on your ERJ and CRJ fleets. Are all those aircraft you're talking about, multipart one, forgive me in advance, are all of those aircraft currently on contract, one? Then two, you know, I know you removed some of the minimum block hour language in your, in your contract recuts, obviously, the industry is short capacity, I'm guessing your partners would want to flex up as much as you can. You know, I guess, do you agree on that?

Then, and then three, you know, if, if your staffing issues were to solve tomorrow, would we see the ERJ fleet, you know, start flying 20% more and, and, the CRJ start flying 35% more, or, or are there some other things that go into the equation that we need to solve besides staffing? Thanks so much.

Wade Steel (Chief Commercial Officer)

Yeah. So Catie, just, you know, I'll, I'll tackle a couple of these questions. The first one was, just on the, the fleet itself, are, are all of those airplanes currently under contract? I'll answer it, a couple of different ways, right? The ERJ fleet, yes, 100% of those airplanes are under contract. The CRJ fleet, there are some CRJ-200s that we have had that are no longer under contract and, and are parked in the desert and would require some, some, some maintenance on. As far as bringing up the fleet to, to full utilization, what I will say on that is the ERJ fleet, all of them are flying today. They're all being maintained today.

So, you know, to get to that level of utilization, if we have the pilots available, yes, those could be flexed up very quickly, and, and staffed. There, there would be no maintenance constraints. On the CRJ side, we would, we would need to definitely spool up some of our MRO capacity to get all of the benefit of that CRJ utilization. The ERJ would be ready, ready to go, as soon as we have the pilots to staff that. Chip, I-

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

Yeah, Catie, this is Chip. Just on your, on your third point there about, you know, if, if our attrition, sort of solved itself, you know, how fast do you get back to those, you know, pre-pandemic utilization? I would say it depends on what your definition of solved is. You know, we had a fair amount of attrition back pre-pandemic that we are accustomed to. If it got back down to those levels, you know, we're still, as we've talked about the last couple of years, in a deep hole.

I mean, I, I don't, I don't think that we're, you know, not serious about some of the, you know, communication we put out there about small communities that we've had to get out of because this, this situation is real, and it's gonna take us, some effort to get out of. If, if our attrition went to zero, we'd be very optimistic at which the speed that we could get the utilization back up. You know, we continue to evaluate what the fall looks like. We continue to evaluate, you know, what, what the holiday season and the middle, you know, parts between those look like so that we can give some better projections for 2024, and beyond.

I think you know that we're relatively conservative about our view about this, and we're gonna continue to be that way until we start to see some really good data further out on the horizon. We're still, look, we're still optimistic, and there's, and I think to your point, and your question is, is there is a tremendous amount of capital investment-free upside in our business model relative to the pilot recovery process that we're gonna have over the next couple of years.

Catherine O'Brien (VP and Equity Analyst)

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks so much. Then maybe just, you know, beyond, you know, listen, we saw 18-24 months, as you said, of, of upside from just utilization, so I did not want to underplay that. Longer term, as we look forward, maybe over the next, you know, three to five years, what do you think are the main buckets of earnings growth from that point on? You know, is it adding that aircraft? Is it the impact of your charter and leasing businesses? Are there more accretive opportunities to buy aircraft off lease? You know, I guess I'm speaking about net income versus EPS, which, which, you know, obviously could continue to, to see upside from share purchases. Thanks so much.

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

Yeah, Katie, that's a, that's a great question because I think that the answer to what you're looking for, for the opportunities beyond the next two years is still continued all of the above, all the above of what we've been doing the last seven years. You know, there's no doubt there's some things we need to do with, with share, shareholders and, and, and number of shares that we have. We're likely to continue to, to do those programs.

Based on the fact that we have invested so much in the model, in our people, and in our partners, even post-high utilization, I can tell you we are very optimistic, once, you know, we get a further good string of, of supply of pilots, that all the things that we've done in the past seven, eight, you know, 10 years are going to continue to have even greater opportunities in the future. I hope that doesn't sound too optimistic, but, from our perspective, I think that we've done some things right, through the pandemic and since the pandemic. We've made all the investments in all the right things. Again, as we say, we play the long game.

We're actually playing the long game beyond the next two years, and we're optimistic about what both Charter and SkyWest Airlines can do with these four amazing partners, with the best aviation professionals in the world. Look, we're, we're pretty optimistic over the long, long game as well.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Savi Syth of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Savi Syth (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Hey, thanks for the follow-up. Just curious, you know, you called out your operational performance, which has been really stellar. If I look at it, you know, partially there's a benefit on geography and not having as much more exposure to the Northeast, but if I look at some of your kind of competitors, they aren't doing as well on, on, on that. Is there something that's kind of different other than geography, that's driving SkyWest to kind of perform that much better? Are you seeing that in your conversations with partners and maybe perhaps a willingness to kind of give more responsibility or kind of opportunity as, as things recover to, to take on more flying?

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

Yeah, I think, Savi, first and foremost, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna challenge your geography question a little bit. I mean, we, we talk a lot about the North-- the Northeast corridor, and I get all of that stuff. We still have four partners spread out all over the United States, and we're always impacted by something at least at one or two places every single day. Holding four separate partners together, as far as we're spread out, is, is a feat as opposed to just flying in the, in, in the Northeast corridor. I get all of those elements. That having been said, I'll be very deliberate in my answer to that.

We've learned hard lessons over the last four or five years relative to capacity and investment, I know a lot of others have learned them this year. I think we pride ourselves on agility, we pride ourselves on creativity and execution. I will tell you that the investments that we've made have all been centered around making sure that we take care of our people, and our people want us to be an outstanding performer. We only recruit people that want to perform. We only, you know, want to hire folks that want to perform and that take pride in the fact that we invest in the right systems. Look, we benchmark ourselves not against other regional carriers or low-cost carriers.

We benchmark ourselves in our investments, in our programs, in IT, and everything against major carriers, like our partners, the best carriers in the world, you know, United and Delta and Alaska and American. That's our benchmark, and we still want to even exceed them because we have the challenge of dealing with all four of them from a dispatch perspective when they're having the same storms that we are. For us to be where we are, I think is. I will admit, probably the biggest windfall is we do have a lot of assets that are not utilized as hard as they could be. As we get our utilization back up, I think that's going to be a challenge because we surely have a lot of airplanes.

That having been said, I think we've become a lot more sophisticated about the partners that we work with from a vendor's perspective. I think our culture has gotten a lot better over the last two to three years, and I just can't say enough for the engagement on our team. I mean, our team is absolutely second to none. I'll put them up against anybody, particularly when there's a challenge from, you know, senior management to mid-level management to the frontline employees. The only thing I can say is that they're among the best in the world, and they continue to deliver. That's our secret, you know, right there. It's probably not as, as eloquent as you want, but it's, it's pretty straightforward.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have a follow-up question from the line of Michael Linenberg of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Michael Linenberg (Managing Director and Senior Airline Analyst)

Yeah, just, just a quick one, team. The on-demand charter business, which I know has now been running up, up and running for, for several months now, what, what are we talking about sort of magnitude-wise on its contribution to top line? You know, is this a $10 million-$20 million annual business? Is it more than that? I'm just trying to get a feel from a modeling perspective. Thanks. Good question.

Wade Steel (Chief Commercial Officer)

Yeah, Michael, this is Wade. You know, as you said, this business is just getting up and going, and we're filling the, we're testing the demand right now. So we're definitely seeing that the fall and winter and spring are definitely busy seasons, right? So we're staffing up for those times. We're working towards those. We really, you know, we're still exploring what that's all going to be right now. We've got airplanes ready, we've got pilots ready, we've got flight attendants ready to go.

As far as the top-line number, at this, at this moment, I think we're gonna hold off on, on giving any of that kind of stuff. We need to test and see what the demands are, the preliminary indications is that it's gonna be strong, and it's gonna be good. You know, we're excited about that, and we'll see, you know, we'll see, see where it goes this fall.

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

Yeah, Michael, this is Chip. I'd only add, I think that's a good answer from Wade, I would only add that, you know, this year it's not likely to make money because we are so heavy on crews. I mean, we are stacked with pilots in the night right now. We have almost 100 pilots in there, there's not enough flying for those almost 100 pilots. We have a very strong cadre of pilots that want to be a part of this organization. Financially, it's not terrific right now. We think that it will be as soon as we get some things in place with the DOT. You know, the commitments and everything that we've made to communities and what we're trying to do, we're investing in it now. It's not like we're gonna invest in it later, so.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have a follow-up question from the line of Catherine O'Brien of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Catherine O'Brien (VP and Equity Analyst)

Hey, thanks for letting me back on here. So maybe just digging into demand from your partners a bit more, can you just walk us through, you know, what percentage of your fleet is coming up to the end of its contract term over the next couple of years? You know, how conversations on extensions are going. Then, you know, a lot to tackle, as we already covered on, on getting back to full utilization. From beyond there, you know, are your partners talking about adding, you know, net aircraft to SkyWest over the coming years? Is that a function of, you know, regional growth there, or is that, you know, share shift? Multi-part question again from me. I really appreciate the color. Thanks.

Wade Steel (Chief Commercial Officer)

Yeah. As far as the demand and the fleet renewals, in the queue, we do give a little bit of information about when some of our contracts expire. We have a handful of airplanes that are expiring at the end of this year. We have some next year in 2024, but, you know, our E175s, you know, which is, you know, the backbone of what we do right now, we've signed up for 12-year contracts. The first expirations aren't for several more years on those, and so those are out there. As far as the conversations go about renewals, they're very good. All the partners are very supportive on renewing. They want the fleets to be up. They want them to be ready to go.

We are having great conversations with all of our partners about continuing to get the fleet, where it needs to be, and going. You know, the conversations are very good with the partners. The demand is still very strong from our side. You know, about fleet renewals and growth, you know, we are always having conversations with our partners about not only, you know, our current fleet, about future fleets, about refreshing our existing fleets. Those conversations are always ongoing, and they're ongoing today as well. You know, the partners have been great, and they're very supportive of what we've got going on.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call over to Chip Childs for closing remarks.

Chip Childs (President and CEO)

Thank you again for everybody to joining us today, and we really appreciate your interest. I think from the call, you can understand that we feel like we've got some very good momentum in some critical areas. Again, I wanna reiterate a couple of things just briefly. One is that we continue to invest in the long game of, of our future and think that the things that we've been doing in the past are gonna continue to, to magnify opportunities in the future. Last, I wanna reiterate what we've talked about on the call relative to our people and our performance. You know, at times we get questions about, you know, what are your future opportunities, you know, long term, short term?

You know, I can tell you, we've got just the best partners to work with, and we have the most amazing group of people that are vested in the success of SkyWest, now as much as ever. We're humbled by that opportunity and take it seriously and hope that we can, you know, do what we need to, to return that value to all of our partners, people, and shareholders. With that, we appreciate your interest, and we will talk to you next quarter.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.