perserverance
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April 24,2008 12:30pm
The following is from a conference call between all the US heads. After
the introduction of all online Doug Parker was given the floor and said:
Doug Parker:
''Fortunately, US Airways is prepared for this environment and we have significant cash on hand. We recently improved our credit card agreement. We have debt agreements that have minimal debt payments through 2013 and no financial covenants other than a minimum cash balance to us. We’ve done a nice job of keeping capacity in check and we are running a great operation for our customers.
One of the things we also do is investigate consolidation opportunities. I obviously can’t comment much on specific consolidation speculation so I will say what I can say now, and that is we’ve been a long-time proponent of industry consolidation. We believe the industry is far too fragmented and we also believe that a healthier, less fragmented industry would be in the best interest of our industry shareholders, customers, and employees.
To that end, we are supportive of the consolidation efforts that have begun and we will continue as always to investigate any opportunities that might be in the best interest of US Airways employees, customers, and shareholder.
In some way all this -- we think the financial turmoil that we are in, while none of us like to see this level of losses, the turmoil that we are in actually provides an opportunity for our industry and particularly for US Airways. We have been encouraged by some of the comments and actions of our competitors recently and we are hopeful this has been a wake-up call that was needed to finally force all of us to treat this industry as a business that much generate adequate returns on capital. The capital markets seem to be enforcing that discipline upon us and we think that’s good. ''
Derek J. Kerr
''For the first quarter, we had 50% of our fuel consumption hedged, which resulted in a realized gain of $81 million, or $0.28 per gallon. Fuel conservation continues to be a top priority for us in 2008. As I said previously, we are in the midst of an aircraft renewal program and we continue to implement where feasible, fuel conservation strategies such as arrival fuel, APU burn, and adding wing lifts to our 757 fleet.
In terms of fuel hedging, we continue to actively increase our hedge positions, even in this environment. We have 56% hedged in the second quarter, 41% in the third, and 26% in the fourth, for 44% overall for the year. The second quarter fuel hedges are capped at $28 per barrel, or $2.62 per gallon. The caps increase throughout the year and top out at $85 per barrel in the fourth quarter. The value of our unrealized fuel hedges in place at the end of the quarter was $157 million.
Moving forward, we expect non-fuel unit costs to increase at a much slower rate, despite the reduction in capacity.
Now I'll talk about the balance sheet. We finished the quarter with $2.8 billion of total cash and investments, of which $2.4 billion was unrestricted. The unrestricted balance does include $295 million of auction rate securities that currently are reflected as non-current assets on our balance sheet.''
Hows' that for information and not talk. Parker says were golden til at least 2013.......
Also it reads we are hedging our fuel costs.......VOTE NO
Thanks
The following is from a conference call between all the US heads. After
the introduction of all online Doug Parker was given the floor and said:
Doug Parker:
''Fortunately, US Airways is prepared for this environment and we have significant cash on hand. We recently improved our credit card agreement. We have debt agreements that have minimal debt payments through 2013 and no financial covenants other than a minimum cash balance to us. We’ve done a nice job of keeping capacity in check and we are running a great operation for our customers.
One of the things we also do is investigate consolidation opportunities. I obviously can’t comment much on specific consolidation speculation so I will say what I can say now, and that is we’ve been a long-time proponent of industry consolidation. We believe the industry is far too fragmented and we also believe that a healthier, less fragmented industry would be in the best interest of our industry shareholders, customers, and employees.
To that end, we are supportive of the consolidation efforts that have begun and we will continue as always to investigate any opportunities that might be in the best interest of US Airways employees, customers, and shareholder.
In some way all this -- we think the financial turmoil that we are in, while none of us like to see this level of losses, the turmoil that we are in actually provides an opportunity for our industry and particularly for US Airways. We have been encouraged by some of the comments and actions of our competitors recently and we are hopeful this has been a wake-up call that was needed to finally force all of us to treat this industry as a business that much generate adequate returns on capital. The capital markets seem to be enforcing that discipline upon us and we think that’s good. ''
Derek J. Kerr
''For the first quarter, we had 50% of our fuel consumption hedged, which resulted in a realized gain of $81 million, or $0.28 per gallon. Fuel conservation continues to be a top priority for us in 2008. As I said previously, we are in the midst of an aircraft renewal program and we continue to implement where feasible, fuel conservation strategies such as arrival fuel, APU burn, and adding wing lifts to our 757 fleet.
In terms of fuel hedging, we continue to actively increase our hedge positions, even in this environment. We have 56% hedged in the second quarter, 41% in the third, and 26% in the fourth, for 44% overall for the year. The second quarter fuel hedges are capped at $28 per barrel, or $2.62 per gallon. The caps increase throughout the year and top out at $85 per barrel in the fourth quarter. The value of our unrealized fuel hedges in place at the end of the quarter was $157 million.
Moving forward, we expect non-fuel unit costs to increase at a much slower rate, despite the reduction in capacity.
Now I'll talk about the balance sheet. We finished the quarter with $2.8 billion of total cash and investments, of which $2.4 billion was unrestricted. The unrestricted balance does include $295 million of auction rate securities that currently are reflected as non-current assets on our balance sheet.''
Hows' that for information and not talk. Parker says were golden til at least 2013.......
Also it reads we are hedging our fuel costs.......VOTE NO
Thanks
