United Airlines expects to end FY2024 with a similar level of capacity as seen in FY2023, even though it won’t be a year of capacity growth across the Atlantic, chief commercial officer Andrew Nocella says in a call with analysts. The airline anticipates little to no growth on domestic flying for the 1H, but it does predict a faster-than-expected shake-up in the domestic market, which will lead to an improvement in margins over the medium-to-long-term, CEO Scott Kirby says.

United Airlines plans to significantly boost its first class seats offering in the upcoming years as customers think differently about paying higher prices to travel in the midst of an inventory-led environment. The airline seeks to increase its first class seats per departure from 9 in 2019 to 16 by 2027, representing an 80% chief commercial officer Andrew Nocella says in a call with analysts. Six years ago, United Airlines didn’t offer premium products that many of its best customers were willing to pay for, but the company is now making quick progress in correcting this disconnect in its commercial plans, Nocella adds.

CFRA, an independent research provider, has provided MT Newswires with the following research alert. Analysts at CFRA have summarized their opinion as follows: Our 12-month target of $41, down $19, is 4.5x our ’24 EPS estimate (cut to $9.13 from $11.38; ’23 to $9.87 from $11.30), below its peer forward average of 4.9x, which we believe is merited due to its above-peer average floating-rate debt ($11B vs. peer average of ~$3B) and lofty capex needs (~$9B vs. peer average of $4B in ’24). Q2 EPS of $3.65 vs. $2.81 beat consensus by $0.24. Q2 revenues grew ~13 Y/Y. The stock fell ~10% today, which we think is due to rising unit costs (labor and fuel) and the impact of the recent Israeli conflict (2% of total capacity per UAL). In Q3, UAL finalized a labor contract with its pilots (valued at $10B, lifting pay by as much as 40% over