I'm Savi Syth, the Raymond James Global Airline Analyst, and this is the Spirit Fireside Chat with CEO Ted Christie and CFO Scott Haralson. Spirit pioneered the ultra-low-cost model here in the U.S., and its reliance on price-sensitive, predominantly leisure and visiting friends and relatives demand means it has seen and will likely continue to see a faster recovery in revenue here. While unit cost recovery might take a bit longer, we continue to see a nice runway of growth for Spirit beyond the recovery as well. With that, good morning and thanks for joining us, Ted and Scott, and I'll turn it over to you to just get Ted for any opening remarks.
Thank you, Savi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for having us. Glad to be, you know, out and about again, even though we're sort of in the office, but it's nice to see some faces. I thought it'd be helpful if I just give a brief update on what we're seeing in the marketplace, and then we can get to the Q&A, Savi, if that's okay. We obviously had our earnings call just a few weeks ago, and what we've seen since then is that February probably turned a little bit later than we thought when we gave our original guidance. It took a little longer for the recovery out of the depths of, you know, the off-peak period to turn.
Now we've definitely started to see that traction, and positive news into, you know, case count and vaccination rates are clearly having an impact such that March has made up for whatever that kind of missing turn was, where we're landing about in the same spot from a margin perspective for the first quarter. I think that that actually portends positive things for the summer because the exit rate coming out of March now feels a little bit better. We thought, you know, it'd be helpful to kind of give you that view, and you can ask us questions around that as we move forward. I'll turn it back to you.
All right, great, Ted. Spirit is fairly well known, but maybe for some of the newer investors, I could take a step back and just have you or Scott describe, you know, what are the key aspects of your business model? What's core to the Spirit strategy?
I can go first, and Scott will color around it. The key components of the ultra-low-cost model and, in Spirit's case, the Spirit model are you start with low costs. It's the most important component of our strategy is that we have the lowest unit cost in the business, and we're able to use that cost structure to get to the next component of the strategy, which is to offer low fares that stimulate additional travelers in the places we fly. We're actually creating market where we go, and we use low fares with a complement of an ancillary product suite that allows our guests to pick and choose the items that are important to them and customize their own travel experience in the lowest fare possible way.
A fully unbundled product, which allows you to pick and choose bags, seat assignment, Loyalty Program, food on board, the distribution platform that you use to buy your tickets, all of those things can change the overall cost of the travel experience. What that does is allow people to pick those things that are most important, and our guests are actively telling us they like that. They want that flexibility. Low cost begets low fare, which allows you to stimulate, and when you couple that with an ancillary product and high operational reliability, and we now are one of the top-tier producers of airline product in the industry, you get a very high-value proposition. Low fares plus a high-quality product is a high-value proposition. I think those are the quick tenets of our model. Scott, what would you add?
No, I think that's right. I mean, the pillars that we've always talked about being low cost, you know, a broad network with the ancillary production, and over the last five plus years, it's really been about operational reliability and building the franchise value around the guest experience. I think we've seen that. You know, folks have taken notice through the years with the awards that we've received, most recently being Fortune's Most Admired Companies List, and those are validations of the things that we've been doing. I think, you know, the setup is strong for Spirit today. Low cost, broad network with an improving and very high guest experience, you know, is really the pillars that we've been driving, and we've been successful at doing that.
Ted, you had mentioned, you know, maybe stronger exit rates in March. It seems like we are starting to see, you know, that leisure VFR demand coming back as things get a bit better here in the U.S. I was wondering, you know, what's the view on, you know, the best guess, I guess, the progression over the next kind of year or two in demand recovery?
I think a proxy for our best guess, at least Spirit's best guess, is how we're tackling the capacity deployment idea. We've already indicated that by the time we hit this summer, our capacity will be equal to and then start to be greater than it was in the same period in 2019. If you think about the last year being 2020, we're now starting to move our way out of that divot. How fast we then recover from there to peak optimization or peak utilization of the fleet, meaning every airplane is deployed and every airplane is deployed at optimal utilization, probably takes us another year beyond that. We're looking at getting ourselves into the summer of 2022 where we're back to kind of our regular utilization of all assets. That delay is a little bit tied to logistics.
That may not perfectly line up with the recovery of the leisure traveler. In fact, we're a little bit cautious that we may actually not be able to move as fast as we want to, to be honest. But we're going to do our best to get everything kind of back in line and online as fast as we can. We just think it's going to take us a full year between the summer of this year and the summer of next year to get all those assets, all those people back trained again and everything to move. At least that capacity idea gives you some idea about our guess on the recovery. If anything, I think it may, you know, we may be positively surprised if the vaccination rate and the jurisdictional restrictions relax the way we expect.
It could be a little bit more positive than that.
That's encouraging for all of us. I've been waiting to get out and about and get back to seeing people live. You know, with network carriers, you know, also chasing leisure and VFR traffic, which we've seen a lot. I mean, there's really not been much business traffic over the last year, and a lot of the routes that legacy airlines and some of the, you know, other airlines have been introducing have been a lot more of the sun and surf and ski destinations. Does that change the competitive landscape for Spirit?
I think it does in the near term, you know, because you're seeing that capacity come into places where maybe it wasn't before or in relative terms, it's bigger than it was before, you know, even though all the airlines are smaller today, you know, more of it is in the places, like you mentioned, sun destinations and that sort of thing. I think in the near term, that's probably true, but I don't think that's a fundamental change shift in the dynamic. I think what's got to happen over as we recover is that, you know, the overall capitalist, you know, design, which is profit motivation, will allocate the best, will be the allocator of the best use of the capacity.
You know, we believe that our low cost structure plus our geographic strength in the places that matter from a leisure perspective, Florida, Las Vegas, to some extent Myrtle Beach, the Caribbean, those types of things are going to play to our advantage. You know, whatever happens to higher cost capacity over that period of time will depend on whether or not I think it's contributing. Higher cost capacity with low fares is not a very good combination, and that's what leads me to believe that over time that will rationalize.
That's interesting. Along those lines, I wonder, do you have any thoughts on basic economy, which was really kind of getting rolled out pre-crisis, and it has been in the market in a meaningful way before the pandemic? Do you see, I mean, recently you've seen some changes, you know, JetBlue made a change to their kind of basic fare to eliminate, you know, carry-on bags to make it a little bit more similar to kind of Spirit's basic fare as well. Do you see a change in, or maybe you can tell us how basic economy has impacted Spirit prior to the pandemic, and do you see a change in how that is used as a tool?
If you go back to the fundamental idea of that product or product segmentation, generally speaking, you introduce incremental segments of the product so you do not dilute. The idea of carving off different types of demand segments is so that the higher priced, higher fare- paying demand segments do not dilute down into that product. That is the idea behind segmentation. I think for that reason, when it was introduced and Spirit was asked about it, we would say, we think it is probably neutral to positive because if anything, it is trying to wall off lower fare paying people from the higher fare- paying . That's generally a good thing. What has happened since the pandemic is everything has been turned upside down, including the way fares are sold and the basic economy product is used. It is hard for me to draw any conclusions right now.
Assuming that it survives the pandemic and is still used as a product, that's probably, again, neutral to positive for the overall market. I think for Spirit too, for the overall market, I think that that's probably right. You know, the changes that we've seen of late, you know, it has more to do with how much of that inventory is sold, you know, if it's open or not. I think time will tell, Savi. I really don't know if I have any good insight as to what's going to happen when we emerge.
I think you're right. Product segmentation was a big component of industry profitability, and it would be hard to see why you wouldn't go back to that as things start to normalize. Let's kind of shift to growth because at the end of the day, Spirit is a growth airline. You're still, you know, a small portion of the overall market size, and there's a lot more opportunities that you've talked about in the past. You know, has that, you know, has that growth opportunity set changed since the crisis? If you look at, you know, what type of growth you've had over the last five years and think about the type of growth you likely have in the next five years, are there any kind of big changes there?
To the first question, has the growth opportunity changed over the crisis? Based on what we know today and reading, you know, the tea leaves, for lack of a better word, I would expect that the opportunity set for Spirit is at least as big as it was going into the pandemic and probably larger. Now, the reason that I feel that's true is mostly has to do with allocation of dollars. If you think about the travel wallet and how much people were willing to spend on vacations and travel in the past, I think that there's going to be some component of the longest haul international travel that will be damaged for a period of time. I don't think that that travel wallet disappears. I think it probably reallocates to a different geography, which for the U.S. consumer means more likely domestic and near-field international type flying.
For that reason, I think for a period of time, there's probably a bigger market set. We have to decide what we do with that, right? We have to figure out what that means for us. You get to the second part, which is, what do you do? W hat happens with your growth strategy? Does it alter it? For now, and clearly the comparisons are wonky because we've, you know, we've had some odd years, but once we kind of stabilize, what we'd said prior to the pandemic is we plan to grow around 15% a year or mid-teens in ASM capacity.
I think that's still a good benchmark for us because the pressure of producing those ASMs around, you know, the logistics of hiring and delivering more aircraft and picking the places to fly are the same. Those are the same pressures that we had before. If what I said before is true and the opportunity set is at least as big, if not potentially bigger, if anything, we're trying to stretch a little more if we can. Using that mid-teens as a benchmark is probably a good place to start. It will depend on our ability to find the right places to fly, maybe to flex the logistical engine some, maybe to find new airplanes that we do not currently have on order. Those are all kind of options at this point.
Thanks. That's a very thorough answer. During your recent earnings call, and Scott, maybe this is for you, you talked about reaching, as Ted had mentioned, capacity close to 2019 levels by the summer. To get to that 2019 type unit cost, you really need to get to utilization that was similar to kind of pre-crisis. Could you talk about that a little bit more and how you see your cost leadership? That was kind of a significant gap. You said, Scott, even in the response to the first part that costs are key for Spirit. How do you see that progressing relative to the industry over the next few years?
That's a great question, Savi. I think, you know, from our perspective, you know, managing both sides of that equation, we got to get to the point where our manufacturing facility is producing, you know, the widgets, the ASMs at an efficient rate. We have to get, you know, the airline back to full capacity, which Ted mentioned, getting our aircraft, you know, out of parked and getting through the maintenance events, getting our crew hired, ready to go for spring break, middle of 2022 timeframe. That's where we think we'll get the facility back running at full efficiency again. You know, look, we paused the airline for, you know, what would be a couple of years there until then. We are going to have to find efficiencies, you know, on the cost side to get us back to that level.
We think we can do that. You know, I've talked about before that, you know, the big drivers of expense for the airlines are what you fly and where you fly it. You know, we're going to make fleet decisions. We're going to make network decisions over the near term that will dictate how far below six we can go. We talked about, you know, 2019 CASM ex-fuel was around five, five and a half. We said it'll be a little bit higher in 2020 when we were guiding to the 2020 CASM ex-fuel number. Getting back to a five, six, five, seven number is a target. We've said, look, we'll be below six. How far below six will depend on those decisions we make. We're not ready yet to figure out the exact number.
I think we're going to drive the airline to be the lowest cost possible while also making sure that we manage margins. I think it's going to be a balancing act between, you know, profitability, long-term investments, as well as CASM ex-fuel. Those things will play out over time. We're going to do everything we can to make sure we, you know, have the lowest cost structure possible. Now, how that plays into the industry, you know, we'll see how that plays out with other airlines. You know, we didn't have the same fleet simplification or, you know, reduction from the higher end of the wage spectrum, you know, the aging crew members. We didn't have that. We paused the airline and we'll have to get back sort of, you know, on the same tracks that we were before.
I think the structural components of the advantage haven't changed, right? I mean, we're going to be at a sub-six CASM ex-fuel. And those that were twice that, you know, if they were to go from 12 to, you know, 11.75 or 11.5, I don't think that changes the competitive dynamics. I think we're still going to be in a competitive position, an advantageous position on CASM ex-fuel. The other point to this is that we talk about CASM ex-fuel a lot, but I think maybe an underappreciated component of margin production is CASM, which includes fuel and the fuel efficiency of Spirit. As we continue to take next generation aircraft that are considerably more fuel efficient than the counterparts, we're going to see that fuel efficiency advantage continue to grow. That flows straight to the bottom line.
I think we're going to see, you know, some margin appreciation just from fuel alone. We do talk about CASM ex-fuel and we care about the core operating components of the business. You know, an underappreciated point is the fuel component.
Fly a plane without the fuel, unfortunately, at least for now. Switching to the other side of on the margin side, you know, from cost to revenue, you know, over the last few years, Spirit has made a lot of investments to improve the guest experience. You know, what's next?
I think I could not be prouder of this organization. If you look back, I am about to get to my ninth anniversary. It is hard to believe it has been that long already. If you think back to the Spirit of 2012 and where we are today, it is a completely different business because we have matured in ways that I do not think anyone forecasted back then. You know, Scott mentioned earlier that we were just named on Fortune's Most Admired list. You couple that with our steady improvement in operational reliability, the external recognitions that the company has been receiving, all of that is contributing to this kind of brand tailwind.
We announced this year that we, you know, we've relaunched our Loyalty Program, which is really three components of the program, which is a points-based program, the Credit Card that's attached to that, and then also our Club Membership Program, which we call the Savers Club. We designed it in ways that are going to be accretive for the business because we believe the economic throughput of our loyalty has been lower than it should be. It is also going to incent people to buy more products on Spirit, which, believe it or not, the old program did not necessarily do. Our guests are noticing this type of thing. They are reacting positively. They are giving us excellent feedback. Our guest satisfaction metrics, however you measure them, have never been higher, even in the course of the pandemic.
It gets to your question, Savi, which is what's next for us? We continue to evaluate investments in our business on an NPV basis. We also know that they can have halo effect. Just last year, we started putting in place new equipment at our airports that Self-bag tag, Self-bag drop, Biometric ID validation for Self-bag drop. All those things actually are positive NPV type investments, but they also make the experience better because it's faster, it's easier, there's less interaction. On board the aircraft, we launched a brand new cabin about a year and a half ago with new seating that gives you more usable leg room, has enhanced comfort in the seat, a slightly greater natural recline, but also is less weight and saves the company a ton of money. That program will continue this year.
In addition to that, we announced a few years ago that we were in the process of installing Wi-Fi on board the aircraft, top tier stream to seat, best in generation Wi-Fi. That project continues to move forward. That is a PV positive project. I think these types of things that find the win-win where we are continuing to enhance the product, but do it in ways that are driving the margin is going to push people to the Loyalty Program. That is where we think we have a lot of upside.
Interesting. Could you, I mean, would it potentially result in, you know, versus past downturns, you know, a faster revenue recovery or a demand recovery for Spirit? Do you expect that?
I will start with I do not know, obviously, but it feels that way. The reason that it feels that way is this economic shock was not based on a macroeconomic issue. This was a crisis, a health crisis that then fed a crisis in confidence. The governments of the world, and most notably the U.S. government, have responded swiftly and dramatically with a lot of stimulus. Those two factors feel like to me are going to produce a faster recovery for leisure and discretionary spend. There is more dollars out there than there were before. They are cheaper to get your hands on. Most of the economy did not take a big hit. The leisure economy, the travel and leisure business did, but a lot of other businesses did not. It feels like it should move a little bit quicker than prior maybe recessionary type environments.
Now, I'll again caveat by saying I don't know, obviously. During the course of this last 12-month period, we have seen admittedly false starts, but we did see starts where we felt we were on a recovery trajectory and the demand started to come in quickly, the air travel demand. That I think is another indicator that we could be in a positive position by the time we're talking about this again in the summer.
As you kind of manage the company and think about all these investments that you're making and, you know, you seem to be looking at kind of an NPV as you think of kind of capital allocation, but, you know, what performance metrics do you focus on and why? You know, do you see, you know, following the recovery, possibly even, you know, given the investments that you're making, just higher margins as a result as well?
We got this question in an earlier meeting and I was glad to hear Scott answer it exactly how I would have. That tells you have got alignment up and down your business when you know where people are focused. Right now, we are focused on the margin. We are focused on EBITDA. We need to get the company back to cash flow, cash neutrality and cash flow. We work our way down into profitability and optimizing profitability. That is where we are focused. I think if you asked anyone in this building that question, they would give you the same answer, which is why I felt very good about it. You know, is it possible for us, to the second half of your question, to enhance the margin because of the way we are deploying capital today? I think that is possible.
You know, growth airlines, growth businesses, sorry, broadly speaking, do not usually have margin expansion in their story, right? It is like we are growing into markets. And if we achieve margin neutrality, that is a massive win. That is usually the story. However, over the course of Spirit's growth trajectory, there have been periods where we have actually been able to expand the margin based on where we flew, our ability to optimize the revenue in those markets. In this case, we also have a little bit more feeding that because we are a better company today. We have a stronger brand than we used to have. And we are bigger, which means we are more relevant in places where we fly. I think those things are advantages that offset some of the pressures of being a growth business.
You know, how that tailored tape works out, I'm not sure, but I feel good about our chances and I like where our chess pieces are.
Savi, one thing I'll add to that is that the airline business obviously has a plethora of metrics to choose from. You know, we measure everything and everything's important. You know, we care about operational reliability and the guest experience. We're going to drive the company to EBITDA production, you know, in the short term. I think one of the things that you mentioned around capital deployment is the hurdle rate's going to be higher. Look, I mean, I think every airline that's building back up again is really thinking about investments in the business, but that hurdle rate will increase. It'll be more difficult for the folks inside this building to justify projects. I think that's just the way it's going to work. It's worked that way in every bit of recession, every company I've been. That's going to be the case.
We are going to continue to think about investing in the business. We think that is the right thing for the long-term value of the franchise, the guest experience. We are going to have to be critical about the things we do. I think that is the way it is going to be for the short- term.
That actually takes me to another question is, you know, given this pandemic, I think when airlines are preparing for the next downturn, because there eventually always is a downturn or event for this industry, you know, you were looking at past crises and, you know, 9/11 or the great financial crisis, and nobody probably envisioned something this deep for this long. Has your view on, you know, the level of liquidity you want to hold or the leverage levels that you target, you know, has anything changed in terms of kind of balance sheet and cash flow considerations in addition to, as you point out, maybe a higher hurdle rate for capital allocation?
Right. Yeah. I mean, I think this period has caused, you know, scars for all managers of any business, certainly the way to think about it. Yeah, I think, you know, as we think about, at least in the short run, look, we're going to be conservative with the cash balance. The biggest lever that we have internally around leverage, cash balance, all those things is really going to be profitability. It's EBITDA production. It's all the components that we measure the business. Profitability will drive that. We're going to be conservative in the short run about how we think about cash balance, how we think about capital deployment.
We've said publicly in the short- run we're probably going to do sale-leaseback financing for aircraft until we feel comfortable about the size of the cash balance and our ability to predict profitability and cash generation for the business. Volatility in those metrics cause concern for CFOs. They just will. Stability around those metrics and profitability and cash generation will be important for us to loosen up a little about how we think about the cash balance. I think this will, you know, make us more conservative about how we think about cash. We'll probably hold cash balance a little longer. We're going to think about probably net leverage levels when we think about debt. It may be a balance between paying off debt or keeping the cash and having a carrying cost for those things. We'll balance all of those.
I think we're going to be at least over some period of time, we're going to carry more cash. I think that's just going to be a byproduct of the environment.
To go to the earlier point about, you know, a big driver of your cost advantage is going to be with the fleet, getting that new generation aircraft, getting that fuel efficiency. Also, another advantage that you have in your fleet right now is your kind of A319 aircraft that are in storage now and could be your flex aircraft. Just could you talk about, you know, how you think about the opportunity? Because you do have some open spots as you go into 2023 and 2024 in your fleet order. You know, what does that market look like and what's the flexibility with the fleet that you have or how you're thinking about it? Is there an opportunity to take advantage of the used aircraft market here for Spirit?
Okay. There was a few questions in there. Let me try to tackle them. The A319 fleet that we have today is obviously unencumbered and, you know, is parked and we're bringing those, you know, out of the desert as we speak to fly those. Now, that's our oldest aircraft. We knew over time those were going to fade away and we were going to replace those. The question here for us has always been the timing of that. Do you replace ahead of your replacement aircraft? Are you doing them at the same time? All of that's going to be an important component of how we think about the fleet strategy going forward.
There could be opportunities to do some of that over the next, you know, call it three to five years. There is going to be opportunities in the lessor market and Airbus's ability to find aircraft for us in this near term. Our order book that we just signed up, the next order back in December of 2019, did have holes in it. We had holes in 2022, 2023, and 2024 that we knew were going to be filled most likely with lessor aircraft. There may be availability from Airbus directly, you know, in this period. We will figure out a way to manage the fleet in the short run. We can be opportunistic with those. We have always said about used aircraft is that, you know, growing at the rate that we have been and what we think will continue to grow, it is very difficult to have used aircraft compile a large portion of that growth. It is just difficult to digest. We are not built for that.
I think over time we'll take used aircraft as they become available and if they fit with the profile that we're looking for. I think the vast majority of our growth is going to be with new next generation aircraft. It fits our utilization profile and everything that we think about running our airline. It's going to be a big portion of that. We'll just see where the opportunities flow in the marketplace for that. I think Airbus did a pretty good job of pulling down capacity to try to maintain some level of equilibrium in the marketplace. I think there's going to be pockets of opportunity at least in the short run.
A bit of a tougher question, but, you know, based on public comments that you've, you know, that these airlines have made so far, how do you think, you know, some of the new startups that are on the wings and ready to come out here, you know, what does that mean for Spirit? You heard of Breeze Airways and Avelo Airlines, the two that are mostly talked about. You know, how does Spirit kind of think about this opportunity for startups to come into this market and what it means for your growth opportunity?
I think at the highest level, I think it validates the growth proposition that we've been saying for the better part of a decade, which is there's an opportunity for low fare leisure travel. And we've done a pretty good job at tackling that opportunity. You know, we're five times the size we were eight or ten years ago. So that's a good start. Beyond that, I don't know much about the specifics of those individual businesses that you mentioned. I'm probably best apt at commenting on where we are and what we think we're focused on.
I think, you know, what we've laid out for this group is how do we make sure that we are a top- tier producer, that we have the best brand in the business, that we have the best ancillary performance in the business, that we have the lowest cost structure in the business, and that we have the most effective network. That means being in the places where people want to go and finding spaces in the places where people live so that they can go to those places. I think if you look across that spectrum of things that I just mentioned, I feel good about where Spirit is positioned. I think we are the lowest cost producer. I think we have the best ancillary performance. I think that we have the best brand. I think that our network is situated well to capture the opportunity.
We have to make sure we strengthen that in all cases. I think if we're doing that well, we'll get as much of the growth opportunity as we can that exists in the market.
If I might, talking about your network, one of the questions going back to one of the earlier question. In, you know, pre-pandemic, that talk about, you know, there were three buckets that you were addressing in your network as you were growing. Do you see kind of a, as you come out of this, a difference in which of those buckets you address? I know a lot of kind of the growth pre-pandemic, there was a lot of international components in that, though that might have been tapering off already. Could you talk about the three buckets and how you see that growth progressing?
Sure. The three buckets being predominantly large leisure destinations, large origination markets, and the international component of our network. That's the, you know, the big pillars, I guess. I don't know if those change. I think that that's still critical for our business. How the capacity is deployed within those things may shift depending on opportunity and timing. You mentioned that just prior to the pandemic, we had flexed up the international component of our network to about 15% of the network. We said that that felt more comfortable to us. It had drifted down in the middle part of the last decade to less than 10% of the network. We knew that we wanted to eventually get that back to, you know, at least mid-teens % of the network.
We were successful at doing that either by adding more destinations or adding more launching points out of the U.S. It is possible that we may see opportunities coming either as the pandemic ends or coming out of it that could shift the prioritization within those baskets. Broadly speaking, those still are the core tenets of our growth strategy. We see plenty of opportunities in all of them. Really the last component that is not part of those three is connecting all the dots in the places we fly and, you know, which we do periodically anyway. That is just kind of in the number. As the network gets bigger, that becomes a bigger component as well. I do not know that it will change the overall setup. It could just change the timing of when we do things, prioritization.
Is there an opportunity to take advantage of, I know there was a little bit of debate if you wanted to take on a second fleet type, I think with this new Airbus order that was kind of put to bed following the analysis. Is there an opportunity? Airbus does have, you know, XLR that has a longer range that maybe can help you get deeper into South America. You already do some kind of upper South America destinations. Is there an opportunity for that aircraft technology to expand that opportunity set for you? Or is there enough in this kind of current aircraft footprint to address before going there?
The good part about it is it is common with our aircraft. So, you know, we would be able to at least crew it in a way that would be efficient. The question is, in the Spirit product and the Spirit model, does that aircraft really add to the network opportunity? It is a long-range airplane, but it's a long-range airplane because they're using some of the belly space and some of the available takeoff weight to add fuel. And we have a lot of people on our airplanes, and we carry a lot of bags. The answer is we're not sure. The Neo is the focus right now. The A320n eo and eventually the A321n eo are the focus of our longer-range network designs. Whether or not the XLR will play in, we'll spend more time on that.
For now, we're chewing through Neos and using that in the network opportunity that we have.
As we kind of get close to the end of our time, I mean, it definitely seems like you have a really interesting opportunity. You said maybe a little bit more time here before you kind of get back fully on track from a utilization standpoint. I am wondering if you have any, you know, closing comments and things that you think investors should, you know, be focused on or that we might be missing here.
I'll take two minutes, and you take a couple. I think that, you know, we touched on a lot of very important topics here for Spirit today, which is throughout the pandemic has forced us to make some very difficult choices, but also reinforced the strengths of our model. The ancillary performance continues to be where we want it to be, which has I think been a positive surprise for everyone out there that doubted whether or not people would continue to pay for separate products and they have willingly. Our cost structure has played to our advantage in this, and our network strength has played to our advantage so far. Now it's about execution. This management team has to be rallied around the idea of getting all of those things to the next step, getting ourselves to EBITDA neutrality and cash generation and profitability.
I feel very good about the focus and the ability to get that done and to do it quicker than most of our peers. I feel like that's the right place for us to be focused today. Scott.
Agreed. No, I think, look, I mean, we've been thoughtful about the balance sheet, and the growth opportunity sets there. I think the platform for us to exit the crisis is going to be strong. I think it's really about how we think about the development of supply and demand and trends and progression for the industry will dictate a lot of the success for the individual airlines as we go forward. I think Spirit's in a pretty good spot to take advantage of opportunities. We are excited to put the crisis behind us and move forward.
All right. Ted, Scott, thank you so much for making the time. I think this is a great discussion. Thank you for bringing some good news that the run rate is a little bit better here and that maybe giving us hope that we can all kind of get out and travel here again in the summer and definitely have this conference in person next year. Thank you.
Look forward to it.
Thank you Savi.