We're gonna get going with our next session. Really happy to have American Airlines back at the conference. Devon May, CFO. I'm gonna pass it to Devon, just for some quick opening comments, and then we will get to I've got some questions, but everyone, please feel free to jump in with your own, and we'll get to it. Devon, thanks for being here.
Okay. Well, listen, thanks for having me. Thanks, everybody, for being here. You know, what you're going to hear from me today, you've probably heard from American Airlines several times over the past six months, which is a good thing. Everything's consistent. What we talked about in January, February, March, April, and again here today in May, is we are focused on reliability, profitability, accountability, and on all fronts, I think we're doing a really nice job. On reliability, our operation has been just outstanding. This hasn't happened by accident. This is something that we have been investing in and planning towards for the last several years, and we're executing on it really well today. Just on reliability, I'll just talk about our capacity plan for a minute as well.
We are able to execute on this capacity plan because of the operation we're delivering on. We started in January saying we were going to grow by 5%-8% this year. We are still saying we're gonna grow by 5%-8% this year. In terms of profitability, also a really consistent story. We had a slightly profitable first quarter. We've guided to a nicely profitable second quarter, and we've kept our full year guidance range at $2.50 a share-$3.50 a share. We're still at that point today, and we feel really good. On accountability, I'll just talk financially. We've put our metrics out there. We have said we're going to repay $15 billion of debt by the end of 2025.
That's still our expectation. We feel really good about where liquidity is at right now. We ended the first quarter with $14.4 billion of liquidity. Excess in terms of what our ranges are, we'll put that to work in good time here. We're pleased with the progress we've been making on the balance sheet. It's stronger today than it was at the end of 2019, and we're really happy with how we're delivering so far this year.
Awesome. You're absolutely right. Very consistent message. Maybe with that in mind, let's start with two things that are a little bit newer.
Yep.
obviously some news in the last week or so. I don't know if there's so much you can say.
Yep.
We'll try and see where we go. We had the NEA ruling that came out on Friday. It was a surprise to us. I will say, you know, it was interesting, you know, a year ago at our conference, Vasu was here.
Yeah
talking about the benefits of the NEA for you guys, Easier to make money in this region, the benefits of connections internationally, redeploying aircraft. Feels like this has been a good thing for you know, how do we think about, you know, NEA going forward? What are options here, you know?
Sure.
You know.
Yeah.
What can you tell us on NEA?
Yeah. Well, listen, it's early. We were surprised by the decision as well. I'll just say we completely disagree with the decision. We think it's flawed. You'll hear more from American in, you know, the coming days and probably the coming week as to what our next steps are. The NEA has been. It's pro-competitive, it's pro-choice. We've added capacity. Like, this is something that we feel really good about what we have done for consumers. The NEA has been great for us in New York. It's been great for our New York strategy overall. Just for perspective. Let me shut this off.
Okay.
Just for perspective on the NEA and what it means to investors, New York is important to us. The NEA is very important to us, but New York's a pretty small fraction of our overall capacity. American Airlines runs a really significant network. We create a lot of O&Ds, and so yes, New York's important, but if you think about earnings, it is not a meaningful impact to our earnings. Just to make that clear, we did see our stock kind of trade down early in the week, and it was trading differently than the rest of the industry. We just wanted to make that point clear that while this is a big decision, and it is impacting us in New York or has the potential to impact us in New York, it's not meaningful to our earnings projections.
I'm not talking about this year's guidance, but more broadly, is there When you say it's not meaningful, what percent?
Yeah.
You know.
Yeah.
We always like to deal with numbers.
A little perspective. New York, excluding the flying we do to our other hubs and to our partner hubs, it's about 5% of our total capacity, excluding our other hub flying. It's a relatively small component of the overall network, and that's why it's not very material to our earnings.
I'll try one more. When I, when I read through the judge's ruling, there seems to be a, "Well, there's a... Look what we have on the West Coast with Alaska," and, you know, that seems to be an alliance that, you know, where you're not coordinating schedules as much, you know, a little, you know, less of whatever. The judge seems to say, "Hey, that could be a good alternative." Some of the benefits that you're getting from the NEA, could you get with a, you know, more of a Alaska type?
The benefits from the NEA come in a handful of different forms. The Alaska agreement is made up of some very similar forms. There's a frequent flyer agreement. There's obviously a code share agreement. Those are a component of the NEA. What we do going forward, though, I'd just say more to come on it. I think, yes, there's some value in a Alaska-style agreement. We like the NEA and how it's structured. We believe it is delivering for our customers. We've added capacity in the region. We've added competition. We feel good about what we've done. We feel good about the structure as it sits today, we'll see where it goes from here.
Okay. Your bottom line is, yes, I mean, we like the NEA, it's been good for us, but from a, you know, earnings standpoint, investor standpoint, it's not that big of a deal.
100% right. It's a big deal for New York. It's a big deal for our New York strategy. It is not something that's meaningful to our earnings.
Okay. The other thing we got over the last week was a pilot deal. You're, they're here, just so you know.
Gentlemen.
Just specifically in the near term, what does this mean for your Q2 CASM guide?
Yeah.
Timing-wise, does this change anything with respect to the-
Yeah.
Q2 CASM?
Listen, I'll just start by thanking the gentlemen in the room, and, listen, the APA leadership was dedicated to this effort. Obviously, this takes a lot of dedication, and work, and trust, and I am thrilled that we have gotten to this point. We're really excited about the announcement last week. In terms of just financial guidance, this is really largely consistent with the guidance we put out there for the second quarter and for the full year. I wouldn't expect any guidance updates based on the agreement in principle that we're able to reach.
No timing issues with Q2 in terms of how much of it?
Yeah, not significantly. There are, like, some puts and takes and some slight differences, but for the most part, it's really in line with the guidance that's out there.
Okay, great. Now let's turn to the just demand environment. Give us an update, what you're seeing, how is second quarter progressing relative to plan? What are you seeing with leisure? What are you seeing with corporate? What regions feel particularly good? Is there anything that feels bad?
Nothing that feels bad. Again, everything really consistent to what we said, I guess, a month ago on the call. Pretty broad-based strength. We see really strong transatlantic performance. You know, this is the first time that people have had the opportunity in a full summer to travel transatlantic without restriction, and we're seeing that in the demand. I'd say traditional corporate is still pretty consistent with what we talked about a month ago. Blended travel continues to be a big component of our demand, and leisure is really, really strong. We had guided to unit revenue down 2% to down 4% for the quarter, and we feel really good about that guide.
Okay. Where are you, corporate, I guess you're saying it's sort of steady, but where are you from a corporate recovery?
I think it's, right, 75%-80% of where we were in 2019.
That's on a revenue basis?
That's on a revenue basis, yep.
On a unit basis would be you know, less than that.
Yeah, something similar to that. You know, our unit or our capacity production this year is still slightly below where we were in 2019 as well. For full year capacity, we're probably down, I don't know, 3%-4% from 2019.
Do we need to, at this point, say, you know, it's been sort of at this range, 75, 80 for a while? Like, is this sort of what we're gonna get, or is there some argument of why there's still some pent-up corporate recovery to come?
Yeah.
Better said, maybe better, are you planning for anything incremental on corporate, or are you now just assuming this is what we're gonna do?
We start by looking at demand at more a macro level. We've talked a lot about that, and there probably is still a little recovery in kind of macro-level demand for industry revenue, and some of that may take the form of traditional corporate. There's corporate strength in some businesses. There's weakness in some areas like tech, so we'll see how this develops over the next year or so. One thing we found over the last couple of years is demand profiles continue to change, and we need to continue to adapt to any changes in demand, and I think we've done a pretty nice job of that so far.
We talked about this a bunch on the last panel, just everyone's views of what is structurally different versus pre-pandemic. What's your, you know, one or two things that you would highlight that you really think are structurally different? How is that a good or a bad thing for American?
I'll start with how customers want to interact with American Airlines. We see more and more bookings that come direct because customers want to understand all the products that American Airlines has to offer. And we like that. That's good for American Airlines, because when presented with new products and new offers, customers very often will buy those new products. So direct interaction with a customer is a big change for us. We're also seeing just change in demand profiles, and that's partly just the demographics of the country. We're seeing more demand in areas like Dallas, Charlotte, Miami, Phoenix. So a lot of these Sun Belt hubs that we've been talking about for a long time are seeing really nice demand, and I think that set us up, or that sets American up really well to meet that demand.
We continue just to change the network and the products we have to better meet that demand and better match customer needs.
When I look at Q1, right, Latin PRASM was exceptional, right? Sounds like Q2 Atlantic's gonna be really, really good. You know, within that down 2%-4% on total RASM, what are you seeing just across the different regions, international? Any color to help us break that down a bit?
I'd say it's starting to feel more like a normal seasonality, normal trends. In the summer, Transatlantic is going to be strong. This summer, Transatlantic is really strong. In the first quarter, to your point, short-haul Latin especially, and longer-haul Latin, to maybe a little bit lesser extent, was pretty strong, and that's what you would expect to happen in the first quarter. This feels a little bit more normal to me, or a little bit more like it did back pre-pandemic. For us right now, again, it's pretty strong demand in most every entity we have. Transatlantic is really strong right now. Latin does continue to perform well. It's going to perform better in those peak periods like the first quarter, though.
Last panel, we heard about maybe Pacific Northwest feeling a little bit better. I don't know if you have any insight, visibility there?
Not a whole lot. you know the network. Obviously, we have a partner, a great partner with Alaska, and they're really big in that area. American Airlines is smaller in the Pacific Northwest. For us, the entities we are big in, we feel demand is pretty strong, and we feel we have the right amount of capacity to meet that demand.
Okay. Latin Q1, Atlantic Q2, what's gonna be the next thing as we think about second half?
You know, listen, peak travel is going to take us through August into September. We also have another nice peak as we get into November and the December time period. We'll see what off-peak looks like this year. You know, I think last year showed us we can have some really nice revenue production days throughout September, October, and into November period as well. We think we're gonna have a pretty nice second half of the year. Obviously, we expect to have a really nice second and third quarter. We don't have a whole lot of visibility kind of outside of that 90-day period. We aren't seeing any weakness in demand. We're not seeing any falloff, which is the uncertainty in the economy. Right now, our projections hold.
We're still expecting to have, unit revenue full year kind of in that up low single-digit range.
Just one quick follow-up here. You know, we all look at the ARC data.
Yeah.
It's moderate a little bit. I was talking to one of the other airlines, they're like, "We just don't know that that's the right data to look at anymore.
Yeah.
Maybe you mentioned that you're getting more through Order Act. Is that just the answer, that is the ARC data becoming a little less meaningful? When you look at it, are you saying, "Hey, I don't understand why it's doing this. We're not seeing that?
I don't know. You know, I'd say, obviously, we benefit from seeing all the bookings to American Airlines. You know, we have folks focused on really short-term revenue production, really short-term inflows for cash. On that front, we feel really good about what we're producing right now. I don't know that there's a public data set that can really represent exactly what demand is doing. I think the best way to do it is this type of thing. You know, we talk a lot about where demand is at. It's been a really consistent message for American, and I actually think most of our competitors are probably sending pretty similar messages to what we are on demand. That's probably a good thing for investors to hear.
with that, right, fuel prices have come down a bunch.
Yeah.
since your Q1 call.
Yeah.
Doesn't feel like anyone's adding any incremental capacity.
Yeah.
Right, with that. Is there gonna be more of an extended sort of fuel tailwind for the whole industry, given that fuel's down, but we're not adding incremental capacity, everyone's still sounding good about the demand environment? Do you feel like that's sort of fully captured in your guidance? Ultimately, just lower fuel and nothing's changing in demand, there should be upside to guidance, right?
Yeah, like, obviously, fuel's come down since our guidance.
Yeah. Right.
That I think is your point. What we have always said about the relationship between revenue and fuel is it's correlated. We don't think it's a pass-through. We don't have pricers that are pricing based on fuel price. Our revenue management team doesn't look at what is happening with fuel price. They price and revenue manage based on demand. Over time, we do think there is a correlation between fuel and revenue. In an environment like this, where supply is constrained, hopefully, that relationship isn't so tied that we're gonna see any sort of dip in revenue, even though fuel has come down, and that should be helpful to earnings.
Yeah, generally, our feeling is when oil is trending down, that's usually a sign of some sort of weakness in the economy, and there's potential for revenue to come down as well. When oil is really strong, there's probably strength in the economy, geopolitical events aside, and that's an opportunity for revenue to go higher. In the environment we're currently in, though, you're right. You're not seeing supply come back into the marketplace just because oil is down, and I don't expect that to happen. In fact, with many carriers, you're seeing it go the other way. Fuel is down, but they're not able to meet the capacity guidance that they put out there to start the year. For us, we guided at 5%-8% for the year. We're planning to hit 5%-8% for the year.
maybe that typical correlation may not be as correlated or may just happen on more of a lag than maybe we've seen.
Perhaps, yeah. Like, I've always felt there's been a bit of a lag. In this case, you're right, though, that lag may be longer.
Right. You started by saying, "Hey, we're really focused on reliability and doing what we said." I'm guessing you still feel very confident about 5%-8% ASM growth for the year?
Yeah, that's the number. You know, we came out, we hit our capacity guide for the 1st quarter. We've kept it consistent for the full year. I think we started the year by saying, "This is something we are really confident we're going to hit." We're not gonna get in front of the resources we have. We're gonna make sure we have the right people, the right process to run a great operation and to produce this type of capacity. That's the story you're still hearing today in May. We have run the best operation in the business to this point. We've got the highest completion factor in the business year to date. Credit to our frontline team, credit to our operations team, and I just think a lot of really nice planning to get here.
As we head into summer, right, one of the areas that people have been the most sort of worried about in terms of handling summer has been New York.
Yeah.
Now we've got this NEA, right? How does this, right, change, right... Can we still do five tape given that? Do we have to add in some more buffers? I don't know, how do we marry-
Yeah.
reliability? We've got overall industry concerns about New York. Now we've got NEA.
Just for clarity. NEA is not going to change our capacity plans in New York in the short term. If there are adjustments, they'll be longer term. It's not gonna impact customers this summer, so any customers that are booked through the NEA will be taken care of. I don't expect the NEA to have any impact on our macro capacity. How we move capacity around over time, you know, that's to be determined, and that changes with any schedule change. We will try to seek to move capacity to our most profitable entities. In this case, though, the NEA doesn't have any real impact on our overall capacity, and it also won't impact our customers in the area.
Okay. I know it's early. Help us think a little bit about how you're starting to plan for next year. How are you thinking about capacity growth? Is this, you know, do we wanna, you know, five take this year? Is that sort of a good sort of placeholder? Is it less, more? I don't know.
Yeah.
How do you think about capacity growth?
It's early, we're not doing 2024 guidance right now. I'd just say, like, a couple of things to be thinking about. For us, we are underutilizing our assets, both mainline and regional. We think on the mainline side, we should be producing probably, somewhere between two and, at the high end, maybe 4% or 5% more utilization than what we have today. That's something that we're gonna strive to achieve next year. On the regional side, we have somewhere, 100 airplanes, 150 airplanes that are either underutilized or parked today. We do expect to have some more of those up next year. We'll see how exactly our pilot capabilities develop here with all of our different partner airlines in the next handful of months.
Those two combined, though, like, it's hard to say exactly where some of our cost pressures are. Like, at a macro basis, the more regional capacity you produce, the higher unit costs are gonna be. Regional unit costs are higher than mainline unit costs. That's okay, because the unit revenue we're able to produce in a lot of these small and medium-sized communities is really significant, so it ends up being a real good guy for profitability. Throughout the rest of the P&L, obviously, we have a new agreement in principle, with our pilots. We do expect to reach new collective bargaining agreements with our flight attendants and with our agents, our passenger service and reservations agents this year.
The run rate on that will drive some cost pressure for next year, but we do think we'll be able to take advantage of our higher aircraft utilization, and that's gonna be a nice tailwind for cost next year.
A couple follow-ups. You mentioned utilization. What, how, where... How much of an incremental utilization tailwind would you strive to get?
At the high end, it's probably somewhere around 4%, maybe 5% if we do really well. At the low end, there's a couple percent there. So we do have underutilized assets today. They're coming on throughout this year. By next year, I think we're going to approach full utilization. We'll see where it goes, though. On the regional side, it's really significant. You know, we need to get these airplanes back up in the air. We're probably not gonna have as much regional lift in 2025 or 2026 as we did in 2019, but we should have more than what we're producing today.
You said there's a, you said 150?
It's in that neighborhood, somewhere between 100 and 150 regional jets that are either just underutilized or completely parked. What you're seeing right now, like, you don't see many 50-seaters in American Airlines network.
Sure.
They still play a role, but there's just fewer of them. We had something approaching 250-seat regional jets pre-pandemic. We're now sitting at, I don't know, I wanna say around 80 50-seat regional jets, so that will just become a smaller component of the network. Going forward, we'll try to backfill that with some larger regional jets over time as pilot availability comes online. The regional footprint probably does end up being a little bit smaller in the future than it was back in 2019.
Of that 150 underutilized or fully parked, you expect to deploy more of those next year, is what you're saying?
Yes. Yeah.
That's gonna, just so I understand, that creates a CASM headwind, but should be a RASM tailwind.
Exactly, yeah.
The net of it, you're saying, is a net positive.
Net positive on the P&L. It is a CASM headwind. This is gonna get blended across a lot of ASMs, but yeah, for sure, it's a CASM headwind. It's gonna be dependent on how many we're able to put back into service. It's probably not all of them, but we do hope to get a decent amount of those airplanes back up and fully utilized.
Do we have the pilot availability on the?
It's stabilized. We feel a lot better about it today than we did six months ago. We'll see how fast. I think you understand the constraint, that there's just not enough qualified first officers that have the hours or the experience to upgrade into the captain seat. We feel pretty good about the supply of first officers, so 1500-hour qualified pilots. We feel that the carriers we partner with are the best in the industry. They have a proposition where they are experiencing a lot of demand for both 1500-hour pilots, but also pilots who just wanna come across into some of their Direct Entry Captain programs. We'll see how it develops, but yeah, we feel like we're in a good spot there.
On the mainline side, we have a lot of training to do. We're training twice as many pilots this year than, we did kind of in a pre-pandemic world. There'll still be a lot of training to do next year. If we're able to, if we're able to ratify this agreement in principle that we have reached, I think that's going to be a nice tailwind, and we should be able to increase the number of mainline pilots we have, and it'll help us achieve our goal of improving this mainline utilization.
By the way, just a reminder, if there's any questions, raise your hand and we'll get you involved. Given all those sort of puts and takes, and then it sounds like we'll have, you know, one quarter of the new pilot deal spilling over into next year, Directionally, how should we be thinking about CASM next year? Higher, lower, stable? I don't know.
Yeah, it's early. Give us a little bit of time to work through capacity plans. It's gonna be dependent on how much capacity production we have, how much of it comes from the regional side. Yeah, you're right. That's where we will see some unit cost headwind, but we see some nice tailwinds on the utilization side. That's something we'll have more color on as we get through the year. You know, I think that we're in a pretty good spot in terms of just our ability to produce more aircraft utilization, and that's gonna be a nice thing for earnings and a nice thing for unit cost next year.
Are there any other just sort of like discrete positives, negatives, you think? I don't know, pension, breakage. I have no idea what, but, you know, what are the other things that you think are worth just flagging, good or bad, as we think about either back half of 2023 or 2024?
Nothing outside of what we've already talked about. Pension, breakage, those types of things, I don't think that's going to be something we talk about as we go into 2024. You know, I think what we are focused on are the big things. We're focused on fully utilizing our assets. We do have some cost pressures in certain areas of the business. Salaries and benefits are going to be higher. Aircraft utilization is also going to be better. Those are the big things. We'll build up a plan, I don't expect any other lines of the P&L to really pop as we head into 2024.
Operating margins for you guys in 2019 were 8%.
Yeah.
Your guidance for this year is 8%. We're there, back to where we were. Can we start to think about double-digit operating margins for American? Is that? Where do we ultimately wanna take this?
Listen, we're pleased with this year's margins. It doesn't end this year. We do expect that we have an entity that can produce stronger margins than what we're doing in 2019. I think we've made a ton of nice progress. I think we've made a ton of nice relative progress on our margin performance, but I think there's more opportunity for American Airlines to do better than that. I think it's gonna happen on top line. We have an innovative and creative commercial team that's trying new things. I do think we have opportunity there. I think we're gonna see it in the expense side as well. We are gonna be more efficient in terms of aircraft utilization. There are better tools, there are better processes.
I think on every line of the P&L, we have an opportunity to be just a little bit better. Margins of 8% are nice. I think we have the capability to produce stronger margins than that going forward. I think we'll talk more about that as we get through this year. You know, the last couple of years, we've been a little hesitant to go out too far in terms of our predictions for financial performance and operating performance. Part of it, we just wanted to understand the environment we were operating in, right? Last summer was a different environment, and probably an unexpected environment for many. Demand was still coming back early on. I think there were some operational challenges. We figured that out, and we've been running a great operation since then.
At that point, we were kind of providing guidance one quarter out. We started this year feeling much better about what the demand environment was going to look like, and so we went and we produced full year guidance. We think we're gonna be able to deliver on that. We're spending a lot of time thinking about 2024 and 2025, and how we're gonna operate, and how we're gonna deliver for our customers, and how we're gonna become a little bit more efficient. That's a story we're going to share as we get through this year, and we're excited to share it. We do think there's just more opportunity for stronger earnings for American Airlines.
At some point, sounds like maybe like an investor day, longer-term targets, things like that.
We've been teasing it for a while. you know, I think it's going to happen this year, and we'll be excited to share the longer-term story.
We've got a, nice, you know, free cash flow this year. You know, fairly light CapEx year. How should we think about CapEx 2024 and beyond? How much of a. I'm guessing we see some degree of a step up. How much of a step up do we see?
Well, just keep in mind, it's a light CapEx year for American this year because we had a lot of heavy CapEx years prior to the pandemic. We invested heavily in the business from 2014 to 2020, and that's hard, right? The balance sheet does change when you're making capital investments like we did over that period. It's hard on the operations team to induct that many airplanes, but we did it, and it's behind us, and we feel great about it now, right? We brought all those airplanes in pre-inflation at relatively low interest rates, so really nice financing. We get to enjoy that right now. This year, CapEx is a little bit light. We have total CapEx of around $2.3 billion, I think. Next year will step up a little bit, so we've given guidance to next year.
We'll take a few more airplanes next year than we did this year. We'll have CapEx stepping up to approximately three and a half billion dollars. Because of this fleet we have, we have the most efficient fleet, the simplest fleet amongst our network peers. We feel really good about where it's at. It's simplified down to four fleet families. It's the youngest fleet amongst our network peers. With where we're at right now, I would expect really steady CapEx going forward. Next year is three and a half billion dollars. We're not going to have years where we have to drive $5 billion or $6 billion or $7 billion or $8 billion of CapEx because we've been through our fleet renewal program.
we'll be much steadier CapEx going forward, which gives us the opportunity to continue to produce really nice free cash flow.
I'm guessing you appreciate that we're 30 minutes in, and we haven't gotten to the balance sheet yet. That's a change, right?
That's a change.
Maybe we'll just wrap, though, on the balance sheet.
Yeah.
you wanna pay down $15 billion of debt, you've got $14 billion of liquidity.
Yeah.
What's the right liquidity target?
Yeah
... right, given where we are now, we feel like we're getting better visibility, right? Where are we on the $15 billion? How much of that is pension tail?
Yep, versus, you know, proper, you know, debt reduction and all that sort of stuff, so.
You held the balance sheet question, but then you asked a lot of questions.
Yeah.
Which is okay because we think we have a really good story there as well. The liquidity level that we have been talking about, this is target liquidity. It's obviously not minimum liquidity, but target liquidity that we have been talking about is $10 -$12 billion. That's something that's probably going to change over time, but for right now, it's $10 -$12 billion. When we say that means like $10 billion at the low point. Think December, that's when December 31st is probably our low point for cash for the year. At the high point, which is the end of the first quarter, maybe the end of the second quarter, we should be something closer to $12 billion.
As you pointed out, we had 14.5 or something close to 14.5 billion dollars of liquidity at the end of the first quarter. That's well above our targeted liquidity. We did wanna see just kinda how the year was playing out before we decided to start making some moves and put some of that excess liquidity to work. That's what we're focused on now, is just how do we best utilize this liquidity that we have that's excess in terms of our target? Part of that is just gonna be focused on the balance sheet. What we do with it is something that we'll provide more clarity on as we go forward, but obviously 2025 Debt Tower is part of it.
We'll choose what of that we want to actually pay down, what of it we want to refinance, but having excess liquidity to start with, puts us in a really nice spot. We feel really good about the progress we made so far on the balance sheet. You talked about the $15 billion. We ended the first quarter, we had paid down $9 of that $15 billion, so I guess somewhere around 60% of the way there. By the end of the year, we expect to be kinda $10 -$11 billion of the way there. You're starting to see it in our metrics. You know, we have better net debt to EBITDA at the end of the first quarter than we did at the end of 2019.
We think we're building a really nice, strong financial foundation. Obviously, we're committed to $15 billion of debt repayment. That was accelerated slightly as we saw the change in the pension obligation, largely with the discount rate. That's a component of it. We've also made nice progress with total debt paydown. This year, we're amortizing $3 billion of debt, so the free cash flow that we're generating, which we've been talking, that would be approaching $3 billion of free cash flow, is going to be used to strengthen the balance sheet and pay down that amortizing debt.
Awesome. We're gonna wrap there. Thank you so much, Devon. That was great. Appreciate it.
Thanks for the time. Thank you.