Air Transport Services Group Inc (ATSG) Q4 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

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Air Transport Services Group Inc (NASDAQ: ATSG)
Q4 2018 Earnings Conference Call
Feb. 28, 2019, 10:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

  • Prepared Remarks

  • Questions and Answers

  • Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Welcome to the Q4 2018 Air Transport Services Group, Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. My name is Adrienne, and I'll be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we'll conduct a question-and-answer session.

(Operator Instructions)

Please note this conference is being recorded.

I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Joe Hete, President and CEO. Mr. Hete, you may begin.

Joe Hete -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Adrian. Good morning, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2018 earnings conference call. With me today are, Quint Turner, our Chief Financial Officer; and Rich Corrado, our Chief Operating Officer. We issued our earnings release yesterday after the market closed. It's on our website, atsginc.com. We will file our Form 10-K tomorrow.

I am very pleased to report that we ended 2018 with substantial increases in revenues and earnings on the strength of a solid fourth quarter. Our revenues increased 27% for the quarter and 15% for the year, excluding reimbursables. Our earnings, on an adjusted basis, were up 23% for the quarter and 42% for the year, largely due to the 10 additional aircraft we leased and improved results from our airlines. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $96 million or a record $312 million for the year. Those excellent results stem from revenue growth in each of our segments, a better than expected contribution from Omni Air and solid peak season service levels for our customers.

2019 is off to a great start as well. We expect to dry-lease 8 to 10 newly converted 767 freighters this year, including the five we will deploy with Amazon in the second half under the expanded and extended agreements we signed with them in December. We also expect overall stronger results from our ACMI segment with the addition of Omni Air in November, which brought passenger ACMI and charter capability via its fleet of 13 767 and 777 aircraft.

Quint is standing by to summarize our overall financial results for the fourth quarter and year. Rich will add a few words on the business units. And I'll close with some perspective on our outlook. Quint?

Quint Turner -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Joe, and thanks to all of you on the call for joining us this morning. Once again, let me start by saying that during the course of this call, we will make projections or other forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results and other future events may differ materially from those we describe here. These forward-looking statements are based on information, plans and estimates as of the date of this call, and Air Transport Services Group undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect changes in underlying assumptions, factors, new information or other changes.