United's Wall Street-Friendly CFO

The airline's finance chief sounds off about why the stock is undervalued, and what he plans to do about it.

 Dear readers,

Many airline CFOs nearly put me to sleep by dryly sharing the last quarter’s numbers and little else, but not Mike Leskinen. Leskinen, United’s former head of investor relations who took over as CFO in September and promises to change how Wall Street views the company, likes to remind analysts that he was once among them. He’s a finance guy, he likes to say, who worked at JP Morgan before joining United in 2018 — not one of those executives Michael O'Leary once called "aerosexuals,” or people more interested in the magic of flight than efficient business practices.

"I think that it is fair to say that this is an industry that folks joined because aircraft are sexy," Leskinen said Tuesday at Citi's 2024 Global Industrial Tech and Mobility Conference. “People like buying airplanes. And I like buying airplanes, too. But we need to balance the airplanes we purchase with the returns that we generate."