Latest revenue
$14.61B
as of 2026-03-31
Latest net income
$699.0M
as of 2026-03-31
Net margin
4.8%
as of 2026-03-31
Community sentiment
Where do you think UAL is heading?
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UAL vs S&P 500 · rebased to 100
Live market
delayed ≤15 min- Market cap
- $35.58B
- Enterprise value
- $52.00B
- P/E (trailing)
- 10.6×
- Forward P/E
- —
- P/B
- 2.24×
- Dividend yield
- 0.0%
- 52-wk high
- $119.21
- 52-wk low
- $71.55
- Beta
- —
- Shares out
- 324.6M
What this company does
United Airlines operates a global network airline, flying passengers and cargo across domestic and international routes through hubs like Chicago, Newark, Houston, and San Francisco. Passenger ticket sales drive the business, generating $13.2 billion of the $14.6 billion in Q1 2026 revenue, with cargo and ancillary services like the MileagePlus loyalty program filling out the rest. Earnings jumped sharply year-over-year, with net income rising 81% to $699 million and operating cash flow hitting $4.8 billion, while advance ticket sales swelled to $11.7 billion signaling strong forward demand.
Generated from UAL's filing dated 2026-02-12
Key risks
- Heavy debt load: $24.2B total debt plus $6.8B operating leases against $15.9B equity; Q1 interest expense $327M despite $135M interest income.
- Fuel exposure: Q1 fuel costs rose 13% YoY to $3.04B (22% of opex), pressuring margins if jet fuel prices spike further.
- Labor cost inflation: salaries climbed 9.8% YoY to $4.56B, outpacing some cost lines and consuming 31% of revenue amid ongoing union contract pressures.
Generated from UAL's filing dated 2026-02-12
ActaClear Score
Computed from 5 years of SEC fundamentals + latest market data, ranked within Air Transportation, Scheduled (15 peers). 10 = best in industry, 5 = median, 0 = worst. Refreshed Jun 10, 2026.
Fair value · DCF
Methodology + caveats (click to expand)
Method. 10-year forecast of free cash flow, discounted at the company's WACC, with a Gordon-growth terminal at year 10. FCF is proxied by last fiscal-year net income (proper FCF needs CFO − CapEx by year, which we don't store yet). Beta defaults to 1.0 when not reported.
Why DCF is fragile. Treat the output as a thinking aid, not a verdict. Honest weaknesses of any DCF:
- Growth is the dominant assumption. No one can foresee 10 years of growth — small changes in the slider can double or halve fair value. The reverse-DCF readout above tells you what the market is implicitly assuming; ask yourself whether that's realistic before trusting either number.
- Terminal value dominates. In most DCFs, 60-80% of the answer comes from the terminal-value calculation — i.e., everything AFTER year 10. A 0.5pp change in terminal growth, or in WACC, can swing fair value by 20-30%.
- WACC is itself a guess. We use a textbook CAPM cost of equity (Rf 4.3%, MRP 5.5%, β from the quote) plus a 6% pretax cost of debt — none of these are the company's actual marginal financing cost.
- No moat / disruption modelling. The model assumes the company keeps earning whatever it earns today, compounding cleanly. Competitive shifts, regulatory action, and technology disruption can invalidate the forecast overnight.
- Net income ≠ free cash flow. For capex-heavy names (semis, telcos) net income overstates distributable cash. For low-capex names (software) it understates. Both reduce the precision of the FV figure.
- Reflexivity. A high stock price often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy via better hiring, financing, and customer trust. DCF can't see this.
Take the DCF, the reverse-DCF implied growth, the historical multiples, and the community sentiment together. When they agree, conviction. When they disagree, the disagreement is the most informative thing on the page.
Historical multiples
How does UAL's current valuation compare to its own past?
P/E uses year-end weekly close ÷ (net income ÷ shares outstanding today). Held shares constant at today's count, which understates the per-share earnings improvement from buybacks over the period. PEG uses 5y revenue CAGR as a proxy for EPS growth — close, but not identical (margin expansion or dilution can drive a wedge). Best read as a comparator across companies and industries, not as a precise replica of historical multiples.