Earnings Call Transcript - CPA Q2 2024

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Copa Holdings Second Quarter Earnings Call. As a reminder, this call is being webcast and recorded on August 8, 2024. Now, I will turn the conference call over to Daniel Tapia, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Daniel Tapia, Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Gee, and welcome everyone to our second quarter earnings call. Joining us today are Pedro Heilbron, CEO of Copa Holdings; and Jose Montero, our CFO. First, Pedro will start by going over our second quarter highlights, followed by Jose who will discuss our financial results. Immediately after, we will open the call for questions from analysts. Copa Holdings' financial reports have been prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards. In today's call, we will discuss non-IFRS financial measures. A reconciliation of the non-IFRS to IFRS financial measures can be found in our earnings release which has been posted on the company's website copaair.com. Our discussion today will also contain forward-looking statements, not limited to historical facts that reflect the company's current beliefs, expectations and/or intentions regarding future events and results. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and are based on assumptions subject to change. Many of these are discussed in our annual report filed with the SEC. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Pedro Heilbron.

Pedro Heilbron, CEO

Thank you, Daniel. Good morning to all, and thanks for participating in our second-quarter earnings call. Before we begin, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all our coworkers for their commitment to the company. Their continuous efforts and dedication have kept Copa at the forefront of Latin American aviation; to them, as always, my highest regards and admiration. Once again, we're pleased to report industry-leading financial results for the quarter. As stated in our earnings release yesterday, our 19.5% Q2 operating margin represents the second-best Q2 results in the Company's history. Among the main highlights for the quarter, passenger traffic grew 10.6% compared to the same period in 2023, while capacity increased by 9.7%, resulting in a 0.7 percentage point increase in load factor to 86.8%. Unit costs excluding fuel or CASM came in at $0.56, a 5.8% decrease compared to Q2 2023, mainly driven by lower aircraft maintenance costs and sales and distribution costs. Passenger yield came in at $0.121, 8.7% lower year-over-year. As a result, unit revenues or RASM came in at $0.11 or 7.7% lower compared to Q2 '23. On the operational front, Copa Airlines delivered an on-time performance of 87.6% and a completion factor of 99.7% for the quarter, once again positioning ourselves amongst the best in the industry. Furthermore, Copa was recently recognized by Skytrax for the ninth consecutive year as the Best Airline in Central America and the Caribbean. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize our more than 8,000 coworkers who, day in and day out, deliver a world-class travel experience for our customers. Their contributions are key to our success. Turning now to our network. In the month of June, we started three new destinations: Raleigh-Durham in the US, Florianopolis in Brazil, and Tulum in Mexico. With these additions, we're now serving 85 destinations in 32 countries, solidifying our leadership position as the hub with the most international destinations in Latin America. Regarding our expectations for the rest of the year, as we notified the market last week on July 29, the Venezuelan government temporarily suspended commercial flights between Venezuela and several countries in the region, including Panama, forcing us to cancel our flight effective July 31. Although the official notice mandates the suspension of flights until August 31, at this time, we cannot determine if this suspension will be extended. With regards to costs, we continue to focus on our cost efficiency initiatives and expect to deliver lower year-over-year unit costs for 2024, leading us once again to deliver industry-leading margins for the year. Jose will provide more details regarding our outlook. To summarize, we delivered industry-leading financial results for the second quarter. We continue to deliver on our cost execution strategy. We keep expanding our network, now serving 85 destinations across 32 countries, reinforcing Panama's position as the leading hub for international travel in Latin America. And we expect to deliver industry-leading operating margins for the year. As always, our team continues to deliver world-leading operational results while providing world-class service to our passengers. Finally, we firmly believe that our business model remains as robust and relevant as ever and that our hub of the Americas in Panama is the best connecting hub in Latin America, making us the best-positioned airline in our region to consistently deliver industry-leading results. Now, I'll turn over the call to Jose, who will go over our financial results in more detail.

Jose Montero, CFO

Thank you, Pedro. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for being with us today. I'd like to join Pedro in acknowledging our great team for all their efforts to deliver world-class service to our passengers. I will start by going over our second quarter results. We reported a net profit for the quarter of $120.3 million or $2.88 per share. We reported a quarterly operating profit of $159.5 million and an operating margin of 19.5%, in what is our seasonally lowest quarter of the year. Capacity came in at $7.4 billion available seat miles or 9.7% higher than in Q2 2023. Load factor came in at 86.8% for the quarter, a 0.7 percentage point increase compared to the same period in 2023. Passenger yields decreased by 8.7% to $0.121, mostly due to a revision of the unredeemed ticket revenue provision for tickets sold during the year 2024. As a result, unit revenues came in at $0.11 or 7.7% lower than in the second quarter of 2023. Excluding the revision related to the unredeemed ticket revenues, RASM would have decreased by 3.8% to $0.115. Unit costs or CASM decreased to $0.089 or 2.1% lower year-over-year. And finally, our CASM excluding fuel came in at $0.56, a 5.8% decrease versus Q2 2023, mainly driven by lower aircraft maintenance costs, due to an adjustment in leased aircraft return provisions of nine aircraft leases, which we extended during the quarter, as well as lower sales and distribution costs due to the higher penetration of both direct channels and the lower-cost NDC travel agency channel. Excluding the adjustment in leased aircraft return provisions, the company would have reported an ex-fuel CASM of $0.058 for the quarter, a 1.7% decrease year-over-year. Now, I'm going to spend some time discussing our balance sheet and liquidity. As of the end of the second quarter, we had assets of close to $5.4 billion. As to cash short- and long-term investments, we ended the quarter with over $1.2 billion, which represents 35% of our last 12 months' revenues. In terms of debt, we ended the quarter with $1.8 billion in debt and lease liabilities and came in with an adjusted net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 0.6 times. I'm pleased to report that our average cost of debt, which continues to be comprised solely of aircraft-related debt, is currently in the range of 3.6%, with around 70% of our debt being fixed. Turning now to our fleet, during the quarter, we received three Boeing 737 MAX nine aircraft, ending the second quarter with a total fleet of 109 aircraft, comprised of 68 737-800s, 32 797 MAX 9s and nine 737-700s. These figures include one 737-800 freighter and the nine 737-800s operated by Wingo. Also, in the month of July, we received our first Boeing 737 MAX 8, increasing our total fleet size to 110 aircraft. Regarding the deliveries for the remainder of the year, recently, Boeing notified us of further delays to the 2024 delivery stream. And now, we expect to receive only two additional MAX 8s during the remainder of the year to end the year with a total fleet size of 112 aircraft instead of the 115 mentioned during last quarter's call. In terms of financing, we have already secured JOLCO financing for these deliveries, as well as for the first three deliveries of 2025. As for our 2025 fleet plan, we currently expect to receive 15 aircraft for the year, all Boeing 737 MAX 8s. And as mentioned before, we extended all of our nine operating leases expiring next year. Additionally, as contemplated in an updated fleet plan, we expect to retire two of our Boeing 737-700s to end the year with a fleet of 125 aircraft. Turning now to the return of value to our shareholders. I'm pleased to announce that the company will make its third dividend payment of the year of $1.61 per share on September 13 to all shareholders of record as of August 30. As to our guidance, we can provide the following update for the full year 2024. Due to the temporary suspension of our Panama to Venezuela flights, we now expect to increase our capacity in ASMs to approximately 9% year-over-year instead of our previous expectation of approximately 10%. And we reaffirm our operating margin guidance to be within the range of 21% to 23%. We're basing our outlook on the following assumptions: load factor of approximately 86.5%, unit revenues in the range of $0.115, which accounts for the unexpected Venezuela capacity reductions, weaker currencies in the region, and a lower fuel cost environment. CASM ex-fuel in the range of $0.059, and we are now expecting an all-in fuel price of $2.70 per gallon. Lastly, as you already know, last month, after a career spanning over 30 years at Copa, I announced my decision to retire from the company by the end of 2024. Being part of the Copa team here has been one of the joys of my life. Our company is in great form, consistently delivering strong financial results with unit costs at the lowest level they have ever been, while continuing to build our very strong balance sheet and returning value to the shareholders. We're currently engaging in an internal and an external search for my replacement, and I will remain with the Company in an advisory role after my successor is named to assist with a smooth transition. Thank you. And with that, we will open the call to some questions.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Savi Syth from Raymond James.

Savi Syth, Analyst

Congratulations on getting some time off from the airline world, Jose. And maybe can I ask on the Venezuela site suspension impact, like how you're thinking about the impact given the uncertainty that you alluded to, just what's in the guidance in terms of kind of how long this impacts and what kind of pressure it puts on unit revenue in the third quarter?

Jose Montero, CFO

Sure, Savi, and thank you for your good wishes there. So, let me start by saying that the Venezuela impact is included in the guidance, and we have taken a conservative assumption in terms of the capacity and the RASM guidance here. We assume that there will be a buildup of the capacity related to Venezuela, either in Venezuela after August or in alternative markets. The reason why the buildup of the capacities over a period of time will be a ramp-up of that capacity is because the flights need time to sell. But we expect basically to be back at full capacity by December, let's say, and a ramp-up to occur between September and December. And it's all again just to reiterate, it's all included in the guidance, both in the capacity guidance and in the RASM guidance.

Savi Syth, Analyst

Got it. So the impact is across second half is what you have here, and not just 3Q? Makes sense. Can I?

Jose Montero, CFO

Absolutely, yes.

Savi Syth, Analyst

On the demand side, you've noticed significant local currency devaluation against the US dollar over the past few months. Are you observing any impact on demand or changes in point-of-sale direction, possibly due to that or the weakening of economies?

Pedro Heilbron, CEO

Hi Savi, it's Pedro.

Savi Syth, Analyst

Hey, Pedro.

Pedro Heilbron, CEO

So, of course, the Venezuela impact is immediate. We are a network airline, so it affects beyond just the O&D Panama Venezuela and having to cancel from one day to the other, that has an impact on our whole network. So it's in the guidance already for Q3 and the rest of the year, as Jose will mention. And then that also is combined with the weaker currency that you alluded to, which is affecting mostly Brazil, which is the most important market for anyone in South America and actually in Latin America. So that's the main impact we're dealing with. Otherwise, demand, it's okay, in spite of a lot of capacity growth from the industry in general.

Savi Syth, Analyst

That’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth from Evercore ISI.

Duane Pfennigwerth, Analyst

Hey, guys. Good morning. And Jose, I don't know why you'd ever want to leave this industry. I think you're crazy.

Jose Montero, CFO

We agree.

Duane Pfennigwerth, Analyst

Just to follow up on Savi's question. Is this a utilization hit? Or do you actually have aircraft parked at this time? I also want to clarify that you're assuming this capacity will be reallocated to Venezuela or to another part of the network by December. Is that the correct way to view it?

Jose Montero, CFO

Sure. Yes, absolutely. That's the way to think about it. And there will be a ramp-up. So it's not like we will have the ability to redeploy everything immediately. But we're assuming that there is a ramp-up of that capacity but essentially, it will be either in Venezuela or somewhere else by the final part of the year. So yes, and it's I think conservative in nature in the way that we've done it.

Duane Pfennigwerth, Analyst

Okay. And then just on the one of the things you called out in the release this change to an unredeemed ticket revenue provision, can you just explain what that is and what changed and if that impact kind of continues?

Jose Montero, CFO

Yes, Duane. So indeed, it's a revision to the unredeemed ticket revenue provision that we have for tickets that we sell or we are selling in the year 2024. So following IFRS 15 standards, we apply for every dollar of sales, we apply an unredeemed ticket factor. And then that gets reconciled after a year once the ticket expires. So what we did this year, just based upon observed behavior, we reduced somewhat the factor that we use. And so, there is an assumption that there is a lesser percentage of tickets that will expire next year. Therefore, we took the factors somewhat down and included that here. That's something that happens every year. But in this particular year, we just saw a difference in the behavior of expired coupons. And that's all included in the guidance. It's contemplated in the guidance and the RASM guidance as well. So it's something that we've included in there.

Duane Pfennigwerth, Analyst

So, maybe a way to think about it is less breakage or lower assumed breakage going forward. And so that's a 2Q through the next 12 months impact. So that's in this back half as well.

Jose Montero, CFO

You got it. And it's included in the RASM guidance for the full year that we included there.

Duane Pfennigwerth, Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Guilherme Mendes from JPMorgan.

Guilherme Mendes, Analyst

Hey good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. Best wishes, Jose, on your new endeavors as well. I have just a follow-up on the first question. I guess Pedro, you mentioned about demand still resilient despite all the capacity increase in the region. My question is if you see any kind of oversupply of the markets that you guys operate or how comfortable are you with the yield assumptions you have for the coming quarters?

Pedro Heilbron, CEO

It’s clear that the situation cannot be overlooked. There will always be increased pressure on yields when demand continues to grow rapidly, as we’ve seen in Latin America. However, we are seeing that our seats are being filled and our load factors remain stable. Additionally, factors like weaker currencies contribute to this dynamic; although currency values can fluctuate, we’re not making long-term forecasts based on this alone, as conditions could certainly change. If we were to experience significant capacity growth alongside the other impacts I mentioned, there would indeed be some influence on yields, but we have taken all of this into account in our guidance.

Guilherme Mendes, Analyst

Super clear. Thank you. And maybe a follow-up on this. You mentioned about ending 2025 with nearly 10% fleet addition. Does it imply that we can assume a lower yield in 2025 when compared to 2024 given this additional capacity?

Pedro Heilbron, CEO

We're growing capacity in a measured way and we're actually growing probably half what others are growing in our part of the world. And we're growing according to the needs we have, the opportunities we see within our network. We're not trying to take land from anyone else. And again, it's measured to our opportunities and to our network, half what the industry in general is growing. So, we're very, very comfortable with that. Plus, we have a lot of flexibility to adjust along the way. We can park the 700 and harvest the engines, or we can keep them flying depending also on Boeing delivery. So, we have a lot of flexibility and we feel.

Jose Montero, CFO

And we are a profitability-driven company. So, we'll make the best decisions we can to maximize our profitability. And by the way, we haven't issued guidance for 2025 yet. So, stay tuned for that one. Preliminary guidance in November and then the full guidance in the February call.

Guilherme Mendes, Analyst

Very clear. Thank you both.

Pedro Heilbron, CEO

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Trent from Citi.

Stephen Trent, Analyst

Yes. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for your time. Jose, I wish you all the best and appreciate all those times we spent together on the road. Thank you.

Jose Montero, CFO

Thank you.

Stephen Trent, Analyst

And I was curious just thinking about and to some extent a follow-up on Guilherme's question in a different way. When you look at your opportunities to grow, any high-level view on let's say servicing new destinations versus increasing frequencies to existing destinations or maybe upgrading equipment or something along those lines?

Pedro Heilbron, CEO

I don't think it's going to change much from what we've done in the past. Usually, around 80% of our ASM growth comes from existing destinations, but through additional frequencies. The remainder comes from new frequencies or new destinations throughout the year. That ratio is likely to stay the same. This year we've added three destinations so far, and we might add a fourth one by the end of the year. We expect to see something similar in the coming years, with between three and five new destinations each year. As the region grows and our hub develops, we believe we have ample opportunities, including increasing our daily frequencies where we also find valuable opportunities.

Stephen Trent, Analyst

Thank you, Pedro, for the helpful information. I have just one quick follow-up. I appreciate what you mentioned about Venezuela. Recently, there has been some volatility in Ecuador. Overall, are the other broader markets you serve experiencing relatively calm situations where it's business as usual?

Jose Montero, CFO

Yes. Stephen, in reality, there isn't really any other country that has any sort of non-political type of situation right now that is of concern.

Pedro Heilbron, CEO

There will always be challenges in our part of the world. We are native to this region and are accustomed to these conditions. We have experienced success through both high and low times, and we are confident in managing today's crisis. A new challenge will arise tomorrow, and we will continue to operate a company that can thrive in the face of that.

Stephen Trent, Analyst

Great color, Pedro. And there are developed market carriers that would love to do half of what you guys do. So thanks very much.

Pedro Heilbron, CEO

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joao Fritz from Goldman Sachs.

Joao Fritz, Analyst

Hi, Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two quick follow-ups. The first one relates to Venezuela. So you put out in the release that capacity amounts to roughly 2% of your total capacity. I just wanted to double check if this is the same case for revenues or is it higher or lower amount? And then on the second point related to the unredeemed ticket provisions. You guys did this revision in the recovery rate right of the non-used tickets. But you have already sold a portion of the ticket for this year. This revision in the second quarter is only related to the second quarter itself or it already accounts for some of the tickets you guys sold for the second half, meaning the impact could be lower in the second half of the year on the revenue side? Thank you very much.

Jose Montero, CFO

Yes. Joao, I'll do the second part first. It is actually a catch-up of the first half of the year. So the third quarter won't really have that much of a significant impact, and again, as I mentioned before, is included in the guidance. But that's a good call out. And indeed the figure was also a little bit higher because in the second quarter of 2024, we included the assumption for both the first and the second quarter of the year.

Pedro Heilbron, CEO

In terms of your first question, what's always going to happen in a network carrier like Copa is that when we talk about ASMs, we're talking Panama-Venezuela ASMs, and those are relatively short hauls. When we talk about revenues, we're talking about network revenues, passengers originating in Venezuela or with destination Venezuela that go to or come from all over our network. So those are going to be much longer hauls. So revenues are going to always be much higher than ASMs in any similar situation. So we can say that revenues are going to be a little bit over double the ASMs just because it's short-haul connecting to long haul and again, showing the guidance. The impact is all in the guidance.

Joao Fritz, Analyst

Super clear. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Linenberg from Deutsche Bank.