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Corporación América Airports S.A. (CAAP)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 27, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. And welcome to the Corporacion America Airports’ Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Call. A slide presentation accompanies today’s webcast and is available in the Investors section of Corporacion America Airports Investor Relations website at https://investors.corporacionamericaairports.com. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end of today’s presentation. And as a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference over to Gimena Albanesi of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Gimena Albanesi

Investor Relations

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Speaking during today’s call will be Martin Eurnekian, our Chief Executive Officer; and Raúl Francos, our Chief Financial Officer. Also with us today is Jorge Arruda, Finance and M&A Manager. All will be available for the Q&A session. Before we proceed, I would like to make the following Safe Harbor statements. Today’s call will contain forward-looking statements, and I refer you to the forward-looking statements section of our earnings release and reconcilings with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new or changed events or circumstances. I would also like to remind you that following the recent categorization of Argentina as a highly inflationary in accordance with IFRS standard commencing July 2018, we began applying IFRS rule IAS 29. This rule applies directly starting January 1st this year. So comparison purposes, we now recently presenting actually for this result, we are also disclosing the isolated impact of the adoption of Hyperinflation Accounting in Argentina and our results excluding IAS 29. Additional information in connection with the application of rule IAS 29 can be found in our earnings report. Now that for comparison purposes and a better understanding of our underlying performance in our presentation, we will be discussing results excluding Hyperinflation Accounting in Argentina. With that being said, I would now turn the call over to our CEO, Martin Eurnekian.

Martin Eurnekian

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Gimena. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Corporacion America Airports’ third quarter 2018 earnings conference call. I will begin my presentation with a discussion of the highlights of the quarter and then Raúl will take you through our financial results. Afterwards, I will provide an update on our key business segments and our view for the remainder of the year. We will then open the call for your questions. Starting with slide number three, with faith and increasingly challenging macro environment in some of our key market this quarter, particularly in Argentina where we are experiencing a significantly weaker travel dynamics and to a lesser extent in Brazil. This resulted in a sequential deceleration in total passenger traffic growth of 1 percentage point to almost 6% year-over-year this quarter. Again, this back drop revenues bode to the high single-digit year-on-year decline. In Argentina, we are seeing a drop in international alone with a mix shift to domestic destinations. Revenues were also affected by the FX translation impact on local currency in Argentina as well as in overall revenues in Brazil, resulting from the stronger devaluations experienced in both countries. Looking at profitability, we turned in another quarter of margin expansion with EBITDA margin ex-IFRIC up more than 430 basis points to over 40%, driven by strong margin expansion in our core markets Argentina, Brazil and Italy. In addition, as our cost structure is based in local currency, we benefited from the strong currency depreciation in Argentina. Excluding inflation accounting in Argentina, adjusted EBITDA margin ex-IFRIC expanded over 460 basis points year-over-year to almost 41% and adjusted EBITDA increased by high single-digit. With the goal of expanding our airport platform for the long-term growth and to enhance the service…

Martin Eurnekian

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Raúl. Let me now review the performance of our key business segments, starting with Argentina on slide nine. We saw an 8% year-on-year decline in revenues ex-IFRIC despite the 6% increase in passenger traffic as business dynamic remained impacted by several factors. First, we are experiencing a stronger mix shift from international to lower priced domestic destinations. As a result, domestic traffic increased over 14% while international traffic contracted almost 7%. Second, Aeronautical revenues from domestic passengers and a portion of our commercial revenues that are in peso denominated remain affected by the FX translation impact from the sharp peso devaluation. And finally, in this context, we are seeing a mix shift in cargo volume with higher export activity and the number of higher margin imports. Despite this change market dynamics adjusted segment EBITDA ex-IFRIC was relatively flat at $79 million in the quarter, reflecting higher cost dilution from our cost structure in Argentina, which continues to benefit from the peso devaluation. Adjusted segment EBITDA margin for Argentina expanded close to 400 basis points to almost 45% in the quarter. Note, however, that we expect margin to normalize going forward as inflation catches up with the peso devaluation. Maintaining our goal of further enhancing our airport infrastructure, we made capital expenditures of almost $47 million this quarter in Argentina. Investments were mainly targeted to the construction of the new departures terminal building at Ezeiza Airport which we expect will be finalized by mid next year and will allow for a more efficient traffic flow, while offering a better travel experience to our passengers. This quarter we also continued with the remodeling of the terminal building at Iguazú in Mar del Plata airports and are making headway in the construction of the new terminal building and expansion of the…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead with your question.

Mark Zhang

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead with your question

Hi. Good morning, guys. This is Mark on for Ian. Thanks for taking our questions. So a very good quarter, again a very solid. I just like to, I guess, touch upon the profitability, you guys mentioned on the call and the press release, how it’s being -- expected to be impacted by inflation as it catch itself and then lower some operating leverage down from sequentially this quarter. So I just like to understand what are some of the expectations going forward and are there like any other, while if you can pull to maintain that level of profitability? Thank you.

Martin Eurnekian

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you for the question. It’s a really tough question you are asking forecasting inflation is seems very difficult with the current environment in Argentina. We have seen high inflation numbers so far, but we are also seeing recession numbers in the economy that should currently be the growth of inflation, but it’d be very difficult to see. The dynamics you had seen in the last couple of years where that -- after devaluation in the period of time inflation would catch up in dollar term, but it would be very difficult to forecast next year what will happen.

Mark Zhang

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead with your question

Okay. That’s fair. And then, just a little bit on the topline, like, you guys are doing a great job in adding new flights and frequencies. I just want to see what the sort of your expectations going to maybe at the end of the year fourth quarter ‘18 what the sort of activity has been going forward and the expectations relative to the performance this quarter? Thank you.

Martin Eurnekian

Chief Executive Officer

Well, our expectations are that the dynamics we are seeing throughout the year will continue. We are seeing a slowdown in international traffic, probably, mainly due to the devaluation of the peso. But we keep seeing domestic growth. We keep seeing airlines continuing with their plans to establish themselves in Argentina to fly domestic. Norwegian for example and a couple of other airline that are working their way through starting to fly in Argentina, so we are still optimistic in the domestic side of traffic. As we have seen this year, so we do not expect those dynamics to change in the fourth quarter.

Mark Zhang

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead with your question

Okay. Great. Thank you, guys, and I will jump into queue again.

Operator

Operator

And the next question comes from Charles Cartledge with Sloane Robinson. Please go ahead with your question.

Charles Cartledge

Analyst · Sloane Robinson. Please go ahead with your question

Thank you and thank you very much for the presentation today. So you point to increase the cost pressure in Argentina, which I understand. So if you are free to price as you wish then presumably you would compensate for these cost pressures with increase revenues, probably, through increase per passenger ticket revenues. I just want to clarify would to do that, if you wanted to do that, particularly on domestic fees or passenger fees, would you need ODMAS [ph] approval and if so, what are you doing to get ODMAS [ph] approval, because obviously you are operating under fixed IRR regime, I believe that it’s -- your overdue a bit of a catch up with regard to recessing that regime in the current year with all the dislocations that having to manage with the devalued currency. So if you could just walk me through the procedure for, for example, raising passenger fees on domestic routes? That would be helpful. Thank you.

Martin Eurnekian

Chief Executive Officer

Well, it’s a regulatory body that has to do the annual analysis and come up with an answer. We are waiting for that. But it also, the fact that, most of our revenues are in dollars play a role in basically automatically increasing our tariff in pesos and also play a role in the fact that our costs dilute in peso, that’s why we have also seen an increase in margins in this quarter for example. So that dynamic is not that clear, although, we have to wait for the regulator to do its analysis and come up with an answer.

Charles Cartledge

Analyst · Sloane Robinson. Please go ahead with your question

So as a follow-up question, I’d just like to ask, I mean, I believe AA2000 has not had a regulatory reset for a couple of years now, but it’s meant to happen every year. So is there any schedules meeting with your regulator to make sure that that you’re on track on your IRRs and if not, than to reset passenger fees or landing fees appropriately? Thank you.

Martin Eurnekian

Chief Executive Officer

Well, we definitely work towards having them do the job, but since it’s not within our power to force them and also there can be temporary disadjustments of the IRR. We are definitely talking to them and hoping that they do their work and come up with a revision on the economic I believe we want the concession. We hope that they basically finish up their job and published a revision soon as they are ready.

Charles Cartledge

Analyst · Sloane Robinson. Please go ahead with your question

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Andrew Levine with Sincetary Capital [ph]. Please go ahead with your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi. How are you and thank you again for the call. My first question is kind of related to the last one which was, is just if there’s been any discussion of a timeline on concession renewal? And then because that will probably be a quick one, second -- second question is on inbound versus outbound international traffic, if you could provide any color on how that change would expect an increase in inbound, although, the international is down significantly overall to Argentina in particular?

Gimena Albanesi

Investor Relations

Okay. First of all, the second question regarding the outbound versus inbound traffic. As of last quarter that we have reported third quarter typically seen we had an outbound traffic of around 60% for international passengers and 40% inbound. This was down from the previous quarter of the Brazil was 66% Argentina out with 34% inbound traffic. And we expect this trend to continue and we expect that coming -- moving forward we will have reduced percentage of Argentina in our overall international passengers.

Martin Eurnekian

Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. And regarding your first question, we are also waiting for the government to be ready to start some negotiations to work with consultancy which is still delayed. And also we have seen a little bit of priority shift within the environment in the last four months to six months with all of that what happen with the macro of the country. So we hope that those discussions negotiations can start as soon as possible.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Pir Zafar with Salder River Capital [ph]. Please go ahead with your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi. Thank you very much for taking our questions. So I had a few, the first one would be, could you have not really published any estimates of what is overdue in terms of catch-up based on your -- the contractual IRR for the AA2000 concession in Argentina? So I don’t know if you -- could you give us a little more color as to when you do get the opportunity to catch-up based on the original contract? What you expect you should receive, because it appears you were -- you continue to -- the confession continues to deliver below what was originally signed. So that’s the first question. Then the second one would be on Brazil. So you are currently adding -- currently building very significant commercial real estate in downtown and prime Brasília. Could you give us a little more color as to how large you believe that opportunity could be eventually especially in light of the recent elections, -eventually this could be a very high EBITDA asset and how should we think about it and when do you believe it could start to meaningfully make a difference in Brazil? And then the last question is just on the current stock price, how do you internally think about the current level are and is there any opportunities to maybe engage in buyback or do you have an opinion about the current stock price and that -- if you do not believe it reflects the prospect of the company, is there anything you believe you should be doing? Thank you very much.

Martin Eurnekian

Chief Executive Officer

Starting with your first question. It’s similar to the one before we need the government to do the yearly revision to understand their view for the future of the concession and understand if we would be on track or not regarding the regulatory framework. We hope that that happen soon and as soon as it happen we will give -- we will have an opinion whether we agree with the government’s forecast or not. And you have to keep in mind that we need to meet the IRR by the end of the period. So, again, there can be a slight adjustments over run during the period. So once we have that we will be able to have a clear opinion if we agree or not with the revision. To your second question regarding Brasilia, I will ask Jorge Arruda on the line to comment on the prospects for real estate development.

Jorge Arruda

Analyst

Hello. This is Jorge Arruda. In addition to be able to file corporate M&A and also we have the feel and the feel of our Brasilia Airport. The Brasilia Airport is almost situation where we have a large airport that is actually located inside the city. So 10 minutes to 15 minutes from the so called ministry area. And also the fact that we have a large area we see the construction agreement to develop. We plan to develop about I million square meters. We have this plan for awhile. The crisis didn’t help. We have now -- we have since the beginning of the year being growing, actually late last year we have been growing in terms of passenger and economy is picking up. If you -- I’m sure you are aware there’s a new government and there is -- generally speaking a very positive mood around, therefore we’re quite optimistic. We have a few agreements lined up. As we mentioned before we don’t provide guidance but our plan is that third-party developed the project and we basically lease the land, therefore it’s pure income for us. We expect to have projects such as conviction centers, entertainment centers, office space and hotels, among the few others. And we hope and we are working towards being able to provide more specific details in our next quarterly meeting, also that that will depend on how the micro environment shapes up in the country.

Martin Eurnekian

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Jorge. And to answer your third question, of course, we believe that the price has not reflected the increasing value of the company. We have clearly been affected by many factors being Argentina’s performance, number one, in terms of as it our manifest. We are considering every possibility to defend the share price, being number one, the sound management of the company for long-term growth, but also other alternatives as share buybacks and so on, but we need to make sure that anything we do will positively affect the dynamics of our share and we see that while Argentina keeps creating concern among investor we still need to wait and understand what will be the real need or long-term trend of investment in Argentina.

Operator

Operator

And at this time, there are no further questions. So please sir go ahead with concluding remarks.

Martin Eurnekian

Chief Executive Officer

So I would like to thank everybody for joining us today. We appreciate very much your interest in the company and we look forward to meeting you more and more over the coming months and providing financial and business updates next quarter. Our team remains available for any questions you may have. So thanks again and have a good day.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.