Earnings Labs

Corporación América Airports S.A. (CAAP)

Q1 2019 Earnings Call· Tue, May 21, 2019

$24.26

-3.06%

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Same-Day

-5.07%

1 Week

-2.08%

1 Month

+5.72%

vs S&P

+3.11%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Corporación América Airports First Quarter 2019 Earnings Call. A slide presentation accompanies today’s webcast and is available in the Investors section of Corporación América Airports Investor Relations website at http://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. And at this time, I would 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 Martín Eurnekian, our Chief Executive Officer; and Raul 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. Note that for comparison purposes and better understanding of the underlying performance in our presentation today, we will be discussing results, excluding hyperinflation accounting in Argentina, which came became effective July 28. Additional information in connection with the application of the rule IAS 29 can be found in our earnings report. Now, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Martín Eurnekian. Martín Eurnekian: Thank you, Gimena. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today. It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Corporación América Airports first quarter 2019 earnings conference call. I will begin my presentation today with an overview 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 to your questions. Starting with Slide number 3. We’re navigating a challenging market environment particularly in Argentina, our largest market and to a lesser extent in Brazil. In Argentina, we saw travel dynamics impacted by the sharp currency depreciation, which resulted in a negative mix shift towards the massive traffic,…

Raul Francos

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Martin. Good day everyone. As Gimena noted, at the beginning of our presentation for a better understanding of our performance, we will discussion our result excluding the impact of hyperinflation in Argentina. Starting with revenues on Slide 5, total revenue growth reflected tough comparison against last year. The first quarter of 2018 included the one-time recognition of the CPI inflationary effect on airport fees in Italy for an amount of 4.9 million, which was recovered in other revenues. On a companywide basis excluding these one-time item and also construction revenues, total revenue fell 8% year-on-year. Aeronautical revenue declined 6%, mainly reflecting the mix shift from international to domestic traffic in Argentina and the FX translation impact on the domestic revenues from the strong currency depreciation. In Italy and in Brazil despite traffic growth, Aeronautical revenue declined impacted by currency depreciation on both the Brazilian real and the euro against the U.S. dollar. Ecuador posted another quarter of revenue growth and in euro-wide the introduction of the new security target more than offset the decline in traffic. Commercial revenue declined close to 14% year-on-year, mainly affected by lower demand in Argentina and the FX translation impact in Argentina and Brazil. In local currency, commercial revenues in Brazil increased 14%, mainly due to higher VIP lounge and advertising revenues. In Italy fuelled by the expansion of a car rental area and remodelling of some commercial areas of our airport coupled with traffic growth, commercial revenue increased over 3% despite the depreciation of the euro. Armenia continued to post positive result on the back of higher fuel demand and prices. Moving to our cost structure on Slide 6, the decline in revenues in our largest market coupled with tough top line comps in Italy resulted in lower cost dilution this quarter.…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And our first question today comes from Steven Trent with Citi. Please go ahead.

Steven Trent

Analyst · Citi. Please go ahead

Good morning guys and thanks for taking my questions. I just have two quick ones at this point. You mentioned the Brasilia asset, the 28% year-on-year dollar decline in EBITDA I imagine that some of that is coming from the currency movements. Could you give us any color how much of that decline was driven by that the bad debt charges?

Gimena Albanesi

Investor Relations

Hi, Steve, thank you for the question. So, the bad debt in this quarter was around $1.3 million. Remember that the FX had a movement, so we are using an average of 3.8 in the quarter roughly. And that is -- that was the cash that we had this quarter specifically.

Steven Trent

Analyst · Citi. Please go ahead

Great. Thanks, Gimena. And is there any potential recourse in terms of you guys eventually collecting that money?

Gimena Albanesi

Investor Relations

Well, we have to see how this situation with these carriers and more forward. There is a chance that we're able to collect, but so far and according to an accounting rule, we have to record this bad debt. And let me remind you, last quarter we also recorded a bad debt for the same situation.

Steven Trent

Analyst · Citi. Please go ahead

Okay, very helpful. And just one last quick question. When I think about AA2000 implied return versus the guaranteed return, it seems that in terms of potential levers to get you guys to the returns, you could A, increase tariffs; B, reduced CapEx; or C, extend AA2000. It is fair to say that the third option would be the path of least resistance from a political perspective and considering the strong domestic traffic growth? Martín Eurnekian: Thank you for all questions. As we need to reply, I would say yes, definitely yes. The extension would be the easiest one, politically, but we have to monitor the development of our cash flows and the concession throughout the remainder of the year of the life of it, to be able to have a clear idea on where we're going, but the answer is yes.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] And this will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Martín Eurnekian for any closing remarks. Martín Eurnekian: I'd like to thank everybody for joining us today. We really appreciate your interest in our company. We look forward to meeting more of you over the coming months and providing financial business updates in the next quarter. In the meantime, the team remains available to answer any questions that you may have. Thanks you very much.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time and have a nice day.