Earnings Labs

Corporación América Airports S.A. (CAAP)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Tue, Apr 7, 2020

$24.88

+0.28%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Corporación América Airports' Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings and COVID-19 Update Calls. A slide presentation accompanies today's webcast and is available in the Investors section of the Corporación América Airports' Investor Relations website at investors.corporacionamericaairports.com. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Gimena Albanesi of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Gimena Albanesi

Analyst

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. Also with us today are Raúl Francos, our Chief Financial Officer; and Jorge Arruda, Head of Finance and M&A. All will be available for the Q&A session. Before we proceed, I would like to make the following safe harbor statement. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements, and I refer you to the Forward-Looking Statements section of our earnings release and recent filings 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 for a better understanding of the underlying performance in our presentation today, we will be discussing results, excluding hyperinflation accounting in Argentina, which became effective in July 2018. Additional information in connection with the application of rule IAS 29, can be found in our earnings report. Now let me turn the call over to our CEO, Martin Eurnekian.

Martin Francisco Eurnekian

Analyst

Thank you. Gimena. Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's call. We are holding our year-end call during an unprecedented health crisis that has rapidly expanded worldwide and that has disrupted the global economy and in particular, the aviation industry, resulting in drastic reductions in passenger traffic. There is significant worldwide uncertainty in terms of the duration and magnitude of the COVID-19 outbreak as well as the impact it will generate on the overall macro environment and on the consumer confidence. On today's call, I will discuss briefly our key operating and financial highlights for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019, and then move on to discuss the impact of the pandemic on our operations during the first quarter of this year. I will then address the initiatives we are implementing across the company to protect employees and passengers. Importantly, I will also discuss the measures we are implementing to mitigate the impact of this crisis on our business and to strengthen liquidity. Starting with a quick recap of 2019 results. A total of 84 million passengers traveled across our 52 airports last year, resulting in a 3% increase in total traffic for the year and nearly 2% in the quarter. The coronavirus outbreak comes at the time when adverse macro conditions in Argentina were already dampening travel demand and FX depreciation impacted the performance in Brazil. This resulted in revenue declines of 6% ex IFRIC 12 for the fourth quarter and nearly 7% for the full year. Despite the impact in our top line, we delivered comparable adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of over 220 basis points in the quarter. We ended the year with a comparable adjusted EBITDA of nearly $450 million and an ex IFRIC 12 margin of 37%. Note that comparable adjusted EBITDA in 2019 excludes a…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And today's first question comes from Stephen Trent with Citi.

Stephen Trent

Analyst

My first question pertains to AA2000. And I know in the current environment, it's very hard to ascertain where we land. But with respect to AA2000 and your conversations with the government, any view with respect to the probability that we could see that asset's concession extended considering that you're owed on that guaranteed return and the government's national airline apparently also owes you money?

Martin Francisco Eurnekian

Analyst

Stephen, thank you for your question. This is Martin here. I would say yes to your question. Of course, again, the world and Argentina, in particular, and I think all countries in all sectors are experiencing something so new and so different. And it's such an emergency that I think all outcomes are possible. We are having productive conversation I think with all of the governments where we operate. And I think we will see the developments move in the next few months as we see and start getting an idea of where the travel restrictions are going and how long will this pandemic last and aside from that, what aggregate will governments have regarding this. We are also working with all the most important agencies in the world to try to understand how and when will the recovery start and what measures should we start thinking of to be able to reignite traffic as fast as possible. But as far as our conversations with the government in Argentina and probably governments elsewhere where we operate, I think given the size and magnitude of this crisis and the fact that there are no precedents and no one really has a recipe on how to deal with this, I think we will have to all keep an open mind to work and create solutions for our industry and our airports.

Stephen Trent

Analyst

I appreciate that, Martin, and if I may just follow-up with one very quick question. I know in the case of Italy, that market seemed to be one of the first places in the EU that got hit very hard and maybe at least lately also showing some signs that the situation has peaked. Are you seeing anything at this very early stage with respect to anything you can see in the booking curve that would suggest that there's light at the end of the tunnel kind of medium term or it's still way too early to say?

Martin Francisco Eurnekian

Analyst

I think although it's very early to say, the conversations I have with our staff in Italy started very grim. And we can now see that the mood -- the moods have changed. They went from all the containment measures and conversations with the governments and regulators regarding the crisis to starting to switch, I would say, this last week to conversations with different organizations or airlines, directly with airlines and regulators on starting to think what the next day would look like. And that has changed the mood for staff and people. Airlines are already talking about when are they going to restart and airports are preparing for that. So I hope that's not a false hope, but that's the mood that we are receiving from Italy. And that's hopeful for us because they were hit first. They started the quarantine first. And hopefully, they'll be one of the first to come out. But I think it's still too early to say how will this restart. If it will be first with domestic traffic and slowly international traffic, if new protocols are going to be implemented for travelers, for international travelers to be able to move freely in different ways and how the pandemic will look like in the rest of the world. I think all of those things will have to do on how fast and how will the restart of the business look like.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Today's next question comes from Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer.

Mark Zhang

Analyst · Oppenheimer.

This is Mark, on for Ian. So I guess I just wanted to follow up on your concession rebidding process and the toll. Do you guys -- I guess like when do you guys expect a response from the regulators? And then as a follow-up question, are there any other concessions in the portfolio that you guys are also assessing?

Jorge Arruda

Analyst · Oppenheimer.

Thanks for your question. This is Jorge. I'm Head of Corporate Finance and also Head of Brazil for the group here. We filed the so-called friendly rebidding process approximately a month ago. We expect that this year, we will be able to make progress at the 3 levels of the government, which are the regulator, ANAC; then the Ministry of Infrastructure, more precisely SAC; and then the PPI, which is the body government in charge of the tender process, the elicitation process. Once we go through those 3 body governments, we should be ready to sign an amendment to the concession agreement and have a date for the new bidding. Obviously, this whole situation that we are in bring some uncertainty over the time line, but we expect that the new bidding will take place sometime next year. We are hopeful that by midyear, it will take place, but let's see. We are working very closely and -- with the government and keep you posted.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Martin Eurnekian for any final remarks.

Martin Francisco Eurnekian

Analyst

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you very much for joining us today. We really appreciate your interest in our company. We look forward to providing updates on our business and initiatives as they become available. In the meantime, the team remains available to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you, again.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.