Earnings Labs

Corporación América Airports S.A. (CAAP)

Q2 2020 Earnings Call· Fri, Aug 21, 2020

$24.88

+0.28%

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Same-Day

-2.46%

1 Week

+4.10%

1 Month

-11.48%

vs S&P

-6.51%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to the Second Quarter Earnings Release and Investor Call for Corporación América Airports. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Gimena Albanesi, Investor Relations Manager. 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 Martín 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 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 welcome to today’s call. I hope you and your families are healthy and safe. This has been the toughest quarter in our history, and in the travel industry worldwide. Passenger traffic declined to unprecedented low levels, impacted by travel restrictions to contain the outbreak of Covid-19, together with the sharp drop in overall levels. We have been rapidly executing on the strategic plan established to mitigate the impact of this health crisis and made significant progress on our four key objectives. First, we established measures to secure the health and well-being of our employees and passengers and implemented safety protocols across our airport networks. Second, we exceeded our cost reduction goals and lowered our cash operating costs by 50% year-on-year. Importantly,…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Ian Zaffino from Oppenheimer. Go ahead.

Mark Zhang

Analyst

Hi, good morning guys. This is Mark on for Ian. Thanks for taking our question. So, it looks like you guys did a great job on the OpEx front achieving 51% cost reduction year-over-year. So just wanted to get a sense of, are there any additional room to move cost from here and mitigate the cash burn? And then, how much of the cost reduction would you think is permanent going forward? Thank you. Martín Eurnekian: Hello, Ian. Thank you for your question. This is Martín Eurnekian. Well, we have worked very hard on cost reductions, but this is a permanent goal of all subsidiaries and they are constantly working to improve the situation. Many of them are implementing new schemes and methodologies to go through next year budgets to be able to go deeper into the cost cutting and also to make those cuts permanent, as you said. But, everything will depend on the situation going forward. Once reopened, we will probably have some more costs related to the reopening, and at the same time, if the reopenings does not come with a very fast infection passengers, there might be some cost associated to that, as well. And also, we will have to monitor the government assistance that we are receiving and if that changes, we will have to adjust accordingly. Thank you for your question.

Mark Zhang

Analyst

Okay. Great. That’s very helpful. And then, just a quick follow-up. Are there any updates on the negotiations for the Argentinean concession? Any insight on progress there with the government would be very helpful. Thank you. Martín Eurnekian: Well, as you know, the concession framework in Argentina provides for an economical review on the concession. So, of course, we are in discussions with the government on how to move ahead according to everything that’s going on. But the conversations are progressing, but we will have to see until we have any clear news on how this will develop. And most probably, will be when there is a certain clarity on the reopening of flights in Argentina, as well.

Mark Zhang

Analyst

Okay. That’s fair. Thank you guys, very much.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Chris Dechiario from Marathon Asset Management. Go ahead.

Chris Dechiario

Analyst

Yes. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for the call and thanks for taking the questions. So, I just – mainly a question I guess really for now is just on the debt maturity profile. You have obviously done a great job in pushing out maturities and amortizations and getting waivers and it’s been difficult that I am sure, and you made excellent progress on that. But I was just curious, I mean, you still have this sort of $73 million in 2020, $280 million in 2021, $252 million in 2022, just sort of how are you looking at these sort of near term, let’s say in 2021, these near-term maturities that you still have existing and sort of what’s the plan for getting through those maturities?

Jorge Arruda

Analyst

Hi. This is Jorge. Thank you very much for your question. As you pointed out, we have the – in my view a very good job in extending the debt profile, would it be exchange offers in Argentina, in Uruguay, we are in the final process of extending the debt profile in Armenia, in Italy, we also extend maturity on debt. We obtained the approval to obtain a new loan of EUR 85 million as we reported with the guarantee from SACE, which is the export agency in – export and insurance agency in Italy. We obtained the extensions in Brazil from, primarily BNDES, which has the lion share of our – which holds the lion share of our investments. And we expect to further extend it. So, with that, and based on our current forecast, we are in a comfortable position. As you pointed out this – that will have to start being amortized and paid late in the first half of the year. And again, with the current forecast, we are in a comfortable position. We have a cash balance as we reported and we think that that again gives us – or puts us in a position that we are in a comfortable position. Parts of our debt in Argentina and in Uruguay are held by local investors in instruments that are much – and in case needed. So, the combination of the extension, the current forecast, the cash balance, and the close relationship we have with the local investors put us in a comfortable position.

Chris Dechiario

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Martín Eurnekian for closing remarks. Martín Eurnekian: I would like to thank everybody for joining us today. We really appreciate your interest in our company. We look forward to providing updates on our business initiatives as they become available. In the meantime, the team remains available to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you everybody and bye, bye.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.