Corporacion America Airports SA

Good morning and welcome to Corporación America Airport's fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. A slide presentation accompanies today's webcast and is available in the investor section of the Corporación America Airport's investor relations website. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for question and answers at the end of the presentation. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Patricio Inaki Esnaula, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Speaking during today's call will be Martino Mechian, our Chief Executive Officer, and Jorge Arruda, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we proceed, I would like to make the following safe harbor statement. Today's call will contain four looking statements, and I refer you to the four looking statements section of our earnings release and recent findings 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 Eurekian.

Thank you, Iñaki. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. Our performance this quarter underscores the multiple initiatives we have been undertaking since the onset of the pandemic. Today, we have a linear cost structure strengthened financial position and have made important advances in further enhancing the equity value of our business. We continue to see a recovery in passenger traffic throughout our operations, reflecting an overall relaxation of traffic restrictions and consequently higher travel demand. Over 13 million people traveled across our airports during the fourth quarter. with traffic levels at just over 63% of the 21 million passengers served in the fourth quarter of 2019. This also was a significant sequential improvement compared to the 46% of pre-pandemic levels reached in the third quarter of 2021. Higher traffic also brought about a strong recovery in commercial revenues, reaching 90% of the fourth quarter of 2019 levels. As a result, revenues ex-IFIC-12 nearly doubled year on year to $200 million, reaching close to 70% of fourth quarter 2019 revenues, up from the 55% of pre-pandemic levels achieved in the prior quarter. We also delivered substantially higher profitability in the quarter with comparable adjusted EBITDA of $92 million, doubling the levels reported in the fourth quarter of 2020. In addition to improved top-line performance and a linear cost structure following the cost reduction initiatives implemented over the past two years, results benefited from a $26 million compensation related to the re-equilibrium of the Brasilia Airport, which is a testament of the intrinsic strength and value of our concessions. Note this applies for the full year of 2021 and was only recorded this quarter. We also accounted 9.5 million euro or the equivalent of 10.9 million dollars government grant in Italy. On the balance sheet front, during the quarter we refinanced a combined amount of 425 million dollars in Argentina and Uruguay to strengthen the company's liquidity position and improve the debt profile. We also obtained new funding for more than $350 million in these two countries, including the $174 million that we just raised last February. Jorge will go over these advances in more detail shortly. Turning to slide four, during the fourth quarter, travel restrictions were relaxed across all our markets of operations, which is reflected by the green boxes on this page. Only some requirements remain in place such as antigen or PCR test and vaccination certificates. Now, turn to slide five for a deeper look at passenger traffic performance. As anticipated, traffic continued to recover, with October, November, and December gradually improving to 58, 65, and 67% of the respective months of 2019, as we show on the left chart. Armenia and Brazil led the recovery, reaching 90% and 82% of fourth quarter of 2019 levels, respectively. Also note that traffic in Armenia was slightly above 2019 levels each of the first two months of 2022. In Ecuador, traffic continued to improve, reaching 76% of pre-pandemic levels, with routes to the US and Panama above those in 2019 for several months now. Passenger traffic in Italy reached over 60% of pre-pandemic levels, posting a strong sequential improvement despite experiencing some impact from the emergence of the Omicron variant in December. Finally, traffic in Argentina and Uruguay, which endured prolonged government-imposed travel restrictions, stood at 53% and 50% of fourth quarter 2019 levels, respectively. Traffic, however, posted a significant sequential improvement reflecting the reopening of borders at the start of November. Looking at traffic performance in the first two months of 2022, we saw a slight slowdown in January reflecting the impact of Omicron with the recovery resuming in February. In Brazil, for example, some airlines were forced to cancel a number of flights due to positive COVID cases within their crew. Turning to slide six, Cargo operations continued to perform well, reaching 80% of fourth quarter 2019 levels. While growth was driven by all kinds of operations, we saw strong contributions from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, which together accounted for over 80% of cargo activity. Italy and Uruguay also stand out with cargo activity above fourth quarter of 2019 levels. I will now hand off the call to Jorge, who will review our financial results. Please, Jorge, go ahead.