Copa Holdings, S.A.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to COPA Holdings' third quarter earnings call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, you will have to press star 11 on your telephone. If your question has been answered and you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star 11 again. As a reminder, this call is being webcast and recorded on November 21st, 2024. Now I will turn the conference call over to Daniel Tapia, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Jonathan, and welcome everyone to our third quarter earnings call. Joining us today are Pedro Hebron, CEO of Copa Holdings, and Jose Montero, our CFO. First, Pedro will start by going over our third quarter highlights, followed by Jose, who will discuss our financial results. Immediately after, we will open the call for questions from analysts. COPA Holdings financial reports have been prepared in accordance with international financial reporting standards. In today's call, we will discuss non-IFRS financial measures. A reconciliation of the non-IFRS to IFRS financial measures can be found in our earnings release, which has been posted on the company's website, CopaAir.com. Our discussion today will also contain forward-looking statements, not limited to historical facts that reflect the company's current beliefs, expectations, and or intentions regarding future events and results. These forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to defer materially and are based on assumptions subject to change. Many of these are discussed in our annual report file with the SEC. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Pedro Hebron.

Thank you, Daniel. Good morning to all, and thanks for participating in our third quarter earnings call. First, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all our coworkers for their commitment to the company. Their dedication and hard work have been instrumental in keeping COPPA at the forefront of Latin American aviation. To them, as always, my highest regards and admiration. We're pleased to once again report solid financial results for the quarter, delivering a strong and industry-leading operating margin of 20.3%. These financial results are in part driven by our disciplined approach to executing our business strategy, including our permanent focus on cost efficiencies, which allow us to continue delivering industry-leading operating margins, even with the softer yield environment we have observed over the past 12 months. Going forward, our focus on our business strategy and commitment to reducing unit costs remain central to achieving strong financial results and are key to further strengthening COPPA's competitive position in Latin America. Among the main highlights for Q3, capacity increased by 9.5% year-over-year. Passenger traffic grew 7.6% compared to the same period in 2023. Unit cost in excluding fuel, or CASAM-X, came in at 5.7 cents, a 1.6% decrease compared to Q3 2023, mainly driven by lower sales and distribution costs. Passenger yield came in at 12.2 cents, 8.7% lower year over year, mostly due to the last minute suspension of flights between Panama and Venezuela at the end of July, weaker currencies in certain countries in Latin America, and additional industry capacity in the region. And load factor came in at 86.2%, 1.6 percentage points lower year over year. As a result, unit revenues, or RASM, came in at 11 cents, a 10.1% decrease compared to Q3 2023. As mentioned before, we delivered an operating margin of 20.3%. Excluding the impact of the Panama-Venezuela flight suspensions, we estimate that we would have reported an operating margin of 21.2% for the quarter. On the operational front, Cooper Airlines delivered an on-time performance of 87.3% and a completion factor of 99.6% for the quarter. Once again, positioning ourselves among the best in the industry. Regarding our fleet plan, due to delays in Boeing's delivery schedule, the arrival of our last two aircraft for the year was postponed by a few months. Nonetheless, we still expect to receive two 737 MAX 8s before year end, one at the end of this month and one in December. These two deliveries will bring our fleet to a total of 112 aircraft by the end of the year. Regarding 2025 deliveries, Boeing has updated its delivery schedule to account for the recent delays, and we now plan to receive 11 Boeing 737 MAX 8s next year to end the year with a fleet of 123 aircraft. This delivery schedule has production ramp-up assumptions that will need to materialize so actual aircraft deliveries could change. As you saw in our earnings release issued yesterday, we issued preliminary guidance for 2025 in which we expect to grow our capacity within a range of 7% to 9%. Jose will provide more details regarding our preliminary guidance for 2025. To summarize, we again delivered industry-leading financial results for the third quarter. We continue to deliver on our cost execution, which remains key to the company's strategy going forward. We expect to grow capacity by high single digits in 2025 and plan to continue strengthening our hub of the Americas in Panama. And, as always, our team continues to deliver world-class operational results while providing the consistent and reliable travel experience our passengers expect from us. Finally, we firmly believe that our business model remains as robust and relevant as ever, and that our hub of the Americas in Panama is the best connecting hub in Latin America, making us the best positioned airline in our region to consistently deliver industry-leading results. Now, I'll turn it over to Jose, who will go over our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Pedro. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for being with us today. I'd like to join Pedro in acknowledging our great team for all their efforts to deliver a world-class service to our passengers. I will start by going over our third quarter results. We reported a net profit for the quarter of $146 million for $3.50 per share. We reported a quarterly operating profit of $173.7 million and an operating margin of 20.3%. Capacity came in at 7.8 billion available seat miles, or 9.5% higher than in Q3 2023. Load factor came in at 86.2% for the quarter, a 1.6 percentage point decrease compared to the same period in 2023, and our passenger yields decreased by 8.7% to 12.2 cents. As a result, unit revenues came in at 11 cents, or 10.1% lower than in the third quarter of 2023. Mainly driven by a lower fuel price, unit costs for CASM decreased to 8.7 cents or 6.2% lower year-over-year. CASM excluding fuel came in at 5.7 cents, a 1.6% decrease versus Q3 2023, mainly driven by lower sales and distribution costs as a result of higher penetration of both the direct sales and lower cost NDC trial agency channels. as well as our continued focus in maintaining the rest of our costs low. I'm going to spend some time now discussing our balance sheet and liquidity. As of the end of the third quarter, we had assets of close to $5.5 billion. As to cash short and long-term investments, we ended the quarter with over $1.3 billion, which represents 36% of our last 12 months revenues. And in terms of debt, we ended the quarter with $1.86 billion in debt and lease liabilities, and came in with an adjusted net debt to a bid-debt ratio of 0.6 times. I'm pleased to report that our average cost of debt, which continues to be comprised solely of aircraft-related debt, is currently in the range of 3.4%, with around 65% of our debt being fixed. Turning now to our fleet, during the quarter, we received 1.737 MAX 8 aircraft, ending the third quarter with a total fleet of 110 aircraft, comprised of 68 737-800s, 32 737 MAX 9s, nine 737-700s, and one 737 MAX 8. These figures include one 737-800 freighter and the nine 737-800s operated by Wingo. With regards to the return of value to our shareholders, I'm pleased to announce that the company will make its third dividend payment of the year of $1.61 per share on December 13th to all shareholders of record as of December 2nd. As to our outlook, we can provide the following guidance update for the full year 2024. We expect to increase our capacity in ASMs by approximately 9% year-over-year, and we expect to deliver an operating margin within the range of 21% to 22%. we were basing our outlook on the following assumptions. Load factor of approximately 86%, unit revenues within the range of 11.4 cents, Casamax fuel to be in the range of 5.8 cents, and we're expecting an all-in fuel price of $2.67 per gallon. In anticipation of 2025, based on the current and preliminary expectations of aircraft deliveries, We're projecting a year-over-year ASM growth of between 7% and 9%. Additionally, we are projecting CASMX fuel at approximately 5.8 cents. As you might recall, this is in line with the CASMX fuel target we shared with you back in our 2023 investor day. So, in summary, we delivered great results for the third quarter. We expect to deliver once again leading operating margins for the full year 2024. with low unit costs, which continue to strengthen our solid financial position while providing outstanding return of value to our shareholders. Thank you, and with that, we'll open the call to some questions.

Certainly, and our first question for today comes from the line of Savi Seitz from Raymond James. Your question, please.

Hey, good morning. If I might, on the revisions that you had for 2024, I was kind of curious if the unit revenue coming down a little bit there is related to kind of Venezuela flight suspensions taking longer or if you're seeing any other kind of weakness, softness in the market.

Yeah, this is Pedro here. So, yes, in part it's Venezuela. It took us a while to redeploy those aircrafts. We were waiting for a restart date, which hasn't happened yet, so we kept the planes. Plus, it takes a while to start selling a flight and pull it up, so we could not, like, redeploy those aircraft the following day. That's been happening mostly throughout November, some in the December high season. So I would say that probably the bigger quarter-over-quarter change

Yeah, well, in addition to that, Xavi, you know, we did highlight the Brazil currency or kind of the Brazil revenues coming in slightly below our expectations. So that's also driving the adjustment that we made.

Makes sense. And if I might just turn to your 2025 capacity view, we're kind of recognizing that that's preliminary. I think before you had, you know, wanted to grow low double digits and wondering, you know, does demand still support low double digits and what's the risk that competitors, you know, backfill that? And obviously what I'm trying to get here is, you know, is supply tight enough where maybe you're exchanging, you know, lower capacity for higher yield here or is there a risk that your competitors are going to backfill that?

Right, so our ASM guidance is directly related to Boeing deliveries. So that's what's driving that. And as a matter of fact, we're actually staying with two 737-700s, which in our fleet plan three months ago were supposed to leave by 2025. So we're going to stay with those aircraft to make up for... for delayed Boeing delivery. So that's driving our capacity. We have demand to grow a little bit faster than that. However, Less capacity is always good for yield. So we're comfortable. We're fine with growing between 7% and 9% next year. I think it's a good balance between keeping demand at strong, healthy levels, demand and supply, of course, and also further strengthening our hub in Panama.

That's what I thought. Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Michael Lindberg from Deutsche Bank. Your question, please.

Oh, hey. Good morning, everyone. I do have a couple here. I guess for starters, I know one of your competitors in Colombia did indicate that the market was starting to stabilize somewhat. And so I'm curious if you can just talk about the competitive situation there. Maybe you're seeing something similar or maybe maybe not.

I'm not sure what they meant by that, but we tend to grow with demand and our potential to capture the piece of that demand that belongs or corresponds to us. So we're very measured. and pragmatic about how we grow and how we strengthen the hub. And that's one of the reasons, not the only reason, why we are able to return strong operating margins and strong operating results, financial results over time. I cannot say that of every competitor. Some have been growing maybe a little bit too fast. I won't mention names, but if that's stabilizing, it's probably good for the market, and it should mean, I don't know, a better balance between demand and supply.

Okay, okay. And then just a follow-up here. You know, I thought it was interesting. You know, normally, once in a while, we'll see COPPA pull out of a market, right? The market isn't working, and for a whole bunch of different reasons, you know, it's kind of a one-off. I thought it was interesting that I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you're actually going to be pulling out of two markets. Maybe you've already pulled out of two Mexican markets. One is Tulum, and the other is Santa Lucia, the alternative Mexico City airport. Is that a Mexican FX macro reason? I know Tulum, everybody rushed into the market at the same time, and maybe that's an oversupply situation. What's behind those, Pedro?

No, I don't know. Don't say that, Mike. No, we, I'll tell you, we're temporarily only pulling it out of force. Four markets, actually. The two you mentioned, but also Armenia in Colombia and Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic. So it's four markets we're pulling out temporarily. We should be back before the end of next year, of 2025. And the reason we're doing that is also tied to aircraft deliveries. So this is just four markets. These are four markets that have an alternative airport around the corner. I see. Less than 40 minutes or an average 40 minutes away, we have an alternative airport where we fly with many daily frequencies. These are all less than daily markets. So, given the delays in aircraft deliveries, there are other markets that do not have the luxury of having like 40 minutes from Armenia. In Mexico, the two airports are like 30 or 40 minutes apart. So, we're going to deploy that capacity to other markets where we have strong demand and not enough aircraft, well, this other market can be served from the nearby airport, and then we should be back by the end of next year. We get the deliveries we're expecting to get.

So, Pedro, with the fact that you have to pull out of markets because you don't have airplanes and you're getting all these delayed deliveries, how should we think about potential compensation, or how does it show up in maybe your CapEx this year and cash flow? And I don't know if Jose answers that, because as I see it, you know, not only you have a special relationship with Boeing, you are Boeing's beachhead in Latin America to the extent that I think the last deal that was signed, we had the President of the United States and the President of Colombia with you to sign that deal. So I would think that you would be getting some form of compensation and it's going to just show up and reduce CapEx. Any color on that? Thanks for taking my questions.

Thanks, Mike. I'll let Jose answer the question. But this particular move that we're talking about, We're doing it to strengthen our bottom line and to better serve our whole network. So there won't be a compensation for those specific actions. But Jose, in general, with how that's working.

Yeah, Mike, and going back to your comment, yeah, we were very happy and proud to have that signing ceremony. It was with the President of the U.S. and the President. At that moment, here in Panama City. But, yeah, there is, of course, some contractual relief associated with this situation. But the nature of our contracts with Boeing is confidential. But, yeah, it would flow through CapEx to a lesser amount of CapEx going forward.

Okay. Okay, thanks for taking my questions.

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Duane Fenningworth from Evercore ISI. Your question, please.

Hey, good morning. Thank you. So just on the guidance, you're going to generate, you know, 21%, 22% EBIT margins this year, which includes the impact of the Max 9 grounding earlier in the year and then obviously the close-in cuts. that you had to make to Venezuela. So can you just remind us, what do you think those two items cost you? And just remind us of the sizing of those two impacts combined.

Well, the Venezuela impact was probably, I would say, half a point.

For the full year.

For the full year. And the impact of the Boeing grounding, I think we disclosed it to be in the order of about $40 million when it occurred. So that's kind of the four-year impact of this, I think, if you can do the math.

Okay, that's great. Go ahead, sorry.

Yeah, sorry, Dwayne. No, what I was going to add is that there are so many moving parts in our industry that

that that uh yeah yeah it's not like you know that it's not simple math but yeah you have to argue that our 21 to 22 a you know results for 2024 include those two aspects yes certainly yeah i mean it does feel like as we think about next year there's some periods that have some pretty um pretty easy compares uh but we'll see

A minor question for you on the interest expense. You called out $4 million related to the adjustment of a discount rate for the calculation of leased aircraft that you're going to return. Is that a one-timer here in the fourth quarter, or is that something that will kind of stay in the interest expense on a go-forward basis?

It is a periodic adjustment that gets performed related to where interest rates lie. It's just a very arcane IFRS requirement where you basically are truing up the return conditions in the balance sheet with the risk-free rate, basically, that we have. so that the liability that shows up in the balance sheet shows the true value of it at the moment where the balance sheet was established. Therefore, on a lowering interest rate environment, that essentially you have to make an adjustment. In this case, it's a bad guy. Let's say when the interest comes down, there is a higher charge related to that. So, I mean, you could argue that it will kind of, from a modeling perspective, will vary depending on where, you know, as interest rates fluctuate, it could fluctuate as well.

Okay, and then maybe just to sneak one last one in, you know, a couple of the U.S. carriers have been able to kind of look a little bit further out beyond the fourth quarter into early 2025. You know, the implied fourth quarter here, is that indicative of trends that you see into early first quarter? And listen, understand you don't typically comment on two quarters out, but it just feels like the yield environment feels a little bit different in January, February than what we're seeing here in the fourth quarter.

I think, Dwayne, you know, again, as you just answered kind of the question in the sense that we don't provide multi-quarter guidance and we haven't established a guidance for the full year 2025, but I think on a, let's say, sequential basis, you could argue that the comps are sort of similar for Q1 versus what's going on in Q4 in terms of on the year-over-year comps, let's say.

Okay. Appreciate the thoughts.

Thank you, Duane.

Thank you, Duane. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Stephen Trent from Citi. Your question, please.

Good morning, gentlemen, and thanks very much for taking my questions. The first one, I recall in the second quarter that you guys had made an adjustment to a provision for unredeemed ticket revenue that had a little bit of a wiggle impact on the margins. Could you refresh my memory if there was any other adjustment this quarter, or will you still have essentially the same policy on that provision as we move forward. Thank you.

Yeah, the last quarter we called out a kind of half a cent impact, and the reason why we called it out was because it was a catch-up. We just adjusted the factor that we used for Unredeemed during the second quarter, and we decided to be conservative and do We did it in a way that it captured the entirety of our assumptions or estimates for 2024. So it was kind of like a catch-up that occurred during Q2, and so there was no other item related to that in Q3.

Great, great.

Accounting entry related to the quarter, nothing beyond that. That's what I meant to say, Steve.

No, very helpful. I appreciate that, Jose. And just one other quick one. You know, when we think about all of the, I mean, not just you, everybody, the supply chain challenges with the OEMs, you know, could you give us a little bit of your high-level thinking, you know, long-term, how you think about optimizing maybe your own aircraft versus leased aircraft if you've, you know, the supply chain stuff has made you think differently about the long-term planning things.

Yeah, that's Pedro here, Steve. Yeah, that's a complicated matter because it's not like we have that many options. So we have bought some aircraft off-lease. We're staying with some 700s. We were expecting... to return. And we have even bought spare engines ahead of time. We're very, very proactive in securing parts in the marketplace, even though we have contracts with OEMs that are supposed to cover us. So we've gone beyond the call of duty to make sure that we have the stock And we're even doing maintenance work even for engines. The program worked where we had to send the engines to the MROs in the past. We're doing that with the support of GE. We're doing that in our maintenance base in Panama also to speed up turnaround times and have more engines in stock. We're doing, I would say, a gigantic effort versus the easier times before. And we've been able to manage, so we have not affected our operations for lack of parts or lack of engines and aircraft.

I would say that the moves that Pedro just alluded to, like the buying of leases and deciding to maintain the 2737-700s, et cetera, just are a... a testament of the flexibility that we have in our fleet plan as well. So we continue executing on the flexibility that we have in our fleet plan.

Really appreciate that, gentlemen. And, Jose, I'm not sure if this is your last results call, but if it is, really deeply appreciate, you know, and I'll miss all our interactions.

Oh, thank you very much, Stephen. You have brought it here to my eye. So thanks a lot, and thank you for the partnership.

My thanks to you, sir.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Jen Spies from Morgan Stanley. Your question, please.

Yes, hello. Thank you. I just want to ask on the Venezuela situation, you already mentioned about the impact for the full year. I just wanted to clarify, was it solely concentrated on the third quarter of Or is part of the impact also going to be seen in the fourth quarter of this year? And maybe also on capital allocation, how are you thinking about it going forward? I mean, you have extremely solid balance sheet, maybe lower capex due to the delay. So are you maybe contemplating some buybacks, seeing where the share price is currently trading at. I don't know. Any thoughts on that would be very useful. Thank you.

To answer the first question and let Jose take the more difficult second question, as always, yeah, there will be an impact on Venezuela in the fourth quarter, which would be slightly above half of what was the impact in the third quarter. And that's because we've had time to redeploy some of the aircraft and generate new bookings in other markets. So that's the difference. But it'll still be a little bit over half of the 0.9 impact we saw in the third quarter.

Yeah, Jens, in terms of capital allocation, The first thing that we have to say is that we have a very generous dividend policy, 40% of prior years adjusted net income, which has a very strong dividend yield right now. So that's something that is of importance and a focus for our company. We do have a buyback program, a $200 million approved buyback program, which we've executed about a quarter of it so far. But in terms of capital allocation, I would say that over the next year and a half to two years, it's going to be the majority or the bulk, let's say, of the order that we have with Boeing in terms of aircraft. So actually for 2025, our expectation In fact, CAPEX in total is going to be approaching $900 million. That cash CAPEX is going to be about $350 million. So there is going to be some CAPEX requirements during the year 2025 that we are sort of preparing for, let's say, right now.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Alberto Valerio from UBS. Your question, please.

Hi, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my question. My first one is about the forward guidance, preliminary guidance to 2025. If you take the current oil curve or jet fuel curve and flat yields for next year, will reaching something close to 23% margins. My question is, would that margins be recurring and feasible for the future or something that changed from the past? And my second one, if I may, about Argentina, you guys had a big presence in the country in the past. Are you looking to going back there after this? change that we have seen in the economy. Thank you.

So I'll start with the second one, Argentina. I'm not sure if I got the full question, but Argentina remains a strong market for us, and we have good coverage. We fly to about five cities, and we have a number of daily frequencies to Buenos Aires. And we're, again, as I mentioned at the beginning, we try to deploy the capacity that makes sense for us And we think that's what we have in Argentina, and we're very happy with our flights to Argentina in spite of any other issues that they might be going through. So that's working well, that market. In terms of the first question, I'll let Jose back me up. We are not issuing guidance for 2025, but I'll just say that we have shown in the past that we can consistently deliver industry-leading margins, or at least leading margins in our part of the world. And we're confident that we have the structure in place to continue delivering those results.

And as Pedro mentioned, we'll provide our full-year guidance in February. Yeah. And the other aspect is that we are with our lowest or our lower unit costs base right now that we've been able to achieve over the last several years, you know, we are simply able to deliver, you know, leading results and not be as dependent on the fluctuations in, you know, the market dynamics. So, you know, we're just simply fundamentally more efficient and able to sustain very, very good margins with our low cost base.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of from Bank of America. Your question, please.

Hello. Thanks for the opportunity. I have one follow-up on yields, if I may. First one, a confirmation. Does the guidance imply a full year of restrictions in flights to Venezuela? And any expectations of operations resuming there? And the second part of the question is regarding the year-over-year comparison of yields. So all else being constant, if you could help us to think a little bit about how the comparable basis is in first half of 24 and second half. So we had currencies devaluating in the region, and we also had Venezuela stopping operations at the end of July. So any other... item that we should take into consideration and what is the expectation for these comparison basis of yields in 24? Thank you.

Yeah. So the guidance that we have issued for full year 2024 includes the Venezuelan impact for the moment or for the period that we have been affected, which is effective the end of July of this year. So that's what it's embedded in there. And remember that a portion of that capacity was not deployed immediately, so therefore it had an impact and also the flow of the passengers on this. And, you know, in terms of 2025, bringing forward the 2025 guidance, we haven't issued any revenue guidance for the year. It's just a preliminary capacity guidance and a CASM ex-fuel guidance. But the capacity guidance assumes that either Venezuela returns or that the flights or the aircraft or the capacity are deployed to other destinations within the network. So from the standpoint of capacity and deployment, there is, let's say it's embedded in, regardless of what occurs with the aircraft, it would be embedded within that capacity. And in terms of yields for the full year, I would say that for the full year 2024, returning back to 2024, the yields in the second half of the year have also been affected by the currency fluctuations that you described, specifically in Brazil. Actually, we highlight Brazil because There was a drop in the real during the latter part of the second quarter that influenced the sales and the revenues in the third quarter. And that's also, as I discussed earlier in one of the earlier questions, part of the reason why the adjustment from 11.5 cents to 11.4 cents in the fourth quarter is also related to the continued Brazil impact.

Okay, perfect. And if I may, a follow-up on Venezuela. Is there any kind of upside if operations resume there in terms of yield strength?

Yeah, it's hard to know. It's an unpredictable situation. I'm confident that we will restart flights. We're flying to five cities over 40 flights per week. We will restart at some point. Maybe not this year. Hard to predict. I would guess that at some point in 2025, but saying if it's in the first quarter or the second quarter, it's hard to tell right now.

Okay.

Fair enough.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Daniel McKenzie from Seaport Global. Your question, please.

Oh, hi. Thanks, guys. A couple questions here. Circling back on the CapEx that jumps to $900 million in 2025, so for those investors that are investing a little longer term, how do we think about the drop-down in 2026 and 2027? And then just related to that, I'm just wondering if there's an appetite to add more aircraft to Wingo.

so in 26 i would say it's similar it's similar in size and of course this is all depending on what the delivery stream is uh from boeing to us because our power essentially all the capex is aircraft so uh so i would say but i would say preliminarily that in 26 it will be very similar to the 25 capex uh and then 27 probably Tad higher. I mean, it depends ultimately on what the delivery stream is. I would say for preliminary modeling perspective for 26 and 27, you could probably model it in a similar level.

Yep. In terms of Wingo, as we get more deliveries next year, we'll give Wingo at least one aircraft, 1-800 next year. It's in our free plan. that was published, if I'm not mistaken. And they could probably use a few more, but we're all tight of aircraft right now. But they'll get at least one next year. Yeah, very good.

Second question here. I'm wondering if you can unpack 2025 growth. So, you know, premium seat growth versus mainline seat growth and And just given the questions on FX earlier, I'm just wondering how that's shaping your thoughts about where you want to grow. So more U.S. flying or perhaps more to smaller markets that are underserved? I'm just trying to get a sense of how the macro backdrop is shaping how you're thinking about the business and growth.

Yeah, Dan, a couple of things. I'll give you some color on the breakdown of the growth. First of all, the majority of the growth for next year is going to be in full-year effect of service that we started during 2024. About two-thirds of the growth is going to be full-year effect. And then the remainder is probably going to be, I don't know, a quarter of the remainder is going to be, or 25% of growth is going to be frequencies to markets that we already served. And then a minor portion will be gauge. You know, we're getting additional, well, actually it's a full year effect of the nines that we're getting towards the latter part of this year. Or I'm sorry, the year that we got earlier in the year, it's a full year effect of the last several max nines. We have 32 nines that are basically in the remainder of the aircraft are just going to be eights. So that's basically that. There's also the fact that we're adding seats into our 800s and densifying. That's another component of the growth for next year that will also help our CASMX in 2025. So that's Gage. So new destinations are going to be a minor portion of the growth. Just low single-digit of the growth is going to be new destinations. Now, in terms of where we put the growth, we have a lot of options and flexibility, but I would say usually you have to start from a premise that, The hub needs balance, so you're always going to balance out north of Panama versus south of Panama. So you always want to balance the group.

And of course, profitability or potential profitability has a heavy weight on our decisions.

Yeah, that's a given. Well, if I could squeeze one final one in here, and that's just, you know, given the growth, the capacity constraints at, you know, Tocuman Airport, how easy is it for other airlines to get access to gates? And, you know, do you have the gates that you need to execute on the growth?

Yeah, Tocuman is an open airport. It's not slot controlled. It's not gate controlled. And it does not... There's nothing about tocumen that stops anyone from coming in. As we continue growing, the airport is already working on plans to expand its capacity, which will be needed in between two and three years from now. And there's a lot of low-hanging fruits that they will implement, take advantage of. to increase its capacity. So there are actually no restrictions. There might be some peak moments during the day where the airport might be tight in slots and gates, but that will be improved also. Thanks for the time, you guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you. And our final question for today is a follow-up from the line of Savi Saif from Raymond James. Your question, please.

Hey, thanks for the follow-up. Just two quick ones. First, just on the unit cost guide for 2025, that's impressive given that you are slowing growth. Sounds like, Jose, you mentioned densification is helping, but I think you're already expecting that. I was curious if you could talk about what's helping you generate that good unit cost execution.

Yeah. Well, first of all, yeah, we are facing, like everybody else, There are inflationary pressures out there, airport fees, overflights, airspace costs, et cetera. Those are items that put pressure on our costs. Aside from the densification of the 800s, that will be an ongoing project throughout 2025. And just as a reminder, we're bringing the seat count on the 48th. 737-800s at Copa Airlines operates from an average of 160 to 166 seats, so adding an additional row. In addition to that, it's growth, first of all. The growth helps, and the overall growth in capacity that we're guiding to. There is still a tapering off of the sales and distribution efforts and initiatives that we're pursuing, so there's a little bit of that, and maintenance also has some some opportunities that we're pursuing for next year that should allow us to keep, you know, mind you that we achieved our 5.8 cent CASM target a year early, but I think we're hopefully keeping it for next year as well.

I appreciate that. And then maybe just final question on, as you look to transition out, any update on the CFO search and any other kind of thoughts on the management makeup.

So let me just simply say something. This is like my last question ever.

So I thought for a second that I was going to get away without that question. We were like doing high fives here. But of course that was not going to happen.

Sorry about that.

Okay, Xavi. We're prepared. So, well, and I'll take actually another more questions, but I'll take this opportunity to recognize Jose on his last earnings call. He's been with COPA over 30 years. He started in our operations control center then was planning an alliances then for over 10 years. He's done a great job as CFO of the company with a ton of accomplishments, most during a really challenging years where we were able always to keep our operating margins in double digits with the exception of of course like the heart of the pandemic 2020 but and a lot of work goes into those results a lot of initiatives uh cost initiatives financing initiatives etc so Jose has done an outstanding job and he has now decided to retire. So he's earned the right and we are actively searching for his replacement internally and externally. We're not ready to announce anything yet. But we're actively working on that, and we also have contingency plans if we were not ready by January 1st. So there's nothing really new to announce right now in that regard. Yeah, go ahead.

No, thank you for that. But the reality is that there's a team here. It's not because of any particular person. So there's a team ongoing that does everything. And so I think that you have to have the confidence that no one is indispensable in this particular case. And I think we have a very strong team behind in the financial areas and overall in management that will go forward. So that's actually part of the most important things that I think about all the time.

Of course. So we're not dropping the ball at all. If we did, it would not look good on Jose. So that's not going to happen. We're not going to drop the ball. We have a strong team. So that won't be a weak point. And then in terms of other management changes, We did bring in and we issued a press release. We created a new executive VP position. The person that's filling that position is already here. His name is Robert Carre. He comes from Wizz Air. He was the president at Wizz Air. Before that, he was a CCO at ECJET. Before that, he was with McKinsey. for many years in the aviation sector, working a lot in Latin America. So I plan to share some of my workload with Robert. It will allow me to not have to concentrate on so many things every single minute of the day. So he'll help me there. and I'll be able to focus on many other things. So we're basically strengthening the company, strengthening the management team to be even stronger overall going forward.

And I can appreciate that the big shoes to fill, so taking some time makes sense. I appreciate the response.

Thank you, Fabio. Thank you. This does conclude the question and answer session. I'd now like to hand the program back to Pedro for any further remarks.

Okay. Thank you, sir. So thank you all again. Thanks for participating in this earnings call. Again, thanks to Jose for his great work at COPPA. This is his last call. I know he's going to miss them. We know that. So maybe he'll make a cameo in the next one. But seriously, thank you all, really. Thank you for your questions. Thank you for your participation and your support, as always. We'll keep on working really hard, like we always do, to continue delivering strong margins and industry-leading results under any circumstance. So thank you and have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. That concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.