Grupo Traxión, S.A.B. de C.V.

Greetings. Welcome to Traxion's 2Q23 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Abi Li Cheng, Executive President at Traxion. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome, everyone. I am very pleased to share an all-record high quarter, both in financial and operating terms. Tracción continues to come across robust demand in all three business segments, and our CAPEX plan moved forward as expected. Consolidated revenue grew 21% and came at almost 6 billion pesos, which is the highest revenue figure in the history of the company. EBITDA came in for the first time above the 1 billion pesos mark, another record high figure. In terms of fleet, traction exceeded also for the first time 10,000 units this quarter, mainly boosted by organic growth in the mobility of people segment. Such expansion was driven by strong demand mainly from related activities. The logistics and technology division posted a 47% growth and continued gaining relevance in our operations. Moreover, the mobility of people segment recorded a 20% growth, mainly driven by increased demand and very interesting opportunities in the North and Bajajillo regions. In terms of cargo, Tracción moved forward with its field renovation program and continued to shift capacity to international and cross-border services, which has resulted in a higher revenue per kilometer. Shifting years, Speaking about M&A activity, in June, we closed the acquisition of VBA Logistics, a door-to-door and cross-border cargo brokerage company in the United States, with a 100% asset-light model, which mainly offers door-to-door service from Mexico to the United States and back. With this addition, we complement Transporta with control of cargo operations into American destinations. and a strong commercial leverage within Traction's client base, to whom we can now offer the complete service to the USA using Transporta's technological platform. This is a very relevant milestone as it marks our entrance to the United States market, a natural step to the company's international expansion, and yet an additional service to continue to size nearshoring opportunities. As you can see, were very active, working hard to capitalize the most profitable and strategic opportunities. Thanks for your attention. I will now hand over to Rodolfo Wolf Antonio for a more detailed discussion on financial and operating figures. Please, Rodolfo.

Thank you, Avi. Good morning, everyone. There are many positive highlights to point out this quarter. First, We continue with our growth plan in the people mobility segment. Perhaps the most important milestone is that we start operations with more than 300 units for new clients. This is especially relevant as it represents about a third of our growth budget of the year in this division. As a result, we are operating an average of more than 1,000 buses in this segment compared to the same period of last year. We also concluded the setup of our first operation of mobility of people in Ciudad Juarez, which is also very important as this city has been capturing much growth from the new showing trend, and it's expected to continue to expand significantly. We are entering this market with great momentum, taking advantage of our operating capabilities, commercial muscle, and IT platforms. We believe that Traction is going to be able to expand and gain market share in such location in the following years. Finally, we launched an online app in this segment aimed to clients that require special trips and private charters. With this technology, we believe we will be able to provide as much better service as we maximize our fleet utilization. Moving on, our 3PL business continues to grow. Warehouse area under management expanded an average of more than 148,000 square meters compared to the same period of last year. This represents 24.5% more area. Indeed, a relevant figure that was driven by both the farm operations and a strong response to commercial activity in our typical 3PL business. In terms of mobility of cargo, we continue with our renovation and fleet management program. the average fleet decreased more than 100 units. Kilometer volume decreased 12 percent as well. However, revenues show a marginal increase of 2.8 percent. Despite of that, EBITDA came in more than 48 percent higher than the second quarter of last year, mainly driven by an increase of 18.8 percent in revenue per kilometer. This was achieved by increased activity in specialized cargo operations, which typically carry barrier economics with reduced distances, which basically means that we're becoming increasingly more efficient on a per-unit basis. All of that resulted in an EBITDA margin of 21.2%, which is well within our long-term target. We expected to keep operating this segment with such efficiency. As you can see, we continue to be very busy, and the prospects for next year are looking promising. Thank you for your attention. With this, I end my remarks. Please, Wolf, go ahead.

Thanks, Raul. Hello, everyone. Welcome. There is a healthy double-digit growth in our business segments that was driven by both price and volume. The Logistics and Technology Division caused an almost 50% growth in revenue and more than 20% in the Mobility of People Division. Consolidated margin expanded 200 and basic points compared to the same period of last year. Most relevant is the 651 basis points expansion in the mobility of cargo segments to reach 21.2%, a much normalized level compared to 2022, and was driven by increased efficiency in the fleet management that resulted in a healthy expansion in revenue per kilometer and a much better cost management. The margin expansion in mobility of people is also very noteworthy. with 262 basis points compared to the same period of last year, driven also by the cost efficiencies as in cargo. This is especially relevant as the segment continues to experience a tremendous growth rate. Speaking about net income, came in at 112 million pesos, which is a decrease of 18.2%, mainly driven by the comprehensive financial results, as the company recorded more gross debt than the last year and with a higher interest rate environment, which has basically doubled interest expense since the second quarter of last year. This was the bulk of the impact in net income. In terms of debt, there is a 46.5% increase in total debt compared to the same period of last year, mainly due to a natural expansion of the business and the M&A activity in the second half of 2022 and in 2023. Finally, I want to remind that in the last 12 months, Traction has conducted a significant amount of investment, including the CapEx running as planned according to our guidance. Having said that, this investment still needs to mature and contribute to the company's profitability. We expect to see those benefits in the next quarters. Thanks for your attention. I will now hand over to Toño.

Thank you, Wolf. Financials and operating metrics this quarter are better than both the second of 2022 and the first of this year. Indeed, the efforts that management put in place last year to offset the impact of fuel increase and the contract negotiations conducted to pass through the growth in operating costs have proven successful. It is very important to highlight that this quarter, general expenses recorded an increase of 52.3%. Please bear in mind that last year, due to the steep increase on fuel costs, management put in place an expense reduction program in an effort to offset the negative impact of fuel. Such reduction took place for the last quarter of 2022. we always said that it was not sustainable to run a company with such a reduced expense program. This quarter, however, the expense level has normalized, and it is similar as a percentage of revenue as in 2021. So please keep in mind that the increase in expenses has to do with a normalization of operations. Shifting gears, it is very important to mention that the new shorting trend continues to present us with very interesting opportunities, especially in the Bajio and North markets. We are looking at expansions with current clients together with new companies starting operations in several industries, especially automotive and electronics. Demand is very strong, even stronger than what we expected when we budgeted 2023. Moving on, in terms of ESG, this quarter Tracción concluded the climate change risks and opportunities analysis to appraise the different scenarios under the task force on climate related financial disclosures framework. The results are going to be available in 2022 integrated report to be published later this month. Also, during the first half of 2023, we have been working to pave the way to develop a health and safety management system in line with the ISO 45001 norm, based on an integrated strategy to better manage risks and preventive medicine. Finally, in the first page of highlights in the earnings release that we shared with you yesterday is a link to a materiality analysis survey. We kindly ask you to help us by completing such survey this week. It is very important for us. With this, I wrap up my remarks and will now open the floor to Q&A. Thanks for your attention.

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. And the first question today is coming from Luis Yancy from Santander. Luis, your line is live.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats. Very, very good quarter. Two questions on my side. The first one is, given the stronger than expected growth that we've seen, especially on the top line, the net dynamics, and as you mentioned, very strong logistics in particular, How should we think about the second half of the year, especially related to kind of your guidance? You seem to be way above your guidance. Just an update on that one would be very helpful. And then the second question has to do with the margins. It looks like we got a very, very nice inflection point on the margin side, mainly on logistics, which have been the one, you know, kind of suffering the past couple of quarters. It looks like sequentially we We saw an improvement. Can you comment a little bit on the sources or the drivers of that improvement and whether that sort of improvement we should continue to expect as we move forward?

Those will be my questions. Thanks. Hi, Luis. This is Tonio. Thanks for your questions.

uh first let me answer your your first question in terms of guidance uh we're doing good as you as you saw we do not see any relevant difference as of as of today to change our guidance but of course if something changes or if we see something something else or something more relevant we will communicate immediately but so far we are comfortable with it with the figures of guidance and as to your second question yes indeed margins have evolved and have um recovered from levels of 2022, and that has to do mainly because many of the investments and the initiatives and projects that we invested on in 2022 and 2023 have started to mature. And if nothing else happens, and if current conditions prevail, we should see quarterly margins around 19%.

Great. That's great to hear. Thanks, Antonio, and congrats again.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Lucila Gomez from Compass Group. Lucila, your line is live.

Hi, good morning. Congratulations on your pretty good results. My question would be more to do with the leverage you have right now. I understand that you have been doing great on M&A and on internal growth. I just want to know, moving forward, what are your plans on that? Are you planning to maybe continue looking for possible M&As, or do you think we're going to start seeing gradual leverage reduction? Thank you.

Hi, Lucila. How are you? Good morning. This is Walt. Thanks for your question. Regarding the leverage of the company, as you may know, the company has an internal policy to be below 2.5 net debt to EBITDA. So we will be below that ratio, and we will continue to grow, but with that internal limit. So we will not be above that limit. So we will continue with that policy in the company.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. And the next question is coming from Pablo Montevies from Barclays. Pablo, your line is live.

Hi, Tim. Thanks for taking my question. I'm just wondering about your CAPEX plan for the medium term, especially on the personal transportation. Demand seems very strong. So what are your medium-term expectations on the amount of money that you will need to cover that demand?

Thank you. Hi, Pablo. Good morning.

As you may notice also in this report and also in the history in the company, the growth in that segment, it's very stable with a double-digit growth. So we will continue growing in that line We continue to see a heavy demand on that side of the services. So we will continue, even though with that growth, we will be very careful and disciplined with the 2.5 net debt to EBITDA. So as much as we can grow, we will be limited to that internal policy.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. And once again, if you do wish to ask a question today, please press star 1. on your telephone keypad. The next question is coming from Martin Lara from Miranda Global Research. Martin, your line is live.

Good morning. Thank you for the call and congratulations for these results. I have one question. How do you see the sales growth in the next few quarters in mobility of cargo?

Hi, Martin. This is Tonio. Thanks for your question.

As we have said, our short-term goal for the mobility of cargo segment is to grow in the high single digits or low teams. However, this quarter, you saw a softer growth in revenues. However, if you also see further, you're going to see that our gross profit for that segment grew almost 80% with less fleet. So the plans are... not to grow the fleet, but to continue to capture organic growth of cargo via transport and to shift our capacity towards more international cross-border and specialized cargo, which usually carry better economics in a per-kilometer basis, and that's going to translate into high single-digit load teams moving forward in this segment.

Okay, Toño, thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Jay Singh from Citi. Jay, your line is live.

Hi, this is Jay Singh from Steve Trent's team. Thank you for taking my question. Any high-level view on the logic behind the reduction in the kilometers trucked and the lower average fleet for the cargo logistics segment, or was it purely efficiency-related?

Yes, Jake. Thanks for your question. They were efficiency-related. The reduction in fleet has to do with the fleet management and renovation program. And as we have always said, we don't like to have the largest fleet, but we like to have the most efficient one. That's part of the strategy moving forward.

Awesome. Thank you so much. And I have a follow-up. How easy or difficult has it been for Traxion to buy new trucks And can you please remind us who your primary truck suppliers are? Thank you very much.

The primary OEM that we work with in cargo is Kenworth International and Freightliner. And we usually negotiate volume discounts, we negotiate conditions of payment, and we negotiate repurchase value of the truck five years down the road. Those are the basic negotiations that we conduct with OEMs.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is coming from Douglas Turnbull from Invesco. Douglas, your line is live.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. In fact, two questions. First, just to follow up on the outlook for the cargo growth, I can see how you keep improving the revenue per kilometer, and that's enough to drive high single digit to low teens. Am I right in saying then that the reason for the low growth in this quarter was a a bigger than usual negative adjustment in the size of the fleet. And so once we've done that, we can grow on from there. So how do you get from that 3% to high single digit to low teens?

Hi, Doug. Thanks for your question.

The main thing to bear in mind here in this quarter, especially in cargo, is also that Seasonality has to play in this quarter to some extent. And if you see on the first quarter of this year, the growth and revenues in carbon was significantly higher than we had expected. So in the aggregate, I think that we are moving on well within the target.

Okay. Fair enough. Thanks. Second question on logistics and as asset-like parts of the business, we saw a really decent quarter-and-quarter improvement in the margin. Is that just from some of the businesses which were bearing costs before the revenues ramped up starting to show those revenues coming through? And so can we expect that margin to continue up towards that kind of low double-digit level you've talked about in the past? And secondly, connectedly, I think I was expecting that as those businesses started to ramp up the revenues, we might see some working capital release, especially some of those receivables come down. Obviously, they didn't in this quarter. So I wonder, again, if you could just draw the line for us between, explain what's going on with working capital and draw the line between that and the margin improvements.

Hi, Douglas. How are you?

Talking about the margins in the logistics side, as you just mentioned, we should expect that the margins go higher and go closer to the 10% that we usually have in that particular division. so so i think we will see progressively going to that level by the end of the year and talking about the working capital also into that segment that is mainly the only investment that we're doing besides the technology we are very comfort what we're looking onto the working capital cycle into that segment. So even though we have to invest in the new clients and the new accounts, we're very confident in how we're looking also with our providers and supply chain. So we shouldn't be expecting any hike on that segment also in the working capital cycle.

Sorry, my question was more that whilst the margins improve because we've seen the revenues ramp up from these businesses which you've been investing in recently. And I think the commentary in the last quarter was around that as those businesses ramp up, you'd see some of that working capital release potentially. So I wonder if that is yet to come or is there a reason we haven't seen receivables fall at all?

We will continue to grow in a similar way. So until the time, in the same line that we're trying to grow that segment, we're not expecting to have in a different way.

Okay, fine. Thanks.

Thank you. And the next question is coming from Jean Bruni from BBVA. Jean, your line is live.

Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. Just a couple for me. The first one is on the labor cost. I like the first quarter. We've seen a strong increase in the second quarter. And maybe what are your expectations for the second half of this year if we're going to see the same trend in 2024? And the second question is more technical. It's on the number of outstanding shares you have after the cancellation of some shares in May of this year. What exactly is the number of outstanding as of June of this year? Thank you very much.

Hi, Jan. This is Tonio. Thanks for your question. In terms of the main impact in labor costs that you saw is It's mainly driven by expansions in the natural course of business. As you can see, we have grown a lot the logistics segment with more than 148,000 square meters. That requires a lot of people in operations. And also, if you see the expansion that we have had in the mobility of people segment, So basically what you see is those labor costs have to do with recruiting and payroll. So if we continue to grow at a fast pace as we have been doing, those costs should be normalizing as new business kicking into the revenues. But it has to do maybe because of growth.

And the second question, We canceled exactly 35 million shares.

Okay, so the number of outstanding should be slightly below.

Outstanding shares is 580,478,261. That's the exact number of shares outstanding. Okay, sure.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. And if there were any final questions today, please press star 1 on your phone.

That's star 1 if you wish to ask a question. And there were no other questions from the lines at this time.

I would now like to turn the call back to Abbey Lieftime for closing remarks.

Thank you. The newsroom continues to present us with compelling growth opportunities, and it has been a significant part of our expansion in recent years. Traccion is a leading newsroom facilitator in Mexico. The company continues to expand and intends to keep its dominant position as a pure play as this trend carries on penetrating into Mexico. We're analyzing the ways to continue to capitalize on those opportunities efficiently and profitably. Thanks again for your attention and have an excellent week.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.