Copa Holdings achieves record Q3 operating margin of 23.2%, reaffirming confidence in 2025 guidance amid healthy demand in Latin America

OPERATOR - (00:01:27)

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 need to press star 11 on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, this call is being webcast and recorded on November 20, 2025. I will now turn the conference over to Daniel Tapia, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Daniel Tapia - Director of Investor Relations - (00:01:57)

Thank you, Michel. And welcome everyone to our third quarter earnings call. Joining me today are Pedro Hebron, CEO. Of COPA holdings and Peter Dunkersloot, our CFO. Pedro will begin with an overview of. Our third quarter highlights followed by Peter Dunkersloot. Who will walk us through the financial results. After that, we'll 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 which are reconciled to. IFRS figures and our earnings release available. On our 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 risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and are based on assumptions subject to change. Many of these are discussed in our annual report filed with the SEC. With that, I'll turn the call over. To our CEO, Mr. Pedro Hebron.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:03:10)

Thank you Daniel. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I want to thank all our co workers across the organization. As always, their dedication and hard work are instrumental in our financial and operational success. COPA delivered another strong quarter, reinforcing the strength of our business model and our competitive advantages in Latin America. During the quarter we achieved industry leading profitability with an operating margin of 23.2% up 2.9 percentage points year over year and a net margin of 19% up 1.9 percentage points year over year. These results are driven by our continued focus on cost discipline and a healthy demand environment in the region. Now go over the key highlights for the quarter. Capacity in ASMs increased 5.8% compared to Q3.24. Load factor increased by 1.8 percentage points to 88%. Passenger yields came in 2.6% lower year over year. Unit revenues or RASM increased 1% to 11.1 cents compared to Q3.24 and unit cost our QASM decreased 2.7% to 8.5 cents compared to Q3.24. While QASM excluding fuel decreased 0.8% to 5.6 cents. Operationally, Copa Airlines delivered an on time performance of 89.7% and a flight completion factor of 99.8%. Maintaining our position amongst the best in the industry. During the quarter, we started flights to Salta and Tucuman in Argentina and as mentioned in our previous call, in the next few months we expect to add service to Los Cabos, Mexico, Puerto Plata and Santiago in the Dominican Republic and Salvador, Bahia in Brazil, further strengthening our position as the most complete and convenient connecting hub and for travel in the Americas. With regards to our fleet, during the quarter we took delivery of five 737 Max 8 aircraft. We added a second Boeing 737800 freighter under an operating lease and COPA transferred an aircraft to Wingo, growing its fleet to 10 Boeing 737 800. We closed the quarter with 121 aircraft and we have since incorporated two additional Max 8, bringing our fleet to 123 aircraft. We expect to receive one more Max 8 before year end, finishing 2025 with 124 aircraft. For 2026, we anticipate adding eight more 737 Max 8, two of which we previously expected to receive in December 2025 ending 2026 with a total projected fleet of 132 aircraft. To conclude in the third quarter we again reported strong operational and financial results going forward. Our guidance demonstrates confidence in our future performance driven by healthy demand in the region and the strength of our business model which consists of the best geographic position with our hub of the Americas in Panama, structurally low unit costs and a strong balance sheet and a passenger friendly product. With industry leading on time performance, our focus on these pillars enables us to consistently deliver industry leading results. Now I'll turn the call over to Peter who will walk us through the financials in more detail.

Peter Dunkersloot - Chief Financial Officer - (00:07:35)

Thank you Pedro and good morning to all. I'd like to start by reinforcing Pedro's recognition of our team's continued dedication to achieving industry leading performance. Let me provide some detail on our financial results for the quarter. Net profit came in at $173 million or $4.20 per share compared to $146 million or $3.50 per share in the third quarter, 2024 representing a year over year increase of 18.7% and 20.1% respectively. Operated income reached $212 million or 22.2 higher year over year, 22.2% higher year over year and an industry leading operating margin of 23.2%, 2.9 percentage points higher than the third quarter 2024. On the cost side, CASM decreased 2.7% year over year to 8.5 cents, driven primarily by lower fuel cost and maintenance expense. CASM excluding fuel came in at 5.6 cents, down 0.8% compared to third quarter 2024. This figure reflects a realized gain from engine exchange transactions and a benefit related to the extension of one lease aircraft. Regarding our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $1.3 billion in cash, short term and long term investments representing 38% of the last 12 month revenues, further demonstrating our financial strength and flexibility. We also have approximately $600 million in pre delivery deposits for future aircraft. Additionally, we currently have 45 unencumbered aircraft. Total debt stood at $2.2 billion entirely related to aircraft financing. Our adjusted net debt to EBITDA ratio came in at 0.7x and our average cost of debt continues to be highly competitive at 3.5%. Regarding the return of value to our shareholders, I'm pleased to announce that the company will make its fourth dividend payment of the year of $1.61 per share on December 15th to all shareholders of record as of December 1st. As for our 2025 outlook, we remain confident in our full year performance. We are reaffirming our guidance and narrowing the operating margin range to the upper end now expected between 22% and 23% with a full year capacity growth projected at approximately 8%. This outlook reflects a healthy demand environment in the region as well as our continued cost discipline. Our outlook is based on the following load factor of approximately 87%, RASM of approximately 11.2 cents, ex-fuel CASM of approximately 5.8 cents and an all in fuel price of $2.40 per gallon. Looking ahead to 2026, we preliminary expectations full year ASM capacity growth in the range between 11 to 13% with an ex-fuel CASM in the range of 5.7 to 5.8 cents. To conclude, we remain confident that our proven business model, robust balance sheet and disciplined execution provide a solid foundation to continue delivering consistent growth, strong financial results and industry leading margins. Finally, I'd like to remind everyone that our Investor Day will take place at the New York stock exchange on December 11th at 11:00am Eastern Time. We look forward to sharing more about our company during this event. Thank you and we'll now open the call for questions from the analysts.

OPERATOR - (00:11:45)

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, Please press Star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. One moment. As we compile our Q and A roster, our first question will come from the line of Savi fifth with Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Savi Syth - (00:12:09)

Hey, good morning, everyone. Could you talk a little bit about the timing and nature of the kind of COBRA credit card renewal that you noted in third quarter and just about the opportunity that you see in loyalty in general?

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:12:27)

Yes. Thank you, Savi. And yes, we had a renewal of our visa agreement during the third quarter. And that's part of what you see at 86%. We cannot disclose too much on that due to the confidentiality of the deal. But if we take that out, the growth of the loyalty program would have been similar to the second quarter. There was over 30% growth year over year.

Savi Syth - (00:12:53)

Great. Anything around the loyalty program initiatives, is that just kind of a normal renewal? Any other kind of thoughts on how that program can kind of contribute in the future?

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:13:05)

So it's an important growth, 30% year over year. Over a small basis, we continue to grow. The program is maturing. We expect the program to continue to grow. There's a lot of new non air partners in the program. And we expect the brand to continue maturing and to continue growing at a decent rate going forward. And it's one of the priorities that we have for coming years. So the 30% growth, I mean, it's over a smaller base. And we expect that growth to continue slightly going down as the program matures.

Savi Syth - (00:13:38)

Got it. And if I can ask just a clarification question on the growth next year, could you tell like the 11 to 13%, how much is that? Is kind of gauge stage versus fee.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:13:52)

So the full year growth that we are projecting between 11 to 13%, I would first say that half of that growth comes from the full year effect of the backloaded aircraft that we received this year. Of the other half, I would say about 50%. 40 percent of that will come from adding frequencies to current destinations. And then the other 10% will come from adding new dots on the map, some of them Pedro alluded to during his intervention. That's more or less the breakdown of our 11 to 13% growth in ASM for next year.

Savi Syth - (00:14:25)

Understood. Thank you.

OPERATOR - (00:14:28)

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Lindenberg with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Michael Lindenberg - Equity Analyst - (00:14:39)

Yeah, Peter, maybe to pick up on Xavi's question on that growth for next year. If sort of half of it is just the annualization of 2025 and then another large chunk of that remaining half, 40 points as frequencies. As we see that type of growth, what is the view on unit revenue trends? Normally when we see a step up in growth, we tend to see pressure, especially when you move into new markets. But it seems like if you're just focused on really strengthening what is already a strong position in the region, we should assume that unit revenue next year could be maybe somewhat flattish. Any thoughts on that or how you think about it for 2026?

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:15:20)

Hi, Mike, Pedro here.

Michael Lindenberg - Equity Analyst - (00:15:22)

Hey, Pedro.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:15:23)

Yeah, so I think in a way you helped us answer the question. I mean, we're not giving yet guidance on unit revenues, but you're right, most of the growth comes either full year effect or from adding frequencies. And of course we're adding those frequencies in high demand routes. When we average 88% for a quarter like we did in Q3, that means that many, many routes, many markets are above 90% and that's where we're at in frequency. So the impact on unit revenues should be much less than what we would expect from double digit ASM growth.

Michael Lindenberg - Equity Analyst - (00:16:05)

Great. And then just second question, since it is frequencies, when we look at the number of gates at Panama City and how full up you are and the number of banks, where are you? When we think about banks and connectivity, I see some markets like you have eight flights a day to Miami, you have 10 flights to Bogota. I recall where it was two banks, three banks, four banks. How many defined banks do you have today? And how much actually additional room do you have to add these additional frequencies? Because presumably they're all in and out of Panama City. When do you start topping off or where do you start running out of connecting banks? Thanks for taking my question.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:16:50)

Yeah, Pedro here again. Mike. So two things I'll say. First is that the airport is already working on its next phase of expansion. They're coming out with bids by the end of this year or early next year to expand the new T2 terminal and also to do some work on the taxiways and runways. One of those contracts actually has already been assigned. And then our civil aviation authorities is also bidding a redesign of the airspace. So all of this is going to happen in the next three to four years and, and it's going to be done in a very pragmatic, I would say way that's going to be very good for the airport and for our hub. So we're really happy with that. In terms of frequencies, we're running Six defined banks today.

Michael Lindenberg - Equity Analyst - (00:17:49)

Six.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:17:50)

Our first arrivals are like at six in the morning and our last departures are nearly at 11pm and we do run wingtips, sometimes even triple wingtips at certain times of the day. Like early in the morning we'll run wingtips to the Caribbean, to Miami and places like that. And depending on the banks we might run wingtips to maybe South America and other points. So there's still with this new phase of expansion that we're very, very involved with the airport authorities and the design even there's an international institute institution also very involved. We're going to have plenty of room to add wingtips if needed or even if it comes to adding banks, there will be room for that also.

Michael Lindenberg - Equity Analyst - (00:18:41)

Great. Thanks, Pedro.

OPERATOR - (00:18:46)

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth with Evercore isi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Duane Pfennigwerth - (00:18:59)

Hi.

Jake Gunning - (00:18:59)

Thank you for taking my questions. Jake Gunning on for Duane Pfennigwerth to ask the question about next year a little differently. Not looking for guidance but could you maybe talk about how your Preliminary thoughts on 2026 margins and earnings have changed. Over the last quarter?

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:19:20)

Yeah, I can. Pedro. Again. They haven't really changed. I mean in terms of our what we expect for unit cost, unit revenues, et cetera, we are kind of in the same place. Maybe the only wild card is what happens to fuel and we've seen in the last few weeks an increase in the crack spread for jet fuel. But that could change again in the next two weeks and it has a lot to do with the conflict in Russia and mainly that and a few other reasons. So I would say that's the only wild card and we haven't modeled how yields would react to that. When jet fuel is higher, usually there's more pressure for everyone to to adjust fares, but we haven't really modeled that. Okay, thank you. And then just given the really healthy leverage, is there any debate or discussion on leaning more heavily into share buybacks versus dividends?

Peter Dunkersloot - Chief Financial Officer - (00:20:37)

Yeah. So Peter now and thank you for the question and I'm going to a little bit about all the capital allocation plan that we have. And basically we have after this year around 46, 47 claim spending delivery from the order book we have and given the fact that we are performing as Pedro said, 88% load factors, very decent margins, one of our top priorities right now is continue reinvesting in the business. We believe the business can continue delivering healthy margin capex growth. So. So that's one of our priorities for the capital allocation. And secondly, of course we'll continue returning value to our shareholders as part of our capital allocation plan. And we have two ways to do that. One is our dividend policy that as you know, it's 40% of last year's net income. We will maintain that dividend policy and maintain those quarterly payments. And then the second is we have a buyback insured buyback program open that was approved by the board. It was approved around 200 million for $200 million. We have executed half of it and we'll continue executing the other half on an opportunistic basis. We don't have an end date for the plan. We will just continue doing it when we see the opportunity to do so. Great.

Jake Gunning - (00:21:53)

Thank you.

OPERATOR - (00:21:56)

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Philippe Naughton with Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Philippe Naughton - (00:22:07)

Hey. Hi everyone. Thanks for good morning or afternoon and thanks for taking my question. I have two questions on CASM X looking at this year, you're continuing guidance to 5.8 cents and just trying to understand what are the moving parts after. This quarter's one off positive one offs. If maybe you're being too conservative on this assumption. And the second one looking for 2026 maybe if you could like guide us on the moving parts of this expectation, maybe for us sounded a little too conservative given that you potentially could increase fixed cost dilution from the capacity expansion. Just trying to understand those points. Thank you.

Peter Dunkersloot - Chief Financial Officer - (00:23:03)

Thank you, Philippe. Peter here. So yes, on the CASM X we're guiding to approximately 5.8 for the quarter. Of course for the year we only use one decimal. So there's a range to that 5.8 that we are alluding to. It's not necessarily going to be exactly 5.80 for the full year. And I would say that I would also like to comment on the two items that we highlighted on our earnings release yesterday. First, we did highlight those two items more to make it easier to compare and to give some color the return conditions. It's every time we do a lease extensions what happens is we spread the provision for a longer period of time. So we did execute one lease extension during the quarter. And that's what you see that that's around one third of the effect of what we call out there. And the other two thirds, which I may say that are not necessarily one offs is the engine exchange. And mainly due to the longer turnaround time that we have been seeing, the team is sending some Engines to do engine exchange instead of sending them to engine restoration. This transaction usually sees some accounting benefits due to the difference between the book value and the transaction price. This transaction is something that we're doing this year and most likely will continue doing next year. So I wanted to highlight that it's not necessarily a one off transaction, but for the engine exchange and for the year, for the 2025 I address, it's a range of the 580. So we would need to model what is within that range of that decimal. And for 2026 we feel pretty comfortable. What we wanted to guide is that we have enough levers in our tool of cost initiatives to offset inflation at least and push the chasm even lower. So I think that's the guidance we're giving the chasm, it's directionality of the chasm that we have enough initiatives to address inflation and push the chasm at least even lower. That's the main point we want to address.

Philippe Naughton - (00:25:19)

Great. This is super clear.

OPERATOR - (00:25:20)

Thank you. Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Daniel McKenzie with Seaport Global. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Daniel McKenzie - (00:25:33)

Oh, hey, thanks guys. Couple questions here. First, going back to the script, the healthy demand backdrop in the region. I'm wondering if you can elaborate on that. Macro has been especially volatile this year and you know, Latin America just seems to be, you know, completely disregarding it, you know, plowing through it. And so I'm just wondering what is driving that and you know, or is it just that the demand is inelastic given the wealth demographic of your customers? I'm just wondering if you can break. It apart for us.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:26:04)

Okay, so Pedro here then. I'm not going to say we have all the answers or that we can share all the answers we might have. There might be something with demographics. As you will explain, we have a lower percent of people that travel in Latin America versus what you would find in Europe or the U.S. but the traveling class does have on average the resources to travel and they're traveling more than before, I must say, and before the pandemic. That's noticeable and that's very clear. So an analysis of the demographics is not going to be easy. But demand remains healthy, continues to grow. There's a lot of capacity coming in, but load factors are holding up. And I would say that that's what we're seeing in most regions. And the regions where maybe that won't be the case are easy to point out. For example, we had the strong Devaluation in Brazil last year starting in mid, mid last year. But the currency has been stable and even recuperated some ground since. So we see Brazil slowly coming back, maybe not all the way back to where it was in 2023, but it's on its way. The rest of South America looks fine. The Andean Pact looks fine. The US is pretty stable, maybe just slightly down, but with a lot more capacity. And I'm saying load factors, of course, demand is up, it's up double digits. Argentina has seen a lot of capacity come in. So still a strong market, but not nearly as strong as before because of all that capacity. But I think that's going to, we ourselves are going to grow. We've grown quite a bit in Argentina. We won't be growing that much, if at all, in the future. So we're also adjusting our capacity and putting our capacity where it makes the most sense. So, yeah, I mean, in general it's a healthy demand environment. Sometimes the additional ASNs hit on yields a little bit, but even that has not been significant. Significant.

Daniel McKenzie - (00:28:42)

Yeah, very impressive. Second question here and thanks for that. Pedro.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:28:47)

The second question here, I'm wondering if you could speak to the durability of growth opportunities beyond 2026. So should we be thinking low double digits for the foreseeable future or you know, how should we be thinking about growth longer term, say three years out or so? Yeah, I'll go with our aircraft order, which I think the, the better way of understanding our growth plans. And as you know, we've always been very rational, very pragmatic, we never do crazy things. But. You know, as well. Like for. The last three years, for the last three years we have delivered plus 20% margins every quarter. One quarter we missed, we were 19.5%. So, okay, we're right there. And that's because we're really careful. I mean, we focus on our business model, we focus on our low cost and we grow capacity by what makes sense to us, not necessarily in response to anything else. So if you look at our fleet plan, it follows that same pattern and it points to somewhere between 7 and 8% per year. Consistently we have a little bit over 40 planes pending delivery for the next four years. And if you do the math, it's going to be around 7, 8% average growth CAGR for that period. And I think that we have the opportunities, given the strength of our hub and network, our leading unit cost and customer service on time performance. When we put everything together, we think that's really reasonable growth that we can sustain in a profitable way.

Peter Dunkersloot - Chief Financial Officer - (00:30:53)

I would just add that as Pedro alluded to, that's our plan of growth and should be around the 6, 7% that Pedro alluded to the next couple of years. But Pedro said it very well. We're not obsessed with growth. We'll only grow if there's profitability in that growth. We'll be more focused on making sure we can get the most profitability. And we have a lot of flexibility for that growth. On the downside, and we have the lease aircraft, we have 45 unencumbered aircraft. We have the 700 that by any point demand softens, we can decide to park, harvest the engines and even help us lower the chasm. So there are a lot of tools we have to address whatever market comes to us. And we'll try to make the best out of it.

Daniel McKenzie - (00:31:36)

That's perfect. Thanks so much, you guys.

OPERATOR - (00:31:39)

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Alberto Valerio with ubs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Alberto Valerio - Equity Analyst - (00:31:50)

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Pedro and Peter, one more on my side. In terms of yields, you see a healthy environment, but I think market was expecting a little bit more in terms of yields for this quarter as well for the next one. Maybe a revising revision on guidance if there is any specific detail that make you guys be a little bit more conservative. And another one, if I may. In terms of competition in the region, we see an IPO in Mexico. We may see another IPO next year in Latin America and also in Brazil. As we come back from chapter 11, what is the perspective and how is the marketing in the region, if you can take some details in terms of competition.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:32:48)

Okay, a few things. So I think we already spoke quite a bit about 2026 yield. You're asking about fourth quarter. We do not give a quarter by quarter yield guidance, but we did narrow our operating margin guidance to somewhere between 22 and 23%. So we narrowed to the higher end of our previous guidance. So that's what we can share now. In terms of competition, you know, it's something that we've lived with for a long time, always, I would say, but even more so in the last four years. In the last four years or three years. And we work on our competitive advantages to make them stronger. And that's our product, our unit cost and the strength of our network. So we're confident that we can continue delivering in 2026 and beyond the strong margins you've seen before and the IPOs you alluded to. Well, you know, those are companies that were public before, so they're going back to where they were before they went through bankruptcy and all the other troubles they got into. We work hard to avoid that kind of situation and try to be a little bit more steady on everything we do. Perfect.

Alberto Valerio - Equity Analyst - (00:34:23)

Thank you very much. Thank you.

OPERATOR - (00:34:26)

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Tom Fitzgerald with TD Cowan. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi.

Tom Fitzgerald - Equity Analyst - (00:34:37)

Thanks so much for the time. Just kind of going back to the high level conceptually for next year. How do you think about like how when you from the incremental frequencies and then the 10 points for the new dots, just like in a normal year, how would you think about how those should theoretically compare to like system rasm?

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:34:58)

Yeah. So normally in a regular year most of our growth goes to adding frequencies and then we always have a little of that growth to put on new markets. And then for those new markets for the next year, normally mature and then they go in the first category of adding frequencies to those new markets as we normally open markets with three to four daily, three to four weekly flights and then we go building up. So that's more or less how we have deployed growth in the past years and how we've done it. Most of it going to frequencies and then smaller portion going to new markets. Got it.

Tom Fitzgerald - Equity Analyst - (00:35:36)

Okay. I mean, is it like normally just like thinking about the matt like on like the, just think of like the maturity ramp for like the incremental like departures. Do you think of that like as a decent discount, like a 10 point discount to system average or pretty much in line with the system that you're producing?

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:35:50)

I would say it's pretty much in line. It's pretty much in line. And, and kind of a related factor is that as we all know, Boeing deliveries have been delayed quite a bit for the last few years. This year they've been on time even earlier. So there's a noticeable improvement there. But overall we're still behind where we thought we were going to be if we had talked three years ago. So these are kind of overdue deliveries and we feel we have the demand for those aircraft, especially that we're adding frequencies as Peter mentioned.

Tom Fitzgerald - Equity Analyst - (00:36:41)

Okay, that's a really helpful color. And then just as a follow up, I was wondering if you could talk, you've talked in the past about some of your, some of the kind of lower hanging fruit you guys have with technology and your ability to maybe price better, whether incorporating more dynamic pricing or upselling products like Economy Extra. I'm just wondering if you could. Maybe it's more of a preview for Investor Day, but love the latest thinking there. Thanks again for the time.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:37:03)

Yeah, we have to keep something for the Investor Day. You're right. You just helped me answer that question. There's still a lot of opportunities. We continue investing quite a bit in our digital tools and especially actually not necessarily in new digital tools, but in making better what we already have. And there's an opportunity we have in doing better merchandiser merchandising. I'm sorry, Better ux, better user experience. Those products we're offering make them more visible to our customers, especially in the booking flow and in the check in flow. Flow. We're working on that and focusing on three things in three ancillary categories. Baggage, of course, upgrades to business class, and we're having a lot of success there. And also our premium economy cabin, which we call Economy Extra. We haven't given that enough visibility and there's nice upside there. So yes, that's where we're focusing and we expect to continue increasing revenues in those categories.

OPERATOR - (00:38:23)

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Gilmer Mendez with JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Gilmer Mendez - Equity Analyst - (00:38:36)

Yes, thanks, guys. Pedro, Peter, thanks for taking my questions. First one is a follow up on the competition. Pedro, you mentioned about Argentina being especially competitive and you also mentioned about Brazil, but which of the regions do you see, let's say higher than average competitive environment. And the second one, Pedro, you also mentioned about feel being the wild card for 2026, given that a potential environment. Do you see Copa change its hedging policy in some way?

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:39:09)

Thank you. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, what I said in general terms is demand is healthy. It's growing at the pace of capacity in all of Latin America. So a lot of factors are holding up well. I highlighted a few regions. Brazil got hit hard last year and at the beginning of this year because there was a sudden devaluation of the currency and a lot of capacity had come in because of that success. That was during the first half of 2024 since the currency, and you know that very well, the currency has been stable, actually has improved since 12 months ago. And that market is coming back little by little. Less capacity has come in compared to the first half of last year. So we're seeing an improvement in our Brazil load factors and in our Brazil prasm. So we're seeing improvement in those. And Q4 should be better. And Q. Q3 and Q3 was better in Q2. So it's going in the right direction. Not all the way back to where it was at the end of 2023, but it's in the right direction. And then Argentina has been booming, has been quite a market with all the economic changes that the new government has implemented in Argentina has been booming. In general terms, the devaluation has been more predictable and not as significant as before. Inflation has been a lot more under control. And the traveling public in a country that loves to trouble, loves to travel, has been growing at a very strong pace that has attracted a lot of capacity from us and from everyone. And when that happens, will yields soften a little bit? But they're still very strong. And what I said is that we will not be growing so much in Argentina as we've done in the past, let's say, 12 months. And that's probably going to be the case with most other airlines serving the country. So I was going to. Stabilized, I would say. Thanks, Pedro.

Gilmer Mendez - Equity Analyst - (00:41:50)

Maybe on the hedging policy.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:41:53)

Oh, okay. The hedging policy. I forgot about hedging because we haven't done hedging in so long that it's. Yeah, no, that's not going to change. And usually the, the hedges, many hedges are on WTI or Brent, and this. What has shot up lately is the crack spread. So it's jet fuel, and I don't know for how long that's going to happen. That's going to stay up there. So we're not planning to change our hedging strategy. We're happy with not hedging. It has worked well for us and it's going to remain that way.

Gilmer Mendez - Equity Analyst - (00:42:41)

Very clear. Thank you, Pedro.

OPERATOR - (00:42:44)

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Savi Syth with Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go. You may be on mute.

Savi Syth - (00:43:04)

Thank you. Sorry about that. Just, can I get an update on the densification plan? Just, you know, how many aircraft are yet to go and just curious on how much next year's unit cost might be driven by that and if there's anything kind of further that it will drive in. 27.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:43:23)

Yeah. Thank you, Xavi. We've done around half of the densification that we plan to. And you know, that was one additional row, so around six more seats per plane. We've done half of it. So around 25 of the. Let's call it 50 that we said we were going to do. And we have another 25 left that we are planning to do during 2026.

Savi Syth - (00:43:50)

That's helpful. And just a clarification on the credit card benefit this quarter. Is that something that's just one time this quarter or is that something that now is layered on and kind of continues going forward?

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:44:04)

So again, on the credit card benefit, we saw two separate pieces and let's call it to oversimplify, half and half. Half was related to the extension of our agreement with a visa, and that is one time every X amount of years. And then the other one is the growth of the program by itself, and that's the other half. And that's similar to what we saw in second quarter. And that should be a. That should be continued. That growth should be continued and stable in that program.

Savi Syth - (00:44:35)

Understood. Thank you.

OPERATOR - (00:44:38)

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our last question will come from the line of Jean Spies with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Jean Spies - (00:44:53)

Hello. Thank you for taking my call. Sorry I joined late. So if you already answered this question, please disregard. I just wanted to get a sense of how much conservatism is built into your guidance. So backing out like fourth quarter quarter, at the mid range of your annual guidance for 2025, we get to an operating margin of around 22% and FE yields of 11.4. So just want to get a sense of how comfortable you feel with that number in the fourth quarter and how much at the end conservatism is built into it. Thank you.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:45:31)

So our hygiene, our fourth quarter 2025 guidance was narrowed down to between 22 and 23%, which was like the upper part of our previous guidance, which was 21 to 23. And we're very comfortable with that range between 22 and 23%.

Jean Spies - (00:45:57)

All right, perfect. Just in terms of yields, it does imply a deceleration of yields versus third quarter. So just want to get a sense on that and how you're looking into the next few quarters, maybe. Thank you.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:46:14)

Yeah, that question was asked before and the response was that we do not guide yield on a quarterly basis.

Jean Spies - (00:46:29)

I mean, looking at your RASM guidance for the full year, we are able to back out like the fourth quarter rasm. Right. Which does imply, I think 11.4 and does imply deceleration quarter over quarter. So just want to get a sense of. Yeah. Do you think there's potential upside to that or you feel quite comfortable with that number?

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:46:56)

I believe that our RASM guidance for the year, it's 11.2 and we haven't changed that guidance.

Jean Spies - (00:47:15)

Got it. So you feel comfortable with that guidance. All right. Perfect. Thank you.

OPERATOR - (00:47:21)

Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference back over to Pedro Hebron for closing remarks.

Pedro Hebron - Chief Executive Officer - (00:47:27)

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you all for your questions and for joining us today. We appreciate your continued interest and support. Of course, I look forward to seeing you in person at our Investor Day and answer even more questions. So, as always, you can feel confident that we will keep working really hard to strengthen and develop our competitive advantage. And I'm confident we'll continue delivering very strong results in years to come. So thank you and have a great day.

OPERATOR - (00:48:06)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. And you may now disconnect.