Copa Holdings - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Transcript

Speaker 7

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 20th, 2025. I will now turn the conference over to Daniel Tapia, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Speaker 8

Thank you, Michelle, and welcome everyone to our third quarter earnings call. Joining me today are Pedro Heilbron, CEO of Copa Holdings, and Peter Donkersloot, our CFO. Pedro will begin with an overview of our third quarter highlights, followed by Peter, 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 is available on our website, copaira.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 Heilbron.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Daniel. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I want to thank all our coworkers 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 2024. 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 2024. Unit cost, or CASM, decreased 2.7% to 8.5 cents compared to Q3 2024, while CASM 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 among the best in the industry. During the quarter, we started flights to Salta and Tucumán in Argentina. 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 Bahía in Brazil, further strengthening our position as the most complete and convenient connecting hub 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 737-800 freighter under an operating lease, and Copa transferred an aircraft to Wingo, growing its fleet to 10 Boeing 737-800 NGs. We closed the quarter with 121 aircraft, and we have since incorporated two additional MAX 8s, 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 8s, 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 cost, 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.

Speaker 1

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 of 2024, representing a year-over-year increase of 18.7% and 20.1%, respectively. Operating income reached $212 million, or 22.2% higher year-over-year, and an industry-leading operating margin of 23.2%, 2.9 percentage points higher than the third quarter of 2024. On the cost side, CASM decreased 2.7% year-over-year to $0.085, driven primarily by lower fuel cost and maintenance expense. CASM, excluding fuel, came in at $0.056, 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 0.7 times, 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%-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 assumptions: 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 expect full-year ASM capacity growth in the range between 11%-13%, with an ex-fuel CASM in the range of 5.7-5.8 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 11:00 A.M. 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.

Speaker 7

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&A roster. Our first question will come from the line of Savi Syth with Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

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

Speaker 1

Yes, thank you, Savi. 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.

Speaker 2

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?

Speaker 1

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 everyone to continue maturing and to continue growing at a decent rate going forward. It's one of the priorities that we have for coming years. The 30% growth, I mean, it's over a smaller base, and we expect that growth to continue and go slightly going down as the program matures.

Speaker 2

Got it. If I can ask just a clarification question on the growth next year, could you tell the 11%-13%, how much is that kind of gauged stage versus state?

Speaker 1

The full-year growth that we are projecting between 11%-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 of that 50%, 40 percentage points of that will come from adding frequencies to current destinations. 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%-13% growth in ASM for next year.

Speaker 2

Understood. Thank you.

Speaker 7

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

Speaker 4

Yeah. Peter, maybe to pick up on Savi'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 is 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. 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?

Speaker 0

Hi, Mike. Pedro here.

Speaker 4

Hey, Pedro.

Speaker 0

Yeah. 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. 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 routes, many markets are above 90%. That's where we're adding frequencies. The impact on unit revenues should be much less than what we would expect from double-digit ASM growth.

Speaker 4

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 8 flights a day to Miami, you have 10 flights to Bogota. I recall where it was 2 banks, 3 banks, 4 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.

Speaker 0

Yeah. Pedro here again, Mike. 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. Our civil aviation authorities is also bidding a redesign of the airspace. All of this is going to happen in the next three to four years, 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. We're really happy with that. In terms of frequencies, we're running six defined banks today, six.

Our first arrivals are at 6:00 A.M., and our last departures are nearly at 11:00 P.M. We do run wingtips, sometimes even triple wingtips at certain times of the day. Early in the morning, we will run wingtips to the Caribbean, to Miami, and places like that. Depending on the banks, we might run wingtips to maybe South America and other points. There is still, with this new phase of expansion, that we are very, very involved with the airport authorities and the design, even as there is an international institution also very involved. We are 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.

Speaker 4

Great. Thanks, Pedro.

Speaker 7

Thank you. 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.

Speaker 3

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. This is Jake Gunning on for Duane. 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?

Speaker 0

Yeah. I think Pedro again. They haven't really changed. I mean, in terms of what we expect for unit costs, unit revenues, etc., we are kind of in the same place. Maybe the only wild card is what happens to fuel. We have seen in the last few weeks an increase in the crack spread for JetFuel, but that could change again in the next two weeks. It has a lot to do with the conflict in Russia and mainly that and a few other reasons. I would say that's the only wild card. We haven't modeled how yields would react to that. When JetFuel is higher, usually there's more pressure for everyone to adjust fares, but we haven't really modeled that.

Speaker 3

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?

Speaker 1

Yeah. Peter now, and thank you for the question. I'm going to tell a little bit about all the capital allocation plan that we have. Basically, we have after this year around 46-47 planned spending delivery from the order book we have. Given the fact that we are performing, as Pedro said, 88% load factors, very decent margins, one of our top priorities right now is to continue reinvesting in the business. We believe the business can continue delivering healthy margins as it grows. That is one of our priorities for the capital allocation. Secondly, of course, we'll continue returning value to our shareholders as part of our capital allocation plan. We have two ways to do that. One is our dividend policy. As you know, it's 40% of last year's net income.

We will maintain that dividend policy and maintain those quarterly payments. The second is we have a share buyback program open that was approved by the board. It was approved for $200 million. We have executed half of it, and we'll continue executing the other half on an opportunistic basis. We do not have an end date for the plan. We will just continue doing it when we see the opportunity to do so.

Speaker 3

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 7

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

Speaker 6

Hey. Hi, everyone. Thanks for good morning or afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. I have two questions on CASM. Looking at this year, you're continuing guiding to 5.8 cents and just trying to understand what are the moving parts after this quarter's positive one-offs if maybe you're being too conservative on this assumption. The second one, looking for 2026, maybe if you could guide us on the moving parts of this expectation. Maybe for us, it 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.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Philippe Peter here. Yes, on the CASM, we're guiding to approximately 5.8 for the quarter for us. Of course, for the year, we only use one decimal. There is a range to that 5.8 that we are alluding to. It is not necessarily going to be exactly 5.80 for the full year. 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, every time we do a lease extension, what happens is we spread the provision for a longer period of time. We did execute one lease extension during the quarter, and that is why you see that. That is around one-third of the effect of what we call out there.

The other two-thirds, which I may say that are not necessarily one-offs, is the engine exchange. 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 we'll continue doing next year. I wanted to highlight that it's not necessarily a one-off transaction for the engine exchange. For the year and for 2025, I addressed it's a range of the 580. We would need to model what is within that range of that decimal. 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 CASM even lower. I think that's the guidance we're giving the CASM. It's the directionality of the CASM that we have enough initiatives to address inflation and push the CASM at least even lower. That's the main point we want to address.

Speaker 6

Great. This is super clear. Thank you.

Speaker 7

Thank you. 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.

Speaker 5

Oh, hey. Thanks, guys. A couple of 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 Latin America just seems to be completely disregarding it, plowing through it. I'm just wondering, what is driving that? 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.

Speaker 0

Okay. 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 % of people that travel in Latin America versus what you would find in Europe or the U.S. The traveling class does have, on average, the resources to travel. They're traveling more than before, I must say. Before the pandemic, that's noticeable, and that's very clear. 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. I would say that's what we're seeing in most regions. 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-last year. The currency has been stable and even recuperated some ground since. We see Brazil slowly coming back. Maybe not all the way back to what it was in 2023, but it's on its way. The rest of South America looks fine. The Andean Pac looks fine. The U.S. is pretty stable, maybe just slightly down, but with a lot more capacity. I'm saying load factors, of course. Demand is up. It's up double digits. Argentina has seen a lot of capacity come in. Still a strong market, but not nearly as strong as before because of all that capacity. I think that's going to taper down. 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. We are also adjusting our capacity and putting our capacity where it makes the most sense. Yeah. I mean, in general, it's a healthy demand environment. Sometimes the additional $0.80 hit on yields a little bit, but even that has not been significant.

Speaker 5

Yeah. Very impressive. Second question here, and thanks for that, Pedro. The second question here, I'm wondering if you could speak to the durability of growth opportunities beyond 2026. Should we be thinking low double digits for the foreseeable future, or how should we be thinking about growth longer term, say, three years out or so?

Speaker 0

Yeah. I'll go with our aircraft order, which I think is the better way of understanding our growth plans. As you know, we've always been very rational, very pragmatic. We never do crazy things, but for the last—yeah, you know us well.

Speaker 5

That's good. Yeah.

Speaker 0

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%. Okay, we're right there. 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. If you look at our fleet plan, it follows that same pattern, and it points to somewhere between 7-8% per year consistently. We have a little bit over 40 planes pending delivery for the next four years. If you do the math, it's going to be around 7-8% average growth KGAR for that period.

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.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I would just add that, as Pedro alluded to, that's our plan of growth. It should be around the 6-7% that Pedro alluded to the next couple of years. Pedro said it very well. We're not obsessed with growth. We'll only grow if there's profitability in that growth. We're more focused on making sure we can get the most profitability. We have a lot of flexibility for that growth on the downside. We have the leased aircraft. We have 4,500 combat aircraft. We have the 700s that, at any point, if demand softens, we can decide to park, harvest the engines, and even help us lower the CASM. 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.

Speaker 5

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

Speaker 7

Thank you. 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.

Speaker 0

Hi. Thank you for taking my question, Pedro and Peter. One more on my side in terms of yields. We 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 revision, revision on guidance. If there is any specific detail that makes you guys be a little bit more conservative. 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, Azul comeback from Chapter 11. What is the perspective and how is the market in the region if you can take some details in terms of competition? Thank you very much.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Okay. A few things. 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 22-23%. We narrowed it to the higher end of our previous guidance. That's what we can share now. In terms of competition, it's something that we've lived with for a long time, always, I would say, even more so in the last four years, in the last four years or three years. We work on our competitive advantages to make them stronger. That's our product, our unit cost, and the strength of our network. We're confident that we can continue delivering in 2026 and beyond the strong margins you've seen before.

The IPOs you alluded to, those are companies that were public before. They are 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.

Speaker 0

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Speaker 7

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Fitzgerald with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

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

Speaker 1

Yeah. 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. For those new markets, for the next year, normally they mature, and then they go in the first category of adding frequencies to those new markets. We normally open markets with three to four weekly flights, and then we go building up. That is more or less how we have deployed growth in the past years and how we've done it. Most of it goes to frequencies and then a smaller portion goes to new markets.

Speaker 2

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

Speaker 0

I would say it's pretty much in line. It's pretty much in line. 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. There is a noticeable improvement there. Overall, we're still behind where we thought we were going to be if we had talked three years ago. 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.

Speaker 2

Okay. That's really helpful, Collar. Just as a follow-up, I was wondering if you could talk—you've talked in the past about 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.

Speaker 0

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. There's an opportunity we have in doing better 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. 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. Also our premium economy cabin, which we call Economy Extra. We haven't given that enough visibility, and there's nice upside there.

Yes, that's where we're focusing, and we expect to continue increasing revenues in those categories.

Speaker 7

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Guilherme Mendes with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Yes. Thanks, guys. Pedro and 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 other regions do you see, let's say, higher than average competitive environment? The second one, Pedro, you also mentioned about FIL being the wild card for 2026. Given that potential environment, do you see Copa changing its hedging policy in some way? Thank you.

Speaker 1

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 load 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, it 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 factor and in our Brazil price them. So we're seeing improvement in those.

Q4 should be better than Q3, and Q3 was better than Q2. It is going in the right direction. Not all the way back to where it was at the end of 2023, but it is in the right direction. Argentina has been booming, has been quite a market with all the economic changes that the new government has implemented in Argentina. It 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. The traveling public in a country that loves to travel has been growing at a very strong pace. That has attracted a lot of capacity from us and from everyone. When that happens, yields soften a little bit, but they are still very strong.

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. That's probably going to be the case with most other airlines serving the country. That's going to stabilize, I would say.

Speaker 0

Thanks. Pedro, maybe on the hedging policy.

Speaker 1

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. Usually, many hedges are on WTI or Brent. What has shot up lately is the crack spread. It's jet fuel. I don't know for how long that's going to happen. That's going to stay up there. No, 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.

Speaker 0

Very clear. Thank you, Pedro.

Speaker 7

Thank you. 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 ahead. Savi, you may be on mute.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Sorry about that. Just can I get an update on the densification plan? Just how many aircraft are yet to go? Just curious on how much of next year's unit cost might be driven by that and if there's anything kind of further that it will drive in 2027.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Thank you, Savi. We've done around half of the densification that we planned to. That was one additional row, so around six more seats per plane. We've done half of it, so around 25 of the, it's about 50 that we said we were going to do, and we have another 25 left that we are planning to do during 2026.

Speaker 3

Okay. That's helpful. 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?

Speaker 1

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

Speaker 3

Understood. Thank you.

Speaker 7

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our last question will come from the line of Jens Spiess with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Hello. Thank you for taking my call. Sorry, I joined late. If you already answered this question, please disregard. I just wanted to get a sense of how much conservatism is built into your guidance. Backing out fourth quarter at the mid-range of your annual guidance for 2025, we get to an operating margin of around 22% and a yield of 11.4. I just wanted 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.

Speaker 1

Our hedging, 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%.

Speaker 0

All right. Perfect. In terms of yields, it does imply a deceleration of yields versus the third quarter. I just wanted to get a sense on that and how, yeah, how you're looking into the next few quarters maybe. Thank you.

Speaker 1

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

Speaker 0

Oh, sorry. Yeah. I mean, looking at your RASM guidance for the full year, we are able to back out the fourth quarter RASM, right, which does imply, I think, 11.4 and does imply a deceleration quarter over quarter. 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? Thank you.

Speaker 1

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

Speaker 0

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

Speaker 1

Bye.

Speaker 7

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

Speaker 1

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. As always, you can feel confident that we will keep working really hard to strengthen and develop our competitive advantage. I am confident we will continue delivering very strong results in years to come. Thank you and have a great day.

Speaker 7

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