Aegean Airlines S.A. (AEGN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Galeigh, your Chorus call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Aegean Airlines conference call to present and discuss the full year 2019 financial results. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Eftichios Vassilakis, Chairman. Mr. Vassilakis, you may now proceed.

Yes, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our annual call. Needless to say, it is a rather strange and difficult period for the world, and in particular, for global aviation. However, the focus of the call today is to present to you in summary the results of 2019. And then once I do that, I will say a few words about the coronavirus crisis and some initial steps that are being taken. But what I need to say is I will not be able to take questions about this today. We will, however, schedule a call in about 3 to 4 weeks from now specifically to discuss the coronavirus crisis and its effects on our company and our response once things have become a little bit clear about different issues. So let me start, and we'll take it from there. So 2019 for Aegean, I think, was extremely successful year. It was a year that we have chosen not to grow in terms of fleet numbers. We invested ourselves in stretching the season in the beginning and the end of the year, trying to improve on the weakest of the, I would say, parameters of our operation, basically the utilization of our aircraft to combat the extreme seasonality of our market because it is predominantly, of course, a leisure-driven, a tourism-driven market. And because of that, the beginning and the end of the year are typically very weak. Our weakest quarters are Q1 and Q4. And what I can say for 2019 was that this first significant step we took in the effort to improve our utilization, try to build the operational groups during either March, April, May or late October, November, have gone very well, and as a result, we have achieved with the same fleet a revenue increase of 10% for the company and a significant improvement also in terms of our EBITDAR and bottom line. Now the reason that I consider this improvement very significant is because, as you may know, the majority of airlines around Europe faced a reduction in their performance in 2019, and at the same time, the effects of IFRS 16 in terms of burdening the companies with accelerated costs coming from the treatment of the aircraft leases as well as, in our case, for the costs of the bond issue that we took early on in March of 2018 -- sorry, 2019, which actually, these funds were not employed for the majority of the year. These 2 things together created a burden for the company which -- beyond which we have to go in order to achieve an improvement in the results. So I think with the same fleet in a year that the company -- the companies in Europe in average were rather behind in terms of the profitability and in terms of their yields relative to the year before, to be able to improve load factor, RASK, and the bottom line despite these burdens of IFRS 16 and the cost of the loan, which were not -- funds were not yet employed, is a very good result. This result was particularly strong in the last quarter of the year. Indeed, the last quarter of the year, the increase of revenue was from EUR 245 million in 2018 to EUR 276 million in 2019. That is well over 10%. It's actually about 14%. And in fact, the last quarter of last year was the first quarter in our history -- the first Q4 in our history that we did not report a loss, we were actually marginally positive. As a result, the total result for the year is no less than our 9 months result, which is not very typical for our company. So if you want to look at some other figures, the EBITDAR of the company went from EUR 244 million to EUR 272 million, an increase of 11%. The EBITDA figure, of course, was very -- increased due to the change of IFRS at EUR 269 million, but of course, it's not compatible. Relative to the year before, the pretax profit went up by 8.2% to EUR 106.7 million, and the net profit for the period was up by 16% from EUR 68 million to EUR 78.5 million. The traffic was increased in overall 7%, with the majority of the increase coming from the international network, close to 11%. This, I might add, again, is significantly higher than the growth of Greece in terms of overall arrivals from abroad, which stood around about 3.5%. And so we achieved an 11% growth international traffic whereas arrivals -- tourism arrivals in the country by air stood at around 3.5% to 4% of the overall market. So that was a significant overperformance for our company, and we even achieved a marginal improvement in our load factor, which is again significant because I believe this would be the third or fourth year in a row where we achieved some measure of improvement in the load factor, and given this came at -- with stretching the season and actually operating a longer season, this is actually doubly important because one would have expected both RASK and load factors to have been compromised by the attempt to utilize aircraft at a more effective -- with a more effective way. So all in all, a very successful year for us, a year which has left the company with -- which ended with the company accepting its first neos, its first new engine option A320s. So -- and actually, we have up until now accepted 4 aircraft since December. So going into our delivery program for the aircraft, where I have to say that the majority -- the overwhelming majority of aircraft to be delivered in 2020 and 2021, in other words, all but 2 aircraft are direct leases from lessors, so not requiring financing for '20 or '21 for these aircraft. This has already been initiated. And of course, we look forward to using these aircraft, so that our cost side, whether it is fuel consumption, cost per ASK or number of seats per aircraft is actually improved. Of course, given where we all are today, it's very important to mention that our liquidity at the end of the year stood around about EUR 505 million, and actually, this number -- sorry, mistake, at EUR 516 million, and our liquidity, in fact, around mid-March, around -- sorry, early March was around EUR 500 million as well. So this liquidity has been there since the end of the year, and it's still there now. I think I would have to say that the most important element of 2019 right now is the fact that it puts us in a good, strong starting position for what is clearly going to be a very difficult period. The coronavirus crisis is something unprecedented at least in European aviation, probably in global aviation as well. We are very much -- we understand we are at the beginning of the crisis, and there are many elements that are unknown to us all, which is exactly why I am not going to take questions today. I'm just trying to put down a few of the things that we think will protect us or guide us through the crisis. But clearly, what we can say is the following: Our first 2 months of operation this year, January and February were again continuing at positive pace of both load factor improvements, additional winter flying and revenue improvement on a first-flight basis. This all was the world we were in until the 24th of February when the outbreak in Italy became visible and understood to the European public. And then from the 24th, 25th of February and on, we are gradually living in a different world where in the last 3 weeks, we have seen, of course, right from the start, a fall in demand -- a drastic fall in demand in terms of incoming bookings. And following that, as the virus spread to different countries of Europe and the effects were visible, gradual government action, restricting flights, restricting access of different nationalities from market to market, different nations taking different actions outside the EU and even within the EU and leading over to about now 5 days ago to the elevation of the coronavirus to a pandemic status by the WHO. The historical discontinuation, I would say, of access or flights between U.S. and Europe was announced. And then several different actions taken by states culminating to the decision taken by the European Commission a couple of days ago that for the next few weeks, customers from outside the EU would not be admissible into the EU countries. As a result, all these restrictions and the fear of the people and the gradual shutdown of the markets have, of course, led to a dramatic change in our demand and the load factor of our flights. Of course, we have taken certain steps to respond. First, I would say the first thing we did was trying to ensure we took all measures and we increased the measures of hygiene, safety for our customers and for our crews. We, therefore, changed the cleaning processes of the aircraft between flights and over the night, and we instituted a very specific disinfection process in cases we were notified by authorities that there were suspect cases aboard our flights. So that was step #1. Step #2 was the gradual reduction of our schedule, which started, I would say, reasonably softly but has certainly accelerated through time and which will lead actually by -- today, I'd say we're flying at around about 45% to 50% -- today, we'll be flying around 50% of our regular schedule. But by the end of this week, we will be flying at probably around 20% of our regular schedule. Now this level of 20% of low -- of our regular schedule or below, we intend to remain for the next few weeks, and it's quite likely that this level will have to be reduced further as the restrictions imposed by EU and individual countries actually takes effect. So it's very likely actually that we could go as far down as 10% of our operation within the coming 2 weeks. Now what does this mean? Well, obviously, it means that our revenue -- incoming revenue is dramatically reduced. It also means, however, since about 70%, 72% of our costs, I would say, 73% of our costs are either flight or passenger related, that as of next week, we will have also a very different cost base, a significantly lower cost base, meaning on a day-by-day basis. Our major cost will remain at EUR 32 million to EUR 34 million a month, which is at our current size of operation, what I would call our fixed costs, which we refer to our overheads, our leases and our personnel, which are to be incurred even if we do not fly. And I think the first measure of comparison for the ability of the company to cope with this crisis is to look at our initial liquidity level, which stands at around 38% of our annual revenue, and compare that with the EUR 32 million to EUR 34 million of fixed cost of our current structure when we do not fly. So this is the amount that we would lose absent any further action and absent any flight or revenue, assuming that we take a position where our entire fleet is grounded. Now of course, as one reduces schedule and as one finds oneself in this very unique situation of reduced demand, that is very much pan-European and, to a certain extent, global, one does not stay idle on the cost side either or on the cash flow side either. Clearly, the first steps that are taken other than reducing the schedule to a significantly lower base, to a fraction of what it was is to go back to one suppliers, where one has built, I believe, very strong relationships as a successful startup 20 years ago, that have gone through 3 crises and survived, and in fact, grew after the crises, and more recently, the Greek crisis of 2010, I would say, 2016, '17. And since we've built, I believe, solid relationships with these suppliers and shown to them that we are a resilient company that knows how to deal with crises that comes out usually quite strong at the end of them, we believe that it is quite feasible to achieve reasonable arrangements with most of our suppliers and our long-term partners, whatever the nature of the cooperation we have, in order to facilitate fast and through this particular period. So I believe that through these actions, we will be able, at least on the cash flow level, to achieve an improvement on the burn of cash, even on the scenario that we arrived to a complete no flying period, which could last some -- a few months, none of us know. And therefore, this could further alleviate the costs and the effect of having to sustain our base through this crisis. Of course, what happens to cash flow and what happens to costs are not the same thing because one thing is to defer certain obligations in agreements with your suppliers, and another thing is to actually change the nature of those obligations. So not the same topic. At the first stage, we are looking at the cash flow and the liquidity. Having said the word liquidity, we have also had discussions with our local banks and intend to draw some additional standing letters of -- standing -- sorry, standing lines of credit -- secured lines of credit that we can use in case we need such assistance. Of course, it is not our intention to burn through our entire cash position, which we have now. And I think that's not very likely to happen in a few months' time, given the numbers that I'm presenting you, but it's very important to build that additional liquidity barrier, and we will do that. Can you -- can I take a 1-minute break, please? I need to address the call. [Break]

Forgive me for the break. So as I said, we have taken action to discuss with our banks locally for additional standing lines for short-term credit, and we are positive that we'll be able to complete that very soon. So between the initial cash position, the discussion and effort with our suppliers to defer certain obligations to a later stage, which, I believe, the entire industry will be pretty much doing, which we expect our suppliers to positively respond because of the experience we've had and the quality of cooperation we have in the past. Then between these 2 things and the level of our fixed cost base, I think, we are quite well positioned to weather a few months' disruption, that will be very unpleasant and very costly, but is, in our view, survivable with certitude if the duration is reasonably short, meaning a few months where our company has the resources to overcome. At the same time, I think it's very clear that all around Europe and indeed around the world, governments will be examining policies to address issues in the most affected sectors, and I believe aviation is probably the one which is most affected than anything else. Therefore, we would expect that European or local policies developed will also be supportive in either to reduce costs or in supporting further liquidity measures. Therefore, I think this is also an important topic, where I cannot say much more because it's very early. But it is very clear that the pan-European discussion on this issue is very live, and by some parties put forth in a very urgent way, we have the good fortune of having, for our size, a significant amount of liquidity and a significant amount of flexibility in dealing with our costs, but this does not mean by any means that we will not also endeavor to try to achieve an absolutely necessary policy shift in terms of aiding the airline sector. I think I have given you the best of my knowledge and our understanding of where we are today. I would like to repeat first that -- the fact that we start off an excellent 2019 and a very good 2 months before the beginning of the crisis. That in itself is the most important proof that we are one of the companies that do have a very good, I would say, strength and endurance to go through this crisis. It will not be easy, but we will be there. And at the same time, I'd like to say that, of course, even fixed costs can be addressed if the crisis lines -- lasts for a longer period of time. But we are not the kind of company that will go first after its employees. We believe that our employees are the strength of our business together with our reputation and our quality of service. They are the ones that bring our quality of service. It's very important, especially in a country like this, which has gone through crisis in the last 10 years, that companies do make an additional effort to protect their most useful and most productive assets and the most loyal assets, which is their employee base. So we will try as much as we can not to affect our employee base at least very soon into this crisis. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention. I hope we have shown in the past that we are resilient. I believe we'll show it one more time now. And I hope all of you will have the least amount of problems in your health and business with the current crisis that is actually facing all of us. Thank you very much. And I will, as we said earlier on, set a call between 3 and 4 weeks to now to discuss more concretely and with more figures our response to the current crisis. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant evening.