All participants, please stand by. Your conference is ready to begin. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Cargojet conference call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Ms. Pauline Dhillon. Please go ahead, Ms. Dhillon.
Thank you, Marie. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our Q1 2023 results. With me on the call today are Ajay Virmani, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Jamie Porteous, our Chief Strategy Officer, Scott Calver, our Chief Financial Officer, and Sanjeev Maini, our Senior Vice President, Finance. After opening remarks about the quarter, we will open the call for questions. I would like to point out that certain statements made on this call, such as those relating to our forecasted revenues, costs, and strategic plans, are forward-looking within the meaning of the applicable securities laws. This also includes references to non-GAAP measures like adjusted EBITDA, adjusted earnings per share, and return on invested capital.
Please refer to our most recent press release in MD&A for important assumptions and cautionary statements relating to forward-looking information and for reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP income. I will now turn the call over to Ajay for his remarks.
Thank you, Pauline. Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining us our Q1 earnings call. Given the tough industry and macroeconomic backdrop, we are pleased with our stable Q1 performance. Another factor that has had a disproportionate impact on our volumes is the shift in consumer spending away from goods to spending on travel and leisure activities during the post-pandemic period. Consumers were not able to travel or go to restaurants, theaters, or movies during the past two years of COVID. We are seeing a higher proportion of disposable income being spent on travel and leisure activities versus pre-pandemic levels. We expect this mix to normalize in the later part of this year. Our strategic decision to place a high conviction bet on building ACMI business has allowed us to soften the volatility of earnings despite a challenging economic environment and a lopsided consumer spending mix.
ACMI business now accounts for one-third of our overall revenues. Let us now touch on the more immediate task of managing in a challenging economic environment. Softer industry results as well as the challenging macroeconomic data remains a major headwind for our business. Despite the recent downward trend in the inflation rate over the last few months, we do not expect interest rates to decline in the near term. We are focusing hard on our cost management across the entire business and more specifically, 1. working closely with our largest customers to rightsize our network to reduce block hours while maintaining delivery standards. Block hours is a key driver of our direct costs, and if we can find opportunities without sacrificing services, we can drive efficiencies. 2. identifying opportunities for 4-5 surplus B757 aircraft for ACMI contracts or dry lease options.
We believe these actions will significantly offset aircraft costs and depreciation expense. 3. With our second flight simulator coming online in Q3 of this year, we plan to operationalize 100% of pilot training in Hamilton, our house. This will result in significant cost savings in travel, hotel, and crew expenses. 4. W ith a greater ability to plan our maintenance schedules, we are targeting a significant improvement in our maintenance productivity. Given the hectic peak flying over the past few years, such planning was sub-optimized. 5. We have eliminated all temporary labor in our operational areas and are targeting zero overtime goal. 6. We are reviewing every line item and focused on reducing overall expenditure in all areas and have frozen non-essential hires. Our cost reduction initiatives are in the early stages of implementation.
We expect to see additional benefits from these in the coming quarters. On the capital expenditure side, at the last quarter call, we shared our desire to exercise options to delay aircraft conversions. We are exercising the optionality to better align the timing of capital expenditures closer to the planned conversion dates of aircraft scheduled to support future growth. We are going to be targeting significantly lower CapEx in 2023 than previously announced. Scott will give you more details on our CapEx spend. Despite a challenging economic environment, we remain focused on identifying new revenue opportunities and are aggressively pursuing new ACMI and ad hoc charter opportunities. We believe we can help our customers further streamline their networks. We'll continue to strike the right balance between cost management and staying prepared for opportunities when the tide turns. It is a delicate balancing act.
Training pilots and maintenance personnel takes time. Likewise, securing aircraft and bringing them on our certificates and making them operational takes time. For a highly capital-intensive business, long-term planning is just as important as the short-term cost reduction. With a strong balance sheet and a solid liquidity position, blue-chip portfolio of customers and partnerships, and a superior on-time track record, we are well-positioned to weather this storm. While we cannot predict the economic cycles, our business model remains resilient and long-term macro trends that drive our business remain intact. We expect to resume growth trajectory as soon as the economy turns the corner. With a strong, committed team, we remain focused on executing on our long-term strategy and creating shareholder value. I will now pass on the call to our CFO, Scott Calver, for an update on the business.
Thank you, Ajay. Good morning, everyone. I'll first build on what AJ just previously mentioned as it relates to our balance sheet, an update for our planned capital expenditures. In the last quarter, we had a subsequent event note outlining the opportunity to sell the feedstock for 2 Boeing 777s to support general growth. For this current reporting period, you will see assets held for sale on our balance sheet. This includes the 2 777s from the Q4 , and we've added a 3rd 777. If you go back to the Q3 last year, you'll remember that we exercised our option for 1 777. This 1 777 from the third quarter last year and the 3 that we have disclosed on our Q1 balance sheet completes the deferral of 4 777s for general growth.
We have not changed our plans for the first four 777s as these are essential to support customer requirements or what we refer to as strategic revenue growth. We have not canceled any of our conversion slots for both strategic and general revenue growth. At this time, we still believe that these are essential to support Cargojet's long-term growth strategy, and we are confident that future feedstock can be acquired closer to the scheduled conversion dates under similar terms and conditions. As Ajay mentioned, we continue to work closely with our customers and we will manage our fleet size accordingly. In the short term, a reduction in non-cash depreciation expense does not align with our goal to maintain flexibility to provide exceptional customer service for various scenarios as required or potentially required by our customers.
Having said that, we are pursuing an expansion of short-term dry leasing opportunities to enhance earnings. An update on our profitability and our cost management initiatives. We are pleased with closing the quarter with $75 million in EBITDA, despite an $8 million reduction compared to the prior year, which was largely driven by crew depreciation and one-time extraordinary event last year with emergency COVID ad hoc charters from Asia. Our domestic overnight revenues at $84 million were almost flat to prior year. It is worth noting that the average quarterly revenue pre-COVID was $66 million. This is a baseline lift of 27%. Our ACMI revenue for the quarter was $65.7 million versus a pre-COVID average of $16.6 million, a lift of approximately 300% over a three-year period.
At $20 million, our all-in charter business remains steady given the overall soft demand after the COVID peak. It was a one-time opportunity for charters last year with a reported revenue of $43.5 million. We are pleased with charter revenue coming in at just over $20 million for the Q1 in 2023. As for the impact of gross margin, the pricing last year for these emergency charters in an environment of constrained capacity was significantly more attractive compared to the typical market conditions that currently exist. For crew costs, there is a five-month lag to have a pilot fully trained and released into our schedule.
We do not have enough capacity in Hamilton with our new 767 flight simulator. The backlog of training is expensive as we outsource the training to a service provider in the United States. While the pilots are in training, the overtime is high for our existing pilots. The good news is that we've made significant progress in March, the progress since then is on track with our expectations. The progress on other cost management initiatives, as Ajay just said, the most significant driver of cost in our business is managing our block hours. We recently further optimized our domestic network by eliminating a direct flight between Edmonton and Hamilton. The savings from this initiative starts in the beginning of the Q2 .
The use of temporary employees has nearly been eliminated with the exception of temporary employees that are required to support certain customer requirements that are paid for by the customer. Cargojet continues to manage vacant positions where possible. There will always be exceptions when a vacant position needs to be filled, but generally speaking, we are making progress to align our costs to the current environment. On a year-over-year basis, if you adjust back to prior year levels for crew costs, non-cash depreciation, and further adjust for the one-time charters in the Q1 of 2022, the gross margin is consistent to prior year. Cargojet's Adjusted Free Cash Flow was flat compared to the Q1 last year, mostly due to a reduction in maintenance capital expenditures.
We closed the quarter with our borrowings being down slightly compared to the start of the year. It is anticipated that the $75 million US dollar sale proceeds for the first two Boeing triple sevens will be received in the Q2 . This will further deliver the balance sheet. Cost management, along with the opportunities to better time our capital expenditures, support one of our primary objectives or what we refer to internally as our guiding North Star, our debt to EBITDA ratio. In conclusion, since we started down this journey to manage the business during this down cycle, we are pleased with the progress made so far. The trend lines are encouraging. The team is committed to further improvements to achieve our short-term goals while not losing sight that the fundamentals remain strong for our long-term strategic plan.
This concludes our opening remarks, and we will now open up the call to questions.
Thank you. We will now take the questions from the telephone lines. If you have a question and you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before making your selection. If you have a question, please press star one on your device's keypad. At any time, you may cancel your question by pressing star two. Please press star one at this time if you have a question. There will be a brief pause while the participant register for questions. Thank you for your patience. The first question is from Chris Murray from ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Thanks, folks. Good morning. Just maybe going back a little bit to, I guess the first question is on cost. Can you guys maybe elaborate a little bit about some of the levers that you're working on to look at getting these margins maybe right, more right-sized or the cost more right-sized, to the revenue profile you're thinking for the next little?
Well, as I mentioned, we are looking at right sizing the network with the right fleet and eliminating block hours. The second part is we're looking at all our personnel costs over time. And third is greater focus on procurement, our supplier costs and any supplies we buy. These are the three areas that we focused on and, you know, if you want further, we can certainly get on one-on-one with it. But these are three major drivers of cost and reduction of cost. We are working on all three simultaneously.
Okay. Is it fair to think that, I mean, you started mentioning that you've been working on this now for maybe about a quarter. Is it fair to think that a lot of these initiatives will have the cost profile right size, you know, as we get into Q2 or Q3, or is it something that you think could take a little bit longer to get these changes made?
We just, you know, because we didn't start working. You know, we started these initiatives more like in the middle of the Q1 when we, when we saw the trends and macro trends. I would, you know, we have to be, as I said, we have to be very careful in balancing this because, obviously, you know, if demands go up, you have to be ready. You can't just on Monday morning or Tuesday get ready and handle these. We have to be very cautious in how we dismantle some of the stuff that has been built during the COVID times.
Now I would imagine that probably, another two quarters we'll see the full impact on some of the changes we are making slowly because, you know, customers are important to us, and we wanna maintain the service. We also have full consultations with them when we sort of do certain changes to schedule that results in cost reductions. I, yeah, I would say that probably for the next 2 quarters this will continue on.
Okay. My other question is on the ACMI business. You know, there's always been some thought that this was gonna be relatively resilient. I go back to the investor day, and I think you folks mentioned that, you know, the way you're positioned with DHL, that it would be, you'd probably be the most favored client or operator, I guess, of that service for them. Can you just talk a little bit about what you're seeing in that ACMI market and if you think that, you know, there's any further opportunity for growth, or are you just gonna be able to maintain what you have at this point?
you know, if you look at ACMI business, it's not immune to the macro trends. I mean, whether it's a network, whether it's ACMI, when the shipping is less, the demand is less, it affects all businesses. We can tell you that we have not had a reduction in number of planes. Yes, some block hours have been reduced by DHL. All I can tell you is that we do have a preferential, strategic partnership with them, and we have had the softest landing of any carriers they use, because number of carriers, almost every carrier has lost planes and routes.
Having that relationship has certainly helped us to maintain the number of planes, and we do get opportunities from them on fill-in basis when other carriers are going for maintenance and other things. We're the first one who gets a call on these. You know, in the, in the summertime we are, or pretty soon, I think we are starting two routes that are strictly, you know, fill in for other carriers or maintenance issues. We continue to be a preferred carrier. We continue to provide them with a service that exceeds anybody else, and we continue to service them in a way that we remain number one with them. As far as the ACMI market is concerned, it is, it goes in line with the macro trends.
I can tell you that, you know, whatever the trends are, it follows every line of business, whether it's charters or whether it's ACMI.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Cameron Doerksen from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks very much. Just a question on the, I guess the domestic, the domestic network. Obviously there's not a huge amount of visibility, going out to the next couple quarters, but I'm just wondering what your sort of core customers are telling you as far as volumes. Like what are they seeing in the markets? You know, what's kind of their expectations for capacity needs over the next couple of quarters?
Yeah. Good morning, Cameron. It's Jamie. It's, I think, you know, as AJ said in the opening remarks, we're definitely seeing, you know, the, you know, the global and here domestically, sort of the macroeconomic factors that are affecting all modes of transportation are certainly affecting our domestic network. I think as we indicated to you and others, going into the quarter, you know, coming out of, you know, a strong year-over-year domestic growth, we thought that the Q1 would see, you know, sort of low single digit growth. We obviously, you know, came in flat. I think the indications are from our customers that we'll continue to see soft demand on the domestic for capacity on the domestic network for the balance of the year.
That's why we've taken some of the initiatives, as Ajay noted, on the adjustments to our capacity and our schedule to meet that demand going forward.
Okay. No, that's that's helpful. Just a second quick question. You mentioned in the prepared remarks about some potential for dry lease opportunities. Just wonder if you can, you know, can expand on what these opportunities might be.
We have, you know, initially we brought in the 757s domestically to get us some more required lift and demand that was, you know, that was asked of us by our customers. Also it provided a direct service to a lot of stations to further improve our services and take out the 767s that, you know, were higher yielding in the marketplace from ACMI and charter opportunities. Because of the certain macro trends, as we all know, we have now continued with the 767s in domestic operation because it reduces the number of block hours and also the cost advantage.
That will free up between 4 and 5, 757s at this point in time, where we are trying to market these as dry lease opportunities or wet lease or ACMI, whatever we can do. We are actively going to be looking at these opportunities in the next coming weeks as dry lease or any other opportunities we can find those. There would be about 4 to 5, 757s.
Okay. No, that's great color. Thanks very much.
Thank you. The next question is from Kevin Chiang, from CIBC. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks for taking my question here. Maybe some macro question. You know, you were pretty cautious on your Q4 earnings call in early March. Just wondering, like, are things worse than you anticipated then? Or just, you know, a continuation of the cautious tone that you had in Q4 and you're just providing more granularity on some of the initiatives you're taking on the cost front here to rightsize the business? Or are you taking more steps than you had thought you'd be taking back in March when you provided your, I guess, your initial outlook for 2023?
Yeah. Good morning, Kevin. It's Jamie. I think definitely indications are that demand is softer than we would have anticipated even back in March when we were reviewing our Q4 results. As you know, as you recall, we saw, you know, Q4 of the year, as I indicated earlier to Cameron's question. I think, you know, we saw strong year-over-year growth when I look at the domestic network that really fell off. You know, it was a unique peak period for us, where December, our traditional peak volume sort of fell significantly, through sort of all facets of our business, all segments of our business, but particularly on the domestic demand. That made us a little bit more cautious about what our expectations were going forward.
I think initially, you know, back in the fall, we were talking about, you know, high single-digit year-over-year growth for the domestic business. I think we tempered that in our Q4 earnings call to, you know, low single-digit and, you know, our actual results being flat. We think that's an indication that we're gonna be a little bit more cautious about volumes on the domestic and for the balance of the year for the net.
All indications from all of our customers is pretty consistent that sort of overall consumer demand is lower than people expected, and that's why we've taken some initiatives that we addressed earlier on driving block hour costs out of our network, rightsizing the aircraft types that are operating on the domestic network, you know, all with the goal of trying to maintain the margins. That we've historically had on our business, regardless of what the revenues are. That spills over obviously into the ACMI business, as AJ just commented on with lower demand. Although we're still operating the same number of aircraft, and we'll be adding additional aircraft on an ACMI basis, and should have...
You know, we'll continue to have year-over-year growth just because of the annualized impact of some of the routes that we added in 2022. Although they may not be flying the same number of block hours that they did. On the charter side, you know, as Scott mentioned in his remarks, we're very satisfied with the ad hoc charter revenue segment in the first quarter at the high end of what we would expect, and we would expect that to continue for the balance of the year just by the nature of the fact that we have additional crew and certainly have additional aircraft available for ad hoc charter, ad hoc charters, as compared to what we would normally have during a normal year.
That's helpful. I know this is a difficult question to answer, but, you know, if you could flex out the network, the way you see fit, I know you have to, you have to have these discussions with your customers. How many excess block hours do you think you flew in Q1 versus what you think you could have flown if you're kind of maximizing or minimizing the cost per block hour? Is there a way to think of, you know, what you see as maybe, you know, the opportunity set here to kind of adjust the network, you know, relative to maybe what you flew in Q1, just given the environment we find ourselves in today?
Yeah, that's a hard question to answer, Kevin. You know, it's an ongoing process, as you can imagine. We can't change the network. We can't just change it on a daily basis. We have, you know, service commitments to meet for all of our customers across the country to the 15 cities that we fly to. You know, we do things on a daily basis in terms of adjusting the capacity. We have the benefit of being able to interchange 757s. One of the reasons why, you know, we prefer the 757 and the 767 aircraft with a common flight deck where we can interchange pilots. A pilot can literally get off of a 767 and get onto a 757. We don't have any restrictions in that matter.
We'll adjust, may not necessarily adjust block hours, but it will reduce some operating costs if we're able to downsize, you know, a 767 on a certain route to a 757 or consolidate 2 757s into a 767. You know, we do a very good job of matching the actual demand and the actual pounds that we're carrying to the actual hours that we're flying on any given night. It's an ongoing process that'll evolve over the year.
Okay. you know, I'll leave it there. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Thanks, Kevin.
Thank you. The next question is from David Ocampo from Cormark Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone.
Morning, David.
Jamie, I guess when we think about the domestic network and the ACMI business, and we've certainly seen a slowdown, but just curious, how close are we to the minimum volume guarantees that you might have with some of your customers?
Yeah, it's a good question, David. We're still well above those numbers. I think as we've, you know, we've indicated to you and to others before, you know, about 80, 75%-80% of our capacity is, on the domestic network is made up of contract customers and their minimum volume guarantees. The balance is ad hoc customers that we trade with on a daily basis, but also for peak and excess demand from our customers, which is, you know, none of them are close to their minimums. I don't anticipate having that issue this year at all with any domestic contract customer.
I think as we may have indicated before, in the history of our business, we've only come across that on the domestic once, and it was during the peak of COVID, where we had one customer who, historically was only in the B2B space, has since evolved into both B2B and B2C that was impacted, and was below their minimums for a period of time. But that was back in 2020. I don't anticipate that happening with any customers this year.
Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Maybe next one is for Scott. I mean, last quarter you guys disclosed that you're deferring $320 million of CapEx, and that number could increase to $400 million. Just curious if there's any update on this number or if you found more pockets of CapEx that you can defer or cancel.
Yeah. Really, at this time, all that we've made plans for and committed to is that CAD 110 million that you see on the assets held for sale. It's still day by day, week by week as far as working with our customers and just seeing how the year shapes up to go any further than what we have optionality to do.
Is there any recourse on the build slots if you decide not to go through with it?
It's a very small deposit. We've got a lot of time to. It's typically a year before the conversion, before you're up against that next milestone. They're small deposits.
We can extend the conversion dates as well.
Okay. Got it. Thanks. Thanks a lot, guys. That's it for me.
Thank you. The next question is from Konark Gupta from Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning. This is Joey filling in for Konark. My first question is regarding CapEx. How do you see total CapEx trending over the next three quarters and in 2024?
Yeah. Good morning. If you go back to our guidance that we issued at our Investor Day last September, and you look at the mid-range for 2023, it was CAD 350 million. Right now, that CAD 350 million, we've got the CAD 110 million for sale. That's in our current assets, the assets held for sale. That gets us down to CAD 240 million. We could see it being as low as CAD 200 million. It's gonna be somewhere just around CAD 200 million or north of CAD 200 million. There's other delays that are out of our control, like the first 777. We thought originally at Investor Day that was gonna come late this year. That's pushed out as much as six or seven months.
Maybe longer, we don't know. Probably, close to that CAD 200 million would be a fair number.
Okay, great. Thank you. I guess my second question, is how soon can you guys add more aircraft to DHL this year? What are your current expectations for ACMI revenue in 2024?
Good morning, Joey, it's Jamie. The, yeah, we'll continue with the 15 aircraft that we're operating for DHL today, as you may be aware. We, you know, we're gonna have year-over-year 3 of those aircraft we added to routes in 2022. As I indicated earlier, you know, the total block hours may be less than what we were flying on average in 2022 'cause we had some long haul routes to Asia, particularly that when demand softened, DHL redeployed those aircraft to other routes within their network. We plan to continue to operate those, and we're working closely with DHL to see what growth is, opportunities are for the balance of the year in terms of additional aircraft.
It's one of the reasons why we've looked at freeing up some aircraft out of our domestic fleet, both on the 757 and the 767, but, you know, it remains to be seen what. We're going to temper our growth expectations for the balance of the year.
Okay, great. Thank you. That's all the questions for me.
Thank you. The next question is from Tim James from TD Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks very much. Good morning. Maybe Jamie, just returning to your comments on the DHL aircraft then. Can you just walk us through for the remainder of this year and I guess 2024, what incremental lanes or route responsibility you'll have with DHL? I believe AJ mentioned earlier about some discussions around a couple of new ones coming this year. Can you just sort of indicate, like you've said that you'll continue with 15 aircraft, just sort of the moving parts as we look forward, what you'll be starting up with them?
As I said, we'll continue with the 15 routes or the 15 aircraft that we're operating presently. We have 2 other routes to the Caribbean and Central America that are anticipated to start at the end in the second quarter, sometime the end of May or the end of June. Those, you know, are still yet to be determined whether they'll be long-term routes. We have the aircraft available. We plan that would give us 17 aircraft, and we'll continue to look at other. There's a lot of ad hoc opportunities as well with DHL where there's specific demand on weekends or other times, other routes that they may want us to operate the aircraft.
That would, you know, other than peak season, the additional two routes starting this summer would be the only two that I would anticipate we'll see growth on this year.
Those are ad hoc opportunities. We don't know whether they are permanent at this stage.
Correct.
Okay. We shouldn't think of those as part of that 7-year agreement and what you talked about in that. This is incremental and again temporary, to that whole agreement at the time.
Yeah. I mean, they are well within the committed 7-year plan. I don't know whether you wanna. I mean, it's a total revenue plan, and I think.
Mm.
the revenue, they're certainly on target on what they have committed even with.
Okay. Okay, that's helpful. Any commentary you can provide if we just really think kinda real-time here, just even since quarter end in terms of volume trends that you're seeing in the domestic network in particular?
I think as I mentioned earlier, I think we're seeing, you know, sort of continued softening, we're going into the summer months, which traditionally, you know, the Q2 is sort of the softer quarter for us in terms of demand on the domestic network once we get into typically, second and Q3 , sort of the crossover between June, July, and August. You know, the flat year-over-year domestic revenue that we experienced in the Q1 , as I mentioned before, was a little bit below our initial expectations when we, when we gave guidance, or not guidance, but gave our opinion back on the, on the Q4 earnings call that we thought we would see, you know, low single digit year-over-year growth.
I think the fact that we're at, you know, flat in the Q1 is an indication that we're gonna continue to see flat or even a little bit of a reduction in demand, continued reduction in demand in the certainly in the second and the beginning of the Q3 . That's why we're taking the initiative to, you know, drive block hours out of the domestic network so that the capacity and the cost meet the demand, so we can protect our margins.
Okay. If I could just one last question. I mean, That still seems, you know, if you get slight declines, given the economy, given all the dollars going to, you know, to travel, given... I mean, I know the domestic competition is early days, but that still sounds to me like a fairly good result in this environment. So you're not... I mean, I know it's not quite what you thought, you know, a quarter ago or several months ago, but do you not still sort of feel that that's actually a good result against this backdrop?
Yeah. No. I We agree with you 100%. I think it's You know, we have a, you know, combination of the, you know, the domestic contracts with the minimums that we have, the demand that, you know, the amount of, you know, representing 90% of the domestic overnight business here in Canada, the service levels, you know, our on-time. One positive thing that we didn't talk about during this earnings call is our on-time performance and reliability during the quarter is probably the highest that it's ever been. You know, that reliability and on-time performance is key for our customers to ensure that, you know.
We, you know, everybody talks about competition and yeah, that's in the early days are, you know, WestJet and Air Canada, not really in the domestic space, but we don't. You know, we're aware of that competition, but we're not really concerned about it. You're right. If we look at. We are happy with the results, and if we look at, you know, by.
We look at the, you know, the detail on our domestic revenue. If we back out some one-time revenue that we had last year in the Q1 related to the domestic portion of revenue that we were able to generate to support some of the Asia flying that we were doing to fill the flights that were going over to Asia to come back on charters, we're actually up a little bit year-over-year when you back that out. No, I agree with you.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from Jonathan Lamers, from Laurentian Bank Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question.
Good morning.
Scott, you mentioned that if we had excluded three specific costs this quarter, gross margins would have been flat year-over-year. Could you just review what those three costs were? I guess in highlighting that, are you suggesting that margins could be flat year-over-year, once certain costs have been taken out?
Yeah, absolutely. Good morning, Jonathan. Yeah, if you look at our detailed disclosure on our direct expenses, what really jumps off the page, is the crew and the depreciation. We've already talked about the depreciation, and AJ went into the detail with the 757s, et cetera. On the crew, it's very early stages. It really started settling in at the beginning of March. Long story short, if you went back and adjusted at historical levels for both crew and depreciation, that explains a lot of it in terms of the gross margin issue within Q1. What has a real significant impact is that CAD 43 million in charter revenue last year in Q1. That was pricing like once in a generation type of an event where you can get pricing to that.
It was such extreme constrained capacity that pricing is just very different than what we experienced in Q1 this year. Those three things, when you get back to a normalized run rate, that reconciles that difference in gross margin year-over-year.
Could you just remind us, when the flight simulator came online and sort of when you're expecting this, you know, training backlog to start to work down?
Yeah. We have been for the past, I would say about six months, we've been using our own simulator in Hamilton, the first one. The second one is coming in October, November this year. It certainly helps not only training, but in-house, but also, you know, crew travel days and hotels and per diems and also, you know, just the overall training impact is much positive than sending people outside. Keep in mind, you know, when you, when you hire pilots, you know, We have 50 pilots right now in training. You know, they're not part of any revenue generation, but that's the industry.
You know, once we have our own, two simulators, then we don't need to send outside and we can train them in-house, more efficiently and more cost effectively. That would start probably in we're slated to get it in end of quarter three, so probably sometime in the Q4 that will take over.
Thanks. Just one other follow-up question. On the 757s that have been earmarked for leasing, for expanded leasing business, does that mean that there could be four to five domestic routes that might see reduced service as those are reallocated to support the leasing? Or is the leasing purely an incremental opportunity kind of on weekends and where demand is low, et cetera?
Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't reduce service anywhere, Jonathan. It's just we take, as an example, if we put a seven that Ajay mentioned about the route, a direct aircraft or direct route that we were flying between Edmonton and Hamilton, we were able to consolidate that, free up 2 757s by putting a 767 on that route. It doesn't have any impact on service. It's just, it's just matching the capacity to the demand.
Okay. Thanks for your comments.
Thank you. The next question is from Walter Spracklin from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks very much, operator. Good morning. Ajay, I think you framed it right in your remarks that, you know, yes, we flag a downturn in revenue. We should be mindful of that, but shouldn't lose sight of the longer term systemic trends that capitalize on e-commerce and your strong competitive positioning. I like what I'm hearing in terms of, you know, during that downturn, you're aligning your costs to reflect the downturn, but not losing sight of the revenue opportunity after that. I think, you know, from a domestic perspective, I think that all makes sense. Where I think there's a little bit more misunderstanding is on the ACMI side.
I don't think the story's any different that, you know, yes, during a downturn, DHL is gonna look to align its block hours, and that's what they're doing. I'm wondering, I don't know if, Jamie, you can answer this the right way or not, but if you look at this downturn and what DHL is doing, perhaps on a temporary basis, what level of quarterly run rate are we expecting here in 2023? Is what you delivered in Q1 kinda a run rate, or is that a seasonally low one? Just to understand where the run rate is while we're in this downturn.
Then, you know, on the upside, if DHL were to return to its pre- let's call it pre-downturn activity levels, what is the more normalized ACMI revenue run rate that you have with the aircraft that you are dedicating to them now and will be, you know, longer term?
Good morning, Walter. I think the, you know, I think the Q1 run rate for ACMI would sort of be reflective of what we, you know, at the low end of what we see for the balance of the year. You know, there's a couple of routes that I indicated earlier that we're starting to the Caribbean and South America at some point in the Q2 , as Ajay mentioned, may only be temporary. They end up being longer term to the end of the year, certainly that'll be incremental growth going out for the balance of the year. With the exception of peak season, because I would expect that our demand in peak season from DHL and our other ACMI customers will be stronger in that quarter versus the previous year.
I think, you know, using Q1 is somewhat reflective of what we see as the sort of bottom line for ACMI revenues going forward. To answer your question, one of the reasons why we, you know, have the fleet that we have, and you're absolutely right in keeping the even though we made some decisions on the longer term growth with the triple seven aircraft, but keeping those slots and keeping the first aircraft that we have, commitments from DHL for in 2024 and 2025 is to be able to, you know, pivot our business very quickly to meet that demand.
As we've indicated and as we've experienced over the last few years, you know, one of the reasons we benefit from the relationship and the growth that we've had with DHL over the last few years was because of our ability to pivot very quickly in the early days of COVID to provide dedicated cargo capacity for them, and that's translated into both the operating agreement and the long-term operating agreement that we have with them today.
In putting that into numbers, I mean, you know, given the current run rate that you mentioned of Q1 plus in Q2, Q3, and then as you reflected for Q4, You know, that's in the CAD 65, let's say CAD 65-70 range in the first part of this year. Is that CAD 65-70, you know, when we look at our numbers on a more normalized full run rate quarterly in the first three quarters of the year, could be more in the CAD 80 million range when if you were to, you know, be fully utilizing those aircraft in the first three quarters of a more normalized year? Is that off the mark, that CAD 80 million run rate if we do see a rebound, in overall demand?
Well, when things rebound, anything is possible, right? I mean, we've had some ad hoc discussions with DHL and a couple of other ACMI opportunities. You know, everybody's looking at quarter four probably this year, a little bit of a turnaround. I think if, you know, we'd be the first one to get calls, and this is why we are a little bit hesitant to go out and sell these 757s. You know, that's why we have put it up for short-term lease opportunities at this time. I think that the minute things open up, we can plug the 757s back in and free up the 767s for those opportunities.
The flexibility has to be maintained, Walter, because we cannot fire up, we cannot go find planes when opportunities arise. On the other hand, we can't wait forever for those opportunities as well. That's why, you know, monitoring the trends and staying close to the customers and finding out, you know, what we should hold. You know, the cost reduction is temporary help right now. I think some of the assets, I mean, we could easily sell the 757s tomorrow, you know, close to CAD 100 million. You know, we also have to look at the flexibility that it's giving us to, you know, interchange between 757 and 767 domestically according to as the demand changes.
Also, you know, watching for if things don't improve by quarter three or quarter four, then all bets are off on anything. I think it'll not be wise for us to dispose off any of these assets, reacting to the short-term market volatility right now.
Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you, Ajay. Just last for me, back to you, Scott, in terms of CapEx, I hear you on the CAD 200 million, roughly or just north of CAD 200 million for 2023. You did mention, though, that that would be reflecting also a shift of the 777 delivery into 2024. Just wanna make sure so that expectations are aligned appropriately. That will bump up your 2024 CapEx, having that delivery early in the year. What are you framing for CapEx for 2024 just to frame it or to position the expectations properly?
Yeah. Walter, I think, you're bang on there in terms of those ranges that we provided for our disclosure, for our guidance for the whole strategic plan, the guidance that we provided last fall, it's still consistent. We're not changing that. Yeah, there's gonna be some movement out of 2023 into 2024, but that 777 and some related costs that relate to that would be the main thing right now.
Okay. That's all my questions. Thanks very much, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, please press star one if you have a question. The next question is from Steve Hansen from Raymond James. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Oh, yes. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the time. Commend you for taking swift action here to right-size the costs. I do recognize the balance you're trying to strike between cost and service. In the event that demand was to just deteriorate meaningfully further, say another 10% or more, you know, how would your plan change today? Would it just be a more rapid pace that you would expect? What would you do differently in event the demand does continue to break down here? Thanks.
Well, look, I mean, we replaced 2 757s with a 767, which, you know, took out, like, on a particular lane a 25,000-30,000-pound reduction, which is, you know, 25% space reduction from what we had planned for Q1. If demand was to go down further, you know, we take a 767 out at 120,000 pound night and replace it with an 80,000-pound aircraft. You know, we do have the fleet flexibility today we are enjoying that. If the aircraft are not flying, I mean, sitting here, we already have the CapEx. It's not going to cost us any more money, you know, except the depreciation portion of it.
Our main cost driver, as I said, is block hours and the type of plane we fly on a certain route. If the demand was to go down 10% or 15%, you know, the easiest thing for us is to adjust the size of the aircraft, and, you know, reduce sometimes the frequency of it or something. That would be the major thing we would do immediately. And that is being monitored, by the way, not on a weekly basis or a monthly basis. It's done on a nightly basis with our network planning folks that they know what's coming in by 6:00, 7:00 o'clock at night, and we plan that right kind of aircraft in that market. It's an ongoing process.
I appreciate the call. Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further question registered at this time.
Thank you, everybody, for joining in the quarter one conference calls, and we'll continue to work hard, to, weather the storms in this economic environment. Thank you very much, everybody.
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