Good morning, and welcome to Corporacion American Airports First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. A slide presentation accompanies today's webcast and is available in the Investors section of Corporacion American Airports' Investor Relations website at httpinvestors.corporacionamericaairports.com. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. As a reminder, this call is being recorded.
At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Gimena Alvanesi of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Speaking during today's call will be Martin Mendellian, our Chief Executive Officer. Also with us today are Raul Franco, our Chief Financial Officer and Jorge Argua, Head of Finance and M and A. All will be available for the Q and A session.
Before we proceed, I would like to make the following Safe Harbor statement. Today's call will contain forward looking statements and I refer you to the forward looking statements section of our earnings release and recent filings with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements to reflect new or changed events or circumstances. Note that for comparison purposes and for a better understanding of the underlying performance, in our presentation today, we will be discussing results excluding hyperinflation accounting in Argentina, which became effective in July 2018. Additional information in connection with the application of rule IAS 29 can be found in our earnings report.
Now, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Martin Marcella.
Thank you, Gimena. Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's call. I wish you and your families are safe. Trends and dynamics we have seen since the second half of March are not comparable to anything we have seen before. The COVID-nineteen outbreak has heavily impacted the travel industry worldwide, leading to an unprecedented situation in which air traffic has dropped to minimum levels in a matter of weeks.
On today's call, I will discuss briefly our key operating and financial highlights for the Q1 and the most recent trends across our airport network. I will then provide an update of the strategic initiatives we shared with you in our previous call to mitigate the impact of this crisis on our business. Before I begin, I would like to highlight the significant progress we have achieved over the past few weeks on the balance sheet front to strengthen liquidity. We successfully refinanced nearly 50% of our principal and interest payment for the next 12 months through a series of transactions that I will cover in more detail later in the presentation. Now turning to a brief overview of our Q1 results.
Passenger traffic fell almost 17%, mainly due to the 45% drop we saw in March when most of our operations began to see the impact of government shutdown measures. Our top line was significantly impacted by the COVID-nineteen pandemic. This, coupled with difficult macro conditions in Argentina and FX depreciation both in Argentina and Brazil, resulted in a year on year decline of nearly 17% in revenues ex IFRIC 12 in the Q1. In terms of profitability, as most of our cost and expense reduction initiatives were implemented late March early April, benefit from these measures did not flow through 1st quarter results. Therefore, comparable adjusted EBITDA declined 30% to $86,000,000 with the margin ex IPIC 12 contracting to 33% from 39% in the Q1 of 2019.
Note that comparable adjusted EBITDA in 2020 excludes a $4,500,000 non cash impairment loss in Brazil. We invested $52,000,000 in CapEx in the quarter, mostly deployed before the outbreak of the COVID-nineteen pandemic, mainly in works at Ezeiza and Aeroparque airports in Argentina as well as in Uruguay, Italy and Ecuador. Since then, we have suspended nonessential CapEx to preserve cash, and I will discuss that more in-depth shortly. More detail in terms of our Q1 2020 results can be found in our earnings report and the exhibits of this presentation. Please turn to Slide 4.
Beginning in March, governments across our countries of operations established a series of travel bans and restrictions to contain the spread of the virus. On this slide, you can see the status of each of our operations as of today. At the moment, in Argentina, Ecuador and Peru, borders are still closed with bans on domestic and international flights, and our airports are only operating cargo and repatriation flights. Similarly, in Uruguay, borders are closed to commercial passenger traffic. In Argentina, the regulator recently issued a resolution prohibiting airlines to sell air tickets for travel before September 1.
In the rest of the countries, borders have not been closed, but we are only operating cargo and domestic flights, except for Armenia, where we also are operating international flights. Moving on to Slide 5. You can see on the chart on the left side of the page, we eliminate weekly passenger traffic trends for April May 2020. The full impact of the travel bans introduced mid March drove year on year declines of approximately 98% in each of those weeks. As a reminder, while we usually do not disclose preliminary weekly figures, we are providing these figures on this call to share with you how the COVID-nineteen pandemic has impacted our business.
On the right side of the slide, we provide an update on the most recent monthly cargo trends. While we continue to see some cargo activity as we are facilitating transportation of medical and essential items to support the continuity of supply chains, cargo was down 56% year on year last April. This was driven by all countries except Uruguay, which benefited from some extraordinary cargo movements that month. Please turn to Slide 6. In our year end call, we shared with you our action plan to mitigate the impact of this health crisis.
We have been working hard focusing on 4 key areas, starting with the well-being of our employees and passengers. This is our top priority, and we have been working since day 1 to protect them. We have enhanced safety and hygiene protocols across our operations, established remote working and only essential staff has been working on premise with the adequate protective gear. As restrictions that were put in place as part of the coronavirus response are being reviewed across our countries of operations, we have begun to prepare safety policies to ensure a successful transition back to office premise when restrictions are lifted. The second area of focus is cost control and cash preservation.
We already made significant reductions in personnel expenses in Brazil, Uruguay, Italy and Armenia. The layoffs, salary reductions, furlough and reductions of working hours. In Uruguay, Italy and Armenia, some of our employees under furlough are already receiving government unemployment subsidies. In Argentina, we are receiving government assistance to cover a portion of April salaries representing a monthly relief of DKK1.2 million. We have applied to receive this release in May and are awaiting government approval.
The government could eventually further extend this assistance. We also reviewed maintenance contracts across all our countries of operations, driving significant savings that we expect to see in the Q2. For instance, in Brasilia, we halted the use of one of the 2 runaways and closed 1 of the 2 peers to reduce maintenance expenses. To further protect our liquidity, we successfully negotiated with our suppliers the extension of payment terms across the business. Importantly, starting in April, all capital investments were suspended.
Note that the BRL52 1,000,000 invested in the Q1 also covers most of the minimum maintenance CapEx planned for the year. So we do not expect to incur an additional significant CapEx in the year. With these cost reduction measures, we expect to obtain a year on year reduction of approximately 43% in total cash operating costs and expenses, excluding concession fees, with most of the benefit from the full impact of the majority of these initiatives beginning in the Q2. This estimated reduction is based on our Q2 2019 total cash operating costs and expenses. Please turn to Slide 7.
As we anticipated in our previous call, as we navigate this unprecedented crisis, we started discussions with regulatory agencies to renegotiate concession fee payments. To date, we have made progress on this front in Brazil and Italy and are moving forward with conversations with regulators in Uruguay and Ecuador. As disclosed before, in Brazil, we obtained regulatory approval to defer to December 2020 the variable and fixed concession fee payments that were due in May July. More recently, we received the regulatory approval in Italy to defer until January 2021, the semi annual concession fee payment originally due July 2020. Importantly, the calculation of the amount due will be made based on the actual number of passengers in 2020.
Without those insights of the mid and long term, we continue to work on the review of the equilibrium of the concession agreements across our airport network. As a reminder, our concession contracts in Argentina, Italy and Armenia have guaranteed returns. In Brazil and Ecuador, we have concession contracts that contemplate force majeure clauses. In Brazil, we have initiated conversations to begin the process of requesting economic re equilibrium for the Brasilia and Natal airport concessions. While in Ecuador, we have filed a request to begin economic reequilibrium process of the Guayaquil concession.
Finally, in Uruguay, we will soon begin the process to request the economic equilibrium of the concession as well. As we mentioned in our last call, we are in the initial stages of this process, which requires going through administrative regulatory channels. We will be providing updates over time as they become available. Turning to Slide 8. We have also made significant progress on the strengthening of our debt profile.
Over the past weeks, we have entered into a series of negotiations with our debt holders and banks, and I am very proud to announce that we have successfully extended almost half of our maturities through over the next 12 months. We deferred a total of $126,000,000 in principal and interest payments. In Argentina, we have concluded 2 transactions. First, last Wednesday, we completed an exchange offer for our BRL400 1,000,000 international notes due 2027 with 86.73 percent of the principal amount tendered for the exchange. This transaction allowed us to defer $60,000,000 in principal and interest payments.
We also obtained the waiver of certain debt covenants until November 2021. 2nd, we deferred a total of $36,600,000 in principal due 2020 in connection with our $120,000,000 credit facility and a $10,000,000 bilateral loan. As a result, in Argentina, we only have a total of $21,000,000 in financial debt due this year. Please turn to Slide 9. In Uruguay, we also launched an exchange offer for our 200,000,000 notes due to 2,032.
We have to obtain approximately 92% of the principal amount tendered for the exchange at the early participation deadline. With this, we have the option to defer up to $20,500,000 in principal and interest payments originally due over the next 18 months. In addition, we deferred a total of 8.7 $1,000,000 in principal payments due 2020 under our local notes. More details on the terms and conditions of these transactions can be found in these slides, our earnings report and recent 6 ks filings. Please turn to Slide 10.
We are pleased with our efforts to strengthen liquidity and extend our debt maturity profile. As you can see on the left chart, we had $278,000,000 in and interest payments due over the next 12 months. As a result of these debt refinancing initiatives, we reduced significantly our debt maturities with a total of $149,000,000 now due during this period. Moving on to our balance sheet and liquidity on Slide 11. We closed the Q1 of 2020 with $173,000,000 in cash and equivalents and the net debt to EBITDA ratio of 2.9x.
We also had approximately $99,000,000 in treasury bills and time deposits not included in cash and equivalents that provide us additional liquidity if needed. We have several initiatives underway to preserve our cash and strengthen our liquidity, which I have been sharing with you over this presentation. I am very pleased with the significant progress we made so far. We successfully deferred $129,000,000 in interest and principal payments originally due over the next 12 months and canceled all non essential capital investments. We also implemented significant cost and expense reductions and suspended dividends to third parties in Italy and Ecuador.
Moreover, we obtained additional funding in the Q1 for an amount of $37,000,000 Now please turn to Slide 12. As we adapt to the new normal, we are developing customized protocols across our countries of operations to ensure maximum health, safety and comfort for our passengers and employees across our airports. We have established a dedicated team that is working together with the aviation industry and the regulators to set and redefine new safety and health protocols. Protocols are also being monitored and will be approved by infectious disease experts. Our efforts are being adapted to this new environment, implementing measures to minimize the risk of infections of our passengers and employees while ensuring uninterrupted operations.
This includes sanitization and social distance measures, screening and biosecurity control procedures for all passengers entering our airports and the implementations of digital solutions to reduce contact with airport equipment while limiting the crowds. We believe the path to recovery will depend on how fast we regain customer confidence to travel by making our passengers feel safe. Now to wrap up, turn to Slide 13. This unprecedented crisis has severely disrupted the travel industry worldwide, resulting in significant declines in passenger traffic over the last month. The passenger recovery still remains uncertain and is dependent on a number of factors, including the successful development of medical treatment or vaccines, government assistance, customer confidence to travel and the evolution of the global economies.
Over the past months, we have rapidly introduced measures to strengthen our financial position. We have refinanced our debt in Argentina and Uruguay extending maturities and enhancing flexibility. We made significant progress on protecting our liquidity by reducing costs, limiting CapEx, while we continue to work on obtaining additional funding. At the same time, we started negotiations with regulators to review economic equilibrium of concession agreements. Despite the overall uncertainty surrounding COVID-nineteen, the situation is very fluid.
For example, in Europe, which was hit earlier by the virus, countries are starting to discuss lifting bans on domestic travel and or opening borders for regional flights in the near term as well as considering lifting quarantines. This could indicate that we are starting to see the initial signs of a gradual recovery process. With this in mind, we have started building our recovery plan, preparing for a new world and developing the new standards of travel that will be critical to reactivate the travel industry in the near future. I wish to thank our teams and partners worldwide for all their hard work in this difficult time as we move together in overcoming this unprecedented challenge and we will travel again. We are now ready to take questions.
Operator, please open the line for questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question is from Ian Zaffino from Oppenheimer. Go ahead.
Hey, good morning guys. This is Mark on for Ian. Thanks for taking our questions. Just quickly on your CapEx spend, can you guys flush out how much of the $52,000,000 of CapEx in the quarter is maintenance versus expansionary? And then sort of can you just give a sense of what's the normal CapEx required for operations going forward and how much
Hello, Ian and Marc, sorry. Thank you for the question. We have maintenance CapEx in a minimum right now. In fact, most of our maintenance is usually recorded under operating expenses. So usually, maintenance CapEx is minimum for us, although we don't have the breakdown right now of the $52,000,000 that we did in the Q1.
Just to give you an idea, most of those EUR 50,000,000 were in Argentina, where you know that we are developing and have been developing space and Erapalque works and also some works in the Interopecancias as well that are mainly expansion CapEx. So although we don't have the breakdown, this is mainly for expansion, not so much for maintenance.
Okay, got you. Thank you very much. And then just another quick one. I believe you guys have mentioned that you started to seeing signs of recovery. Can you guys share any metrics, maybe better passenger traffic in certain regions or what sort of what sort of signs of recovery are you guys seeing?
Thanks.
Sure, Marc. So as you know, the situation is very uncertain. Still, you know that the COVID 19 pandemic has hit our industry the most. And we have started to see some initial signs of recovery, mainly in Europe, with the countries gradually starting to leave restrictions, including some potential reopening of borders. So this could indicate that we're starting to see some recovery, although as I said, situation remains uncertain.
And as of today, we are not able to provide an estimation of how long the situation will remain as it is today or an estimation of recovery in the next few months.
Okay, great. Thank you guys very much.
Our next question is from Chris Dechario from Marathon Asset Management. Go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for having the call and thanks for taking my questions. I guess just two things. Is it possible to give us an idea of sort of what like monthly cash burn you have given this current situation where you're a 98% reduction in passengers. Just sort of how if we can just sort of get a general sense of what the monthly cash burn is now.
I expect it to obviously be reducing as traffic comes back, but that would be
given the sovereign restructuring and the coronavirus issues and everything else.
Just curious if there's any progress made on talks about extending the concession in Argentina? Thanks.
Sure, Chris. So let me take the first question regarding cash burn. As you know, April for us was the first month where we had a full impact in all of our countries with for the COVID-nineteen. So as we discussed during the call, we acted rapidly. We started doing several initiatives on cost reductions and mainly on maintenance, salaries and so on.
So for an estimated cash burn for April is around roughly €14,000,000 according to our mortgage estimates. And so as I said, this was the 1st month with full impact of the decline activity as well as our measures for cash preservation. I will hand over to Martin for the second question.
Thank you, Gimena, and thank you for the question, Chris.
Well, regarding the extension, as we've been saying before, this contract has every ingredient to be ready to have that discussion with the government. They had it before this huge crisis and we believe that given what is going on now, it becomes even more obvious the need for the extension of the contract. Having said that, we really hope to begin negotiations with the government as soon as possible. But given the quarantines and the priorities that have shifted towards the crisis, That has not happened yet, but we hope to begin as soon as possible.
That makes sense. Thanks a
At this time, we have no questions. So we will conclude our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Martin Eureniacian for closing remarks. Go ahead. I'm sorry, there's another question.
Thank you. There's a question. I'm sorry, it just came up.
Okay. Please go ahead.
Okay. There's a question from Roberta Guerciani from Citibank. Go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Sorry, I'm dialing in from Skype, I couldn't press star 1, sorry.
Just a quick question. Are any
governments suggesting some level of financial support beyond the deferral of the for cash burn in April, right? For cash burn in April, right? Just double checking. Thanks.
Thank you, Roberta, for the question. Perez, the cash burn for ASM is is BRL14 1,000,000. This is a monthly estimated cash burn. Regarding the support from government, I would say that what we have already in place is the deferral of concession fees in both Brazil and Italy. We are in discussions also for the digital concession fees in Uruguay and also Ecuador.
And that is what we have so far already implemented in Canon Payments. We are also requesting some financial relief in Argentina through these grants for the government indemnities for companies to support wages. And in Italy, we're moving forward also with some specific relief measures for the industry, although that is not in place yet. We will let you know as soon as we have something on that both fronts.
Great. Thanks. Thanks very much.
At this time, we have no questions. So we will conclude our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Martin Eunekian for closing remarks. Go ahead.
I'd like to thank everybody for joining us today. We really appreciate your interest in our company. We look forward to providing updates on our business and initiatives as they become available. In the meantime, the team remains available to answer any question that you may have. Thank you, everybody.
Bye bye.