Copa Holdings, S.A. (NYSE:CPA) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call August 10, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Daniel Tapia - Director-IR

Pedro Heilbron - CEO

Jose Montero - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Savi Syth - Raymond James

Duane Pfennigwerth - Evercore ISI

Guilherme Mendes - JPMorgan

Stephen Trent - Citi

Rogerio Araujo - Bank of America

Michael Linenberg - Deutsche Bank

Pablo Monsivais - Barclays

Helane Becker - TD Cowen

Daniel McKenzie - Seaport Global

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Copa Holdings' Second Quarter Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being webcast and recorded on August 10, 2023.

I will now turn the conference over to Daniel Tapia, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, you may go ahead.

Daniel Tapia

Thank you, James, and welcome everyone to our second quarter earnings call. Joining us today are Pedro Heilbron, CEO of Copa Holdings; and Jose Montero, our CFO. First, Pedro will start by going over our second quarter highlights, followed by Jose, who will discuss our financial results. Immediately after we will 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. A reconciliation of the non-IFRS to IFRS financial measures can be found in our earnings release, which has been posted on the company's website copaair.com.

Our discussion today will also contain forward-looking statements, not limited to historical facts that reflect the company's current beliefs, expectations, and/or intentions regarding future events and results. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and are based on assumptions subject to change. Many of these are discussed in our annual report filed with the SEC.

Now I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Pedro Heilbron.

Pedro Heilbron

Thank you, Daniel. Good morning to all and thanks for participating in our second quarter earnings call.

Before we begin, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all of our workers for their commitment to the company. Their continuous efforts and dedication has kept Copa at the forefront of Latin American aviation, to them as always, my highest regards and admiration. Today, we're pleased to report solid results for the second quarter.

Our unit revenues continued to benefit from a healthy demand environment in the region. While our unit costs came in lower year-over-year mainly driven by a lower jet fuel price and our consistent focus on delivering low ex-fuel unit costs. Among the main highlights for the quarter, passenger traffic grew 15.4% compared to the same period in 2022, outpacing our capacity growth of 13.6%. This resulted in a load factor of 86.1%, a 1.3 percentage point increase versus Q2 '22.