Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S. A. B. de C. V. (NYSE:ASR) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call October 25, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Adolfo Castro - CEO

Conference Call Participants

Rodolfo Ramos - Bradesco BBI

Filipe Nielsen - Citi

Gabriel Himelfarb - Scotiabank

Andressa Varotto - UBS

Alejandro Zamacona - Credit Suisse

Guilherme Mendes - JPMorgan

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to ASUR's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Elaine and I will be your operator. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of today's conference. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's call is being recorded.

Now I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Adolfo Castro, Chief Executive Officer, please go ahead, sir.

Adolfo Castro

Thank you, Lynn and good morning everyone. Before we started the covering of the highlights from the quarter and then taking your questions, let me remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements, which are based on current management expectations and beliefs and are subject to several risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including factors that may be beyond our company's control.

As usual, additional details about our quarterly results can be found in our press release, which was issued yesterday after market closed and is available on our website Investor Relations section. We reported another solid quarter with record passenger traffic improved cost efficiencies and strong profitability.

Starting with our review of travel demand, total traffic grows over 24% year-on-year and exceed third quarter's 2019 levels by nearly 23% reaching a record of 17 million passengers in the third quarter. Airports across our three geographies all contributed to the solid growth compared to pre-pandemic levels, third quarter 2019. Colombia maintained a stronger recovery of 37% with domestic travel expanding in the low 30s and international travel in the high 50s.

We expected these strikes are threatening strong recovery to continue over the coming months boarded by structural shift in demand driven by new routes and airlines. Traffic in Mexico was up 22% against third quarter 2019 driven by both international and domestic passengers. With all the airports contributing to this growth in particular, international traffic growth accelerated to 30%.

This is strong performance reflect high travel demand from all regions of this market, exceeding 2019 levels except Canadian demand, which has still remained at slightly over 65% of the last 12 months of 2019. Looking ahead, traffic from Canada is expected to resume its winter seasonal levels mainly November through April next year. While the U.S. and Europe are expected to continue delivering a steady growth.