Azul S.A. (NYSE:AZUL) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So you have to adjust, for example, the expected right of use that you would have on that aircraft. You expected the aircraft to remain on the fleet for a certain number of years. And all of a sudden, it’s not going to stay for that number of years. That creates a one-time impact on the P&L that is not recurrent. And so we removed that from the results so that you can have a better perspective on what the result of the company will be going forward when we don’t have that effect anymore. And we’re proud of having followed the approach that we did with our restructuring as opposed to a more competitive and longer and also more expensive approach that some of our competitors took, but there is still some costs, right? You still have some advisers and lawyers and one-time fees involved in the structure.

So we also removed those. Those are mainly the main drivers of the adjustment that we had this quarter.

John Rodgerson: Azul has 185 aircraft and almost every single aircraft was renegotiated. And as Alex said, some were redelivered early, and it’s just kind of part of the process. And so – but we feel very good about where we’re at. We had the ability to have a few eons exit earlier. So we’re very confident that – going forward, we’ll be able to continue to kind of expand margins even further.

Unidentified Analyst: Great. Thank you very much, guys.

Operator: The next question comes from Victor sell-side analysts, Bradesco BBI. Victor, we’re going to open your audio so that you can ask your question. Please proceed.

Victor Mizusaki: Hi, thank you. Congrats for the results and the restructuring. I have two questions here. The first one is related to your fleet plan, right? So now that you conclude all these restructuring. So I don’t know if you can give additional details about the plan for this year and the next? And my second question is related to block hours, right? So we can see an improvement. But if we compare with a pre-COVID level, I mean, you were talking about something at around 11 hours per day and now it’s time for baits. So how fast do you believe that’s possible to reach these kind of asset utilization level? Thank you.

John Rodgerson: And just starting quickly on the fleet. Obviously, all the OEMs are late, including Embraer and Airbus and others. We expect Embraer to fix most of their issues by the end of this year and into next year. So we have a significant amount of E2s coming in to replace older generation aircraft. And every time we take a need to, it’s currently the most profitable thing we do, because we get rid of the ones, we up gauge that aircraft even further from 118 seats to 136 seats with fuel burn, that’s about 25% lower per seat. So we’re pretty excited about that. And so the next couple of years is really the two years for Azul, and so you’re going to see a significant improvement in the fleet going forward. But I’ll let Rodeger, you talk to the utilization.