Azul S.A. (NYSE:AZUL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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John Rodgerson: Hey, Mike. You would think about it in the following way. You need to take our COVID deferrals, right. and that’s 60-40 split and then you need to take a look at all of our aircraft and say, hey, how much was Azul paying for an Embraer versus current market and that difference and so it’s — it varies right, in some aircraft, it’s as much as 50% reduction in the rent and some its zero reduction in the rent. And so if you take a look at it and but the big component is the COVID deferrals and then we did the mark to market with the lessors but as Alex said, 90% where they are right now, the other 10% we’re negotiating with and we believe we’re going to get there. So of that debt that you’re seeing on the balance sheet.

all of it will be touched in some form, right, it doesn’t mean that it goes away, but it will turn into 2030 note some of it in equity and some of it is going to remain where it is, but everybody’s participating, everybody supporting the plan, and I think that’s the most important message that we want to have today, and I know everybody is dying for more details and this is a phenomenal accomplishment that Alex and his team have done in a 45-day period, right. And so why are we 100% yet. Well, quite honestly, we’re going to get there and we’re probably going to get there over the next couple of weeks, right. And so this is — I’ve never seen anybody restructure their balance sheet in the speed at which Azul’s has done it and they’ve done it out of court and they’ve done it on amicable way why, because we have a fantastic business and we have great partners that believe in us.

Michael Linenberg: Yeah. And then, well, John if I came back, I know in the public domain you have said at least as of the last count, I thought the deferrals at least pre-COVID was somewhere around BRL3 billion and then there’s this mark-to-market piece, is that?

John Rodgerson: Yeah, that’s… You got them.

Michael Linenberg: Okay. So then I can back in. Okay, the last piece and I feel like that this is the most important piece from a dilutive perspective, you showed up the chart, you said we’re trading 4.2 times, if we were at 5, the stock will be a triple I think it’s what you said, maybe if I heard you. And then you threw up a bunch of charts and talked about 7 to 8 times and you sort of talked about the long-term sort of where this company has traded. So if I think about where ultimately the equity is struck, it’s not going be struck at 4 times, I think you’ve been pretty clear about that and we know the high end and so it’s somewhere in between, but it’s clearly a lot higher from a multiple. Is that the right way to think about it?

John Rodgerson: You’re hitting close, Mike. So let me, as we said earlier, we will give the details at the appropriate time and I think that’s important, but it’s something that’s great for our partners, it minimizes our dilution, it’s great for our equity holders. And so I think that’s the message today, right. We looked at all stakeholders, everybody wins and that is most important.

Alex Malfitani: Yeah. And as we think about why, right, we talked about why we’re trading at 4, it’s either because the market doesn’t believe our profitability or the market is seeing something different than us on a multiple basis, so it’s not the profitability, right. We do think we’re going to, well, our number is higher than consensus, but even if you just use consensus, which is around BRL5 billion, right, just adding one turn, which is BRL5 billion, you add that to the equity value that we had, not today but Friday, right, to make the math, and that’s almost another 2 times right, so if you take the 1 time you’re starting from, you had BRL5 billion on top of that, that’s a 3 times and then that’s stopping at 5 times which for a company that is one of the most profitable in the world has cash flow generation, has lower leverage, why would we be trading at 5 times when our average since we went public.

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