Copa Holdings, S.A. (NYSE:CPA) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call May 16, 2024 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Daniel Tapia – Director, IR
Pedro Heilbron – CEO
José Montero – CFO
Conference Call Participants
Savi Syth – Raymond James
Duane Pfennigwerth – Evercore
Rogerio Araujo – Bank of America
Helane Becker – TD Cowen
Alberto Valerio – UBS
Michael Linenberg – Deutsche Bank
Pablo Monsivais – Copa Barclays
Jay Singh – Citi
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Copa Holdings First Quarter Earnings Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we’ll conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being webcast and recorded on Mau 16, 2024.
Now, I will turn the conference over to Daniel Tapia, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.
Daniel Tapia
Thank you, Marlin, and welcome, everyone, to our first quarter earnings call. Joining us today are Pedro Heilbron, CEO of Copa Holdings; and José Montero, our CFO. First, Pedro will start by going over our first quarter highlights, followed by José, 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 first quarter earnings call. Before we begin, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all our co-workers for their commitment to the company, their continuous efforts and dedication have kept Copa at the forefront of Latin American aviation. To them, as always, my highest regards and admiration.
Once again, we’re pleased to report strong financial results. Despite facing a significant headwind in January with the partial grounding of our 737 MAX 9 fleet, we were able to deliver once more industry-leading operating margins, while growing capacity year-over-year. These results were driven by a continued robust demand environment in the region, and our ability to maintain low ex-fuel unit costs.
Among the main highlights for the quarter, passenger traffic grew 7.1% compared to the same period in 2023. Load factor for the quarter came in at 86%. Passenger yield came in at $0.14, 3.8% lower year-over-year, while unit revenue or RASM came in at $0.0125 [ph], a 4.6% decrease compared to Q1 ’23. Unit costs decreased by 6.9% compared to Q1 ’23, mainly driven by lower fuel, aircraft maintenance and distribution costs. Excluding fuel, unit costs or CASM ex came in at $0.061, a 2% decrease compared to Q1 2023.
As a result, operating margin for the quarter came in at 24.2%, 1.9 percentage points higher than in the first quarter of 2023. On the operational front, during the quarter, Copa Airlines on-time performance was again recognized by Cirium as the highest of any airline in Latin America. In fact, Copa’s Q1 on-time performance, averaging above 90%, was the highest of any carrier in the Americas and among the highest in the world. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize our more than 8,000 co-workers who, day in and day out, deliver a world-class travel experience to our customers. Their contributions are key to our success.
Turning now to our network growth plans, as we mentioned in our previous call, we expect to start three new destinations next month; Raleigh-Durham in the US, Florida, and the Florianópolis in Brazil and Tulum in Mexico. I’m glad to comment that early bookings are coming in at healthy levels and we expect this route to have a solid start. With this addition, we’ll serve 85 destinations in 32 countries, solidifying our leadership position as the hub with the most international destinations in Latin America.
Turning now to our expectations for the rest of the year, we continue to see a healthy demand environment in the region and as you saw in our earnings release published yesterday, we are reaffirming our guidance for the year, which includes an operating margin within the range of 21% to 23%. Jose will provide more details during his presentation.
To summarize, we’ve delivered industry-leading first-quarter financial results. We continue to deliver on our cost-execution strategy. We’ll grow to 85 destinations by this summer, further strengthening our network, the most complete and convenient hub for intra-America travel. We continue to see a healthy demand environment in the region and expect to once again deliver strong operating margins in 2024 and as always, our team continues to deliver world-leading operational results.
Finally, our business model is as solid and as relevant as ever and our hub of the Americas in Panama is the best-connecting hub in Latin America, making us the best possession airline in our region to consistently deliver industry-leading results.
Now, I’ll turn it over to Jose, who will go over our financial results in more detail.
José Montero
Thank you, Pedro. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for being with us today. I’d like to join Pedro in acknowledging our great team for all their efforts to deliver a world-class service to our passengers. I will start by going over our first-quarter results.
We reported a net profit for the quarter of $176.1 million, or $4.19 per share. These results include the negative impact of approximately $44 million due to the grounding of 21 of the company’s Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft in January, and exclude any compensation from Boeing related to the grounding. We reported a quarterly operating profit of $216 million and an operating margin of 24.2%.
Capacity came in at 7.1 billion available seat miles, or 8% higher than in Q1 2023. Load factor came in at 86% for the quarter, a 0.7 percentage point decrease compared to the same period in 2023, while passenger yields decreased by 3.8% to $0.14. As a result, unit revenues came in at $0.125, or 4.6% lower than in the first quarter of 2023. Mainly driven by lower jet fuel prices, unit costs or CASM decreased to $0.095, or 6.9% lower year over year. And finally, our CASM excluding fuel came in at $0.061, a 2% decrease versus Q1 2023, mainly driven by lower aircraft maintenance and lower distribution costs as we continue deploying our Copa Connect NDC strategy.
Excluding the negative impact on costs and capacity of the partial grounding of our 737 MAX 9 fleet in January, the company would have reported an ex-fuel CASM of approximately $0.058 for the quarter.
I’m going to spend some time now discussing our balance sheet and liquidity. As of the end of the first quarter, we had assets of close to $5.2 billion, as to cash, short and long-term investments, we ended the quarter with over $1.1 billion, which represents 32% of our last 12 months revenues. And in terms of debt, we ended the quarter with $1.7 billion in debt and lease liabilities and came in with an adjusted net debt to EBITDA ratio of 0.5 times. I’m pleased to report that our average cost of debt, which continues to be comprised solely of aircraft-related debt, is currently in the range of 3.5%, with around 70% of our debt being fixed.
Turning now to our fleet, we ended the first quarter with a total fleet of 106 aircraft, comprised of 68, 737-800s; 29, 737 Max-9s; and nine, 737-700s. These figures include one 737-800 freighter and the nine 737-800s operated by 737-800s operated by Wingo.
During the first quarter, and as part of our ongoing fleet management initiatives, we purchased two of our leased Boeing 737-800 aircraft. With this transaction, we ended the quarter with 73% of our aircraft being owned and 27% under operating leases. As for our current max delivery scale, so far in May, we have received two additional 737 Max-9s and for the remainder of the year, we expect to receive seven additional aircraft, one additional 737 Max-9, and six 737 Max-8s, to end the year with a total of 115 aircraft. We have already secured JOLCO Financing for all of these 2024 deliveries.
In April, we signed a confidential agreement with Boeing related to the January grounding. Following IFRS Accounting Standards, we expect that the compensation amount will be amortized through the depreciation line in our income statement over the coming four years.
Turning now to a return of value to our shareholders, I’m pleased to announce that the company will make its second dividend payment of the year of $1.61 per share on June 14 to all shareholders of record as of May 31. Additionally, during Q1, the company executed approximately $40 million of its share repurchase program.
As to our outlook, we are reaffirming our full year operating margin range guidance of 21% to 23% on a capacity growth in the range of 10%. We are basing our outlook on the following assumptions. Load factor of approximately 87%, unit revenues within the range of $0.12, CASM fuel to be in the range of $0.059, and we are expecting an all-in fuel price of $2.85 per gallon.
Thank you, and with that, we’ll open the call to some of your questions.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
[Operator instructions] Our first question comes from line of Savi Syth of Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Savi Syth
Hey, good morning. I was wondering if you could talk about the unit revenue that you’re basing your guidance on. It’s kind of ticked down here a little bit. Just wondering what drove that and how you’re thinking about kind of the year-over-year RASM progression over the next few quarters.
Pedro Heilbron
Yes, Savi, I’ll start, first I have to say that our RASM performance or our outlook of $0.12 is still very strong. It’s, very high levels compared to other periods that we’ve been at and in addition to that, what, it’s early on in the year. So our visibility for the second half of the year is limited. Still, there’s still a lot of water to come down onto the bridge. And in general terms, we are in a competitive environment, so we’re looking out for that.
Additionally, we have seen, it’s kind of like a more technical item. We’ve seen a little bit of an increase or an increase in direct sales and so as more direct sales have come in, there’s a slight reduction in yields related to the surcharge that we’re not recovering on tickets that are sold indirectly. So there’s a little bit of that as well. And I have to close by saying that our guidance for the year is still in the 21% to 23% range, which is, very, very strong performance for the full year. I don’t know Pedro, if you want to add something.
José Montero
Yeah, and also we’re lowering our unit cost X guidance, which is also very important because that’s something we control better and gives us better control over our margin performance.
Savi Syth
Valid points. I guess on that, just to follow up on that comment, Pedro, is this, and what Jose was talking about, is this a pull forward of what you were expecting and kind of reflected in that $0.058 target for 2025? Or are you thinking, is your unit cost kind of coming in better than you were thinking?
Pedro Heilbron
I think that it’s in line with what we guided to and our target, multi-year target of reaching 5.8% by next year. So we’re on track for that and we’re very confident and comfortable with our 5.8% target for 2025.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth of Evercore. Your line is now open.
Duane Pfennigwerth
Hey guys, good morning. Very strong results, especially considering the grounding. On unit costs, obviously there’s some noise in the first quarter, but maybe you can just help remind us what are kind of the factors driving improvement in unit costs beyond the first quarter? Maybe like normalized unit cost reduction. Can you just remind us what maybe one, two, three drivers of that are?
Pedro Heilbron
Yeah, Dwayne, great question. And I would say that there’s — the number one item that continues being a great contributor to our reduction in CASM is distribution. It continues to be a great story and so it’s been a great component to our cost execution over the last several quarters. And we expect that to, as they continue sort of maturing, it’ll continue being a very good contributor to our cost base.
Number two, I would say that maintenance, you heard of last year, maintenance, we had a slight increase related to engine issues and that, as we expected, is being more under control this year, and we’re getting also some benefits in our maintenance line associated with some of the lease transactions that we’ve performed, both the buying of leases and some of the lease extensions that we’ve signed and lowering some of the return conditions. So that’s another item that I think is of note.
Going forward, remember that we are in the process of densifying a portion of our 737-800 aircraft. We expect that to be also concluded sometime in 2025. So that will also be a contributor to our CASM going forward as well. Of course, now there are headwinds in certain of our cost lines as well. That there’s inflationary pressures and costs that are more difficult for us to control, such as airspace, user fees, and airport charges, etcetera, that take away a tad of these improvements and efficiencies that we have achieved. But in essence, we are very confident about our cost performance going forward, and our track record so far has been very good after the pandemic.
José Montero
And, Dwayne, we also keep our whole overhead cost very tight under control. We grow capacity, there’s also a benefit there.
Duane Pfennigwerth
Thanks for that. And then I guess just conceptually, how do you approach full-year guidance at this time in the year? As you said, there’s a lot of the game left to play in the second half, but if we were just considering the results here in the March quarter, and the outlook that you see right now, all else equal, does that put upward pressure on that range or downward pressure on that range? Because I agree, it’s hard to raise 22% to 23% EBIT margins at this point in the year.
José Montero
Yeah, it’s early in the year, as you well said. And we never roll the dice. We’re always pretty conservative in our outlook and of course, we work very hard for our results to be on the upper half of our projections and that’s what we’re doing right now.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Rogerio Araujo of Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Rogerio Araujo
Hey, everyone, thanks for the opportunity. I have a couple here. The first one, we noticed some weakness in Latin American yields for the US airline in this quarter, and that was kind of a mismatch on what Copa reported. If you could please clarify a little bit on the differences of addressable markets between US airlines and Copa, and any difference that you are noticing in the strength of the demand in those different addressable markets would be great. And I can make the second questions afterwards, thank you.
Pedro Heilbron
Right, thanks, Rogerio. I would say maybe the bigger difference is that we’re extremely strong in intra-Latin America. The US to Latin America is important to us, but we’re much stronger in intra-Latin America. Plus, the US airlines are very strong in US to leisure Caribbean, and US to leisure Mexico, and those are not huge markets for us. Actually, we hardly play in those markets. We’re not playing in those markets. So we have differences, and our markets remain quite strong, besides the adjustment, down adjustment in unit revenues, which we have already communicated.
Rogerio Araujo
Okay, pretty clear, thank you. And my second question is regarding the two purchases of leased Aircraft that Copa did this quarter. How many aircraft are owned by Copa right now are unencumbered, and is there a trend here? Can this continue to happen and will you ultimately increase the EBITDA cash conversion for the company in the future if that keeps rising? So that’s why I’m interested about it, but anything you could share would be great, thank you.
Pedro Heilbron
Yeah, Rogerio, we bought two of our aircraft that were under operating leases during the quarter and we are expecting to be selective or opportunistic in terms of deploying capital that way. We believe the 737 NGs is a great asset to own and so we’ve been in negotiations with different or the lessors to see if we can find a deal that is convenient for us.
In terms of the number of aircraft that we have unencumbered, I guess to give you, I think in my prepared remarks, I mentioned that around 73% of our aircraft, of our total fleet of 106 aircraft are owned by the company. And in terms of the aircraft that are fully unencumbered on our fleet, it’s around almost 40 of our aircraft are fully unencumbered. So yeah, it’s quite a bit of a strong position that we have in terms of our fleet.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Helane Becker of TD Cowen. Your line is now open.
Helane Becker
Thanks very much operator. Hi team, thank you for the time. I appreciate it. And also I appreciate that you guys are conservative, but one question I had was with respect to Boeing delivery delays. I guess from what you said, Jose, you’re not really expecting too many because you’re thinking of ending the year with 115 aircraft. Does that include the two you bought off lease?
Pedro Heilbron
No, no. The two that we bought off lease were already in the base. So therefore these are nine deliveries that we’re getting new from Boeing, of which we’ve already received two, MAX 9. So actually we took delivery of one MAX 9 yesterday. So, and we have another one, another MAX 9 coming next week. And then for the remainder of the year, the latest case that we’ll receive six 737 MAX 8s to end the year with the 115 that you eluded to.
Helane Becker
Okay, that’s helpful, thank you. And the other question I had was with respect to, I guess with respect to your demand, you’re seeing an 87% load factor, which I think you’re forecasting for the quarter and the year as well. How does the demand look for either, Panama South or within Panama relative to maybe where it was three or five years ago, since it’s so much higher than it was, back in the last decade?
Pedro Heilbron
Yeah, it’s stronger than before, definitely and for example, tourism, in Panama is growing at a very healthy double digit rate, and that’s helping the O&D Panama traffic. Of course, our main market is the connectivity we provide through our help of the Americas here. So our bigger markets are connecting up and down and East and West in a way. And most markets remain robust in general terms, even though there’s a lot of new capacity from us and from other airlines, we’re still guiding to a very high load factor. So that tells something about the strength of the market.
Helane Becker
Okay, that’s really helpful. Thanks, Pedro. Thanks, Jose.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Alberto Valerio of UBS. Your line is now open.
Alberto Valerio
Hi, good morning, Jose, Pedro. Congrats for the results, really strong. Two quick ones on our side. First one on tax rates. We see a slight increase of tax rate this quarter. Should we consider this for the future? And if you could remind us, what is the methodology in Panama? If I’m not mistaken, it’s 25% and for the connections, you guys don’t have to pay an extra tax.
The second one about the fuel price; we noticed that for the quarter fuel drops, but on the guidance, you keep the 2.85. Just wondering if you did this cautiously if you see a worse scenario for the future, or if the fuel price keeping the way that it is at this moment, we should see further huge decrease and margin should keep stable as you plan the guidance. Thank you, this is all my questions.
Pedro Heilbron
All right, Alberto, I think for your planning purposes, you could assume that our blended tax rate for the full year 2024 should be in range of about 14%. That’s I think the best way to model it financially. I think, sorry, can you repeat the second question? Was it related to our fuel price assumption?
Alberto Valerio
Yes, the fuel price on the guidance, you notice that you keep the same from the fourth quarter results. But we are decreased.
Pedro Heilbron
Yeah, sorry, Alberto, we use the fuel price that we see in the forward curve, and we just simply put it into our guidance. So we don’t necessarily take a view on fuel, on where is it going to be. We don’t want to be predictors of fuel prices. So therefore, it is in the way that we saw it when we were preparing our full year guidance. And it’ll vary throughout the year, definitely, but that’s the price that we looked at in the curve. Of course, that includes as well the realized price during the first quarter.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Michael Linenberg of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.
Michael Linenberg
Oh, hey, good morning, everyone. Jose, I want to go back to just on the maintenance line, and this is sort of to follow up to Rogerio’s question. When we look at this quarter, what was the benefit in, I guess, maybe millions of dollars that you got when you decided to put the airplanes on balance sheet and take them off lease? And the way you answered his question, I got the sense that this will continue through the year, that maybe you’re contemplating additional transactions through the year to take, whether it’s 800s or whatever, to take them off lease and put them on balance sheet.
Pedro Heilbron
Yeah, I would say that the best way to model it from a CASM perspective is that we expect that the maintenance CASM line is going to be kind of flattish on a CASM basis throughout the four quarters of the year, and there’s several reasons there. I would say number one, well, there’s a growth and everything that goes throughout the year, but yeah, there could be further transactions going forward, but also movement there, and there are good guys there related to some of the lease extensions that we have performed in prior periods that create, let’s say, better return conditions, and so that also flows through the P&L, through the maintenance line.
And then there’s another component to it that also creates, let’s say, a good guy in the maintenance line in 2024 versus 2023, and is related to engine maintenance as well that we had, as you recall, last year, all the items with the LEAP, and so some of that is also in there as well. So it’s a mix of things. I would say that the lease transactions and lease extensions are probably represent about maybe half of the benefit, and the other half is related to engine maintenance.
Michael Linenberg
Great, that’s super helpful and then just my second question, when we look at your fleet plan in November of 2023, when you were sort of telling us what you were contemplating for the full year, and this was obviously before the door plug, you were going to get 15 airplanes, and then we went to 11 airplanes, and now we’re at nine airplanes, and I’m not even sure, are we even going to get nine airplanes based on what we’re hearing from other carriers and news coming out of Boeing?
Where was your gross CapEx? What was the gross CapEx plan for 2024 when it was 15 airplanes and now that we’re at nine airplanes, where are we now and call it, I guess hundreds of millions of dollars. What’s the rough number? Thank you, thanks for taking my questions.
José Montero
Yeah, right now our estimate for CapEx with this fleet plan, the gross CapEx is around $700 million. With the original fleet plan, it was in excess of $1 billion.
Michael Linenberg
Wonderful, so, as in lots of dry powder, but no, I’m going to let you finish, Pedro, sorry.
Pedro Heilbron
No, no, it’s great. I’ll rather hear your comment. But no, no, what I was going to add is that unrelated to the CapEx question, or maybe it is, but most of our growth, of our ASM growth this year, is going to come from the full year effect of our growth in 2023. So even if some of our later in the year deliveries get delayed into the following year, it won’t have a significant effect on our ASM growth projected for 2024.
José Montero
And that’s kind of the reason why the capacity guide stayed the same at 10%. We already were assuming a set of delays on these deliveries. As I mentioned, as impactful into the year.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Pablo Monsivais of Copa Barclays. Your line is now open.
Pablo Monsivais
Hi guys, thanks for taking my question. Just two questions and the one is related to Mike’s, and to make sure that I get the number of the CapEx guidance for 2024. I heard it was 700, but just want to make sure of that. And my question is, I want to pick your brain on the competitive landscape. Some Latin American carriers are putting more capacity, other US carriers are saying there’s overcapacity. What are your overall thoughts on where the competitive environment is moving? Thank you.
Pedro Heilbron
Yeah, so our main competitors in the region, and I will name them, have been growing capacity at a pace that’s probably two times, and at times three times our own. But coming out of the pandemic, we grew a lot faster than all of them. So they have caught up in this past year, and I also expect — we also expect their growth to slow down year-over-year, as it lapsed the previous growth. And so far, our load factors remain high. I’m not sure about theirs, but ours remain high. So the market has been able to absorb the capacity. And I’m expecting, at least hoping, that capacity growth will be rational going forward.
The airlines in our region are well managed, and everybody wants to deliver strong financial results. So that usually means they’re being very rational with capacity, but so far, the market has responded well.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Daniel McKenzie of Seaport Global. Your line is now open.
Daniel McKenzie
Oh, hey, thanks, guys. Congrats on the stellar first quarter results. Got a couple questions here. They’re really focused on sort of the longer-term investor, from a longer-term investor perspective and the first one really just is on growth and revenue segmentation. And so with respect to growth, just how sustainable is growth, and how are you thinking about the right growth rate longer-term?
And then separately, I’m wondering if you could share what percent of the overall revenue is perhaps premium revenue and I know you don’t break out corporate, and that’s not the question here. It’s just really similar to how U.S. airlines are defining it, just from a segmentation perspective.
Pedro Heilbron
Okay, hi, Dan. Let me give it a shot. So we are confident that we can sustain a growth, an ASM growth rate above what you’re seeing right now. Above the 10%, we were planning to grow more than 10%. We did not get all the deliveries we expected, but we’re fine with that. We have no issues with that and next year, we should be growing at over 10%.
You won’t see us growing at 20% or 30%, but growing in somewhere between the low teens to the mid-teens, we can probably stay in that range for a number of years, and we see good opportunities in terms of overall market demand, new destinations, etcetera. So we’re pretty confident that we can maintain for a number of years, in the medium to long term, actually, a really, really healthy ASM growth.
But the way we are, just the way we have always run this airline, we always remain flexible to adjust either way. The opportunity is such that we can grow faster. We have means of doing it, but we usually cover the downside. So we have a lot of flexibility to cover the downside if things were to slow down. We’ve always done it. We’ve done it effectively. That’s kind of the mentality of our board also. So that flexibility is important in our planning.
In terms of revenue segmentation, leisure became, after the pandemic, it became a high quality segment in many ways. And as we have explained in previous calls, today our leisure is around 40%. Visiting friends and relatives is in the 35% range. Then business is in the 25% to 20% range, depending on the quarter. So that’s kind of the range. But again, leisure is different than before. There’s a segment of leisure that is a little bit more higher fare. Hope I answered your question.
Daniel McKenzie
Yeah, thank you. That was terrific. And then I guess going back to an earlier question. So for those investors, again, trying to understand the margin outperformance in the current cycle versus the last cycle, what are the top three things that are behind that from your perspective? So the 21% to 23% margins today versus 18% to 20% historically, is it as simple as pent-up demand, sort of high value leisure, or is it perhaps more structural in nature just given where your cost structure is? So really the question just kind of gets down to how longer term investors should think about the business.
Pedro Heilbron
Right. That’s an interesting question. And it allows me to talk a little bit briefly about how we have changed as a company and one of our values as a company is continuous improvement. So we’re always looking for better ways of doing things. So if we compare the Copa’s today to the pre-pandemic Copa, for example, we have better unit costs. We have better revenue management and pricing.
Today, we can sell basic fares that don’t offer much except if the passenger pays more for it and we can distribute them directly to the customer, saving significant costs on GDS and the like. So we are a lot more competitive against any other airline business model.
We’re also, I would say, we have streamlined our network. There’s still around eight destinations that we were flying pre-pandemic that we’re not flying to right now, but instead, we have like, I don’t know, somewhere between 12 destinations and 14 destinations we were not flying to before. So we’re flying to more places. It will be 85 by next month, which is five more than what we flew in 2019. So stronger network, better unit costs, better technology, better pricing. Our digital technology, for example, today is mostly developed and owned by us. Before, it was all third-party companies.
So we have better technology and better costs. So I guess I could keep on going, but we’re a better airline and we’re more efficient, we’re more effective, and we’re more competitive. We also have more competition. So we had to be better to be able to deliver the margins we’re delivering. We could not just sit with our arms across to see what would happen.
Daniel McKenzie
Right, that’s wonderful. Thanks for that comprehensive answer, Pedro.
Pedro Heilbron
Yeah, I’m sorry for the advertising.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Graham Mendez [ph] of JP Morgan. Your line is now open.
Unidentified Analyst
Good morning, Pedro, Jose, Daniel. Thanks for taking my question. My first one, it’s on capital allocation. We continue to see leverage coming down. And how should we think about capital allocation going forward if any excess of capital should be distributed into dividends and buybacks? And if there’s an optimum level of leverage that we could consider for this long-term growth and profitability going forward?
And the second one, it’s on Columbia. I know it’s relatively small for you, but if you could share how Wingo is performing and how the competitive environment is in Columbia post the two airlines leaving the market last year. Thank you.
Pedro Heilbron
So, Guillermo, in terms of capital allocation, I would say first that, yeah, our balance sheet certainly right now is very, very strong leverage. So it’s in a high point and I think we have to be mindful that we have a lot of aircraft coming. So we have a lot of capital expenditures that are going to be put in back into the business over the next year and a half. Our fleet plan that we put in our 20-F for 2025 has around 16 airplanes coming next year. So it is quite a bit of a growth that we will put back into the business over the next several years.
Number two is that we have been very active in return of value to our shareholders. This year, we have essentially the board decided to almost double the dividend vis-a-vis last year. And our policy is as the business continues being successful, we distribute that to our shareholders and we’ve complimented that as we put out in our first quarter results and we’ve also bought back $40 million worth of shares during Q1. So it’s a mix of everything. First, I’d say it’s putting it back into the company for growth and then followed by the return of value to our shareholders.
José Montero
In terms of Colombia, so Colombia is a very competitive market. It goes through its waves, but it’s always very competitive. In terms of one of your specific questions, capacity today in Colombia is close to 20%. Domestic Colombia is around 20% higher than before when the two airlines that failed were operating. So even without those two airlines, capacity is about 20% higher. That includes one new entrant that started, I think late last year, plus the growth from the incumbents.
Wingo is performing well. Maybe it’s the better performing airline in Colombia, I’m not sure, but we’re keeping capacity flat. At Wingo, they operated last year nine aircraft, and this year they’re operating nine aircraft, nine 737-800. So we don’t have ambitious plans. It’s just a very difficult market in general. So we would rather keep capacity under control and results in a healthy level and that’s kind of what we’re doing with Colombia and with Wingo.
Unidentified Analyst
That’s very clear. Thank you, Pedro and Jose. Have a good day.
Operator
And our last question comes from the line of Jay Singh of Citi. Your line is now open.
Jay Singh
Hey, thanks for taking my question. It’s Jay Singh dialing in for Stephen Trent. My first question is, looking at the US market, we see that inflationary pressures pushed above 2019 levels and is likely to continue going forward. As for Copa, what are you executing on the cost side and realizing in terms of maintaining such a low CASM figure? Thanks.
José Montero
Yeah, Jay, look, we of course are cognizant that the US has been going through a significant period of inflation over the last several years. And we are seeing some of that in airport fees, handling fees in the US, hotel rooms for crews in the US. All those have been putting some pressure on our CASM.
But in Latin America in general, the inflation has not been as prevalent as it has been in the United States. So therefore, we have not had as much pressure as some of the US airlines and in addition to that, we’ve been very active in pursuing, as Pedro just mentioned, better ways to do our own operations. So we’ve been very active after the pandemic in just seeking reductions in costs and efficiencies going forward, overhead, fleet decisions that we have made, and distribution strategy, maintenance, densification, etcetera.
We’ve done a lot over many, many swim lanes in order for us to be competitive. But we are seeing some of that inflation in the US, albeit not at the same level as the US carriers.
Jay Singh
And my second question is, how are you able to maintain the 10% capacity guide in spite of the Boeing delivery delays?
José Montero
Yeah, the 10%, if I understand your question correctly, it’s how is it that we’re maintaining our capacity guide in spite of the Boeing delays? Yeah, the 10% assumes the current scenario that we have for aircraft deliveries for the remainder of the year. And as Pedro mentioned before, the large portion of our growth for 2024 is just simply the full year effect from 2023 of the capacity that we put in throughout the year 2023.
So therefore, it’s not that much subject to aircraft. Aircraft that come in later in the year do not really have that much of an impact if they were to be delayed up until 2025. So it is the number that we have right now, 10% and if there are changes in the future, we’ll see and we’ll let the market know.
Jay Singh
Well, this is all very helpful. Congrats on a great quarter.
Operator
Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn it back to Pedro Heilbron for closing remarks.
Pedro Heilbron
Okay, thank you, sir. So thank you all. This concludes our first quarter 2024 earnings call. Thank you for participating and as always, thank you for your continued support. I hope you have a great day.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This concludes the presentation. You may disconnect and have a wonderful day.
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