Copa Holdings SA (CPA) 2010 Q4 法說會逐字稿

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  • Operator

  • Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Copa Holdings fourth quarter and full year 2010 earnings call. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this call is being webcast and recorded on February 10, 2011.

  • Now I would turn the conference call over to Joe Putaturo, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

  • Joe Putaturo - Director IR

  • Thank you very much, operator, and welcome everyone, to our fourth quarter earnings call. Joining us today are Pedro Heilbron, CEO of Copa Holdings, and Victor Vial, our Chief Financial Officer.

  • First, Pedro will open up with an overview of our fourth quarter and full year highlights, followed by Victor, who'll discuss our financial results. Immediately after, we'll open up the call for questions from analysts. We kindly request, if you could limit yourself to one question with a brief follow up, so we can accommodate all questions.

  • In today's call, we'll discuss non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures can be found in our fourth quarter earnings release, which has been posted on the Company's website, CopaAir.com.

  • In addition, our discussion will contain forward-looking statements not limited to historical facts that reflect the Company's current beliefs, expectations, and our 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 that are subject to change. Many of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our annual report filed with the SEC.

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

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • Thank you, Joe. Good morning to all and thank you for participating in our fourth-quarter and full year 2010 earnings call. As always, I would like to begin by congratulating our co-workers for their efforts in delivering a strong fourth quarter. One in which we delivered an operating margin of 22% and a net profit of $93 million, which when adjusted for special items grew 24% year-over-year.

  • Now looking back at full year 2010, I would like to mention that our team began the year with an ambitious set of goals and objectives aimed at further strengthening the competitive advantage of our hub and the best choice for intra Latin America travel, securing the necessary aircraft and infrastructure for our medium and long-term growth trends, and maintaining and improving the appeal of our product and our passengers' travel experience all while delivering world-class financial results. I'm happy to inform you that with the support of a great team these objectives were accomplished.

  • Among our main highlights for 2010, Copa Holdings achieved another year of double-digit capacity and passenger growth. With our consolidated load factor reaching 77%. For full year 2010, and despite a challenging revenue environment in some markets and higher fuel costs in the second half of the year we were able to grow our operating earnings in line with capacity and deliver a consolidated operating margin of nearly 19%.

  • During the year, Copa Airlines continued expanding its network by increasing frequencies to eight markets and adding a new destination, St. Maarten, in December. At the same time, Copa Colombia continued its international expansion by adding more capacity from Colombia into Copa's Hub of the Americas in Panama. As well as adding [other] international destinations such as Mexico City, Cancun, Guayaquil, and Havana.

  • Copa Airlines Colombia now provides direct nonstop service from Colombia to seven international destinations; representing approximately 40% of the capacity. During 2010, our team once again delivered excellent operational performance. As Copa Airlines reported on-time performance of 90.7% and a flight completion factor of 99.6%, maintaining its position among the best and most reliable airlines in the industry.

  • So we continue to deliver what our passengers expect from us, a superior network for intra Latin America travel with more choices, better schedules and a world-class product.

  • Among other highlights for 2010, during the year we placed orders for 42 aircraft, all Boeing 737-800. First we announced 10 leases for delivery in 2011 and 2012 with the purpose of bolstering our growth and strengthening our Panama hub. Days later, we have now the largest aircraft order in Copa's history, 32 aircraft; 22 firm and 10 options which deliver between 2015 and 2018.

  • In the fourth quarter we announced our plans to enter the Star Alliance and we are already working in order to achieve integration by the first half of 2012. With regards to our fleet Copa Holdings ended the year with a consolidated fleet of 63 aircraft, 7 more than in '09.

  • During the year, we received eight aircraft all Boeing 737-800s and returned the last [NDAD] aircraft in our fleet.

  • Now looking at the main highlights for our fourth quarter. Consolidated passenger traffic picked up significantly increasing a very strong 19% on slightly higher capacity expansion.

  • Our consolidated load factor came in at a very robust 78.8% which was even higher than our third quarter which is our high season. Strong overall demand also resulted in a healthy revenue environment as both yields and RASM came in well above the third quarter. This strong revenue performance, along with a year-over-year reduction in unit costs allowed us to report record operating earnings of $89 million which represent an operating margin of close to 22% for the quarter.

  • Adjusted net income came in at $81 million representing year-over-year earnings growth of 24%. I'm also pleased to highlight that we ended the quarter with a very solid balance sheet and cash position.

  • As you can see from our fourth-quarter results and our recently released January traffic statistics which saw traffic growth of 21%. We're experiencing an improved demand environment and forward bookings indicate this trend should continue into the first quarter and hopefully the rest of the year.

  • Given the positive regional economic environment we expect our corporate clients to increase their travel budgets this year. And we're raising the positive impact in January and February which should allow us to continue driving unit revenue improvements in 2011.

  • Operationally, we're excited about our 2011 expansion plans including our transition from a four bank to a six bank hub structure in June. We have already announced three new destinations which we will launch with four repeat frequencies. They are Toronto, our first Canadian destination; Porto Alegre, our fifth Brazilin city, and Nassau, our eleventh Caribbean destination. With these new cities our network will cover 55 destinations in 25 countries, which is by far the most complete and convenient network for intra Latin America travels.

  • Additionally, we'll be increasing daily frequencies inside markets, specifically Bogota moves to six times daily, Lima increases to five times a day, Miami, four times a day, and Orlando and Santiago, Chile, grow from two to three daily frequencies. These new destinations and additional frequencies including those added since the second half of last year our time to coincide with implementation of our six bank hub structure which will add an early morning bank and a mid-afternoon bank to our operation.

  • The transition to a six bank hub gives us an unrivalled advantage over our competitors whom are still have one or two banks, and strengthens our position as the premier intra Latin America hub. Among the main advantages of our six bank hub, it allows for better utilization of the Tocumen airport infrastructure, as well as more efficient use of our airport personnel and equipment. It will provide our passengers with more and better flight options as we add frequencies into the new banks.

  • And in many cases it will permit significant schedule improvements to major destinations in North and South America among others. This new six bank hub and the Tocumen airport expansion which should be concluded by the second half of the year is part of a foundation that will drive our future growth and will increase our hub's dominance.

  • Our 2011 expansion plan calls for 20% ASM growth; however, most of the incremental ASMs for 2011, approximately half, will be the full-year effects of flights we added in 2010. I should also add that in terms of departures we're growing less than 10%, so a lot of the growth is due to increased stage length and the addition of larger gauge 737-800 aircraft.

  • Also our new destinations in 2011 are being added in June as mentioned before, and we will add three more in December. As a result, new destinations will only represent around 10% of incremental capacity.

  • So to summarize, we're very pleased by our fourth quarter and full-year results. As well as the many initiatives we're implementing to strengthen our Hub of the Americas, the regional economic environment remains strong and we're seeing continuous improvement in business traffic. And we're well positioned strategically, financially and operationally to take advantage of opportunities ahead while continuing to deliver world-class results.

  • Thank you. Now, we'll turn it over to Victor who will go over our fourth quarter and full-year results.

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • Thanks Pedro, and good morning everyone. Thanks again for joining us. First and foremost, congratulations again to each and everyone of our co-workers for an outstanding fourth quarter and another exceptional year. We can't thank them enough for their efforts and hard work.

  • With this report we have another year of strong financial results with net earnings for the year coming in at $212 million or $4.82 in earnings per share.

  • Excluding special items which for the full year include a $90 million charge related to the revaluation of the Venezuelan currency and a $12 million mark-to-market gain related to fuel hedges. Adjusted net earnings for 2010 reached $219 million or 9% year-over-year increase.

  • With respect to the fourth quarter, net income came in at $92.8 million which translates to earning per share of $2.11, 32% of our Q4 '09 reported EPS.

  • Excluding special items for -- which for the quarter consist of $11.6 million mark-to-market gain related to fuel hedges, adjusted net income for the quarter came in at $81.2 million, 44% above last year's adjusted net income. Demand for air travel in the quarter was strong as revenue passenger miles increased close to 19% on 20% capacity expansion leading to a consolidated load factor of 79%.

  • On the yield front we continue to see positive trends. In fact, for the quarter, consolidated yields were up close to 1% year-over-year, and adjusting for a 5% increase in length of haul yields were off more then 3%.

  • On a quarter-over-quarter basis yields climbed almost 5%. As a result passenger revenue for available seat miles came in at $0.13 flat year-over-year but 4% higher on a length of haul adjusted basis.

  • On the other hand, lower unit costs notwithstanding a sharp increase in fuel prices, contributed to a 22% operating margin for the quarter and an 18.6% operating margin for the year. In terms of revenues, fourth quarter operating revenues came in at $411 million (inaudible) year-over-year growth of approximately 20%.

  • On the expense side, fourth quarter operating expenses increased 18.6% year-over-year on 20% capacity growth while on a unit basis costs per available seat mile decreased 0.8% year-over-year to $0.108.

  • Excluding fuel and special fleet charges for 4Q '09 unit costs during the fourth quarter decreased 2.6% year-over-year to $0.074 as the capacity growth contributed to dilution of overhead cost.

  • In terms of our main operating expenses compared to the fourth quarter of '09 fuel expense increased 31% driven by a 13% increase in the expected price per gallon of jet fuel including realized hedge gains and a 15% increase in gallons consumed resulting from additional capacity.

  • Salaries and benefits increased 15% driven mainly by an increase in operating headcount before capacity growth. Passenger service increased 11% mainly as a result of additional passengers. Commission increased 6%, mostly due to a higher passenger revenue base partly offset by lower average commission rates. Reservation and sales increased 13%, driven mainly by traffic growth.

  • Maintenance, materials and repairs increased 26% mostly as a result of additional capacity and more major overhaul events. Depreciation increased 24% due to additional aircraft and spares. Flight operation, landing fees and rentals increased 17% due to increased capacity. And other operating expenses increased $4 million from purchases in the fourth quarter of '09.

  • Other non-operating income and expense totaled a net non-operating gain of $11.9 million which includes a net interest expense of $6.5 million and an $11.6 million non-cash gain related to the mark-to-market of fuel hedges.

  • Regarding operating earnings, the Company's operating earnings came in at $89 million compared to last year's fourth quarter adjusted operating earnings of $76.6 million.

  • With respect to profit margins our operating margin came in at 21.7% compared to an adjusted operating margin of 22.3% in Q4 '09, despite a 13% year-over-year increase in the effective price of jet fuel.

  • Turning to fuel hedges during the fourth quarter we had 22% of our volume hedged, 16% with jet fuel swaps at $2.17 per gallon and 6% with crude oil swaps at $83 a barrel. Additionally, we currently have in place the following coverage, for 2011, 23% of our volume, half of which consists of jet fuel swaps at an average of $1.96 a gallon, and the other half consisting of crude oil swaps at an average of $79 a barrel. We also have hedges for 9% of projected consumption for 2012 at an average (inaudible) price in the range of $83 a barrel.

  • Moving on to the Company's balance sheet, assets at the end of the year total $2.5 billion, owners equity reached $1 billion, and debt plus capitalized leases totaled approximately $1.3 billion. In terms of bank debt we ended the quarter with $990 million in short-term and long-term debt with an average blended rate of 3.3% including fixed and variable-rate debt.

  • With respect to cash, the Company maintains a healthy cash position ending the year with $409 million in cash, short-term and long-term investments which represent approximately 29% of last 12 months' revenues.

  • So in summary, we had another year of outstanding operating margins and strong capacity growth. Strong demand in weaker months set the stage for a strong 2011, a year where we'll be adding 10 new aircraft to our fleet, at least 5 new destinations to our network and more frequencies to key markets.

  • We have a strong balance sheet and cash position to continue with our expansion plans. And most of all, our co-workers continue to delivering a world class product to our passengers.

  • In terms of our 2011 guidance, as you may recall, back in November we issued our preliminary guidance and the same economic growth projections for the region have been revised upwards. In fact, GDP growth projections for the year are now in the range of 4% to 5% with Panama again projected to be at the top with at least 7% GDP growth.

  • Accordingly, we are revising our guidance for full year 2011 (inaudible). We are revising our full year capacity growth forecast from a range of 17% to 19% to approximately 20%. We are maintaining a load factor guidance of plus or minus 74% compared to 76.9% in 2010. We are raising our RASM guidance from plus or minus $0.118 to plus or minus $0.123, 5% lower than 2010 driven by 10% year-over-year increase in length of haul.

  • We're raising our CASM ex-fuel guidance from plus or minus $0.064 to plus or minus $0.067, a decrease of 7% from $0.072 in 2010 as a result of a 9% year-over-year increase in stage length. And we continue to project a full year operating margin to come in between 18% and 20% which puts us in the range of the 18.6% operating margin we reached in 2010.

  • Our guidance assumes an increase in the effective price of jet fuel from $2.50 per gallon assuming our November guidance to $2.60 per gallon. Thank you and with that I'll turn over to Pedro for closing remarks.

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • Thank you, Victor. Now we open up the call for some questions.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Jim Parker, Raymond James.

  • Jim Parker - Analyst

  • I have a question regarding your non-operating income expense. If you go to this category, if you look at other net, there is a total gain of $18.4 million of which $11.6 million is non-cash gain related to mark-to-market fuel hedges, all right. There is $6.8 million there that is unexplained; again, can you please tell us what that is?

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • The two major items there are the following, roughly $3 million or so relate to prior period accrued expense adjustments and another $2.5 million to $3 million relate to supplier credit notes which we are booking on their non-operating net, so that adds up to roughly $6 million of the $6.8 million that you mentioned.

  • Jim Parker - Analyst

  • Okay, so those are non-recurring, is that correct?

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • That is correct, they're non-recurring.

  • Jim Parker - Analyst

  • Also with regard to maintenance there is a bit of bubble that appears in the fourth quarter and you mentioned more overhauls. Can you give us some idea, is that a bubble? Or what can we expect in terms of overhauls, major overhauls?

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • Yes, and it has to do more on the engine side, relating more to the CF34 engine which we have on our Embraer fleet. And we simply had more unscheduled engine events in the fourth quarter than we were expecting.

  • Our CFM engine, for many years we've had it on a power by the hour deal, and right now we're installing the final phase of negotiating a deal for us to put our CF34 engines on an on point contract which is basically a power by the hour deal, whereby the cash flows actually remain on your side or the Company's side if the event takes place. So the way we see it is we should have, going forward, more certainty in terms of our engine related costs with respect to CF34 engines such as we did with CFM engine, with the power by the hour deal.

  • Jim Parker - Analyst

  • Great, thank you.

  • Operator

  • Jamie Baker, JP Morgan.

  • Jamie Baker - Analyst

  • Hey Victor, your demand base seems to be considerably more inelastic than some of the other airlines that I look at. And I do realize and respect that your 2011 hedges are in the money right now, and probably stay that way. It's not entirely clear what the cost of that 23% hedge book was. I'm wondering as we go forward if we should assume you hedge less from here in light of the overall expense and what appears to be a pretty easy job of recovering fuel costs from your passengers, any thoughts on that?

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • Sure, well you're right, I mean, we've been pretty successful in passing along to our passengers the higher cost of fuel that -- in a way that's -- as a matter of fact, pretty much 100% of the year-over-year increase in fuel costs. We very well to recoup via fuel surcharges and higher fares.

  • And a lot of the markets where we operate, actually when you have higher commodity prices actually those economies do pretty well. So that issue, additional pricing power, but we do see hedging as somewhat of an insurance. We're not that aggressive with our hedge program; we hedge -- we will be hedging up to 25% of our volume, maybe a little bit more.

  • And looking forward, we expect to continue with our hedging policy which -- it has been pretty successful in the past seven, eight years since we've been applying it. The way we are measure success of our policies is not really by how much gain or loss you had in a given year, it's by the consistency in profit margins and if you look at our profit margins in the past five years would have been in the range of 19% every single year except for '08 when we went down to around 17.5%. And those are years where you have fuel $140 or as low as $30. So we think it's a good insurance and we will continue doing it going forward.

  • Jamie Baker - Analyst

  • Right. Okay, excellent, I appreciate the color, thanks everybody.

  • Operator

  • Helane Becker, Dahlman Rose.

  • Helane Becker - Analyst

  • So my first question is with respect to Copa Colombia, can you just kind of talk about your thoughts there? I thought I saw something come across a week or so ago about doing some -- I don't know if it was a codeshare or an interline (inaudible) there. So maybe you can talk about the outlook for Copa Colombia and how that's going in more -- a little more detail?

  • And then my second question is just on the tax rate, I think Joe, you had said at one point 8% to 13% is that a number we should still be looking to for this year?

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • Let Victor -- and this Pedro, Victor will comment maybe first on the taxes and then I'll talk about Copa Colombia.

  • Helane Becker - Analyst

  • Thank you.

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • Yes in fact the tax rate, going forward we expect it to be somewhere in the range between 12% to maybe 13% this year, it came in a little bit below what -- 11.5%, and I think technically it is a combination of the taxes that we are exposed to not only in Panama but several countries where we operate. So, yes, we should be in that range, so up to 13%.

  • Helane Becker - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • Talking about Copa Colombia, I think we need to start or we probably have to help you there. Start thinking differently, Copa Colombia International services is up to 40% of their total operations. A lot comes into Panama and feeds into our hub.

  • So, by the minute, we're Copa Airline and Copa Holdings one unit with international operations and domestic service in Colombia. And it starts to get difficult to set them apart and think about each of the segments as a different company with a different or a different strategy. So it's more about how we both complement each other and how we're part of the same entity.

  • And when we make decisions we're looking at Copa Holdings and the total resource of -- the resource of Copa Holdings and not each individual segment. So I know I'm not -- I'm probably not answering your question directly, but it's actually getting harder to add with each segment separately.

  • Helane Becker - Analyst

  • Okay. So let me ask it this way. When I think about Colombia then, am I thinking about only the ERJ fleet or are they also operating 737-800s?

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • They operate two 737-700s.

  • Helane Becker - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • And then the other 14 are currently operating our Embraer 190.

  • Helane Becker - Analyst

  • Okay, well that actually helps a lot. And then my other question is in terms of intraline agreements. Have you thought about doing more north -- more northern or northern -- what do I want to say, northern geographies versus just joining the Star Alliance? How will that -- how should we think about that?

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • 90% of our efforts right now are in the joining of the Star Alliance, which requires a lot of time and effort. We have a team of people -- a large team of people dedicated, not 100% of their time, but a good percentage of their time to all the requirements for joining Star Alliance, which we hope to join by April 2012. So our focus is in Star, and the bilateral relationships, and frequent flyer agreements that we're going to be signing from now to April 2012, are going to be 99% focused on Star.

  • Helane Becker - Analyst

  • Right. Okay, thank you very much for your help.

  • Operator

  • Michael Linenberg, Deutsche Bank.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • A couple of questions. Victor, when you talked about the blended rate of 3.3%, you said it's fixed and variable. What percentage of your debt is fixed versus variable?

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • At the end of the fourth quarter, a little bit under 50% of our debt has been fixed.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • And the average fixed rate is in the neighborhood of 4.6%-4.7% or so.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Okay. And is it safe to assume going forward that you may be swapping some of the variable into fixed. Is that part of the plan for 2011, or is it just too early to determine?

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • It's something we're looking at constantly. I would say that our approach has been to have at least 50% of our deadlines fixed. It's not a bad time to start thinking of maybe fixing some of that variables. I will look at it during the course of the year.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • We feel comfortable at 50-50.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Okay. On the comments about the new market additions, I don't know if it was you or Pedro who said it represents 10% of 2011's capacity growth. Is that 10% -- is that 10 percentage points of the 20%? Or is that 10% as in 2% of your -- 2 percentage points of the capacity growth?

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • No, Victor might.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Yes.

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • It is 10% of the 100%. What's going on is that as new destinations are coming in, in the second-half of the year, some of them late in the year.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Okay, okay.

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • It is 10%.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Okay. And then back to Colombia. When you gave some commentary on it, you talked about the yields are up in the press release. And you indicated that some of it was international, but some of it was also domestic. Can you give us just some more color on what domestic yields did year-over-year, and maybe how things are trending into this quarter, the March quarter?

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • Sure. Yes, what we saw in the fourth quarter was a slight increase in domestic yields. It was probably in the range of 40% or so, on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Now to assume that that's going to be the case for full-year 2011, it still remains to be seen. What we have seen at least is a change in stance from [Airis] as a result of the transaction that took place with -- with the more rational behavior with respect to pricing and capacity.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Yes.

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • So we hope that we'll go back to the days where you have a fair environment that we saw in the second and third quarter of last year, where it was just, I would call it irrational. We see more rational pricing --

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • With the takeover of Airis byline, have you seen them pull out of a bunch of markets. I think maybe they've pulled out of Panama. What's -- any color on that? And that's my last question, sorry.

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • Yes, this is Pedro. A couple of things, we now have rational competitors in Colombia, and what Airis was doing was just crazy. They basically went out of business. They were saved at the bell.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Yes.

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • So we do not expect to see that kind of behavior this year, in 2011. They have pulled out of markets. The capacity they pulled out of Panama were small turboprops flying some secondary markets, so none have a huge impact on us.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • And most of the markets they pulled out were international markets they were flying with their 737s to the U.S., Fort Lauderdale and New York, and that doesn't really affect us.

  • Michael Linenberg - Analyst

  • Okay. Okay very good. Nice job this quarter and year.

  • Operator

  • Ray Neidl, with Maxim.

  • Ray Neidl - Analyst

  • Generally speaking, you've done a really great job in expanding -- exploiting those markets down there that called for better air service, and very aggressive expansion. You're getting to be a pretty big airline right now. And the 20% growth, I'm just wondering if your infrastructure can handle that.

  • I know you're building a new terminal that will fit into that. But will you be able to recruit enough qualified employees, pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, ground personnel to keep this growth going, even though the demand seems to be there?

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • Yes, an interesting question. One of the -- in terms of airport infrastructure, that's one of the great advantages we have over basically all of our competitors in Latin America. And we're leveraging that advantage. The Tocumen Airport is expanding as we know. It's -- they're inaugurating the next expansion phase between probably August or September of this year, growing from 22 to 34 gates. And the government has already hired consultants or architects to design the following expansion phase.

  • So, by the time we need it, which could be maybe five years from now, it's probably going to be ready. So again it's something that they're only starting to design. But airport infrastructure, it's a great advantage we have, and we're leveraging that.

  • Obviously, it also -- this expansion requires, and becoming a bigger airline requires solid investments. We're investing in technology, and that's something that's been going on for a while, but we're going to accelerate this year our investment in the right technology, now that we're becoming bigger boys.

  • And also then the personnel question. It's always a challenge, but we've been able to meet that challenge in the past, and right now we're having no problems recruiting the pilots we need for 2011 and 2012. Our training pipeline is full as expected.

  • And luckily, Panama is a country with a good quality of life, where we can attract people from the region and from outside the region to come live and work for us here. Plus, the talent pool in Panama has Copa as one of the premier choices to work at. So we're having success recruiting also.

  • Ray Neidl - Analyst

  • Okay, great. And Victor, I just saw a number that you put out, I didn't quite get them. It sounded like you expect GDP growth in the region to be 4%-5% this year, and Panama, I didn't get that number. Was it 10%?

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • Well, I wish but. It's -- well, it's currently north of 7%, which is still outstanding. And that's from a year 2010, which was also north of 6%. So Panama is doing quite well, and we obviously benefit from that.

  • Ray Neidl - Analyst

  • Okay great. Thank you for clarifying this. Thank you very --

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • Just to add, if I'm not mistaken, during the fourth quarter, the economy in Panama grew around 9%.

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • That's right.

  • Ray Neidl - Analyst

  • Okay, good. Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Steve Trent, Citigroup.

  • Angela - Analyst

  • Good morning, this is Angela on behalf of Steve Trent. My first question would be what was the driver of the big increase in revenue, and my second one would be what might be the plan for any degree of cooperation between Copa and Avianca-TACA, now that both carriers are joining the Star Alliance? Thanks.

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • Yes, with this first question -- Angela, this is Victor -- it boils down to cargo. We had a pretty good quarter in our cargo business and we've seen, throughout the year, cargo pick-up, and fourth quarter came in very strong. And we hope that in 2011, we will continue to see that strength going. But it was on the cargo.

  • Angela - Analyst

  • Okay. And the second one regarding the Star Alliance between Copa and Avianca-TACA and the corporation.

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • Right. Well, the way it works is that even though we are going to join Star, we intend to join Star in April of 2012, we have the opportunity to sign codeshare and frequent flyer agreements before that date. And one of the earnings that brings more value to us is Avianca-TACA given their strength in the Colombian market where we have an important presence also. So we announced recently together with United that we will be entering into a codeshare and frequent flyer agreement which should be in place some time around April of this year.

  • Angela - Analyst

  • Okay. Thank you. I think that's it from me.

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • I thank you, and --

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions). Augusto Ensiki, Morgan Stanley.

  • Augusto Ensiki - Analyst

  • Two quick questions and apologies if it's already been asked. Was there -- what was the main cause of the shift in your guidance for CASM ex-fuel from the previous 6.4 to the current 6.7?

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • Yes. Well, so -- this is Victor, by the way, Augusto, good morning.

  • Augusto Ensiki - Analyst

  • Hi, Victor.

  • Victor Vial - CFO

  • I believe it relates to the higher revenue that we were projecting, the higher revenue being the result of very strong fourth quarter and the demand trend that we're seeing. So at that -- some of it has to do with distribution costs as a result of more revenue.

  • Some of it relates to the aircraft rental line. This year we're bringing in five additional lead 737-800s and we also made the decision to extend two leases, so some of the increase relates to that line. Some of it relates to maintenance which came in a little bit higher than we had expected. I already talked about the engine event. So we adjusted that for the year though we still expect maintenance on a year-by-year basis to come in below on a CASM basis.

  • And also we adjusted itself for build up for 2012, late in the year 2011, we have to build up for that capacity we are going to add in 2012. And we're pretty bullish for 2011 and 2012, hopefully, we ill be as strong.

  • Augusto Ensiki - Analyst

  • Okay, that's very clear. Thank you very much.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Pedro Heilbron.

  • Pedro Heilbron - CEO

  • Okay, thank you all. This concludes our fourth quarter earnings call. Thank you for being with us and we'll see you next time. Have a great day.

  • Operator

  • Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the conference. You may now disconnect.