Cargojet Inc

TSX:CJT

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Good day, and welcome to the Cargojet conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Pauline Dhillon, Chief Corporate Officer. Please go ahead.

[Pauline Dhillon, Chief Corporate Officer]

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today on our results call. With me on the call are: Ajay Virmani, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Jamie Porteous, our Chief Commercial Officer; John Kim, our Chief Financial Officer; Sanjeev Maini, our VP, Finance. After opening remarks are made about the quarter, we will open the lines for questions. I would like to point out that certain statements made on this call, such as those relating to our forecasted revenues, costs and strategic plans are forward-looking within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This call also includes references to non-GAAP measures, like adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDAR. Please refer to our most recent press release and MD&A for important assumptions and cautionary statements relating to forward-looking information and for reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP income. I'll turn the call over to Ajay for his remarks.

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

Thank you, Pauline, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. Exactly 1 year ago when I hosted the earnings call, I had no idea that we would be facing a once-in-a-century pandemic. With the vaccine rollout picking up, I'm optimistic that we will soon be able to enjoy activities that we miss so dearly. From the March of last year to March of this year, Cargojet has gone through a transformation like none other. While thousands of businesses face closures, shutdowns and loss of business, Cargojet was fortunate enough to play in the essential role in keeping of our nation's supply chain moving. There's no question that we benefited from the elevated demand in e-commerce and the need to fly PPE from China and other countries. But it required a very disciplined approach to execution. On the one hand, we had to bear additional costs for health, safety protocols and on-site private testing, hero pay for our frontline employees, additional bonuses and rapid adjustment to how we operated. But on the other hand, we successfully supported rapidly changing needs of our customers. We also stayed disciplined in continuing to execute our long-term strategy of diversifying our revenues and further strengthening our balance sheet. The airlines business, particularly cargo airline business, has always been world-class. Therefore, I'm particularly pleased with the achievement of 2020. We are coming off one of the most successful peak performances under the most difficult circumstances. We operated record number of flights for an unprecedented demand in all sectors, domestic, international charters, our U.S. operations, ACMI. In spite of the COVID and weather challenges and additional business challenges, we finished the year with 98.5% on-time performance. We never left even one parcel behind for our customers during this unusually busy peak period. I want to thank all of our customers for placing their parcels and trust in the hands of Cargojet. Here are some key achievements for 2020. Total revenues for the year were $668.5 million compared to $486.6 million in 2019. But more importantly, the share of domestic network dropped from 58% of total revenues in 2019 to 45% of total revenues in 2020. ACMI business now accounts for 20% of our revenues and all-in charters accounts for 18% of our revenues. We also generated $196.8 million in adjusted free cash flow for the year, which is certainly a record. Subsequently to a successful equity raise of $365 million in February of this year, we have now $600 million in undrawn revolver and expect to completely pay off 6 aircraft by the end of 2021 as the leases come due. This will make us one of the best-positioned cargo airline in the world. We will have 90% off of our fleet paid off by 2021. We have come a long way from our overall leverage of almost 5x this year and overall leverage at just 2x EBITDAR for these changes. Our fleet type stands at 28. But as we previously disclosed, we will be adding 5 767 freighters and 2 Boeing 777 freighters in 2023 with an option of 2 Boeing 777 freighters in 2024. Now let me turn to quarter 4 results. We believe another record holiday season for our customers that led to an adjusted EBITDA of $81.9 million compared to $47.2 million in 2019. E-commerce as a percentage of overall retail sales has gone up from around 7% to 12% in Canada. According to the most recent estimate, this is likely to become the new baseline. And we do not expect this to slip back to pre-pandemic levels, although there might be some short-term investments. Consumers have now discovered the functionality of being able to do certain types of purchases in an online but largely seamless manner. Yet they will go out for certain other items for an in-person shopping experience. We expect e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar stores to coexist for the foreseeable future. More importantly, there are generational trends. And these will likely continue. While we move on to operations, our teams across the country have now adapted to the new reality. Many of our early initiatives in health and safety protocols have now become the standard operating procedures. The team members continue to rise to the new challenge. And I want to acknowledge their hard work particularly as the cold weather continues to throw more challenges. This would not have happened without our motivated and one of the best teams in any organization. Our increased fleet and asset utilization continue to demonstrate additional operating leverage as demonstrated in improved margins. I want to also make some comments about our international strategy in addition to what we have already shared in our recent press release. I have mentioned this before that given the size of Canadian domestic market, cargo airlines have historically struggled to survive in Canada. Dozens of airlines have started, shut their operations, started again, shut their operations, come and gone. But Cargojet took a bold strategy of bringing major logos under one network. We successfully executed this strategy over the past 20 years. We believe there is now a compelled opportunity to build an international business. While the belly capacity of the passenger airlines greatly reduced, global supply chains are struggling to readjust. This uncoupling may continue for some time. There is significant advantage for early movers. We believe if we are careful in designing our domestic and international network in a synergistic way, we can create a competitive offering that simply does not exist in the market today. We are also pursuing an aggressive growth strategy to expand our ACMI, CMI U.S. growth opportunities and continue to strengthen every segment of our business. Diversification is the key going forward for us. We are an entrepreneurial company. And one of the things we all do is to spot opportunities and go after them successfully. With a strong customer base, a solid balance sheet and one of the best motivated teams in the industry, we are now ready to -- for the next phase of our growth strategy. We'll keep you posted as it unfolds in the coming quarters and years. I want to thank everybody for joining us today, and once again appreciate you guys taking the call. And now we will leave the lines open for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Walter Spracklin from RBC Capital Markets.

[Walter Noel Spracklin, MD & Analyst]

So perhaps, Ajay, we can start with the Q1 trends on a seasonal basis. I know obviously, coming from fourth quarter, looking at past trends, you would come off about 10% into the first quarter. I know you talked about kind of conditions being completely different this time around. Just wanted to ask whether that 10% seasonal drop from fourth quarter to first quarter is typical what we should expect here in 2021.

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

John, you would have a better indication of that.

[John Kim, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Walter, I think the traditional seasonal trends are -- would continue. We don't expect a big adjustment or drop-off in e-commerce volumes domestically. And our ACMI run rate is much higher than it was a year ago. But certainly, those routes will continue, the 9 ACMI routes, for our customers. So I think you can expect traditional sort of variances from Q4 to Q1.

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

The January trends were, as we said, a bit different than the previous January, although they were better in a sense. But there was -- as you know, after the peak season, everybody was kind of stocked up. So we saw a little bit of a drop in January, but then it picked right up. So we don't expect anything out of the ordinary going into Q1.

[Walter Noel Spracklin, MD & Analyst]

And on ACMI, you had indicated last quarter that the first half of the year should see a pricing decline of about 15% in the first half from your fourth quarter run rate and doing over $40 million now. Is that what you're still anticipating is a bit of a 15% drop-off for the first half and then get back to the fourth quarter -- kind of third and fourth quarter run rate for ACMI in your third and fourth quarter of 2021?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. It might not be as high as 15%, but there will certainly be a drop in the ACMI run rate because a lot of, in the fourth quarter, especially in third quarter, there was some premium pricing. That's because of the shortage. So there will be some drop definitely in the pricing. But I can't give you exact percentage. But there would be a drop for sure. And then it will pick up in quarter 3 and quarter 4.

[Walter Noel Spracklin, MD & Analyst]

Yes. Ajay, when you look at your new freighters coming on, starting with the 767s, because obviously the 777 is a little further out. But 767s, how are they going to be deployed from a revenue generation standpoint? Will the first one go right into filling in your spare and have little revenue contribution? Or could we see it dedicated toward some charter business, some ACMI business? Are you hoping to have some of those contracts lined up by the time those aircraft come on? Can you give us a sense of how that kind of revenue builds into your top line as those aircraft come on?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

So just to make it clear, when we picked up 3 additional routes for one of our customers in U.S. for ACMI purposes, we used our spare capability and were able to refigure the network to free up 3 aircraft in that. But we also used an American operator to fill in the gap for additional routes that we were flying at the same time that we could not cover ourselves. So at this time, I would say that the new freighters that come in, first of all, they will need -- they will fill the need for having a spare aircraft that we lacked badly in quarter 3 and quarter 4. And second part of it is that we also have a route being operated by an outside company to make sure that service stays and the continuity stays. So those routes will be -- so the one obviously will go into a spare capacity as we are -- we have about 8 C checks going on this year and 8 next year. So we will need an extra spare aircraft just to keep operational lease. We will also replace with 1 aircraft routes we are farming it outside. Third of it, that we are also leasing an aircraft, 767-200, that we keep extending the lease on because we always find work for it. So our plan is to replace 1 of that aircraft with it. And that would leave us with 2 aircraft, 767-300s, that we would deploy in the European and Southeast Asian and South American and Latin American/Mexico markets in September/October of this year. So basically, 2 of those would be dedicated to the international growth strategy. And the other 3 would be sort of covering the present needs: one is replacing in a leased aircraft; one is replacing an ACMI route that we have subbed it out; and third is using it as a spare.

[Walter Noel Spracklin, MD & Analyst]

And do you have already contracts lined up for those 2 net new aircraft? Do you see them taking kind of you going -- doing set charter routes? Or could there be ACMI opportunities that you're lining up? How do you see that?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

So we have a couple of customers who have expressed deep interest in signing up ACMI contract deals with them, if we wanted to. But we're not sure if we're going to go the ACMI route or we're going to go international strategy growth. So ACMI guarantees you a certain amount of revenues and profits. And they're pretty good. But we still -- when we get closer to it within 3 to 4 months of it, those ACMI opportunities are not going anywhere. So we do feel that, as a backup, those are good to keep. But if we find that the yields in the market are still strong because the belly capacity hasn't come back yet, we might deploy them in the international market on a retail basis if we find that's more lucrative. But if we find that some of the pricing has dropped, then we always, as a backup, we can do ACMI on those aircraft, clearly.

[Walter Noel Spracklin, MD & Analyst]

Okay. Sounds like good optionality.

[Operator]

Chris Murray from ATB Capital Markets.

[Christopher Allan Murray]

My first question is around Canada Post's contract and just thinking about the next extension. So when you renewed the extension back in 2017, you had about 4 years on the contract now. We're kind of in a similar timeframe at this point. And I think last quarter, you mentioned some commentary around what you would be willing to do on pricing and things like that. So I guess a couple of questions. How should we think about what that contract looks like? And when do you think that you'll be looking to talk to them about maybe extending the next option?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

So we still have 4 years left on that contract until 2025, 4 years in a couple of months. So I don't have the exact date right in front of me, but in that range. So we are finishing our first 7-year contract, contract year 7 would be next year, so -- and then the 3-year extension kicks in. So at this stage, we obviously are always thinking about expanding relationships and renewal stuff. But I think it's a bit early to be discussing that. A lot can change between now and a year from now, depending on where the pandemic ends up and all that volumes and how much is required. And so this will require a lot of thinking on our part, our customer's part. And hopefully, within this year, we plan to have those discussions with them.

[Christopher Allan Murray]

Okay. Fair enough. And then similar to Walter's question around the 767s, the 777s, especially the converted 777s, are kind of a new entry into the freighter market. How should we be thinking about the application for that? Will be that -- will that be again sort of the ACMI international business trade-off? And what types of opportunities does having the 777 open up for you that is different than what you can do in the 767 right now?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

Well, the 777, first of all, has an advantage of -- with a lower fuel burn, double the payload, it can carry up to 220,000 pounds as opposed to 120,000 pounds of 767 and it's got longer range. So you can do direct flights from China into -- Hong Kong or any of the Eastern Japan into Vancouver and Toronto. Also, if we come to Vancouver, we obviously -- Vancouver-Toronto sector, Vancouver-Hamilton sector, we can combine it with our domestic sector to get the synergies and then continue on to Europe. So it will be an operation that extends from, let's say, Hong Kong into Vancouver, into Toronto and then Toronto into maybe St. Johns, Newfoundland, where we have a domestic base, then continue on to Europe and maybe extending it to India at some point. So it would be sort of a circle flight that covers the entire world. But we will also then have some domestic sectors integrated into it, like the Vancouver-Toronto or Toronto-Vancouver, could be Halifax-Toronto, depending -- or Hamilton. And the second part of it is also we will have 767s that would connect with them going to Mexico and South America that all the cargo that international stuff that ends up here needs be forwarding into many other destinations. So first of all, domestically, they could be reforwarded on our network. And second part of it is that flights like Mexico, Bogota, Lima, Chile and Brazil could also be connecting flights from that network. So I think what this offering does is, number one, it kind of takes advantage of some of our existing domestic routes. You can replace 2 aircraft with 1 on some of those routes, certain days, but also brings in cargo from the Far East, which is one of the biggest trading places right now into not only just Canada, but we can service U.S. and South, Central America with those businesses. So that's how roughly the model works.

[Christopher Allan Murray]

Okay. No, that's helpful. And then one last clarification for me...

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

And just also just know that we always have an option that there's a lot of demand for ACMI for 777s as well. So if we didn't want to get into the network in our own planning, there's always offers out there and inquiries that come in that if we want to operate 777 on an ACMI basis. So both options are available to us.

[Christopher Allan Murray]

And then just one quick clarification. You had mentioned your on-time performance was 98.5%. Was that for Q4? Or was that for the full year?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

The full year was very close to it as well. I don't have that draft split of percentages. But we've always been over 98% for the whole year. And 98.5% was for the Q4. These are carrier-controllable delays for on-time performance.

[Operator]

We'll now move to our next question from David Ocampo from Cormark Securities.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

When I take a look at your Q4, I think in the previous press release, you said that you ramped up your flying by around 20% just by flying during the day and on weekends. When we think about the Q1 and Q3, can we still expect that incremental lift of 20% by flying during the day and on weekends? Or is that more just a peak season phenomenon?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

That was a peak season phenomena plus also the demand for some essential goods that people are restocking up and also still some PPE was being flown in. So I think that market is now not an urgent market. A lot of stuff is on the ocean for that stuff. So I think the 20% additional flying that you saw for charters and dedicated charters is going to become more like ad hoc charters as required rather than the regulator charter work.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Okay. And just to follow up on one of the previous questions, you mentioned that you guys were using some outside charters. Can you give any indication on what the margin is like for those types of contracts? Are they very low for outside charters?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

Well, the margins on that were secondary, considering that there was not much available in the market. So you take whatever you can get to protect the route, protect the customer. We certainly didn't lose money on it. But we certainly didn't make as much as we could have if we operated it ourselves. So having said that, they were probably close to a breakeven or making a few pennies on it. But it was strictly done because of lack of aircraft, lack of crews and so much demand that we had to go outside to protect our business.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Right. And then last one for me here. On the feedstock for the 777s, what do you see in that environment right now in terms of pricing? And when can we expect you guys to execute on that? I imagine there's quite a few right now that are available. And presumably, as demand starts to come back online, the amount of the feedstock starts to decline as well.

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

So there are a lot of 777s out parked here. But it's not a matter of finding the feedstock or the aircraft, it's a matter of locking in the slots for conversion. So that's where the key comes in. And I think we are well positioned now that we have -- we are in the middle of negotiating 2 slots for 2023, which are being held for us, and 2 slots for 2024. So if we are going to be operating a 777, I can see probably third quarter of 2023 or fourth quarter of 2023 to be the first one on the launch.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

And is the expectation to execute on that option? What do you need to see in the marketplace for that to happen?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

Well, knowing what I know today and knowing where the trend is going, I think definitely we plan on executing it. Keep in mind that, that portion of the business is, even if we were in the pre-pandemic situation, where nothing happened, let's assume, and I was looking at 2019, and would I be adding 777s? I probably will because I think one of the key things that we have been able to do is strengthen our balance sheet because most of these assets are going to be paid up, number one. Our infrastructure, our facilities and all that stuff is all paid for. The ground handling equipment is paid for. And as I've always said that it is a further offering which is riding on our existing infrastructure and fixed cost. So it's like McDonald's serving lunch and dinner. And now we are adding breakfast to the menu. So for us, operating those freighters would be mostly at the variable cost level. And our fixed costs would be very negligible on those. And I think even without the pre-pandemic levels, if I was in that market and I had a balance sheet like that, I would definitely be flying those planes in that market as well. So it makes total sense, belly capacity is not going to come back for 3 to 4 years. And even in some form, when it starts coming back, I think the international trade, the way we see things, the capacity, we definitely -- there's a market for those.

[Operator]

We'll now take our next question from Mona Nazir from Laurentian Bank.

[Mona Nazir]

So firstly, in regard to the fleet additions, this is just more of a confirmation. So the 777s, you're currently negotiating and the 767 are secured. Is that correct?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

Yes.

[Mona Nazir]

Okay. Perfect. And are you seeing a lot of price variance on the 777s?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

There's different models of 777. There's 200LRs and there are 300ERs. There are slight differences in payloads and volumes carried on it. Obviously, 200LRs are more available and a little bit less price, but then they take a little bit of less volume. So those are the kind of -- so we have both options available to us. Some markets, 200LRs are better, some markets, 300ERs are better. So we might take 2 LRs -- 200s and might take 2 300ERs. So that's what we are evaluating right now. But yes, there are fairly good deals available on these ex-passenger feedstock that are excellent for conversion. These are not very high hours. They're very low-cycle aircraft. And it clearly shows the trend that these wide-bodies that are up in the market for sale shows that I don't know if they will ever come back to the market as passenger as the wide-body capacity gets reduced. So this is an encouraging sign because if these aircraft were ever going to see back in the passenger, they wouldn't be up for sale. So that gives us an indication that the market is going to be strong for international cargo.

[Mona Nazir]

Perfect. That's great. And just secondly for me, I saw that you have been involved in the vaccination distribution efforts. I'm just speaking, wondering if you could speak about the impact that this program could have on the results and performance going forward, particularly as distribution [ access brand ]?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

So I think all the articles that we saw about 6 months ago that you will need 8,000 jumbo jets around the world to carry vaccines was probably way overestimated. Vaccine doesn't weigh much. It doesn't take much space. And I can tell you that people talk about 8,000 cargo flights carrying vaccines, it was probably, as I said, way overestimated. So second part of this vaccine growth is rolling out in 200,000 doses and 100,000 doses and 50,000 doses. So it does not need plane full. You could take that in 2 containers and fit some of that stuff in. So all those revenue estimates related to vaccines were probably an imagination of a lot of people. It does not require that kind of stuff. Second thing is that behind the scenes, yes, we have been handling vaccines, like, for example, we have flown vaccines regularly to Mexico from Cincinnati when we fly for DHL. We've also handled a lot of domestic distribution of vaccines to our customers, UPS and FedEx. And we'll continue to do that. But I do not think that vaccine is a phenomena that we saw for PPE. It's going to be a lot less. Yes, there is going to be regular shipments coming in and out. But I don't believe that there's going to be plane loads of charters required for that.

[Mona Nazir]

That's very helpful. And just lastly, we've seen the recent CapEx plans, your aircraft additions [ achieving ] fleet up 25%-plus. I'm just wondering, looking back at when you started this company, did you ever think that it could grow to this size? Obviously, the macro tailwinds, you could not have predicted. And just given current positioning, where do you think Cargojet could be in 5 or 10 years even? I know it may be hard, but I'm just looking for something directionally, perhaps mix, geographic exposure. Or is something that we're not thinking about?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

Well, that's -- we always -- I always thought there was a demand for a good cargo airline. I was in the business, I think, 1985. And until 2000, I was using the list from Canadian cargo airlines. In those 15 years, I dealt with 14 cargo airlines that started and either sold or went bankrupt or discontinued operation or whatever -- or lost their licenses. So it was very frustrating to see that there is no strategy in Canada to have a cargo airline. And that's where we stepped in when we saw an opportunity after 9/11 from the ashes of Canada 3000 to build Cargojet and not get into the passenger business. Because the minute you combine passenger business, your focus goes to passenger of what kind of meal they got, what kind of business class seat they got and they're not worried about cargo. So cargo is a second to those airlines. And we saw 14 of them, as I said, fold in those 15 years. Every year, I was negotiating with a new carrier at that time. And that sort of said to me that maybe there is a need for 1 carrier where we can bring everybody into 1 group, share the overheads, go on a variable cost model with some fixed daily minimums, growth for opportunity at variable cost for our customers and a lot of sort of flexibility in their whole contractual commitment. So I think that model worked successfully. And never that I thought that e-commerce would play a role and change the nature of the business. So that was kind of an unknown. But again, the opportunity came up, we were ready to seize that opportunity. Now where do I see in 5 years or 10 years? I'd like to see Cargojet as a premium international cargo airline, which also has obviously a significant portion of the domestic. The international ones, that I'm looking at it from Far East to Asia and from the growing markets, whether it's Vietnam, whether it's Thailand, whether it's China, Hong Kong, those part of the worlds right into Vancouver and then into Hamilton, I would like to see Hamilton become the hub of the transshipments. If a country like Dubai can be the hub for Middle East and Asia, why cannot Hamilton be the hub for North America, South America, Latin America, Mexico and the Caribbean? So my goal is to bring product all around the world into Canada and use and have flights from here that connect to this part of the world. So what Emirates have done a great job in Dubai or Singapore Airlines have done a great job in their countries with little capabilities of local traffic, strictly doing transshipment, we have -- we are blessed with having a great North American, Canadian and U.S. demand. And if we can combine those with, let's say, Latin America, South America, Mexico, Caribbean, transshipping it through Toronto or Hamilton, it obviously would be a great business model, and that's what my dream is, to make sure that there's a big legacy for cargo, Canada as a transshipment hub for North America and surrounding areas.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Konark Gupta from Scotiabank.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst]

So maybe I'm sorry for joining a little late, so apologies if I repeat any question here. But wondering if you guys decided to go ahead with 4 777s now or are you still planning to have 2 and then 2 options?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

So we are going to go with 2 in 2023 and with an option of 2 for 2024. Because our options, it's always good to have flexibility. It's our option. We have to confirm that within a year, 1.5 years. We haven't finalized that exactly. But it's -- obviously, whenever we have bought planes and signed up for them, every time we go buy a plane, this is going to be our spare aircraft, we end up selling that aircraft. And then we have to go and get a new spare aircraft, we end up selling it. I'm certain that what I see in the market that we definitely will exercise those options, knowing what I know today. But obviously, it will depend on how the trends are, what the demands are in the world are. But I definitely see that, as just describing to Mona as what I see in 5 to 10 years where Cargojet should be, I think 4 777s might not even be enough. So let's -- I'm an optimistic in entrepreneurial culture and our whole organization is that way. So we just want to make sure that we have a great infrastructure. We cover 16 cities every morning in Canada. We have flights to U.S. We have some international flights today. And we want to be a complete cargo airline offering CMI, offering also an ACMI, we're offering domestic. We're going to be offering a product into some of the international cities. So I totally believe that, given what I know today and my beliefs, I think we will exercise those options. But obviously again, Konark, as you would say, the first one, there's no guarantees in life.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst]

Absolutely. I understand. Yes, that makes sense. But I was just curious as to like when you say like in the written statement, it says option. Curious if this is like an agreement option, where you buy an option on the aircraft and you exercise a non-depending and you have to pay deposits? Like is it like that? Or your -- the option means you will explore the market when it comes to that point?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

So I think aircraft are not on short supply because there's a lot of carriers are selling their 777 fleets, right, because they do not see the wide-bodies for some reason or they're going to replace it with newer wide-bodies. But we see that the trend will continue, where carriers like Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Jet Airways, recently declared bankruptcy over a year ago, there's lots of 777s out there. A lot of companies are selling their 777s, including Delta. There could be 100 aircraft in the market today. So aircraft is not going to be the issue. The issue of the options come in on conversion slots. That's where the key is. So if you can get those conversion slots locked up, the aircraft, finding their feedstock to convert them, is not an issue. So the options mean that we will obviously source the best aircraft that's a candidate for conversion. But what we do is we lock up the stock conversion slots. And that's where the options are coming together.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst]

Okay. That makes sense. And so from what I heard from you guys earlier on the call, it looks like you are negotiating 2 slots in '23 and 2 slots in '24. I'm presuming that's for 777. So does that mean you have secured all 767 conversion slots at this point?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. We have all the 5 conversion slots locked up for this time for '21 and one, I think, early in '22.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst]

Okay. That's great. And have you disclosed on this call today so far or are you planning to, any contracts, be it ACMI or any routes you are launching with these aircraft that you decided to go for, so 3 767s, I think you were saying going for international and 2 777s at least going for international? So have you disclosed any contracts yet?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

So I'll break it down quickly, although I've covered that, but I'll just break it down for you, Konark, that one of the 767s that we are getting will replace an existing lease that we have, which is going to be returned. So we'll own that aircraft. The second part of it is that we will -- we also have a route that is being operated by ACMI by another American carrier. So it's going to be replacing one of those routes. The third will be a spare aircraft to backup of our domestic network, 2 are going to fly internationally, exclusively Europe and South America. And there will be a lot of capacity available because we'll have 20-odd aircraft that are -- will be available to us on the weekends and during the week to apply other international routes. So all these aircraft are pretty well spoken for, these 5 aircraft.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst]

Okay. Absolutely perfect. That's...

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

On the 2 international 767s, we still have options to place them under either ACMI or fly them commercially or ourselves. And closer to the dates, we'll make those decisions.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst]

And that's great color, Ajay. And last one for me is on pricing, I guess. So looking at domestic market, so I'm using basically -- I know you don't disclose this metric, but what I'm doing here is basically just picking the domestic revenue and dividing it by the average volume per day, so just to kind of get a sense as to what's the average pricing per pound. So it seems like, obviously, it's coming down sequentially. And I'm guessing and just want a confirmation, I'm guessing it's more to do with the B2C and e-commerce. So they're kind of -- it's more about volume than pricing perhaps. Or is there anything else to that sequential, call it, decline in the rate per pound?

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. So Jamie, you can address that.

[Jamie Bennett Porteous, Executive VP & Chief Commercial Officer]

Konark, I think it's that plus the -- you have to consider that during heavy demand periods, we have a mix of customers that are paying loose rates per pound. But we also have a mix of customers that are paying flat rates per container. So if they're utilizing the container more during peak periods, that will have -- that will reflect, on an average, a lower price per pound. But the revenue will be consistent because they're paying a flat rate per container.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst]

Okay. That makes sense. But generally, within the contracts you have maybe are still kind of CPI-linked, right?

[Jamie Bennett Porteous, Executive VP & Chief Commercial Officer]

Yes. All our major contracts have new CPIs or some CPI plus a percent on the anniversary date of the agreement that kicks in.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And there are no further questions in the queue. I would like to turn to -- hand the call back over to Pauline Dhillon for any additional or closing remarks.

[Pauline Dhillon, Chief Corporate Officer]

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today for the call. Have a safe day out there. Any questions, please contact us and we will be more than happy to oblige. Thanks. Bye.

[Ajay Kumar Virmani, Founder, CEO, President & Director]

Thanks, everybody. Bye.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.