OMA's 1.3% Quarter: The Technical Assistance Fee Steps Out of the Tariff's Shadow

Passenger growth stalls, the peso eats the April tariff hike, and a governance question about VINCI's fee becomes the company's most-talked-about idea

OMAB · Earnings Call · 2026-10-29

The quarter that stopped growing

OMA served 7.7 million passengers in the third quarter of 2026, up 1.3% year over year — and available seat capacity rose the same 1.3%. For a company whose 2025 calls were built on mid-to-high single-digit volume, that is a hard stop. Total passenger traffic has converged with capacity, which means load factors are no longer doing the work either. The composition is worse than the headline. Domestic traffic grew 0.6%, and management volunteered that two routes out of San Luis Potosí — to Felipe Ángeles and Monterrey — added over 35,000 passengers, “representing 91% of the total domestic passenger growth” — Ricardo Dueñas, CEO · 2026-10-29. Strip those two city pairs out and the domestic network is roughly flat. International grew 6%, carried by Monterrey airport on the New York, Madrid and Paris routes. But Viva, at 49% of total traffic, declined 2%, while Volaris, at 27%, grew 14%. The larger of the two carriers is shrinking. Then the guide. Ricardo Dueñas was blunt: “We anticipate traffic to be in the low single digits for 2027, and we expect to start to see the recovery in traffic by mid-year.” — Ricardo Dueñas, CEO · 2026-10-29 Set that against October 2025, when he said “we're looking for the rest of the year to finish in our traffic overall for the year between 7% and 8% growth” — Ricardo Duenas, CEO · 2025-10-24, and against February 2026's low-to-mid-single-digit target for this year. This is the second consecutive downward revision, and the word "recovery" quietly pushes the inflection into the second half of 2027.

Where the tariff hike went

April's tariff adjustment was meant to be the year's earnings engine. Aeronautical revenues did grow 6.7%, but peso appreciation absorbed much of it: international passenger charges rose just 4%, and aeronautical revenue per passenger managed only 5.3%. The FX drag is not new — in February, Ruffo Pérez Pliego sized the Q4'25 peso effect at MXN 50-60 million on about 8% appreciation — but it now sits near the top of this company's keyword stack while the tariff narrative has slid down it. Maximum tariff compliance was once the single most-discussed topic at OMA; this quarter it fell out of the top-30 entirely, even though it came up again in Q&A at essentially the same answer as July: 93% this year, 95% next, 100% by "the third year of the five-year plan."

The fee in the room

What replaced it at the top is genuinely new. Jens Spiess of Morgan Stanley opened on whether OMA would internalize the technical assistance fee — then came back a second time to re-ask, noting that competitors have already done it. The answer was a flat no:

No, not at the moment. We believe that the technical assistance fee is very well-grounded as VINCI, our strategic partner, is providing most of good value in that technical assistance.
Ricardo Dueñas, CEO · 2026-10-29

What makes Technical Assistance more than a housekeeping item is Ruffo's first, technical reply: under tariff-based regulation it is “a recognized expense to a certain percentage of that amount” — Ruffo Pérez Pliego, CFO · 2026-10-29. That cuts both ways. Internalizing the fee would lift consolidated EBITDA and route more cash to minority shareholders, but it would also shrink the cost base the regulator uses to set reference value in the next five-year review. Investors are being asked to accept that a related-party charge is the price of VINCI's operating know-how. That is a defensible answer — VINCI's fingerprints are all over the commercial results — but it is now a live governance question rather than a footnote.

The back-loaded build

Growth, meanwhile, is either deferred or scripted. Monterrey's full commercial area opens in the fourth quarter of next year, with only a baggage-claim partial opening in 2026. Ruffo's payoff estimate: “about a 15% increase in income per pax in real terms once it is open. But as Ricardo mentioned, that will be reflected until 2028 results.” — Ruffo Pérez Pliego, CFO · 2026-10-29 That is the same 10-15% range guided in February, just with the calendar pushed further out. The payoff sits two years away. The near-term commercial machine still works: non-aero revenue +13.3%, VIP lounge revenue +28% (helped by the new Torreón Airport lounge and an Acapulco opening next month), retail +18.5%, restaurants +13.5%, all driven by opening of new units and higher penetration. Diversification rose 20.4%, with the OMA Carga business up 42% on new client operations in Monterrey. Yet the cargo explanation is close to word-for-word what was said in July — “new client operations? as well as the handling of additional high-value cargo operations” — Ricardo Duenas Espriu, CEO · 2026-07-28 — recycled this quarter almost verbatim. When a growth engine's explanation stops changing, either it is genuinely stable or the script has run out of new detail.

Costs, and what to watch

Cost of services and G&A rose 8.6%, with contracted services up 19% on security and cleaning renewals and minimum-wage increases; concession tax rose 7.9% to MXN 312 million; financing expense jumped 16.5% to MXN 348 million on higher average debt. Adjusted EBITDA rose 8.7% to MXN 2.9 billion at a 75.0% margin, but net income grew only 2.9%. Leverage sits at 1.0x net debt to adjusted EBITDA — comfortable, and it funds the small stuff. The small stuff includes the second Monterrey hotel under the Hyatt Place brand: roughly US$17 million, 120 rooms, opening in late 2028, in joint venture with Grupo Hotelero Santa Fe. It diversifies revenue; it does not move 2027. So the story here is a high-quality, 75%-margin concession trading a growth narrative for a waiting one. Three things matter from here. January's tariff increase — Ricardo confirmed it will be “something slightly above 4% increase nominal terms” — Ricardo Dueñas, CEO · 2026-10-29 — is the next visible lever. The Viva-Volaris antitrust ruling is the biggest unknown, and management concedes it has no read: “we do not have an indication from the airlines of how the operation would work if the merger is approved, therefore, we can't assess the full potential impact.” — Ricardo Dueñas, CEO · 2026-10-29 And the technical assistance fee will keep being asked about until either it is internalized or management can show, quarter after quarter, that VINCI's value exceeds its price. For now, investors own a well-run airport operator whose passengers have stopped arriving faster than its planes — and whose newest debate is about an accounting line rather than a runway.