SOUTHEAST AIRPORT GROUP (ASR): what the price assumes

boothcheck covers SOUTHEAST AIRPORT GROUP (ASR) but does not put one priced-in number on it: here the defensible answer is the evidence rather than a point estimate. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating. Narrative composed 2026-07-25.

Generated: 2026-08-10 · Exported: 2026-08-11 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/ASR

Headline

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

The operating-margin figure is value-band context at year 7: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.

The price sits below what even a 5%/yr operating-profit decline would warrant; the inversion reports a bound, not a solved growth path.

Solve inputs: computed at a 8.8% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage.

How unusual the bet is: within-range (limited comparison data)

Valuation X-Ray

The price is supported by asset-based and earnings-power and relative-multiple and growth-DCF value. A value/asset-supported name, not a pure growth bet.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

Families that justify the price: Asset, Earnings, Relative, Growth

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 8.8%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=18)

Solvency

Bullet Takeaways

• Mexican airport concessions come with a government-set ceiling on what can be charged per passenger, and the current ceiling is already locked: the 20-F states "The maximum rates for our Mexican airports have been determined for each year through December 31, 2028."

• Cancún is the whole story and it is drifting the wrong way, with operating income there down 1.6% in 2025 to Ps. 10,974.0 million from Ps. 11,157.2 million a year earlier, and group traffic in June 2026 running 5.8% under June 2025.

• What moves the story next is the monthly traffic count and the roughly 936 million dollar purchase of Motiva's Latin American airport business, which would add about twenty airports across four more countries.

Bull Case

Start with one number: 55.9%. That is the share of revenue reaching operating profit on a trailing basis, and it is the hinge everything else swings on. Move it and the verdict moves with it. The reason it is so high is not commercial flair. A Mexican airport concession is a toll road with a roof on the toll and no floor under the traffic, and the 20-F is explicit about the roof: "The maximum rates for our Mexican airports have been determined for each year through December 31, 2028." Fixing the ceiling years in advance sounds like a constraint, and it is one. It is also a promise that nobody undercuts you, because nobody else is allowed to build the runway.

The cost side is what turns that into a margin. Terminals, aprons and gates are spent money. The next passenger through the door consumes a few square metres of floor and a few minutes of a security queue, so almost the entire fare increment lands on the operating line. That is why the composition of 2025 matters more than the total. The filing reports "a 4.3% increase in aeronautical revenues and a 6.1% increase in non-aeronautical revenues in 2025", and the faster of the two is the shops, the car parks and the advertising hoardings, none of which sits under the rate ceiling at all.

There is a detail buried in the rate-setting rules worth sitting with. The allowed return embedded in the maximum rates now leans on a published academic series: the 20-F notes that "the risk premium is now determined based on Mexico's risk premium calculated by Aswath Damodaran for the last five years", where previously it was set by the aviation authority's own reading of how risky airports are. For a holder that is a quiet upgrade in predictability. A number a professor updates on a schedule is easier to plan around than a number a ministry negotiates.

The second leg of the case is geographic, and it is newer than most people assume. Aerostar operates Luis Muñoz Marín in San Juan under a lease signed on February 27, 2013 carrying a 40-year initial term, and the filing notes the subsidiary "is required to make annual revenue-sharing payments to the PRPA according to the terms of its LMM Lease for the LMM Airport." Airplan runs the Colombian airports. Neither carries Mexican rate resets and neither is billed in pesos, which means a soft year in Quintana Roo is no longer the entire result.

Then the balance sheet, which for a concession operator is usually where optimism goes to die. Not here. The group holds 1.149 billion dollars of liquid assets, more than everything it has borrowed, and operating profit covers the interest bill more than twenty times over. That funds a terminal expansion, or somebody else's airports, without a call on shareholders.

The obvious rebuttal is that the concessions expire and the assets go back to the state. That is true, and it is written into the deed. What the rebuttal has to explain is why a buyer today needs those terminal decades at all, when the price already sits below what a shrinking version of this business would be worth.

Bear Case

The most consequential decisions of the past year were not made at any airport. They were made about where the cash goes. Shareholders signed off on wider authority to acquire and to borrow; the company then closed on the commercial programmes at JFK, LAX and O'Hare for 295 million dollars of enterprise value in December 2025, and agreed to buy Motiva's Latin American airport business, roughly twenty airports across Brazil, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Curaçao, for about 936 million dollars. Read that sequence against a single line in the 20-F: "Upon expiration of our Mexican concessions, these assets automatically revert to the Mexican nation". The core asset is rented rather than owned, and the response has been to rent more of it, in more jurisdictions, on borrowed money.

The same regulation that manufactures the margin can withdraw the licence. Maximum rates are set per workload unit, and exceeding one is not a fine: the authorities, the filing says, "could revoke one or more of the Company's airport concessions in Mexico." The mechanism that could trigger it is not operational at all. It is currency. The 20-F warns that "a depreciation of the peso as compared to the dollar, particularly late in the year, could cause us to exceed the maximum rates at one or more of our Mexican airports, possibly leading to the termination of one of our Mexican concessions." A holder is short the peso in a way that appears on no income statement.

Underneath the legal structure, demand is softening. Operating income at Cancún fell 1.6% in 2025, to Ps. 10,974.0 million from Ps. 11,157.2 million. Group traffic in June 2026 came in 5.8% below June 2025, and the six months to June finished marginally under the same period a year earlier. Part of that is Quintana Roo's own reputation problem, which the company documents itself: a United States travel advisory in force into early 2026 that "specifically notes that violent crime and incidents have occurred in Quintana Roo and recommends that travelers pay close attention to their surroundings." Beach holidays are substitutable. Runways are not moveable.

None of this makes the shares expensive, and the bear case here is not an arithmetic one. The static methods land essentially on top of today's price, and the peer-multiple and cash-flow approaches reach well past it, so there is no gap to point at. The argument is that the discount is deserved rather than mistaken. A business whose margin is set by a regulator, whose assets revert by law, whose largest single site carries a public safety advisory, and whose management has just added borrowings to buy concessions in countries it has never operated in, is a business a buyer might rationally keep paying less for. The next rate determination, which takes effect once the current ceilings expire at the end of 2028, is where that gets settled. Not the next quarter.

Valuation

Today's price works out to roughly eight times the operating profit of the whole company. Put the other way: the market is not asking this business to expand at all. The price sits below what a company shrinking its operating profit by five percent every year would warrant, which is an unusual place for an asset earning a 55.9% trailing operating margin to be trading.

The methods largely agree, and the agreement is itself the finding. The price sits about 9% above where the asset-value methods land, and about 4% above the earnings-power methods. The peer-multiple lens and the forward cash-flow approaches both reach well past it. When the conservative approaches are the binding ones and the optimistic ones are slack, you are not looking at a premium paid for a story. You are looking at a discount applied for a worry.

One method does read the price as rich, and its construction explains why. It averages five years of operating income with one-time charges added back, then assumes nothing grows, ever. That five-year window still contains the stretch when the terminals were empty, so the earnings base it starts from is barely half of what the business has earned lately. It is a floor calculation wearing the clothes of a valuation.

There is a wrinkle in the top line worth catching before anyone reads reported revenue as demand. The 20-F reports revenues per workload unit up 22.8% in 2025, "due mainly to a 205.2% increase in revenues for construction services per workload unit, which are based on capital improvements to concessioned assets and are not directly related to passenger traffic." Construction revenue is the accounting mirror of capital the company is legally obliged to sink into assets it does not own. It swells the sales line and earns nothing. Any read of this company anchored on a sales multiple is measuring the wrong thing, which is precisely where the widest disagreement among the methods comes from.

The balance sheet bounds the downside without adding anything to the upside. Liquid assets of 1.149 billion dollars exceed everything the group has borrowed, leaving it holding net cash of 547.6 million dollars, and operating profit covers the interest bill more than twenty times over. Whatever the next few years of traffic look like, solvency is not the open question.

The open question is the next rate determination. The current ceilings run to the end of 2028, and the allowed return sitting inside them is what converts passengers into a 55.9% margin. That number is not set by airlines, tourists, or anyone buying the shares. It is set by a formula, and formulas get rewritten.

Catalysts

Traffic has turned. June 2026 moved 5,642,870 passengers across the group, 5.8% fewer than June 2025, and the six months to June finished at 36,214,188 against 36,336,644 a year earlier. The split matters more than the total: Colombia ran 7.3% ahead year to date, with domestic volumes 8.0% higher, while both Mexico and Puerto Rico went backwards. For a group whose Mexican airports carry the margin, that is the least helpful way to arrive at a flat number.

The March quarter showed costs catching up with the top line. Consolidated revenues excluding construction services reached MXN 8,350 million, 2.2% above the prior-year quarter, while operating costs rose faster and profitability narrowed against the same quarter of 2025. The 20-F had already marked where the pressure sits, reporting government concession fees up 5.7% and costs of services up 15.2% across 2025.

The deals are the larger variable. In December 2025 the group completed its purchase of URW Airports for 295 million dollars of enterprise value, taking over the commercial and retail programmes at JFK, LAX and O'Hare. It has since agreed to acquire Motiva's stake in an airport business spanning Brazil, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Curaçao, roughly twenty airports, for about 936 million dollars, with shareholders approving the wider acquisition and borrowing authority needed to fund it. Whether that converts a rate-capped Mexican operator into an Americas platform, or simply spreads the same regulatory exposure across more governments, is the thing to watch over the next two years.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Core business (reported)

• AGRO (AGRO)
• FY2025 20-F: We face significant competition across our business segments, which could adversely affect our financial performance. In our Farming business, we face significant competition from other producers in the domestic markets and from foreign producers in our export markets. The commodities market is highly fragmented.…
• FY2025 20-F: …Note 12 of the Consolidated Financial Statements. Competition 73 Table of contents The farming sector is highly fragmented. Although we are one of South America's leading producers, due to the atomized nature of the farming sector, our overall market share in some of the industries in which we participate is…
• AROC (Archrock, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …operations service agreements with our customers at rates sufficient to maintain current revenue and cash flows could be adversely affected by the activities of our competitors. If our competitors substantially increase the resources they devote to the development and marketing of competitive products, equipment or…
• FY2025 10-K: ​ Operations ​ ​ ​ Services ​ ​ ​ Total 2025 ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Revenue (1) ​ $ 1,272,081 ​ $ 217,737 ​ $ 1,489,818 Cost of sales, exclusive of depreciation and amortization ​ ​ 343,136 ​ ​ 166,289 ​ ​ 509,425 Adjusted gross margin ​ 928,945 ​ 51,448 ​ 980,393 ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 2024 ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Revenue (1) ​ $ 980,405 ​ $…
• LFST (LifeStance Health Group, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …timing of recognition of revenue; • the amount and timing of operating expenses related to the maintenance and expansion of our business, operations and infrastructure, including upfront capital expenditures and other costs related to expanding in existing markets or entering new markets, as well as providing…
• FY2025 10-K: …performance will not be materially adversely affected by new or expanded competition in our market areas. We may acquire existing high-quality centers as part of our long-term business strategy and may acquire other companies or technologies, which could divert our management's attention, result in dilution to our…
• ADUS (Addus HomeCare Corp)
• FY2025 10-K: …market share across all of our markets. Other providers, entities and individuals in the communities we serve provide services similar to those we offer. Our competition consists of personal care service providers, home health providers, hospice providers, private caregivers, publicly held companies, privately held…
• FY2025 10-K: In addition, competitors may offer new or enhanced services that we do not provide or be viewed by consumers as a more desirable local alternative. These and other factors could impact our ability to contract with payors on favorable terms, result in pricing pressures, loss of or failure to gain market share or loss…
• CMBT (CMBT)
• FY2025 20-F: …of crude oil and other petroleum products depends on price, location, size, age, condition, sophistication and the acceptability of the vessel operator to the charterer. Competitors with greater resources could enter and operate larger tanker fleets through consolidations or acquisitions, and may be able to offer…
• FY2025 20-F: …substantial portion of our revenue from a limited number of customers and the loss of anyone of these customers could result in a significant loss of revenues and cash flow; - to a large extent, we depend on spot charterers, and any decreases in spot charter rates in the future may adversely affect our earnings and…
• PAC (PAC)
• FY2025 20-F: …Montego Bay, Hermosillo and Guanajuato airports. The operating segment information relating to the remaining seven airports are combined and reported under the "Other airports". The corresponding information related with SIAP (a company that provides highly qualified professional services), CORSA (a company that…
• FY2025 20-F: …across periods. Where appropriate, we provide parenthetical disclosure of comparable amounts or alternative measures. Nominal results used in calculating certain margins, such as income from operations, are not affected by IFRIC 12 and therefore remain comparable. See "Item 5, Operating and Financial Review and…
• ATAT (Atour Lifestyle Holdings Limited)
• FY2025 20-F: …in the hospitality industry; 7 Table of Contents ● changes in desirability of geographic regions of the hotels in our business, geographic concentration of our operations and customers and shortages of desirable locations for development; ● the performance of managerial and other employees of our hotels; and ●…
• FY2025 20-F: …entity. All these reserves are not allowed to be transferred to their investors in terms of cash dividends, loans or advances, nor can they be distributed except under liquidation. As of December 31, 2024 and 2025, the PRC statutory reserve funds amounted to RMB 286,721 and RMB 375,495 , respectively. (ac) Segment…
• KNTK (KNTK)
• FY2025 10-K: …may expand or construct gathering systems or other pipeline transportation facilities that would create additional competition for the services the Company would provide to third party customers. In addition, potential third-party customers may develop their own gathering systems or pipeline transportation facilities…
• FY2025 10-K: …condition. The Company's customers may suspend, reduce or terminate their obligations under the Company's commercial agreements with them in certain circumstances, which could have a material adverse effect on the Company's financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. The Company has entered into gas…

Methodology Note

• Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
• Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
• Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
• Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.