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We've spun the wheel for the Emerging Markets bucket. The ticker has landed in Mexico City, on a company most readers outside Latin America have probably never thought about, even though many have walked through one of its terminals.

Before we dive in, a reminder of what the index itself has delivered over time.

Every week, we pull one company at random from the FTSE All-World with ~4,200 companies representing 90% of global stock market wealth. We share the index's long-term returns as a reminder of why we're here: the long game. New to the newsletter? Start here.

Founded in 1998 in Mexico City. Listed on the Mexican Bolsa and the NYSE.

Think back to the last time you stepped off a plane in Cancún. The slow shuffle through immigration. The first hit of warm Caribbean air as you wheeled your bag toward the taxi rank. That whole experience, from runway to curb, was orchestrated by ASUR.

Cancún is the busiest tourist airport in Latin America. ASUR has run it for nearly three decades, alongside eight other Mexican airports, six in Colombia, and the busiest airport in the Caribbean in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Quietly, it is one of the most profitable airport operators in the world.

A few key facts:

More on those profit margins in a bit.

ASUR runs 16 airports under long-term concessions: nine in southeast Mexico (Cancún, Mérida, Cozumel, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Villahermosa, Huatulco, Tapachula, Minatitlán), six in Colombia (the largest being Medellín), and Luis Muñoz Marín International in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Mexican concessions were granted in 1998 for fifty years, expiring in 2048.

The economics are simpler than they first appear. Airlines pay ASUR to use the runways, the gates, the security infrastructure. Passengers pay a small fee bundled into the ticket. The Mexican government caps how much ASUR can charge per passenger. What the government does not cap is the duty-free shops, the restaurants, the parking, the car rental booths, the advertising. The runways and terminals cost roughly the same to run whether 50 million or 70 million people pass through. So every additional passenger walking through the door is close to pure profit.

Most regulated airport businesses earn profit margins of 30 to 45 cents on every dollar of revenue. ASUR's Mexican operation earns 73 cents.

Why so much higher?

Cancún is special. International leisure travellers spend more in airports than domestic commuters do. A retired couple from Chicago with three hours before their flight is a much more profitable customer than a businessman with forty minutes between gates. Cancún alone generated MXN 21.7 billion of revenue in 2025, or 58% of the group total, from a single airport. Mexican Caribbean tourism is dollar-paying, year-round, and overwhelmingly leisure. Tourists spend.

The land also helps. The terminals, the parking, the airport real estate, were largely built on land valued at 1990s prices. Replacing it today would cost a different number entirely. If this sounds familiar, it's the same story we saw at Copart: the land is the moat.

ASUR went public in November 2000. Total passenger traffic at its Mexican airports has grown from 11.4 million that year to 41.4 million in 2024. Profits have grown roughly 30-fold over the same stretch.

The dividend tells the same story. In 2008, ASUR paid MXN 0.50 per share. The dividend for 2024, paid in 2025, was MXN 80 per share. A 160-fold increase in sixteen years.

For four consecutive years, Airports Council International has named Cancún the best airport in Latin America.

Up until mid-2025, ASUR's share price had been a slow, steady climb for years. Then it slipped, from around US$381 in May 2025 to a low of about US$292 over the winter and around US$302 at the start of May as of this writing. Roughly 21% below the peak.

A few things hit at once.

A new state-operated airport opened in Tulum, 130 km south of Cancún, with international flights running from March 2024. The Q1 2026 numbers showed the bite: Cancún passenger traffic was down 1.9% year on year, with domestic flights down 7.3%. Some of those passengers are now using Tulum.

Mexican domestic flying took another hit from Pratt & Whitney engine inspections, which were grounding aircraft worldwide through 2025 and into 2026. Volaris and Aeroméxico flew fewer planes than planned. Fewer planes meant fewer passengers meant fewer airport fees. Management expects this to ease as engines come back online.

In the background, the Mexican government raised the fee ASUR pays on its airline-and-passenger revenue from 5% to 9% in January 2024. A permanent dent in the margin. On top of that, Q4 2025 costs jumped sharply as legal and advisory fees from two big acquisitions (more on those next) hit the income statement at once.

The Q1 2026 numbers, released in April, captured all of it. Group profit margins compressed from 70% to 64%. Net income down 20%. A bad quarter by ASUR's standards. Not by most companies'.

While the share price was sliding, management was making two of the largest deals in the company's history.

In December 2025, ASUR closed the acquisition of URW Airports for US$295 million. The deal didn't bring more airports. It brought the retail, food, and beverage operations inside US terminals: nine of them at LAX, JFK, and Chicago O'Hare. More than 70 million annual passengers walking past those concessions.

A month earlier, ASUR had signed a much larger agreement to buy CPC Aeroportos from Brazilian operator Motiva for US$936 million. CPC operates 20 airports across Latin America: 17 in Brazil including the gateway to Belo Horizonte, plus the main international airports in Costa Rica (San José), Ecuador (Quito), and Curaçao. Closing expected in the first half of 2026.

If both deals close as planned, by mid-2026 ASUR will operate in eight countries instead of three. The 16 airports under management will become 36. The annual passenger count will roughly double to more than 115 million. The CEO described the Motiva deal as ASUR's entry into "the largest aviation market in Latin America."

The thinking is straightforward. Cancún has been throwing off roughly US$1 billion of cash per year. The Mexican concession runs another twenty-two years, which feels long, but the Mexican government has been getting tougher on concessionaires. Better to spend Cancún's cash now diversifying away from a single asset in a single country.

That said, the market is waiting to see the cash. The new US business actually lost money in its first full quarter, partly because of accounting quirks around the airport leases. Brazil hasn't closed yet. The pivot is real, but the financial benefits are not yet in the numbers.

The new Cancún Terminal 1, under reconstruction since 2023, is scheduled to reopen in Q3 2026. A capacity unlock for the most important asset in the network.

The balance sheet has shifted too. Twelve months ago ASUR was sitting on a small pile of cash. By the end of Q1 2026 it had MXN 13.5 billion of net debt, with more on the way for the Brazilian deal. Still well within reason for a business this profitable, but a meaningful change for a company that used to run with cash to spare.

By the time the Mexican concession expires in 2048, ASUR may be a very different company than it is today: less Mexican, less reliant on a single airport, less exposed to the politics of a single country.

ASUR is in every emerging-markets index fund. We had no idea it was in our portfolio but we are happy it is.

Data and images sourced from ASUR filings for fiscal year 2025, ASUR Q1 2026 earnings release, and ASUR Q3 2025 investor presentation. Share prices as of early May 2026.

Next week, we'll be looking at a company from North America.