Earnings Labs

Liberty Latin America Ltd. (LILA)

Q1 2017 Earnings Call· Tue, May 9, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Liberty Global's First Quarter 2017 Investor Call for its LiLAC Group operations. This call and the associated webcast are the property of Liberty Global, and any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the expressed written consent of Liberty Global is strictly prohibited. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's website at www.libertyglobal.com. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded on this date, May 8, 2017. Page 2 of the slides details the company's safe harbor statements regarding forward-looking statements. Today's presentation materials may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical fact. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. These risks include those detailed from time to time in Liberty Global's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed Forms 10-Q and 10-K, as amended. Liberty Global disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect any change in its expectations or in the conditions on which any such statement is based. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Mike Fries.

Mike Fries

Management

Thank you, operator, and welcome everybody to Part 2 of our results call where we'll focus on LiLAC, our Latin America and Caribbean business unit. I'm joined again by senior leadership in Denver, Europe and Miami. In particular, Betzalel Kenigsztein, President and CEO of LiLAC; John Reid, CEO of Cable & Wireless; and Chris Noyes, CFO of LiLAC. Each of them will present in just a moment. I'm going to give a quick overview of the quarter. Betzalel will talk about our operations in Chile and Puerto Rico. John will cover Cable & Wireless, and Chris will close with the financials, and then we'll get to your questions. We are talking from slides, so we hope you can get those, will certainly help you follow along here. And I'm starting on Slide 4, which provides some group highlights. I think it's firstly important to point out that we had another great quarter from our businesses in Chile and Puerto Rico, which together represent about 40% of LiLAC revenue, while Cable & Wireless is showing signs of stabilization as we make progress, changing up the team, investing in growth and executing on our synergy plans. Q1 saw strong RGU growth across the group, with 81,000 positive net adds, including mobile, now compared to a loss of 75,000 a year ago. Broadband net adds were 39,000 compared to 34,000 last year, so that's a 15% uptick. While mobile net adds of 39,000 compared to a loss of 106,000 last year, so a big turnaround in mobile, essentially all of it coming from Cable & Wireless. OCF results were mixed, and Chile and Puerto Rico delivered double-digit OCF growth, as I just alluded to. While Cable & Wireless, as we foreshadowed, had a tough comparable period since calendar Q1 last year was we…

Betzalel Kenigsztein

President and CEO

Thank you, Mike. I will now update you on the progress we have made in Chile and Puerto Rico during the first quarter. Before I dive into the markets, I'd like to provide an update on progress with operational initiatives that we have started across LiLAC, which should benefit us in the medium term and drive some of the synergies Mike mentioned in his introduction. First, we are centralizing our procurement functions, enabling us to reduce our cost by leveraging our scale and reducing our vendor counts. With respect to scale, we are in the process of outsourcing areas such as network and technical activities on a regional basis, resulting in better quality of service, while managing the overall cost down. The last point to mention is that we keep focusing on sharing best practices across LiLAC, and we are seeing benefit of this already reflected in cost reduction, while improving customer experience and commercial results. Moving to Slide 6 and VTR, our Chilean business, which represent approximately 25% of LiLAC revenue. We had a strong start to the year, adding 24,000 new customers, 25,000 fixed-line RGUs and continue to build our mobile base where we have now added a total of 50,000 postpaid subscribers over the past 12 months. We pride ourselves in delivering the fastest broadband speeds and providing best service quality in the country. This begins with the strength of our HFC network, which passes 2.8 million homes on a two-way basis at the end of Q1 and then culminating our leading customer proposition, including a rich HD video offering as part of our attractive bundles. An example of how we deliver differentiated service in the home is our advanced WiFi connected box that are widely utilized by Liberty Global in Europe and by LiLAC in Puerto…

John Reid

CEO

Thank you, Betzalel, and hello, everyone. Q1 was a challenging quarter, both in terms of our underlying performance and in particular, given the very difficult year-over-year OCF comparison, which Chris will address later in the presentation. I am confident, however, that we have and continue to make the right moves to transform the business and position ourselves for sustainable growth. To expand on this, first, we're seeing some encouraging progress with our fixed service offerings across the region. We are actually overhauling our entire operating model, given the heightened competitive landscape in a number of key markets. To this end, as Betzalel commented, we are leveraging LiLAC's and the broader Liberty Group's expertise in generating synergies. We're also revamping our customer value propositions, driving service improvements and transforming our go-to-market approach, all with the aim of first stabilizing and then growing our customer base. Our broadband NPS overall rose 8 points, and our video NPS rose 2 points in the quarter as these initiatives gained traction. As noted previously, fixed services are one of the largest areas of opportunity for C&W, given the company's historic lack of focus in this area. While it's early days, our quarter-on-quarter growth in fixed net adds is encouraging. And, in fact, in Q1, we saw our best quarter of broadband additions as a Liberty company. Panama's success with its Master offering was promising, with an upward trend in customer additions, culminating in March where we added nearly 50% more customers than the previous 3-month average. Jamaica was another market where while we're still seeing some challenges in video, we have generated good momentum in broadband and voice adds as we continue penetration on wireless, an unmatched footprint. It was also encouraging that we posted our best quarter for video RGU growth in the Bahamas.…

Chris Noyes

CFO

Thank you, John. My remarks start on Page 11 with a high-level summary of our financial results. We reported a rebased revenue decline of 1% year-over-year to $911 million in Q1 2017, while our rebased OCF contracted 10% to $354 million for the same period. Both of these rebased growth rates were adversely impacted by the difficult pre-acquisition comparison to Q1 2016 at CWC, which we have discussed over the last several quarters, and I will touch upon it again in the next slide. P&E additions totaled $139 million in Q1 or 15% of revenue, as compared to $207 million or 23% of revenue last year on an as-adjusted basis, including CWC in the pre-acquisition period. The adjusted year-over-year decrease in both absolute and percentage terms, was due to much lower spend at CWC in the quarter, largely reflecting the phasing of various projects. Importantly, the reduction in P&E additions did not hamper our investment plans in new build and upgrade as CWC delivered 50,000 homes in the quarter. Over the rest of the year, we would expect to see higher P&E additions as a percentage of revenue as we accelerate our new build and upgrade plans across the group. On the bottom left of the slide, we show an adjusted free cash flow for Q1 2017 of negative $58 million, a decline over our prior year's adjusted free cash flow. The reported year-over-year decrease was due to the net impact of higher cash provided by OCF and related working capital items, higher interest and tax payments and higher CapEx, all factors which were influenced by the inclusion of CWC in this year's Q1. From a phasing perspective, it is important to note that our bond interest payments at CWC and VTR on collectively $3.6 billion of bond debt occur…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question from Matthew Harrigan with Wunderlich Securities.

Matthew Harrigan

Analyst · Wunderlich Securities

Thank you. I had a couple of questions, just kind of ultimate high-level question. There's talk that - obviously, you don't offer it in Mexico, but there's talk that Obrador might be the best next president and it could be indicative of some political changes throughout the region. I mean, you've always been very careful with markets like Argentina. You sold back in the old Liberty International days, but is there anything that would give you pause, politically, including how there'd be ramifications for the M&A side? And then secondly, what are you learning from the Bahamas' fiber-to-the-home experience in terms of cost and in terms of prospectively even for new services over a period of time? Thank you.

Mike

Analyst · Wunderlich Securities

Thanks Matt, I'll take the first one, and then John, you might pick up on the Bahamas' fiber-to-the-home experience. You correctly pointed out that we have studiously avoided markets that represent significant macro political risks based on history, based on just how we view investment climate. And the markets we're in today we think are good ones for the most part, they're almost all good ones. As I mentioned, in my remarks, the vast majority of our markets are either dollarized or fully hedged in our balance sheet so we're not taking huge macroeconomic risk when it comes to the balance sheet or the business as a whole. Not an expert in Mexican politics, I’m not sure what will go down there, but the markets we're in feel right to us. And as we look at the M&A pipeline, we're clearly bringing that same discipline, that same sort of market focus to the transactions and the geographies that we're evaluating. So, I think it's going to be a strategy of ours. It wouldn't be surprising that to focus in geographies that provide synergies either because they're regionally contiguous or immediate opportunity, again, we know how to execute in those sort of opportunities but certainly, stability, if we can achieve that and that's the underlying goal. John, you want to talk about fiber-to-the-home in the Bahamas? You might be on mute, John. All right, Betzalel? Well, there you go. John?

Betzalel Kenigsztein

President and CEO

Mike, maybe John has a problem with connection. In Bahamas, we did around 30,000 homes, fiber-to-the-home. We get - we are seeing some good traction on sales and mainly selling a triple-play that is having a very high speed and a good video offering. So it's too early to say but some good first signs of development of our fixed proposition in the Bahamas.

Matthew Harrigan

Analyst · Wunderlich Securities

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Soomit Datta with New Street Research.

Soomit Datta

Analyst · New Street Research

Question on wireless, please. Just trying to get a sense as to how that product category will play going forwards. And Panama looked a lot better this quarter, but Jamaica, I see there was a reference in the press release to losing 10,000 subs, I think, and some elevated promotional activity in Jamaica, which has been your best wireless market for a while now. And in the Bahamas, I was interested in getting a sense as to how much revenue share you think you may have lost so far to Cable Bahamas and how you think that plays over the coming quarters. And trying to pull it all together, is wireless ultimately going to get better sooner or is it going to take a little bit longer to play out? Thank you.

Mike Fries

Management

Okay. John, are you back on? Apparently not. Betzalel, you want to take that?

Betzalel Kenigsztein

President and CEO

Yes. We can start with Panama. I think, in Panama, there is several actions that we are taking in order to stabilize. We had a difficult Q last year, especially on the prepaid mobile, and a lot of focus is now in Panama in order to reduce churn and manage the prepaid customer base better. Also, we are seeing some traction on the fixed with a new bundle that was launched in Panama. And both combined, I think that they are delivering beginning of showing the right stabilization and growth that we expected. In Bahamas, I think that it's as expected. It's not an easy situation where we were the only player. Now we have Cable Bahamas offering mobile. But with quite aggressive marketing effort and the right propositions in the market, we are still holding the fort. Of course, there is an ARPU effect on managing that RGU count. It's early to say. So far, the development is as we expected. We knew that there's going to be a drop, but it's tracking closely to our expectations. In Jamaica, it's a market that we are now struggling on maintaining our growth in mobile and at the same time to manage our fixed base, but we believe that we have the right price increase and new propositions in the market that will stabilize the Jamaican situation.

Soomit Datta

Analyst · New Street Research

Thank you. Just a quick follow-up on the Bahamas. Is most of the downside, of the 24% down we saw, is that roaming mainly or are we beginning to see the competitive threat as part of that? You mentioned ARPU was down a bit, but is it possible to split the two components?

Mike Fries

Management

I think part of that is as John said on the hurricane. The Bahamas is still struggling, has been several quarters with costs related to the hurricane. John, are you back on?

John Reid

CEO

Yes. I'm sorry, I lost connection here. Good to know I'm not in one of the countries in which we provide service though. That's a mix of roaming, contracted rates, of course, that we entered into new contracts, long-term contracts a couple of years ago to secure that relationship. And with the Live now getting up to in between 15% and 20%, we think of market share, so pretty much on track to what we thought they would - what they would achieve after the first 5 or 6 months. And as Mike indicated, we still have some hurricane overhang on, unfortunately, these developed markets have certainly taken a little time to get back on stream. So it's a mixture of all three, but certainly not as much on the roaming.

Soomit Datta

Analyst · New Street Research

Okay, that’s great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from David Joyce with Evercore ISI.

David Joyce

Analyst · Evercore ISI

Thank you. You heard some strong OCF results in VTR and Puerto Rico. I was wondering if there are any synergies that are showing there as a result of the broader CWC deal. And just when should we then think of further synergies coming through? And if you could also talk about the B2B seasonality, I know it can be kind of lumpy, but was there any - I know you did mention the proportion of the B2B revenue in the quarter, but is there anything we should think about as the year goes through? Thank you.

Mike Fries

Management

Yes. Betzalel, you want to hit the synergy point? I'll tell you, just - from experience these things will take time to be implemented. I think that number of 150 was half CapEx, half OpEx. So certainly going to take some time, but Betzalel wants to provide you some color.

Betzalel Kenigsztein

President and CEO

Yes. Definitely, as we expected, the synergy plan is taking off. It takes time. The first quarter is the beginning. So not a massive number reflected in the Q1 results, especially in Chile and Puerto Rico, but we see some of the initiatives that we start rolling now that will have impact that will be visible in Q2 and Q3 and Q4, especially as we - as I mentioned before, we are visualizing some outsourcing of network activities. We have some good traction on improving our content negotiations. Procurement is bringing results all over, mainly in Cable & Wireless, but some of it also in Chile and Puerto Rico.

Mike Fries

Management

John, do you want to hit the second question?

John Reid

CEO

Sorry, Mike, that broke up on my end. Well, I heard of the VTR question. Apologies, folks I have had a bad connection.

A - Betzalel Kenigsztein

Analyst · Evercore ISI

Yes. The B2B analysis?

John Reid

CEO

Could you repeat the question David?

David Joyce

Analyst · Evercore ISI

Yes, so you can provide some more color on that. How that should phase through the year, granted it's - it can be fairly lumpy.

Mike Fries

Management

Yes. It's largely a CWC question on B2B, John?

John Reid

CEO

Well, yes. It is lumpy and it comes in certainly - it definitely comes in various quarters at various contract term likes. What we, of course - the objective for us is to standardize and sort of regularize the recurring revenue so as not to see that lumpiness impact the performance, some of which kind of tends to go longer cycles and, obviously, you have quarters sometimes. So it will continue to sort of - I mean, we've got great opportunities in the year to achieve our managed services, certainly targets for 2017. And as a matter of fact, we think we'll actually have a great year-over-year result. That being said, some of it does kind of slip from quarter-to-quarter, so our focused it is much on the recurring side of our business, as it is on the sort of one-time or lumpy B2B or complicated IT solutions or government revenue for that matter.

Betzalel Kenigsztein

President and CEO

Mike, maybe, one word to add. When you look at the different type of B2B services that we're offering in Chile and Puerto Rico, is mainly SOHO and the SME, so it's much, much more stable. Given why there's a lot of big deals with the government, that seasonality - there is a significant effect of seasonality there. There is more on volatility on the timing and the phasing, but those - at the end of those did come through, but sometimes they are a bit delayed versus the previous quarter.

Mike Fries

Management

Yes, I think, it's also fair to say that in Chile and Puerto Rico, the focus is squarely on SOHO, and I think revenue growth in those two markets is 20%, 30%, 40%. So we have had good revenue growth. Similar to the European model of those two markets, Cable & Wireless has got a bigger managed services, wholesale, core subsea business. And I think if you take Panama out of the results, growth was closer to 4%, I believe.

Betzalel Kenigsztein

President and CEO

Absolutely right Mike.

David Joyce

Analyst · Evercore ISI

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Kevin Roe with Roe Equity Research.

Kevin Roe

Analyst · Roe Equity Research

Thank you. John, you highlighted many CWC initiatives and trends to help drive it to growth. And Chris, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned OCF at CWC will improve for the remainder of the year. I'd like you to bridge those two comments and maybe touch on the primary drivers of that OCF improvement for the remainder of the year? I know we've got the Bahamas drag easing, there is some seasonality, the project-related lumpiness. Maybe if you could prioritize that that would be helpful. And my follow-up question is on Puerto Rico, if I may. ARPU was up 2% in the quarter, which was a pretty material reversal of some recent declines. Is this positive inflection point a new trend? Is it going to look more like Chile's ARPU progression going forward? How should we think about that?

John Reid

CEO

Okay. I'll kick it off on Cable & Wireless. And Kevin, you're certainly familiar with the company and the transformation project or, I guess the initiatives that we've undertaken. So where we see the - I guess, some of the start this, get some traction is, one is on, obviously, on the urban network activity, and that starts with the new build in Panama or upgrade in Panama, a new build, Greenfield opportunities in Jamaica, smaller extensions through the region and launching new services over those new platforms. So Panama, obviously, is a big focus for us, they're our biggest asset. So converting those one-way HFC customers to two-way on that plant, extending out the network to a Greenfield part of the country, which we think we'll, obviously, have some great success at. And Jamaica, Jamaica's footprint is very wide compared to our competitors, so we have an HFC plant, and we also have a pretty robust upgraded DSL plant that we've been focusing on. So we're with our plan to launch video and high-speed Internet over that network as well. So I think, certainly, from a new build expansion perspective, you get that. Obviously, all the other network upgrade work that's been done throughout the region is sort of stabilizing the network either wireless or wire line. And obviously, as well as we upgrade these networks, we launched new products, we've got pricing as a big part of our plan for the rest of the year as well. We have - using some pricing in some markets in the first quarter. We've actually kicked off the second quarter with some new pricing in some markets, and the plan there, obviously, is to continue that. But to do that as the networks are upgraded or new products come to market such as the new WiFi Connect Box that we're introducing in some larger markets throughout the course of the year. So, it really is a plan of stabilizing the network, upgrading the network, expanding the network using pricing and also bringing new products to bear in the region. And of course, that's really the consumer business, the B2B business benefits from that by just upgrading and expanding the network and expanding our footprint, as well for that part of our business. And network seems to be - it's steady as - I guess, it's a steady ship, pardon the pun, and we expect to see it hit its objectives throughout the course of the year and continue the successes we've had for the past 10 years or 12 years. So, I think, really, the focus for us, as we all know in the pressure force, is on the consumer business. And [indiscernible] I think the strategy is going to take hold in the second, third and fourth quarters.

Mike Fries

Management

John, I think, you've also got, of course, headcount reductions and the benefits from the broader synergy plan taking effect there as well for OCF.

John Reid

CEO

Absolutely.

Betzalel Kenigsztein

President and CEO

Yes. In Puerto Rico, we did - in the beginning of the year, we did a 3% to 4% price increase that was well-accepted in the market with a limited churn, lower than what we usually have -- we get from a 3%, 4%. And that was mainly through a value-added that we had in the markets, which still increases leveraging the superiority that we have on the network. So when we combined the price increase with adding value, we have a combination of the direct price increase and upgrades of the packages to higher fee. So it's working well in Puerto Rico. The other element that was helping a lot is the U.K. video product that we offered, where eventually what happened people are taking the bundle with, maybe, lower ARPU related to video, but they're transferring it into higher ARPU in broadband. So, the overall combination is higher ARPU per customer.

Kevin Roe

Analyst · Roe Equity Research

That’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Jeff Wlodarczak with Pivotal Research Group.

Jeff Wlodarczak

Analyst · Pivotal Research Group

Hello again. There have been a number of reports, your primary competitor in the Caribbean, Digicel, is financially distressed having issues but relatively high leverage levels. As I understand, they're firing 25% of their employees. Have you seen any signs of - in their markets that you compete with them - of lessening competitive pressure, slowing build outs and/or focus on price hikes? Then I've got a follow-up.

Mike Fries

Management

It’s Mike here Jeff, we've got to be thoughtful about how we speak about competitors, of course. I think Dennis O'Briant and his team are quite effective and quite aggressive. So while we are Number 1 and/or Number 2 in pretty much every market we operate in, we try to take a cooperative approach to regulatory and other matters. We just brought some Champions League sports rights together with them. Having said that, of course, they have a different debt profile than we do. That's for sure. And while we are fully hedged, and we think, in many respects, protected on the currency front that they have not yet or not built a capital structure, that's sensitive to those matters. What they might be doing on synergies, we're not going to speak to. But John, you're welcome to talk about any local impacts that might be having in terms of their competitive posture, which I can guarantee, remains aggressive.

John Reid

CEO

Yes, in terms of their actual build-out, I think they've pretty much done what they planned to do, certainly in the large markets of Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad. I think they've - publicly, they've indicated that they've pretty much done their build-out, which, obviously, their network is not as large as ours. But certainly, where they overlap with us, whether it's FTTH or HFC and in Trinidad and Jamaica. Now they are very competitive. They are rational, however. And so for the most part, their go-to-market strategy has been around sort of a discounted kind of first year or first - actually first quarter of service. The product is pretty much the same. I think when you look at the product set whether it's the video product or the broadband product, there's always certain networks that you will have and the other guy doesn't have. It's normally out of choice, to be quite frank. And when it comes to the broadband speeds, we're kind of neck-and-neck. So in terms of competitive, it was the new guy on the block and we were the incumbent for many years. We knew we were going to lose some share. The good news, of course, is that they had foresight to be rational. And at the same time, as I indicated, we're not seeing any additional build-out from what they did at the end of last year.

Jeff Wlodarczak

Analyst · Pivotal Research Group

Fair enough. Thank you. And then broadly speaking, do you anticipate generating material free cash flow over the next 5 years? Or you are more likely to drive that free cash flow in upgrading your network, expanding your builds, RGUs?

Mike Fries

Management

Well it's a good question, Jeff. I think, today, our free cash flow profile is, as you know, relatively light, and that's partially because we are putting a lot of capital into new build and positioning ourselves for longer-term growth. But we certainly do expect, over time, as the capital intensity declines to generate more free cash. We're not providing any free cash flow guidance, Chris, correct me if I'm wrong. But obviously, our internal profile shows improving free cash flow over time.

Chris Noyes

CFO

Yes. 2017, we did indicate limited free cash flow. And as we look out, clearly, as Mike was mentioning, 2017 is a big investment year for us across the overall group with Chile, Puerto Rico and CWC on the new build and upgrade front. Certainly moving out, I think after 2017, we'll certainly be through a good chunk of some of our key builds in markets like Jamaica and Panama, and we'll be focused on free cash flow generation as we move out, but we're not going to give any guidance at this point in terms of development beyond 2017.

Jeff Wlodarczak

Analyst · Pivotal Research Group

Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Amy Yong with Macquarie.

Amy Yong

Analyst · Macquarie

Thanks. Two questions. So first on VTR, mobile penetration has been growing nicely, but still kind of slow. What do you think needs to get done to push that penetration rate higher? And ultimately, where do you think it could land? And then I guess, my second question is on a hard spin? What are the next steps needed to accomplish a hard spin? And what are some of the options you think above M&A, I guess including M&A, that can open up once that's done?

Mike Fries

Management

I'll take the spin question, and Betzalel, you can prepare the VTR question. I think the spin - there's a couple of questions here. First of all, it's a process and I think I've talked about it before. It's a pretty regular process. It doesn't look different than most spins, meaning that we're getting all of our pro forma financials, historical financials sorted through, drafting a registration statement, clarifying, importantly, the legal and operating relationship between Liberty and LiLAC post-spin, getting all the tax and jurisdiction issues sorted. And I think the punch line is we're making good, really good progress on all of those matters. But we still expect to be filing something with the SEC, mid or late this summer. And hopefully, by year end, we are - it's really a split off, technically not a spin-off, but splitting off the LiLAC business. And the benefits, I think, are substantial. One, it will be, in our view, a healthy and valuable currency that we can use to go out and look at strategic expansion where it makes sense. It should trade better, we think, with greater focus, and investor focus and management focus. And it's important, I think, for both sets of shareholders to know that we've created, as we said we would, two different capital structures, two different currencies, two different investment opportunities with different risk and return profiles. There will be - and I think this is an important point to make, we will retain some influence and co-ordination and collaboration between Europe and Latin America. That makes total sense to us. It doesn't make sense to completely cast away the one business or the other and not continue to take advantage of procurement benefits, programming acquisition benefits, technology and product innovation benefits, things of that…

Betzalel Kenigsztein

President and CEO

Yes. On VTR and mobile, if you track back, WOM is a new player that is not new, entered the market 1.5 years ago with very aggressive offering. So if you look at the overall market, mobile market in Chile, it's not an easy one when we have Entel, a very strong player, Claro, Movistar and WOM that entered the market last year. When WOM entered the market, there was a slowdown in our results. And our growth, we almost went to 0. Some operational and commercial activities on reshaping and focusing on our commercial operation, we are back on track on growth on our mobile customer base. Most of them is postpaid. In the last two quarters, most of them are SIM-only. Yes, at the end of the day, only 7% of our customer base, it's about 180,000 subs that takes the service from us. It's small on the bigger picture, it's still a good contributor to our revenue growth month-to-month. I cannot share now any strategic changes in our approach in the coming quarters, but if there will be, we will definitely update you.

Amy Yong

Analyst · Macquarie

That’s very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our last question from Julio Arciniegas with RBC Capital Markets.

Julio Arciniegas

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets

Yes, hello. Thanks for taking my question. My question is regarding the cable fiber deployment in the quarter. We have heard that basically deploying is a key angle in order to see subscriber growth. On Panama, of course, it's a market that is very relevant. However, I see that for example, in Panama, the new build this quarter has been 0. Can you give me an update of how should I think about the deployment in Panama? Are you currently more focusing upgrading your current homes or you are - in the next quarter, we should see more new build in Panama? I mean, overall in cable and wireless footprint, what is the target of home passed of new build? Thank you.

Mike Fries

Management

John, you like to handle that?

John Reid

CEO

Yes, I'll take that one, Mike. Yes, you're absolutely right, Julio. In the first quarter, the priority is to, I guess, what I would say is to do the easy work, and that's to upgrade the one-way HFC network to two-way capabilities, and then the expansion work will continue. We actually started that upgrade work. It's about 285,000 homes. We started that last year, and we're at the tail end of that. So as we complete that, we will also - actually, there will be a little bit of an overlap. We'll roll out the - sort of start expanding our network out as the middle of the year kind of gets a little bit closer. But the priority was to focus on that one-way HFC plant because as well we have customers there who are underserved in terms of what products we're able to provide them. In terms of the homes passed, we had a target in terms of the total number of upgraded and rebuilded or expansion homes for the region. And that's about 250,000 we've been using for our annual operating plan focus this year. So there is a component of that, that's Greenfield, and it is in couple of other countries, as well as in Panama and Jamaica as I indicated and also I think just a little bit in Trinidad and some smaller Caribbean countries. Most of the work is upgrade, as you can imagine, with a company, with the history that we have and the amount of copper that we have in the ground, but the total upgrade and expansion plan for this year is we'll see 250,000 new homes get positioned for high-speed broadband and the advanced video services by the end of the year.

Betzalel Kenigsztein

President and CEO

Maybe one point to add on the upgrade plan in Cable & Wireless is also moving the legacy copper ADSL to VDSL. That's also a significant part of the overall upgrade plan on top of the HFC one-way to two-way and on top of the new build that will be part of the plan.

Julio Arciniegas

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets

Okay. If I may follow-up, just in that beat, from the 250,000, can you give us some indication of how much is going to be [VDSL]?

Mike Fries

Management

At the top of my head, probably not. I mean I think if I try to reflect on how many homes we have outside of Panama, most of the upgrade work will be VDSL upgrade from DSL. In Jamaica, it's all VDSL, and that's about 75,000 homes. In Trinidad, it's HFC. As Betzalel indicated, actually in Barbados, migrating customers from DSL to FTTH. So it's a hodgepodge as you can imagine, with the number of countries that we have, but primarily outside of Panama, it's a DSL upgrade or migrate to an HFC or fiber-to-the home plan.

Julio Arciniegas

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets

Okay. Thank you.

Mike Fries

Management

All right. Well, listen, thanks for joining us on our second LiLAC call. We'll continue these, of course. I think they're helpful, especially for those who are - who's been taking the time, which we appreciate, to understand the business opportunity. I would say, as I have in the past, it's early days still, but these are exciting times for LiLAC. We're getting the management team formed, we're in the process of integrating and getting the synergies we have talked about. We're eyeballing and evaluating expansion opportunities very carefully. And of course, we're preparing for the spin, all of that happening within the backdrop of a region that we know has fundamental organic growth and which we, in all of our markets, especially a handful of them that represents the vast majority of revenue, are starting to see the benefits of revenue and operating cash flow pickup. So, we're excited about it. Hope you are, too, and we'll speak to you next quarter with results. Thanks very much, everybody.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Global's First Quarter 2017 Investor Call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's website at www.libertyglobal.com. There you can also find a copy of today's presentation materials.