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Liberty Latin America Ltd. (LILA)

Q1 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, May 9, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Liberty Latin America's First Quarter 2018 Investor Call. This call and the associated webcast are the property of Liberty Latin America and any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the expressed written consent of Liberty Latin America is strictly prohibited. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Today's formal presentations materials can be found under the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's Web site at www.lla.com. Following today's formal presentation, instructions will be given for a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded on this date, May 09, 2018. Page 2 of the slides details the Company's Safe Harbor statements regarding forward-looking statements. Today's presentation 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 facts. 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 Latin America's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed Forms 10-K and From 10-Q. Liberty Latin America 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. Also note that nothing stated on today's call constitutes an offer of any securities for sale. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Balan Nair.

Balan Nair

Management

Thank you, Operator, and welcome everybody to Liberty Latin America's first quarter results call. Today, I'm joined by my senior leadership team from across the region, and you may hear from some of them during the Q&A session today. For our agenda, I will start by taking you to our highlights for Q1. Before providing some examples of how we are working towards the strategic vision I laid out in February, which we believe will result in the creation of sustainable top line and free cash flow growth for our company. Chris Noyes, our CFO will then make some prepared remarks regarding our financial performance for the year so far. And then, we will get straight to your questions. As a point of housekeeping, we will both be looking for slides, which you can find on our Web site at www.lla.com. Starting on Slide 4 with the key highlights for the quarter, this is our first quarter as a separately listed company and although we are still in the early stages as we look to our longer term plans, we've made a solid start to the year and why do I say that? A few things, in cable and wireless we delivered good RGU growth in the quarter more than doubling on net ads in Q1 2017 and building on our product and operational improvements in the second half of last year. VTR also continued to perform well with the consistency we've drawn the custom to. Both these businesses generated strong rebased OCF growth year-over-year of 7% and 6% at CNW and VTR respectively. True network expansion as well as bringing an exciting and innovative products to our customers, we are creating a platform for sustainable growth. Moving to Puerto Rico, our recovery continues to move in the right direction…

Chris Noyes

Management

Thank you, Balan. Moving to Slide 10, I will provide some color on our Q1 2018 subscriber results on the top left, we delivered an aggregate 33,000 RGUs during the quarter of which C&W gained 25,000 RGUs with notable year-over-year improvement from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. VTR delivered 24,000 RGUs, which is a great start to 2018 as they enter the remainder of their critical back-to-school selling season, which ends during Q2 and in Puerto Rico, we reported RGU attrition of 15,000 which is a best improvement to at last 65,000 in Q4 of 2017. In terms of products, broadband was undoubtedly the star performer with 37,000 RGU additions. While fixed telephony declined by 6,000 RGUs. Importantly with respect to our 2000 video addition, VTR gained 9,000 RGUs which is a best Q1 result in four years and C&W added 3,000 RGUs which is a second consecutive quarter of video growth. These gains were largely offset by a loss of 10,000 video subscribers in LCPR although LCPR was nearly 60% improve from its Q4 2017 video losses of 23,000. Turning to mobile, we lost 11,000 subscribers in Q1 2018. VTR added 9,000 postpaid subscribers as they continued to successfully sell into their cable base. However, these additions were more than offset by C&W's loss of 20,000 mobile subscribers. As compared to the prior three quarters at C&W, the aggregate mobile expression reflects modest improvement driven impart by the Bahamas as they experience its lowest quarterly loss since Q4 2016. Slide 11 provides a summary of our consolidated quarterly financial results, which as expected continue to reflect the impact of the Hurricane platform. We delivered $910 billion in revenue and $341 million in OCF in Q1 which represent rebased declined revenue of 4% and an OCF of 5%. Looking at…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from James Radcliffe with Evercore ISI.

James Radcliffe

Analyst

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Two if I could; first on Puerto Rico, I believe you said last quarter that about 30,000 homes of your footprint you thought wouldn't get rebuild, is that still where your thinking is so that there implies about 180,000 left to go in the footprint? And secondly, just any thoughts on how strategy may change in Panama, given periods of build for 79 and past? Thanks.

Balan Nair

Management

Sure. Thanks, James. Good morning. On Puerto Rico, I think the numbers are right, and that's what we indicated and that's kind of where we are trending too as well. On Panama, we've been following the bill, it's going through the process right now, get signed a long period after that before it becomes in effect as a law. But we are actually very supportive of that, we think consolidation in that country makes sense and then we will see when the time comes when we go to the long - what actually happens after that.

James Radcliffe

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from [indiscernible] with Royal Bank of Canada.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Fixed KPIs and C&Ws have been positive, they have been proving. When should we see the better KPIs performing translate into top line growth. I see that basically currently maybe working at time on my [indiscernible] are growing however other regions are still having some top line pressure? And my second question is regarding also CWC. In which countries in [indiscernible] footprint is the company focused in the airports of the point and their fixed network and also we are starting to see some companies in the region they are talking about deploying FTPH networks rather than FTPX or cable, is the company expecting to deploy FTPH in some of your markets? Thanks.

Balan Nair

Management

Well, on the first question on the fixed networks, we as you can see, we are seeing some positive progress there and in some of our operations that's been around from some negative process. Fixed network has come around - now when do we see coming to the top line. I think, we want to be patient on that - we have a new management team in place, we are looking at a number of things one on bundling and our packaging ways we can increase value more significantly in the ways that right now how we tie into a mobile product. We have a very unique asset across our region where we have of course mobile and fixed and if you look at our top line really the pressure is more on mobile than fixed and you will see a lot of effort on our product to try to leverage what we have and maybe slightly improve the mobile performance both from a product standpoint, pricing standpoint and transitioning more from prepaid to postpaid. And that's kind of what we - a lot of our management team is working on. As far as the networks are concerned, your observation on FPTH is correct. Of course, if you had a choice and you are building from Greenfield, in many cases you would go with FPTH and we've done that as well in a couple of - it's like in a number of our operations. However, we are very prudent with our capital expenditures and in areas where like more sense to do line extensions so that our existing HSC plan we would do that, we would really focus on upgrading from 1-way to 2-way which has the biggest retail employers and in large cases where we already have existing purchase pair and looking at the competitive nature of the area, VDSL and converting to really high-speed broadband using the existing [indiscernible] technology, we would do that as well. So the way we look at it, we are less religious about the network architecture and more about the potential returns we can get from the network.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We will move next to Jose Quintana with Scotiabank.

Andres Coello

Analyst

Thank you. This is really Andres Coello. I have some doubts regarding Carve-Out acquisition, the impact of the Carve-Out acquisition at the C&W level, I think it's $10 million. But it sounded a little bit difficult to understand what was the impact during the first quarter of the year, so if you can please elaborate on that?

Balan Nair

Management

Thank Jose. Okay, well let me pass it on to Chris Noyes, who can address that.

Chris Noyes

Management

Yes, in terms of the - in the CWC numbers and the LLA is 8.2 million revenue, 1.6 million in OCF, if you added that's the Q1 2017 impact. So that's how you will calculate the rebase churn. And if you look at our press release, I think it's Page 09, there is a description of the rebase figures.

Andres Coello

Analyst

Okay, thank you and second question regarding the insurance payments. I think do you already received $30 million, it was an advance payment, if you can just let us know you know, approximately how much you expect to receive and when?

Chris Noyes

Management

Yes, in terms of the insurance as we mentioned on the Q4 call, we did agree with the insurers of $60 million advance of which $30 million was related to self insurers and $30 million in effect is because third-party or external money into LLA. We did receive that at the tail end of Q1 so that is on the books in our cash numbers. And then, our network basis, we are working through the claims as I mentioned on the call, we have indicated at least two occurrences of the claim such that to the extent if there was a limit in each case that would be $60 million of proceeds times two, so that's 120. So we are still working through the claim. We've obviously received 30 new of capital. So somewhere, hopefully we are trying to angle to at least Q1 claims but the facts were developed overtime on the BI side and we are charging higher, so it was going to take a while to resolve. But I would -- exactly we would some - I would expect we would have additional advance perhaps later in the summer when that's advanced, it will be smaller than what we received, just received.

Andres Coello

Analyst

Right, so from third-party insurance you are expecting in total including the advance you already received, there was a one that you will received later approximately $50 million in total or form third-party insurance?

Chris Noyes

Management

No, no. It's generally very complicated.

Andres Coello

Analyst

Right.

Chris Noyes

Management

But they will go from -- if there were two limits under that assumption which we are still working through to prove that would be a $120 million of third-party capital.

Andres Coello

Analyst

All right.

Chris Noyes

Management

Such that we'd receive 30, so that would be up to 90 if we can support to limit claims.

Andres Coello

Analyst

I see.

Chris Noyes

Management

But I would be, we are working through it, so I wouldn't necessarily pencil in their numbers, we will get more clarity as we work through it but that's how it works.

Andres Coello

Analyst

Okay. That's clear.

Chris Noyes

Management

Does that answer your question?

Andres Coello

Analyst

Yes, thank you.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from Kevin Roe with Roe Equity Research.

Kevin Roe

Analyst · Roe Equity Research.

Thank you. In Puerto Rico, your revenue recovery is progressing faster than estimated, how should we think about the ramp to capture the 130,000 or 133,000 subs you classify as non-billable and switching to BTC, we've seen an improvement in your subscriber loss pressure, are we at or near stability in that market on mobility?

Balan Nair

Management

Okay, let me answer the second question. I'll get to the first question in the reverse order. On BTC, we are encouraged by the numbers that both on the fixed side and on the mobile side as well you will see as the lowest losses since our competitor showed up on the island and is it sustainable going forward? We think that we see a light at the end of the tunnel here and we have the new management team on the ground, on the island. We started significantly, we've done a very good job, a very good job both commercially as well at the cost structure for that business. So I think we are seeing some positive signs out of that. On Puerto Rico, the remaining numbers drives a little, I will ask Betzalel to jump in here in the second as well Betzalel Kenigsztein, the Chief Operating Officer. But we are working really hard to get that remaining non-billable customers, knocking on doors, showing up, helping homes where we tend up and showing them how you can get back online, working through some of your devices in the home. Naji and his management team are laser-focused and it's a race for us to get those customers back to the billable side. Betzalel, do you want to add anything to that?

Betzalel Kenigsztein

Analyst · Roe Equity Research.

Thank you, Balan. But as you said, I think that we are as you said at the beginning of the presentation, we are in a phase of going door-by-door, knocking on every door and making sure that we are collecting back every potential customers. The change, there is a change on the way we were doing it in the first month where we are connecting and putting back power into the region and a lot of the customers are coming - were coming back automatically. Now with the process of cleaning up the last team and we go node-by-node, neighborhood-by-neighborhood and knocking on every door and connecting every door. So we are still optimistic that we will collect back most of those customers that are waiting for us to be connected. We just take a bit longer but the process is very systematic going node-by-node and reconnecting every customer across it.

Balan Nair

Management

Okay, thanks. Thanks, Betzalel.

Betzalel Kenigsztein

Analyst · Roe Equity Research.

And Balan --

Kevin Roe

Analyst · Roe Equity Research.

Sorry, I have a quick follow-up on TSTT any share, any sale update on that asset?

Balan Nair

Management

Not right now, I think on the last call I indicated, I visited and met with some of the, met with a minister there and we feel there is some slight progress, but there is a high chance we will get another extension on the deadline for that disposal of that asset. But we are working really hard and John Winter on my Legal Team, Chief Legal Council, he and his team are really focused on this and its one of the action item task that he has and it's really. We are going to try to make something happen here, we've done everything we can with the government both in incentivizing them to make something here, so sometimes just think move a little slower than we liked.

Kevin Roe

Analyst · Roe Equity Research.

Understood, thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We will hear next from Soomit Datta with New Street Research.

Soomit Datta

Analyst

Hi, a couple of questions please. One you disclosed the sub-sea cable business I think the first time the sport of the, which is very helpful to growth that is very high on the year-over-year basis around 33% or so and how should we think about our business going forward, was there anything sort of lumpy or unusual in the Q1 numbers, it'll be great to kind of stay on how to think about modeling that business going forward, please. And then, secondly as a quick follow-up and just an update on digit sales activities in the region will be helpful, maybe most particularly in Jamaica where I think they have attempted some pricing initiatives in the first quarter, it's a market where they and declare a lot of pressure to home market. Are you seeing anything in particular from them or is everything sort of relatively calm? Thank you.

Balan Nair

Management

On the first question, the growth for the networks and the submarine cable business and we are actually very positive about it - about that, not only the asset and the business but the opportunities there and we are looking actually at quite a number of new business plans in that vertical on extending on networks even further into some of the drop locations, that's a good business as you know, there is not much competition to bear as we pretty high in that space and it's one of the assets that we really try. So, first, if we had to separate that asset out, we would certainly play the high multiples and our overall base and I think if one of the hidden values in this company that perhaps many of you would want to look at and then value that appropriately.

Chris Noyes

Management

And if I could add on your question around the growth on subsidy, the one thing I would point out is the carve-out was sub-sea related and such that, that in fact is obviously positive this year but it was not in Q1 2017, it's again consolidation last year in April, so you would need to add that back to Q1 2017 to get a rebase growth.

Soomit Datta

Analyst

Got it. Okay, clear. Thank you.

Balan Nair

Management

Yes. Now on the - your question on the - where we compete with digit sales in some of the islands, we feel actually pretty good about that as well. In many cases, right many of us came from other businesses, really do you see you operate in a area where you are [indiscernible] and we think that opportunity for some pricing power and we've done that in a couple of areas where we've taken our prices as well and we are going to test the market, we think we have a very rationale competitor in that space in where we operated and I think it's' a win-win for both of us, if we can bring back some pricing power to the power that we have and I say that not because I think the sky is the limit on prices there, I think it's truly is under price in a lot of these markets and commercially I think we have a really good opportunity here and as you know, we announce that in the last call we have brought in Inge Smidts under Betzalel who will be running our cable and wireless business and one of the reasons I wanted Inge on our team is she has declared peace in this area of looking at pricing, looking in our commercial go-to-market, looking at above the line, below the line. She came from P&G and this is an area where we are going to really leverage her knowledge skill set and leadership. So we feel really good about it.

Soomit Datta

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from Jason Bazinet with Citi.

Jason Bazinet

Analyst · Citi.

I just had two questions, what is the definition of non-billable in RGUs in Puerto Rico?

Balan Nair

Management

Okay, so the question is, so if customers argues where we've already connected the network. We have the network back up but the customer itself -- we haven't actually been able to get the customer to where do you actually send it, a payment yet on the service. So and our feeling is that it's an area that we still need to stop pushing our customers and that's what Betzalel was referring to. We are knocking the door to tell them, "Hey, the customer is back." I mean, you are back on, you are plug-in your modem right now and you will get service and maybe that some of the issues going on in the home where they don't have - their computers were destroyed or some other CPE in the home, so we were trying to teach these customers back out, it shows the strength of our team in Puerto Rico and help us to rebuild the network and now we need to get some of these customers back on line.

Jason Bazinet

Analyst · Citi.

They could get the service, but they don't have the service, is that the right way to think about it? There were customers in the past who can get the service today but they are not customers yet?

Balan Nair

Management

Yes, that's right.

Jason Bazinet

Analyst · Citi.

Okay.

Balan Nair

Management

But they are existing customers right now. So there are customers that periodically, so we start spending billing to them because of services that was not available and so hopefully that makes sense.

Jason Bazinet

Analyst · Citi.

Yes, okay. And then, a long-term question, I - given your history of Liberty Global, I think people sort of think of levered equity returns being sort of central to sort of a liberty narrative. But on the other hand, I sort of look at the divergent growth rates between VTR where you have a more traditional coax robust terrestrial network on the rest of your results and there is a clear divergence, which I suspected a function of the type of terrestrial networks that you have in place or don't have in place. Once you get to the point where you are generating free cash flow can you spend a minute and just talk about sort of your priorities for using that cash flow. In other words would you - do you think fixing the terrestrial network or upgrading it is more important than buybacks or vice versa or do both in tandem?

Balan Nair

Management

I think our capital allocation strategy will become more clearer once if you pointed now what we get, we start generating cash and which is by the way a focus of this management team. I'd like to measure a business on a from an FCF basis and the yield on FCF and this is - it's a new focus operational wise. Let's get us back to a positive free cash flow business and start working on generating cash that I think our investors are looking for. Now what do we do from the capital allocation standpoint, we are still a levered equity model at LLA perhaps not as aggressive as other traditional Liberty companies are. We would prefer to be in the low part of the 4.5 range or 4 to 5 range, that would be something that we would feel more comfortable with. We would certainly invest in two areas or maybe three. One in our networks, on network to sell business and you will see us completely focused on wanting to have the best network possible with the best possible speed, which is really the key differentiator in our product whether it is mobile or fixed. Second we would invest very specifically on our customer experience and that goes to the quality as well as to the interaction customers we will have with it and that customer experience, when we look at the digital migration for our business, we look at it from the standpoint of what does this do to make the customer experience better and that's an variable investment. The third part of our capital allocation is, either buyback to acquisition and we know what our LRP is, we know what the LRP is and we know what the IRR for internal case and we will measure against that. If there are any opportunities that are attractive to us from inorganic spaces, we will always measure that against buyback and that's how we would do our capital allocation.

Jason Bazinet

Analyst · Citi.

Thank you

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from Matthew Harrigan with Buckingham Research.

Matthew Harrigan

Analyst

Well, thank you. I just want Balan just around the CTO have as much as the CEO had. We used to have Puerto Rico. I mean, you said a major job is getting everything and the fact back on line but is there anything you are doing differently on the architecture even perspective, why it was dropped, why would you have - what actually network recoveries you again you thought will be another hurricane or hurricane as a big market like Jamaica? And then, secondly, I know your growth oriented when you will feel addressing or the lower little income demographic in market like Jamaica, the possibilities of doing something more on the previous streaming side where you don't have any sack and what kind of flip very gracefully in and out depending on where the football or soccer season is? That will be great because it seems like we are picking price, nice growth enhancement if you would?

Balan Nair

Management

Okay. Maybe I'll answer the first question and you know, there is a little of my own CTO had but really no looking at it from new role and I'll tell you the ideal situation would be, we would take our time, rebuild it mostly in spite of the home underground and try to build a network is "Future proof." And to some degree, we are trying to do that especially in the backbone, where we are trying. Where we can to put more and more of our feeder and just and a pro plant into - in underground as much as we can. Reality of what I have asked the team and what the team is working on is build it back and think of it this way, it's a race, it's a race between us and everybody else on who gets to the customer first. So we could build a really nice future proof network but by the time we get to the customer we would have already gone with our competitor. So what Naji and Betzalel are really focused on is this race. There is two races, the first one is getting the network back touching all of our customers, especially those non-billables, right? That doesn't, that was backup. Second; the second race is getting the customer to sign back with us as far as possible once the network is up and that's what Naji and his team is focused on and when you do that you end up actually going back to the architecture you already have before because as soon as the bolt gets stood up, you want to attach to it as far as possible and you just swap out the nodes, you swap out the things that you need to swap out but…

Matthew Harrigan

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

At this time, I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Balan Nair for closing remarks.

Balan Nair

Management

Well, I want to say thank you to everybody. Thank you operator and for joining us on this call today. We feel really good about our business. The more time we spend on it and I have been visiting a lot of our operations and I think we see a path here that's extremely bright and positive and that's how we look at it. The management team here feels really good about the business as well and some of the changes we've been making in the last 90 days or so and I do want to end by thanking everybody for following us and keep in touch on us and taking the time to join us on this call. So I'll talk to you all again on our second quarter earnings call. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2018 investor call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations section of Liberty Latin America's Web site at https://www.lla.com. There you can also find a copy of today's presentation materials.