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Liberty Latin America Ltd. (LILA)

Q4 2024 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 20, 2025

$8.22

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Today's call is being recorded. I’ll now turn the call over to Asad Nabi, VP, IT, Business Partner, Liberty Latin America.

Asad Nabi

Management

Good morning and welcome to Liberty Latin America's Full Year 2024 Investor Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investors section of Liberty Latin America's website 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. Today's remarks may include forward-looking statements, including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook, and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical fact. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in Liberty Latin America's most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K, along with the associated press release. Liberty Latin America disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information to reflect any change in its expectations or in the conditions, on which any such statement or information is based. In addition, on this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, which are reconciled to the most comparable GAAP financial measures, which can be found in the appendices to this presentation, which is accessible under the Investors section of our website. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Balan Nair.

Balan Nair

Management

Thank you, Asad, and welcome everybody to Liberty Latin America's fourth quarter and year end 2024 results presentation. I'll begin with our group highlights and an overview of our operating results by reporting segment. Chris Noyes, our CFO will then follow with a review of the company's financial performance. After that, we will get straight to your questions. As always I am joined by my executive team from across our operations and I will invite them to contribute as needed during the Q&A, following our prepared remarks. As a point of housekeeping, we will both be working from slides, which you can find on our website at www.lla.com. Starting on slide 4 and our highlights for the year. We grew our fixed and mobile bases throughout the year adding nearly 100,000 subscribers in total. Broadband and postpaid performance was particularly robust with over 260,000 adds in 2024 excluding Puerto Rico. This represents an increase of 9% and shows the potential for volume growth in our region. We reported adjusted OIBDA of $1.6 billion in the year and this was driven by strong year-over-year rebased growth in C&W Caribbean and Costa Rica and double digit rebase growth in C&W Panama. After a challenging 2024, we are committed to making progress in rebuilding Puerto Rico over the coming quarters. We continued investing in our networks with approximately 400,000 homes passed or upgraded to fiber-to-the-home. 97% of our fixed footprint is now gigabit-ready, exceeding the target we previously set. Finally, we have been making important strides to future proof our capital structure. In the past six months, we have successfully refinanced $3.3 billion of C&W debt. Over 75% of the siloed debt is now maturing in 2032 and beyond in line with our financing principle of maintaining a long-dated capital structure. Turning to…

Chris Noyes

Management

Thanks Balan. I will start by running through our key metrics focusing on Q4 performance. Sequentially, Q4 revenue improved $61 million to $1.15 billion as compared to Q3 with each of our operating segments delivering increases. While CWP and Liberty Costa Rica accounted for the largest moves on the back of B2B in addition both C&W Caribbean and Liberty Puerto Rico were up sequentially. Year-over-year Q4 revenue was 2% lower on a rebased basis as organic growth in Liberty Costa Rica C&W Caribbean and C&W Panama was more than offset by declines in Liberty Puerto Rico and Liberty Networks. At the bottom of the slide, Q4 adjusted OIBDA of $427 million increased 6% sequentially on a reported basis and was lower by 2% on a year-over-year rebased basis. Slide 15 recaps our segment results for Q4. Starting with C&W Caribbean. We reported $371 million of revenue in Q4, reflecting 2% year-over-year rebased growth. The primary driver of our top line performance was residential mobile which grew 7% year-over-year helped in large part by the continued growth in our postpaid base with 43,000 postpaid additions since the beginning of 2024 and higher ARPU following price increases primarily in Jamaica. Adjusted OIBDA expanded in Q4 to $168 million for 6% rebased growth. Sequentially adjusted OIBDA grew by 7% on a reported basis. For revenue adjusted OIBDA and P&E additions in Q4, we estimate that the business was impacted by the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl to the tune of $5 million, $6 million, and $9 million respectively. Next moving to Cable & Wireless Panama. CWP generated $209 million of revenue representing 1% year-over-year rebased growth. Mobile residential revenue was up by 20%, primarily driven by subscription and handset equipment growth following the addition of 78,000 postpaid subscribers over the last 12 months and…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question will be from the line of Michael Rollins with Citigroup. Your line is open.

Michael Rollins

Analyst

Thanks and good morning. A couple of questions on Puerto Rico. The first you mentioned the bad debt picked up in the fourth quarter. And curious does that infer that churn could be worse in the first quarter before it gets better as that bad debt could just turn into some disconnect risk? And then within that if you're able just to share if you have some visibility, I think, you did mention you're expecting trends to get better. What are you seeing in the details of the analytics on your customers that are encouraging in terms of where that performance may be going? And then just secondly on -- also on Puerto Rico you previously described I believe a monthly EBITDA target of $45 million. Curious if you could give us an update on whether that's still the target that Liberty is pursuing? And what's the trend to get there whether it's in the first quarter or over the course of 2025? Thank you.

Balan Nair

Management

Sure. Good morning, everybody. Thanks. Good questions. On the bad debt -- the bad debt issue was really a catch-up. We did record the churn first quarter, second quarter you saw the numbers. And there was an element in the bad debt that we had to catch up relative not so much to subscriber movements but as much as to the acceleration of our equipment installation plans and – sorry, installment plans. And those EIP catch-up happens because when a customer disconnects the handset that they owe us on left us and our ability to collect them as it turns out was quite challenging. And so there was a bunch of handset really catch up which is what happened. And we think we've got that mostly under control, but it's something that was the leakage that happened to us. And two ways that we are trying to fix that, of course, clearly one with the collection agencies and the credit ratings; and two a better way in our process when somebody ports out from our base. So a lot of the bad debt issues were not so much whether we did capture the right amount of churn. It's just the right amount of leakage was not captured. Secondly on green shoots, you saw the numbers on NPS. NPS is kind of a leading indicator. Usually it's a couple of months before it actually shows up operating-wise but the trends are very positive. One of the leading problems for us in our customer dissatisfaction was not so much just the technology in our IT systems, but some of the processes that we had in actually capturing the right billing amount for our customers. And there were a lot of credits going back and forth. When we migrated customers from AT&T there…

Michael Rollins

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will be from the line of Vitor Tomita with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Vitor Tomita

Analyst

Hello. Good morning and thanks for taking our questions. Two quick questions. The first one is on the CapEx guidance. If you could give us a little more color on the rationale for it to reduce CapEx to sales to a level that is lower than most telcos globally or in the region. Just to confirm my understanding is that the goal is to approach 13% in 2025 and 2026 to average out 14% in the three-year guidance period but correct me if I got this wrong. Have you been able to achieve your planned network improvement with less cash than expected? Or is this mostly driven by reprioritizing projects that you had planned? And should we see this as a more temporary reduction over the next few years to build up cash flow? Or do you see this level as sustainable in the longer run? And our second question would be on Puerto Rico. You discussed a bit that bad debt impact related to equipment installment sales mostly related to past sales in the context of the migration? And also the earnings release cites some billing adjustments into B2B clients that were also relevant to B2B revenue reduction in the quarter. Can you give some more color on how relevant those were for Q4 since those are impacts that I believe maybe -- might not have to expect in Q1? Thank you very much.

Balan Nair

Management

Sure. On the first one on the CapEx guidance, I think what we plan on doing and what we meant to say is that it's going to drop to 14%. And we may get to 13% in 2026, but my goal is to do 14%, 14%. That's the plan. And the reason we could drop by two points is one a lot of our builds and upgrades and primarily the upgrades from our copper plant is complete. We just have some stragglers left, but it's mostly complete. This is like a six-year project. Secondly we've expanded our mobile networks as well. When we took over this business we were literally less than 50% LTE. So we've upgraded LTE and we've upgraded to 5G in our key markets. I don't expect us to do many other 5G upgrades in the next 24 months partly because in a lot of these other locations even the handsets are not even 5G. It's like 60%, 70% of the handsets are not 5G. As a matter of fact, we still have a whole bunch of 3G handsets in those areas. So it makes no sense for us to do a 5G upgrade. So for where I want to upgrade my mobile network my fixed network, we've done it. Now listen when we did the fiber-to-the-home upgrades the strategy was very clear. It's to upgrade from our copper twisted plan twisted copper plan not from our HFC even though we've done some of that in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. And -- but going forward I think we have a great network already. The second part of where the CapEx helps us as well is our CPE. Our cost of CPE continues to drop. And our focus right now is on mobile. You'll see and you…

Vitor Tomita

Analyst

Very clear. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will be from the line of Andres Coello with Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Andres Coello

Analyst

Thank you. So, there's been a number of press articles mentioning LLA as interesting in a number of M&A transactions in the region. I think that there was an article saying that you could sell your Puerto Rico business to Verizon. And there were other articles saying that you could buy the Telefonica businesses in Argentina and Peru. So I'm wondering what are your thoughts on M&A for this year? Thank you.

Balan Nair

Management

Thank you, Andres. On the Puerto Rico rumors, we came out and said, we don't confirm or deny. Listen, if we were going to do something, I would have said something on this call. There's nothing going on there. We are focused on fixing the business and staging a really nice comeback in Puerto Rico. That is our plan. And clearly, if you look at our EBITDA right now, it's suboptimal for me to trade that asset at this point. We are going to fix it. We're going to grow that EBITDA, and I think it's going to be a great asset for anybody. Now on the Telefonica front, clearly you know all the issues. Just to reassure everybody in this call, the Telefonica Peru asset has a lot of tax liabilities. It's in insolvency right now. It's not one that is of any interest to us. And the second one Argentina, listen, you can't put any debt in Argentina, and it's all going to be in U.S. dollars and you can't hedge it. So, clearly in a levered equity model that doesn't work for us. So hopefully that kind of answers the questions.

Andres Coello

Analyst

Understood. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will be from the line of Matthew Harrigan with The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Matthew Harrigan

Analyst

Thank you. Notwithstanding the more moderate approach on the CapEx side, you've got a fair amount of FTTH in place. And I know it's early, but can you talk empirically about what you think are the benefits on a long-term pricing and the functionality of the network and the cost improvements that you see? I mean assuming more durable reliable networks clearly over a period of time. And then how much does it cost to actually connect customers relative to what you have on the traditional HFC topology? Thank you.

Balan Nair

Management

Sure. Hey Matt. Two things. On pricing, I would say, pricing is really in many ways not related to the network. It's really related to how many people operate in that market. And where we had challenges in pricing, I can go back to Chile. It had nothing to do with our network or anybody else had fiber-to-the-home. Remember, we competed with three other fiber-to-the-home network for years and we were fine. It's when the fifth and sixth operators showed up and started playing the price game, that's when we had problems. Now back to our business today. In Panama, it's a duopoly. In Puerto Rico, it's a duopoly on the fixed network. In most of all the Caribbean, it's a duopoly. In Costa Rica, I indicated earlier, we have a lot of fixed operators there but we started the consolidation process with Tigo and us coming together. And I hope that this starts a wave of consolidation in Costa Rica. And that's how we stabilize pricing and then you get pricing power. It's the number of competitors not so much the network. Having said that, we also have the best network. So I think we're in a very good position. And one thing that I am very happy with our strategy over the last four years have been on volume not on price. So we actually do have a nice positive price arbitrage against our competitors. In most markets, we do have pricing power now and we do actually have room between us and our competitors. And we fully intend to take advantage of it and we've talked about price increases already. So we focus a lot on volume and then now we're pivoting to volume and price. And I think that strategy is working and you can see…

Matthew Harrigan

Analyst

Thanks, Balan. I'm glad you realized it's not a good time to sell the Puerto Rican operation and have a great year.

Balan Nair

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our next question will be from the line of Mathieu Robilliard with Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Mathieu Robilliard

Analyst

Good morning and thank you for the presentation. I had two questions. One is around Puerto Rico but not about all the questions that have been asked before but really about the Echostar integration. How is it going? I think at the Q3 call you had flagged that you may have to face some interoperability issues between the handsets of the customers that you acquired and your technology. If you can clarify that and how it's going? And then just a very quick one on guidance. I realize you reiterated guidance. But can you confirm that the ranges and the numbers that you've put in your Q4 2023 presentation are still valid because maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen it anywhere in the 2024 docs. Thank you.

Balan Nair

Management

Sure. I think let me answer your second question first. As Chris indicated right, we are reconfirming our guidance on free cash flow. If you recall, we had originally guided to greater than $1 billion in free cash flow. What we're saying it's going to be about $1 billion. And the difference is like Chris said 2024 was a challenging year for us in Puerto Rico. Now I'll tell you when I put a guidance out, we don't just put the $1 billion out. We actually have buffers against that $1 billion. And I must say that the challenges in Puerto Rico in 2024 pretty much ate up most of my buffers. But the path to $1 billion in free cash flow is still clear to us. And the other parts of the guidance the EBITDA was supposed to be in the mid-single digit mid- to high-single digit we're going to be around the hoop there on those numbers. You'll see 2025 performance and 2026 performance. It will come in around that guidance. And finally on CapEx as Chris indicated we're going to drop our CapEx. We originally were planning on 16%. We did spend a little north of 16% in 2024. We expect to spend 14% in 2025 and probably come in around 14% in 2026 as well. And that's kind of where it's going to lay out in the guidance. On Puerto Rico in the EchoStar integration, I'll tell you Eduardo our lead in Puerto Rico our General Manager he's got a full handle on this. Remember, he came to us from TracFone where he did a huge prepaid migration between TracFone and Verizon. And he's assembled a team that helped him do that migration in Puerto Rico. And because remember the EchoStar migration here from Boost it's…

Mathieu Robilliard

Analyst

Thank you very much. Absolutely. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

That will conclude today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to hand back to Balan Nair for any additional or closing remarks.

Balan Nair

Management

Yeah. Well, a few things I want to say. Thank you so much operator. Firstly, you saw that we had a lot of challenges in Puerto Rico. And it is a cloud on not only how the business performed and our equity but also, I guess on the management team a lot of us take this very seriously. This is something we know we've let you down on in 2024. I am focused 100% in 2025 to fix a lot of the challenges we had in '24. We've built a strong team. We've made a number of changes in the fourth quarter and earlier this year as well in the team to put us on a different trajectory in 2025. But I must also point out to you we have a great business. The cloud on Puerto Rico has somehow distorted the fact that the rest of our business are killing it, Costa Rica, Panama, the Caribbean Islands, our Subsea Networks business, a lot of those businesses. If you remember when we started this journey we're not where they are today. Panama missed their budgets every year for like five years in a row. We've turned that business around. It is a strong business. We fixed the market structure, put in great management. It is running really well. It's a good flywheel. Costa Rica, who would have thought? We integrated the whole business there from Telefonica smoothly without much disruption to our customers. It is now a good growth in a highly competitive market we're growing our fixed business. And we were number three in mobile in Costa Rica and we are now number one. We know how to operate businesses. The Caribbean Islands, this was one that from way back when we bought this have never achieved its full potential. But today it has more than exceeded the potential that we even thought there. Our management team there is doing a great job. The flywheel is great. And if you look at the string of competitors that compete with us, many of them have challenges, some of them have gone bankrupt, some of them are no longer in business. We are strong. We know what we're doing. We had a hiccup in Puerto Rico. We're going to fix it. And '25 is when we are going to show you that we will fix it. And I am eternally optimistic about this business. The rest of our business is going great. I just need to fix Puerto Rico and I tell you, this business will do very well. So I thank you for your support and your patience with this. This management team is going to work really hard for you. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Latin America's Full Year 2024 Investor Call. As a reminder a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations section of Liberty Latin America's website at www.lla.com. There you can also find a copy of today's presentation materials.