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spk07: 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 Ray Collins, Chief Strategy Officer of Liberty Latin America.
spk02: Good morning and welcome to Liberty Latin America's full year 2020 investor call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investor Relations 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. Additional information on factors and risks that could cause results to differ is available in Liberty Latin America's most recently filed Form 10-K. 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. 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 and on our investor relations website. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Balan Nair. Thank you, Ray, and welcome everybody to our full year results presentation. I'll begin by taking you through our group highlights and operating results for each of our reporting segments. a review of the company's financial performance and our outlook. After that, we will get straight to your questions. As always, I'm joined by my executive team from across the region, and I'll get them involved as needed during the Q&A, following up prepared remarks. As a point of housekeeping, we will both be working from slides, which you can find on our website at www.lla.gov. Well, let's start on slide four and our highlights for the year. Operationally, we added 170,000 RGUs driven by strong performance in cable and wireless and a record result in Puerto Rico where broadband demand drove subscriber growth of more than double our 2019 additions. Our key financial objective is to deliver positive free cash flow in 2020, and I am pleased to say that we generated very challenging year. In terms of momentum, even excluding AT&T's contribution, our results continued to improve in quarter four as we reported revenue at a similar level to the pre-COVID quarter one and adjusted OEBIDA, which was in fact higher than in the first quarter of the year. We also made significant progress with our inorganic strategy. as we completed the acquisition of AT&T's Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Island operations, adding over 1 million, mainly post-paid, mobile subscribers to the group. The operations are off to a good start, and I'll cover our integration plans in more detail later in the presentation. Finally, we continued to lean into our investment thesis despite COVID. with the addition of approximately 400,000 new or upgraded homes in 2020. Over 80% of these homes will pass using fiber-to-the-home technology, and we have exciting plans to increase our bill by 50% in 2021. Moving to slide five, and a summary of our quarterly fixed and mobile subscriber ads. Starting with our fixed RGU evolution on the left of the slide. Here you can see that we grew our RGU base in each quarter through the year with a dip in the second quarter as our markets adjusted to the impact of the pandemic. One of these impacts was reduced mobility, which drove higher demand for residential data connectivity as customers increasingly worked and learned from home. As a result, our broadband ads contributed over 90% of our net subscriber additions in the year. We believe there is a significant opportunity to bring high-speed connectivity to more households in the region, and this underpins our organic growth strategy in the coming years. On the right of the slide, we show our mobile subscriber evolution. Subscriber losses in the first half were primarily the result of mobility restrictions, which limited the ability for customers to access services and reduced demand for top-ups generally. as customers spend an increasing amount of time in their homes. In the second half, restrictions were eased across most markets, and we saw a recovery in subscriber numbers. However, this did not offset our first half subscriber losses. I'll cover the specific trends in more detail over the coming slides. Turning to slide six in our cable and wireless Caribbean and network reporting segments. Note that this represents the cable and wireless segment as reported in prior quarters. However, excluding cable and wireless Panama, which we now disclose separately due to a change in our internal organizational structure. This change has no impact on our borrowing groups or legal structure. Starting with the RGU trends on the left and a similar evolution to the previous slide, we had a good year in fixed. adding over 100,000 subscribers, led by 92,000 ads in Jamaica, which was close to three times that market's 2019 performance. Broadband was once again the main driver contributing over half of Jamaica's ads. During 2020, over 80% of our new build and upgrade volume in cable and wireless Caribbean networks was in Jamaica, which is the segment's largest market. Mobile steadily recovered in the second half, once again led by Jamaica. However, we recorded losses for the year due to the second quarter's adverse performance. In the center of the slide, we present an overview of our revenue mix and the sequential growth rates we saw in the fourth quarter. Our fixed operations remained robust and mobile revenue grew as prepaid recharges continued to recover. Subsea benefited from increased demand for international bandwidth and delivered healthy sequential growth of 5%. Finally, B2B service revenues was 2% lower sequential overall. However, this is a tale of two different businesses with our LATAM operations growing whilst our incumbent Caribbean market was slightly down in the quarter. Taking sub-C, including in-company revenue, which is eliminated in our consolidated reporting, and B2B LATAM in the aggregate, This represents a business with approximately $400 million of mainly U.S. dollar revenue and an OEBIDA margin above 50%. Finally, I want to highlight that this segment actually grew adjusted OEBIDA on a rebase basis in 2020, despite the impact of COVID-19. This was a great achievement by the team in a very tough year. Next, to slide seven, in cable and wireless Panama. where we experienced the most severe COVID-19 restrictions across our operations. This created a challenging operating backdrop leading to fixed and mobile subscriber losses in the second quarter, as shown on the left of the slide, which we recovered to an extent in the second half of the year as restrictions were eased. In our residential fixed business, we delivered 35,000 net RGU ads for the year, with second half additions more than offsetting second quarter's losses. competitive intensity and did not recover losses from earlier in the year. In the center of the slide, you can see that revenue from each of our products grew sequentially in the fourth quarter. Note that B2B growth of 20% was driven by some significant contract wins. As we look to continue growing our fixed operations, we are focused on expanding our product and network offerings. In combination with our Newville activity, where we added nearly 100,000 five-visitor home passings in 2020, we have also launched our Hub TV platform, bringing greater differentiation to our product bundle. Overall, we believe that this business has a lot of potential, given the fixed market structure and relatively strong economic environment. more senior management focus and should provide a catalyst to try to improve performance. Turning to slide eight in our BTR-Cavletica segment. Starting with RGU evolution on the left of the slide, we've previously in Q4 compared to Q3 and really getting to flat result in January. We see the recovery. I'll cover our approach here in more detail on the next slide. Our Costa Rican business, Cavalitica, continues to perform well during adding RGUs in each quarter and 18,000 in aggregate during the year. The mobile chart in the lower left represents our business in Chile, where we finished the year with 280,000 predominantly post-paid subscribers. Store closures due to COVID-19 and a highly competitive market environment drove the software performance here in second half. Moving to the center of the slide and revenue by product, in contrast with the cable and wireless business, fixed residential contributing 90% of revenue and up 3% sequentially in Q4. Finally, a key segment of our group strategy in 2021 is to accelerate our fiber to the home new build program. Across Chile and Costa Rica, we are planning to build more than 400,000 new homes, which is a significant uplift on the 2020 activity. On slide nine, We wanted to highlight some of the metrics that we as a management team are focused on as we look to improve operational and financial trends at BTR. In the upper left, we show significant reductions in both the daily number of technical calls to our representatives and our track roll rate of 73% and 49% respectively. These improvements follow previously discussed targeted network and customer service investments. The points below the chart summarizes key pillars of the framework we are using to approach network and customer experience. Additional measures of our operational improvements are presented in the central charts with a reduction in the intent to disconnect and increase in retention rates over the past months. Finally, on the upper right of the slide, we show how our new build ambitions in 2021 compares to prior years. A significant and exciting step up, which we believe will reinforce our platform for sustained growth. From a return on investment perspective, we have been successful in driving down the cost to pass homes with fiber, making these projects very attractive. Turning to slide 10 and our best performing business in 2020, Liberty Puerto Rico. Starting with our RGU trends on the left of the slide, as I mentioned earlier, 2020 was a record year for the business with 121,000 net RGU additions. Broadband net ads contributed two-thirds of total RGU growth, and as shown in the lower chart, our broadband base grew by nearly a quarter in the year. To put this into perspective, Charter, Comcast, and Altice USA grew their broadband subscribers by around 8%, 9%, 7%, and 4% respectively in 2020. In the center of the slide, we wanted to provide a view of 2020 for Puerto Rico operations, including a full year for the AT&T business we acquired at the end of October. We really like this market, and as you can see, the acquisition provides a significant step up in scale, taking the combined business to $1.4 billion of revenue and over half a billion of adjusted OEB debt. One of the primary reasons we see a differentiated converge opportunity in Puerto Rico is that over 80% of our mobile service revenues come from post-paid customers. Finally, we continue to innovate and invest in our networks to maintain a leading position in Puerto Rico. We are rolling out our Hub TV platform and continuing to build out our footprint. We passed $1.1 million plan to continue to grow and this is further assisted by the union of funding we have one to improve broadband speeds and 43 municipalities out of 78 across the island including San Juan and other key metro areas on slide 11 we provide an update on our integration work in Puerto Rico our key focus areas are firstly progress establishing a common culture. Secondly, I've talked previously about leveraging our product suite and putting together great propositions for our customers. This is already happening with our welcome offer, which has 20% enrollment after a week and continues to grow. The offer involves free fixed broadband speed upgrades if a customer is fixed and mobile services with us. Thirdly, It is vital to ensure that service levels are not compromised as we move to a new mobile call and new operations and business support systems. We have a comprehensive TSA agreement with AT&T to help us here, and we're confident we can move to these new platforms with minimal friction. Fourth, and something that is particularly exciting, we are creating a converged play in the market which enables us to differentiate our product offerings networks we now have. And fifth, we have a unique opportunity to lead with digital channels and services as we create new IT platforms for the new business. Overall, I am very excited about the value we can generate for our customers and other stakeholders through this acquisition. Finally, to slide 12. as well as longer-term shareholder value creation. First, we expect to recover and grow across our markets as the economic backdrop improves. In Chile and Panama specifically, we anticipate better trends following the operational actions we have taken in 2020. Secondly, with respect to our commercial approach, we remain focused on product innovation and are distributing our Hub TV products as we roll out new fiber-to-the-home networks. We are also developing our self-install capabilities, which should both improve customer experience and drive cost efficiencies in the future. Thirdly, we will continue to lean into our broadband penetration thesis for the region and add or upgrade approximately 600,000 mainly fiber-to-the-home homes in 2021, a material ramp in activity from 2020. Fourth, our cost focus. And this remains an area where we see significant potential to improve and drive value. Finally, to M&A. Our near-term focus is on integrating the assets acquired from AT&T and closing the acquisition of Telefonica's Costa Rica business, which we anticipate will happen this summer sometime. We see inorganic opportunities as a core driver of value creation in our region. but only if done at the right value. We are very disciplined in our process to appraise assets and accretive levered free cash flow per share remains a key metric. With that, I'll pass you over to Chris Nice, our Chief Financial Officer, who will talk you through our financial performance before we take your questions. Chris?
spk06: Thanks, Val. I will start on slide 14 with our financial results, two quick housekeeping items. Our 2020 results include Liberty Mobile, formerly AT&T Puerto Rico, for the post-acquisition period, which is for the last two months of Q4. And as mentioned, we are now showing cable wireless Panama as a separate operating segment, reflecting the change in reporting lines. However, our cable wireless credit silo will still include CWP within its results. In the upper left, we reported Q4 revenue of $1.1 billion, including $174 million in revenue from Liberty Mobile. This compares to $975 million for Q4 2019. Our Q4 result reflects a modest 1% year-over-year rebase decline, much improved versus both Q2 and Q3 rebase levels, driven in large part by our strong quarterly performance in Puerto Rico. For the full year, we generated revenue of $3.8 billion for an annual rebase decline of 3%. Moving to adjusted OIBA debt, we posted $428 million, or a 4% rebate decline for Q4, and $1.5 billion, or a 2% rebate decline for the full year. Liberty Mobile contributed $56 million of adjusted OIBA debt in the quarter. Rebate performance in the quarter included a $13 million net detrimental impact on certain non-return items, primarily related to content accrual and withholding tax adjustments, as disclosed in earnings release. Our P&E additions in the bottom left of the slide were $188 million in Q4, or 17% of revenue. This result brings our 2020 total to $631 million, or 17% of revenue, which is 100 basis points lower than our year-ago pre-COVID 2020 target. For 2021, we are targeting a modest increase to approximately 18% of revenue for P&E additions. As Dallin mentioned, we are planning to build approximately 600,000 homes in 2021. a substantial increase over 2020, and we'll have integration CapEx in Puerto Rico as we embark on our three-year plan to fully integrate the business. Moving to the bottom right, we generated $89 million of adjusted free cash flow in Q4, helped in part by a positive contribution from our newly acquired mobile operations in Puerto Rico. For the full year, we delivered $148 million in adjusted free cash flow, comfortably achieving our COVID-adjusted target of positive free cash flow for 2020. For 2021, we are targeting approximately $200 million of adjusted free cash flow, which is more than a 30% increase over our 2020 results. Slide 15 highlights our continued recovery from Q2. Excluding the impact of Liberty Mobile, our Q4 revenue of $923 million was nearly back to Q1 levels, and our Q4 adjusted OIDA DA of $317 million surpassed Q1 adjusted OIDA DA by 2%. As we look to 2021, we expect to build momentum as we go through the year, with Q1 being our toughest comp and as we begin to lap COVID impacts in Q2. Additionally, Q4 to Q1 on an apple-to-apples basis typically steps down due to general seasonal factors. On slide 16, we present our Q4 financial results and quarterly adjusted EBITDA evolution by segment, starting on the left with CNW, Caribbean, and Networks. We generated $428 million of revenue and $182 million of adjusted OIVA dot Q4. Year-over-year Q4 revenue was 4% lower on a rebase basis, as 2% growth in fixed residential revenue was more than offset by COVID impacts across our mobile and B2B businesses, which were 14% and 3% lower, respectfully. As highlighted earlier, our rebase adjusted EBITDA decline for the segment of 10% for Q4 was in due large part to roughly $13 million of net non-recurring items. Despite these headwinds and the impact of COVID, CNW Caribbean and Network School adjusted EBITDA by 1% for the full year on a rebase basis, and we obtained a 42% adjusted EBITDA margin. The bottom chart highlights our sequential improvement as our Q4 adjusted EBITDA result was $5 million higher then Q3, and nearly back to Q1 levels. Moving to our new segment, Cable & Wireless Panama. Across LLA, our Panama business has suffered from the most stringent COVID-related lockdowns. Q4 revenue of $131 million, and just at way below $51 million, were 19% and 13% lower on a rebase basis, respectively, as compared to the prior year period. Our year-over-year revenue result was driven primarily by double-digit declines in B2B and mobile. Sequentially to Q3, the business has continued to recover as quarterly adjusted OIPA DAO was $8 million or 19% higher. In fact, as the bottom chart highlights, we delivered our strongest adjusted OIPA DAO quarter of 2020 in Q4. Turning to VTR in Chile and Cabo de Tica in Costa Rica, we reported Q4 revenue of $244 million, reflecting a year-over-year rebate decline of 3%. The rebase year-over-year decline was driven in large part by volume losses and RP pressure in VTR, which more than offset continued rebase revenue growth in Copley Coupé. VTR Copley Coupé posted $89 million of adjusted OIBA down Q4, which was 15% lower than the prior year period on a rebase basis. The year-over-year decline was driven by increased operating expenses at VTR as we invested our networks in customer service initiatives, and to a lesser extent, a $3 million increase Adverse FX impact of non-functional currency exposure in Chile, relating to the depreciation of the Chilean peso to the U.S. dollar. Sequentially, the Q3 adjusted EBITDA was $4 million lower. However, it was above the $86 million posted in Q2. Finally, to our strongest performing segment, Liberty Puerto Rico. As Balan mentioned, our business Puerto Rico had both a strong Q4 and 2020. With two months of contribution from Liberty Mobile in the quarter, We delivered $296 million of revenue and $116 million of adjusted EBITDA, posting double-digit rebates growth rates. Our cable business continued to build momentum throughout 2020. In fact, our top-line growth in Q4, excluding the impact of Liberty Mobile, was our best of the year at roughly 15% rebates growth year-over-year. This result was due in large part to over 120,000 RGUs added over the last 12 months. The newly acquired business contributed $174 million of revenue, and $56 million of adjusted oil to die in the quarter, achieving double-digit rebase growth as well. Liberty Mobile's growth was primarily driven by a combination of revenue increases driven by strong postpaid ARPU, positive alcoholic roaming, as well as equipment sales. For 2021, it's important to note that we expect to incur significant integration costs in Puerto Rico as we begin to work off the three-year TSA with AT&T and operate on a standalone basis. During 2021, we estimate that we will incur integration operating costs of $35 to $40 million, and CapEx integration costs of $25 to $30 million. In terms of benefits, we anticipate generating $10 million of synergies in 2021 and to ramp towards our full run rate expectation of $70 million by the end of our integration. Moving to slide 17, we have managed our costs in CapEx space well throughout the pandemic. Our 2020 efforts allowed us to maintain our adjusted or the down margin in the 39 to 40% range, while absorbing revenue contraction across many of our markets. The inclusion of Liberty Mobile in Q4 compressed our full-year LRA margin by 40 basis points, as Liberty Mobile's margin was 32% for the two months. The middle chart highlights our nearly 200 basis point drop in P&E additions from 2019, even though we continue to invest in new build, capacity expansion, and subscriber growth. The net impact is outlined in the right-hand chart that we progressed our adjusted EBITDA less puny additions to 23% of revenue, a solid increase from 2019 levels. This metric is a key focus of ours as we look to further improve our future efficiency levels. Slide 18 summarizes our liquidity and credit profile. At year end, we reported $8.5 billion of total debt, $900 million of cash, and $1.1 billion of availability under our RCFs. During Q4, we funded the AT&T transaction and repaid our outstanding CNW RCF. As previously highlighted, our funding for the Telefonica Costa Rica acquisition is all set. We will use local borrowings of nearly $300 million and anticipate the remainder will come from cash on hand as well as a pro-rata contribution from our local partner in Costa Rica. We finished Q4 with growth in net leverage of 4.8 times and 4.3 times respectively. Our ratio is on an LTQA basis on adjusted OEBDA, and we give full effect to Liberty Mobile for the entire six-month period. Turning to our debt maturity schedule on the right of the slide, we made great progress during 2020 on turning out our debt at attractive rates. We do not have any significant maturities over the next five years, as about 85% of our debt is due in 2026 and beyond. Our fully swap borrowing cost is in the low 60s. and most of our debt is trading above par today, implying even lower market yields. In 2021, we'll be focused on refinancing VTR's local term loans that mature over the next two years. Turning to slide 19, I'll wrap up our prepared remarks today. Continuing the theme from Q3, we sequentially improved both our absolute dollar revenue and adjusted OIDA and maintained quarterly fixed and mobile subscriber additions. Definitely a solid improvement from our Q2 COVID-impacted lows. As both Ballin and I have highlighted today, our collective view is that it will continue to take time for our markets to fully recover from the impacts of COVID and for commerce to return more broadly. It is also safe to assume our region will reasonably lag the U.S. in terms of recovery and vaccination levels. We are managing our business for the next couple of years with that in mind. We as a management team are focused on what we can control, grow volume and market share, innovate for and service our customers, invest in new build and transformation, and continue to reset our cost base. So it's a benefit from incremental operational leverage as our markets recover. Importantly, with our ability to generate free cash flow across our operating businesses, we are committed to investing for future growth, and we are targeting approximately 18% of revenue in P&E additions in 2021. The key to our story, and one that will become apparent in the coming quarters, is the anticipated beneficial impact of Liberty Mobile, one that will underpin our free cash flow generation. There's a lot of integration, including systems work to be done, but the business came in stronger than expected, and things are progressing well. Separately, closing the Costa Rican transaction this summer will strengthen our market-leading cable business, and we remain very excited about fixed mobile convergence in that market. Finally, not only are we planning for growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA in 2021, we will continue to drive towards higher adjusted free cash flow as our goal is to deliver approximately $200 million in 2021. We believe this is the right balance for LOA. Lean in further while our markets are recovering. With that operator, we are ready to take questions.
spk07: And the question and answer session will be conducted electronically. If you would like to ask a question regarding the company's operations, please do so by pressing the star or asterisk key, followed by the digit 1 on your touchtone telephone. In order to accommodate everyone, we request that you ask one question with one follow-up if needed. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. We will pause for a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. And we will hear first from James Ratcliffe with Evercore ISI.
spk06: Thanks for taking the question. Two, if I could. First of all, on Subsea, thanks for the color on that business. And that seems like the kind of infrastructure asset that's really getting great multiples out there right now. Can you talk about, is that business to any degree separable from the rest of the business? And secondly, can you talk about what the rationale for changing the structure to have Panama report directly versus being part of cable and wireless? Thanks.
spk02: Thank you. Well, I'll say, I think your point is just right on the subsidy infra business. And I think over the next quarter or so, we'll give you and everybody more clear line of sight into that business. But we kind of highlighted already You know, it's a very good business, $400 million in revenue, all U.S. dollars. We're quite excited about that asset. I think over the next quarter, you'll get more visibility to it. It's positive. On Panama, I think, you know, Panama, you can clearly see the numbers there. And we are very focused on it. We have a great government partner there. We are very excited about that part of the world that we think in Central America, Panama, and Costa Rica, the two best markets. I mean, both of them. And you'll see when we put more, I think it's probably a good thing that we're going to put more attention on Panama. And over the next quarters on that, too, I think you'll start to see some positive outcomes there.
spk08: Great. Thank you. We'll now move to our next caller and we'll hear from Michael Rollins with Citi.
spk05: Hi, good morning. I'm curious on two things if I could. The first, could you give us an update on the framework for the overall strategy to look at over the next three to five years? How do you think about the evolution of your assets both geographically as well as the product mix that you would like to have in each country or country on average? And then just, you know, secondly, maybe it's within this context, you know, as investors try to contemplate where you may go next, can you highlight where your largest priorities are in terms of filling needs for the portfolio or where there might be just markets that you feel like are underpenetrated relative to their natural opportunity set? Thanks.
spk02: Sure. Sure, Michael. Thanks. Let me start by saying we are very happy with the geography that we are currently in. And I think we're in the best parts of Latin America and Central America and the Caribbean. And we see quite a bit of growth opportunities still. Broadband penetration is low, fixed broadband. LTE penetration is low. B2B, our play in B2B is also low. So we see You know, if I look over the next couple three years, the levels of growth for us certainly comes from our network expansion. It comes from getting the new products in B2B. We're quite excited about that. It also comes from the fact that we see lots of opportunities in our existing business on expanding margins in both our OpEx and CapEx. And I say that in the context of, especially on CapEx, it's not so much that we're going to cut CapEx because we are still very bullish on building out. It's our cost per build keeps getting better and better. So there's a number of growth drivers still in front of us on our existing geography. Where we would expand would really depend on what's available out there. We are very opportunistic. There are a number of places that we like, but I can clearly tell you where we probably won't be in. We won't probably be in Argentina. We definitely won't be in Venezuela. We are highly unlikely to be in Brazil. But the rest of Latin America, I think it's good. It's part of why we are in this region. The thesis is strong.
spk05: Thank you.
spk07: We'll now move to submit data with News Street Research.
spk09: Yeah, hi, good morning. A couple from me, please. First of all, on Chile, you've guided up on the number of homes passed. That's a pretty big increase. I know some of it's in Costa Rica, but I assume most of it is in Chile. Can you give just a little bit more color on that, please? I'm kind of interested in the new expansion areas um what kind of areas are we talking here um is that already existing high-speed coverage are you or are you going to be the first guys in the in this area with with a genuine high-speed product um and can you maybe sort of lay a path out for penetration of these uh new homes past should we assume a similar rate um over time as your existing penetration or is that you know maybe it'll be lower or take a little bit longer if you could give a bit of color there that would be super helpful thank you and then secondly if I could just on just on Puerto Rico question for Chris really the EBITDA as you say came on at a slightly higher number it's only two months it's a bit hard to kind of read too much into that maybe but if I annualize that kind of $336 million it's probably 10% ahead of where I was at is this the kind of a slightly higher base we should think about going forward or maybe just overanalyzing two months of contribution. Thank you.
spk02: All right, Schmidt. We'll get to both questions. I'll ask Guillermo to also, you know, jump in there here in a bit. We see the runway in Chile to be very promising. It's still, you know, we think with at least four to five years more bills that we can do that. The increased home staff that we've targeted for 2021 It's mostly because we see great opportunities in some of the B, C, and even some of the D neighborhoods. And this is mostly because we've been able to drive our cost per home path down very low. And we actually, where we've done trials, where we've actually gone in, we've seen tech rates that sometimes even surpass where we were at in our A and B neighborhoods. So it's quite positive. Let me ask Guillermo if you can just add on his view on the commercial front of these new builds.
spk01: Yeah, thank you, Valen, and good morning, Sumit. As Valen pointed out, we see a very exciting opportunity and continue to expand our current 3.8 million footprint. to further cities and further municipalities in Chile. We already started doing that during 2020 with close to 190,000 new homes added, as you can see in the slide deck, with very positive results. We are building all our new homes in fiber to the home, and we will continue doing that, providing accessibility and better quality to neighborhoods that historically had not had such kind of products in the country. So very exciting opportunity and also very proud of narrowing the digital gap in our country, which is a thing that continues to improve over time.
spk02: Thanks, Guillermo. Maybe Chris, you can give some color on the Puerto Rico evidence.
spk04: Yeah, I think obviously the two months are at the tail end of the year. Typically, as we've seen in our other businesses, Q4 tends to be a pretty strong time for the mobile businesses. So I wouldn't necessarily suggest annualizing those two months at this point. We did give in the balance slide the full year 2020 number. So as a reference point for folks on the revenue and OEBDA side. And I would also, you know, caveat as we go into 21, you know, we do have, you know, the business didn't come with, you know, the back office and standalone costs. So, you know, we will be incurring those, you know, as we operate the business. And as I highlighted, you know, in 21, we have a pretty sizable amount of, you know, integration, OpEx in the business as well as CapEx. So, you know, that kind of gets us, you know, moving towards, you know, being able to reap the synergies as we look out, you know, in year two, year three, et cetera. So hopefully that provides a little bit of color for you.
spk09: It's really helpful. Can I just, sorry, just quickly check. The pre-cash flow guide, that is after all of the integration expenses you've highlighted?
spk08: Most certainly, it is. Super, thank you. Thanks, Chris.
spk07: And Matthew Harrigan with Benchmark has the next question.
spk00: If you read the Drudge Report, I guess you know that you know Pope Francis when he goes back to Argentina, although that goes back to the Liberty International Day. So I think Paul Holman is probably still working for Tony Werner back then. Anyway, I'm kind of droning. I was just curious, when you look at the five-year of the Holman, you're obviously not filling that out in the more outgoing areas, I assume, because those were already picked off by HFC Networks. a long time ago, but people where you have apples to apples, I really concluded the OPEX structure is pretty superior. I know there's one operator in Denmark and clearly, I'll teach you what to say, it's pretty active. Do you have any comments there? And then as you get convergence in these technologies and the latency between DOCSIS and 5G, the DOCSIS latency getting down to low milliseconds, do you feel like there's even more utility for your network for 5G? I know 5G is a ways off in in some of these markets, but inevitably, you know, gets there and it feels like you've got a great opportunity in having all the quad play engineering in-house versus having to take a bit of a hodgepodge approach like some of the U.S. operators. Thank you.
spk02: Matthew, okay. Let me see if I can unpack all your questions there. One, I'll start with the fact that HSC is still strong. reliable and an amazing network. We are not worried at all competing with fiber to the home where we have HFC. And I'll say that for a couple of reasons. One, the plant that we have, for the most part, all been upgraded to one gigahertz and passed. So you have tremendous amount of capacity on it. Secondly, HFC is actually one of the most reliable as well as very low maintenance type network, unlike Christopher and all these other networks. Now, I'll tell you, fiber-to-home obviously is better, but it doesn't mean that you cannot compete. Just look at the United States and you look at Charter and Comcast going up against Verizon, Fios, or AT&T, fiber-to-home, or Google Fiber, and you win every day. And we have been for the longest time as well. Now, having said that, all our new builds going forward will all be fiber to the home. And that's what we'll do. And we're not doing that for any other reason than one, we've got the cost price point now to where it just makes sense to do fiber to the home. Now the second question that you had on 5G backhaul, we have never had plans to use the HFC for fiber, for 5G backhaul. As a matter of fact, not even for 4G backhaul. We actually run fiber directly to these sites. So we've always used HFC as a consumer play, not necessarily a backhaul B2B play.
spk08: Okay, great. Thanks, Balan. Now moving to Kevin Rowe, Rowe Equity Research.
spk03: Thank you. Good morning. Balan, a couple questions. First on Panama, do you think, as you're crystal ball showing, this could be the year for mobile consolidation? And on M&A in general, you clearly reiterated your disciplined M&A strategy and the free cash flow, the creative benchmark. But has COVID altered your appetite at all or changed your return thresholds for acquisition targets? Has COVID over the past year bubbled up any new opportunities or closed the doors on some? Sure.
spk02: Hey, Kevin. On Panama, let me say that we've always thought that mobile consolidation, that makes sense. And we've also always said to be a buyer, you have to have a seller. And right now, everybody says this. Not everybody, but at least a couple said they're sellers. But we've not been able to convince them that selling means actually selling at a price that makes sense to everybody. So as a result, not much have moved in Panama. But I remain optimistic over time that it'll get rational and something will break loose there. On the M&A front, you're right, we're very disciplined. And your question, does COVID increase opportunities? I think all the opportunities out there are well known. And of course, we look at everything that becomes available. We are quite opportunistic. You know, levered free cash flow per share remains a key metric. It's not the only metric. There's quite a few metrics that we looked at, but it is one of the key metrics that we look at. And does COVID give us more opportunity or makes us more cautious? No. I think our approach has been the same pre-COVID and post-COVID. If anything on COVID that makes it maybe a little harder is because, you know, where our equity stands. And therefore, you know, returns are judged on a capital allocation basis here. I mean, where we've been, you know, in buying back stock, if it's more creative to us than making an acquisition, we do that. And if you look at where our stock is at right now, you know, you need a pretty high hurdle you know, to justify, you know, allocating capital to an acquisition as opposed to your internal projects. And that's how we look at it. And it's just straight math for us. And so, and therefore it makes it easy. You know, there's purity in our decision-making here that makes it very, very, very non-emotional at all in M&A.
spk03: So following up on that comment, could we see... share repurchases returning at some point in 2021?
spk02: Well, you know, the board has authorized this, I think, $100 million in share repurchases over a period of two years. And, you know, you see what we're doing with new bills. You're seeing a lot of things. So if you look at capital allocation from our first choice, of course, it's always going to be, you know, high return internal projects where we, you know, where we put money to work. And then you've got inorganic activity, buybacks, data on debt, doing dividends. The last two is probably very low likelihood in this company. But right now, we've got lots of exciting projects. And you can see we're guiding to some pretty nice free cash flow for a very, very tough couple of years. That's right.
spk03: That's right. Super. Thank you, Balan. You bet, Kevin.
spk07: And we'll take our last question today from Nitin Sachani with Papyrus Capital.
spk06: Hi. Just expanding on James' question, can you just talk about the subsea business and just how strategic you see it long term? I mean, if you think about that LTCUSA multiple on there, fiber backbone at your 400 million and 50% EBITDA margin, it's effectively the majority of your market cap. So just if you could talk about that and do you see this asset as strategic long-term or a source of funding for M&A?
spk02: Hello, Nathan. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I think the subsea business clearly right now we're not getting any credit on the sums of parts. And Chris and I have been thinking about this and how we crystallize and give people more clear account clear view on the value of this asset. And there are many strategic opportunities in front of us. Clearly you can imagine if other things trade, all the usual suspects are knocking on our doors as well and, you know, and asking the same question. There's some work that we need to do internally. This is not an easy separation if you want to separate the business, but we're working on at least the first stages of, you know, putting the math together and doing some of the legal work and the accounting work so that people can really see the value of this standalone asset. It is a very strategic asset. It's one of the best assets in the Caribbean and Central America. And it's great technology, a lot of growth potential in it. We've got great customers on it. We are one of the larger customers on it. I think, of course, I'm... in my vested interest to say this, but I think it's one of the best subsea network. And then when you link it, by the way, to the B2B tail circuit off this. So on the landing stations, we actually expanded off the landing station. We put in sales teams. We've got a management team that runs it. It's a pretty significant business, very well linked. So our sales teams can sell both like an Ethernet product or a private line product in a country like Colombia, as well as tie it back onto a backhaul of a landing station. So it makes a very seamless transition as well. So it's a great asset. You know, it's clear to the management team and I that we probably need to, you know, bring better view to that. But clearly, some of the parts do not reflect that. this really valuable thing that we have in our portfolio.
spk05: Thanks, Colin.
spk08: Thanks, Nathan.
spk07: And that will conclude today's question and answer session. I'd like to hand the call back to Valen there for any additional or close remarks.
spk02: Thank you, operator. Well, you know, I'll tell you, 2020 was probably one of the hardest years that my management team and I've experienced just because the nature of where we operate. But we started last year, or at least started the pandemic period with lots of concerns. We made some moves last year. If you recall, we drew down the credit lines. We were really, really worried. I'll tell you, at the end of the year and sitting where we are right now, we could not have imagined being in a better spot. Now, having said that, I'll tell you 2021 is still tough. We've guided a free cash flow number. It is not entirely clear that we are out of the woods yet. In many where we operate, there's still curfews in the evenings. There's still lockdowns on weekends. And so this is not super clear yet. And I imagine cruise ships will not be hitting the oceans the Caribbean until perhaps November after the hurricane season this year. So our management team is focused on our cost. It's focused on cash collection. It's focused on our revenue. It's focused on where we can find growth and being very creative. It's focused on getting Panama back in order. It's focused on getting Chile back on track. These are the things that we focus on on the management team, and we are convinced that we can execute. We're not out of the woods, but that's light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you very much for all your support, and we'll talk to you in 65, 70 days.
spk07: Ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude the Liberty Latin America's full year 2020 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.ll.com. There you can find a copy of today's presentation materials. You may now disconnect.
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