Liberty Latin America Ltd.

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 John Winter, Chief Legal Officer of Liberty Latin America.

Good morning, and welcome to Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2021 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 or risks that could cause results to differ is available in Liberty Latin America's most recently filed Form 10-K and Form 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. 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, John, and welcome everybody to Liberty Latin America's first quarter results presentation. I'll begin by taking you through our group highlights and operating results before handing over to Chris Noyes, our CFO, who will follow with a review of the company's financial performance. 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 our prepared remarks. To point of housekeeping, we will both be working from slides, which you can find on our website at www.lla.com. Well, let's start at slide four and our highlights for the quarter. Overall, all markets are steadily recovering from the worst impacts of the pandemic. However, our operating environment remains quite challenging in the first quarter, with reduced tourism in general, and restrictions still in place across a number of our markets. Against this backdrop, though, we had a strong start to the year with a record Q1 RGU additions of 76,000. The group's performance was led by Cable & Wireless and Puerto Rico, and we were pleased to deliver growth across all of our operating segments in the quarter. Our financial performance was also solid with a 3% rebase of adjusted OEBDA growth. This was driven by another strong quarter for Liberty Puerto Rico, and we continue to be excited about the value we plan to create there as we integrate our fixed and mobile operations. We previously outlined our plans to build or upgrade approximately 600,000 homes in 2021, a 50% increase on 2020, And we delivered 130,000 homes in the first quarter, 98% of which were fiber to the home. Bringing high-speed connectivity to more households in the region continues to be a core focus of our company. Finally, I am happy to say that we also reported a very strong first quarter free cash flow result, positioning us well for a full year guidance of approximately $200 million. Moving to slide five, I wanted to cover the first quarter highlights across our key markets before running through our performance by product category in the following slides. Starting with Jamaica, which was the largest contributor of fixed and mobile ads in cable and wireless. We are continuing to invest with momentum here and added or upgraded over 10,000 fiber to the home homes in the quarter. we have also successfully launched converged customer value propositions, driving a strong mobile performance. Moving to the Bahamas, tourism is starting to return with major hotels now open, and a more meaningful rebound is anticipated in the second half of this year. We've invested in a fixed network with fiber upgrades and launched converged propositions to drive broadband ads and post-paid mobile gains. Taking Costa Rica next, This continues to be a strong fixed market for us, and we are constantly looking to innovate and refresh our customer propositions, focusing on increasing speeds and value to gain and retain subscribers. The upcoming acquisition of Telefonica's mobile assets should provide an opportunity to develop attractive converged propositions for our customers and reinforce our strong positions. I've moved one of my best managers, Guillermo Ponce, to have oversight of Costa Rica and the integration of these businesses. Turning to Puerto Rico, our focus is on integrating the acquired AT&T operations effectively and quickly. To that end, in addition to our initial welcome offer, we have now launched our co-branded Juntos Mas campaign as a first step towards creating a single brand in the market. next to Panama on the lower left of the slide where we saw strict lockdowns last year and some in the beginning of the year. However, this market is going to be strong for us as we start our recovery and growth for the year. I recently moved one of my most trusted executives, Batsalal Kinnikstein, to personally run the business, and he is already making progress. We grew both our fixed and mobile subscriber basis in the first quarter and expect to have a good year there. The launch of our unlimited Todo Torito plan drove strong mobile additions in March. Finally, to VTR in Chile, where there continued to be lockdowns during the first quarter despite the country being one of the global leaders in vaccination efforts. Our recent operating and financial performance have been challenged. driven by the intense competition environment in Chile. We are committed to improving performance at VTR, and I would highlight the following. First, we need to start growing our subscriber base again. We turned the corner here in Q1, recording 7,000 net ads following 116,000 losses in the second half last year. Through our sales efforts, the rollout of Hub TV, significant fiber footprint expansion plans, and improve customer service objectives. We are aiming to build momentum in the business and drive meaningful subscriber growth over time. Second, we are focused on managing price to retain customers and recalibrating our cost structure to targeted efficiency initiatives. Third, we have added a new perspective to VTR's management team with Vivek Hemkar, our former CTO, taking on the general manager's role. Vivek has extensive experience across the industry and a deep knowledge of technology, which will be valuable in a market where our infrastructure expansion plans are a key aspect of our strategy. It will take time, but we believe the business can get back to growth and that the steps we are taking today will also position us well as the market evolves. Turning to slide six and our operating performance by product. starting with fixed subscriber additions. As mentioned, all our operating segments recorded net ads this quarter, taking each in turn. First, cable and wireless Caribbean and networks, shown in the upper left, reported 12% higher Q1 additions year over year, driven by continued momentum in Jamaica, where we added 22,000 RGUs. In Panama, we added 10,000 RGUs and expect to continue our growth throughout the year. Liberty Puerto Rico, in the upper corner, carried over its momentum from 2020 by adding 25,000 RGUs in Q1, which was more than double the prior year period. In Chile, as mentioned, we returned to subscriber growth. This is an improvement. However, the market remains very competitive with additional uncertainty related to the pandemic and elections in the near term. Our last segment, Costa Rica, shown in the upper right, continued its steady progression with Q1 net ads 9% higher than the prior year, led by broadband demand. Rolling these results up for the group, we delivered record Q1 performance with year-over-year improvements in net ads driven by Puerto Rico. Our group ARPU per customer at $50 was up 1% year-over-year on an FX-neutral basis in Q1 led by Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. Moving to slide seven, and a record Q1 mobile performance in what is typically a seasonally weak quarter. Starting again with cable and wireless Caribbean and networks in the upper left where we added 2,000 subscribers in the quarter, which was 30,000 more than the prior year period. Across cable and wireless' markets, Jamaica added 10,000 subscribers including 3,000 postpaid additions, which was higher than Jamaica's postpaid ads for the whole of 2020. Next to Panama, which generated the most ads in the quarter, growing its base by 61,000 net RGUs. This was driven by the launch of our unlimited data, Todo Torito plan. Liberty Mobile maintained a relatively flat subscriber base of just over a million subscribers. Although a small net loss was recorded in Q1, it is worth noting that within the mix, we saw growth in postpaid subscribers offset by prepaid losses. Finally, VTR lost 6,000 mobile subscribers in the quarter. We operate as an MVNO in Chile, predominantly providing postpaid services to existing fixed subscribers and are a small player in the market with just over 270,000 subscribers. Sticking this all together, we added 55,000 mobile subscribers in the quarter with a blended ARPU of $20 across the group. The increase of 55% year-over-year is driven by the inclusion of Liberty Mobile in Q1 2021. Next is slide 8 in our B2B and sub-C operations, starting with performance on the left side. The upper graph shows the stability in our Latin B2B and subsea businesses over the past year. This is driven by our attacker competitive positions in Latin B2B markets and the resilience of the subsea business, which I'll come on to. In contrast, our incumbent Caribbean and Panamanian B2B operations have faced challenges related to reduced tourism and the associated impact on local economies where we operate. As a result, performance has steadily improved since the trough last year. However, we are yet to return to pre-COVID levels. On the right of the slide, we wanted to highlight some of the key attributes of our subsea business. Firstly, at over 50,000 kilometers of cable, our network is the most extensive in the region. We've also included a map here to depict our routes, including terrestrial fiber in Colombia and part of Central America. Secondly, we have a unique mesh network with four-trunk submarine cable systems. This extensive network differentiates our ability to provide more resilient solutions and improves our economics. Thirdly, we utilize approximately 10% of potential capacity across our network, so there is ample room to grow. And lastly, our cables provide an important route to the United States with over 90% of our traffic going from the Caribbean and Central America to the U.S. Demand for this connectivity is expected to continue. Finally, to slide nine, and an overview of what we've achieved since the pandemic began and why we remain optimistic about the future. Starting with last year, we were quick to assess the potential impacts on our business from COVID-19, and we took decisive action, primarily to reduce costs so that we could manage the business through a potentially prolonged period of financial headwinds. As a result of the actions we took, our operational flexibility and some better market conditions, we achieved improving operating and financial performance from Q2 2020, including generating positive free cash flow in 2020, a clear focus. We also closed the acquisition of AT&T's operations in Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands, and that business is performing ahead of our expectations. Chris will take you through the strong financial performance this operation is delivering. Moving to the center of the slide and where we are today. We created operating momentum in the first quarter and our focus on maintaining and building upon it. Related to this, we will continue to lean into our thesis bending our footprint, and launching new products. We focused on delighting our customers with zero-touch and frictionless experience. And as announced earlier this week, our CEO, Lorenzo, will join us as our Chief Customer Officer. But we are still cautious, noting that Chile and part of the Caribbean experience locked down in the first quarter. Finally, as we look further ahead, we are very optimistic. We expect vaccinations will aid in the global recovery and facilitate more tourism to our region, in turn improving the economic backdrop in many of our countries. We've adopted our ways of working, recognizing new normal created by COVID-19, and our workforce remains engaged and committed. We remain focused on product innovation and are rolling out our new products as we expand our networks. And inorganically, We have a tremendous conversion opportunity in Puerto Rico and are working hard to integrate the operations we acquired from AT&T quickly and effectively. And we are looking to close the acquisition of Telefonica's Costa Rica assets in the summer. With that, I'll pass you over to Chris Noyes, our Chief Financial Officer, who will talk you through our financial performance before we take your questions. Chris.