Liberty Latin America Ltd.

Please stand by. Good day, everyone. You are holding for Liberty Latin America's third quarter 2024 Investor Call. We'll begin in roughly one minute's time to allow all participants to get connected. Thank you for your patience. 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 Bill Greeley, Head of Compliance and Ethics, Liberty Latin America.

Good morning, and welcome to Liberty Latin America's third quarter 2024 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. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in Liberty Latin America's most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q, 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. Thank you, Bill.

And welcome everybody to Liberty Latin America's third quarter 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'm joined by my executive team from across the region, and I'll 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 four and our highlights, we have added over 50,000 high-speed broadband and postpaid mobile subscribers year-to-date. This figure was a robust 225,000 ads, excluding Puerto Rico, where we have begun to recover following a complex migration project. I'll share further color on our progress later in the presentation. We also experienced some negative net ads in cable and wireless Caribbean during the quarter as a result of Hurricane Beryl. We reported adjusted EBITDA of $1.2 billion year to date. This includes rebase growth in CNW Caribbean, CNW Panama, and Liberty, Costa Rica. We expect adjusted OEBDA performance to accelerate in Q4, driven by B2B, and anticipated improved results in our Puerto Rican operations. We successfully refinanced $1 billion of our cable and wireless credit silo senior notes last month. The issuance was significantly oversubscribed, reflecting the silo's strength. Finally, we continue to explore inorganic ways to drive shareholder value and are excited to provide more details regarding an investment that we've been cultivating in Peru. This is a large and growing market where we have built significant fiber footprint and see potential to create value. We are also pleased to announce the addition of SPARQL to our new pan-regional subsea system. Turning to slide five, I'll begin our operating review with CNW Caribbean. On the left of the slide, we present our internet and mobile postpaid additions. Q3 broadband ads were negatively affected by Hurricane Beryl, which impacted our operations in Jamaica, Grenada, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines in early July. Adjusting for this event, we would have added 3,000 broadband RGUs in the quarter. We anticipate further impacts to net ads in Q4, but are working hard to minimize them. Postpaid mobile ads, although positive, were lower sequentially and year-over-year as barrel-impacted sales efforts. There was, however, an increase in prepaid ads as customers wanted to ensure access to mobile networks in the event of any outages, particularly in Jamaica. Moving to the center of the slide, we generated 2% rebase revenue growth year-to-date, driven by our continued consumer momentum, particularly in mobile. Finally, I want to recognize our colleagues in CNW for delivering adjusted OEBDA growth, both sequentially and year-over-year in Q3, despite the challenges they faced in the quarter. Moving to slide six in our CNW Panama segment. Starting on the left of the slide, we continued to drive penetration of a fixed footprint and delivered another solid quarter of internet subscriber ads and robust revenue growth. A fixed network provides high-speed connectivity across more than 95% of our homes passed, with the majority of those homes passed via FTTH infrastructure. In mobile, we continue to grow our post-paid base, however, we tend to a more normalized rate of ads, following an exceptional second quarter driven by Digicel's exit from the market. We mentioned our successful 5G trials during our last earnings presentation, and last month we became the first operator to launch 5G in Panama, highlighting our technology leadership in the market. Moving to the center of the slide, we have driven 3% top-line growth year-to-date, with positive contributions coming from all our product areas. Overall, we continue to build momentum in Panama and anticipate continued growth. Turning to slide seven and Liberty Costa Rica. Starting on the left of the slide, we delivered another quarter of solid broadband subscriber ads against a challenging competitive backdrop in Costa Rica. We continue to work towards completing our agreed combination with Millicom, which we anticipate will close by the end of 2025. In mobile, we reported another strong quarter. We moved above the milestone of 1 million subscribers with net postpaid ads, higher both year-over-year and sequentially. Over the last 12 months, we've now added over 125,000 postpaid subs in the market, representing an almost 15% growth in our base. Moving to the center of the slide, we reported healthy rebase revenue growth of 5% year-to-date, led by mobile. Next, to slide eight, and Liberty Networks. On the left of the slide, we present year-to-date revenue for the current and prior year periods. Enterprise continues to be our fastest area of growth in this segment and was 8% higher on a rebase basis. As in prior quarters, for Liberty Networks and the wholesale business specifically, we highlight the $17 million year-over-year impact of non-cash IRU declines. Despite this headwind from lower IRU non-cash revenues, our underlying wholesale business continued to demonstrate resilience, growing modestly. Overall, we are building a business with a strong foundation of recurring revenue, which underpins our future prospects. The metrics shown beneath the bars reflect the unique cash conversion characteristics in Liberty Networks. This is an infrastructure business with growing cash orbiter and over 40% OFCF conversion of revenue. Given these characteristics, Liberty Networks has a very attractive financial profile, and we have spoken previously about the opportunities to invest further in this segment. On the right side of the slide, we highlight an investment that will create a new pan-regional subsea cable system. We're excited to share that in addition to gold data, we will partner with SPARQL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Telecom Italia, on this project. This will enhance the system's value given SPARQL's extensive presence in the region. Other highlights of the new system will be its size, spanning over 5,500 kilometers, low latency with six new access points connecting major data hubs, New routes, the landing in Veracruz and Apalachee, creates vital routes between Mexico and the United States, integrating and enhancing our powerful mesh infrastructure and ensuring we are future-proof ready. We are building a system that will serve the incredible growth in demand from hyperscalers and the rise in traffic requirements related to the ongoing shift to the cloud and AI innovations from the USA to Latin America and the Caribbean. turning to slide nine and Liberty, Puerto Rico. Starting on the left of the slide, we reported a stable quarter of internet subscriber ads, adjusting for the impact of ACP-related share. As previously indicated, we managed to keep most AACP subscribers through targeted retention offers. However, there has been some impact with 6,000 subscribers lost in Q3, in adds to the 4,000 who left during the first half. Adjusting for this impact, we would have had net broadband subscriber ads in the quarter. We continue to invest in strengthening our leading fixed business in Puerto Rico and aim to have approximately 200,000 fiber-to-the-homes passed by the end of the year, representing over 15% of our total footprint. In mobile, our post-paid base was lower during the third quarter, partly driven by a migration adjustment of approximately 20,000 lines. We have begun to see some encouraging signs now that the migration is complete. I'll talk to these green shoots on the following slide, but of note, we've now launched our new converged commercial proposition called Loop. Owning leading fixed and mobile platforms is a core differentiating feature for Liberty Puerto Rico, and our strategy is centered on leveraging this as we have done successfully in other parts of LLA. In prepaid, We had more success with a second consecutive quarter of net ads in Q3. This momentum should be further bolstered by the addition of EchoStars Boost subscribers following the close of that transaction in early September. In the center of the slide, we show the revenue mix by product in Puerto Rico and the year-to-date decline of 12%. Chris will cover the financial performance in greater detail within his section. Moving to slide 10. We wanted to share some of the early indicators that we feel represent signs of our mobile operations turning around, starting with the left chart and our average sales per month. Here we can see the drop off in sales as we started to focus our efforts on migration in 2023 and into the first half of this year. This impact was the result of Salesforce needing to spend more time managing migration related queries, thereby having less time to sell while navigating some customer experience challenges. Encouragingly, Q3 2024 showed significant improvements across postpaid and prepaid, with prepaid now back above 2022 levels. In October, we saw postpaid sales eclipsing 2022 levels as well, which is very encouraging. In the center of the slide, we show our NPS progression, which is a leading performance indicator that we track closely. We are now above pre-migration levels and significantly better than the low points at the turn of the year for both postpaid and prepaid. Importantly, we have seen a significant increase in promoters with our postpaid promoter percentage in October three times above the December low. Lastly, on the right of the slide, the customer sentiment. This metric has more than doubled from pre-migration levels, reflecting the work we have been doing to improve customer experience. The complexity of this integration stems from the carve-out nature of this transaction with AT&T where we needed to build a whole new network and a whole new billing stack. This coupled with migrating from a legacy platform within a large corporation brought many unanticipated problems. However, as with our other acquisitions, we are now through the technical phase and positioned to improve our commercial execution. Having said that, The larger-than-expected churn has delayed our recovery to pre-migration EBITDA. To get there, we will cut costs as required, and with improving NPS and improved platforms, we will recapture market share. The commercial recovery will require investments in 2025, which we are planning for. Leveraging our FMC capabilities combined with achieving targeted cost savings sets us up for future adjusted OEBITDA expansions. we remain confident of our longer-term plans and the opportunity to grow in Puerto Rico. On slide 11, we highlight our track record of organic and inorganic growth across CNW Caribbean, CNW Panama, and Liberty Costa Rica segments. Firstly, taking CNW Caribbean on the left of the slide as an example of strong operational execution. In the period shown from full year 2020 to the last 12 months, we have achieved an adjusted OEBIT.K go over 30%. This has been driven by the effective creation and implementation of converged product offerings, which has resulted in over 350,000 broadband and post-paid mobile net ads. We have also focused on driving cost efficiencies, achieving an 8 percentage point improvement in OFCF margin over the period. Moving to CNW Panama in the center of the slide and the significant financial benefits of the acquisition in 2022 of Claro's mobile business. This is an example of a successful integration. By the middle of this year, we had migrated customers to a common platform and adjusted significant cost synergies. The business we acquired from Claro had minimal adjusted EBITDA when we closed the acquisition, and so the growth shown here reflects synergies we achieved through integration. OFCF is expected to improve further in Q4 and rise above 2020 levels as a percentage of revenue. We also see this as an exciting organic story for coming periods given the constructive market structure and our underway position in the fixed market. Finally, to Liberty Costa Rica on the right of the slide. We initially entered the Costa Rican market through our acquisition of a controlling stake in Cabletica in 2018. Through the acquisition of Telefonica's mobile operations in 2021, we created a leading converged operator. This is another example of a successful integration which we completed during 2023. At the time of acquisition, the Telefonica business was generating approximately 70 to 80 million of adjusted EBITDA a year. And so we've driven significant additional value through synergies. We've continued to grow the mobile operations at a tremendous pace, surpassing 1 million postpaid subscribers and launching 5G earlier this year to further cement our position as the forefront of the market. Our track record shows that we have successfully integrated and grown operations. The nature of our Puerto Rico acquisition is much more complex compared to the transactions noted on this slide. which is the primary reason why it has taken longer than we had anticipated to achieve our targets. However, our experience and track record gives us confidence that we will begin to see improved results in Puerto Rico as we have in other markets. Finally, to slide 12 and an exciting inorganic move we have made in Peru. We began investing in the greenfield fiber to the home business alongside a local partner in 2021. and through an aggressive bill now pass approximately 3 million homes in the market with fiber. Peru has significant growth potential, given its low internet penetration at around 40%, and it provides exposure to market much larger than those in our current footprint. WOW has been very successful driving penetration in its footprint, which is mostly outside Lima. In a short period, WOW achieved an approximate 15% broadband market share nationally and 25% in the provinces outside Lima. With 34 million people and 10 million homes in total, Peru presents a large market opportunity. It is more than six times the size of our largest consolidated market. In line with the region, also has a young demographic with a population median age of 34. Finally, we are creating a leading business and brand. This was exemplified as WOW was awarded LATAM Fiber Operator of the Year in the 2024 FiberConnect LATAM Awards. We are excited about this investment. With that, I'll pass you over to Chris Noyes, our Chief Financial Officer, who will take you through our financial performance before we move on to your questions. Chris?