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5/8/2025
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 Sean Fitzgerald, VP of Tax of Liberty Latin America.
Good morning, and welcome to Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2025 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. Balin Nair.
Balin Nair Thank you, Sean, and welcome, everyone, to Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2025 results presentation. I'll begin with our group highlights and an overview of our operating results by credit silo. For this noise, 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 our operations. 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, in our highlights for the year. In the first quarter, we added 44,000 broadband and postpaid mobile subscribers in total. We saw notable progress of postpaid mobile in Costa Rica, as well as across our Caribbean operations. Our broadband and postpaid strategy remains underpinned by our fixed mobile convergence efforts across the group. In our most successful markets, FMC penetration is now over 30%. This is driving a lower churn and a more predictable revenue profile. We reported group-adjusted OEBIDA rebase growth of 8% year-over-year in Q1. This was driven by double-digit growth in CNW Caribbean and CNW Panama, contributing to a very strong performance for CNW silo. Our cost management efforts created a flywheel in driving margin expansion across the company. At the full year results, we discussed an outlook for lower capital intensity across the group in 25 and 26, and we are starting to see this coming true as well, with lower P&E additions in Q1 than prior year's period, driving growth of adjusted OEBIDA less P&E additions of 20% year over year. Turning to slide six, I'll begin our operating review with our cable and wireless credit silo, which had a very solid quarter. Our CNW credit silos composed of CNW Caribbean, CNW Panama, and our Liberty Networks segment. Looking first at CNW Caribbean, where we delivered good operating momentum and very strong financial execution. Starting on the left of the slide with our subscriber additions. Having been negatively impacted by Hurricane Beryl during the last two quarters of 24, primarily in Jamaica, in Q1, we saw a return to growth as we began to add back fixed broadband RGUs. In mobile, we continued to drive a positive post-pay performance in Q1, adding 15,000 subscribers. CNW Caribbean represents a proof point of the successful execution of our FMC strategy. with strong KPIs being delivered alongside a 4 percentage point increase in FMC penetration year-over-year to over 35%. We are also launching loyalty programs across the region with the goal of reducing churn by rewarding our long-term customers. Moving to the center of the slide and our revenue by product. pie chart depicts the well-diversified nature of CNW Caribbean's revenue, with consumer fixed and B2B the largest elements, followed by consumer mobile. Across CNW Caribbean, market structures are constructive as we primarily compete in duopolies where operators are rational and focused on their customers. Year-over-year rebates revenue growth was muted in the quarter, partly due to lower B2B project revenue, but we continue to steadily grow our aggregate broadband and mobile service revenue with 3% year-over-year rebates increase in Q1. A focus on productivity, network efficiencies, and cost of goods sold has increased operating leverage. Chris will cover the very strong cost management in the Caribbean, which led us to report a record-adjusted OEBDA quarter. Moving to slide seven in our CNW Panama segment. Starting on the left of the slide, we continue to see fixed growth in the first quarter, adding not just broadband additions, but also video and voice. This has been supported by recent efforts to expand and upgrade our network with FTTH, which now represents 65% of our home space. In mobile, we continue to grow our postpaid base as we drive prepaid to postpaid migration. Alongside Jamaica, Panama is another standout market for FMC where penetration has expanded by 4 percentage points year-over-year to over 30%. Moving to the center of the slide in our revenue streams, which in aggregate drove our top line 5% higher in the quarter on a rebase basis. CNW Panama was the fastest growing segment in our group this quarter in terms of revenue. Growth was driven by residential mobile, which is up 16%, while fixed grew by 3%, both on a rebase basis year over year. Mobile growth benefited from a larger subscriber base and pricing actions we took throughout 2024. Leveraging off the current market structure, we saw consolidation from four to two players in the past few years and subsequent market repair. Moving to slide eight, in the third CNW credit silo segment, Liberty Networks. This continues to be a great business for us with exceptional U.S. dollar free cash flow generation. To provide some visibility of the underlying trends in the business, on the left side of the slide we present revenue broken down by business lines. Wholesale had a very strong quarter with higher lease capacity and project revenue more than offsetting non-cash IRU declines. Adjusting for IRUs, rebate growth was 7% year-over-year, Enterprise continues to perform well, growing 4% year-over-year on a rebase basis, driven by growth in IT as a service and connectivity, especially in Colombia and the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile, we announced a contract with Subcom for the design, manufacture, and installation of the Manta subsea cable system. Its investments are within our CapEx envelope and provide opportunities for strong future revenue growth. Even with the P&E additions in the new fiber routes of Manta and Q1, our adjusted OE bidder less P&E margin is still at an exceptional 36%. Turning to slide 10 in our next credit silo, Liberty, Costa Rica. Starting on the left of the slide, we saw continued quarterly broadband additions in Q1 in what is our most competitive fixed market, which helped to partly offset ARPU pressures. We continue to future-proof our network, and with our recent investments, almost half of our network is now on FTTH. In mobile, we were again successful in growing our base, adding 30,000 post-paid subscribers in the quarter. This was our most successful segment for postpaid ads in Q1. And once again, it's reflective of our focus on FMC, which saw penetration grow six percentage points year over year to almost 35%. Moving to the center of the slide, consumer mobile remains our largest revenue category, representing over 60% share of our overall revenue in Costa Rica. This is followed by a consumer fixed business representing just under 30% and then a small but fast-growing B2B operation. Costa Rica is our most competitive fixed market with five nationwide players. While in mobile, we compete against two other operators. We are taking the first step in consolidating the fixed market through our announced JV with Tigo. We still expect this to be close in the second half of this year. Overall, I am very pleased with our performance and future prospects in Costa Rica and expect the integration with TECO to yield even more growth opportunities and rationalization of the market. Next, to slide 12 in our third credit silo, Liberty Puerto Rico. Starting on the left of the slide, In Q1, we lost 3,000 fixed broadband customers, though some impact was anticipated following our annual price increase for the fixed base. It's typical to see a small churn response to pricing moves. However, this is expected to underpin future revenue performance. Turning to mobile, on post-bate we continue to make progress in lowering churn. We have seen voluntary churn fall every month over the last six months to almost half the level it was in November. Gross ads, however, were touched lighter in Q1, sequentially. Overall, progress in returning the business to positive post-paid ads is slower than we would like, though we remain focused on improving the trends in coming months as we refresh our customer value proposition and provide differentiated offering to customers. Across the group, we are focused on leveraging our capabilities with FMC solutions for our customers. And this is equally a goal for us in Puerto Rico, where we have a strong starting point to our best-in-class fixed and mobile networks. We are currently focusing, amongst other things, on new distribution channels, including our digital platform as an alternative source of incremental gross ads to accelerate the growth of our FMC proposition loop. In the center of the slide, we show the revenue mix in Puerto Rico and our overall year-over-year top-line rebase decline, which at 11% continues to be a headwind for the overall group. To address the margin compression, we have begun a cost-cutting exercise to reflect the lower revenue of the segment. This focus is on headquarters staff and minimizing the impact of our frontline teams. We expect the second half of the year to reflect a lower cost structure and the beginning of positive growth in post-bay. We also expect to complete the boost migration in the second half. With that, I'll pass you over to Chris Noyes, a Chief Financial Officer, who will talk you through our financial performance before we take your questions. Chris?
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