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5/7/2026
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 Mauricio Romero, VP of AI and Analytics, Liberty Latin America.
Good morning and welcome to Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2026 investor call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investors Relations section of Liberty Latino 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 facts. 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 investor section of our website. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Balaner.
Thank you, Mauricio, and welcome everyone to Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2026 results presentation. I will be running through our group highlights and an overview of our operating results before Chris Noyes, our CFO, reviews the company's financial performance. We'll then get straight to your questions. As always, I'm joined by my executive team from across our operations, 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. Our business started 2026 with a very solid performance. We added 50,000 mobile postpaid subscribers with all segments across the group contributing. Growth continues to be supported by fixed mobile convergence efforts and continuing prepaid to postpaid migration. We reported $405 million of adjusted OEBIDA in Q1 2026. This result came in ahead of our own expectations, with Jamaica and Liberty Caribbean contributing significantly to this beat. While year over year momentum in adjusted or EBITDA doesn't appear as strong as prior quarters, this reflected the combination of one, a full quarter of impact from Hurricane Melissa, and two, phasing on B2B, including the timing of projects, revenues, and costs at Liberty Networks. We anticipate diminishing year over year headwinds and revenue growth throughout the remainder of the year. In addition, We reported Q1 adjusted free cash flow before distributions to non-controlling interests, which was approximately $40 million higher than Q1 last year. This was a great result given the hurricane impact. In Jamaica, our business is recovering more quickly than we had anticipated. The drivers include the speed of homes being reconnected to the residential fixed business, And ongoing strength in mobile, building from our performance through the hurricane where our direct-to-sell connectivity helped grow affinity with customers on the island. Turning to our capital structure, we have significant new developments to highlight. Today, we are announcing the intention to distribute $500 million notional amount of preferred equity in the form of a dividend, providing a rate of 9%. This will effectively divide our equity into an instrument with an attractive return and a more geared common equity. This move reflects our increasing confidence in LLA's future adjusted free cash flow profile, as well as our desire to return cash to shareholders. On that latter point, we have also been active in the market repurchasing shares this quarter for the first time since the first half of 2024. We will continue to be opportunistic with regards to future share repurchase, noting we have approximately $185 million of authorization remaining on our buyback program. Finally, I'd like to mention the joint press release published yesterday by GCI Liberty and ourselves. GCI has announced it has acquired Searchlight's approximate 6% stake in LLA at an April 1 closing market price of $8.63 per share. We would like to thank Eric Zinterhofer and his team for their support over the years and welcome GCI as shareholders. For those unfamiliar with GCI, this is the Alaskan communications business, formerly part of Liberty Broadband, which was spun up last year. Importantly, our director emeritus, Dr. John Malone has over 50% of the boarding shares of GCI and hard control. This means that alongside his 7% direct and indirect equity in LLA, GCI Liberty, which John controls, owns another 6% of our stock, representing significant support for our company. We appreciate John's increased commitment to LLA and look forward to continuing our relationship over the coming years. Turning now to our operations. On slide five, we review our Liberty Caribbean segment, which reflects this quarter of full impact of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica, which represented an underlying negative impact of $12 million at the revenue level in Q1. On the left of the slide, We show how, despite the hurricane, Liberty Caribbean's post-paid performance has continued unabated during this difficult period, adding another 15,000 post-paid subscribers, of which 11,000 were delivered in Jamaica in the first quarter, and with a healthy contribution from our smaller South Caribbean markets. Early in 2025, we stepped up the investments in our network in Jamaica, including bolstering our spectrum position. In addition, in the aftermath of the hurricane, we have reinforced customer trust, helped by our direct-to-sale support, and were ultimately recognized by OOPLA as the fastest mobile network on the island in the second half of 2025. We are pleased with this result and will continue to build on this platform through 2026. Mobile still remains a largely prepaid market in Jamaica, and as expected, we saw a seasonal drop in prepaid subs this quarter. versus a stronger Q4 period, but took an opportunity to increase price and registered strong prepaid revenue growth year over year. A fixed business, both residential and B2B, felt the brunt of the hurricane, but we are pleased to return to positive residential fixed broadband subscriber ads this quarter. Moving to the middle of the slide, at the top, we are showing Jamaica's revenue evolution over the last few quarters. Our mobile business performed well post-hurricane. On the other hand, while the restoration of the fixed network is taking some time, we see a quicker recovery than we had previously anticipated. At the bottom, we present the evolution of revenue-generating customers. Through Q4, driven by Hurricane Melissa, we've witnessed a drop in revenue-generating residential customers of over 110,000. or approximately one-third of the customer base. In the first quarter, we have added back 30,000 such customers. Looking forward, we are now more optimistic on the pace of further reconnections. At year end, we had taken out 60,000 customers and 133,000 home spares from our fixed count, suggesting at that time that reconnection of these customers was unlikely in the near term. As power has come back to the island and following our updated network mapping, we are now increasingly optimistic in being able to reconnect a healthy number of these customers in 2026. In terms of outlook for Jamaica, we suggested in our full year 2025 results an ambition to return to run rate Jamaican adjusted EBITDA by year end. And for a negative FCF impact in 2026, of up to $100 million. We are now increasingly confident that we will land on the right side of these aspirations, especially on free cash flow. On slide 6, we review cable and wireless Panama, where, after a strong performance in Q4, Q1 tends to be a seasonally quieted quarter for the B2B. This gives me an opportunity to talk about some of the great initiatives underway in the residential business. On mobile, we continue to see Postpaid as a strong driver, reporting 10% year-over-year subscriber growth. This performance is built on customer value management focus, using data analytics to drive upsell and cross-sell opportunities. FMC continues to steadily increase, now running at over 40%. Postpaid churn is running at historically low levels. On the prepaid side, our momentum is also good, although we felt the pinch in Q1 as the regulator pushed back on certain price increases. Notwithstanding this, we are seeing strong adoption of our loyalty program and solid growth in our value-added service offerings, including cash advances, trivia, and gaming. On the fixed side, We have continued to grow fixed broadband subscribers as well as total RGUs, which grew 7% year-over-year in Q1. We are aiming to keep the momentum rolling through 2026, looking to use the FIFA World Cup and the Panamanian National Team's qualification and presence as a catalyst. Early offers include campaigns with 65-inch Samsung TVs provided on a non-subsidized finance basis. Over the coming weeks and months, we have a number of other product launches in the hopper which will showcase the quality of our network. On B2B, we see a healthy pipeline and remind investors we tend to see revenues way towards the back end of the year. Turning to slide 7, Delivery Networks. As we show on the left, we see continued healthy underlying demand for subsidy capacity in our wholesale business. driving rebase revenue growth of 9% year-over-year in Q1, with demand from international and regional carriers, and hyperscalers expected to continue at a healthy cliff over the coming months and years. We are running two key projects today, Manta, which is in build phase through 2027, and where we see elevated CapEx and working capital through to go live from which time CapEx will drop to a very low run rate levels and will start to book revenue with high margins or EBITDA and free cash flow. El Salvador is our second significant project within this segment, where we are ticking off milestones which determine revenue and cost. Both of these items are lumpy, with revenue contributing positively in Q4 2025 while there was a significant cost allocation this quarter, which negatively impacted our Q1 reported year-over-year adjusted OEBDA performance. On an underlying basis, excluding El Salvador, we saw an improvement in year-over-year revenue and adjusted OEBDA momentum at Liberty Networks in Q1 versus Q4. Turning to slide 8 and Liberty Costa Rica. which operates in our most competitive fixed market, with five national players and additional regional players further compounding the pressure. In this context, we are pleased to be maintaining a broadly stable fixed residential subscriber base, though there is inevitable pressure on fixed ARPU given the downward pressures on front book pricing over the last 12 months. Notwithstanding this ARPU weakness, Total residential fixed revenue declines this quarter primarily reflected a lower share of CPE being sold under our buy-to-own model and instead being rented. We continue to generate solid volumes on post-fade, which helped drive 2% residential mobile revenue growth in Q1 year-over-year. We are, however, seeing signs of more elevated competition in the early stages of this year. In this climate, we need to continue to differentiate and innovate. On the former, we aim to focus ever more so on FMC given the majority of fixed providers we compete against can't provide such a service. On innovation, we are delighted to announce that Liberty Costa Rica and Starlink have signed an agreement to offer for the first time in Costa Rica a direct-to-sell service. This will be branded Liberty Starlink. and we are working on launching this in the second half of 2026. It will allow both consumers and corporate clients to connect to data that delivers voice, video, and messaging through apps, as well as text messaging from places where mobile coverage does not currently exist, such as rural, mountainous, or maritime areas, and even national parks. We aim to leverage this product to cement a strong position in the Costa Rican mobile market. Finally, we are highly focused on cost reduction initiatives in Costa Rica in 2026. Turning to Slide 9 and Liberty Puerto Rico. On the mobile side, we have made strong progress, registering positive post-date additions for the second consecutive quarter, supported by recent CBPs such as Liberty, Simple, a subsidy-free post-paid SIM offer. We would highlight that Q1 is traditionally a seasonally quiet quarter, and we talked the contribution which our post-paid days received in the commercially more active Q4 from the boost migration. In the center of the slide at the top, we show how our mobile NPS has improved since the migration and how it has been back into positive territory over the last 12 months. If NPS is a positive forward-looking indicator, the chart below shows how far we have already come. This shows the port-in-port-out ratio for post-paid mobile, with the latest data suggesting we have finally returned to greater than one in April. This means we are currently growing post-paid multi-chair in Puerto Rico. While there remains a lot to focus on mobile, our attention is also pivoted to residential fixed where we are seeing a significant and positive shift in momentum in 2026. Towards the end of 2025, we really re-engaged on FIX, launching a number of initiatives which played on the network strength of Liberty Puerto Rico, which resonated well with our FIX customers. We also made significant improvements in channel productivity and in our door-to-door commercial activity. Since then, we have seen a significant improvement in our NPS scores on fixed, combined with a return to lower-chain, close to pre-mobile migration levels. Month over month, through year to date, 2026, we have been seeing net fixed broadband subscriber losses diminish, and in the last couple of weeks, have seen these net losses disappear almost entirely. we need to keep razor focus on our commercial offer and be mindful of competition in the market, but appear to be on a firmer footing here as we look out to the rest of 2026. Across Puerto Rico, while we are very pleased with the recent improvement in operational trends in the business, we continue to have liquidity requirements in the business. As we have made clear for some time, this liquidity needs will continue to be met by Liberty Puerto Rico through its assets. And 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?
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