7/14/2021

speaker
Faith
Conference Operator

Good morning. My name is Faith. I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the American Mobile Second Quarter 2021 conference call and broadcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw a question, press the pound key. Thank you. Now, I will turn it over to Ms. Daniela Guarna, the Head of Investor Relations.

speaker
Daniela Guarna
Head of Investor Relations

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We're here to discuss our second quarter financial and operating results. We have on the line Mr. Daniel Cash, CEO, Mr. Carlos Garcia Moreno, CFO, and Mr. Oscar Gronkowski, COO.

speaker
Carlos Garcia Moreno
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Daniela. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being in the call. Carlos is going to make a summary of the results. Thank you, Daniel. Good morning, everyone. Well, the U.S. economy recovered rapidly. Signs of high inflation towards the latter part of the second quarter created uncertainty and confusion and low price corrections in some segments of the financial markets. The yield on three-year pressure notes, for instance, Those 15 basis points, which was equivalent to a 50% increase in yields, as the market brought forward the expected path of increases in interest rates by the Fed. In several Latin American countries, inflation exceeded expectations and pushed some central banks, notably in Brazil and Mexico, to begin to hike interest rates. Foreign exchange volatility increased throughout Latin America. In this context, we added 4.2 million wireless subscribers in the second quarter compared to a loss of nearly 5 million in the second quarter of 2020. With 1 million subs, 1.1 million subs, Brasil accounted for half of the post-emerge of the quarter, followed by Austria with 289,000 and Peru with 234,000. Colombia was next with 159,000 subscribers. As for prepaid, NetApp totaled 2 million subscribers, with Argentina accounting for 737,000, followed by Mexico with 432,000 and Brazil with 328,000. On the FishLine platform, Louisiana covered 28,000 broadband accesses, with Argentina and Colombia each contributing over 60,000 clients. Year-on-year, mobile post-tax exceeded the fastest tax growth with 10.7%. Mobile trip followed suit with 5.6% with 6 more than coming in with a 3.5% annual pay. Both 6 more and pay-to-do returns slightly less than 6% year-on-year. Revenue total 253 billion pesos, slightly higher in nominal pesos than a year before. At constant exchange rates, service revenue increased 5.3% year-on-year, and importantly, it was up to 1.8% on a sequential basis. It is to be noted that the second quarter of 2020 was the one in which the effects of the pandemic, both in terms of commercial activity and revenue, were more deeply felt, so the annual comparison may be somewhat misleading. But the first quarter of 2020 was largely free of the effects of the pandemic and happened to be a good reference. In the first quarter of this year, service revenue had risen 1.2% from the prior year. So service revenues and mobile service revenues are both greater than pre-pandemic levels. Prepared and posted mobile service revenues are both at higher levels than they had prior to the pandemic, with prepared revenues surging on the strength of the economic expansion in Mexico, the U.S., Central America, Caribbean, and Eastern Europe. Prepaid revenues were up 9.5% and posted 4.4% year-to-year. As for the Fitchland platform, revenue of the different business lines has exceeded a smoother trend over the last several quarters, led by a Fitch program that has increased at levels of between 7 and 9%, and corporate networks that have recovered ground in the last two quarters. KPD and Y-Land boards are both showing improving trends. Second quarter EBITDA came in at 34.9 billion pesos, a 2.6% increase in nominal peso terms from the year-earlier quarter. At constant exchange rates, it increased 11.9%. However, adjusted to the carry discounts obtained by traction in the second quarter of last year, EBITDA had an even stronger performance increasing 14.6%. The EBITDA margin was at 3.6%, which was 0.8% more than a year before, in spite of the greater commercial activity. Our operating profit increased 9.3% to 44.7 billion pesos. Depreciation and amortization charges held steady at 19% for service revenues, resulting, given the increase in EBITDA, in an operating profit that was up 17.9% at constant exchange rates on a manual basis and 6.2% quarterly. Correcting for the tariff discounts referred to before, the annual increase in our operating profit would have been 23.7%. We registered a net comprehensive income in the amount of 17.2 billion pesos as foreign exchange gains 21.1 billion pesos 21.1 billion pesos and gains no financial expenses which were 4.4 billion pesos more than of set our net interest expense of 8.4 billion pesos our net profit totaled 42.8 billion pesos in the second quarter more than doubling that of the year earlier quarter on the back of strong digital growth and our net comprehensive financing income It was equivalent to $55 cents per share and $54 cents per ADR. In the six months to June, our operating cash flow allowed us to fund capital expenditures in the amount of $57.4 billion. We did net debt in the amount of $36.9 billion, which was quite substantial, certainly for the first half of the year. and buyback shares in the amount of 11 billion pesos, and also quite substantial. In addition, we reduced by 5.6 billion pesos our labor obligations. In fact, our share buybacks through June, which amounted to 765.1 million shares, topped those ones of each of the last six years, through the same period. Our free cash flow has exhibited a trend of strong growth, as you can see in the chart, for the last six years. It has been very steady, very consistent, increasing free cash flow year after year for the last six years, increasing over 80% in dollar terms in the period. And finally, I will note that we did a ratio crunch in this quarter, and it stayed at 1.64 times last month's EBITDA, down from 1.9 times a year before. So we have had the largest correction in the net debt to EBITDA ratio that we have seen in probably in as many as 10 years. So with that, I would like to open this for Q&A and pass the floor back to Emil Hasch. Thank you. Thank you, Carlos.

Disclaimer

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