Trilogy International Partners Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Trilogy International Partners Q1 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Anne Saxton. Ma'am, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Holly. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our conference call to discuss our first quarter 2021 results. This call is also being broadcast live over the web and can be accessed in the investor section of the Trilogy International Partners website. Joining me today are Trilogy's President and CEO, Brad Horowitz, and Trilogy's Senior Vice President and CFO, Eric Mickles. This call includes forward looking information from which our actual results may differ materially. For further information regarding the various factors, assumptions, and risks that could cause our actual results to differ, Please review the cautionary language in the About Forward Looking Information section of yesterday's press release, as well as the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements and the risk factors in our 2020 Annual Report on Form 20F, available on both CDAR and EDGAR. This forward-looking information represents our expectations as of today and, accordingly, is subject to change. We disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking information, except as required by law. Please also refer to yesterday's press release for definitions and reconciliations of any non-GAAP measures that we used during today's call. The press release is posted on our website at trilogy-international.com under the Investors tab. I will now turn the call over to Brad Horwitz, President and CEO of Trilogy International Partners.

Thanks, Anne, and hello, everyone. Thanks for joining our call. Today, I'll provide you with an update on our businesses and their operating environments. And then Eric will take you through our first quarter performance and outlook. We're pleased with our results for the first quarter, particularly as our operating momentum in New Zealand drove year-over-year organic adjusted EBITDA growth at the consolidated trilogy level. This is particularly meaningful as a year ago our markets had yet to be impacted by COVID. We continue to execute on our long-term strategy to expand our postpaid customer base in New Zealand. Our sustained postpaid customer growth is complemented by solid gains in our B2B customer base. At the end of the first quarter, 35% of Two Degrees Mobile subscribers were on postpaid plans, up almost 300 basis points from a year ago. This is translated into solid financial performance. And in March, two degrees service revenues for the month reached 50 million New Zealand dollars for the first time. In Bolivia, there's been another wave of COVID cases with a spike in January and another rise in cases that started in April. Mobility restrictions have been applied by local governments in affected areas, which have impacted our results. Moving on to specifics by market, starting with New Zealand, retail foot traffic in New Zealand remains subdued at about 20-25% below pre-COVID levels due to a few lockdown-related closures during the first quarter, as well as continued consumer hesitance. While this has impacted consumer gross additions, our net activations have benefited from continued low churn as well as the solid momentum of our B2B business, which made up almost half of our postpaid net ads in the first quarter. Our B2B customer base has grown 20% in the last year, and corresponding service revenues are up 19% over the same period in local currency. Our Two Degrees B2B team has built a solid sales pipeline, and we remain very enthusiastic about our growth trajectory. In prepaid, our data monetization efforts continue to be positive with solid ARPU growth year over year and sequentially. This is driven by adjustments we made to prepaid pricing several quarters ago in tandem with increased LTE adoption and data usage. Our broadband base in New Zealand also continues to grow, though at a more modest pace when compared to last year. The local broadband market continues to be competitive with aggressive promotions and discounts offered by others. Our local team has done an excellent job in balancing customer growth with revenue and margin, as can be seen in our third consecutive quarter of increased ARPU. We soft-launched wireless broadband service through a few of our own distribution channels at the end of February and began promoting it more broadly in March. While still early days take up by new customers, as well as the migration of existing wireline customers, has significantly surpassed our expectations. In addition to enhancing our EBITDA as it scales up, as we do not have to pay access fees to a wireline provider, wireless broadband presents a significant 5G use case. On that note, After a rigorous process, Two Degrees recently announced that Ericsson will be our 5G network partner. In addition to providing world-class 5G technology, through working with Ericsson as we build out 5G, we will also double our 4G capacity. Our 5G build program is on track, the first sites being deployed in Auckland and Wellington, with our anticipated launch late this year. Much of our legacy Huawei core was actually approaching end of life, and we were in the process of swapping this out to a new Ericsson core. By combining Ericsson 5G, 4G, and 3G equipment, our network will be optimized for a seamless customer experience using entirely new infrastructure. A date has not been set yet for the 3.5 gig spectrum option, but we expect it will be in the first quarter of next year, with usage rights beginning in November of 2022. We anticipate securing limited-term spectrum next month to bridge our 5G launch until the long-term spectrum is available. As we've mentioned on previous calls, this is a very reasonably priced at $750,000 New Zealand dollars for 60 megs. With respect to the New Zealand operating environment, several COVID cases emerged in the country during the first quarter. The government effectively managed these with two short-term lockdowns, primarily in Auckland, and there have been no community cases since early March. The New Zealand government recently purchased enough vaccines for the entire population, with the rollout expected to be complete by the end of the year. In the meantime, the much anticipated quarantine-free travel bubble opened up with Australia on April 19th. While this has resulted in an increase in travel, it's far from pre-pandemic levels. As such, we do not anticipate a material impact to our financial results this year. Broader international travel to and from New Zealand is not expected until the second half of 2022. About six weeks ago, you'll recall that we announced that we were exploring a partial listing of 2 degrees. We have finished that exploration and can confirm that we are now preparing for an IPO on the New Zealand Stock Exchange and Australian Securities Exchange by the end of the year. Macro indicators remain very encouraging, and our operational momentum in New Zealand continues to be strong with an excellent growth trajectory. Our decision to ultimately list will, of course, depend on market conditions at that time. Turning now to Bolivia, the impacts of COVID, coupled with the competitive dynamics in the first quarter, have disrupted our recent positive mobile subscriber and service revenue trends. Promotional activity has increased in the first quarter for back to school in February, and in March as operators try to compensate for the impacts of COVID in 2020. We have continued to grow our fixed LTE business despite these challenges and have almost doubled the size of our customer base compared to a year ago. Our ARPU on this product has remained fairly stable, resulting in a 67% increase in corresponding service revenues in Q1 compared to the first quarter of 2020. We remain acutely focused on cash management, which, with the benefit of our workforce reorganization late last year, helped to more than double our adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter on a sequential basis. The resurgence in COVID cases in Bolivia has caused several cities to implement restrictions. In most cases, this is limited to social curfews in the evening and on weekends. Mobility in general has improved significantly from a year ago when strict lockdowns were in place, but remains about 20% below pre-COVID levels. The government has been distributing one-time grants of about $144 to unemployed citizens, as well as anyone who received a government grant last year. These are scheduled to continue through the end of May. On the vaccine front, the government has ordered supplies from a variety of manufacturers, adequate to cover about 50% of the population so far, but has yet to implement a distribution plan, however. In the last few months, we have seen increased political chaos and unrest in Bolivia, with the former president, Janine Añez, and a number of her administration being put in jail. We were somewhat hopeful that Arce, given his finance background, would be more moderate. However, it's clear that the more extreme part of the MAS party is causing disruption now that its official leader, Evo Morales, has returned to the country. This has a somewhat chilling impact on investment in the country. We continue to engage with a few parties that have expressed an interest, in acquiring our asset, but the current political climate could impact both timing as well as valuation. That being said, the business is self-funded, and our local team continues to optimize its operating structure to maintain profitability, albeit at significantly reduced levels compared to the pre-COVID period. With that, I'll now ask Eric to take you through the numbers. Eric?