Trilogy International Partners Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Trilogy International Partners Q3 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode, and 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, Dustin Greer, Senior Director of FP&A and Business Insight at Trilogy. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Paul. Hello everyone and welcome to our conference call to discuss our results for the third quarter of 2021. 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 Horwitz and Trilogy's Senior Vice President and CFO Eric Nichols. 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 EGGR. 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-gap measure that we use during today's call the press release is posted on our website at trilogy-international.com under the investor tab lastly Management disclosed in its press release dated October 7 that Trilogy had entered into discussions with Macquarie Asset Management and Aware Super to assess whether a merger of Two Degrees Group Limited and Orcon Group Limited can be agreed on satisfactory terms. As discussions are ongoing, management is precluded from providing an update with respect to the potential merger of its New Zealand subsidiary. We look forward to providing an update when appropriate. I will now turn the call over to Brad Horwitz, President and CEO of Trilogy International Partners.

Thanks, Dustin, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our call. Today, I'll provide you with an update on our business and the operating environments, and then Eric will take you through our third quarter performance and outlook. We're very pleased with our performance in New Zealand, where our local team delivered another quarter of solid results. This was in spite of a COVID-19 lockdown for almost half of the third quarter due to an outbreak of the Delta variant. We have sustained post-paid subscriber growth due to our success in penetrating the B2B space, ending the quarter with 25% more business customers than a year ago. This increase more than compensated for the lower growth in our consumer business, largely due to retail store closures. We also grew our fixed broadband base more than we expected, ending the quarter with 13% more customers year over year. Though movement restrictions in the third quarter impacted our results, we have grown service revenue and segment-adjusted EBITDA in New Zealand since the pandemic began, proving the resilience of our business. In Bolivia, COVID continues to be a factor, and our business has experienced prolonged negative impacts. While subscriber mobility in the country has increased over the last few months, resulting in a modest sequential improvement in some of our operating metrics, we have not seen the rebound we were looking for as a result. As a result of that, we have determined that recording an impairment charge to our long-lived assets in Bolivia was appropriate at this time. Moving on to specifics by market, starting with New Zealand, in mid-August, The country moved to its most stringent lockdown, Level 4, for the first time since March of 2020. Retail stores, offices, and schools once again closed as folks self-isolated. With the exception of Auckland, restrictions began to ease in early September. Auckland is currently at Level 3, thus our retail locations and offices remain closed and staff are still working from home. To date, there have been more than 3,000 infections related to this outbreak, which makes up almost half of all the cases in New Zealand since the pandemic began. Given the challenges in containing this outbreak, the New Zealand government has adjusted its original elimination strategy, loosening some restrictions while also accelerating its vaccination program. It has made a lot of headway, and now approximately 90% of the eligible population has had their first COVID vaccine and about 75% have had two doses versus 17% in August. Despite the lockdown, our results in the third quarter were solid, largely driven by our continued strength and deal flow in the B2B space. Though our consumer growth additions were impacted by the retail closures during the quarter, Both our postpaid gross additions and net additions increased on a sequential basis, and our postpaid churn of 0.81% in the quarter was the lowest in our history. More than 37% of our mobile customer base is postpaid versus 34% a year ago, as we continue to make progress in our long-term strategy of shifting our customer base to postpaid. Our fixed broadband base also continues to grow steadily due in large part to our success in bundling with our mobile service. About half of our broadband activations have been bundles over the last several quarters. We are particularly pleased with our broadband growth in the third quarter as the lockdown prevented residential installations by the local fiber companies, meaning that all of our net additions during this period switched to us from other providers. The impacts of the lockdown in the third quarter are most visible on our prepaid business, with store closures affecting additions and behavior as isolating at home and thus offloading to Wi-Fi reduces the need to top up. Despite these muting factors, we maintained prepaid service revenues in ARPU year over year. Notwithstanding the disruptions related to COVID, Our third quarter financial results reflect the stability and resilience of our business. Our subscriber revenues increased compared to the same period last year, as well as last quarter. Our postpaid ARPU in the third quarter was at its highest in a year on a growing base. And our wireless DARPU of 18 and a half New Zealand dollars reached the highest level in our history. We continue to strengthen our market position in New Zealand. According to IDC's latest report, we were the only network operator to increase subscriber market share in the second quarter versus the prior year, and we did so across both mobile and fixed products. We also gained revenue share across all products, and we received a number of local awards during the quarter. These include being the top telco brand in Comar Brunton's corporate reputation top 20 list, and CanStar's Blue Winner for the Most Satisfied Small Business Telecom Customers Award for 2021, where we were recognized for our network performance, value for money, customer service, and overall satisfaction. In October, Ookla named Two Degrees 4G Network to be the most reliable, consistent, and best available in New Zealand for the second quarter. These awards reflect the terrific job that our local team has done in improving our network over the last few years, including along key transport routes in recent years. Nationally, 2 degrees 4G state highway coverage increased by 20% between the second quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2021, extending 4G coverage to more than 2,000 kilometers of state highway. The Level 4 lockdown in August has impacted our 5G build-out. With the movement to Level 3, construction and related industries are now allowed to operate again, so we have been able to resume deploying 5G, though we have adjusted our official launch of 5G into early next year. We believe, while not optimal, the resulting impact of this will be limited only to the delayed acquisition of fixed wireless customers using the 5G spectrum. We still expect the allocation for long-term 3.5 gig rights to take place in the first half of next year, with usage to begin late in 2022. Turning now to Bolivia, vaccination rates have improved across the country. Within our local workforce, almost 100% have had their first dose and about 75% have received their second vaccine. COVID cases have declined significantly and mobility restrictions have largely been eased. Economic activity in the country continues to be muted, however, and we have seen an increase in protests, blockades, and general unrest in recent months. The increased mobility has driven a modest sequential improvement in some of our operating metrics, including increased subscriber activations across our portfolio of products as well as sequential growth in our prepaid and fixed broadband service revenues. Our yields on data are now flat after an extended period of decline, and data usage has also stabilized. While these trends are positive, they are not to the degree that we had envisioned, and our adjusted EBITDA has remained negative for the second quarter in a row. In light of these factors, we determined that recording an impairment charge to our long-lived assets in Bolivia was appropriate at this time. Our priorities remain unchanged with respect to Bolivia, and our focus is on cash management and extending our operating runway. Given the impact of our financial results, liquidity has become more of a challenge, and management is working with partners and our local suppliers to facilitate a transition of the business. We continue to be actively engaged with several parties, both local as well as international. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Eric for the numbers.