Liberty Latin America Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 23, 2024

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by.

Operator

Today's call is being recorded. I'll turn the call over to Eduardo Diaz Corona, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Liberty Puerto Rico.

Speaker 1

Good morning, and welcome to Liberty Latin America's Full Year 2023 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.

Speaker 1

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 ks 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 the presentation, which is accessible under the Investors section of our website.

Speaker 1

I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Balan Nair.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Eduardo, and welcome everyone to Liberty Latin America's 4th quarter results presentation. I'll begin with our group highlights and an overview of our operating results by reporting segment. Chris Noyes, 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 the region, and I will invite them to contribute as needed during the Q and A following our prepared remarks.

Speaker 2

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 4 and our highlights for the year. We consistently grew our high speed Internet and postpaid mobile basis through the year, adding 186,000 subscribers in total. This represents an overall increase of 5% in our base and is evidence of the volume growth potential in our region we have previously discussed. Broadband performance was particularly robust with growth across our reporting segments.

Speaker 2

We reported adjusted OIBDA of $1,700,000,000 in the year, representing a 6% year over year increase. This is our best rebased growth performance since 2019 and was driven by double digit growth in CNW Caribbean, Panama and Costa Rica. We grew despite the shortfall in Puerto Rico. We continue to also allocate capital for our buyback programs with $300,000,000 between stock and convertible purchases in the year. We anticipate that the convertible bond will represent the majority of our buyback this year with $220,000,000 currently outstanding and due in July.

Speaker 2

Finally, we are making progress with our key business integration activity in Puerto Rico, with over 80% of our customers now successfully moved to a new mobile core and IT platform. I'll provide more details later in the presentation, but the key message here is that we are on track with the timeline we communicated when we last updated the market in November. Turning to Slide 5. I'll begin our operating review with C&W Caribbean, where we saw good momentum throughout the year, consistently adding subscribers and positioning the business to continue its growth profile in 2024. Starting on the left of the slide with our subscriber additions.

Speaker 2

We delivered nearly 100,000 additional subscribers across Internet and mobile postpaid in the year. This represented a 9% uplift in ads year over year and was driven by growth of over 30% in Jamaica. Our FMC strategy continues to drive performance in these two product lines, growing volumes and improving our churn levels. We intend on taking price increases this year consistent with inflation. We will be tactical and thoughtful about it to optimize price increases versus churn and retention givebacks.

Speaker 2

Moving to the center of the slide and our revenue by product. The pie chart depicts the well diversified nature of CNW Caribbean's revenue, with B2B and consumer fixed the largest elements followed by consumer mobile. Revenue was flat year over year as underlying growth was offset by discontinuation of transit business, which we have mentioned throughout the year. Adjusting for this, our rebased growth rate for the year would have been nearly 300 basis points higher. Overall, 2023 was a good operational year for CNW Caribbean.

Speaker 2

And as Chris will come on to, this helped drive strong double digit adjusted OIBDA growth. Moving to Slide 6 and our C&W Panama segment. Starting on the left of the slide, we continued our broadband momentum in 2023, adding 29,000 subscribers, which was 12% higher year over year. We are continuing to invest in our network, expanding and upgrading with FTTH home passings, and I'm pleased to say that only 6% of our footprint is now covered by copper. Our focus is to remove this substantially by the end of 2024.

Speaker 2

In mobile, we reported modest postpaid losses driven by retail disruption during some protests in the quarter. Looking ahead, we are focused on prepaid to postpaid migration, increasing the use of our digital channels, improving the effectiveness of our campaigns and achieving better retention, similar strategy to the one which has brought us success in neighboring Costa Rica. Moving to the center of the slide and our revenue streams, which in aggregate drove our top line 5% higher in the year. Growth was driven by B2B and fixed products, which were up by 12% and 7%, respectively. B2B had a strong year following a number of high profile contract wins and growth in underlying recurring revenue.

Speaker 2

Our fixed performance was supported by higher volume from our successful commercial strategy, including a focus on triple play plans, which now represents over half of our customer base. In mobile, revenue was broadly flat. And as mentioned, we are focusing on a strategy to drive growth in 2024. We plan on moving our prepaid pricing up through a thoughtful value ladder. This and adjustments to postpaid pricing is expected to drive mobile revenue growth this year.

Speaker 2

Finally, to our integration update in the lower right of the slide. We have made good progress with our plans and achieved $70,000,000 of total run rate synergies by the end of 2023, of which approximately $20,000,000 related to CapEx, providing a tailwind for the business into 2024. The main outstanding area is to complete the migration of acquired customers. To date, we have successfully brought across 100% of the prepaid base and we plan to have all customers across in the first half of the year. Note that this is not expected to be as challenging as in Puerto Rico, given our existing mobile platforms and capabilities in Panama.

Speaker 2

Next to Slide 7 and Liberty Puerto Rico. Starting on the left of the slide. We delivered a robust year of in net additions, growing our subscriber base by 4%. Our business has continued to invest in products and infrastructure with over 50,000 new fiber to the home passed or upgraded to fiber to the home in the year, an increase of over 20%. We now have 150,000 fiber to the home or 13% of our network with FTTH, while the majority of HFC is at DOCSIS 3.1.

Speaker 2

Turning to mobile. We've had a challenging year, particularly in the Q4 as we accelerated our migration efforts. I would highlight a couple of points here. Firstly, we have been impacted by the withdrawal of ECF funding for schools in Puerto Rico. This is a program funded by the Department of Education.

Speaker 2

This drove 15,000 subscriber losses in Q4 2023 and we anticipate a further 50,000 headwind in Q1 2024. Our proof for these customers is less than half our average across the base. Secondly, I mentioned our new prepaid office during the last call and these have started to show positive results. Overall, however, sales have been challenged as we have repurposed our in store customer facing colleagues to focus on migration activities. This will reverse once we are through the migration with our sales force primed to refactor towards driving volume growth.

Speaker 2

We also plan to bolster this unit with our proposed acquisition of Boost customers from DISH Networks later this year. These actions should help drive an anticipated inflection in the second half as I'll come on to. In the center of the slide, we showed the revenue mix in Puerto Rico and our overall 3% top line decline in the year. This was driven by growth in our fixed consumer and B2B operations being more than offset by mobile challenges. We plan to reverse the mobile trend in the second half of twenty twenty four when we are done with the migrations and our stores plus call center channels can get back to selling.

Speaker 2

Finally, to our integration update. We have made significant progress with migration activities since we last updated the market in November and have now moved over 800,000 customers to our network and billing platform. This represents nearly all of our prepaid base and over 90% of our postpaid and over 40% of our B2B customers. We have stopped selling new consumers on the AT and T IT stack and this is a major step in our integration. We continue to anticipate completing the project in April and ending the TSAs in June.

Speaker 2

This will drive volatility in the first half. However, we anticipate achieving monthly adjusted OIBDA above CAD45 1,000,000 at some point in the second half of the year. Clearly, Puerto Rico is a tale of 2 halves. We will get through the migration and exit the TSAs by the end of June. And then we will redirect our teams to self utilizing the flexibility of our new systems.

Speaker 2

Turning to Slide 8 and Liberty Costa Rica. Starting on the left of the slide. We saw a stable end to the year for our broadband subscriber base in what is our most competitive fixed market. We continue to expand our footprint, adding over 40,000 fiber to the home homes in the year, taking our total network to 750,000 homes passed. We now have 20% of our network on FTTH, and we expect that to be about 40% by the end of this year.

Speaker 2

In mobile, we grew net adds again, reporting our strongest quarter of the year in Q4 and taking the year's postpaid subscriber adds to 87,000. FMC continues to be a key commercial factor driving this growth. We have also launched our first 5 gs trials and are prepared to be at the forefront of this development when spectrum is allocated by the regulator. Moving to the center of the slide. Consumer mobile remains our largest product with close to 60% share of revenue.

Speaker 2

This is followed by a consumer fixed business representing just nearly 30% and then a small but fast growing B2B operations. Finally, our integration activities are now substantially complete with some smaller TSA supported activities anticipated to be migrated this year. Moving to Slide 9 and our Liberty Networks segment. This continues to be a great business for us with exceptional free cash flow generation, but there is some volatility from quarter to quarter driven by non recurring and often non cash factors. To provide some visibility of the underlying trends in the business, on the left side of the slide, we present the 3rd party monthly recurring revenue for December in each of the last 3 years.

Speaker 3

Here, you

Speaker 2

can see that the business grew at a healthy top line CAGR of 8% over the period. Enterprise has been the fastest grower, up 9% relative to 7% in wholesale, driven by increased volume market share as we drove sales of our value added services. Lastly, in December, we announced a collaboration with Gold Data to connect key data center location in Queretaro, Mexico with the U. S. This will open up a new subsea route from Veracruz in Mexico to Apalache Bay in the Florida Panhandle and from Cancun to North Miami.

Speaker 2

Liberty Networks will interconnect with the new system, providing an additional route for the increasing Colombia and Panama traffic and increasing capacity on an existing route CFX, which provides the lowest latency route to the U. S. Today. Finally, to Slide 10 and our strategic focus areas as we look to 2024 and longer term shareholder value creation. These priorities are split across 3 pillars and consistent with those we have previously identified.

Speaker 2

1st, networks and IT. We have progressed our strategy to create a giga ready network, adding or upgrading 350,000 homes in 2023. And in 2024, we plan to add another 350,000 to 400,000 homes. Over 80% of our network is now capable of receiving 1 gig speeds and we are targeting approximately 95% by the end of this year. As previously mentioned, the new mobile core in Puerto Rico is now fully operational.

Speaker 2

And we are strengthening our 5 gs position in Puerto Rico, specifically through the announced acquisition of Spectrum there, while preparing for 5 gs launches in other markets with trials. 2nd, our commercial approach. We continue to focus on reducing churn. This is a material value driver for us commercially and a KPI for our management team. Our push to drive FMC adoption is aligned with this and we continue to see good traction with our office.

Speaker 2

Delivering a strong digital platform is vital to meeting our customers where they want to interact with us, improving the customer journey and also an important area where we can drive cost efficiency. In 2023, we achieved 18% digital sales across the group and the target is to get into the low 20s in 2024. Product Development includes investment across our portfolio, but specifically in the high growth B2B segment and driving eSIM enablement. Lastly, in this area, customer care is always a key focus with QuickConnect for installation proving popular and our self care app adoption increasing. 3rd and finally, capital allocation.

Speaker 2

We completed the monetization of our tower assets in 5 or 6 markets with Bahamas to complete in the coming months. We also continue to work towards getting the required approvals for the DISH spectrum and mobile subscribers in Puerto Rico and USVI later this year. We continue to see a lot of value in our stock and have a buyback program in place. This year, our focus will be on redeeming residual $220,000,000 of outstanding convertible notes, but we will also look to continue repurchasing stock, but particularly at the current levels. Our balance sheet remains in great shape with a long dated maturity profile.

Speaker 2

And through adjusted OIBDA growth, we anticipate our leverage will naturally delever towards 3.5% in the coming years. Finally, as always, we will continue to consider inorganic opportunities, which can drive additional stakeholder value, including opportunities to combine and rationalize infrastructure assets. With that, I'll pass you over to Chris Noyes, our Chief Financial Officer, who will talk you through our financial performance before we take your questions. Chris?

Speaker 4

Thanks, Balan. On this slide, we highlight both our consolidated Q4 and full year 2023 results versus the prior year. Q4 is the Q1 where we didn't comp against VTR, which was deconsolidated at the start of Q4 2022. We reported revenue of $1,160,000,000 in Q4 $4,500,000,000 for 2023, reflecting a 1% rebase decline in Q4 and flat full year rebase growth. As a reminder, we discontinued a legacy non core B2B voice transit arrangement in C and W at the start of 2023, which depressed this year's quarterly revenue by $10,000,000 and full year revenue by $40,000,000 adversely impacting our rebased growth rates by about 1%.

Speaker 4

Our best rebased revenue growth performers on a full year basis were C and W Panama, Liberty Costa Rica and Liberty Networks. We delivered adjusted OIBDA of $432,000,000 in Q4 $1,700,000,000 for the full year. For both periods, rebased adjusted OIBDA growth was 6% year over year with double digit performances in Liberty Costa Rica, C&W Panama and C&W Caribbean. We achieved our 2023 adjusted OIBDA guidance and a 37.7% margin, which improved over 100 basis points as compared to 2022. For both reported revenue and adjusted OIBDA, our Q4 results showed sequential improvement to Q3 in absolute terms.

Speaker 4

Slide 13 recaps our segment results and I will focus on Q4 specifically. Starting with C&W Caribbean, we reported $366,000,000 of revenue in Q4, reflecting flat year over year rebased growth and adjusting for the aforementioned transit revenue, rebased growth would have expanded to 3%. Specifically, we achieved rebased residential mobile and fixed revenue growth of 5% and 3%, respectively, over the prior year quarter, helped in large part by 70,000 postpaid and 27,000 broadband additions since the beginning of 2023. Adjusted OIBDA expanded significantly in Q4 to $160,000,000 for 16% rebased growth. The primary driver of this growth was due to reductions in direct costs, especially with respect to handset and programming expenses and lower bad debt expense.

Speaker 4

As a result of our cost improvement, we drove our adjusted OIBDA margin to nearly 44% in Q4 42% for the full year. Next to Cable and Wireless Panama. The business continued its strong performance into Q4 delivering $260,000,000 of revenue $67,000,000 of adjusted on the back of new project wins and 6% increase in residential fixed as a result of a 10% expansion in the RGU base over the last year. Offsetting in part was a 5% decline in residential mobile, primarily due to a decrease in prepaid RGUs exasperated by countrywide protests during the quarter. As had been the case all year, our adjusted OIBDA performance was helped by value capture from the 2022 Claro acquisition, which should further act as a tailwind into 2024.

Speaker 4

Turning to Liberty Networks. We reported $114,000,000 in revenue $62,000,000 in adjusted OIBDA, reflecting rebased declines of 9% 22%, respectively. The comparison to Q4 20 22 was difficult as the prior year quarter benefited from higher revenue from a customer that is recognized on a cash basis, IRU accelerations and higher amounts of deferred revenue amortization. The combined quarter over quarter impact of these factors was approximately $16,000,000 With that being said, Liberty Networks revenue was broadly similar to Q3 and adjusted OIBDA was only lower by $3,000,000 Consequently, our adjusted OIBDA margin remained very high at 54%. 2nd from the right, Liberty Puerto Rico.

Speaker 4

Our revenue in Q4 was 3 $54,000,000 and adjusted OIBDA was $104,000,000 representing rebased declines of 5% 12%, respectively. As compared to Q4 last year, residential fixed revenues was up 5% driven by a combination of volume and pricing, which was more than offset by 11% decline in residential mobile revenue, primarily due to a decline in equipment sales and to a lesser extent a decline in mobile subscription revenue, mainly pertaining to prepaid subscribers. Our Q4 adjusted OIBDA of $104,000,000 compares to $118,000,000 in Q4 2020 22 $116,000,000 in Q3 2023. A key factor in our lower adjusted OIBDA as compared to both periods is a result of significantly higher operating costs attributable to our migration and integration activities. We incurred $7,000,000 of incremental integration OpEx in Q4 2023 as compared to the prior year quarter, driven by the ramp up in migration activities.

Speaker 4

In addition, we are experiencing higher expenses in general during this period where we are running parallel operations across our new platform and the AT and T platform. On a full year basis, we incurred roughly $45,000,000 of integration costs with $20,000,000 attributable to operating costs and $25,000,000 relating to CapEx. In addition, we incurred approximately $90,000,000 of cost to AT and T through the TSA arrangement. With respect to the upcoming quarters, our expectation is that Q1 will be the toughest quarter to date from a reporting perspective given elevated integration migration activities and the continued duplication of certain costs. We expect to build from Q1 as migration related and duplicative costs run off.

Speaker 4

We begin to execute on our revenue growth plan and we drive our cost takeout strategy. This should enable us to deliver what Balan had noted, which is reaching a monthly adjusted OIBDA of $45 plus 1,000,000 at a point during H2. As such, we expect the leverage to be high sided through Q1 and Q2 and begin the path to a more normal state in the second half of the year and furthermore into 20 20 Concluding with Costa Rica on the far right, we generated Q4 revenue of $149,000,000 $58,000,000 of adjusted OIBDA, reflecting strong rebased revenue growth of 10% and an LLA segment leading 36% rebased adjusted OIBDA growth. Year over year revenue performance was driven by B2B and residential mobile revenue helped in large part by over 85,000 postpaid additions during the year. Similar to previous quarters, adjusted OIBDA expanded significantly year over year, benefiting from the continued strengthening of the Costa Rican cologne to the U.

Speaker 4

S. Dollar as we have certain costs denominated in U. S. Dollars. As a result of the strong quarter, our adjusted OIBDA margin hit 39%, our best result in over 2 years.

Speaker 4

Turning to Slide 14, I will discuss 2023 P and E additions and adjusted FCF. First, we incurred $207,000,000 of P and E additions in Q4 $731,000,000 for the full year with the latter representing 16% of revenue in line with our 2023 guidance target. Of note, as Balan mentioned, we built or upgraded about 350,000 homes during the year. And second, we delivered adjusted free cash flow of $184,000,000 for Q4 $198,000,000 for 2023 after distributions to our partners of $34,000,000 for Q4 $75,000,000 for 2023. For the full year, we had targeted $300,000,000 of adjusted free cash flow before partner distributions and finished the year with $273,000,000 a good result year over year.

Speaker 4

However, the risks that we had identified at Q3 did come to fruition, including a shortfall in B2G collections in Panama. Moving to Slide 15. We finished 2023 with total debt of $8,200,000,000 cash of $1,000,000,000 and access to over $850,000,000 in revolving facilities. Our gross and net debt ratios to L2QA adjusted OIBDA were 4.8x and 4.2x respectively. And over 95% of our debt is due in 2027 and beyond.

Speaker 4

As a result of the Tower transaction at year end in which we completed 5 of the 6 countries with Bahamas to complete in the next few months, we recorded cash and debt of $244,000,000 The transaction is accounted for as a financing transaction. In terms of our equity and equity linked repurchase activity, we bought $300,000,000 in 2023, including $118,000,000 of our shares $182,000,000 of our convertible bonds. We finished 2023 with a fraction less than $140,000,000 of our equity authorization remaining through year end 2025. On the right hand part of the slide, we thought it would be helpful to provide a longer term set of financial targets that we are aiming to achieve. Over the next 3 years through 2026, we are targeting to grow adjusted OIBDA at a mid to high single digit rebased CAGR.

Speaker 4

Similarly, like in 2023, we are targeting 16% of revenue for P and E additions annually, which should be able to support our growth and maintenance requirements. Finally, we are targeting to deliver over $1,000,000,000 of aggregate adjusted free cash flow before distributions over the next 3 years. Important to note, as a result of the Tower transaction, we will incur among other items transaction related taxes and currently intend to apply a substantial amount of the Panamanian net proceeds to repay high cost vendor financing debt versus 4.25 percent term loans. These factors would reduce our expected reported free cash flow by over $100,000,000 in the year. In summary, we remain focused on our customers and have been investing across our operations to improve their journey from sale to install to experience.

Speaker 4

We are beginning to see the fruits from these investments as Balan touched upon earlier. Additionally, we remain focused on volume growth and improving our pricing effectiveness through utilization of AI tools and capabilities, which should underpin our top line expansion in 2024. Importantly, we are near the finish line in Puerto Rico and are looking forward to inflecting the business in H2 and driving improved financial performance on the back of cross sell activities, more compelling CVPs and cost rationalization, including the elimination of the AT and T TSA expenditures. As Balan said, Puerto Rico is a tale of 2 halves. Will get through the migration and the team is poised to launch strong commercial plans in the second half.

Speaker 4

Inorganically, we had 2 key announcements in 2023, our tower monetization, which unlocks capital and enhances flexibility across the group and the DISH transaction, which upon expected close in 2024 should further strengthen our Puerto Rico business and help us further accelerate our mobile growth. In terms of capital deployment, we continue to shrink our equity in 2023 and reduce the outstanding principal on our LLA convertible bond. We expect to see more of that in 2024, including the repayment of the remaining outstanding balance of the convertible bond this summer. Wrapping up, we delivered 2023 growth in terms of adjusted OIBDA and adjusted FCF before partner distributions, which is a solid result when viewed across the industry and the overall business climate across the region. Today, we have also shared our 3 year targets, which we are working hard to execute and which highlight the potential to create significant value over the coming years.

Speaker 4

With that, operator, happy to open the line to take questions.

Operator

The question and answer session will be conducted electronically. Our first question today is from the line of Sumit Datta of New Street Research. Sumit, your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Yes. Hi, guys. Thanks very much for taking the question. A couple from me. Just Chris, just going back to your presentation, there were a few numbers in there.

Speaker 5

I'm not sure if they were on the slide deck, particularly regarding Puerto Rico. Do you mind just again kind of maybe talking through the cadence for 2024, you mentioned Q1 is going to be the tougher quarter and then you come out of that. Maybe if you could just either just recap on some of those numbers or just again talk about some of the parameters around integration costs, EBITDA to the degree you can, maybe just walk through the year again in a bit more detail would be a great starting point, please.

Speaker 6

Sure, Sumit. Nice to hear from you. I think a couple of things to point out. With the migration, we're at the tail end, so there's a significant amount of sort of costs right at the end as we move customers on both B2C and B2B. So as we look at the quarter and compare back to Q4, you do have customers that have incompatible handsets and things like that.

Speaker 6

So we will incur additional COGS running through the numbers in the quarter as well as I would say a somewhat heavy set of integration costs, some of which you saw in Q4, but it will be pretty heavy as we go February, March, April and then start tailing off. So as I look at the OCF or the adjusted OIBDA number, and we look back over history, it should be the most compressed to date. And then as we start tailing out in Q2, the TSA will wind off. So it starts ratcheting down so that by the end of June, it will be off. The overall TSA expense last year in 2023 was $90,000,000 I would expect it's down 75% or so in 2024, which is all through to June.

Speaker 6

So that's when you start seeing the pickup as that bleeds off as you get into Q3, Q4.

Speaker 5

That's great. Thanks.

Speaker 7

Hopefully then.

Speaker 8

And then I'll

Speaker 6

give you some second question.

Speaker 3

Sorry. Yes, yes. No, super helpful. Thank you. Go ahead.

Speaker 3

Just maybe as a follow-up then,

Speaker 5

if you could maybe just, again, similar kind of question, maybe talk through the cadence of the free cash flow guide in any more detail you can. I guess, one can assume the free cash flow for 2024 will be the lower end and that will build. But are there any other kind of puts and takes we should be thinking about? And specifically also just on the refinancing, maybe you could just talk through that again. What are you assuming in terms of refinancing?

Speaker 5

When might that happen? How are you looking at the rates, etcetera, etcetera? That would be great. Thanks.

Speaker 6

Yes. A couple of things.

Speaker 4

I think we feel

Speaker 6

pre tower transaction, we feel really good about our free cash flow trajectory in 2024. The net impact which I did flag, we do have transaction related taxes that will run through the numbers circa $45,000,000 So that wasn't obviously in 2023. And as we look at the vendor financing and debt stack in our jointly owned business in Panama, we do receive about $90,000,000 of net proceeds in that business. And so we're thinking of repaying very high kind of vendor financing debt, which is 2x, our current long term debt in that business, which is at 4.25%. So economically, it would make sense to repay some of that, which is a negative on the reported free cash flow.

Speaker 6

So from a phasing perspective, 24 would be below versus 25, 26. We should build as the synergies and value capture in Puerto Rico as well as the other things we're doing across the group, delivering on the adjusted OIBDA growth. In terms of financing assumptions, we did factor in we have 27 to 29 maturities of debt. We did assume we would be refinancingterming out some of our debt during the 2025 call it 2024 to 26 time period. Obviously, rates are higher today than they were several years back.

Speaker 6

So we've factored in much higher cost. Hopefully, we're being conservative and we have some upside on that in terms of as we look at our numbers. We're pretty prudent as we think about sort of our cash flow trajectory. So I'm hopeful that we'll surprise over time.

Speaker 5

Sure. Okay. Thanks very much.

Operator

Our next question today is from the line of Vitor Tomita of Goldman Sachs. Vitor, your line is now open.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much for taking our questions. Good morning all. So the question from our side would be on Puerto Rico. Could you give me some more color on how the competitive situation is developing in Puerto Rico aside from the customer migration disruptions that affected Q4? Thank you.

Speaker 7

Thank you and good morning as well. Puerto Rico has been kind of an interesting market since early last year when our primary competitor on the mobile side, T Mobile, became extremely aggressive on subsidies and we've kind of zigged and zagged around matching them. And you'll see that as we got into the second half of last year, we started doing a lot more handset subsidies. And in that case, I think we started to see some positive traction back again on the growth head side. But as we get into this year, I think our biggest focus right now is in the migration.

Speaker 7

And during the migration, a lot of our stores, both our retail channel our stores and our call center channels as well, all of them, we've kind of like just refocused them on helping our customers with the migration. And so the plan is as we come out of the migration, which is we anticipate around towards the latter half of April and then starting in May, you're going to see us getting very aggressive back into the market on the gross adds side. And the one thing we have that Timo doesn't have, of course, I mean, it's a great company and all, is that on the island, it's real local and we have full FMC, which we didn't have by the way during the when we were relying on the AT and T systems. So once we migrate everything over, I think we'll have a pretty good product proposition.

Speaker 3

Very clear. Thank you very much.

Operator

And our next question today is from the line of Matthew Harrigan of Benchmark Company. Matthew, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 9

Thank you. Clearly, you have some dispersion in the economic performance across your markets. Cable and wireless, I have to believe the economies are pretty good given the level of tourism right now. I know people being turned even apart from the competitive issues in Puerto Rico on the long term macro outlook. But you talked about having broadband pricing increases at or in the vicinity of inflation.

Speaker 9

I mean, there were some markets. I know the U. K, all the entrants over there have had very material price increases. In some instances, you've had realized ARPU actually pulled down as people downgrade some of their tiers. Is there anything that gives you concern on pricing?

Speaker 9

Are you quite confident you can pull off those price increases? And is there anything you really cross your broad territory that makes you concerned about the enterprise business if you do get some economic softness? And again, thanks for letting me ask the question.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Matthew. And I think when it comes to price increases, we're going to be very opportunistic, yet also realistic. And there's a couple of 3 different factors that drive that. Of course, different markets, it's going to be a very different outcome. So you look at 1, the consumer's propensity to be able to absorb price increases.

Speaker 7

Secondly, you look at where your competitor is at and what the expected response or what did they do first. Certainly, you got to look at this on product line. We have prepaid, postpaid. We have fixed broadband, video. Clearly, some products you can take price increases on and some products you just it's just not that smart to do it.

Speaker 7

And then lastly, we also look at inflation in each one of these markets. And so you try to moderate yourself. As Chris alluded to in his comments earlier, we are looking at using a number of different tools to help us with this to not only maximize our price increase opportunities, but also to maximize it with minimal amount of churn and minimal amount of calls coming into our retention desk. And so we're going to be very, very situational on our price increases. But clearly, I think this industry, all of our everybody in the telecom space, I think, kind of like minded that for the longest time, we've held back on price increases.

Speaker 7

And it's time I think some of the cost that we've really absorbed in our businesses, I think our consumers also understand to some degree that some of that cost will come back as it comes back to them and other things, whether it's food, energy, etcetera. But telecoms have remained relatively flat. So I think you'll see some price increases across the board. And that's what I'm hearing also from some of the other folks whether it's in North America or in Europe or in Asia, everybody is looking at that that way.

Speaker 9

And there's nothing that concerns you right now in the enterprise business in terms of it in relation to the economies?

Speaker 7

On the enterprise, it's kind of interesting because we have it's enterprise to the large enterprises, that's to our government and clearly the SME, medium enterprise and so on. And each one of them will have different reaction to this. I can tell you for sure on the government side, all governments in our region are under a lot of pressure. I don't think you're going to see much price increases in that segment. In that segment, we are focused on more volume, we are focused on more new products, but we're not going back and taking a look at increasing their prices on the back book.

Speaker 7

On large enterprises, I think there's a couple of there's opportunity for us for sure, especially in some of the new services that we intend on coming out with. And so I see opportunities then certainly in the SOHO space, there's opportunities as well. And once again, it's situational and by country. So some countries, I think there's more opportunities than others.

Operator

Our next question today is from the line of Gabriel Vasdelima of Morgan Stanley. Gabriel, your line is now open.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much for taking my question. Just wanted to get your thoughts in terms of what are the trends you're seeing for Q1? Anything you can share with us will be super helpful.

Speaker 7

Okay. Hi, Gabriel. I've got to be careful how I say this because there's no further guidance beyond the guidance that we've provided. I can say that January sales are coming in well. But that's also we'd be cautiously we want to get through the migration of our customers in Puerto Rico and get that behind us.

Speaker 7

And then we'll look at the second half more clearly. But January, sales were coming in right around to slightly better than budget. That's January. 1 month does not make a trend.

Speaker 3

Got it. Crystal clear. Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question today is from the line of Michael Rollins of Citigroup. Michael, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Good morning. Two questions if I could. First, I was just curious if you can unpack a bit more of what's happening in Liberty Networks in terms of the financial performance in the Q4 and how that might progress on a go forward basis? And then secondly, and just taking a step back, where is Liberty Latin America on the journey of optimizing the assets that you hold and operate? And is there anything of significance that's kind of left to do or important to do that investors should be mindful of?

Speaker 8

Thanks.

Speaker 7

I'll ask Ray to jump in here as well. I think as Chris pointed out, the Liberty Networks revenue stream is kind of very interesting. We do have a number of non cash revenues that come in. That's kind of it's very lumpy. And so whether it's our IRU acceleration or one off IRU sales.

Speaker 7

And so when we came into December of last year Q4, there were a number of contracts that we were looking at it with some really some of the hyperscalers as an example that for one reason or another, it was phased out into the second quarter. There were not as much cash impacting, but it's certainly revenue that we would have booked in the Q4. So from a revenue in line perspective, you'll see some lumpiness in a lot of these one off, what we call NRR, non recurring revenue type opportunities. Now one of the things that Ray and I and a number of folks have been focused on this business is moving a lot more to the MRR type revenue streams. And you can see that in the bottom line as well.

Speaker 7

So that's therefore when you look at the year over year growth, it is somewhat impacted. But when you look at the cash flow growth, it's less impacted. And but you'll see in 2024, one of the things Ray is working on, 2 things I'm really excited about is 1, the way we're migrating a lot of our revenues into longer term and really cash generating revenues, which we have a ton of, but now we're going to focus double down even more on those. And secondly, you saw from my comments earlier today and press releases that we've put out last year on new routes that we're building. We really see a lot of opportunity in this segment where we're going to invest in more routes, demand for traffic is higher than ever.

Speaker 7

We're going to build new drops into locations where we think the hyperscalers are going to build even more data centers, going to bring a lot more traffic back to the U. S. I'm actually very bullish and excited about this business unit. Ray, maybe you want to add on to that?

Speaker 10

Yes. The only thing I would say,

Speaker 7

I think you hit it,

Speaker 10

Baum, but just the slide that you shared on the presentation where you see the 8% growth on the MRR, which taken together with our intercompany revenue makes up the majority of the overall revenue in the segment. So you're seeing underlying top line growth at 8%, but you do get volatility from quarter to quarter and year over year in terms of quarters. But in many cases, that is, as balance said, non cash impacting. So we're I concur that we're very bullish on the future growth of this business.

Speaker 6

And I would add just one thing on the sorry, I was just going to add one more point on the Networks revenue. We did have a very large cash collection in Q4 2022 and it's a customer that we recognize on revenue on a cash basis. And then in 2023, we collected throughout the year. So that's sort of the biggest delta on a year over year basis for the business. It was skewed from the Q4, 2022.

Speaker 7

Thanks for the clarification, Chris. Yes.

Speaker 3

Thanks.

Speaker 7

That's our large customer, yes, in Venezuela. Yes.

Speaker 6

And I think you had a second question, which was on the footprint. Is that correct?

Speaker 8

Yes, exactly. Where Liberty Latin America is in terms of optimizing the assets that you hold and operate? And if there's anything that you feel is left to do of significance that we all should be mindful of?

Speaker 7

I think we'd be actually quite opportunistic in this space. There's 2 really business segments in Liberty Networks. That's the wholesale business where we have subsea lending points in a number of countries. And I just alluded to the fact that we're building even more so coming out of Colombia, into Mexico and then back to Miami with drops in Panama, etcetera. So we'll get more lending sites for Subsea business and more a bigger mesh, I guess, you can say.

Speaker 7

But in addition to that, we also have another segment within this unit that is focused on enterprise B2B. And we are in Central America, we are in Colombia, we are in Dominican Republic. And I must tell you, I am actually quite excited about a number of these areas. And one of the things that Ray and Chris and I are going to be looking at is perhaps different ways on expanding our footprint in some of these markets. The returns are actually quite positive.

Speaker 7

The numbers are pretty small right now, but we're going to relook at a lot of our investments here. And I think there's a huge opportunity. I'm particularly excited about El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and these countries. I think that's something that there, but you'll see that play out in 2024.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Operator

That will conclude today's question and answer session. I'd now like to hand back to Balanar for any additional or closing remarks.

Speaker 7

Thank you, operator. And to everybody, you saw our guidance. We moved from a 1 year guidance to a 3 year guidance. And I think that gives you a little bit more visibility mid term to our business. And I want to emphasize one of the things that Chris said, especially in the free cash flow.

Speaker 7

I think you said greater than $1,000,000,000 I think we are quite optimistic about the future. And I do want to thank all of you for your support. Have a great day.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Latin America's full year 2023 investor call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations section of the Liberty Latin America's website at www.lla.com. You can also find a copy of today's presentation materials.

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Earnings Conference Call
Liberty Latin America Q4 2023
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