Liberty Latin America Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 8, 2024

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,

Speaker 1

and thank you for standing by. Today's call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Daniel Neva, VP, Chief Commercial Officer of Liberty Networks.

Speaker 2

Good morning, and welcome to Liberty Latin America's Q1 2024 Investor Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investor Relations sessions of Libert 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 2

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 recent filed annual report on Form 10 ks and quarterly report on Form 10 Q along with associated press release. Liber Latin America disclaims any obligation to update any forward looking statements or information to reflect any change in its expectation or in the conditions on which such statements 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 Investors section of our website.

Speaker 2

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

Speaker 3

Thank you, Daniel, and welcome everyone to Liberty Latin America's Q1 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 3

As a point of housekeeping, we will both be working from slides, which you can find on our website at www.lla

Speaker 4

dotcom.

Speaker 3

Starting on Slide 4 and our highlights. We grew our high speed internet and postpaid mobile basis in the quarter, adding 45,000 subscribers in total. Once again, we added broadband subscribers across all our reporting segments with particularly strong performance in Jamaica and Panama. In mobile, there was some impact from migration and ECF subscriber losses in Puerto Rico, which I will cover later, but this was more than offset by growth in Costa Rica, where we recorded our best net adds for 2 years, as well as strong performances in Panama and Jamaica. We reported adjusted OIBDA of $374,000,000 in the quarter.

Speaker 3

This included double digit growth in Panama and Costa Rica and high single digit growth in Cable and Wireless Caribbean, positioning us well to drive improved group growth in the second half of the year. In addition, performance in Puerto Rico is poised to improve both sequentially and year over year in the second half as well. This reflects our comments of 2024 as a tale of 2 halves. We are seeing growth in nearly all our operations in the first half and in all operations in the second half. We continue to aggressively buy back our stock as we repurchases about 5% of our outstanding shares and a significant part of our outstanding 2024 convert.

Speaker 3

We intend to take advantage of any dislocation in trading levels in the future. To that end, our Board has authorized an additional $200,000,000 of capacity for our buyback to the end of 2026. Finally, we passed a major milestone in Puerto Rico in early April as we completed the migration of mobile customers to our new mobile core and IT platform, ahead of the timeline set out on our last earnings call. We are excited that we can now move forward with our plans to create a leading converged player in that market. We will cover the impacts of the migration activities on Q1 performance and the factors that we anticipate will now drive improved performance in more detail during today's presentation.

Speaker 3

Turning to Slide 5. I'll begin our operating review with Cable and Wireless Caribbean. On the left of the slide, we present our Internet and mobile postpaid additions. In the Q1, we delivered consistent performance across both product categories, led by Jamaica, which is our largest market in this segment. In addition to our FMC commercial strategy, which we have previously highlighted, we have also increased fixed pricing across the majority of our markets by an average of 3.5% so far this year.

Speaker 3

Moving to the center of the slide, this commercial momentum combined with a solid start to the year for B2B helped drive 3% rebased revenue growth for Cable and Wireless Caribbean in the quarter. Overall, we delivered a strong start to the year. Looking forward, we intend to take further price increases consistent with inflation and continue to see an opportunity to reduce our cost base through additional operating efficiencies related to, for example, the shutdown of our copper network, further vendor consolidation and digitalization of our business. Moving to Slide 6 and our C&W Panama segment. Starting on the left of the slide, we delivered a solid quarter of Internet subscriber additions, supporting healthy growth in our fixed product revenue.

Speaker 3

We continue to have an underweight market share position, but having a strong network with 95% of our footprint having high speed and predominantly FTTH, which should support further growth in coming quarters. In mobile, we reported a return to postpaid gains and subscriber momentum should be buoyed in Q2 with the addition of customers from Digicel whose concession ended on April 20. Moving to the center of the slide, we saw our top line increase by 2% in the quarter. Growth was driven by B2B and fixed products, which were up by 10% and 6%, respectively. In mobile, revenue declined by 5%, driven by prepaid subscriber losses over the past 12 months, partly offset by improved ARPU.

Speaker 3

We expect performance to improve through the year, driven by subscriber adds. We also anticipate price increases in both fixed and mobile, consistent with inflation and the value of our product offerings. The prepaid business here has one of the lowest ARPUs in the region and we expect to climb the value ladder in the 2nd part of this year. Finally, the integration of Claro's operations in Panama is now complete and we will see the year over year benefits continue to drive adjusted OIBDA growth through 2024. Turning to Slide 7 and Liberty Puerto Rico.

Speaker 3

Starting on the left of the slide, We delivered another quarter of Internet and total RGU additions driven by 2 Play and 3 Play digital offers. Our momentum in fixed remains robust. In mobile, our subscriber performance was impacted by the final stages of migration and withdrawal of ECF funding for schools in Puerto Rico. We saw lower gross adds as our sales force focus on migration activities rather than new sales. This is now turning and we are starting to see some commercial green shoots with improved additions sequentially through March April.

Speaker 3

As we flagged in our previous earnings announcement, we were also impacted by the withdrawal of ECF funding for schools in Puerto Rico. This drove 22,000 subscriber losses in Q1 and we anticipate a further headwind of approximately 40,000 subscribers in Q2. Our proof for these customers is less than half our average across the base. In the center of the slide, we show the revenue mix by product in Puerto Rico. We reported a 10% decline year over year, driven primarily by lower mobile equipment sales due to the impact of migration activities on gross adds.

Speaker 3

We plan to drive equipment sales in the second half. Chris will cover the financial puts and takes in greater detail within his section. In Puerto Rico, while we are incurring increased costs related to the final stages of customer migration and transitioning to new IT systems and a wireless core network, we believe we have the right strategic assets and team to be successful. We expect adjusted OIBDA expansion in the second quarter, but the full effect of synergies and cost savings should show up in the 3rd Q4 this year. We expect that synergies, operating cost improvements and top line sequential growth with FMC will drive adjusted OIBDA to more than $45,000,000 per month at some point in the second half and sets us up for significant expansion in adjusted OIBDA for 2025.

Speaker 3

Turning to Slide 8 and Liberty Costa Rica. Starting on the left of the slide, we delivered a robust fixed subscriber performance in the quarter against what continues to be a challenging competitive backdrop in Costa Rica. In mobile, we reported our strongest quarter in 2 years with more than doubled the prior year's quarter postpaid additions and showing continued momentum in postpaid. As previously mentioned, we have conducted 5 gs trials and are prepared to be at the forefront of this development. Moving to the center of the slide, we reported 8% rebased revenue growth in the quarter, led by growth in mobile.

Speaker 3

We continue to grow our B2B operations from a small base in the market. On a reported basis, revenue was 18% high in the quarter. Adjusted OIBDA grew by double digits as we are improving cost efficiencies and taking price increases, while still remaining one of the lowest cost providers in the country. Finally, to Slide 9 and our Liberty Networks segment. This is a great business with exceptional cash flow generation.

Speaker 3

However, there's some volatility from quarter to quarter driven by non recurring and often non cash factors. On the left side of the slide, we present revenue for current and prior year quarters. We have shown the impact of IRU amortization to highlight that this non cash revenue is decreasing and our underlying business is growing. We expect the IRU aspect to continue falling over time and therefore create a headwind for near term reported revenue. Enterprise has been the faster area of growth, up 9% on a rebased basis, driven by increased volume market share as we drove sales of our value added services in cloud and cybersecurity solutions focused on mission critical operations for our customers.

Speaker 3

In other words, customers are trusting their most valuable operations to Liberty Networks. Wholesale revenue also grew steadily excluding the impact of additional non cash IRU amortization in the prior year period. We continue to build our network capabilities. And as highlighted in the lower right of the slide, we have expanded our presence in Central America with the opening of 2 new point of presence this year. These strategic locations mark another step forward in our company's growth strategy.

Speaker 3

This new point of presence will serve as vital hubs for our services, providing IP transit, connectivity and MPLS capabilities to our customers in the region, reinforcing our commitment to delivering high quality, reliable network services while extending our reach. Finally, in the center of the slide, we show our usual revenue graphic. However, we also wanted to highlight the strong financial performance of the business. Our Liberty Networks segment has an adjusted OIBDA margin above 50% and given its relatively low capital intensity, a mid-40s operating free cash flow drops. To summarize my presentation, With the completion of the Puerto Rico migration, we finally have our last major integration behind us.

Speaker 3

And our operations are headed in the right direction with improved commercial offerings and strong and secure networks. We are positioned for meaningful expansion in our financial results, which when combined with our share repurchases should deliver stakeholder value. 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 5

Thanks, Balan. I'll now take you through our financial performance in greater detail starting on Slide 11. Revenue was 1% lower on a rebased basis at $1,100,000,000 in the first quarter. We saw positive momentum in Costa Rica, C and W, Caribbean and Panama, which was more than offset by the aforementioned declines in Puerto Rico. Turning to adjusted OIBDA, we reported a rebased decline of 7% to $374,000,000 Our operating segments of C&W Panama and Liberty Costa Rica were our strongest performers with double digit rebased growth.

Speaker 5

C&W Caribbean also had a good quarter posting high single digit rebased growth. Similar to revenue, the positive performance of these segments was more than offset by declines in Liberty Puerto Rico where migration and other integration related costs heavily impacted Q1 numbers. In the 3rd section, our P and E additions were $135,000,000 in Q1 or 12% of revenue. About 65% of our quarterly spend was across CPE, capacity and new build upgrade activities. In fixed, we added or upgraded 73,000 homes in Q1.

Speaker 5

And in mobile, we continue to invest in capacity and have kicked off some 5 gs trials. In the last section, we posted negative $150,000,000 of adjusted FCF in the quarter, dollars 100,000,000 lower compared to the prior year quarter. This was driven by a combination of factors including higher interest and tax payments year over year, including $34,000,000 in onetime VAT and income tax impacts of the Tower transaction that was completed at the end of last year as highlighted in our Q4 materials and an adverse vendor financing impact, including incremental paydowns in Panama. Slide 12 recaps our segment results for Q1. Starting with C&W Caribbean, we reported $364,000,000 of revenue in Q1, reflecting 3% rebased growth.

Speaker 5

Specifically, we achieved growth in all three business categories, posting 2% in fixed, 5% in mobile and 2% in B2B on a rebased basis. The main drivers of higher residential revenue were year over year subscriber growth and increased ARPUs following price increases across a number of markets. We posted adjusted OIBDA of $151,000,000 representing 8% rebased growth, largely fueled by revenue growth along with reductions in direct costs, especially with respect to interconnect and programming Next, moving to Cable and Wireless Panama. CWP generated $169,000,000 of revenue $57,000,000 of adjusted OIBDA in Q1, reflecting 2% rebased revenue growth and 31% rebased adjusted OIBDA growth. Driven by 10% growth in B2B on the back of new project wins and a 6% increase in residential fixed as a result of RGU base expansion over the last year.

Speaker 5

Offsetting in part was a 5% decline in residential mobile, primarily due to the decrease in prepaid RGUs, partly offset by higher ARPU and postpaid additions driven by FMC. Our adjusted OIBDA performance year over year was helped by value capture from the 2020 2 Claro acquisition. This led to adjusted OIBDA margin expansion of over 7 percentage points to 34%. Turning to Liberty Networks. We generated $109,000,000 in revenue $59,000,000 in adjusted OIBDA, resulting in rebased declines of 3% and 8%, respectively.

Speaker 5

As Balan highlighted, wholesale revenue declined due to a roughly $7,000,000 decrease in noncash IRU amortization and accelerations year over year, which was partially offset by high single digit growth in enterprise driven by growth in connectivity and IT as a service, mostly in Colombia, Dominican Republic and Honduras. Our year over year decline in adjusted OIBDA was due in large part to the aforementioned lower IRU revenue. 2nd from the right, Liberty Puerto Rico. Q1 revenue was $327,000,000 reflecting a 10% rebased decline year over year. Residential fixed revenue was up 2% on the back of volume gains in the past 12 months.

Speaker 5

Mobile, however, declined by 20% on a rebased basis, driven by a $26,000,000 reduction in equipment sales due in part to migration impacting commercial activities, as Balan highlighted. Subscription revenue was also lower driven by a decrease in mobile subscribers. Adjusted OIBDA decreased substantially from Q4 as we reported $69,000,000,000 in Q1, which reflected a rebased decline of 46% as compared to Q1 2023. As anticipated, the negative performance was impacted by lower revenue and higher costs related to the migration and other integration activities. Concluding with Costa Rica on the far right, we delivered Q1 revenue of $152,000,000 and adjusted OIBDA of $58,000,000 reflecting 8% rebased revenue growth and rebased adjusted OIBDA growth of 18%.

Speaker 5

All three business lines contributed to the positive top line performance with the main driver of organic growth being mobile revenue, which was 10% higher year over year on a rebased basis. Supported in part by our revenue growth, adjusted OIBDA expanded significantly year over year. Rebased growth was also helped by certain costs being denominated in U. S. Dollars, and the U.

Speaker 5

S. Dollar has continued to weaken against the Costa Rican alone. Moving to Slide 13, I will present a detailed review of our financial performance in Puerto Rico. First on the prior slide, we went through our revenue of 327,000,000 dollars Importantly, our mobile subscriber base and revenue suffered during the course of the migration and this was amplified in Q1 when the bulk of the migration occurred. Sales were reduced as our frontline was focused on assisting our customers with the migration and churn was much higher as expected during this transition.

Speaker 5

With that being said, we now have the flexibility and customer level information to drive targeted offers and capitalize on our FMC cross sell advantage. Post migration, we have already begun to see MPS improve. We will be strategic on timing and expect key campaigns to launch in the near term, setting this up for expanded second half top line performance. Turning to costs in the quarter, we reported $258,000,000 in direct and operating costs. Of these costs, TSA integration specific costs and inventory related adjustments totaled roughly $40,000,000 We incurred $18,000,000 in TSA costs with AT and T in Q1.

Speaker 5

This is on track to fall by more than half in Q2 and then should be less than $1,000,000 in Q3 and then fairly insignificant thereafter. We reported $14,000,000 of integration related costs in Q1, reflecting our most intense quarter to date. Into Q2, these costs should decline substantially, although we do have residual customer support and systems improvements to make during the quarter. After Q2, our expectation is that these costs will continue to run down. In terms of the $9,000,000 in inventory related items, these were costs associated with replacing handsets for customers that had incompatible devices and specific inventory that we ultimately were not able to use on our network, along with other aged inventory write offs.

Speaker 5

These inventory costs were related primarily to the migration and we don't expect them to recur. Additionally, we recently announced a major labor restructuring in Puerto Rico, which should be completed during Q2 and thus realize the savings beginning in Q3. Together with other cost improvement initiatives that are in flight, our revamped commercial plans, we're well on our way to deliver our target adjusted OIBDA in H2. Turning to Slide 14. At the end of Q1, on a consolidated basis, we had $8,100,000,000 of total debt, $700,000,000 of cash and $900,000,000 of availability under our revolving credit lines.

Speaker 5

We had gross leverage of 5 times and net leverage of 4.6 times, which was up modestly from Q4. We expected the quarterly leverage ratio to increase for Q1 given Puerto Rico performance and lower cash on hand, which was impacted by our large stock repurchase activity. As adjusted OIBDA recovers and cash generation improves for the group, we are positioned to see leverage decrease in the second half. As mentioned earlier, we repurchased $81,000,000 of our convertible bond at a slight discount. This leaves just under $140,000,000 outstanding, which we intend to fully redeem this July.

Speaker 5

In terms of our stock repurchase program, we bought back $60,000,000 in Q1, our 2nd highest quarter in terms of activity. March also represented our highest ever monthly total. Since Q1, we have continued repurchasing equity and as seen yesterday in our earnings release, our Board approved an additional $200,000,000 repurchase authorization. To recap, we maintained solid broadband and postpaid subscriber volumes in Q1. We recorded broadband additions in all our segments and our postpaid base grew in all segments except for Puerto Rico.

Speaker 5

This is a testament to the attractiveness of our FMC bundles and enhanced customer value propositions as well as favorable market penetration opportunities. As highlighted on previous calls, the completion of the customer migration in Puerto Rico has been a primary focus for both our corporate and local operating teams, and we are excited to move on to the next phase of recovery and growth. There is still work for us to do in our customer experience, systems environment and back office stemming from migration, but the largest obstacle is now behind This milestone allows us to move off the AT and T systems, dramatically improving our operating flexibility. Our team is motivated to deliver its H2 adjusted OIBDA target and the plans are geared to methodically reach this goal. Finally, the capital allocation.

Speaker 5

We channeled $141,000,000 into our equity and convert buyback in Q1. As seen by our recent activity, it is safe to assume we'll be disciplined but opportunistic in our approach to deploying excess capital. With that operator, please open it up for

Speaker 1

If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. The first question comes from the line of Michael Rollins with Citigroup. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Thanks and good morning. I'm curious first, if you could break

Speaker 6

out maybe more, excuse me, the explicitly the restructuring and integration costs that you're dealing with, just to have a sense of how that affected the 1Q results? And then when you look at Puerto Rico specifically and the goal to get to $45,000,000 per month at some point in the second half, how do we put that into context? Is that a run rate? So at some point, it's $45,000,000 times $12,000,000 is kind of the annual run rate where OIBDA can get to? Or is there just some way to kind of frame the larger annual opportunity in Puerto Rico from where you are today and then what you have to do in the business from where you are today to get there?

Speaker 6

Thanks.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Michael. Good morning. So the way we've been working on this is that if you saw Chris' comments, the Q1 was unusually hit by a lot of one off costs. And some recurring costs that we were carrying for the longest time and that's the AT and T payments through the TSAs. And Chris quoted the number of about $18,000,000 there.

Speaker 4

And so if you take those numbers of TSA cost that would go to pretty much 0 after July, very minimal. So that's one that just drops to the EBITDA line. Then there's a lot of one off integration costs that we were paying up for additional labor because we were just bringing a lot of labor into our stores and our call centers and our Tier 2 and Tier 3 tech support to handle the migration. Those costs also starts winding down. As Chris indicated, in the second quarter, you'll see that wind down happening and it's quite aggressive, but it doesn't go to 0.

Speaker 4

Then in the 3rd Q4, it pretty much disappears. And that's where the EBITDA expansion happens. Now the $45,000,000 is a monthly EBITDA number that if you just take the Q1 and do it the monthly math that we're in the 20s right now. And so our plan is to expand it to $45,000,000 And it comes from both the savings and the TSA, the integration one off costs that drops, labor savings, Chris had indicated that as well, will be picking out about 300 employees of the payroll, and that number would probably stay around them. And I think we will be done with a lot of debt labor reduction exercise this quarter, which most of it happens in the second.

Speaker 4

And then the 3rd and 4th, we see the cost savings show up. The $45,000,000 on a monthly basis, I think what I've been saying is it's going to be greater than $45,000,000 and but $45,000,000 is our target on a monthly basis. So you take that month from, let's say, dollars 45,000,000 happens in the month of August. And then from August on, it's $45,000,000 and more. $45,000,000 is not the target, dollars 45,000,000 is where we would get to.

Speaker 4

And clearly, we plan on exceeding that by the end of the year.

Speaker 6

Very much.

Speaker 4

That makes sense, Michael. Great.

Speaker 6

Very helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Vitor Tomita with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Hello, good morning all and thanks for taking our questions. Two quick questions from our side. The first one is if you could confirm and reiterate if guidance for the next 3 years is maintained. And our second question would be on the prepaid dynamics for Panama. If you could give us a little more color on that and if the volumes that were lost amid some disruptions in Q4 are still a key issue.

Speaker 7

And if you could give us some more detail on how you expect that to improve in the second half of the year? Thank you very much.

Speaker 4

Sure. And I'll ask my colleague, Rossier, to jump in here in a second as well on the to give you a bit more color on Panama. I'll start with the guidance. We are reiterating our guidance. It's over 24,000,000 to 26,000,000 it's $1,000,000,000 of free cash flow cumulative, mid- to high single digit OIBDA, and we intend to keep our CapEx flat at 16%.

Speaker 4

We feel really comfortable with the numbers and certainly hope to exceed it as well. In Panama, I'll start with this. We've made a number of changes there in management and in our propositions as well. And you'll start to see probably a trajectory change there in Panama, specifically on mobile. And without giving too much color in the month of April, I can just tell you that given the Digicel shutdown, things have changed for the much better.

Speaker 4

And our teams on the ground have been extremely bright future there. The first quarter was a little bit noisy and I'll bright future there. The Q1 was a little bit noisy, and I'll ask Rocio to give a little bit more color on the prepaid numbers in the Q1. Rocio?

Operator

Thanks, Balan. Indeed, you have seen a little bit of loss in Q1. I think it was basically driven from the past trajectory. The underlying strategy was right, which is basically push customers to migrate from prepaid to postpaid. However, we're seeing some leakage or we were seeing some leakage coming in.

Operator

And I think the operational improvements we're making is going to allow us to continue to push for pre to post migration, which is, of course, fantastic in terms of predictability, in terms of ARPU increase. So I think strategic wise, it was the right strategy. Now we need to get it executed as we are in the right way. And of course, adding new customers from the digital side, I think, going to be much more clear in the numbers for Q2. So as Marilyn said, we're happy about how it is going.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Lucio.

Speaker 7

Very clear. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1

The next question comes from the line of Andres Coelho with Scotiabank. Your line is now open.

Speaker 8

Yes. Thank you for taking my question. I'm wondering about the potential impact of the shutdown of the Affordable Connectivity Program or ACP. We are noticing an impact on cable companies in the U. S.

Speaker 8

And I'm wondering if you are exposed to this program in Puerto Rico or perhaps this is the same thing as the school subsidies. I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing. So if you have any guidance on the ACP impact. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Andres. It's a good question. In Puerto Rico, our share of the ACP is actually quite low. It's about 600 some 1000 ACP subscribers, and our share is under 100,000, around there. And so the numbers are pretty small relative to the larger base in Puerto Rico.

Speaker 4

And in mobile, I think our numbers are like less than 5,000, I think, so pretty small. So the impact to us is not as significant. Of course, we are doing everything we can to retain those customers. And at this point, I think the number we have because they have to opt in going forward, we have like more than 90 some percent of our ACP customers have already decided to opt in and stay with us. So I think from that sense, it's good.

Speaker 4

It's slightly different than the other program that I described, which is ECF. ECF is strictly a mobile subsidy program. It doesn't impact the fixed business. So on the ACP, for us, it's mostly on the fixed side. On the ECF, this is a Department of Education subsidy that provided for students and schools to give out free modems to have data access.

Speaker 4

It was not used very much. It's a very low ARPU and the subsidy came to an end. But what we did was every modem that got disconnected to this plan would be a disconnect. So we show that it's a postpaid B2B disconnect on our mobile service. So that kind of like distorted the whole net add numbers in mobile for the Q1.

Speaker 4

And as we indicated, Andres, in the Q2, you'll see that distortion also happening again. It's about 40,000, I think, is how it distorts it in the 2nd quarter. But it is like a modem service. It doesn't have it's not a handset voice service. So that hopefully that helps.

Speaker 4

And maybe my colleague, Eduardo, in Puerto Rico. Eduardo, would you like to add any more color?

Speaker 9

Thank you, Balan. And thank you, Andres, for your question. I would just reiterate the fact that we have a low share of ACP customers, about less than 100,000 as Balan said, mostly fixed. Over 95% of those have already opted in to continue with our services, and we're working through actively the rest of the base to make sure that they continue with us. So I would say that we see that as a very low risk.

Speaker 9

Although it is important to mention that there is at least 2 or 3 different actions being taken in Congress to sustain and maintain an ACP in the future. And certainly, we're following those very closely. But right now, we're working under the assumption that the program ends at the end of May with a partial subsidy. And therefore, we believe that the customer base that we have will be will continue with us in the future. That was very clear.

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Eduardo.

Speaker 1

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Sumit Datta with New Street Research. Your line is now open.

Speaker 10

Yes. Hi, guys. A couple of questions for me, please. Can I just go back quickly to the Puerto Rico slide, looking to the $45,000,000 of monthly adjusted OIBDA, I think it's Slide 13? Just trying to get a sense, if we kind of add back those one off integration costs, we don't quite get to the $45,000,000 I think you mentioned there's a bit of headcount as well coming out.

Speaker 10

Just curious how much do you need to get revenues moving again to get towards the 45,000,000 dollars monthly OIBDA. And then again, if we thinking into 2025, presumably, you would view that as a base and would be looking to move beyond that given you would expect to continue to, I assume, improve revenue momentum in Puerto Rico. So is that the right way to be thinking about 2025 OIBDA kind of that as a base, but presumably building on some additional as well? Maybe I'll leave that there. That's the first question, please.

Speaker 10

Thanks.

Speaker 4

I think it's the right way. Thanks, Sumit. Clearly, when you do the math on this, we're already back into the 100. Just based on Chris' slide here, just on that, in the second quarter, we're already in the 100s, on EBITDA low 100s on that. So to get to 45,000,000, you're really in the 130s.

Speaker 4

It's kind of where the EBITDA should land for the quarter. And so 2 things need to happen in addition to this. One, and I'll tell you what they are. The first one is, it's we are planning a price increase as well. So that's going to drop directly to the EBITDA line.

Speaker 4

Secondly, of course, the business will need to recover. We'll need to start growing the top line and especially in our mobile. As you can see, our fixed business continues to grow. So the mobile business will grow and we already seen green shoots. I think Chris kind of alluded to that.

Speaker 4

I'll tell you our April number without giving our second quarter, our April numbers are looking much better. In prepaid, we are already doing, I think, one of our better quarters, better months since we acquired the business. So things are on the app. And the other thing that Chris mentioned that I don't know was picked up very well is that we actually kind of paused a lot of our sales in the Q1. All our team, everybody in the stores, call centers, we just focus on migrating customers.

Speaker 4

And this migration was a little complicated because we had to like migrate people, not just physically there to our network and our IT systems, but the handsets need to be upgraded to the latest versions of Android. We had a whole bunch of questions on billings. And when you move billing systems, errors do happen. And we incented all our sales teams to spend most, if not all their time, on assisting customers and not selling. As a matter of fact, as part of our one time cost in the Q1, we paid all of our sales team 100% commission even though they weren't selling, but just to help our customers in the migration.

Speaker 4

So when we get into the second half, Eduardo and his team have already put together some really good plans. And some of the plans that they've already implemented, certainly in prepay because that was the first migration that was completed, is yielding already. So it's a combination of cost takeout. It's a combination of integration being gone. It's a combination of TSA checks being stopped.

Speaker 4

Its price increases, its recovery in our mobile business, it's very clear to us on how we get there.

Speaker 10

Okay. That's very clear. Thank you, Balan. And then maybe a quick one for Chris, please, just on kind of refinancing. I guess, since you put out the midterm guide, there's been some kind of moves in yields, etcetera, in the market.

Speaker 10

Just curious, is anything I know the midterm guide is still in place. I just wondered has anything changed in terms of your perspectives on either timing or kind of financial implications of refinancing over the next couple of years? Thank you.

Speaker 6

No, thanks for the question. No, I mean, rates backed up a little bit over the last maybe 2 months, but it looks like they're recovering some no real change in terms of our, I'd call it, our assumptions over the forecast period. We're going to be opportunistic on refinancing the debt stack, which is 27 to 29. So we have still a number of years before we need to go into the market. I would think that at this point, as markets become more favorable and open, most likely we'll be out with the start in cable and wireless on that stack over the next, I'd call it 12 months.

Speaker 6

You'll see us at some point in the market, maybe several times. So we're just waiting for the right opportunity. We have great momentum in Cable and Wireless at this time. I think the credit is only going to get better as we go. Similarly, as we've mentioned on Puerto Rico, I think that will probably be later in the refinancing horizon for us, just given the recovery, and we'll wait to have the financial metrics in a better zone before we approach the

Speaker 4

market. Okay, great.

Speaker 1

Thank you. That will conclude today's question and answer session. I would like to hand back to Balan Nair for any additional or closing remarks.

Speaker 4

Thank you, operator. And maybe if I can summarize it in a few things. 1, we are really excited that we have done with the we are really excited with the completion of the migration in Puerto Rico, and it sets us up for a really good path. And if you look at all of our other operations, whether it's in Liberty Caribbean, it's in Panama and Costa Rica and even our Liberty Networks subsidiary, I tell you what, things are looking really good. And so we've got the whole operations moving.

Speaker 4

We fixed up Puerto Rico. The second half is going to be, I think, very positive. And then you'll see all pistons firing here. And when you look at the last quarter, clearly saw our aggressive stock buyback shows the confidence that Chris and I and my whole management team feel about the business. You saw some of the insider buying as well in the Q1.

Speaker 4

We think the future is really bright here. And certainly, not in the next 24, 36 months, but actually by the end of this year, you'll start seeing some really nice print from LLA. So thank you so much for all your support and have a great day.

Speaker 1

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Latin America's Q1 2024 Investor Call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations section of Liberty Latin America's website at www.lla.com. There you can also find a copy of today's presentation materials.

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Earnings Conference Call
Liberty Latin America Q1 2024
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