Liberty Latin America - Q1 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Today's call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Johanna Escobar, General Manager and Chief Executive Officer of Liberty Costa Rica.

Johanna Escobar (General Manager and CEO)

Good morning, and welcome to Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2023 investor call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Today's formal presentations materials can be found under the Investors section on Liberty Latin America's website at www.lla.com. Following today's formal presentations, instructions will be given for a question and answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and will be available under the Investors section of our website. Today's remarks may include forward-looking statements, including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook and future prospects and other informations and statements that are not historical facts. 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-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q, most recently filed with the SEC, along with the associated press release. Liberty Latin America disclaims any obligations 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 measure, which can be found in the appendix to this presentation, which is accessible on the Investors section of our website. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Balan Nair.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Thank you, Johanna, welcome everybody to Liberty Latin America's first 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&A following our prepared remarks. 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 four, and I'll highlight for the quarter. We continued to drive organic volume growth in Q1, adding 65,000 subscribers across high-speed fixed internet and mobile postpaid. Internet additions were particularly strong in the quarter, led by improved performance in C&W Caribbean.

The results reflect net additions in all of our reporting segments, providing a solid operational start to the year. The group reported Adjusted OIBDA of $407 million in the quarter. This represented a rebased growth rate of 4%, which was in line with our expectations and keeps us on track to achieve our financial goals for the year. Moving to our integration activities in Puerto Rico, Panama, and Costa Rica. 2023 is a key year which will set us up to deliver significant value for stakeholders. Of note in the quarter, we began to migrate prepaid customers to our newly built mobile platform in Puerto Rico. We are also moving quickly to consolidate our operations in Panama following the lifting of certain restrictions earlier this year.

Finally, I'm pleased to announce that in line with our previously stated capital allocation strategy, the company has authorized an additional up to $200 million for share buybacks. We continue to hold the view that the most compelling capital returns are in our own company. Turning to slide five. I'll begin our operating review with C&W Caribbean. I'm pleased to say that economies in the regions are continuing to recover from the impacts of COVID-19, and this is reflected in our strong performance. On the left of the slide, we present our internet and mobile postpaid additions. Internet additions continued to build in the first quarter as we added 11,000 RGUs, representing a significantly improved performance compared to the prior year period. Jamaica drove this improvement following the successful launch of our Yard and Road promotions and FMC propositions.

Investments in our networks have also driven increased market penetration. More than 80% of homes passed at C&W Caribbean are now Giga-Ready, meaning that they are capable of delivering broadband speeds of 1 gigabit per second or more. In mobile, we delivered another solid performance with 20,000 postpaid subscriber additions, 33% higher than in the prior year quarter. We continue to drive penetrations of our FMC products and have exciting plans through 2023. In connection with our enhanced services and offers, we have implemented nominal fixed service and prepaid mobile price increases in select markets to reflect the added value being delivered to our customers. In most cases, these rate adjustments follow several years without any increase. Moving to the center of the slide and our revenue by product.

The pie chart here depicts the well-diversified nature of C&W Caribbean's revenue, with B2B and consumer fix the largest elements, followed by consumer mobile. We saw strong growth in mobile revenue during the quarter, driven by subscriber additions over the past 12 months. However, this was more than offset by a decline in B2B revenue due to a strategic change that Chris will cover in his remarks. Without this, revenue would have grown by 2% in the quarter on a rebased basis. Moving to slide six in our C&W Panama segment. Starting on the left of the slide, internet RGU additions in Panama showed healthy growth sequentially and consistent performance year-over-year. We launched DOCSIS 3.1 and combined with our extensive fiber to the home network, we offer speeds of 1 Gbps to more than 85% of homes passed.

We expect that these significant investments will underpin continued growth. In mobile, we remain focused on postpaid and maintain a stable subscriber base in the quarter. In prepaid, we are targeting improved ARPUs through the mix of packages we offer and a focus on higher value customers. We think ARPU increases in prepaid is long overdue in our markets. Moving to the center of the slide and our revenue by product. In Panama, our largest products by revenue are mobile and B2B. Fixed is the smallest product area, but one of the fastest-growing. In Q1, all our products in Panama showed growth, with fixed and B2B performing particularly strong as they grew 6% and 7% respectively. B2B typically starts the year slowly after the seasonal peak in Q4. However, growth in mobile services and customer contract wins in the period drove a positive year-over-year result.

Despite a decline in prepaid customers, mobile revenue was also higher year-over-year. Finally, to our integration update outlined in the lower right of the slide. We remain focused on integrating the Claro Panamá operations. Following the lifting of restrictions in January, we have made good initial progress as we work to combine customer-facing aspects of the business such as stores, brands, and propositions. We are advancing the integration of our back-office functions, and we are consolidating infrastructure and benefiting from associated savings, expanded coverage, and capacity. Next to slide seven, and Liberty Puerto Rico, our largest single market. Starting on the left of the slide, our internet net additions were in line with the prior year period. We continue to invest in the expansion and upgrade of our networks in Puerto Rico and anticipate that this, together with our converged propositions, will drive sustained growth.

We implemented price increases earlier this year and seen de minimis impact on churn levels as our network quality and propositions continue to resonate with customers. Turning to mobile, we held our postpaid base steady in the quarter, continuing to record low churn levels at around 1% a month. In prepaid, we lost subscribers, which was impacted by constraints we have until the integration is complete. Heavy subsidies, both to attract new customers and to retain existing customers, have led to lower ARPUs in the market, and we may look to introduce price increases to help offset this impact. Moving to the center of the slide, consumer mobile is our largest product in Puerto Rico, with just under 50% of our revenue. This is followed by a fixed business representing a third of the total and B2B at 15%. Fixed revenue grew in the quarter.

Mobile was lower as postpaid subscriber growth was offset by ARPU and prepaid subscriber declines. B2B is a growth opportunity for us, given our relatively underweight market share position. To differentiate our propositions, we are introducing exciting new products leveraging our leading network capabilities. As an example, we recently launched our always on connectivity solution where a customer's network will run on fixed infrastructure by default. If that stops working due to, for example, a power outage, our modem will seamlessly switch to the mobile network to keep a customer connected. To our integration updates on the lower right of the slide. Integration is a significant focus for us in Puerto Rico, and we are now entering the latter stages of the process. Of note, our team is beginning to bring existing and new prepaid customers onto our networks and platform.

A key milestone will be when we start to migrate postpaid customers in the fall. Turning to slide eight and Liberty Costa Rica. Starting on the left of the slide, our internet subscriber base remained stable in the quarter, with additions in line sequentially. In mobile, our market-leading business continued to grow, adding 13,000 postpaid subscribers in the quarter. The launch of our Liberty Total FMC bundle in March is expected to drive adds and improve churn rates across internet and mobile. Moving to the center of the slide, consumer mobile is our largest product with close to 60% share of revenue. This is followed by our consumer fixed business representing just under 1/3, and then a small but fast-growing B2B operations. Mobile and B2B drove revenue growth in Costa Rica year-over-year.

We see potential for sustained growth in our B2B operations as we are currently underweight in this area and can leverage products, propositions, and capabilities from other parts of LLA to differentiate our offering in Costa Rica. We also plan to take price increases in fixed this quarter. We anticipate that the increased value of speed and better Wi-Fi will make the price increase go smoothly. To our integration update in the lower right of the slide. We anticipate 2023 will be the final year of integration activities related to Telefónica Costa Rica acquisition. We are on track to deliver synergies as anticipated with a full run rate level from the end of the year. To slide nine, in our C&W Networks and LatAm segment. Starting with wholesale on the left-hand side, where we grew revenue by 4% in the quarter. Running through the highlights.

Our 80% of revenue and cash flow is denominated in U.S. dollars, making the business very stable and predictable. We have a unique mesh network across the region with multiple points of redundancy, including the lowest latency connectivity from Colombia to the U.S., enabling us to provide comprehensive connectivity solutions. We continue to increase our capabilities, recently moving to 400-Gb wavelength technology for our U.S. terrestrial networks interconnecting Latin America with key U.S. data hubs. In the center of the slide, you can see that wholesale accounts for most of their revenue with an approximately 75% share. Although a smaller part of this reporting segment, our LatAm B2B business is one of the fastest-growing areas across our group, with revenue up 12% in Q1. On the right of the slide, we provide some more color on this area.

The chart here shows two different major pro-product groups within our LatAm B2B business. The largest element remains connectivity. However, the highest growth area is value-added and managed services, which include cloud-based data center solutions, disaster recovery as a service, and cybersecurity solutions, among others. We expect the value-added services area to continue a strong growth trajectory, representing a larger share of B2B revenue over time as customers look to increase the sophistication of their IT platforms and products. 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?

Chris Noyes (CFO)

Thanks, Balan. Before I begin, as a reminder, we deconsolidated our Chilean business at the start of Q4 2022, so our reported results in 2023 will not include the operating results of VTR. For Q1, we delivered consolidated revenue of $1.1 billion, reflecting a $59 million increase over Q1 2022. After excluding the $171 million of revenue generated by VTR in the prior year quarter. We produced modest rebased revenue growth of 1% in the quarter. Our operating segments of C&W Networks in LatAm, C&W Panama, and Liberty Costa Rica were our strongest performers, with mid-single-digit rebased revenue growth.

With that being said, C&W Caribbean also had a good quarter, but its re-reported revenue was impacted by a business decision to discontinue a legacy non-core B2B voice transit arrangement in Q1, which accounted for about $10 million of quarterly revenue. Although this will impact our revenue comparable all year, it will not adversely impact our Adjusted OIBDA or FCF, as this arrangement was currently anticipated to be slightly loss-making. Moving to Adjusted OIBDA. We posted $407 million in Q1, resulting in a $17 million reported increase over Q1 2022, excluding the $47 million generated by VTR in the prior year quarter. Our rebased growth of 4% was driven largely by Costa Rica, Panama, and C&W Caribbean, as we posted our best rebased growth result in six quarters.

For 2023, we are targeting mid to high single-digit rebased Adjusted OIBDA growth for LLA. We expect growth will be somewhat muted in Q2, due in part to our comparative in Puerto Rico, and we expect the lion's share of our Adjusted OIBDA growth to be significantly weighted to H2. Slide 12 highlights our key segment results. Beginning on the left with C&W Caribbean, we reported $354 million of revenue in Q1, reflecting a 1% rebased decline, and $140 million of Adjusted OIBDA, resulting in 8% rebased growth. The discontinuance of the aforementioned transit arrangement drove our rebased top-line decline, while the remainder of the business reported rebased revenue growth. On this basis, our primary driver of growth was through residential mobile, consisting of service revenue expansion led by our postpaid efforts and higher inbound roaming.

Our strong Adjusted OIBDA rebased growth was largely fueled by Jamaica and improved operating leverage across many of our islands. We finished the quarter with a margin of nearly 40%, up significantly as compared to the prior year quarter. Moving to Cable & Wireless Panamá, CWP contributed $165 million of revenue and $44 million of Adjusted OIBDA in Q1, reflecting 4% rebased revenue growth and 16% rebased Adjusted OIBDA growth. As an aside, our results moved lower in Q1 from Q4, due in large part to the seasonally strong Q4 we experienced in B2B, and which is typical for us.

Rebased top-line growth was delivered by all three business categories, residential fixed, residential mobile, and B2B, with our strongest year-over-year growth derived from B2B, which was driven by growth in mobile services and an increase in the volume of certain government-related projects, and residential fixed, which was helped by over 50,000 RGUs added over the last year. Adjusted OIBDA grew double digits in Q1, which was our best quarterly result since 2021. This year-over-year expansion has been helped by our value capture activities from the Claro Panamá integration. Turning to the middle column, C&W Networks in Latin America, we generated $109 million of revenue or 6% rebase growth, and $64 million in Adjusted OIBDA or 4% rebase growth. Rebase revenue growth within our subsea network was as a result of higher lease capacity.

LatAm B2B service revenue also expanded through higher connectivity and managed service revenues. We ended Q1 with an Adjusted OIBDA margin of 59% for the quarter. Second from the right, Liberty Puerto Rico. Q1 revenue was $366 million, reflecting flat year-over-year rebase growth and a decline of $8 million from Q4, which is due largely to higher equipment sales during the holiday period. Residential fixed garnered modest growth on the back of volume gains during 2022, and residential mobile decreased year-over-year as higher handset sales were not able to offset lower ARPU and a decline in prepaid and reseller mobile subscribers. Sequentially, our mobile service revenue and ARPU were stable. Adjusted OIBDA increased substantially from Q4 as we delivered $134 million in Q1, which reflected a rebase decline of 4% as compared to Q1 2022.

Several factors contributed to this year-over-year decline, including a lower net contribution from roaming and higher operating costs. These were partly offset by lower direct costs following credits received in Q1 2023 related to historical equipment purchases. Wrapping up with Costa Rica on the far right, we delivered Q1 revenue of $129 million and Adjusted OIBDA of $45 million, reflecting strong rebase revenue growth of 4% and rebase Adjusted OIBDA growth of 28%. Revenue growth was driven to a large extent by our mobile operations as we have added over 80,000 postpaid subscribers over the last 12 months.

Supported in part by our revenue growth, Adjusted OIBDA expanded significantly year-over-year and benefited from lower integration spend and the year-over-year strengthening of the Costa Rican colón to the U.S. dollar as we have certain costs in areas like programming that are denominated in U.S. dollars. Slide 13 highlights our results for P&E Additions and Adjusted FCF and reiterates our 2023 outlook on these metrics. For the first quarter, we incurred $145 billion of P&E Additions or 13% of revenue. We built and or upgraded 90,000 homes in the quarter, led by activity in the Caribbean and Panama. During the quarter, we incurred about $9 million of integration CapEx, largely in Puerto Rico, and expect integration CapEx to remain elevated throughout the year. Finally, we remain on track to deliver our 2023 target of 16% of revenue.

We will see ramping of our spend over the next three quarters. In terms of adjusted free cash flow, we posted negative $50 million in the quarter, similar to our reported level of negative $56 million of Adjusted FCF in Q1 2022. As a reminder, first quarter tends to have heavier trade working capital requirements, and our interest expense tends to be higher in Q1 and Q3 due to timing of payments. We expect our Adjusted FCF before partner distributions to be substantially weighted to H2, especially Q4, and we remain on track to deliver our $300 million target. In terms of partner distributions, we are expecting about $40 million to be paid out to our partners in Q2 in Panama and Bahamas, with a nearly similar amount upstream to us at LLA to then be redeployed. Turning to slide 14.

At the end of Q1, on a consolidated basis, we had $8 billion of total debt, $700 million of cash, and $1 billion of availability under our revolving credit lines. We had gross leverage of 4.9x and net leverage of 4.5x, which was slightly improved versus Q4 2022. Our weighted average life was five years, and our fully swap borrowing rate was just under 6%. During Q1, as we briefly highlighted on the Q4 call, we refinanced our Costa Rican 2024 term loans with $450 million of new debt maturing in 2031. This credit silo is currently levered at 2.5x.

This transaction, combined with a $25 million purchase of our convertible bonds due in 2024 that we made in the quarter, results in 95% of our debt due in 2027 or later. In terms of our stock repurchase activity, we bought $25 million in Q1, and at March 31st, we had $32 million remaining under our authorization. As a result of continued business performance tracking to expectations, in particular cash generation and the attractive level of our stock, our board just authorized an additional $200 million through December 31st, 2025. Moving to the final slide. To recap, we maintained solid broadband and postpaid subscriber volumes in Q1, as well as continued our positive B2B trajectory.

Our volume growth over the last year has enabled us to maintain top line performance, even in light of softer global macro trends and some ARPU compression. As we begin to selectively start using price increases more strategically, together with an increasing focus on FMC bundles and enhanced customer value propositions, these activities should help support our revenue ambitions. As highlighted on previous calls, integration execution is a primary focus for both our corporate and local operating teams. The next three quarters are critical for us as we seek to deliver our value capture goals and be less reliant on the sellers of our acquired businesses in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, and Panama.

Turning to capital allocation, we channeled $50 million into equity in Q1 through both our buyback activity and retirement of a portion of our convertible bond. We will remain disciplined in our repurchases, but given our operating goals and our low stock price, we believe this is a highly accretive window for us to be opportunistic, and our increased buyback authorization supports that activity. Finally, we remain confident in delivering on our Adjusted OIBDA, CapEx, and free cash flow targets for 2023. With that, operator, please open it up for questions.

Operator (participant)

The question and answer session will be conducted electronically. If you would like to ask a question regarding the company's operations, please do so by pressing the star or asterisk key, followed by the one on your touch tone telephone. In order to accommodate everyone, we request that you ask only one question with one follow-up, if needed. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. We'll pause for just a moment to give everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. Our first question today comes from Jeffrey Wlodarczak from Pivotal Research Group. Please go ahead, Jeffrey. Your line is now open.

Jeffrey Wlodarczak (Principal, Senior Analyst, and Internet, Media, Sports and Communications Analyst)

Good morning. I had a couple on Puerto Rico. I was wondering how the TSA migration process is going initially? Is there disruption for customers from that process? Do we assume that most of that $30 million in integration cost this year is related to the fact that you're operating under a TSA and then you're building out your own network, and so that's what goes away next year? I have a follow-up.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Morning, Jeff. Thanks for the question. You know, I'll ask Naji to jump in here in a second as well. The TSA migration has started. We started it on the prepaid side of our business. It's going pretty well. There are disruptions to customers, however, in both the prepaid and postpaid, because there are certain handsets that just won't operate on our new network and some of the really older handsets with older operating systems. We're doing one of two things. We are having customers come into our stores, and we update the software for them, or we are offering also opportunities for them to change out handsets. That's really one of the big frictions in the migration. The systems, we've fired it up. The network is functioning.

The network's the same for prepaid and postpaid, the network core is already up and running, and the work is progressing really well. On the integration cost, yes, a lot of the costs do go away next year. There's costs that we pay to AT&T, as well as costs as we start paying for our licenses already on our new stack. Those are the overlaps this year that kinda disappears next year. Part of it does. Naji, do you wanna add anything to that?

Naji Khoury (SVP and General Manager for Liberty Puerto Rico)

Well, yes, sir. Good morning, Balan. Good morning, Jeffrey. I would just add that in terms of our customer migration, for the most of them, the majority will be completely seamless. For the very few that you had mentioned will require some sort of intervention. Those that is a very low percentage. You know, the plan is, you know, to we start already some prepaid and postpaid will start shortly, probably in H2.

Jeffrey Wlodarczak (Principal, Senior Analyst, and Internet, Media, Sports and Communications Analyst)

Thanks, Naji. I guess this is for any of your markets. Sure. Are there any signs of FWA emerging in Puerto Rico or any of your other markets? You know, as a wireless operator, is FWA potentially interesting for you as sort of a fill-in for your footprint or maybe like a fixed mobile offering?

Balan Nair (CEO)

FWA hasn't really taken off in our markets for a number of reasons. One, most of our networks everywhere on the fixed side is very strong, not only our networks, but our competitors' networks as well. You know, in almost every market, we are the fiber player or HFC player, combination of both, and our competitor has somewhat something similar. FWA would struggle. Almost everywhere, unlike United States mainland, we have ubiquitous coverage, so there's no real pockets for somebody to go exploit FWA. Now, we've considered FWA in a few cases, but remember, it is a huge spectrum hog, and right now, our focus on our spectrum is really on our mobility services.

There will be some niche cases on it, and it would work for us because we have scale in there, and so it's just a fill-in. If your business was just a standalone FWA business, it's gonna be pretty hard.

Jeffrey Wlodarczak (Principal, Senior Analyst, and Internet, Media, Sports and Communications Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question comes from Cesar Medina from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Cesar Medina (Latin America Technology, Media, and Telecom Analyst)

Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I had two questions. The first one is, you had a very positive surprise on the margins for Costa Rica, certainly way ahead of our expectations. How sustainable these new level of margins is? Second, to the extent that you can provide high-level color, any comments on your joint venture and in Chile and the overall state of competition? How is competition in Chile evolving after the joint venture? Thank you.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Sure. Hi, Cesar. Let me answer the Chile question. I'll get to the Costa Rica after that. I'll ask my colleague, Guillermo, to also jump in here on the Costa Rica question. On Chile, you know, we have actually a very strong and good partner there in Chile. We've learned a lot from them. I think they've learned some from us as well. If I look at Chile, there's a lot of good news that's out of there. You know, we've won the 5G spectrum that we were able to transfer, 3.5 GHz. That was a big deal for us. A lot of really good opportunities in mobile. We see the upside in Chile on mobile pricing.

Our penetration is pretty low, so we're in the teens, but so we should grow that. We think there will be stability in the fixed business there as well as fixed ARPU. So we feel, you know, good. There's still structural problems in Chile, make no mistake. The rationale for us to do that transaction is even stronger than ever, and the synergies are already starting to come in. Our local management team has done a really good job. All in all, Chile, you know, I think, you know, the jury is still out, but, and the synergies, once they start kicking fully, and us leveraging some of the other opportunities, I think it's gonna turn out to be a good story. To Costa Rica.

You know, one thing on Costa Rica is, some of the margin expansions is also driven by synergies, which, as I indicated on my comments earlier, that comes to an end this year. We won't have that repeat again next year. I'll ask my colleague, Guillermo, to give any other color he wants to. Guillermo?

Guillermo Ponce (SVP in South-Central Markets and Interim GM of Liberty Communications)

Yeah. Thank you, Balan, and thank you, Cesar. As you pointed out, we're still being benefited from synergies, and we will continue to do so throughout the year. Exchange rate is helping in the comparison with last year. The third element is that we continue to grow. As you pointed out in the beginning of your presentation, we just launched

Balan Nair (CEO)

Thanks, Guillermo.

Cesar Medina (Latin America Technology, Media, and Telecom Analyst)

Thank you.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Yeah. I'll add that, Cesar. I mean, I think that, you know, the margin was quite good in the quarter. Certainly our expectation would be to, you know, continue to improve on that, you know, as we go out.

Johanna Escobar (General Manager and CEO)

Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thanks. The next question comes from Soomit Datta from New Street Research. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Soomit Datta (Partner)

Hi, guys. Yeah, a couple of questions, if that's okay, please. First of all, on pricing, I think you talked about lifting prices in Costa Rica and Q1, if I heard that correctly. There's talk of strategic price lifts elsewhere. I'm not sure if that includes Puerto Rico. I guess just stepping back a little bit, it feels like maybe you're more willing to entertain price increases than in the past. I just wondered if you kind of concur with that view. If so, I wonder what has kind of changed in terms of dynamics on the ground. That's the first question. I do have a quick follow-up if that's okay.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Hello, Soomit. Sure. You know, I think this year what we're trying to do is perhaps just exercise our muscles a bit on price increases. We haven't done a price increase in a few years and we wanted to do something very modest. They're really very modest price increases to see how the market reacts, as well as for us to get our commercial teams all set for, you know, at some point in the future, we will do, you know, our more traditional price increases. Make no mistake, our focus is still on volume and we grow this business with the Q side of it, and we take some fees where we can. The way we focus on fees, in Puerto Rico, we've done on the fixed side a price increase.

I kind of indicated we may do something on the postpaid mobile as well. The fixed price increase that we took, very modest, you know, it was really actually pretty much unnoticed in the market. In Costa Rica, we will take price increase this quarter, also very, very minimal in our cable and wireless business as well as in our Panama business. You know, we're looking at prepaid price increases and selectively in certain areas, some fixed price increases as well. I think, you know, this year it's really, you know, testing the market a little bit, testing ourselves a little bit, how we would do it, get our processes on price increases back on track.

But I think the market is ready, you know, and our customers, like I said, for two, three years, three years now, we've not taken any price increases. I think they can appreciate a lot of the product improvements as well. I mean, nobody likes price increases, but certainly people won't like price increases when they don't get anything for it. We've increased speeds consistently over the last three years. We've given better CPE products, and then introducing a minor price increase, it's landing pretty well.

Soomit Datta (Partner)

Okay, great to hear. I guess perhaps related to that, just on Puerto Rico, on the wireless side, the service revenues on wireless look to have stabilized in the first quarter. I think there's a little bit of sort of funny around the accounting there or not funny, but, you know, a little bit of uncertainty around some of the accounting issues. In principle, do you think you've been through some of the worst of the pricing pressure on wireless in Puerto Rico? Again, you're talking a bit about price increases there, so it sounds like that might help also.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Yeah, I think so. I think in Puerto Rico, the price, you know, declined some of it, as you pointed out, is accounting because there's an amortization of the handsets built into the ARPU that you see. I mean, it's not a price that our customers see, but in the ARPU that we show in our reporting has some adjustments made for it to account for a portion of the subsidized devices. I tell you that the subsidized devices is what caught us by surprise because we did try to match everybody in during the holidays last year, coming into January of this year on subsidies for handsets, both on retention and acquisition, and it was quite successful.

However, having said that also meant we were writing a lot of checks for devices and accumulating that into the ARPU as well. My colleague there in Puerto Rico, Naji, this quarter, this last quarter started to throttle back some of the subsidies and you'll start seeing more stability in the reported ARPU on this. Like I indicated, we are contemplating a price increase on the postpaid side, not too different than what the mainland wireless operators are doing.

Soomit Datta (Partner)

Got it. Okay. Thank you. Cheers.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Thanks, Soot.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please go ahead, Kevin. Your line is now open.

Kevin Roe (Founder)

Thank you. Good morning. Follow on a few questions on Cable & Wireless Caribbean. Could you update us on the competitive landscape there in postpaid and in residential broadband? How are you thinking about macroeconomic pressure potentially impacting that business as we go through the next months and quarters?

Balan Nair (CEO)

Sure. And I'll ask my colleague, Inge, to jump in here as well. You know, we feel really positive about our Caribbean business for a few reasons. One, a lot of the economy is coming back. By the way, it's not coming back to where it was pre-COVID. You see cruise ships coming back, but it's still a fraction of where it was in 2019. Hotels are back, but occupancy rates are still in the 60% range as opposed to the 80% range pre-COVID. You know, there's still upside yet to come as the economy fully recovers. Now, Inge and her team, you know, together with a lot of my other colleagues in this business have, you know, launched a couple of things.

One, we've been really focused since COVID on taking costs out, and you'll see the margins expansions here. One, both on the COGS side, as some of you have noticed, you know, COGS has improved. There's some really good work that's being done by teams both on the programming side, on the commercial side, that took quite a bit of cost out. Secondly, you know, our commercial teams have also launched some very innovative FMC products that have moved some of our prepaid customers up to postpaid. I think, you know, in many cases it's a duopoly in a lot of these islands and, you know, our competitor there, Digicel, is quite, you know, I think motivated like us to create value.

When you have two competitors that are looking to create value and providing good service to their customers, I think everybody wins. That's what we're seeing right now in a post-COVID world. Inge is my colleague that runs that business, and I'll ask her to jump in here to provide a bit more color. Inge?

Inge Smidts (SVP of Caribbean Markets)

Hey. Thank you, Balan. Hi, Kevin. On the economy, similar as Balan, we really see island for island. There might be a few islands which are not yet fully recovering, but there is room to even recover more. As for Balan, we see the cruise ships coming, we see the tourists coming, and not yet on the level of before COVID, but we're making massive progress. You can see that when you're in the islands, and you can really feel that uptake. I think from a macro point of view, I think it will only improve. From a competitive point of view, like Balan said, we have a very good competitor in the Caribbean and our focus is twofold.

One, really understanding every dollar we spend, how can we get the best return? Second, really, drive every single aspect of our business, whether it is in mobile, whether it's in fixed through FMC or B2B. We've done quite some work in B2B on the SMB segment. We launched very dedicated propositions and also our B2B segment in large enterprises actually also doing really well. Overall, by, you know, having the right propositions with the right cost structure, that's how we believe we are in a very good shape for the coming quarters ahead of us.

Kevin Roe (Founder)

Thank you, Inge. Yeah, that's super helpful. Just a quick follow-up, if I may. Balan, broadly looking across your footprint, are there any new regulatory developments or risks we should be monitoring? Thanks.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Well, you know, when it comes to regulatory issues, we are always on tenterhooks. We have a pretty strong team led by John Winter, my general counsel, and which we constantly monitor, you know, all the different footprint days. I think the thing that we are probably really focused on right now is 5G spectrum. At what point do the spectrum become available, the method on how these governments want to distribute the spectrum, what the local posture would be. That's probably the big one. Most of the governments that in areas that we operate in are business friendly.

Of course, you know, they are obviously elected by their voters, they have to cater to that need as well, but they're mostly very business friendly. My leadership team has spent a lot of time with respective politicians in the different areas, we've built quite a good relationship, an honest relationship, I would say, where we don't go in asking for anything. But we wanna make sure that they know that we're here for the communities, we're here for the country, we're an engine of economic growth for them. I think they see it the same way as well. Regulatory-wise, yeah, our eyes are always open, but there's nothing in the horizon that would worry me at all.

Kevin Roe (Founder)

Got it. Thank you, Balan.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Thanks, Kevin.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our final question today comes from Matthew Harrigan from Benchmark. Please go ahead, Matthew. Your line is now open.

Matthew Harrigan (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. Balan, I was curious if you could comment what you see structurally in the Latin video market. Certainly, I think you've toyed in the past with having your in-house streaming product that responds any CPE cost, and then certainly that could be attractive in certain markets and certainly for a middle income demographic. It also feels like ViX, I mean, Televisa and TelevisaUnivision is mostly focused on Hispanic U.S. and Mexico right now. It feels like Netflix is maybe lagging or stalling out a little bit right now. I'd just be curious or we'd just be curious in terms of what you're seeing in terms of the consumer preferences and how it was working for you other than really fostering demand for broadband and higher speed broadband. Thank you.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Hey, Matt. You know, you're breaking up a little bit, so I'm gonna answer the question that I heard, but you tell me if that's the question that you asked. On the video side, you know, I think there's two parts to the video. One, we have defensive plays where we are the video provider, and that's really Puerto Rico and Costa Rica, where we're the cable company. It has been defensive for a while, until recently, where we've kinda found a few opportunities just because some of our competitors are retreating from the video business or not investing in that. We've seen some stability, unlike the United States, where you see, like, massive, you know, drops in video subscriber base. You see more a more stable video business for us.

When it comes to investment in video, we've made two investments. One, our IPTV setup box called Hub TV, which we are now deploying everywhere. Associated with Hub TV, because it's an IP box, we actually do stream content to that device, which means we can also stream content to any other devices as well. I must tell you, Matthew, this is not a growth product for us. You know, my management team and I, are managing the video business as a business to conserve cash, you know, generate new cash and, but holding it steady. Our focus on growth remains in postpaid, in fixed broadband, and in our B2B business. That's where we focus on growth. Video is a steady state product.

I suspect the Hub TV investment would be our last big investment in video. We're gonna hold that steady and then focus on the products that our consumers are really demanding right now.

Matthew Harrigan (Equity Research Analyst)

Very quickly, is the exploration of monetizing the subsea network pretty much completely off the table or somewhat off the table in this macro environment?

Balan Nair (CEO)

Well, as I mentioned in the last quarter call, we've appointed Ray Collins now to be the general manager of that business. Ray, given his background in M&A, and he by the way, also retains the portfolio of my, as my lead biz dev executive. We're always, you know, our eyes and ears are always open on that business. The process that we started last year ended without any conclusion because of where the credit markets, you know, ended up. Now this is a very high cash generative business, so when people look at this business, they look at an EBITDA multiple. It's the wrong way to look at that business.

It's really, you know, a multiple of free cash flow. When you look at that from a yield standpoint on a free cash flow, it generates. I mean, you translate that into EBITDA. The EBITDA multiples are actually quite high for this business. For it to make any sense for us to wanna do any transaction here, and given where credit markets are, you know, I suspect, you know, everybody's gonna have different expectations of multiples. Ray remains, you know, open eyed and open eared on this. If an opportunity comes by that makes sense for us, we'll do it. You know, you know this management team, we rarely ever get our math wrong. When we see an opportunity that works for us, we'll take it.

If not, this is a great free cash flow business for us. We actually love the business. I must say, we are looking at ways to invest in it further. You should hear from us over the next few quarters, it's expanding new routes and opening new, you know, new markets for us to get into.

Matthew Harrigan (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks, Balan.

Balan Nair (CEO)

Thanks, Matthew.

Operator (participant)

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

Balan Nair (CEO)

Thank you, Operator, and thanks everybody for taking the time on this call. I must say I feel really good about our first quarter, you know. First quarter usually sets the trend for the rest of the year. This is coming in to our expectations. If you had a chance to look at my internal budgets, you will be equally pleased as I am with our first quarter performance. I thank you all for your support. We've got lots of work to do here in LLA, and we will continue to work really hard for you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2023 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. You may now disconnect your line.