Liberty Latin America Ltd - Earnings Call - Q4 2020

Transcript

Speaker 0

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 Ray Collins, Chief Strategy Officer of Liberty Latin America.

Speaker 1

Good morning, and welcome to Liberty Latin America's Full Year twenty twenty Investor Call. 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. 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. Additional information on factors or risks that could cause results to differ is available in Liberty Latin America's most recently filed Form 10 ks. Liberty Latin America disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward looking statements to reflect any change in its expectations or in the conditions on which any such statement 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 and on our Investor Relations website. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr.

Balan Nair.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Ray, and welcome everybody to our full year results presentation. I'll begin by taking you through our group highlights and operating results for each of our reporting segments before closing with an overview of our strategic focus in 2021. Chris Noyes, our CFO, will then follow with a review of the company's financial performance and our outlook. After that, we will get straight to your questions. As always, I'm joined by my executive team from across the region, and I'll get them involved as needed during the q and a following our prepared

Speaker 0

remarks. As a

Speaker 2

point of housekeeping, we will both be working from slides, which you can find on our website at www.lla.com. So let's start on Slide four and our highlights for the year. Operationally, we added 170,000 RGUs driven by strong performance in cable and wireless and a record result in Puerto Rico where broadband demand drove subscriber growth of more than double our 2019 additions. Our key financial objective is to deliver positive free cash flow in 2020, and I am pleased to say that we generated close to 150,000,000 in a very challenging year. In terms of momentum, even excluding AT and T's contribution, our results continue to improve in quarter four as we reported revenue at a similar level to the pre COVID quarter one and adjusted OIBDA, which was in fact higher than in the first quarter of the year.

We also made significant progress with our inorganic strategy as we completed the acquisition of AT and T's Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands operations, adding over 1,000,000, mainly postpaid mobile subscribers to

Speaker 0

the group.

Speaker 2

The operations are off to a good start, and I'll cover our integration plans in more detail later in the presentation. Finally, we continue to lean into our investment thesis despite COVID with the addition of approximately 400,000 new or upgraded homes in 2020. Over 80% of these homes will pass using fiber to the home technology, and we have exciting plans to increase our bill by 50% in 2021. Moving to slide five and a summary of our quarterly fixed and mobile subscriber ads. Starting with our fixed RGU evolution on the left of the slide.

Here you can see that we grew our RGU base in each quarter through the year with a dip in the second quarter as our markets adjusted to the impact of the pandemic. One of these impacts was reduced mobility, which drove higher demand for residential data connectivity as customers increasingly worked and learned from home. As a result, our broadband ads contributed over 90% of our net subscriber additions in the year. We believe there is a significant opportunity to bring high speed connectivity to more households in the region and this underpins our organic growth strategy in the coming years. On the right of the slide, we show our mobile subscriber evolution.

Subscriber losses in the first half were primarily the result of mobility restrictions, which limited the ability for customers to access services and reduced demand for top ups generally as customers spend an increasing amount of time in their homes. In the second half, restrictions were eased across most markets, and we saw a recovery in subscriber numbers. However, this did not offset our first half subscriber losses. I'll cover the specific trends in more detail over the coming slides. Turning to Slide six and our Cable and Wireless Caribbean and Network reporting segment.

Note that this represents the Cable and Wireless segment as reported in prior quarters. However, excluding Cable and Wireless Panama, which we now disclose separately due to a change in our internal organizational structure. This change has no impact on our borrowing groups or legal structure. Starting with the RGU trends on the left and a similar evolution to the prior slide, we had a good year in fixed, adding over 100,000 subscribers led by 92,000 ads in Jamaica, which was close to three times that market's 2019 performance. Broadband was once again the main driver contributing over half of Jamaica's ads.

During 2020, over 80% of our new build and upgrade volume in Cable and Wireless Caribbean and Networks was in Jamaica, which is the segment's largest market. Mobile steadily recovered in the second half, once again led by Jamaica. However, we recorded losses for the year due to the second quarter's adverse performance. In the center of the slide, we present an overview of our revenue mix and the sequential growth rates we saw in the fourth quarter. Our fixed operations remained robust and mobile revenue grew as prepaid recharges continued to recover.

Subsea benefited from increased demand for international bandwidth and delivered healthy sequential growth of 5%. Finally, B2B service revenues was 2% lower sequential overall. However, this is a tale of two different businesses with our LatAm operations growing, whilst our incumbent Caribbean market was slightly down in the quarter. Taking subsea, including intercompany revenue, which is eliminated in our consolidated reporting and B2B LatAm in aggregate, this represents a business with approximately $400,000,000 of mainly U. S.

Dollar revenue and an OIBDA margin above 50%. Finally, I want to highlight that this segment actually grew adjusted OIBDA on a rebased basis in 2020 despite the impact of COVID-nineteen. This was a great achievement by the team in a very tough year. Next, to Slide seven, in Cable and Wireless Panama, where we experienced the most severe COVID-nineteen restrictions across our operations. This created a challenging operating backdrop leading to fixed and mobile subscriber losses in the second quarter, as shown on the left of the slide, which we recovered to an extent in the second half of the year as restrictions were eased.

In our residential fixed business, we delivered 35,000 net RGU adds for the year, with second half additions more than offsetting second quarter's losses. Mobile adds improved in the second half, but were impacted by increased competitive intensity and did not recover losses from earlier in the year. In the center of the slide, can see that revenue from each of our products grew sequentially in the fourth quarter. Note that B2B growth of 20% was driven by some significant contract wins. As we look to continue growing our fixed operations, we are focused on expanding our product and network offerings.

In combination with our new bill activity where we added nearly 100,000 fiber digital home passings in 2020, we have also launched our Hub TV platform, bringing greater differentiation to our product bundle. Overall, we believe that this business has a lot of potential given the fixed market structure and relatively strong economic environment. Our organizational changes give Panama more senior management focus and should provide a catalyst driving improved performance. Turning to Slide eight and our VTR segment. Starting with RGU evolution on the left of the slide, we've previously discussed the challenges we faced in Chile following the initial spike in bandwidth demand during the second quarter, leading to network reliability and service issues.

We moved quickly to stabilize our network and improve customer service, And this drove better operational performance as can be seen in our RGU losses being halved in Q4 compared to Q3 and really getting to flat result in January. We see the recovery. I'll cover our approach here in more detail on the next slide. Our Costa Rican business, Cavutica, continues to perform well during adding RGUs in each quarter and 18,000 in aggregate during the year. The mobile chart in the lower left represents our business in Chile where we finished the year with 280,000 predominantly postpaid subscribers.

Store closures due to COVID-nineteen and a highly competitive market environment drove the softer performance here in second half. Moving to the center of the slide and revenue by product. In contrast with the Cable and Wireless business, fixed residential services are by far the largest product in the VTR COVID-nineteen reporting segments, contributing 90% of revenue and up 3% sequentially in Q4. Finally, a key segment of our group strategy in 2021 is to accelerate our fiber to the whole new build program. Across Chile and Costa Rica, we are planning to build more than 400,000 new homes, which is a significant uplift on the 2020 activity.

On Slide nine, we wanted to highlight some of the metrics that we, as a management team, are focused on as we look to improve operational and financial trends at VTR. In the upper left, we show significant reductions in both the daily number of technical calls to our representatives and our track roll rate of seventy three percent and forty nine percent respectively. These improvements follow previously discussed targeted network and customer service investments. The points below the chart summarizes key pillars of the framework we are using to approach network and customer experience. Additional measures of our operational improvements are presented in the central charts with a reduction in the intent to disconnect and increase in retention rates over the past months.

Finally, on the upper right of the slide, we show how our new build ambitions in 2021 compares to prior years, a significant and exciting step up, which we believe will reinforce our platform for sustained growth. From a return on investment perspective, we have been successful in driving down the cost to pass on through fiber, making these projects very attractive. Turning to Slide 10 and our best performing business in 2020, Liberty Puerto Rico. Starting with our RGU trends on the left of the slide. As I mentioned earlier, 2020 was a record year for the business with 121,000 net RGU additions.

Broadband net adds contributed two thirds of total RGU growth. And as shown in the lower chart, our broadband base grew by nearly a quarter in the year. To put this into perspective, Charter, Comcast and Altice USA include their broadband subscribers by around 8%, 9%, 74% respectively in 2020. In the center of the slide, we wanted to provide a view of 2020 for Puerto Rico operations, including a full year for the AT and T business we acquired at the October. We really like this market.

As you can see, the acquisition provides a significant step up in scale, taking the combined business to 1,400,000,000.0 of revenue and over half a billion of adjusted OIBDA. One of the primary reasons we see a differentiated converged opportunity in Puerto Rico is that over 80% of our mobile service revenues come from postpaid customers. Finally, we continue to innovate and invest in our networks to maintain a leading position in Puerto Rico. We are rolling out our Hub TV platform and continuing to build out our footprint. We passed 1,100,000 out of a total of 1,400,000 homes in Puerto Rico as at the 2020 and plan to continue to grow.

And this is further assisted by the union of funding we have won to improve broadband speeds in 43 municipalities out of 78 across the island, including San Juan and other key metro areas. On Slide 11, we provide an update on our integration work in Puerto Rico. Our key focus areas are, firstly, to integrate and grow as a single company. This process began on day one of the acquisition, and we are making good progress establishing a common culture. Secondly, I've talked previously about leveraging our product suite and putting together great propositions for our customers.

This is already happening with our welcome offer, which had 20% enrollment after a week and continues to grow. The offer involves free fixed broadband speed upgrades if a customer has fixed and mobile services with us. Thirdly, it is vital to ensure that service levels are not compromised as we move to a new mobile call and new operations and business support systems. We have a comprehensive TSA agreement with AT and T to help us here, and we're confident we can move to these new platforms with minimal friction. Fourth, and something that is particularly exciting, we are creating a converged player in the market which enables us to differentiate our product offerings, but also adds resilience given the fiber backbone and five g mobile networks we now have.

And fifth, we have a unique opportunity to lead with digital channels and services as we create new IT platforms for the new business. Overall, I am very excited about the value we can generate for our customers and other stakeholders through this acquisition. Finally, to slide 12, in our strategic focus areas as we look to 2021 as well as longer term shareholder value creation. First, we expect to recover and grow across our markets as the economic backdrop improves. In Chile and Panama specifically, we anticipate better trends following the operational actions we have taken in 2020.

Secondly, with respect to our commercial approach, we remain focused on product innovation and are distributing our Hub TV products as we roll out new fiber to the home networks. We are also developing our self installed capabilities, which should both improve customer experience and drive cost efficiencies in the future. Thirdly, we will continue to lean into our broadband penetration thesis for the region and add or upgrade approximately 600,000 mainly fiber to the home homes in 2021, a material ramp in activity from 2020. Fourth, our cost focus. Chris will talk to the numbers here in more detail in his section.

However, I would note that we've made good progress since becoming a separately listed company, and this remains an area where we see significant potential to improve and drive value. Finally, to M and A. Our near term focus is on integrating assets acquired from AT and T and closing the acquisition of Telefonica's Costa Rica business, which we anticipate will happen this summer sometime. We see inorganic opportunities as a core driver of value creation in our region, but only if done at the right value. We are very disciplined in our process to appraise assets, and accretive levered free cash flow per share remains a key metric.

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 3

Thanks, Val. I will start on slide 14 with our financial results. Two quick housekeeping items. Our 2020 results include Liberty Mobile, formerly AT and T Puerto Rico for the post acquisition period, which is for the last two months of q four. And as mentioned, we are now showing Cable Wireless Panama as a separate operating segment, reflecting the change in reporting lines.

However, our Cable Wireless credit silo will still include CWP within its results. In the upper left, we reported q four revenue of $1,100,000,000 including $174,000,000 in revenue from Liberty Mobile. This compares to $975,000,000 for Q4 twenty nineteen. Our Q4 result reflects a modest 1% year over year rebased decline, much improved versus both q two and q three rebased levels, driven in large part by our strong quarterly performance in Puerto Rico. For the full year, we generated revenue of $3,800,000,000 for an annual rebased decline of 3%.

Moving to adjusted OIBDA. We posted $428,000,000 or 4% rebased decline for Q4 and $1,500,000,000 or a 2% rebased decline for the full year. Liberty Mobile contributed $56,000,000 of adjusted OIBDA in the quarter. Rebased performance in the quarter included a $13,000,000 net detrimental impact from certain nonrecurring items, primarily related to content accrual withholding tax adjustments as disclosed in our earnings release. Our p and e additions in the bottom left of the slide were a 188,000,000 in q four or 17% of revenue.

This result brings our 2020 total to $631,000,000 or 17% of revenue, which is a 100 basis points lower than our year ago pre COVID twenty twenty target. For 2021, we are targeting a modest increase to approximately 18% of revenue for p and e additions. As Valid mentioned, we are planning to build approximately 600,000 homes in 2021, a substantial increase over 2020, and we'll have integration CapEx in Puerto Rico as we embark on our three year plan to fully integrate the business. Moving to the bottom right, we generated $89,000,000 of adjusted free cash flow in q four, helped in part by a positive contribution from our newly acquired mobile operations in Puerto Rico. For the full year, we delivered $148,000,000 in adjusted free cash flow, comfortably achieving our COVID adjusted target of positive free cash flow for 2020.

For 2021, we are targeting approximately $200,000,000 of adjusted free cash flow, which is more than a 30% increase over our 2020 results. Slide 15 highlights our continued recovery from q two. Excluding the impact of Liberty Mobile, our q four revenue of $923,000,000 was nearly back to q one levels, and our q four adjusted OIBDA of $317,000,000 surpassed q one adjusted OIBDA by 2%. As we look to 2021, we expect to build momentum as we go through the year with q one being our toughest comp and as we begin to lap COVID impacts in q two. Additionally, q four to q one on an apple to apples basis typically steps down due to general seasonal factors.

On slide 16, we present our q four financial results and quarterly adjusted OIBDA evolution by segment. Starting on the left with C and W, Caribbean, and Networks. We generated $428,000,000 of revenue and a $182,000,000 of adjusted OIBDA in q four. Year over year q four revenue was 4% lower on a rebased basis, as 2% growth in fixed residential revenue was more than offset by COVID impacts across our mobile and b to b businesses, which were 143% lower, respectively. As highlighted earlier, our rebate adjusted OIBDA declined for the segment of 10% for q four was due large part to roughly $13,000,000 of net nonrecurring items.

Despite these headwinds and the impact of COVID, C and W Caribbean networks grew adjusted OIBDA by 1% for the full year on a rebased basis, and we obtained a 42% adjusted OIBDA margin. The bottom chart highlights our sequential improvement as our Q4 adjusted OIBDA result was 5,000,000 higher than Q3 and nearly back to Q1 levels. Moving to our new segment, Cable and Wireless Panama. Across LLA, our Panama business has suffered from the most stringent COVID related lockdowns. Q4 revenue of $131,000,000 and adjusted OIBDA of 51,000,000 were nineteen percent and three 13% lower on a rebased basis, respectively, as compared to the prior year period.

Our year over year revenue result was driven primarily by double digit declines in b to b and mobile. Sequentially, the q three, the business has continued to recover as quarterly adjusted OIBDA was $8,000,000 or 19% higher. In fact, as the bottom chart highlights, we delivered our strongest adjusted OIBDA 2020 in q four. Turning to VTR in Chile and Cabletica and Costa Rica. We reported q four revenue of $244,000,000 reflecting a year over year rebased decline of 3%.

The rebased year over year decline was driven in large part by volume losses and ARPU pressure in VTR, which more than offset continued rebased revenue growth in CabriQIDA. VTR CabriQIDA posted 89,000,000 of adjusted OIBDA in Q4, which was 15% lower than the prior year period on a rebased basis. The year over year decline was driven by increased operating expenses at BTR as we invested in our networks and customer service initiatives, and to a lesser extent, a $3,000,000 adverse FX impact of nonfunctional currency exposure in Chile relating to the depreciation of the Chilean peso to the US dollar. Sequentially, the q three adjusted OIBDA was $4,000,000 lower. However, it was above the $86,000,000 posted in q two.

Finally, to our strongest performing segment, Liberty Puerto Rico. As Darren mentioned, our business in Puerto Rico had both a strong q four and 2020. With two months of contribution from Liberty Mobile in the quarter, we delivered $296,000,000 of revenue and a $116,000,000 of adjusted OIBDA, plus a double digit rebased growth rates. Our cable business continued to build momentum throughout 2020. In fact, our top line growth in q four, excluding the impact of Liberty Mobile, was our best of the year at roughly 15% rebased growth year over year.

This result was due in large part to over a 120,000 RGUs added over the last twelve months. The newly acquired business contributed a $174,000,000 of revenue and $56,000,000 of adjusted OIBDA in the quarter, achieving double digit rebased growth as well. Liberty Mobile's growth was primarily driven by a combination of revenue increases driven by strong postpaid ARPU, positive Alcolect roaming, as well as equipment sales. For 2021, it's important to note that we expect to incur significant integration costs in Puerto Rico as we begin to work off the three year TSA with AT and T and operate on a stand alone basis. During 2021, we estimate that we will incur integration operating costs of 35,000,000 to $40,000,000 and CapEx integration costs of 25,000,000 to $30,000,000 In terms of benefits, we anticipate generating $10,000,000 of synergies in 2021 and to ramp towards our full run rate expectation of $70,000,000 by the end of our integration.

Moving to Slide 17, we have managed our cost and CapEx base well throughout the pandemic. Our 2020 efforts allowed us to maintain our adjusted OIBDA margin in the 39% to 40% range while absorbing revenue contraction across many of our markets. The inclusion of Liberty Mobile in Q4 compressed our full year LLA margin by 40 basis points as Liberty Mobile's margin was 32% for the two months. The middle chart highlights our nearly 200 basis point drop in P and E additions from 2019 even though we continue to invest in new build capacity expansion and subscriber growth. The net impact is outlined in the right hand chart that we progressed our adjusted OIBDA less p and e additions to 23% of revenue, a solid increase from 2019 levels.

This metric is a key focus of ours as we look to further improve our future efficiency levels. Slide 18 summarizes our liquidity and credit profile. At year end, we reported $8,500,000,000 of total debt, $900,000,000 of cash, and $1,100,000,000 of availability under our RCFs. During q four, we funded the AT and T transaction, and we paid our outstanding C and W RCF. As previously highlighted, our funding for the Telefonica Costa Rica acquisition is all set.

We will use local borrowings of nearly $300,000,000 and anticipate the remainder will come from cash on hand as well as a pro rata contribution from our local partner in Costa Rica. We finished q four with growth and net leverage of 4.8 times and 4.3 times respectively. Our ratio is on an LTQA basis on adjusted OIBDA, and we get full effect to Liberty Mobile for the entire six month period. Turning to our debt maturity schedule on the right of the slide. We made great progress during 2020 on turning out our debt at attractive rates.

We do not have any significant maturities over the next five years as about 85% of our debt is due in 2026 and beyond. Our fully swap borrowing cost is in the low sixes, and most of our debt is trading above par today, implying even lower market yields. In 2021, we'll be focused on refinancing VTR's local term loans that mature over the next two years. Turning to slide 19, I'll wrap up our prepared remarks today. Continuing the theme from q three, we sequentially improved both our absolute dollar revenue and adjusted OIBDA and maintained quarterly fixed and mobile subscriber additions.

Definitely a solid improvement from our q two COVID impacted lows. As both Ballon and I have highlighted today, our collective view is that it'll continue to take time for our markets to fully recover from the impacts of COVID and for commerce to return more broadly. It is also safe to assume our region will reasonably lag The US in terms of recovery and vaccination levels. We are managing our business for the next couple of years with that in mind. We as a management team are focused on what we can control, grow volume and market share, innovate for and service our customers, invest in new building transformation, and continue to reset our cost base so that we benefit from incremental operational leverage as our markets recover.

Importantly, with our ability to generate free cash flow across our operating businesses, we are committed to investing for future growth, and we are targeting approximately 18% of revenue in P and E additions in 2021. The key to our story and one that will become apparent in the coming quarters is the anticipated beneficial impact of Liberty Mobile, one that will underpin our free cash flow generation. There's a lot of integration, including systems work to be done, but the business came in stronger than expected, and things are progressing well. Separately, closing the Costa Rican transaction this summer will strengthen our market leading cable business, and we remain very excited about fixed mobile convergence in that market. Finally, not only are we planning for growth in revenue and adjusted OIBDA in 2021, we will continue to drive towards higher adjusted free cash flow as our goal is to deliver approximately $200,000,000 in 2021.

We believe this is the right balance for LOA. Lean in further while our markets are recovering. With that operator, we are ready to take questions.

Speaker 0

And 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 following by the followed by the digit one on your touch tone telephone. In order to accommodate everyone, we request that you ask 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. And we will hear first from James Ratcliffe with Evercore ISI.

Speaker 3

For taking the question. Two, if I could. First of all, on Subsea, thanks for the color on that business. And that seems like the kind of infrastructure asset that's really getting great multiples out there right now. Can you talk about is that business, to any degree, separable from the rest of the business?

And secondly, can you talk about what the rationale for changing the structure to have Panama report directly versus being part of Cable and Wireless? Thanks.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Well, I'll say, I think your point is just right on the subsidy infra business. And I think over the next quarters or so, we'll give you and everybody more clear line of sight into that business. But we kind of highlighted already, it's a very good OIBDA business, about $400,000,000 in revenue, all U. S.

Dollars. We're quite excited about that asset. I think over the next quarters, you'll get more visibility to it. It's positive. On Panama, I think Panama, you can clearly see the numbers there.

And we are very focused on it. We have a great government partner there. We are very excited about that part of the world. We think in Central America, Panama and Costa Rica, the two best markets and we're both of them. And you'll see when we put more, I think it's probably a good thing that we're gonna put more attention on Panama and over the next quarters on that too.

Think stay tuned and you'll start to see some positive outcomes there.

Speaker 3

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 0

We'll now move to our next caller, and we'll hear from Michael Rollins with Citi.

Speaker 5

Hi, good morning. Curious on two things, if I could. The first, could you give us an update on the framework for the overall strategy? If you look at over the next three to five years, how do you think about the evolution of your assets, both geographically as well as the product mix that you would like to have in each country or country on average? And then just, you know, secondly, you know, maybe within this context, you know, as, you know, investors try to contemplate where you may go next, can you highlight where your largest priorities are in terms of filling needs for the portfolio or where there might be just market that you feel like are underpenetrated relative to their natural opportunity set?

Thanks.

Speaker 4

Sure. Sure, Michael. Let me start by saying we are very happy with the geography that we are currently in. And I think we're in the best parts of Latin America and Central America and The Caribbean. And we see quite a bit of growth opportunity still.

Broadband penetration is low, fixed broadband LTE penetration is low. B2B, our play in B2B is also low. So we see, if I look over the next couple, three years, the levels of growth for us certainly comes from our network expansion. It comes from getting the new products in b to b. We're quite excited about that.

It also comes from the fact that we see lots of opportunities in our existing business on expanding margins in both our OpEx and CapEx. And I say that in the context of especially on CapEx, it's not so much that in a cut CapEx because we are still very bullish on building out. It's our cost per bill keeps getting better and better. So there's a number of growth drivers still in front of us on our existing geography. Where we would expand, would really depend on what's available out there.

We are very opportunistic. And there are a number of places that we like, but I can clearly tell you where we probably won't be in. We won't probably be in Argentina. We definitely won't be in Venezuela. Highly unlikely to be in Brazil.

But the rest of Latin America, I think, it's good. It's part of why we are in this region. The thesis is strong.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 0

We'll now move to Sumit Dada with New Street Research.

Speaker 6

Hi. Good morning. Couple from me, please. Just first of all, on Chile, you've guided up on the number of homes passed. That's a pretty big increase.

I know some of it's in Costa Rica, but I assume most of it is in Chile. Can you give just a little bit more color on that, please? I'm I'm kind of interested in the new expansion areas. What kind of areas are we talking here? Is there already existing high speed coverage?

Are you or are you gonna be the first guys in the in in this area with with a a genuine high speed product? And and can you maybe sort of lay a path out for penetration of these, new homes passed? Should we assume a similar rate, over time as with your existing penetration, or is that you know, maybe it'll be lower or, take a little bit longer? If you could give a bit of color there, that would be super helpful. Thank you.

And then secondly, if I could, just on, just on Puerto Rico, a question for Chris, really. The the EBITDA, as you say, came on at a slightly higher number. It's only two months. It's a bit hard to kind of read too much into that maybe. But if I annualize that kind of 336,000,000, it's it's probably 10% ahead of where I was at.

Is is it the kind of a slightly higher base we should think about going forward or maybe just overanalyzing two months of contribution? Thank you.

Speaker 4

Alright, Sumit. We'll we'll to both questions. I'll ask Guillermo to also jump in that here in a bit. We see the runway in Chile to be very promising. It's still, we think there's at least four to five years more bills that we can do that.

The increased home pass that we've targeted for 2021, it's mostly because we see great opportunity in some of the B, C and even some of the D neighborhoods. And this is mostly because we've been able to drive our cost per home pass down very low. And we actually where we've done trials where we've actually gone in, we've seen take rates that is sometimes even surpassed where we were at in our A and B neighborhood. So it's quite positive. And let me ask Guillermo if you can just add on his view on the commercial front of these new builds.

Speaker 7

Yeah, thank you, Balan, and good morning, Sumit. As Balan pointed out, we see a very exciting opportunity and continue to expand our current 3,800,000 footprint to further cities and further municipalities in Chile. We already started doing that during 2020 with close to 180,000 new homes added in as you can see in the slide deck with very positive results. We are building all our new homes in fiber to the home and we will continue doing that, providing accessibility and better quality to neighborhoods that historically have not had such kind of products in the country. So very exciting opportunity and also very proud of narrowing the digital gap in our country, which is a thing that continues to improve over time.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Guillermo. Maybe Chris can get some color on the Puerto Rico EBITDA.

Speaker 8

Yes, I think, obviously, two months are at the tail end of the year. Typically, as we've seen in our other businesses, Q4 tends to be a pretty strong time for the mobile businesses. So I necessarily suggest annualizing those two months at this point. We did give in the balance slide the full year 2020 number, so as a reference point for folks on the OIBDA revenue and OIBDA side. I would also caveat as we go into 2021, we do have the business didn't come with the back office and stand alone costs.

So we will be incurring those as we operate the business. And as I highlighted, in 2021, we have a pretty sizable amount of integration OpEx in the business as well as CapEx. So that kind of gets us moving towards being able to reap the synergies as we look out in year two, year three, etcetera. So hopefully, that provides a little

Speaker 2

bit of color for you, Sumit.

Speaker 6

It's really helpful. Can I just sorry, just quickly check? The free cash flow guide, that is after all of the integration expenses you piloted?

Speaker 8

Most certainly, it is.

Speaker 0

Super. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. And Matthew Harrigan with Benchmark has the next question.

Speaker 9

If you read the press report, guess, you that you know Pope Francis, want to go back to Argentina, although that could go to the Liberty International base. I think Paul was probably still working for Tony Werner back then anyway and kind of droning. I was just curious. When you look at the fiber of the home, and you're obviously not building that out in in the more affluent areas, I assume, because those were already picked off by HSC Networks a long time ago. But people where you have apples to apples, it really concluded the OpEx CapEx structure is pretty superior.

I know there's one operator in Denmark, and clearly, Altice USA is pretty active. Do you have any comments there? And then as you get conversions in these technologies and the latency between DOCSIS and five gs, the DOCSIS latency getting down to low milliseconds, do you feel like there's even more utility for your network for five gs? I know five gs is a ways off in some of these markets, but inevitably gets there. It feels like you've got a great opportunity to have all the quad play engineering in house versus having to take a bit of a hodgepodge approach like some of The U.

S. Operators? Thank you.

Speaker 4

Matthew, okay. Let me see if I can unpack all your questions there. One, I'll start with the fact that HFC is still strong, pliable and an amazing network. We not worried at all competing with private to the home where we have HFC. And I'll say that for a couple of reasons.

One, the plant that we have, for the most part, all been upgraded to one gigahertz and passed. So you have tremendous amount of capacity on it. Secondly, HFC is actually one of the most reliable as well as very low maintenance type network, like crystal clear and all these other networks. Now I'll tell you fiber to home, obviously, is better, but it doesn't mean that you cannot compete. Just look at The United States and you look at Charter and Comcast going up against Verizon Fios or AT and T's fiber to the home or Google Fiber and you win every day and we have been for the longest time as well.

Now having said that, all our new builds going forward will all be fiber to the home and that's what we'll do. And we're not doing that for any other reason than one, we've got the cost price point now to where it just makes sense to do fiber to home. Now the second question that you had on five gs backhaul. We have never had plans to use the HFC for fiber for five g backhaul. As a matter of fact, not even for four g backhaul.

We actually run fiber directly to these sites. So we've we've we've always used HFC at the consumer play, not necessarily a backhaul or B2B play.

Speaker 9

Okay, great. Thanks, Paul.

Speaker 0

Now moving to Kevin Rowe, Rowe Equity Research.

Speaker 10

Thank you. Good morning. Following a couple of questions. First on Panama, do you think, as your crystal ball showing, this could be the year for mobile consolidation? And on M and A in general, you clearly reiterated your disciplined M and A strategy and the free cash flow accretive benchmark.

But has COVID altered your appetite at all or changed your return thresholds for acquisition targets? Has COVID over the past year bubbled up any new opportunities or closed the doors on some?

Speaker 4

Hey, Kevin. On Panama, let me say that we've always thought that mobile consolidation, makes sense. And we've also always said to be a buyer, you have to have a seller. And right now, everybody says that not everybody, but at least a couple said they're sellers, but we've not been able to convince them that selling means actually selling at a price that makes sense to everybody. So as a result, not much of mood in Panama.

And but I remain optimistic over time that it'll get rational and something will break loose there. On the M and A front, you're right, we're very disciplined. And to your question, does COVID increase opportunities? I think all the opportunities out there are well known. And of course, we look at everything that becomes available.

We are quite opportunistic. You know, levered free cash flow per share remains a key metric. It's it's not the only metric. There's there's quite a few metrics that we look at, but it is one of the key metrics that that that we look at. And does COVID give us more opportunity or makes us more cautious?

No. I think our approach has been the same pre COVID and post COVID. If anything on COVID that makes it maybe a little harder, it's because, you know, where our equity stands. And therefore, you know, returns are judged on a capital allocation basis here. Mean, where we've been in buying back stock, if it's more accretive to us than making an acquisition, we do that.

And if you look at where our stock is at right now, you need a pretty high hurdle to justify allocating capital to an acquisition as opposed to your internal projects. And that's how we look at it. It's just straight math for us. And therefore it makes it easy, you know, there's purity in our decision making here that makes it very, very, very non emotional at all in M and A.

Speaker 10

So following up on that comment, could we see share repurchases returning at some point in 2021?

Speaker 4

Well, the Board has authorized this, I think 100,000,000 in share repurchases over a period of two years. And you see what we're doing with new builds, you're seeing a lot of things. So if you look at capital allocation from us, our first choice of course is always going to be high return internal projects where we put money to work. And then you've got inorganic activity, buybacks, pay down debt, doing dividends. The last two is probably very low likelihood in this company.

But but right now, we've got lots of exciting projects, and and you can see we're we're guiding to some pretty nice free cash flow for a very, very tough couple of years. Last year, That's this

Speaker 10

right. Super. Thank you, Balan.

Speaker 4

You bet, Kevin.

Speaker 0

And we'll take our last question today from Nitin Szechuani with Papyrus Capital.

Speaker 3

Just expanding on James' question. Can you just talk about the Subsea business and just how strategic you see it long term? I mean if you think about that Altice USA multiple on their fiber backbone at your $400,000,000 and 50% EBITDA margin. It's effectively the majority of your market cap. So just if you could talk about that, do you see this asset as strategic long term or a source of funding for M and A?

Speaker 4

Hello, Nathan. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I think the subsea business clearly, right now we're not getting any credit on the sum of the parts. Chris and I have been thinking about this and how we crystallize and give people more clear view on the value of this asset. And there are many strategic opportunities in front of us.

Clearly, can imagine if other things trade, all the usual suspects are knocking on our doors as well and, you know, and asking the same question. There's some work that we need to do internally. This is not an easy separation if you wanna separate the business, but we're working on at least the first stages of, you know, putting the math together and doing some of the legal work and the accounting work so that people can really see the value of this standalone asset. It is a very strategic asset. It's one of the best assets in The Caribbean and Central America.

And it's great technology, a lot of growth potential in it. We've got great customers on it. Be Out, one of the larger customers on it. I think, of course, in my best interest to say this, but I think it's one of the best subsea network. And then when you link it, by the way, to the b to b sales circuit office, so on the landing stations, we actually expanded off the landing station.

We put in sales teams. We've got a management team that runs it. It's a pretty significant business, very well linked. So our sales teams can sell both like an Ethernet product or a private line product in a country like Colombia, as well as tie it back onto a backhaul of a landing station. So it makes a very seamless transition as well.

So it's a great asset. It's clear to the management team and I that we probably need to bring better view to that. But clearly, some of the parts do not reflect this really valuable thing that we have in our portfolio.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Colin.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Nitin.

Speaker 0

And that will conclude today's question and answer session. I'd like to hand the call back to Valen Maher for any additional or closing remarks.

Speaker 4

Thank you, operator. Well, you know, I'll tell you 2020 was probably one of the hardest years that my management team and I experienced just because the nature of where we operate. But we, you know, we started the last year or at least started the the pandemic period with with lots of concerns. We we made some moves last year. We if you if you recall, we drew down the credit lines.

We we were really, really worried. I'll tell you, at the end of the year and sitting where we are right now, we could not have imagined being in a better spot. Now having said that, I'll tell you 2021 is still tough. We've guided a free cash flow number. It is not entirely clear that we are out of the woods yet.

In many of where we operate, there's still curfews in the evenings, there's still lockdown on weekends. And so, you know, this is not super clear yet. And I imagine cruise ships will not be hitting the oceans in The Caribbean until perhaps November after the hurricane season this year. So our management team is focused on our cost, it's focused on cash collection, it's focused on our revenue, it's focused on where we can find growth and being very creative. It's focused on getting Panama back in order, it's focused on getting Chile back on track.

These are the things that we are focused on the management team and we are convinced that we can execute. We're not out of the woods, but that's light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you very much for all your support and we'll talk to you in sixty five, seventy days.

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude the Liberty Latin America's Full Year twenty twenty Investor Call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations of Liberty Latin America's website at www.ll.com. There, you can find a copy of today's presentation materials. You may now disconnect.