Millicom International Cellular - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, everyone. Thanks for taking the time to connect to our Third Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. This event is being recorded. Our speakers today will be our CEO, Mauricio Ramos, our CFO, Sheldon Bruha, and our President and COO, Maxime Lombardini. Following their prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session. By now, you should have received a copy of our earnings release, which is available on our website, along with the slides that we will be referencing during today's presentation. Now, if you please turn to slide 2, you can see our safe harbor disclosure. We will be making forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties and could have a material impact on our results.

We will also be referring to many non-IFRS metrics throughout this presentation, and we define these metrics on slide three, where you can also find reconciliation tables in the back of our earnings release and on our website. With those disclaimers out of the way, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Mauricio Ramos.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

Good morning, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. As usual, I will go over the highlights of the quarter, and Sheldon will discuss the financials. Finally, Maxime, our new President and COO, will say a few words before we take your questions. Let's start on slide 5 with a recap of our 4 key priorities for 2023 and our progress to date. I will go into more detail on each of these points in the next several slides, but here are the key highlights. First, the beginning of the year, we set out to dramatically improve the profitability of our operation in Colombia by simplifying the business, by bringing increased discipline on capital allocation and around pricing for our services. You can see the results of these efforts starting to pay off in this third quarter.

Our quarter in Colombia had very strong EBITDA and OCF growth, and we're not done yet. We have now agreed with our partner to inject additional equity capital into the business in Colombia, so we can focus now on executing on the rest of the plan, which includes continued mobile growth, further cost discipline, and as you know, some much needed inorganic solutions. Second, in Guatemala, we are creating the conditions for a healthy and very sustainable long-term industry structure. In the last 6 months, we took part in 2 transparent and successful spectrum auctions, in which both players were able to acquire all of the spectrum that was offered by the government. These were the country's two first auctions in more than 15 years. As a result, both competitors now have similar and much larger amounts of spectrum.

We think the conditions are now set to return to a more rational pricing environment. Third, we continue to improve our operational efficiency across the business more than ever before. We're simplifying product offerings and operations. We are digitalizing processes. We are reducing headcount, and we are automating platforms. And across the board, we're driving new opportunities to further reduce costs and increase cash flow. During Q3, we began to implement Phase 2 of Project Everest, which we spoke about last quarter. We expect this Phase 2 to significantly increase the overall savings we can expect from Project Everest overall. Fourth, and finally, we have continued to make great progress towards carving out LATI, our tower portfolio. Earlier this month, we began transferring assets to the new legal entities. We're now preparing to launch the monetization process.

So let's review each of these points in more detail, beginning with Colombia on slide 6. As most of you know by now, our mobile business has been growing rapidly since we acquired critical spectrum in the 700 MHz band in 2020. Back then, we embarked on a multi-year plan to expand our mobile network and to extend the reach of our commercial distribution. Since then, we have steadily gained market share, especially in the postpaid segment, where we have doubled our customer base since acquiring the spectrum. The shift in mix towards postpaid has been lifting ARPU and driving mobile service revenues, which increased 8% this Q3. The scale we're gaining in our mobile business, combined with efficiencies from Project Everest, drove EBITDA margin to a record this quarter, as you can see on the middle chart.

EBITDA grew almost 10% in a quarter and by close to 20% if we exclude the one-offs. We expect that Phase 2 of Everest will drive further margin expansion going forward, and we are converting that EBITDA growth into operating cash flow growth, as you can see on the chart on the right. OCF in Colombia is also benefiting from lower levels of capital investment in our home business. This is largely because we're choosing to remain disciplined on price. We're charging installation fees and implementing price increases and staying the course, even when competitors don't follow, and even if this means sacrificing subscriber volume but gaining profitability.

As we have told you many times, a significant portion of our CapEx is variable in nature and is directly linked to the number of new customers we sign up, given the high cost of equipment that we install in their homes. So with higher prices, we're selling less, but we're also investing less and attaining a better return on capital. Going forward, we expect that our Colombia operation can continue to sustain lower levels of capital intensity than in the past for two reasons. One, because our 700 MHz network deployment is now largely complete, and two, because of the very material synergies we expect from the combination of our mobile network and spectrum with those of Telefónica. As you may have seen, this transaction has now received regulatory approval just a couple of weeks ago.

Finally, as you may have heard, we recently agreed with a partner to each invest approximately $75 million of equity into our Colombia operation. Despite all the noise that you may have heard on this topic, this equity injection had been planned for quite some time, and its key purpose is to provide long-term funding for all the long-term investments that we have made in the business over the past several years. There's tons and tons of work to still do in Colombia, no doubt, but we made real good, good progress this quarter. Now please turn to slide 7 to look at Guatemala. As you know, competition has been intense in the prepaid mobile market since the end of the pandemic in Guatemala. As you also know, we took a variety of important strategic steps to shield our customer base and strengthen our market leadership.

It remains convinced that this is the right strategy to preserve and grow the long-term value of our business, and we see signs already that this strategy is beginning to pay off. The chart on the left shows the evolution of our mobile customer base and market share in Guatemala over the last four years. As you can see, we've picked up quite a bit of market share during the pandemic. We've been able to hold on to these gains and to our customer base, even as our competitor began offering access to the most popular social media apps for free to prepaid customers. No doubt, defending our customer base, which is definitely the right thing to do for the long run, has had an impact on ARPU, service revenue, and the overall profitability of the business.

You can see this on the chart on the right, showing the evolution of our total service revenue growth in Guatemala over the last several quarters. Yet, two important and positive events are relevant in the last few months in Guatemala. One, after two consecutive spectrum auctions, spectrum positions in the marketplace have been increased and stabilized. We no longer have a spectrum deficiency or a spectrum disadvantage in Guatemala. This has an important positive effect on our network efficiency and costs, as well as on our service and product offerings. And two, we took some price increases in prepaid in mid-September. As a result, while the revenue growth remained negative in Q3, there were clear signs of stabilization compared to Q2, and we're encouraged by the trends we saw during the quarter.

It's too early to tell whether this price increase will stick for the long run, but we are encouraged by the response at our points of sales, and we're optimistic. We do see the makings of a healthier industry structure in the making in Guatemala, as we had anticipated earlier. We want to remain cautious on the commercial outlook and also flag that there have been some mass protests on the streets in Guatemala since the presidential elections a couple of months ago, and this may carry on until the new president takes office in January. We remain cautiously optimistic in Guatemala. Now, let's go to slide 8 to discuss Project Everest. As many of you will recall, we began implementing our efficiency program earlier this year, and we communicated an ambition of achieving run rate savings of more than $100 million by year-end 2024.

We are on track to achieve those savings. In addition, early in the summer, we began working on Phase 2 of the program, as we mentioned on our Q2 call. Indeed, in September, we began implementing important headcount reductions and new cost-saving initiatives, starting with our centralized functions. We expect this first phase of Phase 2 to produce approximately $35 million in additional savings on top of the initial $100 million target. We also expect to finalize the scoping for the full Phase 2, along with our annual budget planning. So our ambition is actually much broader, as we have already identified very meaningful opportunities that we expect to implement, mostly before year-end. Sheldon will give you additional details about the cost of the program in a minute. On slide nine, let's review our progress on LATI. LATI is already a separate company and a separate brand.

New legal entities have now been created in every country. Earlier this month, we started transferring tower assets from Tigo to LATI, and we expect to complete this process in November. This means that we're ready now to launch a process to monetize this important infrastructure asset in Q4. Yes, showtime is coming up soon. As we have said in the past, we have certain preferences on the transaction that we envision will best maximize value. But as we have also said, we plan to keep all our options open until we can evaluate and compare the options that are brought to the table. So stay tuned. Opening date is indeed coming soon. With that, I will hand over to Sheldon to discuss the financials for the quarter.

Sheldon Bruha (EVP and CFO)

Thank you, Mauricio. Before we review the financials, let me quickly recap the macro context on slide 11. As you can see on the slide, inflation across most of our markets has followed closely the trend we have seen in the U.S., with inflation back to a more reasonable level of around 4%, with the exception of Colombia, where inflation is still in the double digits. The good news, though, is that the Colombian peso was strengthened significantly this year, and in fact, you will see that FX was a small tailwind for us during Q3. In terms of economic activity, our markets are generally proving quite resilient, with some countries like Panama and Paraguay expected to grow real GDP in the range of 4%-5% this year. Now let's look at our Q3 performance, beginning on slide 12.

Service revenue was $1.32 billion in the quarter, which is up 3.2% on a reported basis from $1.28 billion a year ago. For the first time in more than a year, our service revenues benefited from favorable FX trends this quarter, primarily due to the Colombian peso, as I just mentioned. Excluding the impact of FX, organic growth was 1.8% in the third quarter, very similar to the growth we reported in Q2. Our mobile business continues to perform well and accounted for nearly all of the growth in the quarter. Meanwhile, our fixed businesses were flat, and this is consistent with our broader capital allocation strategy over the past year, as I'll discuss later. Going down further on slide 13 to the service revenue by country.

As you can see, most of the countries experienced positive service revenue growth in the quarter. The two exceptions were Guatemala, which Mauricio already discussed, and Bolivia, which was down less than 1% in Q3. This is a significant improvement for Bolivia compared to last quarter, as we've begun to lap the regulatory changes that have impacted results since August 2022. Our mobile business had positive growth in the quarter, and the decline is coming from our home business, where we are choosing to be very disciplined on price to drive better cash flow from this market, given the more volatile macro backdrop in this country.

Colombia and Panama had low single-digit growth, and this is largely the result of our commercial and capital allocation decisions to focus on mobile in these countries. On the positive side, we've had solid mid-single-digit growth in the four countries on the bottom part of this page, with all three business units contributing to growth in these countries. Okay, turning to slide 14, EBITDA of $533 million was down 1.2% from $539 million from a year earlier. This is a cleaner quarter than first half of the year, but there are still a few items to unpick here to provide a fuller picture of the performance. First, FX, primarily from Colombia, provided a small tailwind of about $4 million this quarter. Second, we had two large one-offs.

The first was $22 million for severance related to Project Everest, which I'll talk about later. The second one was for $11 million and was the result of an adverse legal ruling in Colombia. Excluding FX and these one-offs in this quarter, as well as another in Q3 of last year, EBITDA would have grown 2.6% during the quarter, with positive growth in most countries, as you can see on slide 15. On this page, you can see that EBITDA tells a similar story as our service revenue growth, with positive growth everywhere except Guatemala and Bolivia. As Mauricio discussed previously, we are seeing some signs of stabilization in Guatemala. EBITDA declined 3% year-over-year, but it has been stable at $199 million for the third consecutive quarter. Bolivia was down 2.2%.

This is a big improvement from the last three quarters as we've begun to lap the regulatory changes that went into effect in August of last year, and we've seen improvement in our mobile business there. On the positive side, Colombia stood out with EBITDA growth of 9.1% and almost 20% excluding the legal one-off. As Mauricio mentioned already, our margins have been expanding over the past two years, and we think there is still more upside here, thanks to Project Everest and other initiatives that we have been implementing in order to drive better profitability and cash flow from our business in this country. Panama grew 2%, which is consistent with the 1.4% service revenue growth we saw in the quarter.

Remember also that we have made investments in our sports content offering that hurt our EBITDA growth this year, but that investment strengthens our home business and helps us maintain our leading market share in this business. You will also notice a lower margin in the quarter, and this is due to higher equipment sales related to the large B2B contract that we expect will start generating service revenue beginning in Q4. Paraguay had impressive EBITDA growth of 8.1%, and it was 11.6%, excluding the Everest-related severance. The strong performance is consistent with the strong service revenue growth we are seeing. In El Salvador, EBITDA growth of 16.1% benefited from a lower-than-usual level of bad debt that flattered performance this quarter.

On a year-to-date basis, EBITDA is up just under 7%, which is more consistent with the mid-single-digit service revenue growth in that country. Nicaragua EBITDA grew 3.6% as our business and the broader economy continued to grow despite the volatile political environment, and that is largely thanks to remittances from the United States, which continue to grow very rapidly. Finally, Honduras, which we do not consolidate, had another strong quarter with growth of 7.9%, reflecting the improved revenue trends during the quarter. Now please turn to slide 16 to review our efficiency program, Project Everest. Mauricio already gave you the highlights, but I want to help unpack the various puts and takes. In terms of savings, we are accelerating our plans.

For Phase 1, we remain on track to deliver more than $100 million by year-end 2024 and are in fact accelerating our plans. On a run rate basis, we now expect to achieve more than 75% of these savings by end of 2023. This is up from our previous estimate of more than 50%. As Mauricio told you, we have decided to significantly expand the scope of the project, which we refer to as Phase 2. During the quarter, we incurred $22 million of implementation costs. $19 million of this was related to new actions and initiatives we took that were concentrated in our headquarters and other centrally managed and shared service activities, including approximately 30% of our Miami-based population.

This will result in additional run rate savings of approximately $35 million above and beyond the Phase 1 savings of $100 million. In total, since the beginning of this year, we will have reduced our Miami-based population by approximately 40% through a number of separate restructuring decisions. Over the next several weeks, we'll be finalizing our 2024 budget, and we expect to take additional measures across all our geographies as part of that process, where we expect additional severance charges to drive additional savings for the business. We will provide a further information at our full-year results in February. Now please turn to slide 17. In addition to organizational savings, we've also had significant savings in capital expenditures this year. Through the first nine months, our CapEx spend is about $150 million lower than prior year.

I've mentioned in prior calls the source of these savings, which is a combination of three key components of roughly equal size. Firstly, earlier this year, we conducted 3-year renewals with our largest mobile vendors, where we received multiyear discounts. As you can see on the left-hand side of this chart, our level of mobile build activity has remained constant, while we are also able to absorb the impact of activating the new 700 MHz and 2600 MHz spectrum we obtained in Guatemala. Secondly, we've reduced our home footprint expansion in light of tougher competitive and macro environments in Colombia and Bolivia in particular.

Lastly, home installations are down, again, primarily in Colombia and Bolivia, as we are being more disciplined in pricing and promotions, given the more challenging environments there. On top of this, we continue to scrutinize all other CapEx spending and are finding other opportunities to lower spend and contribute to this year-on-year savings. Now, please turn to slide 18 for our usual net debt bridge. Net debt declined $74 million in the quarter to just over $6 billion. Net debt to EBITDA after leases was 3.32x. That's down from 3.34x at Q2. If we include lease obligations of just over $1 billion, our leverage was 3.34x.

The decline of the net debt during the quarter was primarily due to strong equity free cash flow of $100 million, which was partially offset by the FX impact from the translation of local currency debt as the Colombian peso strengthened this quarter. Regarding our equity free cash flow, I want to remind you that there is a lot of seasonality here. Q1 is usually negative, and then we see improving trends throughout the year. The strong cash flow in Q3 reflects typical seasonal patterns, as well as some of the benefits of Project Everest and of our capital allocation decisions over the past year. Looking ahead to Q4, which is usually the strongest quarter of the year for equity free cash flow, I want to caution you that this year should be a bit different.

This is because we're expecting more than $100 million of spectrum payments in Q4. This is for the renewal of the 1900 MHz spectrum in Colombia, and the acquisition of the new spectrum of 700 MHz band in Guatemala. Items that we flagged for you when we revised our equity free cash flow targets in June. Also in Q4, we have to pay a lot of the severance that we booked in Q3 and that we expect to book in Q4. Let me hand the call over to Maxime, who is joining us for the first time on this earnings call.

Maxime Lombardini (President and COO)

Thank you, Sheldon. It is my pleasure to be here today. As you may know, I joined the company on the first of September, so a little less than two months ago. At this time of year, the company begins planning the budget for next year, and this has given me the perfect opportunity to interact with each of the country teams and with the leadership teams in Miami and Luxembourg. I have also had the opportunity to travel in our three biggest country of operations, Guatemala, Colombia and Panama, and I have more visits planned before year-end. As you can imagine, I am still learning about the company, but today I can share some of my first impressions on my priorities.

Firstly, Tigo is an incredible company with a strong brand and market leadership position, run by a talented team, a team with a strong culture and can-do attitude, ready to take on any challenge when the target is clear. But we do business in countries with volatile macroeconomic and political environments, and we do not generate enough cash. This means that we must de-risk the company by operating efficiently and with lower leverage, and we must ensure that the business can generate much higher equity free cash flow every year. With that in mind, one of my first priorities has been to significantly expand the push on costs. We started immediately in September by decreasing drastically HQ costs in Miami. Currently, as part of the budget process, I am challenging each country team on their costs and CapEx.

On a day-to-day basis, I am personally reviewing each purchase order and every dollar that we spend. Short term, a strong focus on cost control is the clear priority. And as we strive to deliver on the free cash flow target that we are reiterating today, I will be equally focused on making sure that we capture the long-term revenue growth opportunity with the right investments that are necessary to provide the excellent experience that Tigo customers have come to expect. I will report back to you next quarter on our progress with more details.

Speaker 11

Thank you, Maxime. With that, we're going to now go to the Q&A session. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please email us at [email protected]. We'll take the first question from Oscar Rönnkvist from ABG. Oscar, the line is yours.

Oscar Rönnkvist (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, and good morning. Even though it's in the middle of the day for me in Stockholm. Just two questions, if that's okay, please. Just first one on Guatemala. You say that signs of improvement or an improving market is visible. So how should we think about timing? You mean at around 1%-2% decline in service revenue, like the last few quarters. So just wanted to get a sense of if you should see that delta improving already in Q4 or if you expect that to take a bit longer. My second question is just on CapEx. I think you have been around $180 million each quarter for the last three ones, and you say that, I mean, you're holding back a bit on home, right?

Also, you are looking at efficiency. So just the $180 figure over the last 3 quarters, I guess that's a bit low, maybe on the sort of run rate on an annualized basis. Just, if you could elaborate on the timing or any quantification on the new run rate, please. Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

All right. Hello, Oscar, and welcome. Thanks for joining us today. I'll take the first one on Guate and timing, etc., and the market, and I'll give Sheldon a little bit of time to prepare some numbers for you on the CapEx question. On Guate, I think we've played it really, really well.

The timing, which is the core of your question, is happening pretty much as we expected it would happen. And with that, I'll give you some color. As you recall, over the last year or so, we faced a tremendous amount of competitive pressure on prepaid. We set out to basically hold our market share position, our very strong market share position, and we've been able to do that. Not without some pain on the revenue, for sure, but certainly holding on to our market share and our subscriber base. And we did that knowing that we could and we would revamp, re-stabilize both the spectrum position and the network position, and we have done that. That was the long game, that was the long strategy that we were playing, and over the course of the quarters this year, we have seen that play out.

Two consecutive spectrum auctions, we no longer have any network disadvantage, we no longer have any service disadvantage, we no longer have any spectrum disadvantage. So quite frankly, we were playing the long game, and it has worked out as we expected it would. Subsequently to that, we took a price increase, on prepaid, to a percentage of the prepaid base, in mid to late September. So you don't actually see it in the quarterly numbers yet. But as we look forward, this was the timing that we were expecting: strong network position, strong spectrum position, so that we could now focus on the commercial actions. So far, as I said, we are cautiously optimistic. Cannot guarantee ever, can never guarantee that price increases will stick, but we're certainly playing a cautious, well-played game here.

So the answer to your question is, things have been playing out as we expected it would, and we wanted to play them out. We're also just mathematically lapping pretty much the initial effects of the push on competition, but we are playing the long game here, Oscar, and that's why we use the term cautiously optimistic. Things are better in the market, they're more rational in the market, as compared to what they were before. But we're playing the long game, and we're playing a very strategic game here, so we're cautiously optimistic. Going into Q4, just to manage your expectations, remember we had a very good Q4 last year because of the World Cup that we had, so we're not gonna have that this year.

So again, long term means, you know, Q4 will have some, you know, some difficult comps vis-à-vis the World Cup. Did I miss anything, guys?

Speaker 11

I think, Oscar, we should also just flag that there's been some significant protests in the street in Guatemala these last several weeks, since the presidential election, so that has created a little bit of a disruption in terms of economic activity. But, you know, the new president takes office in early January, so that could continue for some time, but still a little too early to know what kind of impact that might have.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

Yeah, Guatemala has a very lengthy timeframe between elections, and actual handover is over six months, so that's created a little bit of political turmoil there. So come January, our hope would be that things will be on the quiet side politically.

Speaker 11

Sheldon?

Sheldon Bruha (EVP and CFO)

Okay, on the CapEx question you had, look, I mentioned a lot in the presentation around what was driving some of the reductions in CapEx this year. I mean, really around, you know, basically, you know, majority of CapEx decline really related to two markets, Colombia and Bolivia, where, you know, we, you know, I think it's absolutely appropriate some of the steps were taken in terms of discipline around our CapEx spend, given, you know, the situations in both those countries.

But look, on going forward, you know, I would just say, you know, and you would have heard it kind of in Maxime's comments, you know, in addition to the things that's been happening this year, you know, we are being very disciplined, and scrutinizing sort of CapEx spend across the business. You know, I would not expect CapEx spends to be higher than what you're seeing right now as we go into 2024. I would expect us to be, you know, maybe slightly lower than those levels, you know, on a going-forward basis. So, well, that's how, you know, if you're asking sort of where we see the trending is going, it's, you know, levels lower than what you're seeing currently.

Oscar Rönnkvist (Equity Research Analyst)

Understood. Thank you very much.

Speaker 11

Thank you, Oscar. Okay, next we're gonna go to Phani, Phani Kanumuri from HSBC. Phani, the line is yours.

Phani Kanumuri (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, thanks everyone for taking my questions. My first question is on Colombia. You seem to have had a good margin accretion this quarter. How sustainable is the margin accretion? And once you complete the Project Everest, where do you expect the margins to trend in Colombia? And again, the second question is again, in Colombia. You had a recent equity infusion into Colombia. Do you see any potential equity infusions in 2024 or 2025 into Colombia?

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

All right, I'll take the first one and perhaps a little bit of the second one, and as always, give Sheldon a little bit of time to get the numbers right. So the things, Phani, that have been driving our record margins in Colombia this quarter are a combination of activities. First, as you recall, there was a ton of network investment and commercial expansion that happened in the years prior, right after we had bought the 700 MHz spectrum. That's behind us, so now we are more on the efficiency phase of those network investments and commercial expansions. The second element is that, as you know, mobile is a game of scale, and we have been gaining scale, particularly in postpaid in Colombia. So obviously that helps the margin on a, you know, fixed cost-based business.

The third element in Colombia is Project Everest, Phase 1 of Project Everest, which we started very early on this year. As we've been talking, there is a Phase 2 that will help maintain sustainability of that margin expansion going forward. The fourth element is that there's been, and I use these words with a degree of cautiousness, more price rationality in the market in the last few quarters, and particularly, we've been able to sustain or drive service revenue on postpaid, both on volume and on ARPU as well. Also, we've been very, very disciplined on the home business, as we alluded during the call, keeping prices up, charging installation, and if need be, sacrificing volume over profitability, and that's what you see in the results.

Going forward, profitability will also be enhanced by the mobile network and spectrum contribution agreement that we talked about in the prior quarter and this quarter. And all of these combined lead to the one single focus that we have in Colombia, which is to make colombia equity free cash flow positive. As you recall me saying a number of times, it's the only operation in the portfolio that has not been equity free cash flow, and our drive has been to make that business equity free cash flow. And I'll tell you, at the risk of, you know, not giving you, you know, specifics, that we're really focused on making that happen as soon as possible. And that gives you an idea as to why, you know, we're, we're driving hard with the expectation of not having any additional equity contribution going forward.

With that, I'll hand it over to Sheldon.

Sheldon Bruha (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, no, Mauricio, you really hit the key points. I mean, I think, you know, EBITDA is, and EBITDA margins are important metrics to be tracking, but most importantly, and more importantly, it's the equity free cash flow performance we're trying to drive out of that business and getting that business to equity free cash flow, you know, break even first initially, and ultimately equity free cash flow positive. And, you know, of course, once that's achieved, that's gonna certainly address your second question about will more capital be needed from the shareholders. I mean, you know, the answer would be no once we get that business to be equity free cash flow positive. So, you know, that's where the focus is.

Look, I think we're gonna make a lot of progress on that in 2024, in terms of achieving that objective. You know, that's, you know, that's kind of where the focus is right now for that business.

Phani Kanumuri (Equity Research Analyst)

In the best-case scenario, when do you expect to achieve a kind of break-even, or at least a broad timeline for, for Colombia?

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

There's this thing that happens on a yearly basis called the budget, right? That's all I'll say. That's a non-answer, Phani. Look, as soon as we possibly can. There's nothing we. You can just imagine how focused we are on this, Phani, right? As soon as we can. We've done everything in Colombia, again, back to the Guatemala question, by the playbook. This is the game we were playing with a single objective, which is to get Colombia to equity free cash flow positive as soon as possible, and just about every action has been driven in that direction. We put Everest Phase 1 early on in Colombia, early this year. We're obviously focused on Colombia for Phase 2 of Everest, and all you can take away from, you know, without forcing us into specifics on guidance, is that we're very focused on making Colombia equity free cash flow.

Phani Kanumuri (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, sure. Yeah, thanks a lot for the answer.

Speaker 11

Thank you, Phani. All right, next we're gonna go to Marcelo Santos from JPMorgan. Hey, Marcelo.

Marcelo Santos (Senior Sell-side Equity Analyst of TMT and Education)

Hi. Hello, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first question is just if you had any update on Tigo Money strategic alternatives. You disclosed that in the Investor Day, so I just wanted to know how this is going. The second question is actually for Maxime. You mentioned that you're going to do the right investments to capture the long-term revenue growth opportunities. Could you expand a bit on what do you see as the main long-term revenue growth opportunities? If you could give some color, would be great.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

All right, I'll take the first one and give Maxime a little bit of time to, you know, prepare a couple of brilliant ideas there for sure. So listen, on Tigo Money, we continue to grow the business quite positively. Geographically, as you may recall, we're very strong in Paraguay, very strong in Bolivia. We've relaunched this year in Guatemala. Tigo Money existed in Guatemala, but it didn't have the full suite of products in there, so we relaunched in Guatemala. We've also obtained licenses and launched in Panama, and we're happy with the progress that we're making then operationally.

Our second area of focus is making sure that we complete the delivery and implementation of the full suite of the service offering, so the wallet app, but also continue to increase the merchant community, and also begin piloting, which successfully delivering in Bolivia and also in Guatemala. And we continue to find very important ways of making the telecom business work really closely with the fintech business in the eyes of the consumer, which we think is a win-win for everybody. And we're also now beyond this investment phase that we put for the last couple of years, very focused, again, going back to our cash flow emphasis for 2024 on making sure Tigo Money is, with all of this investment and launches behind it, OCF break even, and we're very happy with that result.

Which leaves us then with plenty of flexibility to then figure out in these very difficult fintech markets, Marcelo... When is the best time to maximize, and how is the best time to maximize the value of that asset? And that is the punchline to your question. And Maxime, showtime for you.

Maxime Lombardini (President and COO)

Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon. Thank you, Marcelo, for your question. You know, I joined the company something like seven weeks ago, so it's a bit early to describe a full strategy for the future. What I wanted to say with the few words about the future is that the future of a company cannot be only on cost-cutting. Cost-cutting is today a clear need to be back to cash generation, but that's not the sole project for the company. So we are working a lot also on CapEx optimization, meaning where to invest properly in mobile densification coverage, and more importantly, probably, where to invest and what to do on home, where you know the margin are a bit stretched.

So those I would say will probably come in a bit more next quarter, but today it's a bit too early. And then there are many, many other options within each one of the geography where on the home business, as you can see, there are many networks of a building and probably intelligent solution that could be worked on.

Marcelo Santos (Senior Sell-side Equity Analyst of TMT and Education)

Wonderful. Perfect. Thank you very much for the answers.

Speaker 11

Thank you, Marcelo. Next we're gonna go to Stefan Gauffin of DNB. Stefan, you're on mute, I believe.

Stefan Gauffin (Senior Equity Analyst of Telecom Services and Tech)

Don't want any issues. Can you hear me now?

Speaker 11

Yes.

Stefan Gauffin (Senior Equity Analyst of Telecom Services and Tech)

Yes, great. So a couple of questions. First on the network JV with Telefónica in Colombia, if you can somehow quantify what kind of savings you could get from that on both OpEx and CapEx and when those can materialize. And secondly, a question for Maxime. You mentioned in your remarks that given volatility in these markets you believe the leverage is a bit high, which I think all of us agree to. But now, given the strategic initiatives with the sale of LATI, etc., so my question is: where would you see leverage to go to be comfortable?

If it's totally preferred to pay down debt rather than have some sort of shareholder remuneration from sale of LATI, etc.? Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

Hey, Stefan, good to see you as always.

Stefan Gauffin (Senior Equity Analyst of Telecom Services and Tech)

You too.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

Great questions. I'll take the first one on the network JV briefly, and then I'll hand over the second one, if it's okay to you, with you, to our CFO, Sheldon, so that we provide you with the full institutional, I got to do this in my role, as I can see your smile, as interim chair, so that we provide you with the full institutional view on leverage, from the board. On the network JV, I think the two key areas without, you know, our ability to give you, you know, specific details, obviously, there is the OpEx and CapEx savings of running a single network, right? That's the nature of a network JV on mobile. In addition to that, there is the synergies of running a single pool of spectrum.

And this is important, particularly in Colombia, because, you know, the cost of spectrum in Colombia is significantly higher than in most other regions. So the ability to run not only a single network from the CapEx and OpEx side, but also to pool your network is an important part of the savings from that JV. And on the question of leverage, you will be happily reassured that we have coincidence on our targets, institutionally. Sheldon?

Sheldon Bruha (EVP and CFO)

Sure. Look, on leverage, I think, you know, very consistent what we've said before, Stefan, you know, on this point, you know, our intermediate target remains 2.5x EBITDA. We haven't made the progress towards that objective this year for a variety of reasons. Some that were in our control, some that, you know, that weren't. But we've got several one-offs this period, things that we're, you know, unusual items, but also things that we're doing and driving the business around the severance costs. You know, look, you know, we see us making a lot of progress next year on this leverage reduction. I mean, next year is gonna be a big year for us for, you know, for cash flow generation.

As we've said, it's gonna be the highest of the three years in our three-year targets, in terms of what we're gonna be delivering. It's also gonna be sort of cleaner of a lot of the one-off charges we've been taking, particularly this year, with regard to the severance charges. You know, I will point out, you know, we're expecting, as you've heard in my prepared remarks, more severance charges in Q4 as we complete the budgeting processes and go to the countries. So, you know, there will be sizable charges again, which the benefits of will be accruing in 2024.

You know, and currently this year, there was kind of a lot of unusualness, a little bit around FX, that's also, you know, ticked our leverage up a bit higher. You know, in particular, Colombia has appreciated from a currency standpoint. Now, a lot of that appreciation has happened more recently, and so, you know, in terms of the benefit on EBITDA, that hasn't really flowed through our LTM EBITDA, last twelve months EBITDA, but it has hit us pretty quickly on marking to market the Colombian debt, you know, on a higher basis and, you know, on the debt situation. So that should roll off, you know, assuming that, you know, trends kind of remain constant on the currency, that should also benefit us into, you know, into 2024.

So look, I think we're gonna be making progress on the deleveraging, certainly in 2024. You know, we told you on a previous call that, you know, we expect to get to that 2.5x level in, you know, by 2026, one year later than the previous, given some of the adjustments we've made on our equity free cash flow outlook. But look, I think we're gonna be making a lot of progress on that, you know, and really seeing meaningful progress in 2024. As it pertains to LATI, in sort of, you know, quite frankly, I think we're gonna kind of hold off and sort of, you know, talking about proceeds from LATI until we have proceeds from LATI, right?

So, but we're launching a process, and we'll have to see how that process, you know, evolves in terms of what we're able to achieve, and then we'll assess the situation at that point in time, I think, in terms of what the best way to allocate those proceeds.

Stefan Gauffin (Senior Equity Analyst of Telecom Services and Tech)

Yes, yes, agree. Better to wait until the bear is shot before we sell the skin.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

That sound like the Scandi way of saying it, Stefan.

Stefan Gauffin (Senior Equity Analyst of Telecom Services and Tech)

Yeah.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

The priority remains to reduce leverage. That's the short answer.

Speaker 11

Thank you, Stefan. So next, we'll go to Eduardo Nieto of JPMorgan. Eduardo?

Eduardo Nieto (VP and Equity Analyst)

Yes. Thank you, guys. So, part of my question was already answered, but I wanted to follow up on the capital allocation strategies. Moody's recently put you on a negative watch, basically because of challenges in Colombia, but also because of high leverage and governance concerns, potentially having more aggressive financial policies. You partly addressed that, but curious on what your plan is to address those concerns, avoid the downgrade. And my second question would be in Colombia, in terms of the 5G auction. Obviously, I'm just curious about how you will translate the EBITDA performance into cash flows and how you expect spectrum costs and all those items to behave going forward.

If you see any other opportunities, you talked about inorganic solutions, so curious if you can give any more color on that.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

Yeah, listen, on the part, Eduardo, that has a little bit of the noise on Colombia, as you very well know, there was just a lot of noise there. But the reality is, we came out of that process with a well-capitalized business, a business that has expanding margins, revenue growth, OCF growth, and has, as we discussed earlier, a significant focus on driving the business towards being equity free cash flow positive as soon as we can. So I think there was a lot of noise there, but the reality is the business in Colombia is improving significantly at all levels, including its strategic optionality going forward. And, you know, as that relates to the group, as we just discussed, and I'll hand it over to Sheldon for additional.

Our focus remains on cash flow generation next year, as we have said a number of times, and we'll repeat that today. We think 2024 is a year of our cash flow. And with that, I think, you know, we reiterate our focus on reducing leverage, as we have done this number of times. 5G on Colombia, we're reviewing the terms. They just came out last night. Obviously, we've been very involved in the process. We understand a lot of it, but I'd rather, you know, answer that question once we have full information on exactly what the details of that. You know, it's an ongoing process, and those processes do tend to move around and shift around as they are being finalized with the authorities.

Sheldon, anything?

Sheldon Bruha (EVP and CFO)

Well, not too much more to add. I think in terms of, in terms of the Moody's, you know, concerns that they're highlighted, I think are the exact items that we probably have as our, as our four priorities in terms of what we're addressing as, you know, as a, as a company. So, you know, look, we need to deliver stronger cash flow. We believe next year, you know, and stronger deleveraging. We believe next year is gonna be a big year for us on that, on that front, and, and go a long way towards addressing a lot of things that, you know, you guys have been highlighting to us and Moody's has been highlighting to us.

I think, you know, I think, you know, we've kind of highlighted exactly where, you know, what we expect, we expect from a cash flow perspective and a deleveraging perspective. You know, I think now we just need to deliver on that and to address those issues.

Eduardo Nieto (VP and Equity Analyst)

Understood. Thank you very much.

Speaker 11

Thank you, Eduardo. Okay, next up, I think we have André Salles from UBS on the line. André, are you, are you there?

André Salles (Associate Analyst of Equity Research)

Yes. Yes, I'm on. Sorry about my camera. I'm having technical difficulties here to make it work. Sorry. So hi, everyone, first of all, thanks for the presentation and for taking my question here. Actually, I have two on my end. The first one is more like on a cash flow basis. We saw positive contribution here of working capital to free cash flow in this quarter. Could you please give us a little more color on that? What has driven this positive impact, and if we should expect the same trend to go in the following quarters? The second question is regarding our product timeline here in the Guatemala business. So when do you expect that the improved spectrum capabilities that you now have would translate into better efficiency?

And if it could mean investments here in the country in the upcoming quarters. That'll be all from my side. Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

Sure. I'll be brief on number 2 and, and give Sheldon a little bit of time to look up the numbers in detail. We've been working, as I said, for the long run, long game, as I described on the very first question, Guatemala. So we were readying up the network and getting ready, for the use of the new spectrum pretty quickly. So a lot of that has been done, and as a result of that, we have started the subsequent commercial activities, as I said, on September the 18th. So now, really, it comes down to the marketplace, André, and stabilization of the commercial activities in the marketplace. And as I alluded, also, some, some of the political, you know, last few weeks issues all sort of stabilize.

It's less of a network and a spectrum issue and more of a commercial stabilization now going forward. As I said earlier, we took a prepaid price increase. We're optimistic about it, and commercially, we're cautiously optimistic. That's the full answer on that one. Sheldon?

Sheldon Bruha (EVP and CFO)

Sure. On the equity free cash flow performance for this quarter, I mean, look, I mean, you highlighted working capital. I mean, I would highlight, I think, strong performance kind of across the board. I mean, OCF was a big contributor to us this quarter in terms of driving equity free cash flow. Taxes, I think, was a contributor for us in terms of driving equity free cash flow this quarter. Interest costs actually was not, as we've been talking about, just some of the higher interest rate environment in some of our countries. Working capital contributed as well, but you know, to some degree, a couple items I would highlight there for you, though.

You know, we took, we took our severance provisions here, about $22 million this quarter. You know, that's, that's going to be paid in future quarters, right? So that's probably, that's one of the contributors to, to working capital benefit. The same on this, on this legal provision we, we took in, in Colombia that was cash out, at least this period, so that was also a contributor to working capital.

We did have a large B2B project in Panama that benefited us a bit on working capital, sort of, you know, the timing of sort of payments received versus payments going out to some subcontractors and some, you know, and some of the equipment providers who are providing some of the information or some of the aspects of that project. So that benefited us a little bit as well on working capital. Those are probably the key items I would highlight, but look, I think it was a good quarter, you know, overall from equity free cash flow.

You know, I was cautious in terms of making sure you have, in terms of forward looking, you know, I did pull out and highlight a few items on a forward-looking basis on equity free cash flow, particularly spectrum in Q4, which is going to be a big uptick for us. We highlighted in June, in terms of a full year perspective of, you know, higher spectrum costs this year, but, you know, particularly it's going to be pronounced in Q4 for us this year, you know, on the spectrum costs, as well as then just paying for some of the items that we took. You know, we booked here from a severance perspective this quarter, as well as what we expect to be booking next quarter.

Speaker 11

All right. Thank you, André.

André Salles (Associate Analyst of Equity Research)

Thank you. Yeah, yeah, thank you, and sorry once again for the camera.

Speaker 11

No worries. Thank you, André. All right, so next, we'll take our last question from Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken. Fredrik, good to see you.

Fredrik Lithell (Senior Research Analyst)

Good to see you. Thank you very much. Thank you for taking my questions as well. Maybe just a little bit of a housekeeping, Sheldon. You, I think you mentioned earlier about the, severance costs also in Q4. Was that correctly understood, or did we see a peak here in Q3 on severance costs? That, that's the first one, really. The second is on the Everest 1, 2, and possibly number 3, enlargement of sort of that project as well. I, I'm just curious to get an elaboration on how deep you can cut in cost before it starts to hamper your ability to, push growth, at the same time.

I'm just curious how you balance that going forward, so you don't get, you know, poor scores on customer care or you're not setting up the next base station, whatever it might be. I'm just curious to have a sort of reasoning around that balance would be interesting to hear.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

Yeah, I'll start with the second one. Obviously, Fredrik, we'll be very, very careful, very, very conscientious, and obviously, we start with the areas that are less revenue-generating and protect those definitely as part of the process. So you can, you can rest assured that we are surgical in our approach, that everything gets reviewed with a payback analysis, and that we certainly protect the areas that are long-term revenue generating, as part of the process. But there is room to be more and more efficient. The ambition on Everest was always significantly high, and we're emboldened and supported by our new largest shareholder, to take that opportunity.

As we've been discussing some of the markets that are part of the question, you know, we, we should also highlight that part of the reason why we see a path to better cash flow in many of those markets is because we see efficiencies, significant efficiencies there at all levels as well. So that's the full answer to your question. Yeah.

Sheldon Bruha (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, I would just add, I mean, I think in addition to that, I mean, I think, you know, in terms of these cost savings, we're trying to take complexity out of the business and add simplification, you know, which I think, quite frankly, can be beneficial from a customer perspective, you know, as well, as, you know, fewer product offerings, you know, you know, fewer complications in terms of how they interact with us, you know, etc. So, so some of the cost savings actually, hopefully, will be, you know, I would expect to be beneficial as well to the, to the top line, not just, you know, not just sort of cut, you know, if you're trying to push us towards, are we cutting fat and muscle out of the business?

I think, quite frankly, I think we're trying to improve the way we operate, you know, as a company. In terms of additional severance costs, I mean, yes, we're going, as I alluded to, we're going through our budgeting process right now, and you know as you know, we've taken the actions on the headquarters this quarter in terms of this Phase 2. You know, we're vitalizing you know our plans for you know for the countries here, you know as we finalize the budgeting, and there will be charges here in Q4 related to that.

We're not, we're not gonna, you know, give you essentially size, and, and guidance on that at this point in time, but it will be $10s of millions of, you know, of, of severance costs, I would expect in, you know, in Q4. And, you know, we'll be giving you much more color on that once we complete our budgeting process here in, and at the, at the full year results in February.

Fredrik Lithell (Senior Research Analyst)

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Speaker 11

Consistent with that, Fredrik, you should assume that that $135 million number will also increase commensurately.

Fredrik Lithell (Senior Research Analyst)

Right.

Speaker 11

Right.

Fredrik Lithell (Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Speaker 11

Right.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

All right.

Speaker 11

Okay. Thank you very much, Fredrik. So I think that wraps up the Q&A session. Mauricio, back to you.

Mauricio Ramos (CEO)

Yeah, I just wanna give you the 30-second wrap-up, just to make sure that the big points are clear, and they should be pretty obvious on our call today. Colombia is growing well, and it's improving its profitability very quickly. It is now better capitalized, and we have received approval for merging our mobile network and our spectrum positions in Colombia. Tons of work in Colombia, and that work is in progress. But we made a lot of progress this quarter, and we're heading in the right direction, as we alluded during the call, with a clear objective ahead of us. In Guatemala, as you have heard us for a number of quarters, our market leadership has been sustained. Spectrum positions have now been equalized, so we no longer have a spectrum or a network disadvantage, and we're putting that to use.

There are initial signs of a healthy environment after we took some price increases in prepaid in mid-September. So, as I said, we're cautiously optimistic in Guatemala, and as you've heard, our cost savings and our ambitions on efficiency have been increased with a Phase 2 of Project Everest. And most importantly, all of these efforts are aimed at a single thing, which we have alluded to before, and that is to make 2024 the year of our strongest cash flow delivery. So hopefully, those points are clear, and thank you for joining us today.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Thank you.