Q1 2025 Liberty Latin America Ltd Earnings Call
Thank you for joining us today, and thank you very much for joining us today.
and Bill Brierly. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Today's call is being recorded. I'll now turn to the call over to Sean Fitzgerald, VP of Tax of Liberty Latin America.
Speaker Change: Good morning and welcome to Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2025 investor call.
Speaker Change: 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 statement.
Speaker Change: Including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical facts.
Speaker Change: Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements.
Speaker Change: For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in Liberty Latin America as most recently filed annual report on form 10K and quarterly report on form 10K along with the Associated Press release.
Speaker Change: In addition, on this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.
which are reconciled to the most comparable GAAP financial measures.
Speaker Change: which can be found in the appendices to this presentation which is accessible into the investors' section of our website.
Speaker Change: I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO , Mr. Balan Nair.
Balan Nair: Thank you Sean and welcome everyone to Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2025 results presentation.
Speaker Change: A begin with a group highlighting an overview of our operating results by Fred Psylo.
Speaker Change: Chris Noyes, our CFO will then follow over the review of the company's financial performance.
After that, we will get straight to your questions.
Speaker Change: As always, I'm joined by my executive team from across our operations, and I'll invite them to contribute as needed during the Q&A, following our prepared remarks.
Starting at Slide 4, you know, Highlights for the Year
Speaker Change: In the first quarter, we added 44,000 broadband and post-paid mobile subscribers in total. We saw notable progress on post-paid mobile in Costa Rica, as well as across our Caribbean operations.
Speaker Change: A broadband and post-paid strategy remains underpinned by our fixed mobile convergence efforts across the group. In our most successful markets, FMC penetration is now over 30%. This is driving a lower chance and a more predictable revenue profile.
Speaker Change: Re-reported group on adjusted or even a rebate growth of 8% year-over-year in Q1.
Speaker Change: This was driven by double digit growth in CNW Caribbean and CNW Panama, contributing to a very strong performance for CNW silo. Our cost management efforts created a flywheel in driving margin expansion across the company.
Speaker Change: At the full year results we discuss an outlook for lower capital intensity across the group in 25 and 26
Speaker Change: And we are starting to see this coming true as well, with lower P&E editions in Q1, then prior years period, driving growth of adjusted, or even there are less P&E editions of 20% year over year.
Speaker Change: Tending to slide six, I'll begin our operating review with our Kibbel and Wireless Credit Silo, which had a very solid water.
Speaker Change: Our CNW credit house composed of CNW Caribbean, CNW Panama, and our Liberty Networks segment.
Speaker Change: Looking first at CNW Caribbean, where we deliver good operating momentum and very strong financial execution.
Speaker Change: Starting on the left of the slide, with our subscriber additions.
Speaker Change: Having been negatively impacted by Hurricane barrel during the last two quarters of 24, primarily in Jamaica, in Q1 we saw a return to growth as we began to add back fixed prop and RGUs.
Speaker Change: In mobile, we continue to drive positive post-pay performance in Q1, adding 15,000 subscribers.
Speaker Change: CNW Caribbean represents a proof point of the successful execution of our FMC strategy with strong KPIs being delivered alongside a fourth percentage point increase in FMC penetration year-over-year to over 35%.
Speaker Change: We are also launching loyalty programs across the region with the goal of reducing chain by rewarding the long-term customers.
Speaker Change: Moving to the center of the slide and our revenue by product.
Speaker Change: The pie chart depicts the well diversified nature of CNW Caribbean revenue with consumer fix and B2B, the largest elements followed by consumer mobile.
Speaker Change: Year-over-year rebate revenue growth has muted in the quarter, partly due to lower B2B project revenues, but we continue to steadily grow our aggregate broadband and mobile service revenue, with 3% year-over-year rebate increasing Q1.
Speaker Change: Chris recovered the very strong cost management in the Caribbean which led it to report a record-adjusted
Speaker Change: Moving to slide 7 in our CNW Panama segment Starting in the left of the slide, we continue to see fixed growth in the first quarter, adding not just broadband additions but also video
Speaker Change: This has been supported by recent efforts to expand and upgrade our network with FDKH, which now represents 65% of our home span.
Speaker Change: In Mobile, we continue to grow our post-paid base as we drive pre-paid to post-paid migration.
Speaker Change: Moving to the center of the slide in our revenue stream, which can aggregate, we drove our top line 5% high in the quarter, on a rebase basis. CNW Tanama was the fastest growing segment in our group, this quarter in term of revenue.
Speaker Change: Cross was driven by residential mobile which is up 16% while fixed crew by 3% both on a rebased basis year-over-year.
Speaker Change: Mobile Growth benefited from a larger subscriber base and pricing actions we took throughout 2024, leveraging off the current market structure we saw consolidation from 4 to 2 players in the past few years and subsequent market repair
Speaker Change: Moving Slide 8 in a 30NW Credit Silo segment, Liberty Networks.
Speaker Change: This continues to be a great business for us, with exceptional US dollar free cash flow generation. To provide some visibility of the underlying trends in the business, on the left side of the slide we present revenue broken down by business lines.
Speaker Change: Paul Shale had a very strong quarter with higher lease capacity, and project revenue more than offsetting non-cash IRU declines, adjusting for IRU's rebate growth was 7% year over year.
Speaker Change: Enterprise continues to perform well, growing 4% year-over-year on a rebase basis, driven by growth in IT as a service, and connectivity, especially in Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
Speaker Change: Meanwhile, we are now to contract with Subcom for the design, manufacture, and installation of the multi-subsea cable system.
Speaker Change: Its investments are within our Capac's envelope and provide opportunities for strong future revenue growth.
Speaker Change: Even with the P&E additions in the new fiber routes of Montana Q1, our adjusted Oybeda Les P&E margin is still at an exceptional 36%.
Speaker Change: Turning to slide ten in our next credit cycle, Liberty Costa Rica.
Speaker Change: Starting on the left of this line, we saw continued quarterly broadband additions in Q1 in what is our most competitive fixed market, which helped to partly offset our food prices.
Speaker Change: We continue to future-proof our network and with our recent investments almost half of our network is now on FTTH.
Speaker Change: In mobile, we were again successful in growing our base, adding 30,000 post-bed subscribers in the quarter.
Speaker Change: This was the most successful segment for Post-Bate ads in Q1. And once again, it's reflective of our focus on FMC, which saw penetration growth, 6 percentage points year over year to
Speaker Change: Moving to the center of the slide, consumer mobile remains our largest revenue category, representing over 60% share of our overall revenue in Costa Rica.
Speaker Change: This is followed by a consumer-fixed business representing just under 30% and then a small but fast-growing V2B operation.
Speaker Change: Costa Rica are the most competitive fixed market with five nationwide plays. While in mobile, we compete against two other operators.
Speaker Change: We are taking the first step in consolidating the fixed market draw, announced J.B. with TIGO. We still expect this to be close in the second half of this year.
Speaker Change: Overall, I am very pleased with our performance and future prospects in Costa Rica and expect the integration with Tigo to yield even more growth opportunities and rationalization of the market.
Speaker Change: Next, the Slide 12 and our third credit title, Liberty Puerto Rico.
Speaker Change: Starting on the left of the slide, in Q1, we lost 3000 fixed broadband customers, though some impact was anticipated following our annual price increase for the fixed base.
Speaker Change: It's typical to see a small-chern response to pricing rules. However, this is expected to underpin future revenue performance.
Speaker Change: Turning to mobile, on post-paid, we continue to make progress in lowering change. We have seen voluntary change for every month over the last six months, almost half the level is watching no better.
Gross ads, however, will touch light in Q1, sequentially.
Speaker Change: Overall, progress in retaining the business to positive post-based ads is slower than we would like, though we remain focused on improving the trends in coming months as we refresh our customer value proposition and provide differentiated offering to customers.
Speaker Change: Across the group, we are focused on leveraging our capabilities with FMC solutions for our customers. And this is equally a goal for us in Puerto Rico where we have a strong starting point through our best-in-class fix and mobile networks.
Speaker Change: In the center of the slide, we show the revenue mix in Puerto Rico, and our overall year over year top line rebase decline, which at 11% continues to be a headwind for the overall group.
Speaker Change: To address the margin compression, we have begun a cost-getting exercise to reflect the lower revenue of the segment.
Speaker Change: We expect a second half of the year to reflect a lower cost structure and the beginning of positive growth in post-may.
Speaker Change: We also expect to complete the boost vibrations in the second half.
Speaker Change: With that, I'll pass you over to Chris Noyes, a chief financial officer who will talk to you through our financial performance before we take your questions. Chris?
Chris Noyes: Thanks, Bound. I'll now take you through our financial performance in greater detail, starting on slide 14.
Chris Noyes: Q1 revenue was 2% lower on a rebase basis at $1.1 billion. We saw positive momentum in C&W Panama, Liberty Costa Rica, and Liberty Networks, which was more than offset by decline in Liberty Puerto Rico.
Chris Noyes: In fact, our non-pluricant operations, which accounts for over 70% of our consolidated revenue grew revenue by 2% year-over-year collectively on a rebased basis.
Chris Noyes: Turning to adjusted Oipeda, we reported a rebased increase of 8% to $407 million, with three of our five operating segments posting year-of-a-year rebased growth, including Liberty, Puerto Rico.
Supporting our growth is operating leverage as Balan flagged
Chris Noyes: We have embarked upon a range of cost-out activities across each of our operations, and this is positively impacted our consolidated adjusted Oibida margin, which increased over 300 basis points compared to Q1 2024.
Chris Noyes: In the third chart, we highlight an important metric for us, which is adjusted Oyba Dial S P&E editions. We increase this by $47 million to $286 million in Q1, or 26% of revenue as compared to 22% of revenue in last year's Q1.
Chris Noyes: The year-over-year improvement is reflective of the higher adjusted Oyba-Dob margin and low opiniony additions, which amounted to 11% of revenue in Q1.
Chris Noyes: Moving to the last section, adjusted FCS before partner distribution was $46 million better, resulting in a negative $103 million for Q1 2025.
Chris Noyes: Combined with third-party distributions to our partners, our reported adjusted FCF was a negative $133 million.
Chris Noyes: Our first quarter results are always impacted by seasonal working capital movements in part due to the phasing of spend with our vendors.
Chris Noyes: Slide 15 recaps our CNW credit silo results for Q1 which consists of CNW Caribbean, CWP, and the Liberty Network.
Chris Noyes: Starting with C&W Caribbean, we reported $364 million of revenue in Q1 with flat rebase growth. This was a result of 5% growth in mobile offset by a reduction of 3% in B2B on a rebase basis.
Chris Noyes: We posted a Justin Oyeva of $173 million, representing 16% rebase growth, largely fueled by reductions in indirect costs, especially respect to facilities, staff, networks, and commercial costs.
Chris Noyes: As a result, adjusted Oveda.margin improved by over 600 basis points year over year to 48 percent.
Chris Noyes: Next, moving to Cable Wireless Panama, CWP generated $177 million of revenue and $65 million of adjusted OIVA.inQ1, reflecting 5% rebase revenue growth, and 15% rebased adjusted OIVA.
Chris Noyes: Year-over-year rebased top line growth was driven by 16% growth in mobile and a 3% increase in residential fix largely as a result of subscriber-based expansion over the last 12 months.
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Chris Noyes: Turning to Liberty Networks, we generated $110 million in revenue, and $58 million in adjusted Resulting in rebase growth in 3% revenue, and rebase decline of 2% in adjusted
Chris Noyes: Top line growth, year over year, was driven by higher revenue in both wholesale and enterprise business lines, while adjusted Oivida was impacted by higher network maintenance expenses, in part due to the cost associated with the cable cut, and higher interconnect costs.
Chris Noyes: Aggregating all three operating segments for the CNW credit silo, we generated $629 million in revenue and $296 million in AdjustmentWave.nq1 for the credit silo.
Chris Noyes: Importantly, these results reflect year-of-a-year rebate growth rates of 2% for revenue and an impressive 12% for a just-it way to done.
Chris Noyes: Moving to slide 16 and the Q1 results for our other two credit styles, Liberty Puerto Rico and Liberty Costa Rica.
on the left, Liberty Puerto Rican.
Chris Noyes: Q1 revenue was $298 million, reflecting at 11% rebate decline year-over-year
Chris Noyes: Residential 6 revenue declined 1% due to lower volume driven by the discontinuation of the ACP program and lower RPU due to retention discounts more than offsetting price increase.
Chris Noyes: Mobile Residential Revenue Declined by 16% on a rebase basis driven by lower post-paid revenue post migration.
Chris Noyes: On the other hand, Prepaid Revenue remains stable during the period.
Chris Noyes: B2B Revenue Declined, 22% on a rebase basis driven by lower mobile service revenue due to a decrease in the subscriber base impacted by migration related churn, RPU declines, and the termination of the ECF program.
Chris Noyes: Adjusted Oyba-Dabra year-a-year as we reported $82 million, which reflected a rebased increase of 16% as compared to Q-1 2020.
Chris Noyes: This improved adjusted Oibidop performance was mainly driven by costs related to our integration and migration efforts reported in Q1 2024 and lower equipment, labor, interconnect, and transition services costs in the current quarter. [inaudible]
Chris Noyes: Concluding with Costa Rica on the right, we delivered Q1 revenue of $158 million in Adjustment Ovidah of $59 million, reflecting 2% rebass revenue growth, and a 1% decline in rebass adjusted
Fixed Revenue was down 7% year-over-year on a rebase basis.
Chris Noyes: with volume growth more than offset by lower ARPU, impacted by competition.
Chris Noyes: Mobile Residential Revenue increased 6% on a rebased basis driven by postpaid volume and equipment sales growth, and B2B Revenue was up 7% year-over-year on a rebased basis, mainly due to a higher project rate.
Chris Noyes: Adjusted Oimidda to climb slightly over year, doing part to higher equipment cost, and an increase in bad debt.
Chris Noyes: Turning this slide 17, at the end of Q1 on a consolidated basis, we had $8.2 billion of total debt with a net leverage of 4.6 times.
Chris Noyes: Our fully swapped borrowing costs was 6.5% with a weighted average life of over five years. As of March 2025, we have roughly $600 million of cash on balance sheet and $800 million of the availability under our revolving credit line.
Chris Noyes: Continuing to the bottom left of the slide, the three timely CNW recent answers over the last nine months, which we highlighted on the key for Ernie's call, have significantly improved our maturity schedule with about 50% of our debt maturing in 2031 and beyond.
Chris Noyes: As it pertains to Liberty Puerto Rico, which has that due in 2027 to 2029, we would target refinancing in mid to late 2026 as we provide the business with time to improve its financial results.
Chris Noyes: Firstly, each credit pool is an independent rain fence capital structure with no cross-guarantees across the faults. This approach enshrines the concept that each silo is self-standing and shields each of the credit pools from negative performance contamination from any of the other silo.
Chris Noyes: We aim to maintain sustainable amounts of leverage in our businesses, and we expect our silos to naturally be levered through organic growth. Our medium-term leverage target is mid-3s for LLA on a consolidated basis.
Chris Noyes: We run a hedge balance sheet, hedging both our floating rates and currency exposure when economically viable, and finally we maintain a robust liquidity position with significant cash on balance sheet and committed revolving credit facility availability.
Chris Noyes: With respect to our stock buyback program, we have not been active for the last three quarters and have roughly $240 million available under our authorization. We may look to be opportunistic as we return to our cash flow build cycle, which is always weighted to H2.
Chris Noyes: Moving to Slide 18 and our conclusion. First, we had a very good start to the year with strong KPI performance on both post-paid mobile and broadband.
Chris Noyes: This flowed through into robust financials, which led to high single-digit rebays to just the oiba dog growth in the quarter. This was driven by standout performances in the CNW silo, where we recorded double-digit adjusted oiba dog growth.
Chris Noyes: This was all supported by continued initiative to reduce P&E additions and intensity, helping to underpin and improve trends in cash flow.
Chris Noyes: In Puerto Rico, we are behind schedule due to the challenging migration in 2024 and a slower start to our recovery than hope for in 2025.
Chris Noyes: This is the principal reason for our decision to withdraw our three-year guidance from 2024 to 2026 for LLA today.
Chris Noyes: Our other operating businesses are performing largely as expected, but collectively not able to overcompensate for the 2024 deficit and the slower recovery in Puerto Rico this year.
Chris Noyes: Now it was standing in Puerto Rico, we are seeing steady improvements in churn and have new CVPs in the market and are leaning into FMC where we have seen such success across the group. We anticipate better post-paid Molo KPI trends in the second half of 2025.
Chris Noyes: We are positioning LLA for significant year-over-year growth in the Justin Oyveda and adjusted FCS before partner distributions in 2025.
And with that, operator, happy to take questions.
Speaker Change: The question and answer session will be conducted electronically. If you would like to ask a question regarding the company's operations, please do say by pressing star
Chris Noyes: In order to accommodate everyone, we request that you only ask one question, with one follow-up if needed.
Chris Noyes: If you are using a speaker phone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment.
Chris Noyes: We'll pause for just a moment to give everyone an opportunity to signal for questions.
Speaker Change: First question is from Vitor Tomita of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open, please go ahead.
Good morning all, and thanks for taking our questions.
Speaker Change: Two questions from our side. The first one is on Puerto Rico. If you could give us a bit more color on the competitive environment there, how aggressive competitors are being right now in terms of promotions and handsets discounts in particular. And our second question would be on Capix, you previously provided a guide and stuff.
Speaker Change: and that was lowered to 14% capex in 2025 and in 2026. Do you still expect that's 14% capex yourselves? And could you give some more color on how that might be distributed across regions? Thank you very much.
Speaker Change: Visit www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!
Speaker Change: Sure. Thanks for the question. I'll answer your second question, but then the cap-axe.
Speaker Change: The Capact of 14% is something that we will hit in 25 and 26, and it is quite equally distributed across the business. For many reasons, it wasn't just by luck that we did, that's how it played out.
Speaker Change: The level of maturity in all of our businesses, where we are doing both our fiber-to-the-home upgrade and our mobile upgrades reaching to the same point. So we are very confident on that 14%.
Speaker Change: On the competitive environment in Puerto Rico, essentially on the fixed side we compete with Claro, and on the mobile we compete with Claro and T-Mobile.
Speaker Change: And of all the three mobile operators here, clearly, T-Mobile, the most aggressive on their handsets, subsidies, and that's the case across mainland USA as well, the promotion CM4
Speaker Change: Our view is that, you know, and what we've seen is that they haven't gotten any more gracious than what they've been.
Speaker Change: And as a matter of fact, you know, I think with all the tariff issues, people may, you know, dial it back a bit on subsidies, but we haven't seen that either. Right now, the subsidy issue is not what worries us at all. We're doing pretty well there. I think what we need to do is improve on both our customer service,
Thank you very much.
Speaker Change: The next question is from Chris Hall of New Street Research. Chris, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Just following up on that.
Speaker Change: You know, appreciate you're still sort of year, 15 months away from the refinancing in Puerto Rico. But I just wonder if you can say anything about whether or not you see the opportunity to use any of the assets within Puerto Rico to help build a stronger balance sheet as you've head towards the refinancing.
Sure, on the first question on the CAPEX.
Speaker Change: You know, the way we report the segment CAPEX, CAPEX is actually spent by the local operating team here in Puerto Rico. We do have CAPEX spent
Speaker Change: for Porto Record at the group level. As an example, our digital platforms, they can tune Capactors as well, is spent at the corporate level, but allocated to Porto Record being done for Porto Record.
Speaker Change: Some of the spends that we also do at the corporate level, like some of the centralized platforms.
on like a wireless coordinate loop, etc.
Speaker Change: that are allocated outside of Puerto Rico but really it's Puerto Rico Capac. So if I look at the overall Capac for the, for the year, Puerto Rico is turning closer to them.
Balan Nair: Smith to a 5-15% range. So we're not understanding in Puerto Rico where we're actually...
Speaker Change: We're actually doing a pretty good job here, I think, especially in the mobile network. As a matter of fact, as you know, last year we bought the spectrum from Dish, and we're firing that up this summer, and all that 600 megahertz spectrum gets put into the network. And that also requires capital, so we're not showing away from that. And that's what we're going to be doing, and that's what we're going to be doing, and that's what we're going to be doing.
Balan Nair: On your second question on the refinancing, I'm going to ask Chris to jump in here and give you some color.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, I think as I mentioned, the focus in the business today is to improve the operations and the financial results. So we're best positioned
Chris: in 26 and mid to late 26 to look to refinance the debt. Certainly the work that we are doing in both the mobile and the fixed business should help crystallize value and improve the value of each of those businesses.
Chris: And I think that's the focus of the management team at this point.
Okay.
and Bill Brierly. Thank you.
Chris: The next question comes from Michael Rollins, a city group. Michael, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
and Bill Brierly. Thank you.
Jose Herrera: Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. This is Jose Herrera on Mike Rollins' team.
Jose Herrera: The first question was, within the prior multi-year guide provided, how much of that growth was coming from Puerto Rico relative to the rest of the asset portfolio? And then secondly, if the Puerto Rico business needs additional funding, will Liberty Line America fund the business from the parent balance sheet? Or does Puerto Rico need to fund it within its own capital structure? Thank you. Thank you.
Jose Herrera: Sure, on the free castle, we have been up breaking down the percentages for each.
Segment in our business.
Jose Herrera: Suffice to say, you can see from the operating results, that
Jose Herrera: The rest of Liberty Latin America is on fire. And, you know, and so if we needed the guidance a year ago, we did not anticipate some of the challenges in Puerto Rico. And all at least to the extent that we actually experienced it. [inaudible]
Jose Herrera: And then when we got into the end of the year, we kind of indicated that, you know, because we had a lot of buffers in our free cash go beyond the billion dollars, but we thought kind of eaten up over the year in 24. And when we got into the beginning of the year as we looked at our budgets, et cetera. Let's go.
Jose Herrera: We were very close so everything had to be price to perfection and we came on to that you know what we still think it's right there. [inaudible]
Jose Herrera: But then as the first quarter started to progress, we looked at some of the numbers and we tried to trajectory out the first quarter.
Jose Herrera: And that ad performance, and we go, you know, everything needs to be priced to perfection and it's not working to perfection here for what they're equal. Not right now. We're still pretty optimistic in the second half of standing around a lot of things.
Jose Herrera: But, but clearly, you know, having that information on where things are at Puerto Rico we decided, you know.
Jose Herrera: Let's pull the guidance, but I can tell you that the rest of our business, and even for the equal over time it's going to get better and the rest of the business is not throwing off cash. You can see that in our numbers.
Jose Herrera: And your second question around the capital structure. Listen, we have the silos for a reason. We paid up for the silos.
Jose Herrera: And we're going to treat these all as separate credit silos.
Jose Herrera: And the parent will decide, you know, strictly on a capital allocation methodology that we have in the Liberty way. And then we'll make decisions on funding, whether it's a credit sale or funding a buyback or funding anything, basically on how we look at the different opportunities in front of us.
Jose Herrera: And I know I'm being cryptic, but you should hang on to the fact that it is a separate credit silo and retweeted as such.
and Daniel Noyes. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thanks, Paul and I think a number of years ago people were quite happy with how Puerto Rico was performing in the context of all the headlines on net [noise] migration and the debt issues and some of the political issues and I know you can't just do an economy model on.
Speaker Change: We're a telecom business is going to fair, but when you look at federal subsidies given everything going on if the Trump administration and that migration on the positive side, Puerto Rico has a very nice manufacturing base.
Speaker Change: Relative to some other obviously, it's a territory rather than the state, but relative to other U U S. U S. States. How helped hindered are you by the Backgrou outlook in Puerto Rico, and I suspect you're not going to give a definitive number what.
Speaker Change: State your operating guys to achieve on a monthly EBITDA level aspirationally, even if it's not guidance relative to where you were before thank you.
Speaker Change: Sure. Thanks, Matt [noise], let's start with the Puerto Rico macros. It is actually a good market competitively like I said two player fixed three player mobile and very rational you know value and value.
Speaker Change: So you want to be in the market like that it's all you have dollars, obviously and and if you look at the net population, it's health steady and and it's it's a robust great functioning state of the United State.
Speaker Change: Good.
Speaker Change: Your question on you know back 21, 22 by the way the F. C. We had an a T and T. When we bought this business had a lot of FCC funding and that slowly you know declined over the last two three years, it's part of the revenue decline not all of our revenues Haven.
Speaker Change: S. T C revenues that that decline as well and we are really at this point not too dependent on any government subsidies, even though they are still some kind of like the the rdoff in the United States. It's called you Neando here in Puerto Rico, and so we do have some.
Speaker Change: What could it be with that kind of a macro environment and by the way we have the best Mobile network here you go anywhere we have the best coverage and like I said, we're gonna fire up and 600 Megahead spectrum here in a couple of months, we'll have even bigger penetration.
Speaker Change: We have the best fixed network, we consistently win on a fixed network, it's one gigabyte everywhere highly competitive.
Speaker Change: Product and infection, we have you know pretty much a split market 50, 50, 40, something like that with with us and the other guys, but we had we have a five handle on our market share in mobile we're about 21% market share with a lot of upside when we bought the business us about 26%.
Speaker Change: But remember even at 26% that's 74% of the island that we never served and we haven't even started our FMC here. So there's some upsides and the reason we haven't done some of that because we have some systems issues and we needed to get our house in order before we can do some of these.
Speaker Change: And so you can see good macros good competitive environment, we have a great network, we need to fix some internal issues and then you'll start to see things return we have internal guide guidelines I am very you know.
Speaker Change: And and we are focused on that and we're focused on getting the EBITDA right place as Chris pointed out earlier, it's all operations and you get EBITDA. The right place then by mid 26, you know you're sitting a lot better given the you know some.
Speaker Change: And on a debt and that's how we're looking at it but like like Chris said this is an operational.
Speaker Change: Problem to solve for.
Speaker Change: Apart from the F. C C subsidies, which is which is you know it sounds like it's diminutive or not that big a deal at this point are you very concerned about the Trump administration withholding support you know for the economy of the island.
Speaker Change: Maverick TR Trump can be I honestly don't know how much federal support there is to Puerto Rico, not not on FCC basis, but in terms of just upholding the general economy.
Speaker Change: You know, we don't see it yet by the way the governor of Puerto Rico is a strong front supporter I'm gonna be visiting with them here soon.
Speaker Change: Listen.
Speaker Change: There's a lot of things with the federal government that really I can't predict yeah, and I don't think anybody can they'll do what they need to do but I haven't heard anything officially or even inficially. Other than you know rumors on the media about them.
Speaker Change: So sorry, sorry, I'd try to make you play Treasury secretary or whatever thanks.
Speaker Change: The next question is from Leonardo Kertador of Scotiabank Leonardo Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Leonardo Kertador: Alright. Thank you for taking my questions I have two the first.
Leonardo Kertador: Additionally, my second question there was significant refinancing activity this quarter and average foreign costs were slightly up to 6.5% from 6.2%. This year comes in that it was close to 620 million last year.
Leonardo Kertador: Yeah.
Leonardo Kertador: Yeah on the interest.
Leonardo Kertador: You know I would focus you as well to look at the swap portfolio. So we are hedged you know on the Unfloating rate exposure and you can you can factor that in beyond just the you know cash interest there's an offset an.
Leonardo Kertador: Dot com, we typically have you know grants happen in the first half of the year and I mean, what how I would look at it is you know continue to kind of you know run it out not just similar to you know prior years.
Leonardo Kertador: Okay.
Leonardo Kertador: That was perfect. Thank you.
Balan Nair: Any other today's question and answer session I would like to hand back to Balan.
Balan Nair: Thank you operator, and thank you everybody on the call you know the business is doing really well you can see from the numbers now we did pull guidance and I I know that'll be a reaction to that but I think it's you know this is important for us that when you know when we look at stuff.
Balan Nair: And it since we know it we want to make sure. Our credibility is also strong and I know to a certain degree.
Balan Nair: That's been challenges in our Puerto Rico business and and over the last year was very hard for us internally to predict some of the trajectory of that business, but we're getting a dis we getting a strong handle and everything here and now we see things very clearly and we see a very clear pass as well.
Balan Nair: It's gonna take time, though we have to be patient and in Puerto Rico, It's going to take time, but you can see from the rest of our businesses. There was a time when Panama is not doing great, though cable and wireless the Caribbean Islands was not doing great any one of our operations and before.
Speaker Change: I'm really strong flywheels and I see the same thing here for Puerto Rico, Yes, we got into a jam, we're gonna get out of this jam and we're gonna really grow this business and I I'm quite positive about that so with that I want to thank you again for your support and we'll talk you next quarter.
Speaker Change: [noise], ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2025, Investicle as a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations section of Liberty Latin America's website at W. W. W. Dot.
Speaker Change: There you can also find a copy of today's presentation materials.