América Móvil, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:AMX) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Walter Piecyk: Thanks. Hey, Daniel. And if I look at Mexico, obviously you had good unit growth and ARPU was also very strong in ’21 and ’22 obviously, maybe somehow the pandemic had some impact on that. But this quarter this shows a little moderation there. Is that just kind of coming out of the pandemic or is there economic issues that we need to think about in terms of Mexico? Obviously, ARPU is still growing and service revenue is still growing, wireless service revenue specifically. I’m just curious kind of what are your thoughts on some of the moderation of that growth and how we should think about that going into future quarters?

Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: Well, I think what you are saying is right, it’s moderation. We are still growing our revenues in Mexico. I think the moderation is more on the prepaid than on the postpaid. So maybe it has to be a little bit with this acceleration of the economy. I don’t know. We don’t know exactly what it will be, but I can tell you that we have very good 5G network, good coverage. We are working very hard on control cost platform all around. And I think also could be a little bit on the market. Our competitors could be doing some promotion. So I still feel very comfortable on what we’re doing in the mobile products. And by far, we have the best perception to the costumers in terms of coverage, quality and price, attendance, digitalization.

So all these things will help us a lot on how the customer is taking the decision. As I said the moderation that we’re having is more on the prepaid side than on the postpaid side. So that’s what we have been seeing. On the fixed side, yeah, Carlos want to add something.

Carlos Garcia Moreno: Just to add something here, Walter. The ARPU growth in Mexico was 1.5% year-on-year. And — but if you look at postpaid, it was actually strong, it was 3.1%. So this is what Daniel said, the moderation was a little bit more on the prepaid side. And the postpaid, it remains quite firm, not very different from what we have seen in prior quarters.

Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: And you said also —

Walter Piecyk: And you think — and Daniel, apology, you said that — that you think — if you just looked at prepaid, you think that might be more the promotions of the competitors may be impacting prepaid than necessarily some sign of the economy reducing the usage of some of those? Yeah.

Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: Yes, I think so. That’s what I think. Yes.

Walter Piecyk: Okay. Okay. Just a similar question. If you look at the equipment revenue line, that actually looked stronger, meaning, like if you do the math on it, looks like maybe people in Mexico are buying more expensive phones. Is there anything you can tell, I mean, because that would suggest that the economy is pretty good, that people are buying or upgrading phones. So just curious on any thoughts you have on, on your equipment revenue line? And why that might show, you know, some decent growth? Yeah.

Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: Yeah, I think on the equipment revenue, we’re doing good. What is happening is not only Telcel, the ones, I think we have been having a lot of imports of handsets. And this has been thus accelerating a little bit. Some brands does not like, let’s say, Samsung does not like that Samsung phones will gain not through their office in Mexico, through other country. So I think that’s a little bit on that. And I think they are cutting and reducing these imports. So that’s why you are seeing that there is more sales on equipment this month.

Walter Piecyk: Got it. And then just one final question. There is a line on the cash flow statement that I believe you call payments of lease liabilities. This is where some of the payments, I think primarily to tower companies exist. I’m just curious how we should think about that going forward. Are there normal escalators that should take that? And for this quarter, I think the number was MXN9.7 billion. So I’m just curious if that’s — that line item on the cash flow statement, is that something that should grow at a similar rate that it has in recent years, I think it’s about 10%. Or is there any opportunity to moderate as you’ve kind of completed a lot of the 5G deployment in a lot of these markets?

Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: Yeah, I think you are right. I don’t think in 5G, we’re going to need the same amount of towers that we need in 3G or 4G. The new tower should be more on coverage than on capacity. And that’s more or less what we have been seeing. So I think that will moderate in the future.

Walter Piecyk: Great. Thank you very much.

Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: Thank you. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question today comes from Marcelo Santos from JPMorgan. Marcelo, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Marcelo Santos: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I have two. The first question is about Colombia. If you could please comment on the competitive environment on the fixed market? We saw that you started adding broadband subscribers again, so it was a very strong result. So a comment there would be very helpful. And the second question is if you could provide us an update on the joint venture with Liberty Latin America in Chile and the outlook on potential capital injections that operation might need. Thank you very much.

Carlos Garcia Moreno: As you mentioned in Colombia program, on the third quarter, we did it pretty good. And what we did is that we really changed the way that we go to the market. We did [indiscernible] focus in the area that we have a lot of competition. So we started winning share on both areas. We upgraded the network. And as you know we are building fiber as well in Colombia. So we believe the third quarter is the trend that we are going to see in the next quarters in fixed broadband. And as well, we improved all the quality of services to the customers, time to deliver, time to repair. So we really focus on the third quarter to really change all the structure to go to market for fixed broadband in Colombia.