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

Soomit Datta: Yeah, hi. Hi, guys. Couple from me, please. One, just on the group prospects for service revenue and an EBITDA, your medium-term guidance or your ’22, ’24 guidance has seen EBITDA running ahead of service revenues. The guide, I think, is 4% to 6% versus 2.5% to 4%. So service revenues and EBITDA run rate is similar today. I just wondered, do you still see the opportunity essentially for margin expansion? Do you see the opportunity for EBITDA run rate to come in ahead of service revenues as we look forward? That’s the first question please. And then the second one if I could on Mexico, I think, you have been resistant to increasing prices over the last few quarters. I just wondered how you are looking into 2024? Do you still think that’s the right strategy or is there room to consider lifting prices or do market conditions not allow for that? Thank you very much.

Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: Okay. On the first question, I think, the revenues that we’re having, the service revenue that we are having, are running, as Carlos said, 3.9% — 3.8% and the EBITDA is going and increasing 3.9% taking all that one-offs and everything. So I think we have a very good platform. We’re very focused on controlling cost and expenses. In every country, it’s a little bit different. In every country, you have managed to increase a little bit the — and pass through the inflation to some prices, to some segments, in other ones, no. We can’t — we haven’t done that. And — but in every country, we have a big platform controlling cost, controlling expenses and digitalize more, reducing people. So we have a very focused controlling cost strategy on the company. So that’s something on that. And in countries where competition allow us to do that then we can pass through a little bit on that. The second question, can you repeat that?

Soomit Datta: It was a question on Mexico and on a similar theme, price increases. I just wondered how you are looking at the outlook for potential price increases. On the fixed side, we know your competitors have moved their prices and you have not. I just wondered broadly across wireless and fixed, do you see the opportunity to increase prices at all in Mexico?

Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: Well, we still don’t know that, but at this time, we are not thinking to increase prices at this moment. And we are focusing, we’re putting a lot of fiber. I think we have 16 million home passes on fiber and giving to all our customers the chance to move from copper to fiber and have new customers with fiber. So we are focusing — we have 76% of our customers connected with fiber and we’re going to follow that. So I don’t know and I cannot tell you what we’re going to do in ’24. But until the end of this year, we haven’t had any — for the fixed. We haven’t increased any prices all this year.

Soomit Datta: Okay, thank you.

Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: Thank you. Another question? Hello?

Daniela Lecuona: Hi, Daisy. Can you hear us?

Operator: Apologies, I was muted. We have a question from Cesar Medina from Morgan Stanley. Cesar, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Cesar Medina: Great. Thank you so much for taking my question. I have two related questions. The first one is what is your read on the stock performance today after the printing down 6%? And then related to that, if I hear all the commentary around, it seems the following. Service revenue is going well. You have room for margin expansion. CapEx is on a positive trend, if not lower. So is there room to increase or like to start a discussion of increase in shareholder remuneration given that two-year yields are like north of 5%? Thank you.

Carlos Garcia Moreno: Okay, Cesar, you are asking for a question of what we think about — and I’ll tell you what I think. I think there is a lot of stress today in the market. If you see 10-year interest rates have been climbing sharply the last day, the last couple of days. They are now — last time I saw at 4.90%. That’s the highest level they’ve been in, you know, since all of these pressure for rates — since rates started to rise. So they are now close to 5%. This in spite of the Feds having been saying that they probably didn’t need to raise rates once again because the market was doing the work for them. So my read is that there’s a lot of stress in the market. That means that it’s a risk off. And when people want to go to de-risk, often they sell what is liquid.

And I don’t think that sometimes America Movil is utilized as a proxy for other things given the liquidity. That’s my take. I think it has less to do with the actual results. It has more to do with the move to de-risk given stress in the market.

Daniel Hajj Aboumrad: And in my view, I think, as Carlos says, he gives his view. My view is that the results were consistent with the — what the market thinks. And I think the fundamentals are okay. And the business in America Movil is growing and it’s okay. So that’s my view.

Cesar Medina: No, no, I’m with you. So this is why I was just flagging, you know, if you look at the margin trend, revenue trend, is there a scope for you to evaluate perhaps increasing shareholder remuneration?

Carlos Garcia Moreno: Yeah. So again that takes us back to one of the prior questions. I think that we were saying we typically tend to pace with share buybacks with — materializes mostly the last third of the year. I had already said that since July, we have had a significant deployment of resources in share buybacks. And we have had, since the end of June till today, MXN350 million in share buybacks, and we’re still not done. And obviously, we still have another big payment of dividends $800 million or less that will be made in November. But certainly share buybacks, we can continue with them because this is time when we can get the funding, the leverages where we want it to be. And the cash flow is coming in as we expect it to.