ATN International, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATNI) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Brad Martin: Yes. I will start on that answer, and Michael who’s been closer to, can chime in. Generally, this is something we obviously watch very closely. It’s something that we stay very close to the other major U.S. investors in that market and the Exxon CEO spoke to this in their earnings call as well. And spoke to the fact that they think it’s a general low risk, but it’s something that’s watched very closely. And we make sure that the teams are aligned. The general disputed area is an area where very little of our infrastructure resides. It’s a very unpopulated portion of Guyana. But it’s something we’re watching closely as things develop. And we’re certainly making sure we have our teams aligned around what we effectively are monitoring with our governments and our business partners. Michael anything to add to that?

Michael Prior: Yes, this is Michael. I don’t think there’s much to add. I would just emphasize that it’s really around interruption for Guyana, which we certainly don’t hope and we don’t — we hope that there’s nothing like any kind of even minor military action. We don’t get the sense that, that’s likely from everyone we talk to, but who knows. But the point is that from a pure economic and business standpoint, as Brad said, really all of our operators very, very little is in that region that Venezuela is claiming.

Gregory Burns: Okay, thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Hamed Khorsand of BWS. Please go ahead, Hamed.

Hamed Khorsand: Good morning guys. So first off, I just want to ask you, there was a sequential bump in U.S.-related revenue by about $7 million or so, how much of that is you’re able to retain going forward? I understand there’s the grant money is coming off in Q2. But outside of that, how much of that is realistically…

Justin Benincasa: Hamed, there was an engineering service revenue, right, that I spoke about in my part of the opening of about $3 million. So — but I think generally if you take a lot of that sustainable, but for the fact of the ECS drop-off that I noted as well.

Hamed Khorsand: Okay. And then could you provide a little bit more details about the restructuring that you took, and why you decided that you had to take it down?

Justin Benincasa: Yes. The restructuring was really kind of cost reduction initiatives, right, in terms of workforce and leases and things like that, that we took on. So there it predominantly is all onetime charges associated with exiting those costs. That answers your question.

Hamed Khorsand: I guess I was asking why now? What was the impediment to do it now?

Justin Benincasa: It’s really a part of the initiative to just kind of more efficiently run the business and improve the margins.

Hamed Khorsand: Got it. And my last question was, last earnings call, you were talking about the churn going up in mobile, that came down. What was the result of that as far as the improvement you’ve seen? Is that because of better marketing, the consumer there is happy with the mobile service they have and the mobile phones they have? I know in the past, you’ve talked about that they have two phones, and now they’re back to one.

Brad Martin: Yes. Hamed, I’ll take that. Generally, there was a dynamic this year in one of our significant prepaid markets or there was a competitor that came in with a free offering with new network, a much smaller competitor. That did have an impact — it did effectively have some positive impact for subscribers on data consumption. So that was 1 of the dynamics that was effectively a 6-month free promotional period. So that is something that, that promotional period has ended.

Hamed Khorsand: Congrats Justin on the retirement. Thank you.

Justin Benincasa: Thanks, Hamed.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Ric Prentiss of Raymond James. Please go ahead Ric.

Ric Prentiss: Hey Justin can’t let you go without — we’ll give a few more questions here on your last call. Did you all have any exposure to the ACP program? Is that what you’re referring to in the COVID one? Or what was your exposure ACP?

Brad Martin: Ric, that was not what we’re referring to as the COVID. That was a different program called emergency connectivity Fund. ACP, we are watching this closely. We do have some exposure the ACP. It’s not a huge overall to ATN. We are still working to quantify the overall impact in options self-mitigated.

Ric Prentiss: Okay. Do you know how many subs you have sort of ability to kind of show us what that ballpark number is?

Justin Benincasa: Yes. We haven’t given that, Ric, yet. I think we probably just more time for us to quantify it.

Ric Prentiss: Yes. And the anticipation is that it might stop April, right?

Justin Benincasa: Yes, I think that’s — yes, yes.

Brad Martin: Yes.

Ric Prentiss: Okay. And other question for me is free cash flow looks like we’re there on the cusp of turning the corner to be positive free cash flow. Can you talk a little bit about maybe cash taxes and interest, which would be the other items compared to EBITDA and CapEx. But are you feeling pretty good that maybe even early this year, you get to that free cash flow positive dynamic? And then what kind of progress from there?

Justin Benincasa: Yes. I mean we’re definitely striving to increase free cash flow, right? We’ve been repeating that message over and over. And I think in terms of interest — so with that kind of our priority items to keep driving down leverage that’ll help on the interest cost. I think in terms of interest expense, you’ve kind of seen that in the quarter, that’s kind of a decent working number. Our cash taxes for before worse these days are pretty limited. But our goal is to keep expanding that free cash flow, bring down leverage, return it to shareholders.

Ric Prentiss: Okay. And we don’t usually include in our valuation free cash flow, but are there any unusual working capital items coming up?