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

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Justin Benincasa: There is nothing out of the ordinary, but we are watching, like with the government reimbursement programs. So we’ve got some working capital already tied up in those programs, right, as we go through the replace and remove. But we’re watching that. We’re trying to manage that closely, but that could be a little bit of a — there’s some work for us to not grow that part of the working capital too much. But it’s out there because we have to kind of have to expend it before we get reimbursed.

Ric Prentiss: What’s the lag as far as from spending to reimbursement? Is that 6, 9 months? Is it…

Justin Benincasa: I don’t know. It’s probably in a shorter period than that.

Brad Martin: It does vary by program, Ric, but we have seen much better than that. But some of these programs, certainly, the more sizable ones require a lot of details for those reimbursement. So — but it has been measured in weeks, which is good. And there have been some programs that allowed for pre-positioning, giving effectively a 6-month prepositioning of invoicing.

Justin Benincasa: And the trick for us is to try to manage how fast we’re constructing and seeking reimbursement too, right? So it’s — there’s a lot of [indiscernible] in it, obviously.

Brad Martin: Yes.

Michael Prior: It’s worth adding to that just that we’ve also entered into agreements on some of the big vendor contracts that you get paid when we get paid kind of thing.

Justin Benincasa: Yes.

Ric Prentiss: And a lot of your reimbursement probably coming from states instead of the U.S. Fed.

Justin Benincasa: It is mostly U.S. federal government, but there are some states as well.

Brad Martin: The ones we’re working on now.

Ric Prentiss: Right, right. Right. Okay. If our government can get something done in weeks, that’s — all right. And the last one for me is just the leverage guidance changed a little bit. Previously, it was get to approximately 2% by end of 2024, and now it’s kind of the 2.25 to 2.40. We were at 2.2% anywhere in our model. Was that just kind of a fine-tuning of kind of the — when you get to that closer to 2 range? Or is there anything specific different from prior guidance and now?

Justin Benincasa: No, it’s probably I think it’s just a little bit of fine-tuning how much working capital we might have tied up in some of the reimbursement programs, so that’s where the fine tuning was.

Ric Prentiss: Alright, thanks everybody. And Justin, again, best wishes.

Justin Benincasa: Thank you, Ric. Appreciate it. Thanks for all the support over the years.

Operator: Thank you. As there are no further questions in queue, I would now like to turn the call over to Brad Martin, ATN’s Chief Executive Officer for closing remarks. Sir?

Brad Martin: Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today. We will be participating in Sidoti’s small-cap Virtual Investor Conference on March 14. We look forward to meeting with many of you there. I would like to take a moment to thank Justin for his leadership and his commitment to long-term tenure to ATN. I wish you all the best in your retirement.

Justin Benincasa: Thank you, Brad.

Brad Martin: And thank you again for your time. With that, operator, I’ll turn it back to you.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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