Millicom International Cellular S.A. (NASDAQ:TIGO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Sheldon Bruha: Mauricio, you really hit the key points. And I think EBITDA that particular and EBITDA margins are important metrics to be tracking, but most importantly, and more importantly, it’s the equity free cash flow performance, we’re trying to drive out of that business and getting that business to equity, free cash flow, breakeven, first initially and ultimately, equity free cash flow positive. And of course, that once that’s achieved, that’s going to start to address your second part of question that will more capital be needed from the shareholders? I mean, the answer would be no, once we get to that business, the equity free cash flow positive. So that’s where the focus is. Look, I think we’re going to make a lot of progress on that in 2024. In terms of achieving that objective, and – that’s kind of where the focus is right now for that business.

Phani Kanumuri: So in the base case scenario, vendor is expect to achieve a kind of breakeven at least a broad timeline for Colombia?

Mauricio Ramos: There’s this thing that happens on a yearly basis called the budget, right? That’s all I’ll say. That’s a normal answer Phani.

Sheldon Bruha: As soon as we possibly can, there’s nothing. You can just imagine how focused we are on this factory, right? As soon as we can. We’ve done everything in Colombia. Again, back to the Guatemala question stable. This is the game we’re playing with a single objective, which is to get Colombia record cash flow positive as soon as possible. And just about every action has been driven in that direction. We put Everest phase 1 early on in Colombia in this year, we’re obviously focused on Colombia for phase 2 of Everest and all you can take away from without forcing us into specifics on guidance is that we’re very focused on making Colombia equity free cash flow.

Phani Kanumuri: Okay, sure. Thanks a lot for that.

Operator: Thank you, Phani. All right. Next, we’re going to Marcelo Santos from JPMorgan.

Marcelo Santos: Hi. Hello. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first question is just if you had any update on to [money] strategic alternatives. So you disclose that in the Investor Day so we just wanted to know how this is going. And the second question is actually for Maxime. You mentioned that you’re waiting for the right investments to capture long-term revenue growth opportunities. Could you expand a bit on what do you see as the main long-term revenue growth opportunities. If you could give some cover would be great.

Mauricio Ramos: All right, I’ll take the first one and give Maxime a little bit of time to prepare a couple of brilliant ideas there for sure. So listen on Tigo money, we continue to grow the business quite positively, geographically, as you may recall, we’re very strong in Paraguay, very strong in Bolivia. We’ve we launched this year in Guatemala, Tigo money existed in Guatemala, but it didn’t have the full suite of products in there. So, we launched in Guatemala. We’ve also attained licenses and launched in Panama. And we’re happy with the progress that we’re making and operationally. Our second area of focus is making sure that we complete the delivery and implementation of – the full suite of the service offering. So that Wallet [application], but also continue to visit merchant community, and also begin piloting, which successfully delivery in Bolivia and also in Guatemala.

And we continue to find very important ways of meeting the telecom business worked really closely with the fintech business, in the eyes of the consumer, which we think is a win-win for everybody. And we’re also now beyond this investment phase that we put for the last couple of years very focused and going back to our Haskell instances for 2024 or making sure that Tigo money is with all of these investments and launches behind it all of the [indiscernible] breakeven. We’re very happy with that result which leaves us then with plenty of flexibility to then figure out in these very difficult fintech markets, Marcelo? When is the best time to maximize? And how is the best time to maximize as the value of that asset? And that is the punchline to your question.

And Maxime, show time for you.

Maxime Lombardini: Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon. Thank you, Marcelo for your question. I joined the company something like seven weeks ago. So it’s a bit early to describe a full strategy for the future. I wanted to say with a few words about the future, is that the future of a company cannot be only on cost cutting, cost cutting today are to needs to be back to cash generation, but that’s not the sole project for the company. So, we are working a lot also on CapEx optimization, meaning wealth we invest properly in mobile densification coverage, and more importantly, probably where to invest and what to do on home, where you know, the machine are a bit [stretched]. So those, I would say, we probably come a little bit more next quarter, but today, it’s a bit, it’s a bit too early.

And then there are many, many other options within each one of the other geography where are the home business as you can see, there are many networks other building and probably intelligent solution that could be worked on.

Marcelo Santos: Wonderful. Thank you very much for the answers.

Operator: Thank you, Marcelo. So next we’re going to go to a Stefan Gauffin of DNB Markets. Stefan, you’re on mute, I believe.

Stefan Gauffin: So can you hear me now?

Mauricio Ramos: Oh, yes.

Stefan Gauffin: Yes. Great. So a couple of questions. First on the network, JV with Telefonica in Colombia. If you can somehow quantify what kind of savings you could get from that on both OpEx and CapEx and when those can materialize. And secondly, question for Maxime. You mentioned in your remarks that given volatility in these markets, you believe the leverage is a bit high, which I think all of us agree to. But now given these strategic initiatives with the sale of Lati, et cetera. So my question is, where, would you see leverage to go to be comfortable, if it’s totally preferred to paydown debt rather than have some sort of shareholder remuneration from sale of that et cetera? Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos: Hi Stefan, good to see you. As always you to great questions, I’ll take the first one on the network JV briefly. And then I’ll hand over the second one if it’s okay to deal to our CFO, Sheldon. So that he can provide you with a full institutional, I got to do this in my role as I could see your smile as Interim Chair, so that we provide you with a full institutional view on leverage from the Board. On the network JV, I think the two key areas without our ability to give you specific details, obviously, there is the OpEx and CapEx savings or branding a single network, right, that’s the nature of a network JV on mobile. And in addition to that, there is the synergies of running a single pool of spectrum. And this is important, particularly in Colombia, because the cost of spectrum in Colombia is significantly higher than in most other regions.