Liberty Latin America Reports Q3 and YTD 2019 Results
- Continued Subscriber Momentum; 80,000 Additions in Q3, over 270,000 YTD
- Announced Accretive Acquisition of AT&T's Operations in Puerto Rico & USVI
- Completed Sale of Cable & Wireless Seychelles
- Reconfirming Financial Guidance Targets for 2019
Denver, Colorado – November 5, 2019: Liberty Latin America Ltd. (“Liberty Latin America” or “LLA”) (NASDAQ: LILAand LILAK, OTC Link: LILAB) today announced its financial and operating results for the three months (“Q3”) and nine months (“YTD”) ended September 30, 2019.
CEO Balan Nair commented, “In the third quarter, we continued our strong operational execution, adding 80,000 subscribers across fixed and mobile products, taking our total year-to-date additions to over 270,000. Supporting this growth, we added or upgraded over 100,000 homes across our footprint during Q3 and continued to invest in mobile network coverage and capacity.”
“Product innovation remains an important element of our growth strategy, and we expect to bring several new products to our markets in the coming quarters. One such example is our soon-to-be launched video platform in Puerto Rico. This new platform will function as a central video content aggregator, includes a sophisticated recommendation engine and seamless multi-screen capabilities and will provide access to applications, OTT content and traditional IP video. We believe this cloud-based video platform will further differentiate our product offering on island and will dramatically enrich our customers’ video and entertainment experience.”
“For the third quarter, we reported $967 million in revenue, $70 million of operating loss and $380 million in OCF1. Our Q3 results reflect year-over-year reported revenue and OCF growth, for each, of over 4% and relatively flat performance in terms of rebased2growth, while operating income declined 150%. Specifically, our revenue and OCF growth rates were dampened by the impact of Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas during Q3 2019 and FCC funding that we received in Puerto Rico during Q3 2018, representing a combined impact of $16 million in revenue and $19 million in OCF.”
“In early October, we announced the $1.95 billion acquisition of AT&T’s wireless and wireline operations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. We believe these assets, when combined with our market-leading Puerto Rican operations, will create a strong and competitive integrated communications player capable of providing enhanced value to customers. This transaction demonstrates our continued disciplined acquisition strategy, and, as we complete and integrate this highly synergistic transaction, we expect these assets to further bolster LLA’s free cash flow. In addition, today we closed the sale of our business in the Seychelles, following which, we will be focused entirely on the Caribbean and Latin America region.”
“As we look to finish the year strongly, we remain on-track to deliver our 2019 financial guidance targets and are excited by the platform we are building to drive sustainable free cash flow growth.”