Liberty Latin America sees video subscriber losses

Liberty Latin America lost 6,200 net video subscribers in the three months to the end of March, with losses in Costa Rica contributing to the drop.

Balan Nair

Overall, Liberty LatAm gained 34,000 fixed line revenue-generating units, with both internet and fixed line telephony net adds contributing to the uplift.

The company lost 141,800 mobile subs, with an adjustment in counting pre-paid subs that excluded those paying less than US$3 in the reporting period contributing to the drop.

Overall, Liberty LatAm had 952,500 video customers at the end of March, with C&W, its Caribbean unit, accounting for 510,800. Liberty Puerto Rico had 242,700 video customers and Liberty Costa Rica had 199,000. Overall, the group had 3.854 million RGUs at the end of the quarter.

With the adjustment to mobile numbers counting as ‘inorganic’, the outfit reported 65,000 organic broadband and post-paid mobile net adds and declared itself satisfied with a strong start to the year.

The group posted revenues of US$1.1 billion, down 9% but up 1% rebased.

Excluding Chilean outfit VTR, which was deconsolidated into a 50:50 joint venture at the end of last year after merging with rival Claro, revenue was up 6%.

Adjusted OIBDA was down 7% (up 4% excluding VTR) at US$407 million.

“We had a good start to the year, delivering solid subscriber growth in the first quarter and remain on track to achieve our 2023 financial guidance targets,” said CEO Balan Nair.

“We added internet and mobile postpaid subscribers across all of our reporting segments in Q1. Broadband additions were particularly strong led by improved performance in C&W Caribbean as we continue to make our networks Giga-Ready and delight our customers with differentiated converged propositions. In connection with our enhanced services and offers, we recently implemented nominal price increases in select markets to reflect the added value being delivered to our customers, in most cases, these rate adjustments follow several years without any increase.”