Operator
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Today's call is being recorded. And I'll now turn the call over to Aamir Hussain, Chief Technology and Product Officer of Liberty Latin America.
Liberty Latin America Ltd. (LILA)
Q4 2022 Earnings Call· Sat, Feb 25, 2023
$8.11
-1.88%
Operator
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Today's call is being recorded. And I'll now turn the call over to Aamir Hussain, Chief Technology and Product Officer of Liberty Latin America.
Aamir Hussain
Management
Good morning, and welcome to Liberty Latin America's Full Year 2022 Investor Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investor Relations section of Liberty Latin America's website at www.lla.com. Following today's formal presentation, instructions will be given for a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Today's remarks may include forward-looking statements, including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical facts. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. For more information, please refer to the risk factor discussed in Liberty Latin America's most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K along with the associated press release. Liberty Latin America disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information to reflect any change in its expectations or in conditions on which such statement or information is based. In addition, on this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, which are reconciled to the most comparable GAAP financial measures, which can be found in the appendices to this presentation, which is accessible under the Investors' section of our website. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Balan Nair.
Balan Nair
Management
Thank you, Aamir, and welcome, everybody to Liberty Latin America's Full Year Results Presentation. I'll begin with our group highlights and an overview of our operating results by reporting segment. Chris Noyes, our CFO, will then follow with a review of the company's financial performance. After that, we will get straight to your questions. As always, I'm joined by my executive team from across the region, and I will invite them to contribute as needed during the Q&A following our prepared remarks. As a point of housekeeping, we will both be working from slides, which you can find on our website at www.lla.com. Starting on Slide 4 and our highlights for the year. The group reported revenues of $4.8 billion in 2022. Without VTR, which was still consolidated until the end of Q3, our revenue would have been $4.4 billion and up by 3% on a rebased basis, driven by top line growth across all reporting segments particularly our Liberty Costa Rica, C&W Networks and Lat Am and our C&W Caribbean businesses. We continued our operating momentum, adding 445,000 broadband and mobile postpaid subscribers in the year. We delivered Internet RGU growth across our segments with the largest contributions from Puerto Rico, where we added 36,000 subscribers despite some sales disruption from Hurricane Fiona. In mobile postpaid, we had a record year adding 344,000 subscribers. This was more than double our 2021 results, again, with growth across all of our operations. Our principal financial guidance metric for 2022 was adjusted free cash flow, and we broadly met our target of approximately $200 million as we delivered $189 million in the year. Notably, we had a record Q4 generating $210 million in that quarter. We made significant progress with our inorganic strategy in the year as we acquired Claro Panama and…
Christopher Noyes
Management
Thanks, Balan. I will focus on Q4 performance on this slide. Two items to note. First, we deconsolidated our Chilean business at the start of Q4; second, our Q4 results in Puerto Rico continued to be impacted by Hurricane Fiona. Q4 revenue totaled $1.16 billion, representing a reported decline of 9% from Q4 2021, which included $175 million of revenue associated with VTR. Excluding VTR, our revenue increased year-over-year by $55 million helped in part by the contribution from our Q3 acquisition of Claro Panama and modest rebased growth of 1%. On a full year basis, excluding VTR, revenue was up 8% on a reported basis and 3% on a rebased basis to $4.4 billion as each of our 5 operating segments grew year-over-year, especially our Costa Rica and C&W Networks and Lat Am businesses. In terms of adjusted OIBDA, we delivered $405 million in Q4, which reflects a 13% reported decline. Excluding VTR, we experienced a modest decline of 1% on adjusted OIBDA on both a reported and rebased basis. Our Q4 rebased performance was adversely impacted by Hurricane Fiona by roughly $7 million. On a U.S. dollar basis, our adjusted OIBDA sequentially expanded in Q4 by over $20 million in Q3 levels, excluding VTR's results. For the full year, excluding VTR, adjusted OIBDA was flat on a rebased basis to $1.6 billion with C&W Caribbean and Costa Rica performing exceptionally well. Our growth was adversely impacted by $26 million of integration expenses in 2022, reflecting a $10 million increase year-over-year and roughly $19 million of adverse impacts from Hurricane Fiona. For 2023, we expect to incur over $30 million of integration costs and more importantly, are targeting mid to high single-digit rebased adjusted OIBDA growth for LLA, of which growth will be significantly weighted to H2. Slide 14…
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] The first question we have from the phone lines comes from Soomit Datta of New Street Research.
Soomit Datta
Analyst · Soomit Datta of New Street Research
A couple of questions, please. One, just on the free cash flow outlook for 2023. You talked a little bit around where synergies are going. I just wondered -- do you have a number for full year '23 to what that synergy capture will be within the $300 million? And then secondly, please, just on the minority dividends, which is an interesting one, obviously, very limited payout last year. It looks like a bit of a catch-up payment this year. What is the best way to think about that number going forward, please?
Balan Nair
Management
Soomit. Okay. Let me take your questions. I'll start with the dividend first and I'll get back to the free cash flow. On the dividends, last year, we did the acquisition in Panama. So we did not -- we spent most of the cash there on that transaction, the Claro acquisition. And then certainly, in the Bahamas, what we did was -- sometimes we hold the cash in the business, especially when we think with natural disasters, hurricanes, et cetera, we have issued dividends in the Bahamas prior, and I think what Chris was indicating in his comments was that we are working with our partners this year to determine if we need to issue dividends this year, and I suspect we will. And from where we stand, of course, when we upstream all that cash, the capital allocation needs in our business to be significant. So we feel really good about the cash going towards buybacks as an example. On the free cash flow side, we're not breaking out the synergies, but I can tell you this, most of our synergies are going to kick in, in '24. So you'll see this year's FCF, of course, have synergies in that, but the bulk of our synergies dropped in '24 and beyond. So clearly, you can see even further expansion next year.
Christopher Noyes
Management
I would add, Soomit, your question around what maybe is more of a normalized bid. I think there is -- we are sitting on some cash balances in both Panama and Bahamas. So I think it's rightfully good to assume that there is a little bit of a catch-up. I think as you look out until '24 and beyond, it will really be a factor of the free cash flow generation in each of those businesses both of which we think we can continue to grow the cash flow, particularly in Panama with the synergies kicking in, in '23 going into '24.
Balan Nair
Management
That's right.
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions]
Balan Nair
Management
I think, operator, if we don't have any more further questions, I think our presentation this morning was self-evident. So we give maybe 20 seconds, and then we'll call it a wrap.
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions]
Balan Nair
Management
Okay. Well, operator, thank you. And to everybody on the call, I want to thank you all for your support. Clearly, we are quite excited about 2023 with the guidance that Chris just gave. I think the management team feels really good about our region, feels really good about the businesses that we operate, and feels really good as well on our ability to execute this year. So we do thank you for your support, and we look forward to talking to you again in the next quarter. Thank you, everybody.
Operator
Operator
Thank you, all. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Latin America's Full Year 2022 Investor Call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available to the Investor Relations section of Liberty Latin America's website at www.lla.com. There, you can also find a copy of today's presentation materials.