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Millicom International Cellular S.A. (TIGO)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 25, 2020

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Millicom Q4 2019 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today, Tuesday, the 25th of February, 2020.I would now like to hand the call over to your host today Michel Morin. Please go ahead.

Michel Morin

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Hi, everyone and welcome to our fourth quarter results conference call. As usual, we're referencing some slides which are available on our website. Please turn to slide 2, our Safe Harbor disclosure. We will be making forward-looking statements and these involve risks and uncertainties and these could have a material impact on our results.And then on slide 3, we define the non-IFRS metrics that we will be referring to throughout the presentation. You can find reconciliation tables in the back of our earnings release as well as on our website. So with those disclaimers out of the way, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Tim Pennington. Tim?

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Thanks, Michel. So I'm going to give you a very quick introduction to the group's financial performance and then Mauricio will take you through why 2019 was a transformational year.Okay. So starting on slide 5 with the Q4 headlines for the group. And be aware this is the IFRS presentation treating Guatemala and Honduras as equity associates. In more detail on slide 6, this is a summary of the group reported P&L for the full year 2019. And note that the results have been significantly affected by M&A IFRS 16 and fair value adjustments.Revenue was up almost 10% year-on-year mostly from acquisitions whilst operating profit was down again mostly because of the swing in other non-cash operating items. Below the line financial expenses were up on higher debt to fund acquisitions and IFRS 16 and it more than offset -- it was more than offset by a fair value gain arising from the Helios Towers IPO where we sold some shares but we still own about 16%. Discontinued operations reflect the sale of Chad and we ended with EPS of $1.48 per share.So with that, let me turn over to Mauricio.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Thank you, Tim and good day, everyone. I went out for an afternoon run early this January and my mind started reflecting on all the things we accomplished as a team in 2019. And by the time I finished the run it was clear that 2019 was a year in which our transformation began to take real shape.In each of the quadrants on slide 8 you can see the four building blocks of our transformation. I will touch on each of these pillars in the next few slides, but the key message is that we ended the year in a much, much stronger position than we started with a solid platform and with a ton of strategic optionality ahead of us.Let's start with our strategic development and positioning on slide 9. We continued to reallocate capital out of Africa. We sold Chad for cash. We listed both HTA and Jumia and took other very key steps to facilitate monetization of our remaining non-core assets in the near future. We're not totally done yet of course long are the days in which our execution ability on this front was still to be tested. Every year we have made substantial progress reallocating capital.Indeed and more importantly, we have allocated over $3 billion in acquisitions to complete our footprint in Central America. Two-thirds of this investment went into Panama, a growing stable and dollar economy where we bought both the leading cable company and the leading mobile operator. We're now number one in Panama. The integration is on track and acquisition is ahead of plan as Tim will speak to you about in a second.The remaining capital went to add mobile to our cable businesses in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. And as a result of this, we now have fixed and mobile in…

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Thanks, Mauricio. I'll now go through the key financials for the Latam segment, starting on slide 21 with Latam service revenue. So in Q4, we saw 14.2% increase in Latam service revenue, reflecting the acquisitions in Panama and Nicaragua.Underlying organic growth was 2.3% in line with the full year growth rate of 2.2%. Cable was once again the driver of the organic growth up 8% and that was offset by a 2.7% decline from Mobile reflecting weaker prepaid revenues in several markets. The FX impact was a bit more stable in the quarter also.So, breaking this down by country of operation on slide 22, the main highlights on this slide is that Colombia grew very strongly this quarter up 6.3%. All our business lines performed well and this frankly is our best performance in more than two years. I'll go into more detail on Colombia, Panama, Bolivia and Paraguay in a few slides.Turning to EBITDA on slide 23, overall we were up almost 23% on a year ago. Again it's largely M&A, offset by more modest FX drags plus some positive impacts from IFRS 16. IFRS 16 added 2.6 percentage points to the EBITDA margin, but at 38.5% that's excluding IFRS 16 we continue to show progression on a year ago.As you can see on slide 24 in most markets we made solid progress. Note that the organic growth rates shown here are normalized for IFRS 16, and also other factors like FX, so you're looking at like-for-like growth rates. And on this basis, you can see that most of our operations may progress. In particular, we saw El Salvador posting a second consecutive quarter of positive EBITDA growth.We still have a few challenges, but we're feeling much better about the outlook following the recent spectrum auction results that Mauricio…

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Thank you, Tim. Let's talk now about the future. Let's start with our outlook on Slide 34. As you know, our investment opportunity is predicated upon young and growing populations in our markets, increasing digital adoption on the back of low broadband penetrations and our growing middle class in economies with continued GDP growth.These are clear and consistent trends over the medium term, even if there may be political unrest or a macro downturn in one or two of our markets in any given year, like indeed we saw in 2019. And to tap into this opportunity, we have been building state-of-the-art networks, consistently adding customers and revamping organic revenue growth.And in tandem, we control costs to drive operating leverage and improve cash flow generation as you have seen. This is our simple strategy and it is working. Even in 2019, with clear challenges in Bolivia and Paraguay, we drove 8.3% operating cash flow growth. And because ours is a strategic long-term vision, we are indeed investing for the mid and long-term. We like the momentum we now see in the business. And to keep this mid-term and strategic focus, we will move away from providing the very specific guidance for the year as some of you may have come to expect.We're doing this while maintaining and reconfirming and quite bullishly so, our mid-term outlook. Our ambition is for service revenue to grow mid-single digits for EBITDA to grow mid to high single-digits and for operating cash flow growth to be about 10%. The key point here is very simply. We remain very committed and very bullish about our outlook and about our mid-term guidance.And that is why on Slide 35, we are reaffirming the total shareholder remuneration amount we provide to our shareholders, while improving the mechanism we use…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Marcelo Santos. Please ask your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Could you please discuss a little bit more the current environment in Bolivia? Are we already seeing some kind of normalization going forward? Or is it something that we should expect more in the mid-term? And the second question is about the service revenue growth in Latam. I know you don't want to provide a specific guidance. But you could -- could we expect some kind of improvement in 2020 versus 2019, on local currencies? These are the two questions. Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

All right, I'll let Tim figure out, how we answer number two, without backtracking on the notion of no annual guidance, which we think is absolutely right thing to do. And we'll be happy to talk about that. But in Bolivia, a few bits and pieces Marcelo. And thank you for the question.We did go through a couple of months, in the fourth quarter. In which the political situation that you're very familiar with did not allow us to sell or service, either customers or the network. So, it was pretty difficult for a couple of months.From an operational point of view, it is getting back to normal. We're back selling. We're back actively servicing the network. And we're back up connecting subscribers. And January in particular has been very stable.As you know, looking into the future, the next round of elections are in May. So although, things are stable now I couldn't quite put out a crystal ball that allows me to exactly tell how those elections are going to come out and what the civil unrest may or may not be.And that's part of the reason we want to be very cautious, because these things do pop out one way or another, every now and again. So things are back on track, back to normal, but we're not out of the woods yet. And we remain very vigilant as to what may happen on the elections in May, and on the run up to those elections.I do want to point out that, despite this hiccup in Bolivia, my personal view is that, the country has turned out to be very resilient in these institutions, and has been dealt with this institutional crisis, in quite a stable manner. And we hope that continues. And I'll hand it over to Tim, on the second part of your question.

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Yeah. And the question was the outlook for service revenue growth in Latam in 2020. And as I said, we want to move away from quarterly guidance and focus on the mid-term. And our mid-term is to get to mid-single digits, on our revenue growth.And we take Q4 2019, as the indicator of what might happen in 2020. We saw and as I said in my remarks, very, very strong performance from Colombia. We feel that a lot of the actions we've taken over the last two years are starting to be seen now in the financial results.So -- and with the 700 spectrum that should aid our Mobile business. So kind of we remain positive on the outlook, in Colombia. Guatemala has always been and remains very strong business. It continues to grow was just under 4%, in the fourth quarter.And I mentioned El Salvador, where we've had a tough time over the last few years. And we started to see sequential growth in most of the metrics, apart from revenue in El Salvador. But I'm hopeful that we'll start to see that, improving in 2020.The opportunities we have in Panama and Nicaragua, surrounding the acquisitions we believe gives us a good outlook. Clearly, its early days for us, the integration so far is going very well but it remains early days in terms of just exactly how far we can push that business forward.We'll be looking probably primarily, at synergy extraction, during 2020. And Bolivia, as Mauricio was just saying, I mean, it ended the year with a relatively muted, sort of flat lining on its revenue growth, which did dampen -- it has been a driver for us for a while.And so, kind of we're crossing our fingers. But we think we'll start to see Bolivia coming back, in 2020 with stronger performance stronger revenue. And of course Paraguay which has dragged us through 2019.We are beginning to see some signs of more rational pricing, in that market. And again, we have made investments and repositioned our business. So, look, I don't want to sort of, kind of oversell 2020, on the revenue side. I want to undersell it.I think we feel we've taken the right moves. And as I said, on Q3, we'll continue to focus on maintaining our market share. So there may be markets that we have to move either pricing, investment, et cetera to preserve that. But generally, we are positive on our outlook.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

I'd say, Marcelo, that's actually better color than guidance.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yeah. Thank you very much.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Next question.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from the line of Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question.

Fredrik Lithell

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

My question, I was just -- coming back to your thoughts for sort of not really providing a, 2020 guidance. And if you could sort of more specify, sort of the mid-term where that is so we can sort of try and bridge this in a sensible way then? So that's really one part.And then on the way you will now distribute cash to shareholders, in one part, in dividends and also then one part in share buybacks over three years.Will that be sort of the share buyback program? Will that be evenly distributed throughout these three years? Or is it more an opportunistic situation where you can use it when you feel you have sort of the situation to do so? And how would that work? Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Sure. So I'll take the first part of the question if you will. And then, I'll let -- maybe address a little bit of the rationale, on the buyback. And let Tim walk you through. And I wouldn't call it the mechanics but perhaps the more -- the inner workings of the buyback.So listen, on the guidance, we want as a management team to be focused and our investors to be focused on, long-term opportunity. And we are solidly and bullishly making progress towards that long-term.What we've done today is we've put it out there again, very, very clearly. So our mid-term guidance is very robust. It's actually very detailed, when you look at it, both on the service revenue growth and the EBITDA growth. And our commitment to operating cash flow growth.So it's very solid mid-term guidance. And a very specific guidance, and it is perfectly consistent with what we deem to be the investment opportunity, which is predicated on digital adoption, growing GDP, growing middle class and low broadband penetration. So there's perfect consistency between the opportunity, the strategy, the long-range plan and as a result the mid-term guidance, which is very specific.So we're confirming and bullishly saw that mid-term guidance. The reason why we are moving away if you will from the yearly guidance is precisely so we focus on the long-term. There are hiccups on a yearly basis that come from either macro or political turmoil or one given competition normally here or there. And those do not move away from the long-term guidance.We want as a management team to always be able to make the right calls for the long-term. And I'm being very transparent with you. So if in any given quarter we want to more aggressively defend market share, we don't want to be straight jacketed bound by quarterly guidance movement. We want to be able to do the right thing for the business in the long-term.Conversely and this has happened in the past if you recall 2018, if we have a ton of momentum and in a given quarter, we want to drive net acquisitions we don't want that additional subscriber acquisition CapEx to take away from us doing the right thing, which is investing in the business. So we're doing this for the purposes of having very, very strong flexibility to take the opportunities to grow faster or defend market share for the long-term if we need be and not be straight jacketed in the short-term quite the opposite be very, very open to do the right thing for investors in the long term.

Fredrik Lithell

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Thank you.

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

I think -- and we haven't really defined the medium-term specifically. But I think most people would view it as three to five years, and I don't think we would disagree with that period. I think on the buyback the distribution of cash buybacks, I think this is an important point we want to get across. This is a long-term program. We don't view ourselves as stop-head this year. We intend to be in the market consistently. And we're not going to back-end, front-end. We're simply going to continue to be present in the market buying back stock. That's our view of how these programs are successful. And it's certainly our view of the way we want to proceed with this program.

Fredrik Lithell

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Okay. Thank you. Can I have a follow-up just, Tim on the synergy side. You mentioned in Panama you've done a little bit better there. That's good. And so could you elaborate on now when you have most -- I mean you still have one piece coming in here in Q1? But have you found any new areas where you could tap in and do more of synergy work and maybe on data centers and all that stuff? Is there anything adding to your picture when it comes to synergies? Sorry -- or do you see that your regional plan is fair?

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Yes, again thanks for the question. Because -- ironically the synergies we've captured so far have come out of Cable Onda. And in fact when we did the deal, we didn't specifically say there'd be synergies in that deal. In fact we weren't very sure there would be synergies in that deal, because we didn't have any market conditions at the moment. But we found them principally through basically better buying. I mean, we're just a bigger buyer and therefore we've been able to extract real cash synergies out of the procurement side.Now the Telefónica piece where we did have a market consolidation in all three markets, but the big one is Panama, we gave guidance at the time that we expected to be able to extract $30 million to $40 million of OpEx savings on a run rate basis $3 million to $5 million in CapEx. And we specified some revenue savings as well, kind of -- we haven't really made a start on those in the sense of these businesses have only been in our portfolio now for I don't know three to six months or so.But from what we've seen, we remain very confident about extracting those synergies. And I think you will see those coming through in 2020, 2021. Those are the periods we expect to bring those out.

Fredrik Lithell

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Okay. Thank you very much.

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Fredrik Lithell from Danske Bank. Please ask your question

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question.

Kevin Roe

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

Thank you. On Colombia, you mentioned in the press release, price increase in the Home business in the fourth quarter. Could you share some additional color on that? Was that any different than prior price increases and its magnitude? And any potential impact on churn here in the New Year?And also in Colombia there, you mentioned the government contracts secured in Q4. Anything else you can share on that, its duration, its materiality for Colombia in the fourth quarter? And Tim big picture for Latin America for 2020, are there any new regulatory or tax issues, we should be monitoring for the new year?

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

I'll take the first part of the first Kevin and thanks for your question on Colombia. The key difference this time around on the price increases in Colombia is that we didn't lead, we followed and that's very significant, because we're the challenger of the dominant in our market. And as a result us following is very significant. And I think that's very relevant.So we believe this will be stickier price increases. And the second thing, I would add, which is less relevant for sure is that we took the opportunity to reshuffle a little bit our lineup, our programming lineup and we took away some analog channels. So we didn't see the full benefit of the price increases because we took advantage of the opportunity to reshuffle our analog or take away some analog channels. And as you know that's always troublesome for consumers.And that's with regards to Colombia. We do see Colombia becoming more rational and we do see our competitors -- and this is across fixed and mobile, our competitors focused on return on the capital investments made. It's no longer the cut throat environment that we saw some two or three years ago.

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

Yeah. I mean it's been followed as well on the mobile side. We didn't specifically call this out. But basically we followed moving prices on the entry-level postpaid plans and also one of the most popular prepaid top-ups. Again prices moved up. So, positive signs. I'm not sure we want to sort of get the streamers going just yet, but it's been.And in terms of regulatory tax for Latam for 2020, we don't have anything. We've got particular concerns about on the horizon. Obviously, we remain vigilant because the governments that -- and the countries we operate remain sort of short of cash, and so we remain vigilant, but we don't see or we not -- we don't have visibility on anything at this point in time. And frankly, I'm not expecting anything that would be significant.

Kevin Roe

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

That's helpful. And any color on – yeah, the government contract?

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

Yeah. Before Tim goes back on that, you may recall me saying Kevin at some point over the last 18 months that we should be on the lookout for a number of presidential elections in our market. Those are largely in the rearview mirror now with the exception of Bolivia, which basically got postponed into 2020. So with the exception of Bolivia, we're more in the clear for a political turmoil that usually is around political elections in these countries than we were in 2019.

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

Yeah. And on that contract -- the contract that we mentioned in the fourth quarter was another election contract. So it's a one-off. It's sort of done and dusted. But I'll make a couple of observations. One is, these things seem to be repeating and not necessarily suggesting there'll be an election contract in 2020 or 2021. But these are happening regularly.And secondly, and then again, this is just internal stuff. I'm seeing more now B2B request for big ticket transactions that we're bidding on. I think we're becoming a much more credible player in that market. I think it's -- I think the fact that we have committed to the long-term there where some of the other big players have not been able to do that is helping us. So kind of again, we remain optimistic that this will be an area that we will start to see sustained progression through 2020 and 2021.

Kevin Roe

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

So following on that Tim, that's super helpful, the B2B market in Colombia, how big is the market growing? And what's your current share in your view?

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

How long is a piece of string? I think we get a consultants license to answer that question and I'm not sure I've got the answer off the top of my head.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

You can go back Kevin and I'm looking at Michel here who's getting anxious at my answer, but you can do some pretty. Yeah, you can imagine you see us figuring out what I'm going to say.You can go back and sort of normalize our B2B business over the last few years, if you can do the math. And you'll soon realize that yes 2019, as I said on the call, that show kind of flattish, but that's because 2019 was great. And our B2B business there on a normalized basis is actually a net grower and we believe quite an engine of growth into the future on a normalized basis meaning, any given year may be one way or another. But on a normalized basis, it's a steady grower.And because we have a strong position now in Colombia and we're paid up for the long term there, but also in Panama on B2B and a continuous footprint also in South America we're getting a lot of traction with the multinationals on the Multilatinas. And those were the big tickets that Tim was referring to.

Kevin Roe

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

That's helpful. Thank you, Mauricio.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Kevin Roe from Roe Equity Research. Please ask your question

Certainly.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Soomit Datta from New Street Research. Your line is open. Please go ask your question.

Soomit Datta

Analyst · Soomit Datta from New Street Research. Your line is open. Please go ask your question

Hi, there. A couple of questions please. One just going back to the buyback. I wonder why not front-end load the buyback to a greater degree. I would imagine you think your shares are fairly inexpensive at this point. Your leverage is projected to fall from the, I think it's 3.19 times level at the end of 2019. And so it seems kind of a sort of attractive proposition. I wonder why you're a bit more cautious about doing that please. Maybe liquidity is a factor. I'm not sure if you've done some work on that, but that would be interesting to get some thoughts on it.And then just secondly on Colombia. You're talking about price increases, I think on fixed but also on mobile. However, there is a new entrant who I think this week it was confirmed their spectrum position, so they'll be coming into the market. When we saw them in Chile, they took advantage of higher prices and build a business pretty successfully there. So what are your general thoughts on the new entrant in Colombia? And is it a slightly dangerous time to be putting up prices therefore? Thank you.

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Soomit Datta from New Street Research. Your line is open. Please go ask your question

I'm not going to hit the end of this Soomit. I am going to have to -- I've been holding retail pack like wild horses and now the floodgates are opened.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Soomit Datta from New Street Research. Your line is open. Please go ask your question

Thank you Soomit. Thank you. You're doing my bidding for me. Listen on the buyback, I don't think it's news to anybody that we strongly believe, I strongly believe that our equity free cash flow growth profile is becoming stronger and stronger. As I said 2019 and 2020 are years in which we use some of that strength to strengthen the business operationally and strategically. But as the synergies and the good prospects of these acquisitions come through our equity free cash flow profile and its growth become very, very interesting.And that is the perfect scenario the perfect moment to actually give more of that equity free cash flow on a per share basis to our shareholders. Hence, we think this is the perfect time for us to launch this buyback program and the reason we are putting it forth. And we're giving ourselves three years for it, which we think is sensible. There are no specific huge constraints one way or the other. We just like to give ourselves plenty of time to execute and there are obviously market restrictions that we need to abide by.Colombia, I think I'll tackle the whole thing on Colombia on your question Soomit, because I think it's better if we just talk about the spectrum situation in Colombia in a holistic manner. And we may not get a second question -- or a third one actually on Colombia.So, there's two or three elements to Colombia. One the 700 and the actual spectrum that we got. As we've said to the authorities and then obviously, we're very committed to Colombia. We've been investing heavily where it's HFC deployment in over 30 locations, a 4G network that now covers 70% of population and revamping our IT in Colombia. And the benefits of that you've begun…

Soomit Datta

Analyst · Soomit Datta from New Street Research. Your line is open. Please go ask your question

Just a quick follow-up if that's possible please. Is there some appeal process you are pursuing with the industry in Colombia or is it just a done deal?

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Soomit Datta from New Street Research. Your line is open. Please go ask your question

So, we've got our spectrum. We're ready to rock and roll. We're building. We're happy. As a matter of fact, we've been getting ready for a number of years. So, as we speak here, our spectrum has been delivered to us. We're out on the streets building, putting out staff. So, we're stopping holding us back. And as I said, we have first-mover advantage.There is going to be a ton of regulatory issues around the way the things turn out in that auction. So, I do believe and we've been forceful and publicly that you should expect us to defend your rights, our rights, vis-à-vis the Colombian authorities and the legal manner in which this auction was changed exposed.

Soomit Datta

Analyst · Soomit Datta from New Street Research. Your line is open. Please go ask your question

Okay, clear. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Peter Nielsen from ABG. Your line is open, please ask your question.

Peter Nielsen

Analyst · Peter Nielsen from ABG. Your line is open, please ask your question

Thank you very much. Just two quick ones left please. First one on Guatemala. Obviously, you've spoken about Guatemala and briefly here today, but also in previous calls perhaps developing a little differently than originally expected in the near-term. How are you seeing Guatemala developing post the merger, et cetera?And then just quickly could you share any -- discuss a bit how you see the road map for deleveraging going forward given that you are significantly above your target for leverage and you're maintaining a high level of shareholder distributions? How do you view or how should we view the road map for deleveraging toward that target? Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Peter Nielsen from ABG. Your line is open, please ask your question

Sure. I'll take the first one and let Tim handle the deleveraging. It's been just about a year actually since the landscape in Guatemala changed. And in the long term it changed for the better as you've heard me say a number of times because the market structure became effectively a very good market structure for investment and a very good market structure for consumers in the long-term because it's two players in a small market, both of which have the wherewithal and the focus to invest for the long-term. So, it's a great market structure for the long term for consumers and for investments.But as you can imagine there are some adjustments that need to happen during the first year the realignment of the new competitor and some nervousness in our teams in Guatemala around how to protect our market share and protect the market from that possibility.So, we've invested heavily throughout this year both in network and in OpEx, distribution, service levels, et cetera in Guatemala to make sure that we face a new reality with sustained market share and a growing business. And by far and large, although there's been some nervousness, that's the way it's played out.If you look at the full year results from Guatemala, not one quarter or the other, Guatemala remains very, very strong. And there's been a lot more noise and really any change in trend and in reality; it's a stronger market into the future.As we expected, we are seeing our competitors behave very rationally, that's made some nervousness here and some hiccups here. And we do expect that it will remain a very good market for continued investment going forward.It remains one of our fastest growing. I mean the numbers are quite clear and most profitable businesses and that did not change in 2020 and we don't expect it to change into the future.

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Peter Nielsen from ABG. Your line is open, please ask your question

And on the road map for deleveraging, I think Peter we said at the time that we have an organic story on deleveraging. We got our work to do, last year, next year and probably 2021 in terms of getting the synergies out of the acquisitions. But we made a lot of investments in the rest of our business. We expect organic growth. We expect synergies to come through. And I think on top of that in 2019, we also made a little bit of progress on some of the residual assets the Helios Towers and the Jumia. Stakes got closer to liquidity through their IPOs. So kind of – I'm not sure, I would expect too much in 2020, but beyond that we expect to start to see deleveraging taking place.

Peter Nielsen

Analyst · Peter Nielsen from ABG. Your line is open, please ask your question

Okay. Thank you very much both.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Lena Osterberg from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Lena Osterberg

Analyst · Lena Osterberg from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Yes. Hi. A question then on the equity free cash flow on slide 31 of presentation. Here you showed that net financial charges of course are $100 million in 2019, due to all the acquisitions and the one-offs relating to those. I was just wondering, what is a normalized financial charge, if we sort of shrink off all the one-offs and that. So what should we expect into 2020? And then also on further acquisitions, there are some other assets out for sale. Are you looking to do more? Or is it more the focus on deleveraging and distribution so far in this quarter? Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Lena Osterberg from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Lena, I was wondering when you were going to ask your question and I was hoping it was going to be around equity free cash flow. So Michel gets a little anxious, when I answer those questions. I'm going to ask Tim to tackle number one.

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Lena Osterberg from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Yeah. I mean, Lena there was a lot of noise in the equity free cash flow in 2019. I think it's sort of kind of easy one to deal with first. We had about $54 million of one-off charges that we wouldn't typically expect to see. Those are detailed at the back of the earnings release and that reduced our operating free cash flow. We also saw working capital somewhat higher in fact quite significantly higher than we typically have. Part of that is very technical just to do with the introduction of the balance sheet and the new businesses coming into it.Other bits of it have been to do with just timings of cash flows. And in fact we also had a timing difference on our CapEx of around about $100 million in the year i.e. cash CapEx was about $100 million higher than balance sheet CapEx, which again affects our equity free cash flow.And then the final piece of complexity was that in the net financing charges clearly, we put in place a financing structure for the acquisition for the EBITDA for the cash flow that we didn't actually own when we put the financing in place. So we carried a much higher level of debt and cash, and also we incurred sort of front-end fees, and kind of we have to take out a bridge loan we did a number of bonds in the period. It's difficult for me to quantify that figure and Michel will get upset with me, if I try to. But suffice it to say, we didn't see underlying that our equity free cash flow was particularly different from previous years. But there was a lot of noise in – relating to those factors that are just flagged.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Lena Osterberg from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Can you remind me the second question? Oh, sorry Lena go on.

Lena Osterberg

Analyst · Lena Osterberg from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Yeah. Just – yes, you probably have some more acquisition-related things now in Q1. But other than that, is it fair to assume that underlying as you say have roughly flat equity free cash flow year-over-year adjusting for the one-offs that now that could probably be the leverage to 2020 as well before you start to see the synergies kick-in in 2021?

Tim Pennington

Analyst · Lena Osterberg from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question

So Lena, I'm not expecting any kind of M&A-related fees coming through into Q1. But let me take this opportunity just to talk about the integration costs. When we did Camelia we – sorry, the Telefónica assets, I mentioned that, we expect about $100 million of integration costs. We will probably see about $50 million of them during 2020 and that's sort of more or less where our current plan is for this year. So that will be additional, if you like. Part of it will be covered by synergies that we extract in the year, but clearly run rate synergies will come through probably 2021, 2022.

Lena Osterberg

Analyst · Lena Osterberg from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Okay. Yeah – no the other question, I had was on acquisitions. You said some other assets outside at the moment. So I was just wondering, if you attempt to have a proposal or it's – you've bought enough with the funding.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · Lena Osterberg from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Okay. All right. We get it. Thank you for being so diplomatic in the way you phrased the question, Lena. It's excellent. Of course, we've been reading the papers and of course we've been listening to banker pitches here and there, and everybody has an idea or another. But I want to be super clear to you and everybody here that what we have said in the past remains absolutely true.Our focus remains on integrating the four assets that we bought in the last 18 months. We put in over $3 billion of capital reallocation into Central America, which if you look at our market cap it's over 50% of our market cap. And more importantly, we are liking the synergies that we're driving into the business. We're liking the cash flow profile that these acquisitions beyond our strategic nature is giving us into the future and it underpins everything that we talked about today, including our new shareholder remuneration approach. So rest assured that our focus, including our commitment to delivering over time remains completely consistent with precisely this strategic approach.

Lena Osterberg

Analyst · Lena Osterberg from Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our question comes from the line of Stefan Gauffin from DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Stefan Gauffin

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Yes. Hello. A couple of -- just trying to understand a little bit more the sort of -- a little bit one-off impacts in the quarter. If you can help us – and if you strip out the new B2B contract in Colombia, what would the service revenue growth have been in the quarter? And secondly, also for Bolivia just to understand, if you can say what the service revenue growth were in December after the political turmoil ended? Thank you.

Tim Pennington

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

I'm not sure I've got the answer to the first question Stefan. And in a sense, we took a view a while ago not to kind of post adjusted numbers one way or the other. And we kind of show the good with the bad. In Q3, we were down because of prior year we had very good one-offs. This year we're a little bit up. I guess -- so -- and I -- so as a consequence I don't really look at the numbers excluding this or excluding that.The thing I would say and I do think this is quite important. And I said it in the call, if I looked at the underlying numbers for Mobile -- kind of Mobile headline for us didn't look fantastic, but all of the impact was to do with the wholesale revenues. And what we mean by this are basically the people that roam on our network, the MVNOs and the wholesale customers.When I look at postpaid and look at prepaid, they were growing every bit as fast as where the competition of the principal competitor was growing. I did the same analysis for HFC because in HFC we still have got some copper that we saw a little bit DTH a little bit of -- because when I look at the pure HFC growth rates again very consistent with sort of market-leading growth there.So yes, we did have a positive momentum this quarter with the election contract. But I still think underlying we were -- we are beginning to see very strong momentum now coming out of Colombia.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Stefan on Bolivia which I think is important since it's an important part of our growth, I don't know that Michel again will allow me to give you December specific growth numbers for revenue is looking at me with a stick in his hand.But I can tell you this, if you look at our mobile customer net adds for the quarter they are positive and they are significantly positive. And that's a telling sign of what's going on there.And if you look at our HFC net customer adds in Bolivia for the quarter, they're also positive. They're not as positive as they were a year ago or the first half of the year, but they're also positive despite the fact that it was a couple of months in which we couldn't sell our service. So quite clearly, Bolivia is normalizing.And what we see today in the marketplace is a normal economy. It's going back to normal. Our concern or if you will our caution is simply because the elections haven't gone through smoothly yet and that's where we want to keep an eye out for that.

Stefan Gauffin

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Can I just follow-up on Colombia? You had a very solid mobile subscriber intake in the quarter. Are there any particular reasons for this, any extra campaign activity or something?

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

I -- we've been calling Colombia out for a few quarters now signaling that we think the economy is getting stronger that we were going to reap the benefits of all the deployments in capital expenditures that we've been doing. And you also have the continuous investment we've made on service levels, on churn reduction and on the Mobile business in particular, the new product which is significant.And all of that is trickling into better performance and on top of that we simply have an industry that is getting fresh air and growing as a whole. I'm sure, you've looked at the results from our competitors and you will see that they too are growing. And as a result of that we just have a more stable environment in Colombia.

Tim Pennington

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

I do think it's beginning to shake out now. Some of the marginal players in the market are either exiting it or kind of not participating significantly in there. And I think we are a long term player. We've been consistently there. We will continue to consistently be there. And I think that shows and I think that kind of partially will address one of the earlier questions on new entrants there.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

If you -- I mean if you look at we haven't actually said this, but I'm sure you realize Stefan that we lost some of the Avantel revenue and that 6% growth would have been much better had we not lost our revenue. As you know Avantel declared bankruptcy late last year and we were basically their tenant. So our results are actually in reality affected or would have been better without the loss of that revenue.

Stefan Gauffin

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Yes, okay. Thank you.

Michel Morin

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Jules, last question please.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And the last question comes from the line of Johanna Ahlqvist from SEB. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Johanna Ahlqvist

Analyst · SEB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Thank you. One question trying to pinpoint the equity free cash flow a bit. So I'm just wondering, what your view on the CapEx for Latin America in 2020? I guess, since you sort of won the Colombian spectrum, just wondering, if you see a need to deploy that already in 2020 and that we should expect somewhat higher CapEx run rate for 2020. And my second question relates to Helios and Jumia. I'm just wondering do you have any sort of lockups on the two and when those expire? Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · SEB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Yes. On the CapEx, this is a very good attempt at getting us to give you some guidance for 2020. What I'll do is I'll try to give you some color Johanna and I think that will be very helpful. And I'll try to do it on a long-term basis rather than on a given specific year and I think that would be most helpful for you. We expect, that we will remain over our mid-term at right around that $1 billion, $1.1 billion of CapEx on a yearly basis all in. But within that, you must understand that Colombia, the 700 in particular has two significant elements to it. One, as we deploy the network, we also get cost savings in the network size because we will be able to reduce the size of the network we would have otherwise had because the 700 is more efficient.And number two, this spectrum acquisition comes with very long-term payment terms and rollout obligations are diffused over time. And as a result of that, we don't expect that Colombia will drive a spike in our CapEx in 2020. We believe that we'll remain within that $1 billion to $1.1 billion over our mid-term guidance. More importantly, we believe this will continue to be increasingly success driven, because it's more focused on the HFC net adds' and it's more focused on capacity, rather than coverage as I've said a number of times. And we do believe that in the medium term as we said a number of times, our capital intensity will move towards 15% from where it is today at around 70%. So, there you go, I'm giving you a ton of color still within a medium-term outlook which is the way we manage the business. And on HT and Jumia I will pass it on to our Africa expert. A –Unidentified Company Representative: Technically, I think, we're out of the lockup on Jumia and we're still in one on HTA the bank's lockup I think comes out in April.

Mauricio Ramos

Analyst · SEB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

But I think, what I said on my remarks is, we've moved one step closer towards monetization of what we've clearly said our noncore assets in the long term.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. Over to you.

Michel Morin

Analyst · DNB. Your line is open. Please ask your question

Thank you to all of you for your very, very good questions and for hearing us out today. I won't repeat everything we've said. I hope the tone and the demeanor of this chat gives you an idea that we remain super bullish and super confident on our growing equity free cash flow and our new total shareholder remuneration program, which we think is an improvement on the prior mechanism.On an operational basis this year, we haven't said it loudly, but we are at near-records for total subs, postpaid and 4G and very solid near record HFC net adds. All that didn't go unnoticed. Colombia is very strong on revenue and EBITDA growth. Guatemala remains solid. And Cable Onda as far as we can see is ahead of plan on operating cash flow and we remain very bullish both defending our fixed leadership and gaining market share on Mobile. So, overall we're pretty bullish particularly about our equity free cash flow growth into the future and the strategic moves we've made over the past 18 months both on the shareholder remuneration now and on the acquisition. So, we look forward to what we think is a solid future and we hope many of you will continue to join us for the ride. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

That does conclude today's conference. Thank you to everyone who participated in today's call. You may now all disconnect.