Liberty Latin America Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 7, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Q1 beat expectations: Adjusted OIBDA was $405 million and the company added 50,000 mobile postpaid subscribers, while adjusted free cash flow before partner distributions improved by about $40 million year‑over‑year to negative $64 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management announced a $500 million notional preferred equity dividend paying 9% and restarted share repurchases, with roughly $184 million remaining under the buyback authorization.
  • Positive Sentiment: Jamaica is recovering faster than expected after Hurricane Melissa — the company added back ~30,000 residential revenue‑generating customers in Q1 and is increasingly confident of returning to run‑rate adjusted OIBDA and a smaller free‑cash‑flow hit in 2026.
  • Negative Sentiment: Leverage and Puerto Rico liquidity remain material risks: consolidated debt is $8.4 billion with net leverage ~4.5x, while Liberty Puerto Rico carries very high leverage (reported borrowing group net ~8x, restricted‑subsidiary covenant ~14x) and may need asset‑backed third‑party financing or creditor engagement.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Liberty Networks showed strong wholesale demand (rebased revenue +9%) driven by subsea projects (MANTA, El Salvador), but timing and project costs (El Salvador) depressed Q1 adjusted OIBDA, with meaningful high‑margin revenue expected once builds go live.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Liberty Latin America Q1 2026
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Operator

Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Today's call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Mauricio Romero, VP of AI and Analytics, Liberty Latin America.

Mauricio Romero
Mauricio Romero
VP of AI and Analytics at Liberty Latin America

Good morning, and welcome to Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2026 investor call. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the investor relations section of Liberty Latin America's website at www.lla.com. Today's remarks may include forward-looking statements, including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other informational 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 factors discussed in Liberty Latin America's most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q, along with the associated press release.

Mauricio Romero
Mauricio Romero
VP of AI and Analytics at Liberty Latin America

Liberty Latin America disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information to reflect any change in its expectations or in the conditions on which any 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 investor section of our website. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Balan Nair.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Thank you, Mauricio, welcome everyone to Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2026 results presentation. I will be running through our group highlights and an overview of our operating results before Chris Noyes, our CFO, reviews the company's financial performance. We'll get straight to your questions. As always, I'm joined by my executive team from across our operations, and I'll 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 four and our highlights. Our business started 2026 with a very solid performance. We added 50,000 mobile postpaid subscribers, with all segments across the group contributing. Growth continues to be supported by fixed mobile convergence efforts and continuing prepaid to postpaid migration.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

We reported $405 million of Adjusted OIBDA in Q1 2026. This result came in ahead of our own expectations, with Jamaica and Liberty Caribbean contributing significantly to this beat. While year-over-year momentum in Adjusted OIBDA doesn't appear as strong as prior quarters, this reflected the combination of, one, a full quarter of impact from Hurricane Melissa, and two, phasing on B2B, including the timing of projects, revenues, and costs at Liberty Networks. We anticipate diminishing year-over-year headwinds and revenue growth throughout the remainder of the year. In addition, we reported Q1 adjusted free cash flow before distributions to non-controlling interests, which was approximately $40 million higher than Q1 last year. This was a great result given the hurricane impact. In Jamaica, our business is recovering more quickly than we had anticipated.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

The drivers include the speed of homes being reconnected to the residential fixed business and ongoing strength in mobile, building from our performance through the hurricane, where our direct-to-cell connectivity helped grow affinity with customers on the island. Turning to our capital structure, we have significant new developments to highlight. Today, we are announcing the intention to distribute $500 million notional amount of preferred equity in the form of a dividend, providing a rate of 9%. This will effectively divide our equity into an instrument with an attractive return and a more geared common equity. This move reflects our increasing confidence in LLA's future adjusted free cash flow profile, as well as our desire to return cash to shareholders. On that latter point, we have also been active in the market, repurchasing shares this quarter for the first time since the first half of 2024.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

We will continue to be opportunistic with regards to future share repurchase, noting we have approximately $185 million of authorization remaining on our buyback program. I'd like to mention the joint press release published yesterday by GCI Liberty and ourselves. GCI has announced it has acquired Searchlight's approximate 6% stake in LLA at an April 1 closing market price of $8.63 per share. We would like to thank Eric Zinterhofer and his team for their support over the years and welcome GCI as shareholders. For those unfamiliar with GCI, this is the Alaskan communications business, formerly part of Liberty Broadband, which was spun out last year. Our Director Emeritus, John Malone, has over 50% of the voting shares of GCI and hard control.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

This means that alongside his 7% direct and indirect equity in LLA, GCI Liberty, which John controls, owns another 6% of our stock, representing significant support for our company. We appreciate John's increased commitment to LLA and look forward to continuing our relationship over the coming years. Turning now to our operations. On slide 5, we review our Liberty Caribbean segment, which reflects this quarter a full impact of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica, which represented an underlying negative impact of $12 million at the revenue level in Q1. On the left of the slide, we show how despite the hurricane, Liberty Caribbean's postpaid performance has continued unabated during this difficult period, adding another 15,000 postpaid subscribers, of which 11,000 was delivered in Jamaica in the first quarter, and with a healthy contribution from our smaller South Caribbean markets.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Early in 2025, we stepped up the investment in our network in Jamaica, including bolstering our spectrum position. In the aftermath of the hurricane, we have reinforced customer trust helped by our direct-to-cell support and were ultimately recognized by Ookla as the fastest mobile network on the island in the second half of 2025. We are pleased with this result and will continue to build on this platform through 2026. Mobile still remains a largely prepaid market in Jamaica, as expected, we saw a seasonal drop in prepaid subs this quarter versus a stronger Q4 period, took an opportunity to increase price and registered strong prepaid revenue growth year-over-year. Our fixed business, both residential and B2B, felt the brunt of the hurricane, we are pleased to retain the positive residential fixed broadband subscriber adds this quarter.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Moving to the middle of the slide. At the top, we are showing Jamaica's revenue evolution over the last few quarters. Our mobile business performed well post-hurricane. On the other hand, while the restoration of the fixed network is taking some time, we see a quicker recovery than we had previously anticipated. At the bottom, we present the evolution of revenue-generating customers. Through Q4, driven by Hurricane Melissa, we've witnessed a drop in revenue generating residential customers of over 110,000, or approximately 1/3 of the customer base. In the first quarter, we have added back 30,000 such customers. Looking forward, we are now more optimistic on the pace of further reconnections.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

At year-end, we had taken out 60,000 customers and 133,000 homes passed from our fixed count, suggesting at that time that reconnection of these customers was unlikely in the near term. As power has come back to the island and following our updated network mapping, we are now increasingly optimistic in being able to reconnect a healthy number of these customers in 2026. In terms of outlook for Jamaica, we suggested at our full year 2025 results an ambition to return to run rate Jamaican Adjusted OIBDA by year-end and for a negative FCF impact in 2026 of up to $100 million. We are now increasingly confident that we will land on the right side of these aspirations, especially on free cash flow.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

On slide 6, we review Cable & Wireless Panama, where after a strong performance in Q4, Q1 tends to be a seasonally quieted quarter for the B2B. This gives me an opportunity to talk about some of the great initiatives underway in the residential business. On mobile, we continue to see postpaid as a strong driver, reporting a 10% year-over-year subscriber growth. This performance is built on customer value management focus using data analytics to drive upsell and cross-sell opportunities. FMC continues to steadily increase, now running at over 40%. Postpaid churn is running at historically low levels. On the prepaid side, our momentum is also good, although we felt the pinch in Q1 as the regulator pushed back on certain price increases. Notwithstanding this, we are seeing strong adoption of a loyalty program and solid growth in our value-added service offerings, including cash advances, trivia, and gaming.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

On the fixed side, we have continued to grow fixed broadband subscribers as well as total RGUs, which grew 7% year-over-year in Q1. We are aiming to keep the momentum rolling through 2026, looking to use the FIFA World Cup and the Panamanian national team's qualification and presence as a catalyst. Early offers include campaigns with 65-inch Samsung TVs provided on a non-subsidized finance basis. Over the coming weeks and months, we have a number of other product launches in the hopper which will showcase the quality of our network. On B2B, we see a healthy pipeline and remind investors we tend to see revenues weigh towards the back end of the year. Turning to slide seven, to Liberty Networks.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

As we show on the left, we see continued healthy underlying demand for sub-sea capacity in our wholesale business, driving rebased revenue growth of 9% year-over-year in Q1, with demand from international and regional carriers and hyperscalers expected to continue at a healthy clip over the coming months and years. We are running two key projects today, Manta, which is in build phase through 2027, and where we see elevated CapEx and working capital through to go live, from which time CapEx will drop to a very low run rate levels and will start to book revenue. With high margins or EBITDA and free cash flow. El Salvador is our second significant project within this segment, where we are ticking off milestones which determine revenue and cost.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Both of these items are lumpy, with revenue contributing positively in Q4 2025, while there was a significant cost allocation this quarter, which negatively impacted our Q1 reported year-over-year Adjusted OIBDA performance. On an underlying basis, excluding El Salvador, we saw an improvement in year-over-year revenue and Adjusted OIBDA momentum at Liberty Networks in Q1 versus Q4. Turning to slide eight and Liberty Costa Rica, which operates in our most competitive fixed market, with five national players and additional regional players further compounding the pressure. In this context, we are pleased to be maintaining a broadly stable fixed residential subscriber base, though there is inevitable pressure on fixed ARPU given the downward pressures on front book pricing over the last 12 months.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Notwithstanding this ARPU weakness, total residential fixed revenue declines this quarter primarily reflected a lower share of CPE being sold under our buy to own model and instead being rented. We continue to generate solid volumes on postpaid, which helped drive 2% residential mobile revenue growth in Q1 year-over-year. We are, however, seeing signs of more elevated competition in the early stages of this year. In this climate, we need to continue to differentiate and innovate. On the former, we aim to focus ever more so on FMC, given the majority of fixed providers we compete against can't provide such a service. On innovation, we are delighted to announce that Liberty Costa Rica and Starlink have signed an agreement to offer for the first time in Costa Rica a direct-to-cell service.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

This will be branded Liberty-Starlink, and we are working on launching this in the second half of 2026. It will allow both consumers and corporate clients to connect to data that delivers voice, video, and messaging through apps as well as text messaging from places where mobile coverage does not currently exist, such as rural, mountainous or maritime areas and even national parks. We aim to leverage this product to cement a strong position in the Costa Rican mobile market. Finally, we are highly focused on cost reduction initiatives in Costa Rica in 2026. Turning to slide nine and Liberty Puerto Rico. On the mobile side, we have made strong progress, registering positive postpaid additions for the second consecutive quarter, supported by recent CVPs such as Liberty SIMple, a subsidy-free postpaid SIM offer.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

We would highlight that Q1 is traditionally a seasonally quiet quarter, and without the contribution which our postpaid base received in the commercially more active Q4 from the Boost migration. In the center of the slide at the top, we show how our mobile NPS has improved since the migration and how it has been back into positive territory over the last 12 months. If NPS is a positive forward-looking indicator, the chart below shows how far we have already come. This shows the port in port out ratio for postpaid mobile, with the latest data suggesting we have finally retained a greater than 1 in April. This means we are currently growing postpaid market share in Puerto Rico. While there remains a lot to focus on mobile, our attention has also pivoted to residential fixed, where we are seeing a significant and positive shift in momentum in 2026.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Towards the end of 2025, we really re-engage on fixed, launching a number of initiatives which played on the network strength of Liberty Puerto Rico, which resonated well with our fixed customers. We also made significant improvements in channel productivity and in our door to door commercial activity. Since then, we have seen a significant improvement in our NPS scores on fixed, combined with a return to lower churn, close to pre-mobile migration levels. Month-over-month through year to date 2026, we have been seeing net fixed broadband subscriber losses diminish, and in the last couple of weeks have seen these net losses disappear almost entirely. We need to keep razor focus on our commercial offer and be mindful of competition in the market, but appear to be on a firmer footing here as we look out to the rest of 2026.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Across Puerto Rico, while we are very pleased with the recent improvement in operational trends in the business, we continue to have liquidity requirements in the business. As we have made clear for some time, this liquidity needs will continue to be met by Liberty Puerto Rico through its assets. With that, I'll pass you over to Chris Noyes, our Chief Financial Officer, who will take you through our financial performance before we move on to your questions. Chris?

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

Thanks, Balan. I will recap our first quarter results, which were ahead of our own internal targets. Consistent with last year, we delivered revenue of $1.1 billion, reflecting a 1% rebased decline. Our relatively flat performance was due to several specific factors, including a full quarter impact of Hurricane Melissa on our Liberty Caribbean business, a change in our Costa Rican fixed residential business model for equipment, and phasing of B2B projects, principally in CWP. A highlight of the quarter was performance in Liberty Networks, which led LLA. In terms of Adjusted OIBDA, we posted $405 million in Q1, which like revenue, reflects a rebased decline of 1%. The top line headwinds, as noted, were the principal drivers of this performance, including the impact from Hurricane Melissa.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

We recognized costs in Liberty Networks for the El Salvador subsea build of $7 million, which did not have corresponding revenue in the quarter. Liberty Puerto Rico, meanwhile, posted strong Adjusted OIBDA growth of over 10% year-over-year. Turning to slide 12 for the C&W credit silo results. Starting on the left, LCE reported $355 million in revenue and $163 million in Adjusted OIBDA. As anticipated during our FY 2025 call, both metrics declined year-over-year, primarily as a result of the $12 million gross negative effect in revenue from the hurricane, with an impact of over $8 million in fixed customer revenue and around $4 million in B2B fixed revenue.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

This was partially offset by the recovery of B2B revenue in Q1 2026 for services provided to certain customers in Q4 2025 that were initially believed to be uncertain of collection. For Jamaica, a solid mobile performance continues to support the business, while an increase in the anticipated pace of reconnections should bring us closer to pre-hurricane levels on fixed before year end. Moving to CWP. In Q1, both CWP revenue and Adjusted OIBDA decreased 1% year-over-year on a rebased basis, reporting $176 million of revenue and $64 million of Adjusted OIBDA. Positive top-line performance in both fixed and mobile, sustained by subscriber additions, was more than offset by B2B, mainly impacted by pricing negotiations of some government-related contracts in what is a seasonally much slower quarter. Operating costs are modestly higher year-over-year and sequentially.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

However, management has plans in place to help control rising costs. Turning to Liberty Networks. LN generated $121 million in revenue, resulting in rebased growth of 7%, while Adjusted OIBDA declined by 5% year-over-year on a rebased basis to $55 million. Q1 revenue was fueled by the sustained expansion of our wholesale business through strong capacity sales, while Adjusted OIBDA was impacted by timing of direct costs related to our El Salvador project. Aggregating all three operating segments within the C&W credit silo for Q1, we reported $631 million in revenue, resulting in flat year-over-year rebased growth and $282 million in Adjusted OIBDA or a 5% year-over-year rebased decrease, mainly driven by the hurricane impact and the aforementioned El Salvador project.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

Rounding out our other two credit silos, Liberty Costa Rica and Liberty Puerto Rico. On the left, we highlight LCR. We delivered Q1 revenue of $158 million and adjusted OIBDA of $57 million, representing year-over-year rebased declines of 4% and 8% respectively. Residential mobile growth was more than offset by lower residential fixed and B2B revenue. The decline in residential fixed revenue was driven in part by ARPU pressure impacting subscription revenue and lower sales of equipment sold under our buy to own model, which affects non-subscription revenue. To support financial performance, we have also embarked on a comprehensive cost out program, which is in its early days, but should be hitting its stride as we get into H2.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

Concluding with Puerto Rico on the right, LPR posted Q1 revenue of $296 million, which reflects a 1% decline. Revenue is continuing to stabilize as mobile and B2B recovery is underway, while the residential fixed business has been hampered by modest increase in churn over the past year. Turning to Adjusted OIBDA, we grew 12% to $91 million. The strong performance is largely a result of the continued efforts to improve LPR's cost base over the year, which includes lower labor and bad debt costs. Turning to LLA's Adjusted OIBDA less P&E additions and adjusted FCF on slide 14. Building upon our Adjusted OIBDA performance, we invested $111 million or 10% of revenue in P&E additions in the quarter, which represents an 8% reduction compared to last year.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

Typically, Q1 tends to be a seasonally low quarter for us, thus we expect our spend to pick up over the rest of the year. Importantly, roughly $12 million of our spend in Q1 was associated with the Jamaican recovery. As Balan noted, we are hyper-focused on bringing back even more fixed residential connectivity to our footprint. The chart on the left depicts an important metric for us, which is Adjusted OIBDA less P&E additions. For Q1, we delivered $294 million, reflecting an improvement of 3% year-over-year and a margin of 27% of revenue. The absolute figure was adversely impacted by Hurricane Melissa for about $20 million on a net basis.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

Moving to the right side of the slide, we significantly improved our adjusted free cash flow before partner distributions, delivering negative $64 million in the quarter, which is $40 million better year-over-year. This result was driven by a combination of stronger cash flow from operating activities and the lower capital spend just noted. As seen in prior years, Q1 working capital is always constrained, reflecting a partial unwind from the seasonally strong Q4. As a reminder, our adjusted FCF will be highly weighted to later in the year. On an LTM basis through March 31, our adjusted FCF before partner distributions increased to $190 million from $150 million for fiscal 2025. Next to slide 15 and a quick review of our capital structure.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

On a consolidated basis, LLA had total debt of $8.4 billion and $1.5 billion of liquidity, consisting of just under $700 million in cash and almost $800 million in availability under our committed credit lines. Q1 2026 consolidated net leverage was 4.5x, and if we exclude LPR leverage, LLA leverage would decline into the mid-3s. The middle of the slide summarizes our two credit silos of C&W and LCR. We have total debt of $5 billion and covenant leverage of 3.7x at C&W, and total debt of $510 million and covenant leverage of 2x at LCR. Over 75% of borrowings are due in 2031 and beyond.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

During the quarter, we reduced our outstanding LCR bonds by 10% as we exercised the 103 call that we had. On the right is our Liberty Puerto Rico credit silo, which has $3 billion of total debt and reported borrowing group net leverage of 8 times, while covenant leverage of restricted subsidiaries was 14x. During the quarter, as noted on the year-end call, LPR borrowed the remaining $50 million available under its unrestricted subsidiary facility, bringing its total unrestricted subsidiary borrowing proceeds to $250 million. This borrowing strengthened LPR's liquidity position. The business continues to benefit from substantial flexibility in its credit documents, we expect LPR to continue to utilize its assets to raise third-party capital to the extent that it is needed.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

In terms of the liability management exercise that has been ongoing since the summer, LPR is continuing to evaluate its options to maximize value, and this may or may not include direct engagement with its lenders and bondholders. We will provide further updates with respect to this process when we determine it is appropriate. Turning to slide 16 and building upon Balan's highlights at the start of the presentation and our increasing confidence in our underlying businesses, including our cash flow potential. We announced today the intent to dividend 9% cash paid preferred stock with a notional amount of $500 million to our equity shareholders. We are working to be able to complete this distribution before the end of Q2. This structure accomplishes several objectives, providing our shareholders with an attractive cash pay security and a regearing of our equity.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

LLA is obviously leaning into the levered equity model. This is backed by our conviction on future FCF generation. Over time, we believe the combination of the preferred stock and a skinnier common equity will positively impact overall value to our shareholders. Moving to slide 17 and our closing remarks. First, on the surface, our revenue and Adjusted OIBDA were flattish, but relative to our plan, we overperformed, helped in part by a better than expected recovery in Jamaica. Importantly, our adjusted FCF was substantially better to start the year. We are setting the stage for what we expect to be a robust finish to 2026 in the fourth quarter. Second, a significant focus remains on Jamaica, and we are encouraged by the efforts of our management team.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

Still lots of work to do, particularly around the fixed network, but we believe our business and brand will come out of this unfortunate event even stronger. Third, we are excited about the preferred distribution that we discussed on the prior slide as we provide our shareholders with a consistent capital return. As we think about our equity, it was great that we could be back in the market repurchasing in Q1. As of quarter end, we had $184 million remaining under our board authorization, and LLA will be opportunistic in the forthcoming quarters. Finally, I hope that you all saw our joint press release with GCI Liberty yesterday. GCI Liberty, which is majority controlled by John Malone, announced that it purchased 12 million shares in LLA for $107 million from Searchlight Capital.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

GCI Liberty now owns about 6% of LLA's equity. Separately, John Malone owns roughly 7% of LLA's equity. From our perspective, this incremental investment in LLA demonstrates substantial confidence in our business, our growth prospects, and our cash flow generation potential. With that, operator, we'll open it up for questions.

Operator

Thank you. The question and answer session will be conducted electronically. If you would like to ask a question regarding the company's operations, please do so by pressing star 1 to ask a question. In order to accommodate everyone, we request that you only ask one question with one follow-up. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. We will pause for just a moment to give everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. Your first question comes from Matthew Harrigan with The Benchmark Company. Your line is open.

Matthew Harrigan
Matthew Harrigan
Analyst at The Benchmark Company

Thank you. Congratulations on the results and the dividend. The usual from yourselves and presumably some John Malone input. I was curious. We had a couple companies, Xfinity in the U.S. and VodafoneZiggo, JV, you know, really five issues on the front book, back book issue and really have to, you know, rectify their pricing. You called that out on Costa Rica. Is that a phenomenon in some of your other markets as well? How can you provide, you know, further value?

Matthew Harrigan
Matthew Harrigan
Analyst at The Benchmark Company

I mean, you know, the UPRA ratings and everything are quite positive, you know, to make sure that people are getting, you know, better price value rather than have to adjust your pricing on kind of a step function in a manner which can be pretty disruptive. Thank you.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Thank you, Matthew. You know, one thing that's really good about LLA is that we actually have been very disciplined in managing our front book pricing. The one place where we actually had lots of price increases and a very high front book was in Chile a while back. We learned a lot from that experience as well. I think between 2019 and 2024, we did not take any price increases anywhere. As a result, our front book is very competitive. Costa Rica is slightly, it's just an aberration. As a matter of fact, even in Costa Rica, our front book is extremely competitive. We are not the highest price in Costa Rica. The company that's really being impacted by the price challenges there is the incumbent.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

What we've been trying to do there is mostly on our retention desk. Certainly if you look at our back book in Costa Rica, the back book is very solid. We feel pretty good about where our pricing is. We'll be very competitive. One of the things we've learned as well, hanging on to market share is extremely important. Therefore, you see we'll play the ARPU game to hang on to market share. In Costa Rica specifically, we actually grew fixed broadband. We actually grew our business ever so slightly, but nevertheless, in a highly competitive market, we're doing fine. Eventually the market will restore and having good market share is always gonna be the better outcome.

Matthew Harrigan
Matthew Harrigan
Analyst at The Benchmark Company

Thanks, Balan Nair. Thanks, Chris Noyes.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Thanks.

Operator

Your next question comes from David Lopes with New Street Research. Your line is open.

David Lopes
David Lopes
Analyst at New Street Research

Hi, and thanks for the opportunity and congrats on the results. I had a question on the cost structure. I was wondering if the rise in energy cost we are seeing currently has any impact on your cost structure, and if you can comment on that a bit, please. Thanks.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

We are very focused on our costs. You can see, you know, we have actually a pretty healthy EBITDA margin in the business and more importantly, a very healthy operating free cash flow margin. We expect that there's still opportunity to increase both those metrics. Our business over the last 24 months have gone through a lot of cost reduction. It doesn't end. This year we also have some pretty good cost improvements. They'll continue to 27 and 28. By the way, we are really leaning in on AI. We expect a lot of further cost improvements in our business through our, you know, our complete embracement of AI technology.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Which already, by the way, on the front line, we've implemented it. In the back office, we are working to implement it. We've recently appointed an individual in our company to fully lead our AI transformation. We expect some pretty good returns.

Chris Noyes
Chris Noyes
CFO at Liberty Latin America

I mean, I would add, you know, around the energy point, you know, we continue to focus on. It's only about roughly 2% of revenue, overall energy costs. A couple of things to take note. One is the network is fiber or HFC. It's not cable, it's not copper. That obviously uses a lot of energy. Over time, our move to improve the network topology has reduced energy costs. We'll continue to be quite agile to the extent energy increases in the region, particularly in the islands. We have a number of kind of mitigating strategies to reduce cost to the extent that energy moves up.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Thanks, Chris. I missed the energy, the number.

David Lopes
David Lopes
Analyst at New Street Research

Very clear. Thank you.

Operator

That will conclude today's question and answer session. I'd like to hand back to Balan Nair for any additional or closing remarks.

Balan Nair
Balan Nair
CEO at Liberty Latin America

Well, thank you, operator. Well, as you can please clearly see, we are excited about this morning's announcement. From what we announced, you can also draw the conclusion that we have significant confidence in our business and future free cash flow growth prospects. We are also very excited about John Malone's increased investment in LLA. Overall, the future is bright. Thank you for your support.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Latin America's first quarter 2026 investor call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the investor relations section of Liberty Latin America's website at www.lla.com. There, you can find a copy of today's presentation materials. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Balan Nair
      Balan Nair
      CEO
    • Chris Noyes
      Chris Noyes
      CFO
    • Mauricio Romero
      Mauricio Romero
      VP of AI and Analytics
Analysts
Powered by Quartr