Liberty Puerto Rico reports $352M in Q2 revenue
Liberty Puerto Rico, the local subsidiary of Liberty Latin America, reported $352 million in revenue for the second quarter ended June 30 and $717.8 million for the first half of the year.
“Growth on a rebased basis was driven by higher wholesale network revenue associated with a significant customer that is recognized on a cash basis, and growth in enterprise-related connectivity and managed services,” the company reported.
Liberty Puerto Rico President Naji Khoury said it “has been a good year so far. Customer volume has been increasing and so is broadband penetration.”
In the latter half of this year, Liberty will continue migrating AT&T’s system into its own, which should not impact mobile customers who joined Liberty when it purchased the wireless company’s assets in Puerto Rico.
That process should finish by the end of this year, Khoury said.
“This is going to give us as a company more flexibility because it’s our system and we can do what we want, so we’ll have more control over things,” he said, referring to the back-office procedure.
He also noted that completing the integration of AT&T’s network will result in hiring around 300 new employees.
Also in the pipeline for the latter half of 2023 is the ongoing islandwide fiber-optic build-out, which will add new homes to Liberty’s footprint. The telecom provider is also enhancing infrastructure to “become as independent as possible from LUMA Energy” to reduce the impact on services in case of electric grid outages.
During the second quarter, Liberty added about 7,000 subscribers, primarily driven by its broadband service component, Khoury said.
Liberty LatAm reports company-wide results
Liberty Latin America reported $1.1 billion in revenue, $140 million in operating income and $445 million in adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization (OIBDA) for the second quarter.
“Following a solid start to the year, we continued our momentum in the second quarter with sequential financial and operational growth and are well positioned to achieve our 2023 financial guidance,” said Liberty LatAm CEO Balan Nair.
“Capital allocation remains a key focus for us. Following the renewal of our buyback authorization earlier in the year, we accelerated activity in the second quarter, repurchasing $57 million of our equity and $74 million of convertible notes, close to three times our aggregate first quarter activity,” he said.
“Looking ahead to the second half of the year, we remain confident that we will achieve our 2023 financial guidance targets supported by continued subscriber additions and organic financial momentum, synergies from integration activities, particularly in Panama, and our focus on operating cost and capex discipline,” he added.
