Millicom releases Q3 2015 results

Thursday, October 22nd, 2015
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Cable footprint increases by 243,000 to 7.5 million

STOCKHOLM — Millicom International Cellular S.A. has released its Q3 2015 results.

Millicom’s CEO: “I am also pleased with the progress we are making in Home, our pay-TV, fixed broadband and telephony business. We are bringing the digital lifestyle into customers’ homes. Our target is to reach 10 million homes in the medium term. This quarter, we delivered an accelerated cable build-out with 304,000 new homes passed in HFC, nearly tripling that of the second quarter. We continued to add new customers at a strong rate across our DTH and cable footprint with pay-TV contributing most to the growth. One of our core strengths continues to be our ability to provide relevant local content for customers. In Colombia we now offer the local football league (“DIMAYOR”) on our fixed network and exclusively on mobile via the Tigo Sports app.”

Millicom has residential cable services in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Paraguay, Bolivia and Colombia.

Tigo’s newly launched satellite Direct To Home (DTH) pay TV takes its television and broadband services to new areas historically beyond the range of fixed cable and urban development, in Bolivia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras.

CABLE

Cable and Digital Media revenue grew strongly at 25.2%. Total revenue generating units (“RGUs”), excluding a cleansing of 72,000 passive RGUs at UNE, increased by 83,000 from Q2 2015 to 5.25 million.

Our cable footprint expanded by 243,000 to 7.5 million homes passed. The number of RGUs per household increased to 1.87x from 1.78x a year ago. Around 55% of our households were double or triple play, a ratio in line with the prior quarter. The ARPU per Homes Connected in Q3 was $26.0, 10% lower on a reported basis than Q2 2015 due to currency impact in UNE ARPU. Excluding UNE and currency impacts, the average ARPU was flat year-on-year.

South America – Colombia, Paraguay, Bolivia

Cable continued to perform strongly increasing by 27.1% (excluding UNE). The number of HFC homes passed increased by 237,000 from 30 June 2015 with the ratio of RGUs / Homes Connected at 2.01x (1.90x a year ago).

Central America – Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica

In Cable, the number of homes passed increased by 67,000 during the quarter and the ratio of RGUs / Homes Connected reached 1.51x, broadly flat compared to the previous quarter but an increase compared to the prior year ratio of 1.43x.

Cable RGUs

                 Q3 2015  Q2 2015  Q1 2015  Q4 2014  Q3 2014  % change
                 -------  -------  -------  -------  -------  --------
South America      3,770    3,797    3,778    3,677    3,658       3.1
Central America    1,102    1,069    1,052    1,027      986      11.7