Millicom cable RGUs up 41,000 in 2Q 2016

Cable footprint expansion target increased to 12 million homes passed

LUXEMBOURG — Millicom has announced results for the second quarter and first half ended June 30, 2016.

Mauricio Ramos – CEO, Millicom: “Our Cable business, representing residential Home and Fixed B2B businesses, also very much represents the future for Millicom and already delivers over 27% of service revenue. Most of our Home operations continued to deliver impressive double-digit revenue growth and having accelerated the cable expansion we now pass 7.8 million homes. Our roll out programmes are well tested and so we are revising up our targets and now expect to reach our original goal of 10 million homes passed by 2018, a year early. In light of this achievement, we have set ourselves a new target of 12 million homes passed.”

Quarterly operating review – Cable

Cable revenue grew at 7.7%, with Home growing 8.5% and fixed B2B 6.9%. UNE service revenue grew 4.0% with Home growing 4.8% and B2B growing 5.3%. Total revenue generating units (“RGUs”) increased by 41,000 from Q1 2016 to 5.46 million with the growth coming primarily from pay TV offers. Focusing on HFC technology only, the growth in RGUs was 110,000.

Our cable footprint expanded by a net 74,000 to 7.8 million homes passed with 161,000 additions via HFC technology offsetting the downsizing of UNE’s copper footprint. The number of RGUs per household (HFC) increased to 1.75x from 1.62x a year ago. Nearly 59% of our households were double or triple play, around 4 percentage points more than one year ago. The ARPU per Home Connected in Q2 was $26.9, up 4.8% year-on-year in local currency.

Q2 16 – Latin America

Latam organic revenue decreased by 0.7% to $1.35 billion with growth in Paraguay and Bolivia offset by increased weakness in Colombia and El Salvador.

Cable KPIs (thousands):

                    Q4 14  Q1 15  Q2 15  Q3 15  Q4 15  Q1 16  Q2 16
                    -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
Homes connected              
 Latin America      2,881  2,915  2,962  2,962  3,020  3,021  3,017
  South America     2,113  2,116  2,138  2,093  2,098  2,074  2,055
  Central America     768    798    824    869    922    947    962
RGUs              
 Latin America      5,090  5,178  5,239  5,251  5,393  5,424  5,465
  South America     3,966  3,997  4,020  3,977  4,050  4,035  4,049
  Central America   1,125  1,181  1,218  1,274  1,344  1,388  1,416

Colombia

UNE Home revenue grew 3.8% as we continued our HFC roll-out by adding 79,000 new homes (89,000 in the previous quarter) and continued to overbuild copper lines.

Guatemala

Cable revenue was up 13.9%, a slower growth than the previous quarter, as a large public contract was fully recognised last year in Q2 whilst only partially in Q1 2015.

Paraguay

Cable grew by 16.4% mostly driven by the increase of the customer base.

Honduras

Cable grew by 10.7% driven by a better penetration of our footprint as ARPU was stable.

Bolivia

Mobile revenue was up 1.8% (data up 29% offsetting the 13% voice and SMS decline) and Cable up 27%.

El Salvador

Cable revenue increased by 9.7% on higher volume and stronger ARPU.