America Móvil not planning further M&As

América Móvil is not planning further M&As in Latin America as it will continue to focus on the consolidation of its Chilean operation and achieving organic growth in the rest of the region. 

“We're not seeing any opportunities in Latin America,” CEO Daniel Hajj said during the firm's investors call to discuss the 3Q24 results.

The company will focus on consolidating its operation in Chile after acquiring the majority of the ClaroVTR joint venture with Liberty Latin America. 

América Móvil plans to consolidate the company on October 31, upon the conversion into equity of its outstanding loans to ClaroVTR. After that operation, the Mexican company will own a controlling interest of approximately 91% of Chilean firm ClaroVTR. 

“We have a lot of work to do,” Hajj said about the consolidation of the Chilean operation. The executive did not want to give further information about the firm's plans in the country and said was “too early” to speak about capex for Chile. 

The company said in July that it is not planning to make major cash injections in Chile.

“It’s a very competitive market. We've been upgrading all our mobile network and we've been making an agreement with the wholesale company OnNet,” he said.

The company has also signed an agreement with Telefónica to look at the acquisition of bankrupt company WOM in Chile.  

In the rest of the region, Hajj said that the company will continue its strategy of adding more coverage in fiber and 5G networks, as well as advancing with the digitalization of the company and improving customer care. 

“The biggest 5G network in Latin America is América Móvil’s 5G network. We have the latest technology that gives us better quality, more speed and better costs than our competitors,” he said. “That’s more or less where we're focusing and what we're going to do for the coming years.” 

FINANCIAL RESULTS

América Móvil reported third-quarter revenues of 223bn Mexican pesos (US$11.4bn), up 9.4% year-on-year, with service revenue rising 11.5% year-on-year in local currency.

Mobile service revenue showed its best performance in over a year, with year-on-year growth of 5.2%.

Ebitda was up 11.9% to 89.4bn pesos. Net profit was 6.4bn pesos in the quarter, surging 217% year-on-year.

At the end of September, net debt – excluding leases – was 433bn pesos. 

Wireless subscribers reached 316mn in the region as of end-3Q24, up 5.9% year-on-year in postpaid and 1.4% in prepaid.

On the fixed line market, América Móvil ended the quarter with 74.6mn revenue generating units (RGUs), of which 33.2mn were broadband accesses, 12.8mn pay-TV clients and 28.5mn landlines. 

Fixed broadband accesses grew 5.2% year-on-year.