Millicom interested in Telefónica's CentAm assets - CFO

Millicom is interested in purchasing Telefónica's remaining Central American assets in Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua after regional rival América Móvil snatched up the Spanish company's Guatemala and El Salvador units, its CFO was quoted as saying.

"If Telefónica wants to sell today, Millicom will have to look at the assets," the executive, Tim Pennington, was quoted as saying in an interview with Bloomberg.

Telefónica is said to be looking for US$568mn for its assets in those three countries, after selling the Guatemalan and El Salvadoran units to Mexico's América Móvil for US$648mn in January, as it looks to reduce its large debts by selling non-core businesses.

Millicom, which this year started to trade on the Nasdaq exchange, has been reinforcing its presence in the region with acquisitions, such as a majority stake in Panama's Cable Onda for around US$1bn, as it looks to accelerate its expansion into cable.

"VERY STRONG" YEAR IN LATAM

Company CEO Mauricio Ramos (pictured) said during a conference call with analysts that Millicom had a "very strong" year in Latin America, as the firm added 3.2mn 4G mobile clients during the year, above the expected figure of 3mn. Besides the new 4G clients, Millicom also added 228,000 new higher-paying, postpaid mobile clients in the region during the year, Ramos said.

Millicom reported US$5.49bn in revenues in Latin America at the end of 2018, up 0.8% compared to 2017, while Ebitda increased 2.6% to US$2.08bn. Service revenues totalled US$5.07bn for the year, down 0.2%, but organic growth reached 4.3%.

Growth was underpinned by a 3.5% expansion in service revenues in Colombia, the company's main business in the region, accounting for 28% of revenues, as well as 6.2% growth in Guatemala and 11% growth in Bolivia, more than doubling the 4.6% expansion seen in 2017.

The cable business accounted for 80% of the annual growth, Pennington said during the analyst call.