Earnings Call Transcript - TIGO Q2 2020

Operator, Operator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter results conference call. As usual, we're going to be referencing some slides, which are available on our website. So if you would please turn to Slide 2 for our Safe Harbor disclosure. As usual, we will make some forward-looking statements and these involve risks and uncertainties and these risks could have a material impact on our results. On Slide 3, we define the non-IFRS metrics that we will be referring to throughout the presentation and you can find reconciliation tables in the back of our earnings release, as well as on our website. So with those legal disclaimers out of the way, let me turn the call over to our CEO Mauricio Ramos.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Thank you, Michel, and good morning, and good afternoon to everyone and thanks for joining us today. As you all know, we are living through very difficult and uncharted times and I hope that you and your loved ones are all staying healthy and safe. This is the most important message that I have been sharing with all of our Tigo employees, all 24,000 of them, as you can see at the top of Slide 5. And indeed, keeping our employees and our customers safe has been our top priority since day one. Over the last five years, as you know, we have been building a purpose-driven and a client-centric organization, one that is attracting a diverse and a talented workforce across multiple geographies. And that is why I'm so very proud today to say that for a third consecutive year, we have been recognized as one of the Great Places to Work in Latin America. This is our highest ranking ever, and we're now the number one telco on that list. With that, it's quite obvious that this quarter has been the most challenging in our 30-year history, no doubt. The storm hit and it hit hard. But as you know, we reacted quickly and most importantly, very effectively because we now know that our response is indeed working and we'll show you why we think it is. As you know, we set out to sustain our market share leadership as part of our goals to face this pandemic, and we have achieved that and a little more than that in some key markets as we are picking up market share in some of those. We also promised to ourselves and to you to remain very focused on the long-term and to keep our course steady through the storm even if our storm sales are up. And we are on track holding that CapEx and OpEx this year in order to protect cash flow during the pandemic and to wait for demand growth to come back into our markets. And Tim will show you a lot more detail on how we're tracking them. And we have continued to build for the future, as we said we would. Indeed, we have continued to actively invest in our state-of-the-art networks, as you will see in a minute. We're also executing with focus and discipline on the detailed integration plan that we prepared last year. Our integration in Panama and Nicaragua are on track. And we now expect to exceed our initial synergy expectations despite the effects of the pandemic. We also set out a hard goal to protect our cash flow and reduce our net debt during the pandemic and we're doing just that. Our equity free cash flow was up strong in the quarter. Our net debt came down and our priority remains to accelerate net debt reduction in the second half. And you will hear us confirm today that we are on track to hit our goal of U.S.-$1.4 billion in operating cash flow for this year. And my last message on this slide is that we have seen encouraging signs of improvement in June. If you will, we have gone through the eye of the storm. Don't get me wrong, the winds are still very strong and we still have our storm sales up. But we are now, if you like sailing, on the leeward quadrant of the hurricane, we are manning the ship actively, we have the same destination as we had before, but just with less sail for now and we're still making steady progress. And we remain optimistic as ever about the long-term, even if we expect that this will be a very gradual recovery. We have taken all the right measures, and they are indeed working, but we're still dealing with a very severe health crisis. And the entire region and pretty much all of the world is now in recession and that's why we will continue to take a prudent approach in managing the business with all hands on deck as we have, if you will. And because of this, and before we go to the specifics of the quarter, I want to give you an update on how COVID is indeed impacting our markets on Slide 6. Many of our countries are still trying to contain the virus and new cases are still growing. And we don't think any peak seems to have been clearly surpassed or reached at least just yet. We hope, but it's not clear that it has happened yet. And the situation and the handling of the crisis is different in each one of our markets and we'll speak about the impact it has differentiated in each one of our operations. And Panama, in particular, stands out as facing a very difficult moment. Despite this, more severe lockdowns are being partially and gradually eased, albeit at a slow and cautious rate and some of them may be prolonged. So whereas we do see increased mobility and we do see encouraging mobile consumption, we also do expect the populations will remain cautiously off the street for anything other than necessities until the health crisis subsides and this will remain a drag on economic activity on our business. On the chart on the right, you can see the magnitude of what we've had to deal with in our markets during Q2, as people were either forced to stay at home or chose to stay at home to protect their families. As you will see in a few minutes, this big drop in mobility was the key factor that impacted our performance in Q2, particularly in Bolivia, Panama and Honduras. And it was heightened by our delayed ability to build and collect in Bolivia, in particular, but also in El Salvador. Now the lockdowns are being eased off gradually and those are encouraging signs. And we have now also been able to put in place billing and collection mechanisms in our markets and that has had a positive impact as of June. So we need to remain vigilant, cautiously optimistic, all hands on deck to continue to weather this storm as successfully as we've been able to do in Q2. With that, let me turn it to Tim to go over the financial highlights for the quarter and I'll come back later.

Tim Pennington, CFO

Thank you, Mauricio. As mentioned, Q2 presented significant challenges. However, toward the end of the quarter, we observed improvements in some of our key performance indicators, especially in prepaid, which began to show signs of recovery, and our subscription business stabilized. The B2B sector is expected to take longer to recover and may worsen before improving, particularly for small businesses. Let's examine the quarter starting on Slide 8. In Q2, organic service revenue for the LatAm business decreased by 6.8%, and reported revenue saw a similar decline of 6.4% due to adverse foreign exchange movements and mergers and acquisitions. EBITDA decreased by 8.1%, primarily due to lower revenue and a significant bad debt charge, which was about twice our normal quarterly charge. We managed to partially offset this through cost reductions. Our EBITDA margin improved by 50 basis points to reach 40%. Importantly, our operating cash flow was $354 million, consistent with last year, achieving a healthy margin of 26%. On Slide 9, the impact of COVID on our business is evident. Countries with the strictest mobility restrictions, such as Bolivia, Honduras, and Panama, experienced the most significant revenue drops. Conversely, markets like Guatemala, Paraguay, and Nicaragua demonstrated resilience, and our home business continued to grow positively. Slide 10 further clarifies this impact, showing that the three countries with the strictest lockdown contributed significantly to our revenue decline. While May was our most challenging month, we did notice improvements in June as lockdowns eased and the prepaid business began to recover. On Slide 11, our mobile subscriber base decreased by 1.7 million, primarily in prepaid, but there are signs of improvement in prepaid top-ups since reaching a low in April. However, we still have a way to go for a full recovery. Our home customer relationships declined by 95,000, mostly in HFC, all of which occurred in May. Since then, we've successfully enrolled all affected countries in lifeline products, maintaining relationships with non-paying customers, although they are no longer counted in our customer base. We anticipate a gradual recovery in both postpaid and home subscriptions, with most of our stores now open, though commercial activity remains below early-year levels. Looking at the results for each country in Q2 on Slide 12, Bolivia, Honduras, and Panama reported double-digit revenue declines, while Guatemala and Colombia, which together make up about 50% of our LatAm service revenue, were less affected and showed stronger organic revenue trends. However, it’s important to note that Colombia's reported figures were impacted by a weaker currency during Q2. On Slide 13, we review EBITDA performance on an organic basis. As discussed, swift cost measures were necessary due to revenue impacts, with significant effects noted in Honduras, Panama, and Bolivia. Bolivia and El Salvador incurred notable bad debt charges since lifeline products were not implemented until the end of the quarter, affecting collections. Guatemala and Paraguay experienced smaller declines, indicating stable commercial activity. Colombia, on the other hand, saw a 6.9% increase, influenced by a one-off charge in the previous year, yet still reflected positive growth due to effective cost management. As outlined on Slide 14, we set financial targets during our Q1 call to help navigate this crisis, aiming to reduce costs by at least $100 million and CapEx by $200 million to $300 million. These measures were intended to maintain our operating cash flow flat at around $1.4 billion for the year while using cash generation and asset sales to lower our net debt. On Slide 15, we can see progress towards these goals. We reduced costs by approximately $66 million in Q2 after adjusting for acquisitions and foreign exchange, while some of this decrease was due to lower commercial activity levels. Meanwhile, we also achieved a significant reduction in general and administrative expenses, as well as employee costs. On the right side, CapEx was about 15% or $34 million lower than in the same quarter last year, despite expanding our mobile operations. As Mauricio will reveal, we continue to make strategic investments in our network infrastructure. Turning to cash flow on Slide 16, we adjusted our business to prioritize liquidity and cash flow in response to the crisis. Despite the significant top-line impact, we maintained our operating cash flow run rate for the LatAm business in line with our revised 2020 goal of $1.4 billion by effectively managing costs and reducing non-essential investments. Additionally, we reduced net debt by $82 million since the start of the year, including a $166 million reduction in Q2, all while investing more than usual in spectrum. In Q2, we generated $170 million in underlying equity free cash flow, with over $200 million of that in Q2 alone, compared to $75 million in Q2 last year, showcasing the resilience of our cash flow even amidst a global pandemic. Furthermore, during the quarter, we divested our stake in Jumia and sold part of our investment in Helios Towers, generating approximately $90 million and bringing our underlying net debt below $5.8 billion. Our proportional leverage stood at 3.24x, including leases, and 3.07x excluding leases, remaining relatively unchanged from the beginning of the year. Now, let me pass it back to Mauricio to discuss our future preparations.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Thank you, Tim. It's important for us to emphasize that Q2 was a tough quarter and we expect a challenging second half. But we've made it through the eye of the storm, we think, and now we need to continue to focus on the future. To continue with this analogy, our ship is not taking on water. We've remained on course and as a result of that, we remain very busy and very focused on building our networks and capabilities for our long-term journey, which remains very promising and one that we still have as our guiding north. So let's start with that very important basics on Slide 19. At a time when most of you are listening to this call, you're doing so from home and you're likely planning to work mostly from home for the next six or 12 months. But the reality in our market is that only about a third of the homes have access to a fixed internet connection at home. And many of these connections are at speeds of less than 10 megabits per second. This will need to grow and improve to support remote work, online schooling, video streaming and overall connectivity. This pandemic has made it very clear that having a reliable broadband connection at home and at the office has become a basic necessity everywhere and for everyone. Meeting that growing need is a question for us, making our networks available and for the markets to reach the affordability to buy those services. Now for the past few years, we have been building around a million homes per year and we have seen very strong customer take-up. Last year, in 2019, we added more than 400,000 broadband subscribers to our network. And you can see on this slide that we are up about 10% year-on-year, even after the impact of COVID in Q2. And as the leading and growing provider of broadband in most of our markets, we are ready to capture that growth when we get past this crisis and when the affordability comes back to our market, they begin growth and come back strong. And that is the long-term opportunity that we remain focused on. We will cover over 60 million homes passed with a state-of-the-art network within our horizon. We will grow our broadband subscriber base by another 1 million to 2 million additional subscriber homes in that horizon and that's what we're focused on. And on Slide 20, you can see on the left that our immediate priority has been, as Tim was alluding, to one, protect our employees by keeping them safe, engaged and motivated; two, our customer base with safe protocols and sustained connectivity and by holding or growing market share, and three, our financials by sustaining our strong cash flow and reducing net debt. Now with the ship in strong shape, we have continued and very actively so to build the leading telecom platform in the region for the future. So let's look at this starting on Slide 21 because it's very important. There is a lot of info on this page but that is precisely the point. Our clear, defined strategy, everyone at Millicom knows what it is, you know what it is, it is clear and now more than ever, very fit for the future. The foundation of that strategy is our network infrastructure. We now have over 17% population coverage on 4G, with very solid spectrum positions that we've increased over the last six months. And we continue to build fiber cable to lay the foundations for our fixed mobile convergent future, and we continue to invest in the IT infrastructure to make sure we extend our leadership as this adoption accelerates and you will see in a minute that our investments are already paying off. Underpinning this is a very strong culture, uniquely entrepreneurial and highly committed. We do watch our pennies and increasingly diverse and inclusive. I view our culture as one of our key competitive advantages. You know that we call it Sangre Tigo, and we're recognized as the best telco to work for in the region, and you see that we are able to react the way we did in Q2 precisely because of that Sangre Tigo. Now we have been turning our market leadership into consumer-centric market leadership, as we have moved from a transaction-driven business to a subscription-driven business that uses Net Promoter Score to support our decision-making and reward our leaders. Lastly, this is our Latin American platform focused. We have effectively taken capital to Africa and we continue to do that even this quarter, and we are really pulling this capital to Latin America to enhance our fixed mobile convergence capabilities and to improve industry structure. And we're doing all of this with a world-class governance framework and are growing to a record of being a force for positive change in the countries we belong to and where we are operating, where this kind of leadership is so badly needed, particularly now. So let's turn to Slide 22 for some specific examples of infrastructure investment we continue to make during the pandemic. In Colombia, finally, after over 15 years of being, quite frankly, handicapped, we now have low-frequency spectrum and we have a very well balanced spectrum position that allows us to optimize and improve the customer experience while also lowering our costs. We no longer have our hands tied behind our back and we are moving rapidly to maximize these new capabilities. About a fifth of the new network has been built in just the past few months and it already carries over 10% of our traffic and 25% of our customers have already been on this new network. Remember, it gives us enhanced indoor coverage as much as it does give us enhanced coverage geographically. In El Salvador, we have quietly and very quickly increased our capacity after acquiring AWS spectrum at the end of last year. Our 800 new LTE sites are up. We're almost finished with a new build in record time. This is a gamechanger for us and we're seeing this pay off in the marketplace, congestion is down, traffic is up, and customers are happier. In Nicaragua and Panama, where we acquired two mobile networks that were in good shape to manage the current traffic, we bought these assets with the intent to maintain and even expand our market leadership in these countries. So we have been modernizing the networks, adding both capacity and coverage while also improving energy efficiency and lowering our future operating costs. It's been about one year since we made these two acquisitions. So let me share some of our accomplishments, starting with Nicaragua on Slide 23. We bought the No. 1 mobile operator in a two-player market. And since then, we have solidified our market share leadership in mobile and we have just completed our rebranding right on the one-year anniversary of the acquisition and in line with our regional plan. This will help drive cross-selling synergies as we continue to strongly grow our home business there, which now has a larger brand to operate under. And you can see that we continue to expand our home business very rapidly. Meanwhile, our integration is on track and I want to congratulate the teams involved. Now we still have a lot of work to do to integrate systems, but we now expect to exceed our initial synergy expectations. And the punch line here is simple, talking about capital reallocation. Our new mobile business in Nicaragua has contributed more than $45 million of equity cash flow over the last 12 months. We have achieved this even though GDP fell 4% last year and the last several months have been impacted by the pandemic and we believe we're still scratching the surface on synergies there. You're all good at math, so I'll let you work out the returns on that. Now let's look at Panama on Slide 24. As you know, we're now the market leader in telecom in Panama. In our first nine months of ownership of the mobile business, we have solidified our leadership of the mobile market there and we have probably picked up a tiny bit of market share there. And we have done this while integrating the businesses and without taking our eye off the ball on the cable side, as you can see on the right of this slide. We have successfully defended our cable market share very successfully so, and we have continued to grow our customer base, especially in broadband, where we added 7,000 customers in Q2 and 17,000 in the first half of the year. Clearly, we have not counted on a global pandemic and a severe recession and Panama has been particularly impacted, as you know. But even in these challenging times and considering also the investments we have made to upgrade our networks in Panama, the Panama mobile business contributed more than $40 million to our equity free cash flow since the acquisition. And as you can see, we're just getting started on the synergies and we know there's a lot more potential in Panama as we continue to ramp up the cross-selling opportunities in our market. Now please turn to Slide 25 to summarize our expectations for synergies that have changed since we announced this acquisition back in February of 2019. As you can see on the right, we're now more optimistic about the potential to extract cost and CapEx synergies. Basically, we've been finding synergies in places where we did not expect to find them, particularly procurement. Meanwhile, expectations for revenue synergies are practically unchanged. But if you consider also the impact of the pandemic and the recession, you can see that we're progressing nicely on the revenue front, too. As I said before, it's about cross-selling into mobile in Panama and cross-selling into cable in Nicaragua. When you bring this forward at present value, this equates to a 10% increase relative to our initial forecast, not bad in the middle of this crisis. The last topic I want to discuss, talking about how we're building for the future, is our digital-first strategy. When you take a transaction-focused business that we used to be and start to broadly convert it into a subscription-based business, you need to invest in new tools to manage and support the growth of the subscription-based business. While at the same time, driving efficiencies, so you can protect the profitability of the transactional business. These slides tell you where we are in our long-term digital strategy and it provides you with our strategic framework. And you can see that we have already built the tools that a customer would need to interact with us exclusively via digital channels throughout the journey as a Tigo digital customer. The next slide shows you how we are doing in this mid-phase of our long-term digital journey. We are making progress in driving adoption of these digital tools. On the left, you can see that we now collect about 35% of our subscription revenue from digital channels. That's a 30% increase from Q1. And 7% of total top-ups and we're using lessons learned during the pandemic to make sure that we continue to build on these programs long after the pandemic has passed. And all of this is important because customers who interact with us using digital tools are more loyal and churn less. They generally have a higher ARPU. And most importantly, the cost to serve them and acquire them is significantly lower. And all of this is also true about our Tigo Money business, which is one of the largest payment platforms in the region. We have been quietly building our capabilities in this area and we're beginning to see a growing potential pan out. Last quarter, our customers generated more than 14 million payment transactions in our Tigo Money platform. That's almost double what we saw in Q1. So we have great momentum here, and we know that we're building a growing and valuable payment business inside of Tigo. And of course, we're actively exploring ways to catapult this growth in order to unlock shareholder value into the future. Now let me wrap up with a recap of the key messages for you today. First, I don't want to minimize the severity of what we're all going through, not at all. But we had robust business continuity plans and this gives us the ability to focus on the business by establishing a handful of clear principles to guide our decision-making. And as we've alluded to today, it is working. Second, as Tim and I pointed out, the month of June was better than May and April. We're hopeful that Q3 and Q4 may be better than Q2. We think it will be a challenging second half. The difference is we're very prepared for that, minimum products, lifeline products and the plan that you're very familiar with. And finally, take a step back for a minute and think about the fact that we are the premier provider of broadband in our markets. And our services have become now more important than ever. Customers know that, we know that and we've been building the networks to satisfy that demand once affordability comes back. I don't know when, but there will be a time when everyone who has water and electricity will also have broadband Internet in our markets. And Tigo will be there as a premium provider to provide that service. With that, we're ready for your questions.

Operator, Operator

Bernard, if you can open up for questions, please?

Operator, Operator

Sure, sir. Your first question comes from the line of Johanna Ahlqvist from SEB. Please ask your question.

Johanna Ahlqvist, Analyst

I have a few questions. The first one concerns the uncertainty surrounding the B2B business. How do you plan to proceed with it? Do you anticipate the B2B sector worsening while the mobile consumer business improves or continues to improve? I noticed you mentioned that July started a bit better than June. Is that the trend you're expecting for the rest of the year? My second question pertains to bad debt. You incurred some this quarter, and I'm curious about your outlook for bad debt moving forward. Should we expect similar levels in the second half of the year? Lastly, Tim, could you provide some insight on taxes and financial net expectations for the full year? Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Thank you, Johanna, for joining us today and for your questions. Why don't we go backwards? Tim, you deal with bad debt and tax and then I'll talk a little bit about B2B afterwards.

Tim Pennington, CFO

Yeah. Sure. Okay. So taxes were a little bit up this quarter. But if you just look at them over the half, they were more or less in line on a P&L basis. We did do a restructuring in Paraguay, which would give rise to a slightly higher withholding tax this year compared to last year, but it will give us lower withholding tax going forward. So we haven't made any real changes to our tax kind of estimates for the full year maybe with the withholding tax in Paraguay, we'll add another $10 million to $20 million to that. So we'll be talking kind of high 200s to kind of early 300s, pretty much in line. On the bad debt, Johanna, it was very concentrated actually. It was very concentrated in Bolivia and El Salvador where we didn't have lifeline products and we didn't have the ability to disconnect people. We have very large levels of non-payment. Now we have seen that rectifying our collection levels now are pretty much in line with where they were pre-COVID, so that is comforting. I think the way that IFRS 9 works will be a little bit of a lag effect. But on an underlying basis, I think Q2 is the worst of it for the bad debt charge that we've had to incur. Mauricio, do you want to do the B2B?

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Sure. That's a great question, Johanna, as this area has received less attention. You're correct that this is B2B, which is one reason we want to stay cautiously optimistic about the future. Let me explain further. We're cautious because we want to observe the impact of the recession and the lockdowns on various B2B segments. Starting with small offices and small-medium enterprises, they have struggled the most, as we anticipated. In the last call, I expressed concern over the fate of small businesses and SOHOs if lockdowns persist, as their customer footfall has diminished. However, I believe that as lockdowns gradually ease, these small businesses will return and demand broadband connectivity. It's a complex situation; we are unsure of the economic downturn's effects on small businesses, which remains to be seen. The optimistic side is that they will need enhanced connectivity more than ever to recover. Our approach has been two-fold. First, we introduced lifeline products that keep them connected to us, preparing for their eventual recovery. We understand the need to support them as they return, perhaps through promotions or incentives, and we are ready to assist. We are cautious yet optimistic regarding small offices and home offices. Regarding our government business, which is significant in Panama and Colombia, there's some slowdown relative to previous activity. I anticipate that governments might redirect some funding to address health crises, possibly affecting government contracts. However, it’s also clear that governments recognize the importance of connectivity, which may lead them to invest more in it for their organizations and communities, providing us with opportunities in the medium to long term. Finally, concerning corporates, this segment shows greater resilience and offers significant potential. Corporates now recognize the need for business continuity plans and are reaching out to us to explore implementations, even discussing home connectivity for employees. That's the more encouraging aspect moving forward, and I hope this gives you a clearer picture of why we remain cautiously optimistic about B2B in the long term.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Stefan Gauffin from DNB. Please ask your question.

Stefan Gauffin, Analyst

You mentioned the $100 million in cost savings, of which $66 million was achieved this quarter. How do you anticipate this trend will unfold in the upcoming quarters? Also, can you confirm that at the end of Q2, you had approximately 250,000 home subscribers and 500,000 mobile subscribers on lifeline services? What are your expectations for these numbers in Q3? Furthermore, could you quantify the impact of lifeline services on revenue in Q2 for both home and mobile segments? That information would be very helpful.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Tim, do you want to take the cost? And I think we'll need to jointly tackle the second question to discuss some big picture and some financials in it, but I'm sure we can manage. So let's start with number one.

Tim Pennington, CFO

Yes. Okay. And Stefan, even though we have set a target, it doesn't mean we will just stop our efforts once we reach it. The actions we implemented at the beginning of Q2 and the end of Q1 were immediate responses, with some being straightforward like advertising, while others, such as commissions, were more natural outcomes. We were genuinely satisfied with how the costs reacted in the business. I prefer not to reset targets every quarter; we have established a solid target and are currently focused on managing costs. We intend to stay very focused on this for the remainder of the year, but I want to avoid resetting expectations regarding those cost savings. Regarding lifeline customers, it is somewhat challenging to assess the impact. Essentially, these customers become non-paying, which affects our revenue and subscriber counts; however, we maintain a network connection with them because many are facing similar challenges as others, like difficulties working or paying bills. Many of these customers are likely to return, with approximately 60% to 70% already having done so. I'm hesitant to speculate on how many of the remaining customers will return, but our team is optimistic that a significant number still want our product. In terms of revenue impact, the best comparison is between the growth rates we experienced in mobile and home last quarter versus this quarter. In home services, we saw around 6% growth last quarter compared to about 2% this quarter, which is not entirely due to lifeline customers, but certainly has a significant impact. In mobile, we experienced a decline of about 10% this quarter. I can't recall the exact figure from last quarter, but the larger impact for us has been in home services. Mauricio, do you want to add anything else?

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Let me expand on that. That was spot on. Thank you. Stefan, your question is crucial, and we believe we've made the right decision. In the first quarter, we've faced situations like this before, and we responded quickly in the market with our lifeline product. This decision has proven to be beneficial for several reasons. Firstly, it has enabled us to fulfill our social responsibility in the market. I can confidently say that we have ensured all customers remain connected by implementing this lifeline product. From a business perspective, we have maintained connections, which has helped us preserve market share during a time when commercial activities might have conflicted with our social responsibilities, while also keeping our focus on cash flow for the year. It has also helped us maintain strong relationships with our clients, which is essential since reconnecting these clients will save us money on reconnection costs, avoiding the expenses of reinstallation and subscriber acquisition. This approach is indeed a wise strategy. From an accounting standpoint, which I’ll address in relation to customer relations, it has allowed us to avoid contentious interactions with clients since we are not charging them for services that are not being collected, thereby preventing issues with bad debt and write-offs. Our relationship with clients remains straightforward, and that is a testament to our effective strategy. As Tim mentioned, we are reconnecting, not in the traditional sense, but we are regaining approximately 70% of these customers, which aligns with our typical reconnection rates during normal circumstances. I want to commend the team for executing a strategy that meets all relevant social and financial criteria, while also keeping our accounting clean. We wish we could have rolled it out universally from the start, but it took longer in El Salvador and Bolivia. Nonetheless, we believe we now have the tools necessary moving forward. This is why we remain cautiously optimistic, despite the ongoing challenges, as we now have better resources to handle the situation.

Operator, Operator

Your next one comes from the line of Marcelo Santos from JPMorgan. Please ask your question.

Marcelo Santos, Analyst

I have two. The first question would be about potential disposals that you could make to help to further reduce leverage. Maybe would it make sense to dispose data centers? Or do you have tower assets that could be interesting? So some light on that direction will be interesting. And the second question is broadly about Tigo Money. So I guess we are seeing now the limitation that not having a digital account now, not having a bank account has on people. Can you discuss a little bit broader how maybe this might turn into an opportunity for Tigo Money, what you are doing in that front? What are your ambitions for that product? Thank you very much.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Certainly. Regarding potential disposals, you've seen our management team actively reallocate capital from Africa to Latin America over the last five years, moving investments away from tower positions to use that capital more effectively elsewhere. We are continuously reviewing the opportunities you've mentioned, such as towers, data centers, and infrastructure in Africa. We have executed transactions nearly every quarter, with recent examples including HTA and Jumia. While I can't reveal specific plans at this moment, we are dedicated to capital allocation while also focusing on reducing net debt, as we've done recently. As for Tigo Money, we have been quietly and diligently working to build a substantial platform. Currently, we have around 4 million active subscribers in Latin America, and we've seen a notable increase in their activity in the second quarter. Governments are starting to recognize the value of our platform for distributing funds, especially in Paraguay and across Central America. This is crucial for embedding more money into the system. We're also observing a growing acceptance among retailers that Tigo Money can be a viable growth platform, which will enhance customer usage. We are gradually expanding our services from cash-in and cash-out to peer-to-peer transactions, which help us grow the ecosystem. While I won't make any grand claims about overnight changes, we are steadily building a peer-to-peer platform with increased customer engagement and a growing user base. Our focus will be on these foundational aspects before we explore the broader opportunities in mobile financial services and fintech, taking measured steps forward.

Operator, Operator

Next question comes from the line of Peter Kurt from ABG. Please ask your question.

Peter Kurt, Analyst

Question related to Colombia, please. Tim touched upon it earlier, particularly on the comments on the year-on-year EBITDA profit. There seems to be some puts and takes in Colombia this year versus last year. And I was just interested if you could give us a better feel for how you see that going forward. I'm thinking we have lower commercial activity, lower taxes, et cetera. Could you give us any further clarity on how we should interpret which helped you improve margin in Colombia, which is sort of higher than the savings you've spoken about? And how should we think about Colombia going forward? Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Tim, perhaps if you take the first part and then I'll jump in towards the end with a longer view on how things have expanded.

Tim Pennington, CFO

Yes. Okay. So yes, I mean the performance has been good in Colombia, actually, over the last four quarters or so where they've really got the grips now with the cost structure, I think. And okay, there was some noise in there because of prior year adjustments. But even excluding that, I think we're about 3% up, excluding the one-offs, which in this environment and compared to everywhere else, business is really a testament to the team on that. I mean, of course, there was some benefits from kind of holidays on tax and things like that. But I think that would be not reflecting the job the team has done to sort of say that it was things like that. I think there is a good fundamental kind of cost structure now emerging into Colombia. And I think once we get the revenue line going in the direction we want to get it going, it really is going to be the business that we thought it could be.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

So adding to that, Peter, we're pleased with the way Colombia is progressing. We actually like the position we are in Colombia today from where we were just six months ago. Over the last five years, we've deployed a ton of fiber cable and successfully so. So that's giving us a substantial fixed fiber cable business to support our mobile business. We have sold for a handicap that quite frankly held us back for the last 15 years. It's not a small thing to have had to operate with low-frequency spectrum against the rest of the competitors. And we're now the largest holder of 700 megahertz spectrum in Colombia. And as you've seen it, we're deploying it fast and quick and without hesitation because we know already that it's expanding indoor coverage and it's going to give us enhanced geographic coverage. Think of our mobile network now into the future as one that will finally, finally, and if we continue this pace quickly, match that of Claro in the country. That's a major difference from where we were before. That's our ambition. We have a network that really allows us to compete head-to-head with Claro. And we are ramping up our commercial distribution platforms in Colombia because we're ready to now think of ourselves as a true challenger with our kit in the toolbox to do just that.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Soomit Datta from New Street Research. Please ask your question.

Soomit Datta, Analyst

I have just two or three questions. Firstly, regarding leverage, Tim, I noticed you reported a 3.24x at the end of H1. Could you share what your target might be and what kind of run rate we could expect for that leverage moving forward? I understand there's more uncertainty than usual, but any insights would be appreciated. Secondly, I have a strategic question about the residential cable business. Globally, there seems to be significant demand for home broadband, yet it appears that you're currently focusing more on wireless investments instead of cable. I understand the affordability issue, but it could be argued that you should accelerate efforts to pass as many homes as possible now, given the potential returns and low costs involved. Additionally, I’m curious why some companies are adding residential broadband subscribers while others are losing many. If you could address this, that would be great. Lastly, regarding Colombia, are you noticing any changes with the brand? Also, do you foresee any opportunities to regain wholesale revenues in the near term to support your wireless revenue? Thank you.

Tim Pennington, CFO

Thank you, Soomit. I will address the leverage question briefly and then hand it over to Mauricio.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

All right. Yes. Leverage, we finished the quarter at 3.24. I mean that is on an IFRS 16 basis on a kind of maybe like cash base 3.07. And when we set out our target of 2x, it was on that cash basis. So we're still kind of north of where that is, but I think you've seen that we've made some good sort of inroads into our debt this quarter and we're very, very focused on it. So no real change in the targets. Soomit, I'd ask you to just be aware that we set our targets out on a pre-IFRS 16 basis, so that's about a 20-basis-point delta between the two. And we're relatively comfortable where we are at the present time. Yes, regarding residential cable, I appreciate your question as it gives us the chance to clarify a point that might have been misunderstood. Overall, we firmly believe in residential broadband and the strength of fixed networks, which are crucial not just by themselves but also for our mobile business. The results in the U.S. reflect this. This commitment to residential cable is a strategic element of our business, and we've demonstrated this in the past and will continue to do so in the future. The current focus on mobile networks is simply due to immediate necessities, particularly because we've acquired spectrum in Colombia and El Salvador, which are significant for both markets. El Salvador is experiencing its first positive mobile growth, thanks to the swift deployment of AWS spectrum. We've previously discussed Colombia, and after purchasing spectrum, we can't just leave that investment idle—we need to build the networks. The same goes for modernization in Nicaragua and Panama, where updating networks will yield benefits through increased efficiency in energy use and business operations. Given our recent asset acquisitions in Nicaragua and Panama, it's crucial to invest now. Although we've slowed down residential cable investments this year due to market uncertainty and how customers are allocating their spending, we will still engage significantly in building. We're not stopping all investments; we have many homes built previously that we can target. As demand returns, we'll swiftly resume growth. We're actively managing this situation and see actual demand for broadband. However, until we're sure we're not taking on bad debt from that demand, we've adjusted installation costs across our markets. We hope this leads to more disciplined capital allocation in the industry moving forward. When affordability and effective demand improve, we could see a healthier residential cable market in our areas. We appreciate your support on this matter.

Operator, Operator

Your next one comes from the line of Lena Österberg from Carnegie. Please ask your question.

Lena Österberg, Analyst

I actually have three questions. First, could you estimate how much of the decline in ARPU is temporary due to mobility restrictions, and how much might be due to lower affordability, which could persist even after restrictions are lifted? Secondly, I'm curious about how your lifeline products function. How long can customers remain on this type of product, and do they reach out to you to return to the normal plan, or do you contact them? Lastly, I want to revisit the cost reductions from a slightly different angle. You mentioned $66 million in savings for the quarter. What was the run rate as you ended the quarter and started Q3? Thank you.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

All right. Tim, I hope you got your calculator out because there's a lot of math involved there.

Tim Pennington, CFO

The main factor answering your question, Lena, is foreign exchange. At this moment, affordability isn't the issue. It's a complex situation because, for example, on the prepaid side, we've noticed fewer top-ups, but the amounts being topped up have increased, not enough to make up for previous levels, which has had an impact. On the home side, foreign exchange is a significant factor as well. We've experienced and will continue to see some benefits in the next couple of quarters from installation fees in certain markets, which will provide us a boost. That said, we're not implementing any price increases right now, and looking ahead, it seems challenging to consider price hikes this year. This could lead to a natural decline in average revenue per user as we attract more entry-level customers, which will have an effect. So, it seems to be a mix of factors. I'm not sure we can draw concrete conclusions from the average revenue per user data. I noted the run rate in costs; many of our cost adjustments were immediate. For instance, we adjusted variable compensation and sales and marketing expenses, lowering advertising and commission levels in response to lower activity. We've acted quickly to restrict non-essential spending. Therefore, it's not a straightforward situation; it takes time to build up, and we expect similar growth next year. As I mentioned to Stefan, we set a target of $100 million, and while we won’t just stop there, I’m hesitant to commit to increasing that amount. I believe we've done well so far and must balance that with identifying where to invest and where demand is showing potential for revenue growth. So, Mauricio.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Yes, on the lifeline product, I’m glad to offer some clarity on this. Consider it as a temporary and smart dynamic approach that sets a premium which we cannot sell subscribers into. This creates a significant distinction between the standard product and the lifeline product. Establishing that distinction helps us effectively bring back customers to the regular ongoing product from the lifeline offering while keeping them connected. Regarding the duration, this will be adaptable since in some markets we set it ourselves and in others, we have negotiated with the government. It will change as the pandemic progresses. The key point is that it’s operational, and we’re successfully transitioning people back to their regular products, viewing it as a dynamic temporary pricing tier or an upsell premium. To address the last part of your question, we approach this very proactively. A noteworthy aspect is that we maintain a connection for this process. The equipment is at the households, and the subscribers possess mobile postpaid services, allowing us to engage in dialogue that remains intact despite any debt issues, which doesn’t necessitate a renegotiation. Consequently, we are experiencing the success rates we have previously mentioned.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bill Miller from My Capital. Please ask your question.

Unidentified Analyst, Analyst

My question has really been answered more than ever, but I hope everybody on your staff in the local countries has remained healthy and have you had a lot of problems with the health of your workers in those countries?

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Thank you, Bill. That is a fantastic question. We did the right thing. And I'm proud to say, we set out very early on, we tell everyone in our Tigo team that this was a moment in which we had to give our very best. We had to both protect ourselves, but we had to protect ourselves so that we could keep our customers connected. And giving that sense of purpose to the teams that have to go out on the streets to maintain service and to keep connections going and to make sure that people had connectivity throughout the pandemic was coupled with all the right, say, protocols, all the PP&E. But the most important thing is, it had a sense of purpose to our teams. And meanwhile, those that we could keep safer at home because they did not have to go out and keep connectivity, we were able to make for them available the opportunity to work remotely. And as a result of that, we have a team that is more purpose-driven than ever that has reacted so very positively to this and it's more engaged than ever. We have not had significant amounts of cases that differ from what the rest of the population is facing in our countries. We have had cases, Bill. They are in line with what our countries are seeing. We are providing all the support and all the protection we can to all of those. And we continue to remain and I say this without hesitation, an agent of positive change. All our stores carry out the best protocols. All our teams have all the protective equipment and we are being there the best we possibly can to do both things, protect our employees, protect our customers and continue to provide service. And the last point I'll make is kudos to the team for listening to the calls. Our service has been up and running 24/7 every single day without a glitch. So Bill, I'm going to take the opportunity to thank everyone on the Tigo team who's listening to them because they deserve a big, big thank you. All right. All right. With that, I just want to wrap up and thank all of you for joining us today. I think you get the key messages we're holding and hopefully, picking up a little bit of market share. Our integration is on track and the synergies are slightly up despite the economic downturn. We are being successful in protecting operating cash flow. We're sticking to that $1.4 million number that we've given you and we're directing the business to make sure we hit that number. We remain very disciplined in our capital allocation. You've seen that quite clearly and focused on reducing net debt. And there's a change in our focus there that I think is consistent with the time we're living. And despite that, we continue to build for the future. And thank you for your questions, Soomit and others because we're building network where we bought spectrum and we're modernizing networks where we bought assets and that's what we need to do. And we're building our digital capability because we believe that broadband residential and mobile is the name of the game going forward. And so we're building this more robust, higher speed, more reliable networks and that remain the core strategies. And then we aim to couple and I hope you've seen this, this state-of-the-art robust networks with a pretty strong digital strategy. So if we have the networks, we have the commercial distribution, we have the spectrum and we have the digital platforms, then we're going to be right on the sweet spot of digital adoption and broadband adoption in our markets. It is as simple as that. And thank you for listening in.