Earnings Call Transcript - TIGO Q1 2024

Operator, Operator

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2024 results call. And this event is being recorded. Our speakers today will be our CEO, Mauricio Ramos; our President and COO, Maxime Lombardini; and our CFO, Bart Vanhaeren. The slides for today's presentation are available on our website along with the earnings release and our financial statements. Now please turn to Slide 2 for the safe harbor disclosure. We will be making forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties, and these could have a material impact on our results. And on Slide 3, we defined the non-IFRS metrics that we will reference throughout today's presentation. And you can find reconciliation tables in the back of our earnings release and on our website. With those disclaimers out of the way, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Mauricio Ramos.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Thank you, Michel. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. The key highlight this quarter is our financial performance, and you can see that on this page. After years of carefully building the strategic platform that we now have in TIGO today, we have spent the last few quarters making that platform a more profitable one. And this has led to a strong start of the year in this quarter. We're pleased with that and we remain very focused to navigating the significant challenges that still lie ahead. Service revenue in this quarter accelerated to 3.8%. That's our strongest performance in nearly 2 years. Two specific elements have contributed to this performance. First, during the quarter, we implemented another round of price increases in a majority of our markets. As a result, Mobile ARPU increased 5% on average in local currency terms, and it was up in every single country. Second, we continued to generate revenue from 2 large government contracts in Panama. Please note that these contracts added a bit more than 2 percentage points to our organic service revenue growth in the quarter. We're extremely pleased with the successful work our B2B and Panama teams have undertaken to win these 2 contracts. Moving forward, we will continue to bid for more of these contracts that help accelerate Panama's digital transformation. Having said that, I want to caution you that these 2 large projects are expected to generate less revenue in the quarter going forward. So we don't expect to sustain this level of service revenue growth in Q2, nor really for the rest of this year. EBITDA increased 20% year-on-year organically, and this reflects both the service revenue growth that we just talked about and the effect of our efficiency program. And cost savings from Project Everest are now very visible. This EBITDA growth is going straight to operating cash flow as we continue to streamline our CapEx in line with our plans. But please do know that Q1 CapEx benefited from some phasing. As a result of all of these efforts, OCF was $519 million in the quarter. That's up more than 50% organically compared to last year. As I have indicated very often before, over the past few years, we have assembled a strong platform across the region. We're now making that platform more and more profitable. And given the strong start to the year, we remain confident that we will achieve our target equity free cash flow of about $550 million in 2024. Let's look at Colombia first. Last quarter, we made excellent progress on our plan to make our Colombian business profitable and cash generative. Execution of the long-term strategic roadmap that we laid out for Colombia a few years ago is now showing strong results. In 2019, we made the bold decision to buy 2 blocks of spectrum in the 700 megahertz band to strengthen our competitive position in the mobile business. And as you know, we immediately put that spectrum to work by deploying network infrastructure and by expanding our commercial footprint. Since then, we have more than doubled our postpaid customer base, and our mobile services revenue has grown very strongly and steadily, as you can see on this page. We have achieved this despite the arrival of a new entrant who brought disruptive pricing to the market over the past few years. We remained focused on driving increased scale in mobile, aiming to drive better financial performance for the entire Colombia operation. We have now been able to take steps even at bringing back price discipline to that market, within mobile and in the residential broadband business. As a result, we're now seeing our actions translate into high ARPUs. Mobile ARPU is up about 7% and home ARPU is up almost 10% in local currency terms. As a result of this long-term strategy, our sustained pricing discipline, and the savings from Project Everest, we're driving margins higher in Colombia. The very strong 36.5% EBITDA margin in Q1 would have actually reached 41.4% if you were to exclude the severance we booked in Colombia during the quarter. Years of work and the cost discipline of Project Everest are bringing combined profitability to our Colombia operation. Please note that one of the consequences of a price discipline boom is that we have been sacrificing some customer growth. As a result, we're currently spending a lot less than we used to on customer premise equipment, and this has historically been a very large component of our CapEx spend. The net effect of all of this is that OCF is up strongly, roughly doubling over the past year. Good news. But please note that this may not be sustainable if we decide to step up our commercial intensity to return to positive volume growth in our home business. All along this journey, we have also continued to look for ways to make the business even more efficient in its use of capital. And with that in mind, as you know, we recently finalized an agreement to combine our mobile network with Telefonica's in Colombia. This project was over 2 years in the making and is now well in place. This combined network will produce very meaningful synergies in the form of lower spectrum and shared network costs. And it has already given us the ability to buy 5G spectrum jointly in the most recent auction and to deploy a 5G network together, thus enhancing our savings. In addition, earlier this year, we also monetized our remaining towers in Colombia as part of our larger asset monetization strategy. And with that, we have further improved our capital efficiency in Colombia. As a result of these strategic and operational initiatives combined, we're performing much better in Colombia, and we are on track to deliver positive equity free cash flow in 2024. Despite these meaningful improvements, we still face significant industry challenges in Colombia. There are still too many players and too many networks in both mobile and fixed. ARPUs are still the lowest in the region and yet spectrum costs remain the highest. And in Colombia, today, only the largest player is able to generate profitable free cash flow. Said differently, there's still a lot of work to make the Colombia industry structure a really healthy one for the long run. Now please turn to Slide 7, where you can see that Guatemala is back on its game, with both service revenue and EBITDA up year-on-year in the quarter. As you will surely recall, we made the bold decision to increase our ownership to 100% towards the end of the pandemic and to allocate an important amount of our capital to Guatemala. This was a tremendous opportunity to own more of the asset with the highest return on capital and the most cash generation in our portfolio. Shortly after that investment, we began to face a strong challenge from our competitor, and we responded by investing heavily in new spectrum and infrastructure to boost capacity in our networks. We also invested confidently to maintain our strong position in the distribution channels in Guatemala. And as a result of that strategy, mostly as it was, we successfully protected our market share and defended our strong leadership. And now after 2 successful spectrum auctions, we have spectrum priority in the Guatemala mobile industry. And this has created the conditions for the return to a more rational competitive environment. We are now seeing signs of this in Q1 with our mobile ARPU up year-on-year for the first time since early 2021. And this was the main driver of revenue growth this quarter. When you add this to the meaningful savings from Project Everest, you can see low single-digit revenue growth translate into high single-digit EBITDA growth. So our investments and our patience for the past 2 years are now beginning to pay off, with our largest market now back to a strong positive growth. As we sit here today, indeed, it feels good to now own 100% of this strong and growing cash flow. With that said, we're not out of the woods and we're not dropping our guard. Our competitor remains aggressive, and it's still too early to tell how the market will react to our most recent price increase in February. So while the strategy is in place and it is working and we're feeling good about Q1 in Guatemala, we know we still have a lot of work ahead. Now please turn to Slide 8 to talk about Panama. 5 years ago, we made the highly strategic decision to enter the Panama market. That important capital allocation is also coming to fruition now. As you will recall, we made 2 back-to-back acquisitions, first in fixed and then in mobile. A year after the merger, we rebranded everything to our own flagship TIGO brand, which is now one of the most recognizable brands in the country, as is also the case everywhere you go in Central America. At the time of our initial investment, we saw 3 critical opportunities that have become a reality by now. First, we saw a tremendous opportunity to cross-sell mobile services to the fixed customer base we have acquired when we bought Cable Onda. Indeed, when we subsequently bought the Telefonica mobile asset, its mobile market share was in the mid-30s. Today, we're at about 50% mobile market share in Panama, and we are now guiding postpaid penetration to that base. Second, we thought that the Panama mobile market was ripe for consolidation with too many players and too little cash flow. Since then, the market has indeed consolidated from 4 players when we entered down to 2 today. When you consider that many of the largest countries in the world have only 3 players, there was no reason for any country in Latin America to support more than 2 mobile players, perhaps with the exception of Brazil, which is much larger, of course. And finally, the third pillar of our investment thesis was the opportunity to bid and win our fair share of large programs and contracts in the B2B space. After years of work, this is just now starting to happen, as you can see in our results in the last 6 months. With all of this put together, we are now the #1 telecom operator in Panama. And as a result, Panama, with its stable and dollarized economy, is now becoming the second largest contributor to Millicom's equity free cash flow in 2024. Now let me turn the call over to Maxime to say a few words.

Maxime Lombardini, President and COO

Thank you, Mauricio. As many of you know, I joined the company less than 9 months ago, and my first priority was to simplify the way Millicom operates to empower the countries, optimize CapEx, and accelerate and expand the scope of Project Everest. As we told you on the third quarter earnings call, Millicom has tremendous assets and a very strong team, but we saw an opportunity to significantly enhance the cash flow generation of the business by bringing more focus on cost control, well beyond the initial scope of Project Everest. We've also decided to upgrade the HFC cable network for it to provide more bandwidth. For a limited cost, we now have the capacity to deliver high bandwidth and be competitive again. We constructed our 2024 budget on this basis, and 9 months later, the results are very tangible. EBITDA is up more than 20%, OCF is up more than 50%. Equity free cash flow is always seasonally weaker in Q1, but this year was $134 million better than Q1 of last year. And all of these actions are helping to bring our leverage down very rapidly, which was also one of the key priorities when I joined. Every country is contributing to our improved financial performance, and we expect that all of our countries will generate strong equity free cash flow in 2024 at a level well above what was achieved in 2022 and 2023. And while we have been driving this important effort, this is the result of the tremendous effort of many people throughout the company and we want to take a moment to thank everyone for their dedication over the last several months. It has been painful, but Millicom is already in a much stronger position thanks to you. Of course, there is still much more that we can and will do in the future, continuing cost control, CapEx optimization, and implementing significant changes everywhere. It is possible to be more flexible and more efficient. And we are downsizing the volume of shared services to other countries fully responsible, and we have a structure to keep only countries and use cases that make sense. We can probably do better with organic service revenue growth. And we will continue to focus more of our time on identifying opportunities we may have to accelerate our profitable growth. With that, back to you, Mauricio.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Thank you, Maxime. It has been a true pleasure to partner with you over the last several months. Thank you for your incredible support and your friendship, and for helping Millicom to tap into the experience and expertise of the broader Atlas team. Before turning the call over to Bart to go over the financials, I will wrap up by discussing the various leadership changes that have been announced over the past several months. First, as part of the CEO succession plan that we had announced 9 months ago, I will be stepping down as CEO shortly after the shareholder meeting later this month, and I will remain as Chair of the Board, subject, of course, to shareholder approval at the AGM. No major news for you there, I hope. As we recently announced, the Board has appointed Marcelo Benitez to be Millicom's next CEO starting June 1. Marcelo's journey at Millicom has been nothing short of incredible. Marcelo joined the company about 30 years ago, starting in one of our call centers in Paraguay. Since then, he has held leadership roles in multiple countries, touching just about every part of the organization. He's currently the General Manager of our Panama operation, where he successfully integrated the acquisitions and has executed our investment plan, which I alluded to just a few seconds ago. A very warm welcome to Marcelo, a team leader with so much Sangre Tigo. I also want to publicly thank our Board for the time and the effort that every member devoted to the discussions, analysis, and interviews with many internal and external candidates. Our decision to appoint Marcelo was indeed thoughtful and unanimous, and that could not have been achieved without the months of work that the Board put into this very important task. And we also recently announced that Maxime will remain our President and COO until the year-end, and he will join our Board as of this May. Maxime's contribution has already been very positively impactful to the company, and I personally immensely look forward to continue partnering with Maxime now in the boardroom. As you can see, Maxime and I will stick around to help Marcelo whenever and for whatever he needs us. Marcelo will have our full support, that of the full Board, and that of all his TIGO colleagues who know him so well and have enjoyed his strong leadership for decades. And also subject to shareholder approval, we will be joined by Justine Dimovic as our new Board member. Justine is with L'Oreal now, but she was our very own former Treasurer and Head of IR some years ago at Millicom. So she will bring back tremendous knowledge of the company, along with her experience and financial acumen. Welcome back, Justine. Thanks to Michael Golan for sitting on our Board for the last year with meaningful insights and contributions. And also thank you to Pernille Erenbjerg for her many, many important contributions to the Board over the last 5 years and also for her insightful challenge and continuous support to the team. A few weeks ago, we also announced the appointment of Bart Vanhaeren as our new Chief Financial Officer. Like Marcelo, Bart is a Millicom veteran who has held several leadership roles during his 14 years with the company, most recently overseeing corporate finance, which encompasses the company's treasury, tax, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate administration activities. As you know, I've worked closely with Bart over the years and think highly of him. Before I turn the call over to Bart to go over the financials, I want to reconfirm that we continue to work on monetizing our regional TIGO portfolio. We launched the monetization process externally in Q4, and we're now very actively in the middle of the M&A process. Of course, precisely because of that, that's all that we can say at this time. With that introduction, let me turn the call over to Bart for his debut moment.

Bart Vanhaeren, CFO

Thank you, Mauricio, and hi, everyone. Many of you know me already from my various roles in the past or from investor conferences. For those who don't, I encourage you to reach out to me through Michel, as I definitely want to engage with our broader investor base to hear what is top of your mind. This being said, let's now have a look at our financial performance beginning on Slide 12. Mauricio indicated this already, a lot of work has been done over the last few months and now results start to show. At the same time, we still have significant challenges ahead. Service revenue was $1.38 billion in the quarter. This is up 8.8% year-on-year from $1.26 billion a year ago. Excluding the impact of exchange rates, organic growth was 3.8% in the fourth quarter, driven by: one, our mobile business, which is up mid-single digits, thanks to ARPU growth from recent price increases and pre-to-postpaid migrations. Two, meeting growth in B2B coming from large contracts in Panama that Mauricio already talked about. These contracts should continue to generate revenue and EBITDA for several more quarters, but we anticipate a much smaller contribution from these contracts going forward and beginning in Q2. Three, this revenue growth is offset a bit by a decline in the home business, where we focus on return on profitability in a competitive environment. Our EBITDA, which we will discuss in more detail later, was up 24.5% year-on-year to $632 million, despite $30 million of restructuring costs incurred in the period. The very strong growth reflects the combined effect of the service revenue growth that I just discussed, as well as the cost savings for Project Everest that are now visible and recurring. Then the operating cash flow rose 61% to $519 million, reflecting both the robust EBITDA growth and a 38.9% reduction in CapEx. This CapEx reduction is in part due to the efficiency measures taken during 2023 and now materializing in the run rate, but a bigger portion is due to the slower phasing of investments in this quarter of 2024. So please don't annualize Q1 CapEx as an indication for full year investment. Drilling down further into the service revenue by country on Slide 13, Guatemala increased by 2%. This was the first positive quarterly growth in 5 quarters and is fueled by mobile growth, where recent price increases are driving ARPU growth. As Mauricio mentioned, we are happy with the improved performance in Q1, but competition remains very intense here. Colombia service revenue was flat in local currency. Here, our mobile business continues to grow very nicely and was up high single digits, but this was offset by a decline in our home business, where we continue to prioritize price discipline and profitability over growth in a market that remains very competitive. As Mauricio already discussed, we'll be willing to sacrifice some customer growth, but the good news here is that home ARPU is up strongly, and we have also seen a significant improvement in churn and net adds in the last couple of months. In Panama, service revenue grew 17.8%, fueled by the 2 large B2B contracts, as well as, a strong growth in mobile. Excluding these large contracts, service revenue would have been flat. Bolivia service revenue was flat as well, with growth in mobile and B2B, offset by a decline in home, where we continue to prioritize price discipline, especially given a more challenging macroeconomic outlook and the longer payback terms on this side of the business. Paraguay service revenue grew 4.3% in local currency with every business unit continuing to perform well. Service revenue in our other segments increased 5.4%. As a reminder, the other segment is comprised of our operations in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, which in aggregate account for just over 15% of our service revenue and EBITDA. Now turning to EBITDA on Slide 14. As I mentioned before, EBITDA in Q1 was $632 million. That's up 24.5% year-on-year from $507 million. As you can see, foreign exchange was a tailwind this quarter and contributed about $21 million of growth to the quarter. This doesn't happen very often, so we're happy to take it. Excluding this FX benefit, EBITDA increased 20% organically year-on-year. Noteworthy is that about $30 million of further severance costs are included in our Q1 EBITDA. On Slide 15, you can see our EBITDA by country. It's quite clear that the cost savings initiatives we've been implementing over the past year or so are having a very positive impact across all our operations with nearly all countries up double digits. Guatemala EBITDA improved very significantly and increased 7.9% in local currency terms, largely thanks to better ARPU growth in mobile. Colombia EBITDA local currency growth was more than 24% due to both mobile service revenue growth and continued price discipline in our home business, as well as, all savings from Project Everest. The EBITDA margin of 36.5% was a new record. Noteworthy is that during Q1, our Colombia operation incurred almost $18 million of restructuring costs related to the voluntary retirement plan that we implemented early in the year. Excluding this charge, the margin would have been 41.4%. That's up 10 percentage points over the past year. And this is one of the reasons why we expect equity free cash flow to be positive in 2024, as Mauricio indicated previously. Now turning to Panama, where EBITDA grew 26.1%. The B2B projects contributed more than half of this growth. And as I've just told you, we expect much smaller contributions from these projects going forward. Bolivia EBITDA increased 12.7%, and this is largely due to the savings from Project Everest and to our reduced commercial activity in home. As a reminder, the macroeconomic situation in Bolivia has become more challenging because there is a shortage of U.S. dollars in the economy. Up until now, this hasn't had any noticeable impact on consumer demand, but it has become a lot harder for us to convert Bolivianos to dollars to pay some of our vendors, and to upstream cash from the country. In other words, no impact yet on revenue or EBITDA, but our working capital was about $16 million better than it should be because of these payment delays. Paraguay had another solid quarter with EBITDA up 14.1% organically and the margin expanded almost 5 percentage points to 48.3%. EBITDA in our other segments increased 17.8% with all 3 countries contributing to the growth. Now please turn to Slide 16 for our usual net debt bridge. During the quarter, net debt increased slightly by $19 million to end Q1 at just under $6 billion. The taxable EBITDA growth, our leverage decreased by 19 bps in this quarter. The key factors that contributed to the increase in net debt were our equity free cash flow was $1 million, however, includes the proceeds of the sale of towers in Colombia for $39 million. We repurchased our bonds in the open market for approximately $132 million. These purchases were made below par, leading to a $15 million benefit. We also bought back shares for approximately $27 million. As a result of these items and considering also the strong EBITDA growth that I already talked about, our leverage ratio ended Q1 at 3.10, down from 3.29 at Q4. Now please turn to Slide 17 to review our financial targets. We continue to target equity free cash flow of around $550 million in 2024. And we continue to target leverage of 2.5x by 2025. These targets remain unchanged from what we communicated to you at our Q4 results last February. As you can see from our Q1, we have started the year on a relatively strong note, and we are indeed slightly ahead of our plans. But as Mauricio and I have already told you, we benefited from a number of tailwinds in Q1 that won't necessarily repeat. And we also see a number of risks for the remainder of the year. These risks are contemplated and reflected in our targets. Now let me turn the call back to Mauricio to wrap up.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Thank you, Bart. Pretty good for your first time. Before I take your questions for the last time as CEO, myself, I want to recap some of the key strategic decisions we have made, as a team, over the past several years to help get us to where we are today. First, we invested heavily in our networks. We deployed 4G and bought spectrum to secure our mobile market leadership, and we expanded aggressively into home and into B2B. The largest chunks of our spectrum acquisitions and renewals are now behind us, as you know, and B2B is beginning to show its strength. Second, we invested in Africa, where we had no scale. We closed offices in London and Stockholm, and we sold our noncore assets. Third, we entered Panama and Nicaragua to consolidate our leadership in Central America. Panama is now a success story, and we increased also our ownership in Guatemala, a country where our return on capital is by far the highest, and strong cash flow growth is back. Fourth, we have made great strides to improve profitability in Colombia. We still have a lot of work to do there, but we're closer than we ever were in making Colombia a key contributor to Millicom's growth and to its free cash flow generation in the future. Fifth, and this is perhaps the most important, we created a winning Sangre Tigo culture that makes all of our plans possible. In this, out of this Sangre Tigo, and perhaps because of it on to our next leader, Marcelo Benitez. TIGO indeed has become a magnificent unique platform in the region, one that is now more profitable, thanks now also to the immense and positive support of our largest shareholder, Atlas. I'm happy now to hand over the helm to a seasoned and highly capable company veteran like Marcelo, a great colleague and a dear friend of many years. You will get to meet Marcelo in early August for the second quarter results conference call. Today, Bart, Maxime and I will take your questions.

Operator, Operator

And first question will come from the line of Soomit Datta, New Street Research.

Soomit Datta, Analyst

Thank you, Mauricio, for all your help over the years, and good luck with your new role. I look forward to speaking with you, Bart, going forward, and good luck with everything. I have a couple of questions. First, I want to commend you on the impressive work regarding cost management over the last few quarters. I've been observing the sector for many years and can't recall anything quite as notable in terms of margin improvement. Congratulations to everyone involved. This brings me to my first question about the sustainability of this approach. You've hinted at areas for potential increased investment, particularly in the home segment. Could you provide more details on where you see opportunities for investment to boost top-line growth over the coming months, either in the home sector or wireless? My second question pertains to cash flow concerns from markets like Honduras and Bolivia. I'm trying to understand the severity of that risk and its implications for equity free cash flow. You've mentioned that it's within guidance, but any additional insights on the situation on the ground would be appreciated.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Sure. I'll address part of your first question, and perhaps Maxime can add to that as well. For the second question, I’ll let our new CFO take the lead, as it's a good opportunity for him to engage with the challenge. Regarding our commercial initiatives and the Everest project, we started this initiative some time ago, and it was well planned with external resources. Implementation began, but the process accelerated significantly due to the involvement of our largest investor. This support transformed Everest into something much larger and expedited its progress, and I’ve frequently expressed my gratitude for that backing. Maxime's presence on this call reflects our successful partnership. What you see now is the result of strategic initiatives from last year, blended with our work in key markets like Panama, Guatemala, and Colombia, which are becoming increasingly profitable. When it comes to the top line, which is a priority for us, let me provide some specifics. We've been consistently focused on postpaid services in mobile, particularly in Panama, where we expect to see results from cross-selling and expanding our postpaid subscriber base. It's proving to be very effective. In Colombia, postpaid services have also shown strong performance, leading to lower churn rates, increased ARPU, and longer customer lifetime value cycles. This is part of a long-term strategy we are committed to. We're leveraging our fixed network to enhance convergence, even though we may not discuss it in detail due to time constraints. We're making significant investments in key markets like Colombia and Bolivia to drive this. B2B efforts are also advancing, particularly in Panama, where we’ve emphasized that sector over the years. As previously mentioned, we adopted a disciplined pricing strategy in Colombia some time ago, where we implemented installation costs and maintained stringent pricing. This approach has affected our volume but positively impacted cash flow, resulting in slower growth. However, we've noticed some signs of improved market conditions in Colombia recently, with price stabilization and more consistent competition in the home sector, leading to slight ARPU growth. We may resume focusing on volume if these trends continue. The situation in Bolivia has similar complexities, which we'll explore later. Essentially, we're maintaining a strong emphasis on both cost management and revenue growth moving forward. Maxime, do you have anything to add?

Maxime Lombardini, President and COO

First, we have not sacrificed CapEx. Much more, we have optimized CapEx, especially by aligning technical, IT and sales to be more efficient. Several we have renegotiated a lot of contracts with the vendors, both on network and IT. So for the same amount of money, we can get more. And there is more to come on that. And on the home business, we've made a huge HFC upgrade in terms of bandwidth capacity for quite a low cost. So all that explains to you that we have a good performance commercially with relatively low CapEx. On top of that, there is more to come on costs, especially on content. Each time a contract comes up that we can renegotiate drastically, and that is a big amount. And then on subcontractors and on shared services, there are many shared services in Millicom that we started to push first to reduce and then to push to the country. It's just to avoid, let's say, HQ costs with limited leadership on them. And the third aspect, we have many initiatives that are pushed on the service revenue. The first one is to lower as much as we can the churn, especially on home because this comes with a high cost, both OpEx and CapEx. And the HFC upgrade is quite successful on that. Then on the distribution, we are improving the distribution network. And we are great believers in the FMC offers, putting together the home and mobile business, especially when fighting in certain countries with these small ISPs that are cheaper providing BBI only. That's the best way to fight on that.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Bart, Bolivia and Honduras?

Bart Vanhaeren, CFO

So for once, we had positive currency effects in the quarter, so we'll take that, but we operate in emerging markets and it can't all be positive in all countries at the same time. In Bolivia, so we are putting in the work in the sense that we are working with all suppliers to convert our contracts from U.S. dollar to local currencies, so to reduce our U.S. dollar need. We are still able to buy a number of dollars and euros in the market, a lot, thanks to good relationships with our banks over the years. We have been issuing local bonds; we've been in the market for many years with them. But those come at commission rates between 10% and 30%. So that only makes sense to the extent that we can share that commission cost with our supplier, which in most cases is relatively straightforward for them and for us then to execute on. We also allocate some of the cash flow that we generate in the market for debt repayment. So our net debt in Bolivia will have come down during the quarter. But then lastly to say, I think the business itself has not suffered from this. So mobile business is up, B2B is up. And then in home, we have a slowdown; returns in home are a little bit longer. So to allocate the cash better to go into the mobile business for even more immediate term. In Honduras, a bit of the same activities, working with the suppliers. But in Honduras, the difference with Bolivia is we are able to convert much larger amounts in U.S. dollar. The way it works is we have to present the invoices to the Regulator. Those get reviewed and approved over time, so there is a bit of a delay. DPO will go up. But it's a process that is still functioning. And so far, we're not expecting that much of an impact on the upstream at this moment in time.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

A couple of additional comments just to wrap it up, Soomit. Number one, for quite some time now, you've heard us say we're cautious on our investment envelope in Bolivia. And we talk about Honduras to a lesser extent. That's precisely because we saw the dry up of foreign reserves coming up. So we've been preparing ourselves for that, and managing the way Bart has described it. In terms of the target, there are things that can go well, that are going well. There are things that can go bad and we try to put it into a bag, and that basically shakes out with us confirming the envelope for the target for this year, with all the puts and takes in there.

Operator, Operator

So next, we're going to go to Stefan Gauffin at DNB.

Stefan Gauffin, Analyst

Well, first of all, just thanks, Mauricio for all discussions over the years. And I have a few questions. A couple of them will likely be short. So first of all, on the restructuring charges, are we done now or will there be more charges to come in the coming quarters? Secondly, the Panama business was boosted by the B2B contract, so around 2 percentage points to group service revenue or around $25 million to Panama service revenues. How should we think about these contracts going forward? Will they come down materially or how should we think? And then just thirdly, you mentioned reducing the MFS footprint. And just a couple of years ago, I believe the target was to do the opposite then to build out that business materially. So could you just give a brief update on the MFS business?

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Certainly. Regarding the first part, Stefan, about the charges, I want to emphasize that we will keep pursuing efficiencies wherever possible. Our objective is to enhance the platform's profitability, and I believe we all share this vision, including the entire Board and our investors. We've made significant progress recently with Everest 1 and Everest 2, so while the level of activity may slow down, our search for efficiencies will continue. Bart, I can provide further insights on how this will impact charges on a quarterly basis. Are you ready to discuss this?

Bart Vanhaeren, CFO

I think a lot of the restructuring charges are already spent, Stefan. So on the flip side, a lot of the benefits are in the run rates or in the bank, as we call it. Now as Mauricio said, we continue to look for more efficiencies. So I would say, generally, yes, you will see more. But that's as well where we now not report adjusted anymore, the presentation as you have seen. So it has been ongoing for a number of quarters. And so I personally look at it in what we have as reported numbers. And as this can continue over time, not going to stay at the same intensity. But I would encourage you to look at reported rather than adjusted for one-off charges.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

On the B2B contract, Stefan, very quickly, these are very large, very profitable contracts that basically have, as in Panama, get to something that begins to look like a fair share of the B2B market in that economy given the size that TIGO Panama currently has. We fought for those for years, and we're happy to obtain them. But B2B, as you know, it tends to be lumpy. These are long-term contracts, but we booked the bulk of the first year revenue both in last quarter, so last quarter of last year and this quarter. Going forward, we want to be super clear, do not expect that we're going to continue to be having quarterly revenue from these contracts to the level that we had in the past 2 quarters. So now 25 to 30 per quarter, materially less. Very important that we'd be transparent on that. On MFS, a couple of comments, and I'll hand it over to Maxime. Number one, we worked very hard to bring the business to OCF. I think I've said that a number of times, so that we have perfect optionality with that business. We are very, very focused now on integrating it better into the operations of the business because that particular product reduces churn and increases ARPU and has a lot of affinity with the operations, which, in fact, means and we are learning a lot from that business, learning a lot on what countries it works better and in countries it doesn't quite work as well. So we're pretty much in the learning process. We're pretty much in the efficiency process, pretty much in the integration process. And going forward, it's all about optionality. We're no longer focused on one specific M&A outcome here. Maxime, over to you for any add-ons you want to give on that?

Maxime Lombardini, President and COO

Yes. Very limited additional elements. The first one, we are not a fintech. It's a market which is very complicated, very competitive with very limited margins. So we've decided to focus on the countries where we are also regionally strong, such as Paraguay, Bolivia or Honduras. And on specific use cases, mainly the ones that are bringing something to the telco business, meaning the reloads for prepaid and the bill payments to lower the cost of commissions. Lending will be in Paraguay only because it's a risky business that is not our core business. And very important, we've made the countries fully responsible for that TigoMoney business. There is not anymore, any longer, a big team to build everything and think other countries. The countries will have to define what are the use cases they really needed, be it in the software development and to market the product in a very close relationship with the B2C teams. So it's a different approach, really something where TigoMoney is supporting the Teleco business and not anymore the fintech, living its life.

Operator, Operator

So next, we're going to go to Marcelo Santos at JPMorgan.

Marcelo Santos, Analyst

I have two questions. The first is about Panama. You mentioned that with the departure of the third operator, the market has become a two-player mobile environment. Is this something that regulators will accept? Are there potential remedies being discussed? Typically, when the number of competitors decreases, regulators tend to become more concerned, so I would like to know your perspective on this. The second question is whether there have been any changes in competitive behavior in Colombia due to WOM's financial challenges. I believe WOM in Colombia has filed for Chapter 11, so I'm interested in what you're observing on the ground.

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

It's interesting that you asked one question right after the other, as if you are suggesting a parallel and there may or may not be a parallel here, Marcelo. So let's start with Panama here. It indeed has become a 2-player market. As I said, we envisioned it would naturally eventually end up being by default. And it has been a very lengthy, organized, methodic, highly interactive process since Digicel decided to turn back the business and the licenses to the Panamanian government quite some time ago. We have as an industry, Millicom also very closely with the government of Panama to assist them in handling that unexpected situation when the business was handed back to them. It has been a continuous dialogue. The government has looked for a third party, maybe manage that business, take over that business, and has been unsuccessful. And as a result of that and our focus and continued work as an industry to make sure that there is no customer disruption as those subscribers were looking for a new home, the process has been managed, I think, quite well. And as a result of that, although the law in Panama still says 3 players, the de facto reality is that it's a 2-player market with everyone having done its best to find a very healthy industry structure going forward. Because of this, Marcelo, this is not the result of organic M&A. This is the result of an industry adjustment that was necessary, and an inorganic transition, which was well managed vis-a-vis the customer. As a result of that, we're not expecting any remedies coming out of Panama. Colombia, it is a matter of public record that WOM filed for a Chapter 11 type proceeding, not too long ago. The first thought that comes to mind is a book by a Colombian Nobel prize winner, Cronica di una morte annunciata, apologies for the use of Spanish language, you can all look that one up, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. We always imagined that it was difficult for the Colombian industry structure to accept a new player. Having said that, it has been very painful for 5 years for the industry. Prices came down. We all had to react. ARPUs in Colombia came under a lot of pressure, but you see that we held our own in Colombia. I spoke to that at length, and as a result of that, that process of the Chapter 11 type bankruptcy of WOM in Colombia is at the very beginning of that process. And it will be the beginning of what I believe to be an inflection point in Colombia, meaning the industry structure in Colombia have been vocal that it is too damaging to those that do not have that will to stand in for long-term. Here is one more example of that. So I believe we're at an inflection point and at some reconstruction in the Colombia industry structure, which needs to be reconstructive so that long-term healthy players can continue to invest. Things like the combination of our network with Telefonica was badly needed. The filing of bankruptcy proceedings by WOM was expected because the industry needs re-composition, and this may be on the positive side an inflection. That's what I expect will happen going forward and that we have expected with having gone through very painful last 4 to 5 years. Having said that, Marcelo, 2 comments. One, we're only at the very beginning of that, right? And bankruptcy proceedings do afford the parties that undergo some financial protection, which means they remain commercially active, and because they remain commercially active, they are still a player in the market. So don't expect any short-term upside from that and bankruptcy proceedings are by definition uncertain. And they are at the very beginning. So as much as I see a long-term trend towards a better industry structure in Colombia, I caution you on the short because there's uncertainty on the outcome and it is the early days.

Operator, Operator

So next, we're going to go to Oscar Runquist at ABG.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

My first question is about severance payments. You mentioned approximately $30 million in severance for the first half of the year, and $30 million for the first quarter. Should we expect any additional restructuring costs related to severance that you mentioned in the Q4 report, or has everything been accounted for in the first quarter? My second question is regarding Colombia and the network joint venture with Telefonica. You mentioned that you are on track to achieve or exceed breakeven in free cash flow in Colombia during 2024. Given the current positives and negatives, when can we anticipate a positive cash flow run rate from the network joint venture in Colombia? Lastly, I'm interested in your perspective on the recent acceleration of the savings program, which included a significant reduction in headcount and overall cost optimization. How has the remaining staff managed through these cost reductions, and do you see any impact on personnel satisfaction?

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

That's a great question, and I appreciate your interest. The joint venture with Telefonica has been in development for years, involving significant negotiations with both the government and our partner. We are already seeing benefits from this collaboration, as we've secured 5G spectrum together and are currently deploying that network. The formation of the joint venture is in progress, and it plays a crucial role in achieving our positive cash flow goals for Colombia this year. Regarding the headcount reduction, I want to express my gratitude to everyone, especially the 300 to 400 employees from TIGO who are listening. We could not have executed this process quickly and effectively without the support and challenges from Atlas, as well as the strong commitment from our staff. Our teams deeply believe in our mission and the company's success, which is why, despite the challenges of this transition, they recognized the importance of acting swiftly and moving forward. This is the result of years of cultivating a strong culture that we are now leveraging. There's a saying about the value of capital only being realized when put to use, and that's what we've done, thanks to the dedication of those who have built this remarkable company and its spirit. Moving on to the numbers regarding severance.

Bart Vanhaeren, CFO

Yes. Now on severance, I think last year or in the quarter, we said that we would expect $30 million to $35 million of severance payments in the first half of this year. A very significant portion has been executed now in Q1, definitely as planned. But as I mentioned before, we continue to look for optimization across the board, not only on headcount, but on other costs, suppliers, CapEx, name it. So there will be more. We started to report now as reported, not adjusted. I don't think the same intensity as this quarter. But as there are maybe less severance, there might be some other restructuring charges, definitely less, but probably some more to come. On the JV, on the equity free cash flow in Colombia. The performance in Colombia is doing very well, right? So we have more than 24% EBITDA growth compared to last year. So that gives a lot of oxygen. Net of restructuring costs, our EBITDA in Colombia is north of 40%. This is now the first time that we reached those levels in Colombia. And that obviously flows down into a much more air in the equity free cash flow. So we have increased revenue, improved margins, lowered costs, we'll have less spectrum in the year to go. We have CapEx savings. We're focusing more on our mobile growth, which has immediate returns as opposed to the growth in the home business. So also cash flow-wise and EFCF-wise, that gives a lot more flexibility in your equity free cash flow. And then additionally, from the JV with Telefonica, I don't expect a net EFCF saving immediately this year, more over breakeven on that level and then the benefits to come in mostly next year. It's split into sites, one on spectrum, and that derives obviously, some of that is already in the bank as we start to look at 5G, etc., together from the JV rather than separately.

Operator, Operator

So we're about 1 minute to the top of the hour here. We do have a last question from Eduardo Rubi at UBS.

Eduardo Rubi, Analyst

Just a quick one here on my side. So I would like to know how you're seeing the leverage going forward as we already deliver some improvements this quarter?

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

We had a strong start to the quarter, improving our leverage from 3.29 to 3.10. Our net debt increased slightly by $20 million. However, the growth in EBITDA after leases of $120 million has significantly contributed to our deleveraging efforts. We anticipate generating more equity free cash flow in the upcoming quarters to align with our targets, which will further reduce our net debt. Additionally, the EBITDA after leases is positioned for a strong year, and we are optimistic about our year-end results. Both metrics will require ongoing attention. We remain committed to our guidance of reaching around 2.5 or exactly 2.5 by 2025. While this is a positive sign, it is still early in the year, and we face several challenges ahead. We have already noted some macroeconomic concerns in Bolivia and Honduras, along with ongoing regulations, taxation, and heightened competition in our region. Nevertheless, we are off to a good start, and reducing leverage continues to be our top priority.

Operator, Operator

So thank you, Eduardo. I think we'll leave it at that. Mauricio, do you have any final words?

Mauricio Ramos, CEO

Sure. I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has helped do 2 things: one, build this platform over the years and two, make it profitable because that is exactly where we are today, a more and more fantastic and profitable platform. So thank you to everyone who's contributed on both fronts. From here on, Marcelo, I hope you are taking notes because this is going to be over to you. I'll stick around for strategic direction, for consultation, and for government relations, but I hope you took a lot of notes because the next quarter is all yours. Thank you, everybody, and thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thanks, everyone.