Earnings Call - MILLICOM INTERNATIONAL CELLULAR SA

Hello everyone and welcome to our third quarter 2026 results call. This event is being recorded. Our speakers today will be our CEO Marcelo Inites and Bart Van Aeren, CFO of the company. The slides for today's presentation are available on our website along with the earnings release and our financial statements. Please turn to slide 2 for the Safe Harbor disclosure. We will be making forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties which could have a material impact on our results. On slide 3, we defined the non-IFRS metrics that we will be referencing throughout this presentation. And you can find reconciliation tables in the back of the earnings release and on our website. With those disclaimers out of the way, let me now turn the call over to our CEO, Marcelo Benitez. acelo thank you luca and welcome everyone to our third quarter 2026 results call i'm very pleased to report another strong quarter for millicom with record adjusted ebda solid revenue growth and strong cash flow generation i want to start by emphasizing that these results are not happening by chance they are the result of a clear strategy and consistent execution across our operations we continue to focus on the same priorities improving customer experience investing in our networks strengthening commercial execution and making our organization more efficient every day on the commercial side we continue to see very positive results from our more for more strategy We are giving customers larger allowances, better connectivity, and a better overall experience, while gradually increasing ARPU. In prepaid, it's not simply about increasing prices. It's about giving customers more value, keeping them more engaged, and building stronger customer relationships. At the same time, we continue migrating prepaid customers to postpaid, increasing convergence in our home business, and expanding our digital services offering for B2B customers. And of course, efficiency remains a fundamental part of our culture. We continue simplifying our operations, improving productivity, and applying the Millicom Playbook across our markets. This combination of strong commercial execution and cost discipline is driving our financial performance while we continue investing in the long-term growth of our business. Before going into the quarterly results, I want to highlight two important milestones from October. First, Colombia. In October 14th, we officially brought our combined operation under Tigo brand, bringing together the strengths of Tigo and Movistar. This is another important step in our integration and in building a stronger and more competitive operation. Together with the brand consolidation, we announced an ambition investment plan for the next four years. This includes doubling our 5G coverage, increasing network capacity at more than 5,000 sites, and expanding coverage through more than 1,000 new sites and continuing to invest in fixed and digital infrastructure. This is a significant commitment to improving network quality and the experience of millions of customers in Colombia. We also reached another important milestone in Ecuador. On October 1st, we officially launched the Tigo brand in the country. And just as in Colombia, our focus goes well beyond the brand itself. We have already increased network capacity to more than 2,000 sites, and our plan includes building at least 500 additional sites, mainly expanded coverage along the coastal region. Our objective is clear. Bring better connectivity to more people, improve customer experience, and build a stronger business over time. Both initiatives show how we are combining network investment with strong commercial execution to deliver profitable and sustainable growth. Before reviewing the numbers, I also want to acknowledge two difficult events during the quarter. Both Colombia and Panama experienced significant earthquakes. Sadly, in Colombia, we lost one of our employees and one of the contractors. Our thoughts are with our families and loved ones. And we continue to support them during this difficult time. The earthquake also affected our networks and disrupted services for many customers. I want to recognize our teams in both countries for their extraordinary response. Despite very challenging conditions, particularly in Colombia, our colleagues restored service at all affected mobile sites within just two days and worked tirelessly to keep our customers connected. Fortunately, our operations in Panama were not materially affected. In Colombia, the impact on our fixed network lasted longer, and contributed to a decline on home customer additions during the quarter. I'll come back to this when we discuss our home business. Now, turning to our results. At the group level, service revenue reached approximately 2.1 billion, growing 5.4 organically year over year adjusted ebitda reached a new quarterly record of 1.1 billion growing 7.7 organically with an adjusted ebita margin of 48 equity free cash flow reached 316 million for the quarter up 27 compared to last year this brings our equity free cash flow for the first nine months to approximately 870 million keeping us on track to deliver our full year guidance of around 1.1 billion what i particularly want to highlight is the consistency of our performance we continue growing revenues improving efficiency and converting that performance into a stronger cash generation our commercial strategy also continues to deliver we added almost 390 000 postpaid customers during the quarter in home we lost 86 000 customers sequentially reflecting both the earthquake in colombia and our deliberate approach to pricing and customer value i will explain these dynamics in more detail shortly but importantly home service revenue increased 3.4 percent year over year overall these results demonstrate the strength of our operating model we continue generating strong earnings and cash flow while investing in the quality and competitiveness of our business starting with mobile we continue to see strong results from our commercial strategy as we have discussed in previous quarters one of our main priority is migrating prepaid customers to postpaid this quarter 73 percent of our postpaid sales came from customers migrating from our existing prepaid days this shows the strength of our commercial execution and our ability to move customers to higher value plans giving them more data greater predictability and a better overall experience our postpaid customer base reached 17.2 million growing almost 31 percent year over year importantly our prepaid base also grew 7.8 percent year-over-year so we continue growing postpaid while maintaining a large prepaid customer base which give us a significant opportunity for future migration at the same time our more for more strategy continues to deliver We are offering larger allowances and better value, supported by continued investment in our networks. In prepaid, we are also focused on improving customer engagement and helping customers to stay connected more consistently. And when customers migrate to postpaid, they typically stay connected for nearly twice as many days each month. This improves their experience while also supporting loyalty and long-term customer value. Together with Discipline Pricing, these initiatives continue to support ARPU growth. As a result, mobile service revenue reached $1.3 billion, growing $7.2 organically year-over-year. These results demonstrate how customer migration, better monetization, and consistent execution are supporting our mobile growth. turning to our home business we continue to focus on improving customer value increasing convergence and delivering a better broadband experience during the quarter our customer base declined mainly due to two factors the first was the earthquake in colombia which affected our fixed network and disrupted services for a significant number of customers Approximately, one-third of the sequential decline in home customers was related to the earthquake. The second and more significant factor was our deliberate commercial approach. We continue implementing our more-for-more strategy, offering customers faster speeds, better connectivity, and more value, while adjusting our pricing. We recognize that this can lead to higher churn, particularly among more price-sensitive customers. But our priority is to increase customer value and revenue rather than grow subscribers at any cost. And we are seeing encouraging results. Home service revenue reached $542 million, growing 3.4 organically year over year, despite the pressure on subscriber additions. Another important driver is convergence. Our fixed mobile convergence penetration reached 38%. The slight sequential decline reflects the inclusion of Coltel's FMC metrics for the first time this quarter, as Coltet has a lower FMC penetration than the group averaged. Convergence remains a very important part of our strategy, because these customers tend to be more loyal, with churn historically around half that of non-convergent customers. Going forward, we will continue investing in our fixed networks, upgrading speeds and expanding our convergent offers. We expect some continued pressure on subscriber additions in the fourth quarter as we maintain our pricing strategy. But our priority remains the same, delivering a better customer experience, increasing customer value, and supporting sustainable revenue growth. Let's now turn to our B2B business. In B2B, we continue to see good opportunities, particularly in digital services and the SME segment. During the quarter, B2C service revenues reached $404 million, growing 2.1% organically year-over-year. Digital services revenue reached $105 million, growing 5.9% organics compared with the last year, supported by continued demand for cloud, cybersecurity, and managed services. Compared with the second quarter, digital services revenues declined, mainly because certain B2B and government projects came to an end. As a result, we expect some moderation in the near term as those projects' revenues roll off. Looking ahead, we remain confident in opportunities across our B2V business. Our focus is on expanding our digital services portfolio, improving sales productivity, and strengthening our position in the SME and corporate segments. Next, I would like to discuss our two largest markets, Colombia and Guatemala. I am very pleased with the progress we are making in Colombia. Following by the acquisition of Coltel, our teams move quickly to integrate operations, simplify our business, improve efficiencies, and implement our commercial strategy. With the most intensive phase of the integration largely behind us, our focus is now shifting more toward commercial execution and capturing the opportunities from our expanded customer base. And we are already seeing encouraging results. Our prepaid to postpaid migration strategy continues to perform very well. During the quarter, 71% of our postpaid sales came from customers migrating from prepaid. Our postpaid customer base reached 10.2 million, growing 7.4% year-over-year, excluding Coltel. This is a strong result, particularly considering the size of the combined operation. At the same time, our more-for-more strategy continues to support ARPU growth. On the home side, our customer base declined 2.8% year-over-year, again excluding Coltel. As I mentioned earlier, this reflects both the impact of the earthquake and our deliberate pricing strategy. Convergence is another important opportunity. Our FMC penetration in Colombia, now including Coltel, reached 40%, reflecting continued progress in bringing fixed customers and mobile services together across our combined customer base. And with the recent consolidation under the Tigo brand, together with the investments announced in October, we are entering in a new phase for our business in Colombia. We now have the scale, the network investment plan, and the commercial strategy to increase customer value and improve profitability over time. There is still work ahead, but the progress we have made gives us even more confidence in the combined operation in Colombia. Guatemala continues to deliver excellent results and remains one of our best examples of what consistent execution of the Millicom Playbook can achieve. Our prepaid to postpaid migration strategy continues to perform extremely well. During the quarter, 87% of our postpaid sales came from existing prepaid customers. Our postpaid customer base reached 1.6 million, growing 18.7% year-over-year. And importantly, this is not just a one-quarter result. We have delivered post-paid customer growth above 18% in every quarter so far this year. At the same time, our more-for-more strategy continues to support ARPU growth. We are offering customers larger allowances and better customer value, supported by continued network improvements and disciplined pricing. Together with our pre-to-post migration, this is improving our customer mix and building stronger customer relationships. And these commercial trends continue to translate into strong revenue growth. Mobile service revenue reached $301 million, growing 6.8% organically year over year. Guatemala continues to demonstrate how a clear strategy executed consistently over time can deliver strong and sustainable results. Before handing the call over to Bart, let me briefly update you on Chile. During the third quarter, service revenue was broadly stable compared with last year, with only a marginal decline. At the same time, the team has made significant progress in simplifying the operation and improving its cost structure. With the initial restructuring program largely completed, we are now seeing the benefits in profitability. Adjusted EBDA margin improved by almost 10 percentage points year-over-year, reaching approximately 33% during the quarter. This is an encouraging result, particularly given the competitive environment in Chile. As a reminder, we hold 49% stake in the business, and its revenue and adjusted EBDA are not consolidated into Millicom's group results. There is still work ahead, but the progress achieved in just 8 months shows what the disciplined execution can deliver. I want to congratulate Carolina, our CEO in Chile, and the entire team for their commitment and the progress they have made. Before closing, I want to reinforce one message. We are very pleased with our financial results, but what gives us more confidence is how we are achieving them. We have a clear strategy. We are investing in our networks, improving customer experience growing arpu through more for more and becoming more efficient every day and we are applying this approach consistently across all our operations our priority is not just to deliver one strong quarter is to build a stronger miracle for the long term i want to thank all our tigo teams across latin america for their commitment and outstanding execution With that, let me hand over the call to Bart to review our financial results in more detail. Thank you. Thank you, Marcelo. Let me now walk you through our financial performance for the third quarter. We delivered another solid quarter with reported service revenue increasing 61% year-over-year to $2.1 billion. Importantly, organic service revenue growth, which excludes foreign exchange movement and the coltel acquisition reached 5.4 percent year over year this marks our fourth consecutive quarter of organic service revenue growth in the mid single digits and demonstrates the continued execution of our commercial strategy supported by prepaid to postpaid migration and disciplined pricing that continues to support arpu expansion across most of our markets adjusted EBITDA reached a quarterly record of $1.1 billion, increasing 7.7% organically year-over-year. Once again, adjusted EBITda grew faster than service revenue, demonstrating the operating leverage we have been focusing on. On a side comment, amplifying this message, when adding Kotel on a pro forma basis, adjusted EBitda increased by 12.7 percent year- over-year! This further highlights the underlying momentum of the business and the scalability of our operating model. As a result, our adjusted EBITDA margin reached 48%, even after absorbing approximately $30 million in severance-related expenses during the quarter. Importantly, our operating performance continues to translate into healthy cash generation. Equity-free cash flow reached 316 million for the quarter increasing almost 30 year over year with that total equity free cash flow for the first nine months of the year reached approximately 870 million dollars close to our original full year equity free casual target in just nine months let's now review the performance of our individual markets starting with colombia we can now say that the most intensive phase of the integration is behind us with the local team increasingly focused on commercial execution service revenue increased organically seven and a half percent year over year reaching now 908 million dollars supported by the continued application of our commercial strategies across the expanded customer base turning to guatemala we delivered another solid quarter with organic service revenue increasing 6.5 percent year-over-year to 392 million dollars supported by prospect customer growth and disciplined pricing in panama we saw further acceleration in top line growth with service revenue increasing 5.2 percent year-over-year to 179 million driven by mobile subscriber growth and incremental b2b projects paraguay ecuador and our other markets are growing respectively 3.6 3.3 and 4 percent on the back of continued prepaid to prospect migration and again disciplined pricing let's now turn to the profitability of our operations for the country profitability let's start again with colombia we are very pleased with the speed of execution and the resulting turnaround adjusted ebda organically increased 6.3 percent year-over-year to 470 million dollars for the quarter including approximately 20 million in severance-related expenses. As a reminder, we expect approximately $40 million in additional restructuring expenses during the remainder of the year. So now, half a year into the integration, we reached an adjusted EBITDA margin of 44.2%, bringing up the acquired lower margin business from Coltel to our highest EBITda margin in Colombia ever, despite still incurring integration costs given that coltel integration was widely viewed as one of the key execution risks for milicom the results shown to you today reinforce our confidence that this risk is largely behind us and that the combined operation offers further upside potential towards profitability levels in line with other milicam countries turning to guatemala the business continues to demonstrate the strength of our operating model adjusted ebitda increased 7.6 percent year over year to 255 million supported by healthy service revenue growth and continued cost discipline i would note that the third quarter benefited from a 4 million dollar one-time benefit coming from reversing certain legal liabilities including this reversal the adjusted ebita margin reached 57.2 percent a new quarterly record for the operation i would like to use this moment to provide an important update regarding the litigation proceedings in guatemala that we disclosed in our second quarter results i am pleased to report that we have reached a settlement resolving all pending material litigations and claims under the agreement we recorded a high double-digit million dollar expense in the quarter recognized as other non-operating income and expenses with these matters now resolved we have removed a significant source of financial and regulatory uncertainty in the country this outcome allows our local management team to now focus fully on commercial execution operational efficiency and sustaining the strong underlying performance that Guatemala has consistently delivered. Now turning to Panama, adjusted EBITDA increased 3.5% year-over-year to $96 million, representing an adjusted EBIDA margin of 51.9%. Paraguay once again delivered strong operating leverage, with adjusted EBDA increasing 11% organically year- over-year, to $101 million, reaching a margin of 54.8%. percent turning to ecuador as of today we have passed the first anniversary of our acquisition and we are very pleased with the progress achieved adjusted ebda increased 36.8 year-over-year to 57 million dollars representing a margin of 47.8 percent following the launch of tigo brand on october 1st we expect some margin moderation in the fourth quarter as we increase marketing and promotional investments consistent with what we communicated in our previous earnings call finally our other markets also delivered strong results with adjusted eb that increasing 5.9 year-over-year to 194 million reaching an adjusted ebitda margin of 47.7 percent let's now turn to equity free cash flow bridge for the quarter as discussed adjusted ebi there reached 1.1 billion dollars increasing by almost 400 million dollars year over year cash capex total 263 million up 91 million year-over-year this primarily reflecting continued investment in our recent acquired businesses and the impact of timing differences previously disclosed in our second quarter earnings call spectrum payments amounted 67 million increasing 46 million year over year mainly due to the spectrum related payments in colombia and paraguay taxes paid finance chargers and lease payments increase year over year mainly due due to expansion of our operating perimeter through acquisitions as well as profitability honduras repatriation remained broadly unchanged year over year at 22 million dollars for the quarter putting it all together equity free cash flow increased almost 30 percent year over year to 316 million importantly we continue to deliver strong cash generation while absorbing the incremental investments financing costs and restructuring related cash requirements before moving on to the nut that bridge let me remind you that the fourth quarter is typically the strongest quarter for cash generation however the improvements we have implemented across the business have significantly reduced the seasonality of our cash flows as a result we expect a solid and orderly finish to the year supported by continued robust cash generation in the fourth quarter to reach our guidance equity free cash flow level for the year but as well starting strongly next year now turning to our net depth and leverage progression the key message here is straightforward our strong operating performance continues to translate into healthy cash generation supporting our deleveraging objectives during the quarter we generated 360 million dollars of equity free cash flow which more than offset our regular dividend distribution and the adverse impact from derivatives and foreign exchange movements together with continued earnings growth this resulted in a reduction in leverage ratio now down to 2.53 at quarter end again in line with our guidance for the full year but now achieved in nine months in summary we are reducing leverage while continuing to invest in our networks and return capital to shareholders reflecting the cash generating capacity of our expanded operation to summarize the third quarter one another solid continuation of the trends we have seen throughout the year two the integration risks are now largely behind us three guatemala risks legal and regulatory removed four setting us up for continued focus on our strategy to deliver healthy growth further margin expansion and growing equity free cash flow and five converting this performance into strengthening of our balance sheet while maintaining our commitment to shareholder distributions As a quick update on our non-controlled subsidiary in Chile, we recently renegotiated the earn-out arrangement with the seller, providing greater flexibility around capital allocation and future upstream distributions in exchange for an additional earn-up payment. Importantly, this obligation is financed at the joint venture level and carries no recourse to Medica. The business is already generating mid-to-high double-digit millions of equity free cash flow annually and we expect this to be triple digit million next year together with our partners we are evaluating the optimal use of this cash generation including distributions accelerated the leveraging and incremental commercial investments to support future growth based on our year-to-date results and our expectations for the remainder of the year we are maintaining our full year financial guidance we continue to expect equity free cash flow of around 1.1 billion and our path to the leverage below 2.5 remains intact based on current operations perimeter and cash flow generation with that let me now open the call for questions we will now begin our question and answer session as a reminder if you'd like to ask a question please let us know by emailing us at investors millicom.com and we will add you to the queue our first question of the day comes from gustavo farias from ubs thanks for the opportunity to ask questions so two on my end first of all congrats on the results very strong very positive so first question regarding the investment program uh for next for the next four years in colombia and also in ecuador uh what should we expect in terms of capex intensity along that period and i'm asking that uh in the light of what is what we are seeing uh capex intensive very stable uh so far uh and my second question just to get an update uh on the current opportunities uh that you guys are seeing in latin for mna and right now i like to be very specific on uh potential opportunities uh in brazil and venezuela if you could give us an updated view on those markets thank you so uh the strategy in colombia and uh and ecuador is very similar in columbia now we have the scale to invest so we are on an aggressive plan to increase coverage of 5g to double our existing coverage to increase capacity and mainly in the in the urban areas where the demand is extremely high and third we are building new sites more than 1,000 sites that will cover 3 million customers that today has either no option or no connectivity, or they have only one option. So that's more or less the same playbook we are doing in Ecuador. Basically, with the purchase of the 700 Spectrum, we already increased the capacity immediately in all our sites. Also, we are investing in new 4G sites and capacity in the Quito region, or let's say in the region where we have a strong competition. And we also found that in the coast, we had very, very small coverage compared to our competitors. So we are investing in 500 new sites in the coastal region. So all that is made by our team with very, very specific design of the network. And also we are using the Millicom price list when it comes to negotiate with the vendors. So we do not expect the ratio of CapEx to increase. We expect to do all this investment under the same envelope. On the M&A side, I think our story there is consistent. So first, I Think we looked at minorities, and this was largely executed. We look at in-market consolidation. You've seen us doing this as an example in Colombia, but there are more opportunities as we have still multiple players in some of our markets. But then coming to your question, number three would be adjacent markets. In a past quarterly call, I mentioned Peru and Venezuela as kind of a spot on strategy. um venezuela specific to your question has still a number of capital flight mechanisms especially related to the dollar in place so it makes it still a hard investment um brazil is generally you know um too big a different culture limited synergies limited turnaround stories many of these companies are already at the at 50 percent of the margin um so you know it's not it's not let's say our first uh our first area to look at um in some of the past stories i mentioned you know uh brazil and and mexico as areas that are not necessarily top of our on top of on of our mind uh so we're looking more on on the rest of of latin i would say that's very clear thank you guys thank you gustavo thank you our next question comes from andreas jolson with dmb hello everyone a question from my side first of all you mentioned this part on on the cash flow and the seasonality is there anything that we should be more aware of for q4 i mean implicitly you need to deliver in line what you did in in q1 in order to reach the full year guidance and now you have a much better position in colombia for instance so given that it seems quite reachable so just thinking of how we should think for q4 and also the run rate into 2027 and my next question is on colombian which you also alluded to that the profitability is now almost at the group level. Would you think you can reach that within the sort of short to mid term and then have a sustainable development from once you reach that level? And finally, from my side, I think maybe I'm not up to date, but it seems like you are increasing the the dividend by 0.75 dollar cents per quarter is should we see that as an extra dividend or is that more an ordinary dividend going forward as well thank you thank you let me just take the one colombia and then you you do the other two uh hi andreas uh in colombian the main drivers for profitability has to do to sustain the top line growth at the high single digit second is that we are going to see in 27 the full run rate effect of all the efficiencies we did during the the transition and the merge and also we do see further efficiencies mainly in commercial activities so all that should bring us very close to the 50 club level next year of course our ambition is to get there but we do see at least to be very closed on that club 50 we have now half of our countries in club 50 so definitely we want to bring in more countries uh into that uh into the agreement we want to open the club 60 no that's a challenge for guatemala sure um but uh back to your first question and this um so the equity free cash flow you know you pointed out that we removed uh quite some of the seasonality out of the business if you see a lot of telcos it's negative q1 equity free catch flow and then a lot in q4 uh we don't have that, we brought it more in line with the dividend distribution, basically, right? So to have a more smooth path during the year. You may have heard me in a prior call saying, you know, for the performance of a year, you start to win it in the Q4 of the year before and Q1. In Q2, you risk losing it and in q3 you protect it um so we are now looking at opportunities for our 2027 year so we could bring in some investment forward some initiatives to normalize and things like this too really prepare for our twenty twenty seven our teams are already looking at at twenty twenty seven um i i think those are the are the the big parts um to your last question dividend uh distribution we announced in the last quarter. Extraordinary dividends of 75 cents on top of the existing 75 cents per quarter for both Q1 and Q2 of next year. We have our AGM in May. The AGM declares from May to May our dividend policy with the first dividend paying after an AGM being 15th of July. So, in May of next year, we will know the July 27 to June 28 dividend policies. But meanwhile, 1.5 in Q1, 1,5 in q2. I'll pay better attention to the extra dividend in the future. Thanks. It's always good news. Thank you, Anders. thanks andreas our next question comes from funny kanamuri with hsbc funny yeah uh thanks marcelo and bart for taking my question so the first question is on your prepaid to postpaid conversion i know you have you're converting well you have a lot of base that you can convert but what we have observed in other markets is that you need access to digital banking whether it's credit cards or others to actually do this conversion is that a risk for you in terms of conversion? Or are you using some kind of cash mechanism to overcome this risk, especially in the Central American markets? And then the second question is regarding Colombia with the brand integration. What are the benefits that you are expecting in Colombia? Thank you. Thank you, Fanny, for your question. On the first one, remember, we have only one third of our customers in postpaid. And we are growing five percentage points per year. And on the other hand, you have countries like Chile and Uruguay where 90% of the customers are postpaid already. So all this is to say that there is a long runway to increase the days connected for prepaid customers. We are targeting the customers that are using more than 20 days to migrate them to PostPay, and then we are migrating customers that are connected 7 days, 10 days, to 15 days. So there is a lot of work to do there. In terms of collecting the bills, we have two sources of collection, or three, if you want. Number one is digital. Of course, you do see that bankarization in countries like Paraguay and Panama through a very aggressive digital wallet penetration incentivized by the biggest banks there, you do have access to pay it from your bank account. Second, we do have a very large capillarity of banks collecting these bills on our behalf and number three there are a lot of moment shops collectors that are distributed very well distributed across the country for cash in and cash out purposes and that in those places we we have also the ability to and these our third party's ability to to collect so we don't see any issues with collection and a long runway to increase uh postpaid the second question was about colombia right yeah uh funny i also missed it uh the second questions okay uh so so you are integrating your tigo versus you know the movistar brands how do you expect that to benefit you know um millicom going forward in 4q and 2027 so uh this was not only a a change of color or a change of name right there is a strong investment behind so number one we are going to have more presence of 5g double of our presence so we are gonna be in the main uh in the main cities we're going to have full coverage of 5g that of course is going to bring more customers and also customers are going to be able to upgrade to 5g phones with higher with higher plans second we improved the quality of service across our network because before when we were two companies We didn't have the scale to really be able to offer a good experience, a good navigation experience. Now, we are investing in increasing capacity. And number three is that we are starting to get into cities where we were not before. So, naturally there, we're going to cover 3 million new Colombians. So, natural there, these customers, they have either no connectivity. So, a big opportunity for us to penetrate those areas. And second, these customers may have just one operator as an option. So, it's natural that we will grab a piece of that market as well. So, this is going to, of course, bring a lot of strength to the brand combined with, as you know, we are very, very good at commercial execution. So, these may bring customers and also in prepaid, so that allow us to start migrating to postpaid and the value ladder that is very well known from us. So, Fanny, maybe just to add to the financial side of this, bringing into one brand also brings the front end in one company, let's say, which at that moment you can have KPIs for the sales reps harmonized to the best in class in between the two companies and hence decrease your commercial costs. So linking it to the question before of getting, you know, aspiring towards the 50%, this is an essential step that allows to reduce commercial costs and improve further margin expansion in Colombia. Yeah. Thanks, Marcelo. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Fanny. Thank you. Our next question comes from Marcelo Santos with JP Morgan. Marcelo? Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I have two on my side. The first is about Chile. I mean, it seems a lot of the operating turnaround seems done, at least from the margin levels you're showing. It's below your average margin, but for a four-player market, seems pretty high. What's next on your playbook on Chile, given that looks like you cut a lot off the costs already? The second question is about, we saw this potential $50 million bonus in case you reach $2 billion of free cash flow in the midterm. was disclosed in the financial statements. What is mid-term here? Could you talk a bit more about this? I mean, is this something that you're envisioning? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Marcelo. So on Chile, the first priority is to return to growth on the top line. We are very close to be there. This quarter, we had marginal negative growth. So that is the first, is to stabilize the commercial operation, to start increasing the base and start increasing their pool. So that's the first priority. We do see positive trends from that perspective. From the cost perspective, I mean, that's our day-to-day. We are going to increase. We're going to still have still opportunities to be more efficient in Chile, and we will grab all these opportunities. so we do see a much better profile in Chile and we are improving the commercial execution and operation it is starting to be translated as I said in better margins and positive cash flow and next year Bart mentioned that we are going to be in triple digit equity free cash flow So that is outstanding for a company that was losing $400,000 per day. So I think the trajectory is positive, but we are very cautious because we are in a very competitive market. So that's why the target number one is to return to growth, and that's the most complex task we have in Chile. so on the bonus we we love to put ambitious targets to our team that's the way we work we are we are very very motivated to get there important to understand what are the levers and what's accelerators that we see i mean the levers are the ones you see high middle single digit growth predicated on basically what I said to Fanny, that is, we have a long runway for increasing the post-pay base, increasing ARPU, also increasing AR PU in prepaid. In home, I think it's important to look at it a bit different because the three metrics in home are net ads, AR PU, and cash to revenues. So even though you see a very flat top line growth or shy top line growth, we are growing the contribution from cash to revenues on around 3% to 4%. So we do believe that in home, the main opportunity is to become more and more efficient in the way we capture customers, in the way we retain customers, and that's where we're pointing towards. And then we have the efficiency program. We do see a lot of AI adoption already in the day-to-day operations. So we are going to translate that into efficiencies just next year. The cost to care is going to just migrating to digital use cases and AI is going to give us $30 million in savings. So we do see a lot of that also being part of this new ambition of being in $2 billion. I just want to say, and Bart is going to, I think, repeat this, this is not a guidance. This is an internal target that we do want to share with you because that's the way we operate, very transparently. and this is of course bringing a lot of work, internal work to start thinking on how to do things differently and we call it how to find accelerators to be there as fast as we can. Thank you Marcelo. Just to compliment on the financial side and indeed we're not opening new guidance here. I recall when we had our first budget on the turnaround was 600 million and the teams were laughing, this is an Excel budget or a paper budget. So we set an ambitious target and then you kind of develop what you need to do. So in line with Marcelo's, if mid-single digit will be quickly, growth will be quick, quickly at, you know, just add mid-simple digit to this year, we had $9 billion revenues. You want to target 50%, if the margin were at 48, you want to then reach 20% equity-free cashflow on that. So 20% of 9 billion or 1.8 billion. And from there, you continue either organic growth for some time. So that's the midterm range, operational leverage on the growth, the accelerators that Marcelo talked about. And why not M&A? M&As are always tricky. You have your cost of debt that increase. So to become a creative look globally, it's not that easy. we've done it a few times now uh but you know why not um so we have multiple angles to get there uh it's not crazy but again it's no new guidance uh to the market here it's a disclosure obligation on the back of an incentive plan that we that we received as uh as management and just rough follow-up roughly mid-term means what like three years five years six years like i don't know if can add that yeah okay thank you otherwise it becomes guidance but but it's it it's not the first time we we did this i mean we had an internal target of 1 billion uh to the team i mean uh and and that worked very well and now and this trigger triggers very positive uh you know uh it is a very uh people start thinking on on doing things differently taking more advantage of new technologies so it's triggering the it's triggering the right behavior from the team so we do believe that ambitious target is what we what we want in the company perfect thank you very much thank you Marcelo our next and final question comes from Ernesto Gonzalez with Morgan Strength Ernesto hi thank you for taking our question it's two the first one is on the tragic earthquakes in Colombia and Panama. If you could comment on the financial and operational impact, anything you've seen or expect. And the next one is on B2B. We saw growth slow down slightly from the second quarter to the third quarter. Could you comment on what drove this and what are your expectations for the segment? Thank you. Sure. The impact to the first one, the impact in Colombia was more or less we lost 27,000 customers. The financial impact is around $10 million. Of course, for the size of Colombia, it's something that is non-material. Nevertheless, it was a very big event that demanded a lot of efforts from our team, as I said, to reestablish the services. In B2B, we will see this. I mean, we are entering into, we have two dimensions in B2B. One is the organic growth has to do with connectivity and basic digital services by segment. But also we are entry into big projects. We have big projects in Colombia. For example, we used to manage all the traffic of Medellin. So we developed that solution many years ago. Also in Panama, we do telemedicine. It's a very big project for Panama. But these big projects expire, but just because the contract expires. And then we need to find new ones. So the transition is what generates a little bit of a disruption. And that's what happened here. here. We had big projects that are facing down in this quarter. We're going to see that as well in the next quarter, because we had in Q4 of last year, a big project in Panama. So we're going to see the effect of that as Well. But the most important thing is that our organic growth is solid. The corporate is growing at 8% in connectivity, plus the corporate segment, There is a bigger segment at 8% and the small SME segment is growing at 5%. So there is going to be a moment where we are going to be less dependent on big projects, but also we have a pipeline of big projects. So you will see the seasonal effect of the big projects which is, I think, positive because all these big projects come with good margins as well. so not not the same as connectivity but very positive margins really clear thank you thank you very much ernesto this concludes our question and answer session thank you everyone Thank you.