América Móvil, S.A.B. de C.V. [NYSE: AMX, AMOV], announced its financial and operating results for the third quarter of 2018. Barclays analyst Amir Rozwadowski said, the carrier’s fundamentals have improved in Mexico and Brazil and his firm has refined their price targets.
“With management set to reach its leverage target within the next few quarters,” Rozwadowski said, “increasing shareholder distributions could be on the horizon. However, with the pace of margin expansion easing in Brazil and commentary suggesting limited margin improvements in Mexico over the near-term, questions on the prospects for further margin expansion are likely to linger.”
Highlights include:
- Fixed-broadband continued to be the fastest growing segment on the fixed-line platform, 4.7 percent year-on-year, after adding 284 thousand new accesses in the quarter.
- Revenues were up 2.1 percent year-on-year in Mexican peso terms and were just shy of 250 billion pesos. At constant exchange rates service revenues were up 3.4 percent year-on-year, their best performance in five quarters. Service revenue growth increased practically across the board, with Mexico posting a 4.7 percent increase.
- In the mobile space service revenue was up in Brazil and Mexico 10.5 percent and 9.5 percent respectively, with mobile ARPUs rising 13 percent in Brazil, 11 percent in the U.S. and 8 percent in Mexico.
- EBITDA of 71.8 billion pesos was 7.7 percent higher than a year before; at constant exchange rates EBITDA was up 13.0 percent.
- Through September, it funded our capital expenditures of 91.7 billion pesos ($4.8B USD), paid out net dividends in the amount of 10.1 billion pesos ($530M USD), contributed 15.6 billion pesos ($820M USD) to its pension funds and reduced by 14.0 billion pesos ($730M USD) our net borrowings.
- Our net debt stood at 584 billion pesos ($30.5B USD) at the end of September, down 45 billion pesos ($2.36B USD) from December. Relative to LTM EBITDA, it stood at 2.0 times.
October 22, 2018
