Liberty Latin America, the recently spun-off unit of Liberty Global focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, has confirmed an initial approach for rival Millicom, a Luxembourg-based company present in 13 countries in Latin America and Africa. Millicom had earlier announced that it had received a “preliminary highly conditional non-binding proposal” for all of its shares from Liberty Latin America, adding that “there is no certainty that a transaction will materialise.”
Millicom reported revenues up 0.3 percent to USD 1.5 billion in the third quarter of 2018, with organic service revenue growth in its main Latin American business up 4.7 percent. It has a total of around 51 million customers under the Tigo brand, across 9 Latin American countries and the African countries of Chad and Tanzania.
Its shares recently debuted on the Nasdaq stock market in the US and the company said it expects its Latin America segment to close full 2018 with a 2-4 percent service revenue growth, slightly above the top end of guidance, supported by a faster expansion of its residential cable business.
Liberty Latin America launched as a newly independent publicly traded company a year ago after splitting from Liberty Global. It has a presence in over 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, serving around 6.5 million homes and 5.3 million mobile subscribers across brands including VTR, Flow, Liberty, Cabletica and BTC. It reported third quarter revenues up 3 percent to USD 925 million thanks to improved performance in Puerto Rico and Chile and a total of 25,000 fixed line customer gains.
