Liberty Latin America ends talks over Millicom acquisition

Liberty Latin America, the recently spun-off unit of Liberty Global focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, has ended discussions with rival Millicom over a possible takeover. The Liberty Global unit confirmed the breakdown of talks in a short statement, saying it remained focused on its growth strategy to deliver value for shareholders a week after Millicom announced that it had received a “preliminary highly conditional non-binding proposal” for all of its shares. No details of the bid were disclosed but Bloomberg reported that Millicom executives pushed for an offer with a higher premium and cash component than the USD 7.6 billion in cash and stocks put on the table by Liberty Latin America. The executives were also concerned over the LatAm group’s high debt level, according to the unnamed sources.

Millicom has a total of around 53 million customers under the Tigo brand across nine Latin American countries and the African countries of Chad and Tanzania. The Luxembourg-based company 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.  

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.