Good morning. My name is Emily, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the América Móvil third quarter 2022 conference call and webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star followed by number two. Now I will turn the call over to Ms. Daniela Lecuona, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our third quarter financial and operating results. We have on the line Mr. Daniel Hajj, CEO, Mr. Carlos García Moreno, CFO, and Mr. Oscar Von Hauske Solís, COO.
Hi, Daniela. Good morning, everyone. Carlos is gonna make a summary of the results.
Thank you, Daniel. Good morning, everyone. Well, the increasingly hawkish tone by the Federal Reserve on the back of continued inflationary pressures brought about renewed increases in U.S. interest rates in the latter half of the third quarter after a lull in its first half, with ten-year rates ending the quarter at 3.33%, just missing a break of the 4% a few days earlier. That was the context of the third quarter for us. In the quarter, we added 2.9 million wireless subscribers, of which 1.9 million were postpaid clients. More than half of the new postpaid clients came from Brazil, with Argentina contributing 329,000 subs, Colombia 215,000, and Peru 155,000.
Net subscriber gains in prepaid amounted to 1 million, with Mexico leading the way with 402,000 net adds, followed by Colombia with 300,000 and Central America and Eastern European blocks with approximately 135,000 each. On the fixed-line platform, broadband accesses increased by 156,000 in the quarter, with Argentina being the main contributor and the Central American Eastern European blocks following suit. Mobile postpaid was our fastest growing access group, increasing 11.9% year-on-year to 118 million, followed by mobile prepaid that climbed 8.2% to 119 million. In both cases, access growth accelerated in the third quarter.
On the fixed line platform, broadband access lines grows 2.1% to 31 million, while fixed voice and pay TV accesses scaled 1.6% and 1.3% respectively. The latter appears to be on an improving trend. Our third quarter revenue reached MXN 251.5 billion. It was up 1.8% year-over-year, with service revenues rising 3% in Mexican peso terms. At constant exchange rates, service revenue expanded 5.9%, as mobile service revenue jumped 9.7% and fixed line service revenue remained almost flat by growing 0.2%. Year-over-year, the Mexican peso appreciated strongly vis-à-vis the Colombian and Chilean pesos, 12.9% and 18% respectively, and even more versus the euro, 16%.
It remained practically flat vis-à-vis the US dollar and the Brazilian real. The appreciation of the peso explains the difference between revenue growth in nominal and constant exchange rates. Mobile service revenue rose more than 9% year-on-year at constant exchange rates, both in the prepaid and the postpaid segments. It was the fastest rate of growth observed in at least five quarters, with postpaid revenue growth accelerating in each of the last two quarters, partly buoyed by 5G services. Brazil led the way in mobile service revenue growth at 22.5%, which includes the impact of the incorporation of part of Oi's mobile clients, followed by Mexico and Eastern Europe with 9.7% and 6.9% respectively. At 3%, Colombia posted its best revenue growth in five quarters, as did the Central America block with 6.5%.
Ecuador, on an improving trend for several quarters now, posted a 1.6% revenue increase in the period. On the fixed line platform, broadband revenue rose 3.4% at constant exchange rates, and that of corporate networks increased 12.6%, also the fastest pace in at least five quarters, helping offset a 5.4% reduction in pay TV services and a 6.1% decline in wireline voice revenue. Eastern Europe, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico were the top performers, with double-digit growth and revenue growth. Corporate networks was our fastest growing business line across the board, with Brazil posting a 27.7% rate, Colombia 14.4%, and Mexico 8.1%.
Fixed voice and revenue increased between 4% and 5% in both Mexico and Brazil, with Eastern Europe's revenue surging to 18.5%. Our OIBDA rose 2.3% year-on-year to MXN 83.2 billion. It was an increase of 5% at constant exchange rates, with OIBDA margin, which has been on an improving trend all year, expanding to 38.8% from 38.6% a year before. Brazil and Eastern Europe were the main generators of EBITDA growth with 10.8% and 8% respectively.
EBITDA expansion helping about a 5.7% increase in our operating profit to MXN 44 billion, resulting in an MXN 18 billion net profit in the quarter, after MXN 17 billion in comprehensive financing costs that were 33% below that of the prior year, mostly on account of the foreign exchange losses incurred then. The increase in current and deferred taxes has mostly to do with our having booked certain tax assets a year ago, which reversed this line item at the time. The difference is explained by the increase in profits that took place then. Our operating cash flow allowed us to fully cover our capital expenditures of MXN 105 billion in the nine months to September.
The remainder, together with MXN 72 billion in net financing raised in the period, suffice to fund MXN 45 billion or MXN 60 billion in shareholder distributions, including MXN 21 billion in share buybacks, MXN 20 billion in labor obligations and MXN 13 billion in the net acquisition of ownership interest coming from the acquisition of a portion of four smaller clients on one hand and the sale of our interest in Claro Panamá on the other hand. Our net debt excluding leases ended September at MXN 412 billion, equivalent to 1.39 times our last twelve months EBITDA after leases, EBITDA-L. The spin-off of Sitios Latinoamérica in August resulted in the separation of 39,090 towers in thirteen countries, but also brought about a reduction of MXN 47 billion in our net debt as it migrated over to Sitios Latinoamérica's.
With this summary, I will pass the floor back to Daniel Hajj. Thank you, Daniel.
Thank you, Carlos. We can start with the questions please.
Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question today comes from Diego Aragão with Goldman Sachs. Diego, please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. The first question is related to the tower spin-off. Can you help us to identify the impacts on your financial-
No.
Diego, can you hear me?
Yes. You have a bad connection, Diego. We don't hear you very well. Please.
Is it better now?
A little bit better, but okay. Speak a little bit slowly because I don't hear you, we don't hear you very well. Thank you.
Sounds good. Yes, let me begin. The first question is related to the tower spin-off. I was wondering if you can help us to quantify the impact on your financial exposures related to the leases. If you can also provide the cost of the tower for América Móvil. Secondly, I would like to understand your tax rate in the quarter, which was higher than, you know, in previous quarter. Thank you.
We don't understand the first question. The second question on the tax ratio is what you are asking, Diego?
Yes. The tax rate in the quarter as well.
Okay.
As the cost of lease of the towers that you spun off recently.
Okay, the tax rate in the quarter, the effective tax rate was high, was 40%. It was mostly to do with the tax regime in Mexico. As you know, we have an inflationary adjusted tax regime, which in essence will allow you only to deduct the quote-unquote "real interest payments" on the debt. Not the nominal interest that you pay on the debt, but the real payment, that is the nominal rates minus the inflation. The inflation went up and has basically more or less matched the rates on the debt of América Móvil. The deductions for interest payments in Mexico have become much smaller.
That's basically what explained the situation in the quarter. It obviously also have to do with there being a smaller profit in this quarter, but it was basically to do with this inflationary accounting. Okay, there will be some changes in our setup. We don't expect this to continue going forward. On your first question, which had to do with the tower, we didn't quite hear it. Maybe you can repeat it again, please.
Okay. Yes. Apologies for the technical issue here. If I may, you know, we observed that you contributed to your stake in KPN.
Can you just give us some guidance around that? Thank you.
Diego, you have a very bad line. Why don't you send me your question via text or email, and we'll read it out loud, and while I get it, we can probably take the following question.
Perfect. I will do that. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, Diego.
Our next question comes from the line of David Joyce with Barclays. David, your line is open.
Thank you. Can you please help us understand if the wireline RGU weakness was more from a macroeconomic softening, or was it from a step-up in competitors' offers, or are you just seeing your own clients switch to mobile-only voice and video? Thank you.
All overall, yes, David, good morning. All overall, in the results of this quarter, you see a very good increase in revenue in mobile and a good trend in the fixed side. We grow 156,000 subscribers in the fixed side, so we have a good increase. We used to have, in the first quarter and second quarter, negative trend in the revenue service in the fixed line, and today we have 0.2% increase in the fixed side. We are increasing, and I think we're doing much better. The competition is high, the competition in some countries higher than in other countries in the fixed side.
You know that there's a lot of companies that are putting fiber all around Latin America. I think we have a good service, a good combo, and we're offering mobile convergence, and it's helping us to maintain and to have a better rate, less disconnections with this. We have mobile fixed and broadband together in a combo and it's helping us. Pay TV is also very important. We are growing also with this. It's been less the rate on disconnections on the pay TV. I can say that overall in mobile we do very good in the revenue growth. In fixed the trend is going better.
We're growing 0.2% and we used to have negative, the growth in the fixed side in the other quarters.
Thank you. Could you please update us on your plans for your 5G and fiber roll-outs, where you expect to be by the end of this year and end of next year on your key markets?
Again, please.
5G
5G and growth on fiber is what you are asking?
How much of your plan do you expect to be upgraded by the end of this year and next year for 5G and for fiber?
Okay. A ver, it's different in each country, but I can tell you that from September last year to September this year, we have been putting around 7.5 million houses in fiber. I think we do a very good increase in houses in fiber. I think it's one of the highest that we have been having in the last years. It's helping us to give more speed, better quality, and to have more customers. We are upgrading. In part of this is upgrading our network, the other part is going to new cities, greenfields there. That's what we're doing. It's different in each country, but that's more or less what we have been doing.
In 5G, in countries where we have licenses, let's say in Mexico, we already have 64 cities. The main cities in 5G, we have been covering more than 60% of the population in 5G. You could see that in Mexico 5G is helping us to increase our ARPU in postpaid. We increase our ARPU 7.6% in Mexico. 5G is helping. The ARPU in 5G is higher than the ARPU that we have in 3G and 4G. 5G has been very successful in countries where we are putting 5G. In Brazil, we are developing, we are still starting to grow in 5G. In the countries where we have license, 5G has been with a very good result.
I don't know if Oscar wants to talk a little bit more about the fixed.
Well, as mentioned, we are doing this home passing with fiber at this moment. Another is that we operate all the cable network to DOCSIS 3.1. We could deliver 1 Gbps speed possibly on fiber that we have.
We upgrading the network plus putting more fiber.
Yes.
Yes.
Good. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I have Diego's question, so maybe we can continue with that one. About the tower spin-off, can you help us quantify the impact of your financial expenses in 3Q22 related to the leases? It will be great if you can provide the cost of these towers for AMX as well.
The question is more or less the cost in terms of EBITDA?
No.
In terms of the rents?
The rent.
The rent would be probably at an annual rate, approximately $350 million.
The rents that we're gonna pay to.
To Sitios.
Sitios is gonna be around.
350.
$350 million.
There's a follow-up question. AMX continues to reduce its stake in KPN, can you give us some guidance about it?
Well, we have been selling at prices where we thought were quite good. I don't think that we have any specific objective or any target in terms of you know doing away with the shares anytime soon. I think it's very opportunistic. As we have said in the past, this is for us a financial investment, and we will be taking profits when we think it's convenient.
Good.
We can proceed with the questions from the audience, please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alejandro Chavelas with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi, AMX team. Thanks for taking the question. Can you hear me well?
Yes. Alex, yes.
Okay, great. Margins in Chile were very low this quarter. Is there anything in particular that explains this? Do you have any estimate on the level of margins that we should expect going forward? Also on the potential costs maybe that could be achieved in this region with the VTR merger, in the long term? Thanks.
Well, in Chile, I think finally we get the authorization and we are starting with this joint venture. In my view, well, first, I have to say that in Chile, the conditions in the market are really aggressive, so there's a lot of competition. Prices has been going down and for the size of the country, there are a lot of competitors in fixed broadband a lot and very aggressive in the mobile side. In terms of the economic situation of the country, Carlos can tell us that the exchange rate has been going high and inflation also is high.
Yeah, I think the country has developed a very major current account deficit, and that has been driving the loss of FX reserves, and that has already been going hand-in-hand with the pressure on the peso. We think that this will be more contained going forward, but certainly it has been a factor in the first, you know, in the first few months of this year.
I think we're happy to do the joint venture. We were more focused on the mobile and in the corporate side. Liberty or VTR has been more focused on the broadband and on the TV. I think together we do a very good combination. What we're gonna do, you're gonna see in the next years that we're gonna have a good synergies in the company. We're gonna invest synergies in CapEx, synergies in costs, synergies. We already put a new management there. I think for me I'm confident that the next year we're gonna see good improvements in the Chile operation.
Together, we have more or less the size of a big company, so it's gonna help us, economy of scale over there. I'm sure that in the next year, we're gonna see good improvements in Chile.
Thanks so much. Perhaps a follow-up just on Brazil. Have you already adjusted prices for the postpaid subscriber base for inflation? How high was the adjustment in postpaid for you?
I don't remember. I think we adjust some prices in postpaid in Brazil. I don't know exactly how much. I don't think that's exactly one price adjustments depending on the plans maybe. Yes, we do adjustments only on the postpaid subscribers in Brazil.
Thanks so much. That was amazingly.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Fred Mendes with Bank of America. Please go ahead, Fred.
Hello. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for the call. I have two questions as well. The first one on Mexico, and again, as a follow-up from a previous question. On Telmex, there was an important improvement in this quarter, growing 4.7% year-over-year. Just wondering if this is an impact from your fiber deployments and now it's, you know, you're containing churn, it is getting harder to, let's say, poach your clients.
If for any reason competition is easing a little bit or if something related to price. Just trying to understand the dynamics. That was my first one. Then the second one in Brazil on mobile you are doing very well in terms of net adds and your performance has been solid on the mobile front. My question here is you increased the number of clients on postpaid by close to 25% year-over-year including Oi. If this at some point could be a challenge in terms of billing in terms of collecting the receivable from these postpaid clients anyway it's changing the structure of your clients in Brazil in a very fast way. How could that eventually be a challenge for the operations in Brazil?
Thank you.
Well, it starts on Brazil. I don't think there's a challenge over there. I think we have been preparing to take all these customers in prepaid and not only on postpaid, also in the prepaid side. We were working and we're gonna still work on that to bring these customers to our billing system, to our network and that we already do that in the Nextel acquisition that we have, and we were very successful. I think we're gonna have good synergies. We're on target on the synergies and we feel comfortable passing these subscribers to our billing network, customer care and everything. We have a good experience. Brazil do that very good. We're confident that we're gonna have a successful transition.
In Mexico.
Yeah. About Mexico, as we mentioned before, we've been in the aggressive plan of capacities with fiber. Almost 68% of our customer base is already with fiber, and we will continue to migration every month the customers to fiber and getting into new areas as a greenfield. We are building this year almost 2.9 million of capacity with fiber. Another good thing in revenues in Mexico is in the corporate space. We've been growing, selling products like cloud, like SD-WAN, like security, have addressed a very good development, this year. I think the combination will be the way to compensate the decline that we have in voice revenues, and we will continue to grow in the national areas.
Thank you. Perfect. Very clear. Thank you, Oscar. Thank you, Daniel.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Carlos Legarreta with Itaú. Please go ahead, Carlos.
Hi. Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I have two, actually. The first one, just going back to the spin-off of the towers. Now that the CapEx required for the tower deployment has been mostly moved to Sitios Latam, should we expect any changes in the CapEx guidance on a yearly basis for you guys? And secondly, on this same issue, I understand you ended up keeping some of the towers, I understand, in Peru and Dominican Republic. Is there a possibility that you will divest those towers to Sitios Latam down the road? And if so, could you perhaps pay an extraordinary dividend with those proceeds? Thank you.
On Sitios Latam, I think the CapEx for this year, we are not gonna have it. We have only three months, four months without Sitios, so this year is no change. For next year, we're still working on our budget. We haven't finalized that, but we still see very good options to grow. There's not too many sites that we have been doing every year. We have a big amount of sites, but there's not big ones that we have been doing in the last year. Mexico was out with Telesites. They were doing the sites. We have been seeing good opportunities on growth on broadband, on 5G.
I don't know exactly if there's gonna be a small reduction on the CapEx or not, because of Sitios, but we still see very good opportunities in growing in Latin America. That's important. We're gonna see, and we're looking very carefully to have a very efficient CapEx, also for next year. The other question?
Dominican Republic and Peru.
Dominican Republic and Peru, yes. We're gonna sell the towers to Sitios. I think as we put it in the consumer-
The release.
In the release that we think we are gonna sell them and maybe at the beginning of next year we think that we can complete those operations. Still, it depends also on the Sitios management and what they decide, but we think that we're gonna sell Dominican Republic and also Peru.
Thank you, Daniel. If I may follow up, just on Argentina, if you could comment what is going on in terms of the competitive environment. I mean, you guys are adding subscribers both in wireless and fixed. However, the results are, I mean, in real terms as you present them, being pressured. I understand this is given that the pricing is very aggressive currently, but if you could comment on that'll be great. Thank you.
No, I don't think we are changing our plan in our fixed or in mobile. I think in some quarters, we have more increase on prices because of the inflation. In other ones, we have a little bit less price increase. And we fell short of inflation in some months. Doesn't depend on that. I think we are aggressive because we are doing households with fiber. Our plans and ours are good. Our quality is also very good. I think in Argentina, we are doing exceptionally good in broadband, growing in TV and doing good in the mobile side.
I'm not reducing prices or doing big promotions to have this growth. I think we have been stable on the prices and increasing maybe not increasing at the month that we need. Maybe in the next month, we do those increases and that's been okay for us. We're growing and we're doing also, it's important for us. We used to be only mobile. Today, we're doing combos and our customers with this combo in Argentina have been very happy with the combo, having TV, having broadband and mobile prepaid or postpaid there. That's also very good for us to have less churn in the future. We're happy with the developments in Argentina.
Yeah. Now, just to add to what Daniel said, I think that the contribution of Argentina I mentioned in the note to the growth of broadband accesses was enormous. I think they added nearly 100,000 broadband accesses alone. I think the momentum is very clearly there. We have had a very good cash flow in Argentina. I think that the issue with Argentina is that they have inflationary accounting, and it's very difficult to determine exactly what is going on from the accounting. From the point of view of the growth of the business in terms of accesses, from the point of view of market share, from the point of view of cash flow, it's doing really well.
Another important thing is we still see very good opportunities in the fixed side in Latin America. I think in some specific countries that we think that the growth will be good. There's a good opportunity, still good prices over there. With everything that we have in the country, easy for us to increase our participation in the broadband and TV side. That's what we're looking for next year's budget and to also still do this fiber to the house and to upgrade our cable that we have in each country.
I appreciate your comments, guys.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Lucas Brendim with Bank of America. Please go ahead, Luca.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is we notice a reduction in the CapEx investment over the quarters from 20% to 17% something. How the savings were made, and do you expect to continue to invest in the next quarters? If I may ask second one, what are the main cash free cash flow improvements you expect for 2023? How could that affect shareholder distribution going forward? Thank you.
The second question, we don't hear you. What was the second question?
The second question was about free cash flow improvements. What do you expect for 2023, and how do you expect that to affect your cash flow going forward?
Well, we haven't finished our budget for 2023. We're still looking, as we said, on the CapEx, on the growth. Cost reductions is important. Inflation in some countries also, it's important because the pressure on prices has been high. We're working on that and, I think we're gonna finish that end of November, you know. That's more or less where we finish our budget for next year. Still, as I said, still seeing good opportunities in 5G and broadband in Latin America. On the CapEx.
Yeah, on the CapEx, we had just mentioned it in the previous question, but it's basically, as we have said before, this is a financial investment for us. We don't have any specific target in terms of where we would want to be going forward in terms of net reductions.
We did have some opportunistic sales in the quarter and that's basically what explains it. We don't really have any target, and it will very much be a function of the prices that we get to in the market.
Okay, thank you. Very clear.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Marcelo Santos with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first one is regarding the opportunity you just mentioned that you saw on LatAm fixed line. You said you see a lot of room for growing broadband. Could you rank the main countries that you see most opportunity to specifically grow the broadband? The second question is regarding ICMS in Brazil. You passed only to postpaid. I wanted to understand better how is the behavior on prepaid. Did you capture higher revenues? Did you give more allowance to clients? How has the prepaid business done with the ICMS reduction in Brazil? Thank you.
Well, I think on the opportunities that I'm seeing in Latin America, there are, I think, good opportunities for us in some countries because we are not so strong. Let's say Central America, I think we see good opportunities. Penetrations are low. Ecuador is also good opportunity. Peru is good opportunity for us because we still rolling out fiber and growing very good. Dominican Republic is also doing good. In Mexico, we have been very strong rolling the last two years. We're doing a lot of new fiber and moving some customers to that. It's very good. Also in Europe, in all the eastern countries in Europe, we are also moving from only being mobile to being mobile and fixed, and it's also good.
In Austria, we have a new regulation, very, let's say, taking out a lot of restrictions that we have for the fixed side, and it's also gonna help us to increase our broadband and our fixed share there. There's a lot. In Brazil, we're doing good. We haven't enter in some new areas. Every time that we enter in new area, we are doing also very good. We have more competition in the areas where we have, but when we put fiber in other areas, there's good growth and good net adds for us. That's more or less how we see. On the other side, next year we have also 5G in some countries.
I think there's some we're gonna improve Brazil in 5G. Maybe we have in Colombia, we don't have the license, but if we get the license in 5G, then we're gonna do that. Chile, I think we're gonna start to roll out 5G also. Obviously, we're gonna do more on 5G because it's increasing. There's big opportunities in each country. We are really working on very detail and where we want to put the CapEx and where is more profitable the CapEx that we're putting. No?
On your question on prepaid in Brazil, let me just point out because this is really interesting. Revenue growth in prepaid in Brazil in quarter was 32%, 32.3%, which already yes it incorporates a little impact of Oi, which was already in second quarter with 25%. It also incorporates, we think, the issue of the reduction in the ICMS, which is basically leading people to spend a bit more on the product.
I think it's not only in Brazil, in every place, if you take some taxes from telecommunications from the people, then the people is gonna use more. They're gonna use this money to use more our products. It's exactly what is gonna happen. It's happening and it's gonna happen in Brazil with this reduction on the ICMS.
Perfect. Thank you very much. Very clear.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Walter Piecyk with LightShed Partners. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Dan, just following up on those comments about Brazil and also if you look at ARPU in general, and Mexico is obviously very good. Doesn't really seem like any signs of recession. Have you seen anything beyond that? I know some economists are expecting some recession in 2023. How do you think that could impact your business? Or is it possible that this has become such a necessary service for your customers that you won't see an ARPU impact or other impacts in 2023?
I think, well, we don't know exactly. I think everybody's talking that there's gonna be a recession for next year. We don't know exactly how deep it's gonna be in Latin America and in which countries as to whether we're gonna have higher recession or for more time. Telecommunications has been very resilient, has been a product that people is using. I think they need that. We see that in the pandemic, you know, in the COVID, and people moving to their houses and using more. All of these things have been making everything more digital for us. All those things are making that people is every day more connected and needs to be more connected.
I still think that telecommunication is a product that people is gonna need, with recession or without recession.
Just to give you a reference, the latest outlook that we have for Latin America, including the latest IMF forecast, but also the one from investment banks. The only country in Latin America that is expected to be in recession that year is going to be Chile, as of today.
Let's hope that's true.
Carlos, can I also ask you about the share repurchase? Obviously, Oi took some cash. If I look at the share repurchase activity for Q1, Q2, and Q3, it was obviously lower than Q4 of last year, but you also spent a lot of cash on Oi. Now that Oi is paid for, you know, maybe you have to kind of amortize it into the fourth quarter. Should we expect the share repurchase to kind of return to Q4 2021 levels, you know, within the next couple of quarters now that Oi is behind us?
Sure. Well, I think it's important to not only look at your buybacks, but total distributions, no? What we have, which we didn't have last year, is that we made all the dividend payment in one installment in August, and that was roughly equivalent of $1.4 billion. It was quite major. If you look at total distributions to shareholders year to date through the third quarter, I think they're very much in line with what we did last year. Okay? I think that we will try to remain on track more or less with the distributions based on the outlook that we have for free cash flow for the year.
Great. Thank you, Carlos.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Phani Kanumuri with New Street Research. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Yeah, I've just got one question at this point. Thank you. It is on, it's back to Chile. Given the tough macro and the tough trading conditions in that market, I wondered if you can give any thoughts on to how you are looking to fund the JV going forward. Presumably, your thoughts on that may have changed with the operating environment. I wondered, is there a possibility that you'll have to put more equity into that JV in the near future? Thank you.
I think we already agree on the funds that we're gonna put this year for Chile. I think synergies is gonna give us a good improvement in cash flow also there. Always we can talk. There's not any lock on that. If we need to do something else, so we need to sit down with our partners and decide what to do. It's gonna depend how things are going and how things are evolving there. In my view, I think Liberty and NOS are really committed to Chile and to do a very good job and have success in Chile.
That's more or less what we agree, and it's what we're working for. No?
Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our final question today comes from Stefan Styk with Barclays. Please go ahead, Stefan.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on the results and the two deal closings and spin off. Just two quick questions. Jumping back to Chile, I wanted to know when we could expect more detailed guidance or an update on next steps. I would assume that's probably post Liberty results. The other question on Chile, would you evaluate bringing in other partners? I know you have a connection to Telefónica, for example, with Subsea. Any detail you could provide on Subsea would be helpful as well. Finally, any color that you guys can provide on liquidity at Claro Chile, and particularly how much cash and as well as debt is at the Claro Chile level, and additional available liquidity, if you have any. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Good morning. First, we don't have any talks with nobody. I don't think we would want to have a third partner in Chile. I don't think there is a space to have another partner on the authorization. I think the company there is very close to second place in terms of revenue and first place. We have the size in Chile. Consolidation in Chile, I think it's very good, and that's what we have. We have been working on what we can on the synergies that we can get together. We need to speed up on that. We need to work very hard and to do all these synergies for end of this year and all the next year to have all these synergies there.
That will give us much better results and savings. We think. I think what we said last time is that the savings could be in synergies for more than $100 million as the-
180.
Let's see. It's 180 in three years, so that's more or less what we are looking in terms of synergies. Good synergies that we could have also is that they are not gonna take our customers, and we are not gonna take. This churn is gonna help us a lot in cost and expenses, in people, so in the network. There's a lot of things that we can do, and we need to work on that. We are focused on working on operations and not to get a third partner right now. In terms of the liquidity, the only thing that I agree is that we already have committed funds for this year.
If we need more funds next year, we'd need to sit down with them and to review the business cases and see what we can do. I cannot say any more because until today, we already have committed for this year. Next year we need to sit down and to review what we are gonna do if we need more funds. That's really what is happening in Chile.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you.
Those are all the questions we have for today, so I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Daniel Hajj for final remarks.
Thank you all for being in the call. Just to reiterate that, I think the growth that we have in mobile was excellent in the quarter, and that in fixed, we're improving, and I think we're gonna still improve more. Thank you very much, and thank you for being in the call.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. This concludes today's conference call, and you may now disconnect your lines.