América Móvil Consolidated
Results
Throughout the fourth
quarter, concerns about the rise in inflation rates across the
board kept financial markets alert about the policy implications,
with U.S. 10-year Treasury
yields moving around in a relatively wide band—35 basis points—but
ending the quarter very much where they had started, at 1.51%.
Notwithstanding the volatility in interest rates, equity markets
continued to advance, with the S&P 500 delivering a 10.7%
increase in the quarter. In our region of operation the Mexican
peso, the Colombian peso and the Chilean peso all experienced bouts
of volatility in the second half of November, with the former
recovering fully by the end of the year and the other ones
depreciating further.
Fourth quarter revenue
totaled 227.3 billion pesos, a 7.7% year-on-year increase, with
service revenue expanding 5.4% to 180 billion pesos. The
consolidated figures mentioned above—and those that will be
referenced below—exclude TracFone as it has been deemed to be a
discontinued operation; they also exclude Argentina, which is
presented under inflationary accounting. At constant exchange rates
service revenue growth came in at 4.4%, a similar rate to the one
posted the prior quarter: 4.8%. In the quarter, the Mexican peso
appreciated vs. most other currencies in our region of operation on
an annual basis, and depreciated slightly, 1.1%, vs. the U.S.
dollar.
The pace of growth of mobile
service revenue stayed roughly constant in the quarter, at 6.9%,
with postpaid revenue expanding 5.9%—practically at the same pace
as in the previous quarter—and prepaid revenue growth accelerating
to 8.7% from 8.1% in the precedent quarter. Several operations
including Peru, Puerto Rico, Eastern Europe, Dominican Republic,
Mexico and Brazil experienced brisk mobile service revenue
growth—between 8% and 12.4%, with Austria posting a 7.0%
increase.
On the fixed-line platform
service revenue expanded 0.5%, with revenue growth from corporate
networks accelerating to 6.8% and that from broadband services
decelerating to 4.0%. Both continued the trends followed throughout
the year. Fixed-line voice revenue growth continued to decline,
although at a slower pace than seen previously, whereas PayTV
revenue kept on declining roughly at the same rhythm as it had in
prior quarters.
Our Eastern European
operations and Peru observed the fastest revenue growth in
fixed-line services, with 13.1% and 11.8%, respectively. They were
followed by Colombia and the Dominican Republic, with 7.1% and
6.2%.
Most of our operations—and
four of the top five by revenue—presented service revenue increases
in both the mobile and the fixed-line platforms, helping us
leverage fixed costs.
EBITDA came in at
89.8 billion pesos in the fourth quarter. This figure reflects
one-off items including the
impact of the sale of towers by Telmex in the quarter and the
release of certain collection reserves a year before that also took
place in Mexico. Our adjusted EBITDA, correcting for these factors,
totaled 82.9 billion pesos, representing an 8.9% increase from
the year-earlier quarter. At constant exchange rates, adjusted
EBITDA was up 7.7% year-on-year, slightly more than
the 7.2% increase observed in the third quarter. The adjusted
EBITDA margin rose to 37.6% from 36.0% in the year-earlier
quarter.
The Dominican Republic,
Central America and our European operations exhibited the fastest
pace of EBITDA growth, at 12.4%, 11.1% and 9.7%,
respectively.
Our operating profit jumped
36.7% to 47.8 billion pesos. Adjusted for the aforementioned
extraordinary items, our adjusted operating profit reached
40.9 billion pesos and was up 20.1% in Mexican peso terms and
15.6% at constant exchange rates. It helped generate—after
accounting for 19.7 billion pesos in comprehensive financing
costs—a net profit from continuing operations of 22.9 billion
pesos.
The net profit obtained
through both the operation of TracFone until its sale on November
23rd and the sale itself is booked under the line item of Net
Income from Discontinued Operations. It totaled 112.7 billion
pesos. Together with the net income of our continuing operations it
resulted in a net profit of 135.6 billion pesos in the fourth
quarter, which was equivalent to 2.1 peso cents per share and 2.0
dollar cents per ADR. For the full year 2021 our net income stood
at 196.0 billion pesos, more than four times larger than the
one observed the prior year.
In 2021 our operating cash
flow allowed us to fund 170 billion pesos of capital
expenditures, 65 billion pesos in shareholder distributions
and to reduce our net debt by 128 billion pesos in flow terms.
Excluding leases, our net debt ended the year at 400.7 billion
pesos, a 137.2 billion pesos reduction from the level
outstanding at the end of 2020. Net debt excluding leases was
equivalent to 1.23x EBITDAaL at the close of 2021.