America Movil Q1 results tumble against strong peso, 2023 tower sales

By Cassandra Garrison

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexican telecommunications giant America Movil's net profit tumbled 55.2% year-on-year, landing at 13.5 billion pesos ($816.7 million), earnings showed on Tuesday, as a stronger peso and lack of extraordinary income diluted first-quarter results.

The company, controlled by the family of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, reported revenue of 203.3 billion pesos ($12.3 billion) in the quarter, down 2.7% from a year earlier. Revenue beat the mean estimate of $11.87 billion from four analysts, based on LSEG data.

The company blamed the weaker results on currency fluctuations as a stronger Mexican peso watered down earnings from abroad. The peso gained around 8.2% compared to the end of the first quarter of 2023.

America Movil also cited the previous sales of cell phone towers in the Dominican Republic and Peru, which bumped up extraordinary income in the first quarter of 2023.

"This quarter, there were practically no tower sales," the firm said in its filing to the Mexican stock exchange.

America Movil's core earnings, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), fell 2.6% in the quarter to 80.6 billion pesos.

It added 1.5 million mobile subscribers, including 1.3 million post-paid customers, driven by an uptick in Brazilian customers. In the fixed-line segment, the company added 562,000 broadband accesses.

The company said its net financing of 17.4 billion pesos and operating cash flow covered 21.8 billion pesos in capital expenditures, 4.8 billion pesos in share buybacks and 6.5 billion pesos in labor obligations.

The company in March added a five-year bond to its global local currency bond program with an issuance of 17.5 billion pesos. International investors made up nearly a third of the transaction, the company said.

The bonds issued under the program since June 2023 amount to 54.5 billion pesos.

($1= 16.5310 Mexican pesos at the end of March)

(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison, Valentine Hilaire and Kylie Madry; Editing by Stephen Coates)