The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) suffered a near-nine percent year-over-year revenue decline for the 2021 first quarter despite driving a 2,400 post-paid mobile subscriber rise.

The communications carrier’s ultimate parent, Liberty Latin America (LiLAC), in a conference call with analysts to discuss its results for the three months to end-March revealed that BTC’s top-line had fallen by $4.3m compared to the same period in 2020, declining from $49.3m to $45m.

This was despite BTC “bundling” its products into packages of multiple services in a bid to drive subscriber uptake, while also building on the continued roll-out of its fibre-to-the-home technology. “Fibre-to-the-home network upgrades are driving broadband [Internet] adds and bundle upgrades,” LiLAC said in its investor presentation.

Expanding only slightly on the multinational communications giant’s strategy for BTC, and prospects in The Bahamas, Balan Nair, LiLAC’s chief executive, signalled that it was hoping revenues will rebound with the tourism economy’s continued re-opening during the final months of 2021.

“Moving to The Bahamas, tourism is starting to return as the major hotels now open, and a more meaningful rebound is anticipated in the final half of this year,” Mr Nair said. “We’ve invested in our fixed network, the fibre upgrades, and launched converged propositions to drive broadband adds and post-paid mobile gains.”

There were some signs that the latter strategy may already be starting to pay-off, as BTC recorded a 2,400-strong growth in post-paid mobile customers during the 2021 first quarter, which represented a 7.9 percent gain compared to the 2020 year-end. Post-paid subscribers, regarded as more lucrative customers, rose from 30,300 at end-2020 to 32,700.

However, this was not enough to offset the 3,400 reduction in pre-paid mobile subscribers over the same period. Their numbers dropped from 150,800 at year-end 2020 to 147,400 at March 31, 2021, leaving BTC with a net overall loss of 1,000 subscribers during this period.

Andre Foster, BTC’s newly-appointed chief executive, earlier this year admitted to Tribune Business that the carrier faces “a real day-by-day fight” to reclaim mobile market share lost to Aliv.

However, he said the carrier is “pretty confident” that the erosion of its mobile subscriber base has “bottomed out”, adding that BTC believes new products that it plans to launch in the 2021 second half will “help us reclaim some of our mobile subscriber base”.

Aliv, though, previously said its total mobile customer base had increased to 186,000 at year-end 2020 which, if accurate, means it has seized majority market share from BTC.

However, BTC elsewhere managed to add a net 1,300 subscribers to its Flow TV and broadband Internet offerings during the 2021 first quarter. Some 600 new TV customers, and 1,400 broadband Internet subscribers, were added during the first three months of the year, although this was partially offset by the loss of 700 customers from its fixed-line telephone platform.

BTC closed the 2021 first quarter with 180,100 mobile subscribers, 8,000 TV customers and 27,800 broadband Internet customers. Excluding mobile users, it had some 69,500 customers, while its fibre-to-the-home technology passed 120,900 residences. Fixed-line telephone customers totalled 33,700.

BTC’s revenues suffered a 12.6 percent year-over-year decline in 2020, dropping by $26.2m from $207.3m in the prior year to $181.1m for the 12 months to end-December, a fall that will largely have been driven by COVID-19 and its devastating impact on consumers.

The carrier’s revenue also fell by $48.1m over a two-year period when the 2020 figures are measured against 2018. That equates to a 21 percent decline.