Although mobile is still Millicom's largest business around the world, its cable business' share continues to gain importance, growing by 25% in Q3 pushed by its Latin American operations.
According to the company's quarterly report, cable and digital media revenue grew strongly at 25.2%, with total revenue generating units (RGUs) increasing to 5.25 million. Millicom's cable footprint expanded by 243,000 to 7.5 million homes passed, all of which were in South and Central America.
Indeed, reported revenue in LATAM was $1.4 billion, although this is down by 1.4% mainly due to currency movements and lower growth from mobile handset sales in Colombia, where the company merged with UNE. In addition, direct-to-home (DTH) operations grew at a healthy pace.
"I am pleased with the progress we are making with our pay-TV, fixed broadband and telephony business. We are bringing the digital lifestyle into customers' homes. Our target is to reach ten million convergent homes in the medium term," stated Mauricio Ramos, CEO, Millicom. "This quarter, we delivered an accelerated cable build-out with 304,000 new homes passed in HFC, nearly tripling that of the second quarter. We continued to add new customers at a strong rate across our DTH and cable footprint with pay-TV contributing most to the growth".