Millicom's balance sheet for the January-March 2021 period shows clear signs of recovery within the framework of the new normal. Revenues totaled US$ 1.088 billion, equivalent to the same period of 2020. Operating profit reached US$ 115 million, a 13.9% year-on-year decrease, while net profit was positive, of US$ 42 million.
Millicom's revenues in Latin America amounted to US$ 1.530 billion, a 2.7% year-on-year increase; and income from services reached US$ 1.413 billion (+ 2.2%). Among other outstanding data -and a reflection of the recovery to pre-Covid levels-, the operator added 166,000 clients in the Home business segment, a historical record; and 1.1 million mobile subscribers, which implies the best performance in a first quarter in the last decade.
Millicom's mobile subscribers in Latin America totaled 42.8 million, an 8.5% increase compared to March 2020. Of that total, 18.8 million are 4G accesses (+26.6%). Mobile ARPU suffered a 6.6% drop to US$ 6.5, due to the change from postpaid to prepaid modality.
A quarter of the record mobile subscription additions come from Colombia, thanks to the expansion of Tigo's network over 700 MHz in that country, and from Honduras, due to the strengthening of prepaid. 587,000 new 4G accesses were added between January and March, which already represent 44% of the access base, compared to 38% in the first quarter of 2020.
The operator also highlighted the progress of Tigo Money, present in five of the nine markets where Millicom operates: after an 11.4% increase, the customer base reached 4.8 million.
The fixed business, passed households reached 12.24 million, a 2.7% year-on-year growth. Customers reached 4.7 million (+7.1%). The deployment was affected by the closure of the UHF network in Paraguay and the loss of some 8,000 homes in Honduras due to the hurricanes in the last quarter of 2020. The best performing countries in the period were Bolivia, which added a record 50,000 clients within the framework of the return to school campaign; Colombia with record additions; and Guatemala with 36,000 new clients. ARPU remains stable at US$ 28.8.