Millicom CEO Mauricio Ramos (pictured) talked-up the company’s long-term prospects as it pressed on with integrating recently-acquired units and measures to cut costs in the face of severe lockdowns in major Latin American markets.

In its Q2 results statement, Ramos said although the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic presented “many challenges in the short term” he was “more confident than ever in the long term opportunity before us.”

The executive noted it had maintained or increased market share in its business units and continued with strategically important initiatives during the quarter.

These include mobile infrastructure improvements, investments in digital customer channels to cut costs and identifying larger than anticipated efficiency savings from absorbing recent acquisitions.

He also noted easing of lockdowns helped improve figures in June, with the majority of the pandemic’s impact in the early part of Q2.

Across the operator group revenue fell 8 per cent year-on-year to $970 million, with a net loss of $115 million. This compared with a profit of $45 million in Q2 2019, though the company noted the figures were not directly comparable due to the inclusion of discontinued operations in the prior year.

Declines were attributed to “very severe lockdown measures” in its Latin American markets, which had a particularly strong effect on the operator group’s prepaid businesses.