Liberty Latin America’s fourth-quarter results give the clearest look yet at what Hurricane Melissa cost the company in Jamaica, and how it plans to close the gap by the end of 2026.

The company estimated Melissa cut fourth-quarter revenue by US$20 million and reduced adjusted OIBDA by $27 million, driven almost entirely by the Liberty Caribbean segment, where revenue fell 4 per cent year over year. Residential fixed revenue absorbed the worst of it, down 10 per cent on a reported basis, largely from customers in Jamaica who lost service and have not yet been reconnected.

The company disclosed that it permanently reduced its revenue-generating unit count by roughly 136,000, made up of 65,000 fixed-line telephony connections, 57,000 broadband subscriptions and 14,000 video subscribers, tied to homes it does not currently expect to reconnect in the near term. Homes passed fell by 133,000. A separate group of about 86,000 units were off-service at year-end but are still expected to come back online, and the company did not book revenue against them after the storm.

Set against those losses, Liberty Latin America collected $81 million in net proceeds during the fourth quarter from its parametric insurance program, a mechanism that pays out based on storm intensity rather than itemised claims, which management said helped offset much of the damage and business interruption. Executives called the mobile recovery in Jamaica rapid, saying the network is now running at or above pre-hurricane levels. Fixed infrastructure, which requires physical cable and copper repair rather than tower restoration, has moved more slowly.

The company’s own forward guidance suggests the reconciliation between the $20 million quarterly loss and a full-year recovery target is not immediate. Management said it expects the 2026 adjusted free cash flow impact from the storm to run around $100 million, with performance weighted toward the second half of the year because of the timing of Jamaican network rebuilding. The stated operating goal is to be running near pre-hurricane levels by the end of 2026, with what the company described as a full recovery to follow in 2027, a year later than the run-rate target alone might suggest.

What has not been determined is whether that $100 million in free cash flow impact includes or is separate from additional insurance proceeds.

That timeline is in keeping with the capital intensity typical of Caribbean fixed-network rebuilds, where undersea and underground cable repair, pole replacement and last-mile reconnection in storm-damaged parishes tend to take longer than mobile tower restoration. Liberty Latin America kept capital expenditure discipline elsewhere in its business in 2025, with property and equipment additions at 14 per cent of revenue group-wide, giving it room to direct rebuild spending toward Jamaica without straining the balance sheet further. Consolidated net leverage stood at 4.3 times at year-end, improved from 2024, with $800 million in cash and $900 million in available credit.