Nos SGPS Aktie

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to NOS First Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. Our CFO, Luis, will guide you through a brief presentation, and then we have the executive team in the room. We will be happy to take your questions after the presentation. Over to you, Luis.

Thank you, Pedro. Good morning to all, and welcome to NOS's first quarter conference call. We will begin, as usual, with the main highlights of this first quarter. Revenue growth driven by strong IT expansion and solid Audiovisuals and Cinema performance, more than offsetting competitive pressure in Telco. EBITDA performance reflects the disciplined cost management and structurally lower CapEx, delivering healthy cash flow generation -- and the balance sheet remains strong with a 1.4x leverage ratio and the credit rating upgrade to BBB by S&P, reflecting a stable financial outlook.

A quick overview on our main KPIs in this first quarter. Consolidated revenues increased by 1.9% to EUR 460 million and EBITDA rose 2.1%. This solid EBITDA performance, along with a CapEx reduction of 5%, led to an improved EBITDA minus CapEx of EUR 84 million, a growth of 18%. Recurring free cash flow, excluding extraordinary items, grew 22% to almost EUR 80 million and recurring net income increased 7.9% to EUR 60 million, reflecting a solid operational performance and our Gen AI-driven efficiency program. As usual, we will discuss each of these metrics in more detail throughout the presentation. As said, NOS's credit rating has been upgraded by S&P to BBB with a stable outlook. S&P rationale for the upgrade highlights 3 key points: NOS's robust operating performance and cost optimization program, that NOS is well positioned to face increased competitive dynamics with modern and well-maintained networks and that declining fiber and mobile CapEx supports strong free operating cash flow generation.

Committed to long-term value creation, NOS has established itself as a leader in both R&D investment and patent application in Portugal. On the research and development front, NOS has consistently ranked in the top 3 since 2018, while on the patent side, the company has topped the Portuguese market for the second consecutive year. Our SCAILE program continues to scale AI across NOS with 7 execution programs and more than 140 AI use cases identified. Another key example is the workforce augmentation program, which includes our sales assistant in B2B and B2C, a virtual assistant designed to support sales consultants and maximize their productivity.

This tool is already handling more than 5,000 questions per month and answering to more than 98% of the questions autonomously. The B2B virtual agent is effectively boosting efficiency and sales productivity through opportunity follow-up and smart recommendations. The SCAILE program has also developed a B2C sales assistant, a virtual assistant designed to support customers throughout their resolution journey, successfully contributing to higher NPS scores and reduced call handling times. Moving now to the operational performance side. More than 6.1 million households are now covered by NOS's next-generation fixed network with FTTH representing 91% of the households passed. During the quarter, NOS deployed 96,000 new fiber homes, 75% of which were rolled out over third-party networks, thereby reducing expansion CapEx. Despite the challenging competitive environment and typical first quarter seasonality in mobile, NOS delivered positive operational momentum in the first quarter.

Total RGUs grew by 12,000, the strongest first quarter in 3 years and a significant improvement year-on-year, driven by a solid fixed net adds of 24,000 and the return to positive mobile net adds of 3.8. In fixed, we achieved 8,000 net adds in unique fixed access. This is a strong quarterly performance, outperforming both the previous quarter and the same period last year and are consistent with the strategy levels. Churn remains at low levels, reflecting the strength of NOS customer base and its competitive positioning and new offers, WOO and naked broadband continue control, but with some impacting the mix of new customers and ARPU.

In mobile, this was the best first quarter of the last 3 years with 3.8 net adds with mobile RGUs increasing 4% year-on-year, reflecting a positive performance backed by postpaid resilience despite a challenging competitive environment, particularly in the prepaid segment. Postpaid increased 69,000 RGUs with a slight deceleration versus previous quarter, impacted by the low-value machine-to-machine decline, which is a more volatile RGU. Mobile prepaid declined by 65,000 against the best first quarter of the last 3 years, despite reflecting the ongoing push to convergence and competitive pressure in the low-cost segment. In summary, a solid operational performance despite the competitive environment and the normal first quarter seasonality in mobile.

Now moving to Audiovisuals and Cinema business. Ticket sales grew by 12% with a very strong performance in January and February, driven by the successful launch of The Housemaid and by Avatar and Zootropolis. NOS Audiovisuals distributed 2 of the top 3 movies in the quarter. NOS consolidated revenues rose 1.9% driven by a strong 16% growth in IT, a 7% increase in Audiovisuals and Cinema, partially offset by the resilient Telco performance. Telco revenues declined slightly by 0.2% to EUR 390 million, mainly impacted by the wholesale unit. The B2C segment recorded a decline of 0.7%, driven by a combination of factors pressuring ARPU. The competitive pressure, the growing share of WOO within NOS customer base and the impact of Storm Kristin that offset the price increase that happened in mid-February. B2B revenues grew 5.5% to EUR 81 million, maintaining the growth path of the previous period.

This acceleration in overall revenue growth reflects a higher volume of project and resell activity. Wholesale revenues declined 11%, driven by a reduction in mass calling services and by changes in one wholesale model, which no longer record revenues and costs. IT revenues showed a strong increase of 16% to EUR 54 million, driven by a solid 4.8% increase in IT services and by a significant 36% growth in the more volatile equipment and licensing sales. Finally, the Audiovisual Cinema division reported a 7% revenue increase to EUR 25 million, driven by the strong cinema performance with ticket sales growing 12% year-on-year.

NOS EBITDA grew 3.1% to EUR 203 million with a consolidated EBITDA margin of 44.2%, an improvement of 0.5% year-on-year, reflecting a solid operational performance and the Gen AI-driven efficiency program. Despite flat revenues, Telco EBITDA grew 2.8% with a margin expansion of 1.4% to 47.5%. IT EBITDA increased 6.1%, below the 16% revenue increase explained by the strong growth of resale of equipment and licenses with lower margins. And Audiovisual and Cinemas EBITDA grew 6.1%, in line with revenues growth. CapEx continues its structural declining trends. In this first quarter, total CapEx, excluding leasing, dropped 5% to EUR 86 million. Telco CapEx declined 6%, driven by a 3.8% reduction in customer-related investments. Technical CapEx fell 8%, impacted by a higher percentage of deployment rolled out over third-party networks, thereby reducing expansion CapEx.

IT CapEx increased 14% to EUR 1.5 million, explained by customer-related investment and Audiovisual and Cinema CapEx increased 15% to EUR 4.6 million, reflecting a return to a more normal spending levels in movies after the lower investment in 2025 caused by the disruption of the Hollywood strikes. As a result, improved operational performance, the Gen AI-driven efficiency program and efficient CapEx management drove an 18% increase in [EBITDAL] minus CapEx, reaching EUR 84 million. Recurring net income grew 7.9% to EUR 59.7 million, driven by the positive EBITDA contribution of EUR 6 million, a D&A reduction of EUR 4 million and a decline in net financial expenses. These positive impacts were partly offset by a EUR 4.6 million reduction in joint venture results penalized by the reversal of a SportTV provision in first quarter '25 and higher taxes driven by higher EBT.

Nonrecurring items declined to EUR 2.2 million, driven by lower refund of ANACOM activity fees, resulting in a total net income increase of 4.7% to EUR 62 million. Recurring free cash flow increased 22% to EUR 80 million. Operating cash flow increased by EUR 50 million year-on-year, driven by the strong operational performance and lower investments. Interest paid increased EUR 1.4 million year-on-year, penalized by a one-off tax devolution in the first quarter '25. Nonrecurring items declined EUR 6 million to EUR 12.4 million due to lower ANACOM refund of activity fees versus first quarter last year, bringing total free cash flow to EUR 91.8 million, a 10% increase year-on-year.

At the close of the first quarter, NOS net financial debt decreased to EUR 930 million, and the financial leverage ratio improved to 1.4x, well below our reference level of approximately 2x. Additionally, NOS benefited from a lower average cost of debt, now 2.8%, a reduction of 0.5% year-on-year, reflecting the lower interest rate environment and in line with the previous quarters. As of March 31, NOS held a total liquidity position of EUR 347 million. With this, we conclude our presentation, and we are now ready to answer to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Mollie Witcombe from Goldman Sachs.

I have 2, please. Firstly, on the price increases, a little bit of color on how they landed in Telco [indiscernible] DiGI was more competitive following the increases a little bit more color around that and the competitive dynamic would be fantastic. And then you mentioned in your release the impact of storms in Portugal. I'd just like to understand, are there any ongoing or potential future CapEx spends that we should expect associated with this? And can you quantify?

Well, I'm not sure if I completely understood your questions. If I understood the first one was on the competitive environment. And the competitive environment is in line with previous quarters. I would say that limited to B2C as before. DiGi had a very strong first quarter last year, but since then lost the momentum and nothing changing in that part. Our commercial activity with our dual brand strategy has impacted the operational since the second quarter. And this quarter was very positive on that, too. It was the best first quarter of the last 2 years. But the issue is the ARPU. And what the competition environment is impacting is that the second brand is increasing weight on our customer base. It's still very controlled on gross adds at 10%, 12%, but the weight on the customer base is increasing and therefore, impacting ARPU.

Future CapEx, looking to -- we don't provide guidance, but looking to the numbers of this quarter, we continue to decline CapEx through the reduction of the expansion, both on mobile and FTTH. So our expectation is continue to decline CapEx in line with what we did in the past and this quarter.

And maybe just a little bit of clarification. So my first question was also on how the price increases landed. I don't know if you can give a bit of color around that.

So the price increases were in line with the past. So just on NOS brands, but on the same customers, they were, I would say, well received as they can be well received. So no impact on churn. If you compare with 2024, the number of complaints or questions declined 40%, also because it was an inflation-based price increase that was below what happened in '23 and '24.

And then sorry, just again to clarify on CapEx. My question was actually more about the impact of the recent storms in Portugal and if we should expect anything unexpected in relation to that for the current year CapEx.

Yes. The storms had some impact and naturally have and will have some impact on CapEx, but it's not material to the point that will affect the declining trend that we are having.

Our next question comes from the line of Fernando Cordero from Banco Santander.

Partially a follow-up on the previous ones. Also thinking on the impact of the storms, I would like to understand of the ARPU performance year-on-year, how much of that is coming from the customers that you haven't built during the quarter as they were impacted by the storms. Just making a very quick number if the price increases have been around 2.3% in mid-February impacting in the ARPU and you fell by minus 0.8% in the ARPU.

It seems that excluding price increases, ARPU has suffered around 2%. I would understand how much of this ARPU impact is coming from the nonrecurring effect of the storms. And the second question is on the footprint expansion. we have seen a material deceleration during the quarter. I understand that also storms have impacted, but I would like to understand what -- how do you see, let's say, the recurring run rate in terms of footprint expansion in the coming quarters after the effort made last year.

Well, on the storms, I understand the question, but we will not provide that much detail. I would say that the ARPU has 3 different dynamics. The first one is, yes, the storms that impacted because we had a few thousand customers that were without service, so therefore, not being built. But that effect is fading. It was stronger in February and March and now it's fading. The second one, as I said, it's the dynamics -- the competitive dynamics, but mostly the WOO effect because it's increasing quarter-on-quarter and therefore, pushing the ARPU down. And this -- let's say that this is a headwind that we will continue to face for the future.

The third one with opposite effect, it's the price increase. It was in mid-February. So just between 50% and 60% of the price increase was captured this quarter and will have a positive impact for the next, but it's very difficult to differentiate between impacts and even harder to estimate the future trend of it. On the footprint expansion, we are obviously going to the end of the FTTH expansion. We will end our own expansion of FTTH until the end of the year. So that's why the numbers of new fiber homes is declining. It was still a strong number, 96,000, but already with 75% coming from third parties network.

In that sense and not only thinking on the fiber footprint, but also on the whole footprint of the company, it has been basically flat in the quarter. Should we expect similar trend in coming quarters?

The total footprint has been flat this quarter because there was a significant number of houses that are what we call brownfield, so houses that we already had cable, and that will change from quarter-on-quarter, but it's obviously going to -- quarter-on-quarter, the number of new houses will be -- will decline.

Our next question comes from the line of Ajay Soni from JPMorgan.

I think the thing that I think investors are asking this morning is really around the consumer growth. Obviously, it has decelerated this quarter. And obviously, the ARPUs are down as well. I'm really trying to figure out how much of that is from the storm and what's the positive tailwind from the CPI? I know you can't really maybe provide clear numbers on that, but how would you expect your residential ARPUs to evolve throughout this year, taking into account all of the effects that you've already talked about? And then on the consumer side, do you think you can get the revenues back into positive growth territory this year? Or do you think it will be more a 2027 story?

Thank you for your question. Well, I think we are basically going around the same question. We would rather not go into much detail. But what I would say, reinforcing what Luis already said is that we are still facing headwinds. Those headwinds are not growing in intensity. Things are pretty stable in terms of the discount brands, the weight of the discount in gross adds is stable also. But naturally, when you compute the net adds and look at the customer base, the weight of the discount brands continues to grow. And our expectation is that it will continue to grow throughout 2026.

So the headwinds will continue to be there. We still have some effect coming from the price increase. some effects coming or disappearing from the storms, still some impact in the second quarter, but looking at the second half of the year, hopefully, no more storms there. But I think the main message is that the headwinds are still there and will continue to be. And our expectation is that the intensity, as I said, will not increase, but they are not going away.

Just kind of reading what you're saying, you're basically saying that the current trends kind of give a good indication of what might be coming ahead. And then if I could just kind of move to business, obviously, it was a strong quarter, maybe pretty similar to last year. Again, is this mid-single-digit growth something that you see within your current customer orders for 2026 as well around that 5% number?

Yes. We -- as you know, there's a strong leading indicator in B2B, which is the commercial activity, and we are comfortable with the commercial activity the first few months of the year. So the expectation is that we will continue to strong healthy growth in terms of B2B throughout the year.

And our next question comes from the line of Antonio Seladas from AS Independent Research.

So just regarding the storm, sorry to insist on this. Maybe you can provide some color at least in terms of the costs, the non-recurring costs that you booked over the quarter. I don't know if something that you could provide or not. Second question is related with synergies of IT division. You mentioned in the past when you bought Claranet that the revenues -- revenue synergies were one of the points. So maybe you can provide also some color how it's going, and last question is related with the consolidation sector. There are some comments in the press last week about sector consolidation.

I think that yourself and the other CEOs of the other incumbent operators also mentioned it. Maybe you can share with us your main ideas about it.

The idea is quite simple. When you look at different markets, namely in Europe, you can see that there's a small number of markets with 4 operators. You've seen more recently, for example, in France, probably going from 4 to 3. So that's a trend. And we all know that the right number of players. If you are thinking about consumer wealth is 3, it's not 4. From our view, the fourth operator is not economically sustainable. So when you add up all those reasons and more, I think it's not about -- if it's going to happen, it's about when it's going to happen. So we don't expect any kind of market structure changing in the near future. But when you think about long, long term, I think it's something that will eventually happen. It's -- I'm actually pretty sure it will happen. As I am pretty sure that it will not happen short term.

Regarding the IT synergies, there were basically 2 sources of potential synergies. One was the combined coverage and penetration in the market of both companies. And the second is the added capacity to close deals because of SCAILE and competence of the different practices. It's -- we're still on a very early stage of that materializing. What I can say is that the pipeline that we are -- the combined pipeline that we are seeing is already showing the materialization of that potential. And what I hope to see and expect to see in the coming quarters is further materialization of the start of that process because this is not an immediate process, a long process, but will be fruitful.

Well, on the cost of the storms, we are not disclosing the specific numbers, but I would say that the main impacts have been felt on the customer support, on the field force and also on the recovery of the fixed and mobile networks.

Our next question comes from the line of Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank.

I've got 2 questions, please. Firstly, on the scale program, which continues to progress well. I think last quarter, you gave a number which I think was 25% to 30% of the initiatives have been implemented. Can you give us an update on that and perhaps how that translates to the percentage of savings achieved? That would be very helpful.

And secondly, it's just a follow-up on previous questions, and apologies if I missed it, around the CapEx. Now you've previously given a kind of midterm guidance of around EUR 350 million annual CapEx ex the leases. We've seen a consistent trend down of your CapEx profile. Do you see any kind of upside to that EUR 350 million number after the recent performance that you've seen and any other efficiencies you can extract?

Okay. So first, on the scale, well, the 25% to 30% of last quarter is more now close by the 30%, but that's not the relevant KPI to look because as you can understand, we have begun by the biggest projects. So the most relevant information, I would say, is that -- the program is moving as expected. The efficiencies are there. If you look to the relevant number is the cost reduction of the Telco, and it's completely in line with last quarter. Last quarter, it declined 2.9%. This quarter, it declined 2.7%. I would say that the large -- the majority of this number is coming from the efficiency program, okay? So we are very confident that we will continue to deliver this kind of savings for the next quarters. On the CapEx, I understand your question, but we don't provide guidance. And I would say that the EUR 350 million is still the number that we say, but we are also confident that the level of reduction that we had this quarter is something that we can expect for the rest of the year.

There are no further questions at this time. So I'll hand the call back to Pedro Dias for closing remarks.

Okay. So thanks very much for joining. Any questions, please feel free to reach out, and we'll see you next time. Take care. Bye-bye.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining, and welcome to NOS's Fourth Quarter and 2025 Full Year Results Conference Call. As usual, we will start with a brief presentation by our CFO, Luis Nascimento, and then we'll open for Q&A, and we have the executive team in the room for that as well. So Luis, over to you.

Thank you, Pedro. Good afternoon to all, and welcome to our conference call. We will begin, as usual, with the main highlights of this fourth quarter. In the quarter, NOS maintained a positive operational momentum despite new competitive environment, leveraging 5G and nationwide fiber fixed infrastructure, also a healthy cash flow generation driven by top line growth, operational efficiencies across OpEx and CapEx structural decline. And an attractive shareholder remuneration with a strong dividend yield while maintaining a robust financial position.

A quick overview of our main KPIs. During fourth quarter, consolidated revenues increased by 0.3% to EUR 486 million and EBITDA rose 4.4%. This solid EBITDA performance, along with a CapEx reduction of 4%, led to improved EBITDA CapEx -- EBITDA AL minus CapEx of almost 21%. Recurring free cash flow, excluding extraordinary effects, increased 132% to EUR 71 million and net income increased 58%, reflecting a solid operational performance and our strategic transformation program. Our annual numbers also reflect a strong performance, which we will discuss in more detail later in this presentation. So NOS has achieved upgraded classifications from both CDP and S&P Global Ratings, recognizing its significant ESG efforts.

The CDP score improved from B to A, reflecting a leadership position in the fight against climate change, a distinction achieved by only 2% of the companies. Furthermore, NOS's S&P Global score increased from 58 to 75, nearly doubling the sector average of 40. As part of its dynamic strategy to create value, NOS is enhancing its customer value proposition through COMBINA, a new initiative in partnership with Galp and Continente. This program offers unique customer benefits, including up to a 10% discount at Continente and a EUR 0.30 discount per liter on fuel at Galp. These significant savings can partially or even fully offset the family annual telecom costs.

With 150,000 customers in the first 2 months, COMBINA is a key component of NOS value proposition, translating into significant savings for our customers. Our SCAILE program with 140 AI use cases identified and already 40 implemented is a key driver of our efficiency, contributing to a 2.3% reduction in fourth quarter OpEx. The personal productivity vertical, one of our 7 SCAILE initiatives is successfully massifying AI across NOS. NOS GPT supports over 4,000 users with an impressive 40% daily adoption, and our FAAST training program has already reached over 1,400 employees. With SCAILE, we are effectively boosting efficiency throughout NOS.

On the operational performance side, this was another strong quarter of Fiber to the Home. More than 6.1 million households are now covered by NOS Gigabit fixed network with Fiber representing almost 90% of households passed. This is a significant increase of 159,000 households quarter-on-quarter and almost 380,000 year-on-year. But despite a challenging competitive market, NOS delivered a strong fourth quarter with 2% increase to 10.9 million RGUs. With 60,000 -- 66,000 net adds, this quarter posted a good level of net adds despite natural fourth quarter seasonality. We achieved 7,000 net adds in unique fixed accesses in the quarter.

Despite the seasonal slowdown and intense competitive environment, these results are consistent with [ pre-digi ] levels. Churn continue at low levels and new offers, WOO and naked broadband continue control, but with some impact in the mix of new customers. In mobile, with 62,000 net adds in the quarter, mobile RGUs increased 3.3% year-on-year, reflecting a strong performance, particularly in postpaid customers with higher ARPUs. Postpaid had 88,000 net additions, posting very strong results driven by WOO and by NOS's competitiveness on convergence cross-sell. Prepaid net additions declined 26,000 in the quarter, below fourth quarter '24, driven by the competitive pressure that impacted more on low ARPU customers.

In summary, a solid operational performance despite the competitive environment. Now moving to Audiovisuals and Cinema business. The number of tickets sold declined 19% year-on-year, an improvement versus the minus 28% of third quarter, driven by a difficult October and November, but with a solid December with revenues flat year-on-year, supported on Zootropolis, Avatar and Now You See Me, all movies distributed by NOS Audiovisuais. On the financial performance side, NOS consolidated revenues rose 0.3%, mostly affected by an 8% decline in Audiovisuals and Cinema division that were offset by the resilient performance of the Telecom segment and by the solid 4.4% growth of IT.

Telco revenues were flat year-on-year, primarily due to the performance of the enterprise sector that posted a 1.3% increase driven by large company segment and Wholesale. The B2C segment experienced a decline of 0.4% due to the increased competition impacting ARPU despite the strong operational activity and solid equipment sales, still an improvement versus the decline of minus 1.1% in third quarter. Revenues in the B2B increased by 1.3% to EUR 123 million, continuing the growth path from previous periods. The slowdown in the overall revenue growth of the business results from a lower volume of projects and resale with lower margins.

The new IT business showed a strong increase of 4.3%, mainly driven by a solid 9% growth in IT services and despite a 3% reduction in the volatile resale of equipment and licenses. As previously explained, the Audiovisuals and Cinema division reported an 8% decline, driven by the 19% reduction in cinema attendance. So NOS's operational performance and solid results of NOS transformation program supported on Gen AI-driven efficiency program continued to deliver strong 4.4% EBITDA increase, significantly above revenues with a strong contribution from Telco and IT, which recorded increases of 4.4% and 11%.

Audiovisuals and Cinema division posted a 1% EBITDA increase despite an 8% decline in revenues. NOS CapEx continues the structural declining trend, and this quarter dropped 4% to EUR 92 million, supported by a CapEx decline in all lines of businesses. Telco CapEx declined 1.2%, driven by a 2.6% reduction in customer-related investments. [ Expansion ] CapEx had a small increase of [ 0.4% ] this quarter, mainly driven by fiber projects as we approach the end of NOS Fiber deployment. IT CapEx declined 34% to EUR 1.9 million, explained by an exceptional customer-related investment during fourth quarter '24. And Audiovisuals and Cinema CapEx declined 24%, reflecting a return to a more normal spending levels in movies after the higher investment in 2024 caused by the Hollywood strikes and by a reduction in cinema CapEx.

As a result, improved operational performance and efficient CapEx management drove to a 20.6% increase in EBITDA AL minus CapEx. Net income declined to 10.9% to EUR 63.8 million, primarily due to a reduction of EUR 31 million in extraordinary effects, mainly related to ANACOM refund of activity fees in fourth quarter '24. However, excluding these items, net income rose EUR 23.5 million, a 58% increase year-on-year. It's a strong increase driven by a strong EBITDA growth, supported by a solid operational performance and by a proactive cost management, complemented by a EUR 10 million contribution from tax reduction and by EUR 3.9 million in results from joint ventures. Free cash flow increased 155% with a EUR 2.8 million positive year-on-year impact from an extraordinary tax payment in 2024 related with the ANACOM refund of activity fees.

Without extraordinary items, recurring free cash flow increased 132% driven by EUR 11.7 million from strong operational performance and lower investments, by a positive impact of EUR 22 million in working capital and by a reduction of EUR 5.6 million of income tax paid. So now moving on to the final year key financial numbers. Despite stronger competition, NOS demonstrated a resilient revenue performance in 2025 and strong OpEx and CapEx efficiencies leading to a solid EBITDA AL minus CapEx growth. Consolidated revenues increased by 1.6% with Telco growing 1.6% and IT 3.5%, offsetting a 2.6% decline in Cinema and Audiovisuals.

Consolidated EBITDA also grew by 4.3%, while EBITDA AL minus CapEx saw a significant 15% increase. NOS showed strong growth in net income and free cash flow in the final year '25, excluding extraordinary items. Net income after adjusting for these items increased 29% and free cash flow, excluding these items, also rose by 15%, indicating a solid underlying financial performance. So at the close of the year, NOS's debt decreased to EUR 1.022 billion, and the financial leverage ratio dropped to 1.5x, well below the reference threshold of 2x.

Additionally, NOS benefits from a lower average cost of debt, now 2.7%, representing a decrease of 0.8% year-on-year, reflecting lower interest rates. As end of December, the company held EUR 342 million in cash and liquidity. So with all these elements in play, the Board has approved a total dividend of EUR 0.45 per share composed of EUR 0.35 ordinary and EUR 0.10 extraordinary. This payment reaffirms our strong commitment to an attractive and sustainable shareholder remuneration.

With this, we conclude our presentation, and we are now ready to answer to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And now we're going to take our first question. And it comes from the line of Ajay Soni from JPMorgan.

I've got 3 questions. First is around your SCAILE program. So what headcount reductions could you deliver from this in '26 and in the midterm? And then where are the most of these -- could most of these cuts come from within your business areas? Second is around the slightly slower business growth we've seen from lower volume of projects. So what's the reason behind this? And is the Q4 growth expected to continue into 2026? And then the last one is just around your price rises in 2026. Could you remind us what you've done and then what the customer reaction has been so far relative to the price rises you did in previous years?

First, well, we didn't understand completely the questions. But if I understood, the first one is on SCAILE. And if we can -- if we believe that we can continue to have these solid efficiencies for 2026. And yes, we do believe so. As I said, SCAILE is a long project. We have 140 use cases. We have begun only -- we have implemented 25% to 30% of them. So yes, we do believe that we can have efficiencies for the next couple of years.

Yes. The third question was on price raises. So what we did is this February, so this past month, we raised prices by 2.34%, which is in line with the inflation in 2025. And until now, the customer reaction has been very positive in the sense that there was no reaction, even when we compare to other price inflation increases in the past, so we didn't have them last year. But in the past, we had less customers either calling us or complaining. So the reaction in that sense was good, mainly because the amount of the increase is not that significant. I'm not sure we understood the second question.

If I understood, it was about B2B resale.

Sorry, it's around the business growth. So you mentioned the slower growth in Q4 was down to a lower volume of projects. So I was wondering what the reason was behind this? And then is this Q4 growth a level you expect to continue into 2026? Or should it accelerate from here?

This line of revenues from projects is very volatile. It has been always the case in the past, some quarters very strong, some quarters not that strong. It also -- we are always comparing to the same quarter of previous year. So if you have a good quarter last year and not so good quarter this year, the difference is significant. But there is no structural trend that you can take out of that.

Probably next quarter will be okay. There's always a lot of volatility around this kind of one-shot projects. It's not like telecom revenues, which are basically monthly fees, which are recurrent and stable, but these B2B projects, not so much. But again, there's no particular trend or structural trend you can take out of these numbers.

And the question comes from the line of Mollie Witcombe from Goldman Sachs.

I just have 2. Firstly, some color on the competitive environment in B2C specifically would be fantastic. I've noticed that the ARPU in Consumer seems to be a little bit better in Q4. So just an idea of how you're thinking about incremental competition in Q4 and into Q1? And then my second question is just on IT growth potential. You previously talked about potential for 5% to 10% CAGR, 3-year CAGR market growth with 5% to 10% in applications, tech consulting, cloud, et cetera, and then 10% to 15% in cybersecurity. Could you give us an update on these trends? Is this still what you're expecting to see? And how are you seeing the markets develop?

Yes. Thank you very much. In terms of competitive environment, I don't think there's any significant update. We have been living more or less the same competitive environment since November '24 for the reasons you all know. The dynamics hasn't been different throughout 2025. Nothing really relevant changed already this year in 2026. So I would say that from that sense, of course, in a level of competition, that is much more aggressive than we had before November '24.

But since November '24, it has been the same. And we don't expect it to change going forward. So it's a new reality. We have been living under this reality with the strategy that we have communicated. So with the main brand NOS, with a premium service and with a discount brand WOO, fighting the low end of the market. We are happy with the results, and we don't see trends changing materially going forward. In terms of IT growth, yes, that's -- we're still kind of bullish around the IT business.

We believe we have tailwinds, and we will continue to grow in that business. So the numbers you mentioned, 5% to 10% is within our -- also our estimate up until now. And when we look at 2025, we actually managed to be slightly above that, but we'll see going forward. But we are still betting on significant growth on that line of business.

Understood. Sorry, just a follow-up maybe with a third question. Potential upside from AI on CapEx has been a bit of a theme this quarter amongst other European telcos. Just you've talked a lot about kind of potential from AI, but just wondering specifically what you're seeing on CapEx.

Well, what we're seeing is across different cost drivers. Some from accounting point of view are considered OpEx, others are considered CapEx. But what we see is the impact is very transversal, very across many different functions, processes, areas. So yes, we see some impact there. But nevertheless, we were already planning beyond AI. We are already planning a decrease in terms of CapEx in 2026 when compared to 2025. But of course, it helps to have that reduction with this help from AI, which makes us more productive and as such, taking more out of each euro that we invest.

And the question comes from the line of Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank.

I have 3 questions as well, please. Perhaps following up on the question around pricing, and you mentioned the mix. And I think this year, we didn't have a price increase, but the Q4 ARPU trend and exited the year quite well. Is that perhaps upselling within the tiers? Or is that just a better mix within your kind of premium brand and your challenger brand given perhaps a more relaxed competitive dynamic in the market? Second question is around the operational efficiencies from SCAILE.

So I guess, limited top line growth through '25, but 4 percentage points expansion at the EBITDA AL level. Is that the right level we should think about in '26? Or should we see a pickup in those efficiencies? And lastly, on the fiber rollout, can you remind us what your target coverage is? I think you said low 90s before. And should we be thinking that the remainder will be covered by alternative technologies such as satellite?

Thank you very much for your questions. In terms of -- I would tend not to read too much from the ARPU in Q4. There are some specific effects, namely, for example, premium TV channels that had a good quarter, which helps ARPU. But I don't think you can read from those numbers any significant change in terms of the mix between the main brand, the premium brand and the low-end brand. I don't think you can have that reading from the quarter numbers. Obviously, the low-end brand will keeps growing, keeps increasing its weight on the overall customer base of NOS. That is something that we expect to continue throughout 2026.

So you cannot read too much from those ARPU numbers from Q4. As I mentioned, this is very seasonal and specific impact, namely from the premium TV channels. In terms of SCAILE, what -- actually, what you asked would imply some kind of guidance that we tend not to give. So what we can say is that we expect SCAILE to continue to contribute to cost optimization. That much is true. But in terms of numbers, I would rather not give any specific guidance, even though obviously, we have our own budget and our own estimate. In terms of fiber rollout, we estimate our present coverage in terms of households passed close to 94%. And that is as high as we will go on a stand-alone basis.

We expect the remaining of the market, so 100% to be actually also covered with fiber. But from this project, the state project that has as an objective to cover the white areas with fiber. So one can expect once this project is implemented, and it should be pretty soon, at least start pretty soon, 100% of the country would have fiber, which means that alternative technologies are not necessary, and we don't see any space for those alternative technologies in a country that has 100% fiber coverage.

That's very helpful. Just a follow-up on the fiber point. Given the extensive fiber network, have there been any developments on the wholesale front offering out the network and maximizing that utilization?

You mean -- sorry, can you repeat your question? I'm not sure that [indiscernible] wholesale.

Sure, of course. It was just any wholesale discussions on the fixed network, please.

Wholesale discussions in the sense that we should open the network. The answer is no, not at all. We have no plans to give access to our network in the coming future.

And the question comes from the line of Antonio Seladas from A|S Independent Research.

So first one is related with your SCAILE program. So I know that you don't like to provide any guidance. Nevertheless, it seems fair to assume that OpEx will continue to perform below the top line. So it seems fair to assume it. I don't know if you want to comment on this. And second question is related with -- there were some comments on the press this morning that you could acquire some company on the IT space. I don't know if you want to comment on this.

Yes, sure. The question was around our plans for the IT business unit, if we had plans to expand to grow. And the answer was, first of all, we want to grow organically. We already mentioned the targets in terms of growth -- organic growth. But also, we said that we are open and actually actively looking to also grow from acquisitions. It's not obvious. We don't have any specific target at this time, but we are open to the possibility of growing also through acquisitions. In terms of the OpEx numbers and the impact of SCAILE on the OpEx, what I think we can say without giving too much guidance is that we expect margin expansion.

[Operator Instructions] And now we're going to take our next question. And it comes from the line of Fernando Cordero Barreira from Banco Santander.

Thank you for taking my 2 questions. The first one is on the COMBINA program that you have presented as well. I would like to understand which is the kind of impact that you are expecting in your churn rates at the end, given the discounts that you are offering be, let's say, -- just trying to understand which could be the savings on the -- either on the [indiscernible] or in the customer retention cost that is going to be at some extent, funded by the COMBINA program. And the second question is quite simple. Just would like to understand if you are expecting any kind of financial impact from the floods and from the meteorological issues that we saw in this first quarter when you report the first quarter in May.

Okay. Thank you very much, Fernando. In terms of COMBINA, I think it's fair to say it's still early days. The main objective for us is churn reduction. To be completely transparent, that is the main objective. Nevertheless, we announced 150,000 COMBINA clients, I think, last week. In the first 2 months, 150,000, we have 1.5 million customers. So it's still limited in terms of the customers that have joined the program. But without any number or quantification because it's still too early, the objective is clearly to reduce churn, given one more reason to customers to stay with NOS because the benefits from this program are actually quite significant.

In terms of the storms, it was hard. We still have some residual customers without service on fiber. In mobile, it's back, working again. We have some negative impact, but it's quite limited. We have the negative impact in terms of revenues because we have to credit the customers that were without service. But we are talking a limited region of the country and a few days, nothing very significant. We have some costs associated to rebuild what was destroyed. But again, some of the major investments associated with that rebuild is not on us, namely towers, namely poles, which suffered a lot. This is not on us. So again, we are not expecting a big impact in terms of financial costs. In terms of service, it was a big impact, as you know. But in terms of financial impact, not that significant.

Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management team for any closing remarks.

Okay. So thanks very much for joining again and any questions, please feel free to reach out. So take care. Bye.

Hello, everyone. Good morning. Welcome to NOS's Third Quarter 2025 Conference Call. I'll hand you over to our CFO, Luis, who will deliver a short presentation, and then we'll open for Q&A as usual.

Well, good morning, and welcome to NOS's third quarter conference call. We will begin, as usual, with the main highlights of the third quarter. A strong operational performance with the RGU trends significantly improving versus previous quarters. Consolidated revenue of EUR 457 million, strongly impacted by A&C decline despite resilient performance from Telco, an efficient cost management that is driving EBITDA growth and sustainable operational cash flow generation and a solid balance sheet and financial position with leverage below reference level of 2x. So a quick overview of our main KPIs. This quarter, revenues declined 1.2% to EUR 457 million, but EBITDA rose 2.7%. This positive EBITDA performance, along with a CapEx reduction of 2% led to improved EBITDA CapEx of almost 10%.

Recurring free cash flow, excluding extraordinary effects, decreased 19% and net income increased 25%, reflecting the solid operational performance and our strategic transformation program. NOS proudly leads in global sustainability, having been recognized by both Time and the Financial Times in their international benchmarking rankings as one of the world's most sustainable companies. This impressive achievement places NOS as one of only 5 Portuguese companies in both lists and the only one from the telco sector. This highlights NOS's strong commitment and significant progress towards a sustainable future.

Furthermore, NOS has received recognition from DECO Proteste, the leading Portuguese Consumer Rights Association Magazine, being named best in test for its mobile Internet, Wi-Fi and TV services. It's the first time any operator has secured all 3 core distinctions, underscoring NOS's strong commitment and investment in superior network and quality of service.

On the operational performance side, this was another strong quarter of fiber-to-the-home expansion. More than 5.9 million households are now covered by NOS gigabit fixed network with FTTH representing almost 88% of households passed. This is a significant increase of 78,000 households quarter-on-quarter and almost 300,000 year-on-year.

But despite the challenging competitive market, NOS strong offers and commercial capabilities delivered a very strong third quarter with a 2% increase to 10.9 million RGUs. With 131,000 net adds, this quarter posted the highest level of net adds since 2023, driven by solid numbers in both fixed and mobile RGUs. With 12,000 net adds of unique fixed accesses, this third quarter saw an acceleration of the operational momentum, driven by high levels of fiber deployment, low levels of churn and competitive offers, particularly from WOO brand and naked broadband that are changing the mix of new customers.

In mobile, we do 111,000 net adds in the quarter. Mobile RGUs increased 3.3%, reflecting a stronger performance both in postpaid and prepaid. Postpaid has 160 net adds, posting very strong results driven by Woo and NOS competitiveness on convergent cross-sell. Prepaid net additions continued to improve since first quarter and just decreased 5,000 in the quarter, a clear improvement from Q2 seasonality despite competitive pressure. In summary, a solid operational performance and a strong improvement versus the previous quarters.

Now moving to our Audiovisuals and cinema business. The number of tickets sold declined by 28% driven by the lack of blockbusters lineup this quarter in contrast with third quarter '24, which featured several box office hits, including Inside Out 2, the most watched film ever in Portugal. The Audiovisual segment was dragged down by cinema distribution, reflecting the lack of successful movies lineups in this third quarter as opposed to third quarter '24, where NOS distributed Inside Out 2.

Only 3 NOS Audiovisual films ranked in the top 10 this quarter, harming NOS performance. Now on the financial performance side, NOS consolidated revenues decreased 1.2%, a reduction of EUR 5.5 million, driven by a EUR 6.8 million decline in the Audiovisuals and Cinema division and despite the resilient performance of the Telecom segment. Telco revenues show a resilient 0.3% growth, primarily due to the performance of the enterprise sector, which posted a 4.4% increase driven by the corporate segment.

The B2C segment experienced a decline of 1.2% due to increased competition impacting [indiscernible] despite stronger operational activity. The new IT business showed a small decline of 0.4%, mainly driven by a reduction in the volatile resale of equipment and licenses. However, this was almost fully offset by a solid 8.4% growth in IT services. As previously explained, the Audiovisuals and Cinema division reported a 21% decline, driven by the 28% reduction in cinema attendance. So NOS's operational performance and the solid results of NOS transformation program supported on Gen AI-driven efficiency program continued to deliver a solid 2.7% EBIT increase, significantly above revenue with a robust contribution from telco and IT, which recorded increases of 4.3% and 10.4% and despite Media segment decline of 21%.

This quarter, NOS achieved a 4.6% OpEx decline, largely due to proactive cost management and Gen AI supported transformation program that continues to boost structural efficiencies organization-wide. Two significant examples of AI impact this quarter include the automation of call center and customer care service through LLM-powered voice virtual assistants and Gen AI-based chatbots, which drove a 19% reduction in customer care costs.

Furthermore, a 14% reduction in maintenance and repair costs was achieved by decrease in call times and intervention orders, also driven by AI. NOS CapEx continues the structural declining trend, and this quarter dropped 2% to EUR 91.5 million, mainly supported by the telco CapEx decline of 2%. In Telco, we saw a 2.4% reduction in customer-related investments and a 3.7% decrease in base CapEx. Expansion CapEx, however, saw an exceptional increase of 1.8% this quarter, driven by a temporary peak in NOS FTTH projects.

IT CapEx increased by EUR 300,000 to EUR 1.9 million, driven by customer-related investment to support business growth and Audiovisuals and Cinema CapEx declined 7% to EUR 4.6 million, reflecting a return to a more normal spending levels. As a result, improved operational performance and efficient CapEx management drove a 9.6% increase in EBITDA AL minus CapEx.

NOS show the consolidated net income rise 25% to EUR 65 million, a strong EBITDA growth supported by a solid operational performance and nonproactive cost management were key drivers, complemented by reduced financial costs and the EUR 5 million contribution from tax incentives. Free cash flow declined by 56% to EUR 51 million, primarily due to a reduction of almost EUR 50 million in extraordinary effects mainly related to tower sales to Cellnex and the tax receivable paid in advance in 2023, which positively impacted third quarter by EUR 30 million.

However, this quarter, we have a negative impact of EUR 90 million in taxes from extraordinary gains in 2024 from tower sales and refund of activity fees. With NOS's extraordinary items, recurring cash flow dropped 19%, driven by a EUR 39 million increase in taxes that totally offset the positive impact of the strong operational performance, lower investments, a reduction in working capital and lower interest rates.

To finalize, this quarter, NOS debt decreased to EUR 1,093 million and the financial leverage ratio dropped to 1.6x, well below the reference threshold of 2x. Additionally, NOS benefits from a lower average cost of debt, now below 2.8%, representing a decrease of 0.2% quarter-on-quarter and 1.2% year-on-year. As end of March, the company held EUR 343 million in cash and liquidity. So with this, we conclude our presentation, and we are now ready to answer to all your questions.

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question comes from the line of Mollie Witcombe from Goldman Sachs.

I have 2 questions, please. Firstly, on the competitive environment. If you could give us a little bit more color on how that is progressing versus previous quarters, specifically in the budget segment. It would be really good to understand as well the uptick in net adds that you've seen. Is it mainly driven by WOO and the budget segment or elsewhere?

And then my second question is on upside from cost efficiencies. Obviously, you've set out your transformation plan. To what extent are these savings already make a part of guidance? And to what extent do you think there's potential for further upside from cost efficiencies driven by AI savings?

Thank you very much for your questions. In terms of competitive environment, to be completely honest and transparent, these last few months, I don't think there's any news, anything relevant that is different from the previous months. So the dynamics since last November has been more or less the same.

There's -- in our case, there is already some weight in terms of gross adds coming from the discount brands, but that number is still -- not even double digit. But still, it's more or less stable in terms of weight of gross adds. So to be honest, we don't see anything changing significantly from what we have seen in the first half of the year.

On the cost efficient side, I would say that cost efficiencies are the main driver behind the operating cost decline of 2.6% in telco. Almost all of it are coming from efficiencies, as I said, from customer-related and from operating-related cost decrease, we believe they are sustainable as the Gen AI initiatives are still far from explored. It's a long-term program. So we believe that we will have efficiencies for a long period.

We'll now move on to our next question. Next question comes from the line of António Seladas from A|S Independent Research.

Thank you for the presentation. It's just one. It's related with the [indiscernible] that your retail customers are renegotiating their packages. So taking in consideration that this new environment is now about 1 year old. And at same time, your loyalty programs are for 2 years, so it's fair to assume that roughly 50% of your customers -- retail customers all have [indiscernible] package? Or do you think this is too optimistic?

Look, first of all, thank you for the question, António. We -- since in this new competitive environment, so again, last 12 months, the pressure on our retention lines, so customers trying to renegotiate contracts has not increased. It has been more or less stable. We haven't seen -- namely on these last few months, we haven't seen any pickup on customers trying to renegotiate contracts. So on that front, I would say also like in the competitive environment, things are pretty much stable.

Nevertheless, your [indiscernible] blended price in retail are coming down 1% year-on-year on the second, now about 2%. So is this kind of performance that we should expect for the coming quarters? .

Look, that decline has a number of effects built into it. First of all, there are -- you have the data -- mobile data revenues that we had a one shot decline last December or November. That's a one-off effect that will not continue for the future. And then you have -- as I mentioned, we already have since last November, some gross adds coming from the WOO brand, the discount brand, which has a much lower ARPU than our brand. So in terms of -- and that progressively has an impact. And on top of that, I would recall that we didn't have the price increase beginning of this year. So if you have to add up all these effects to explain that decline.

We'll now move on to our next question. .

Next question comes from the line of Fernando Cordero Barreira from Banco Santander. .

Three questions from my side, if I may. The first question is as a follow-up on the strategic transformation plan. You have already highlighted the impacts on the customer care and in maintenance and repair costs. Are you foreseeing any other area in the operational side where the AI-driven efficiencies could be as relevant as in this, too?

The second question is related with the [indiscernible] expansion. You have already commented in the presentation that you have already added 300,000 new homes. I would like to understand what is the still potential expansion of [indiscernible] network. What would be the, let's say, the number of households that could be deployed in the future just to understand which is also the impact on your potential top line growth?

And the last question is, looking to your KPIs where the some performance in volumes has been offset by the trends in ARPU as you have already highlighted. I would like to understand -- or I understand that you are prioritizing volumes versus customer value versus ARPU can you help us to understand why have you opted by this scenario instead of prioritizing ARPU versus volumes? Just to understand what has been your way of thinking in the current strategy?

Thank you, Fernando. I would like to start with the last question, which I think it's very interesting. Well, I don't think it's fair to say that we are prioritizing volume against price. As I mentioned, we -- of course, we don't want to give too much space to the discount -- brands of the discount players. And we launched, as you know, a discount brand, and obviously, that has an impact because progressively, we have more customers within this brand with lower ARPUs, much lower ARPUs. And when you see the combined ARPU, that has an effect. But that's it.

I don't think it's fair to say that we are prioritizing volume versus price. We are not going to give too much space to the new entrants, that's for sure. But we are trying to manage value. I don't think your comment is very fair, to be honest. I understand it. Don't take me wrong. I understand it. But this is a result of a number of things. Our strategy is not to prioritize volume against price. It's to find the right mix.

Okay. So on the transformation program, the Gen AI is part of our program, and we -- the idea is to massify Gen AI across the entire organization. We have around 135 different use cases, and we have just started with around 25% of them. So there's a lot of room to massify GenAI across NOS. On the expansion, we are expanding FTTH, our own FTTH, and we will do it until the end of the first half of 2026. But we will have -- then we will have houses from third parties. So we expect it to have around 300,000, 350,000 houses for the next year, but a significant part of them from third parties. So our CapEx -- expansion CapEx will continue to decline in the -- in 2026.

Just a follow-up on the network expansion side. Not only I'm, let's say, looking to understand what could be the CapEx trend for next year. Also to understand, given that you are increasing your footprint by close to 5% and your customer base in terms of fixed assets by around 2%, I just 0I would like to understand which would be the network expansion that you are expected for '26, '27, not just on the impact of CapEx, but particularly in the impact of new addressable areas for your marketing activities?

I would share 2 comments on that. First of all, there is a time to take up. So one thing is to have the expansion. Another thing is to acquire customers, it takes time. So you cannot expect -- if you increase by 5% the number of households, you don't -- you cannot expect to increase the number of customers by 5% day 1. It takes time, and it takes a lot of time, obviously. So the take-up is going according to our expectations, but there's obviously a delay. On the CapEx side, what you can expect as we have been saying for quite some time now is CapEx going down. Part of this expansion -- fiber expansion is on third-party networks. So what you can expect for next year in terms of CapEx is a reduction.

We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of José Cabezon from [ CaixaBank ]

One question regarding the efficiency plan. You have mentioned that you have 135 areas of where you can extract more efficiencies. Could you tell us the percentage of potential sales that have been already considered? And the amount that will be -- will emerge in the coming quarters?

Okay. Well, to give you the percentage of efficiencies that we have, it's a form of guidance. So we are not sharing this number.

Okay. And my second question is regarding the comparison basis for us from this quarter. Are you expecting that the decline in RPUs and the changes that we are seeing year-over-year are going to soften in the coming quarters?

Well, let's say, our expectation is that it can get a little bit worse before it gets better. Long term -- sorry, just to add to that. So you're talking about the next quarter.

I am referring to the -- basically as from the next quarter, what we are going to see, especially in the first quarter of next year and the following ones?

Our expectation is that short term, probably it will decline a little bit more medium term. So looking 6 months, 9 months ahead, it will stabilize.

We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. .

I've got 2, please, many follow-ups. Just on the competitive dynamic. And I guess, having had quite a strong start to the year, the new entrants momentum has perhaps stalled. I don't know if that's fair to say. How should we then be thinking about the scope for price increases next year? Because I think typically, it's around this time where you do inform your customer base around the kind of inflationary pricing indexation that we see. And I think this year, we didn't have anything.

And secondly, it's around the network dynamics. And have you changed your stance or have you seen kind of incremental approaches for wholesale access? Anything that has changed on that front? Again, the new entrant has been pushing hard to increase their coverage. Any thoughts around that, if there's been any change or is it still the same?

Well, thank you for your questions. You're right, it's more or less around this time of the year that we have to inform customers, but it's still closer to the end of November, beginning of December. And the fact is that as of today, we have no decision. But I can tell you that we are evaluating the option, and we have no conclusion yet, but we are looking into it seriously. And we'll inform the market of our decision or not by the end of November.

In terms of network development and wholesale access, namely from the new entrant, we don't know if -- with us, there's no discussions whatsoever. With the others, we don't know if there are any discussions, but in terms of closed deals, there's nothing new.

We'll now move on to our next question. We have a follow-up question from the line of Fernando Cordero Barreira from Banco Santander. .

It's only one. I just would like to understand if there is any news regarding the legal situation of one of your majorholders, the 26% stake [indiscernible]. Just to understand if there has been any update or you have any update on that situation?

Well, that's the easiest question of all. No developments whatsoever. Nothing new. Everything is as it was 1 year ago, 2 years ago, 3 years ago.

There are no further questions at this time. So I'll hand the call back to Pedro Dias for closing remarks. .

Okay. So thanks very much for tuning in, and we hope to see you back in fourth quarter 2025 results. Bye-bye.

Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining NOS Second Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. We'll have a presentation followed by Q&A, as usual. But this time, we'll start with Manuel Eanes, who is the [ Ex-com ] member in charge for B2B. He will go through some slides on Claranet Portugal to give you a bit more color since this is the first quarter that we are actually consolidating the company. Then Luis, our CFO, will go through the rest of the presentation before Q&A.

I'll now hand you over to Manuel.

Thank you, Pedro. Hi, everyone. I'd like to give you a quick update on Claranet and to explain why we believe that we have now on IT a much bigger and better growth engine.

The first note is that the Claranet 's acquisition boosts NOS's exposure to a 4x larger and faster-growing market. Basically, the -- we estimate the telco market in Portugal to be -- the B2B market in Portugal to be worth EUR 1.1 billion and the IT market in Portugal to be worth around EUR 4.6 billion with basically much, much higher structural growth.

We believe that this growth is possible to basically by driving expansion in 3 key purchase areas where either we have significant competitive advantages or have a high growth potential. We'll see that in the next page. We can -- we'll be able to reinforce our position in managed services and in professional services as well. Actually, basically, we doubled the size of our IT services business with the acquisition of Claranet. And we also believe that even the resale part of the business is key in the sense that it puts the NOS Group in the center of the deal flow of the key manufacturers in Portugal of hardware and software, and that presents a very relevant opportunity for services growth as most of the manufacturers will tell you.

The second is that IT brings -- or this acquisition brings relevant scale and a full breadth of not only solid offer partnerships and talent to our IT business. First of all, Claranet brings the set of practices that we aim to be present in, in the IT arena in the full breadth. So it is a great way to structure the way we look at the IT business and the practices of cloud and infrastructure, applications, security, workplace, data and AI and third-party software. We believe that these are the exact arenas where we want to be present, where we believe we have the synergies and the competencies. And we believe that we now have the full breadth with which to address the market.

The second is that we are as a group now, very relevant to a number of key technology partners in this market. The transversal partners of Microsoft, HPE and HP and the practice-specific partners of Cisco, AWS, Cloudflare, Dell, Adobe, EasyVista, Fortinet, Palo Alto and Google. I believe these are very relevant names in the technology arena. And I believe that they all regard the NOS Group as a relevant partner in Portugal.

The third note is that we have now as a group, a very relevant scale and a very relevant competence. We have 19-plus FTEs managing professional and managed services in IT in Portugal, a very large engineering team and over 200 cloud certifications with which to help our Portuguese customers address their digital transformation needs.

We believe that we -- with this acquisition, we have very relevant growth levers to pull. First of all, we have an increase -- actually a very significantly increased sales footprint in enterprise and mid-market, which crossing with a full breadth of IT services brings a full potential that is very relevant for the future. The second is we have practices in our portfolio, namely cloud, cybersecurity and data and AI, which have in themselves a very high potential for growth. And third, we have a strategic cooperation with the Claranet Group that benefits us both ways. First of all, the ability to serve multinationally -- multinational customers; and the second, to leverage the scale of our practices in multinational environment of the Claranet Group.

So back to the beginning of my very short presentation, that was to say that we have a bigger and better growth engine for IT with which to show you progress in the next few quarters.

So good morning, and once again, welcome to our conference call. Just an additional comment on Claranet. This quarter, we fully consolidated Claranet Portugal for the first time. And for consolidation purposes, in accordance with IFRS 15, revenues from contracts where Claranet acts as an agent should be recognized on a net basis. Therefore, the EUR 216 million of Claranet gross revenues of 2024 under the Portuguese GAAP must now be consolidated for EUR 130 million of net revenues. It's a 40% adjustment, but only for consolidation purposes.

Well, now following the update on Claranet Portugal, we will now briefly review the quarterly results and then open for Q&A. The main highlights for this quarter are strong operational performance with the RGU trends significantly improving quarter-on-quarter. Consolidated top line revenues growing year-on-year and EBIT increasing faster than revenues with AI and transformation programs progressing well. And operational performance, CapEx reduction and working capital improvement, pushing recurring free cash flow and a solid balance sheet with leverage below reference level despite the acquisition of Claranet Portugal and the dividend payment.

So a quick overview on our main KPIs. Revenues increased by 3.2% and EBITDA rose 5.9%. This positive performance, along with a CapEx reduction of minus 2% led to improved EBITDA minus CapEx of 22%. Recurring free cash flow, excluding extraordinary income related to legal procedures and Cellnex tower sale increased 8.8%. And net income, also excluding nonrecurring activities, grew 16%, reflecting a solid operational performance.

On the operational performance side, this was another strong quarter of Fiber to the Home expansion. Over 5.9 million households are now covered by NOS' Gigabit network with FttH representing 86% of the households passed. This is a significant increase of 78,000 households quarter-on-quarter and 313,000 year-on-year. But despite the challenging competitive market, NOS' strong offers and commercial capabilities delivered a very strong second quarter with a 2% increase to 10.7 million RGUs. With almost 58,000 net adds this quarter not only represented a significant improvement compared to the previous quarter, but also exceeded the results of the second quarter '24.

On unique fixed access, we increased almost 2% to 1.5 million. The second quarter showed some new dynamics as net adds recovered to 8,300, driven by lower levels of churn, competitive WOO offers and naked broadband that is gaining momentum and changing the mix of new customers. With 46 net adds in the quarter, mobile increased 3.3% year-on-year, reflecting a stronger performance both in postpaid and in prepaid. Postpaid had 116 net additions, posting very strong results above the previous 6 quarters, driven by WOO and NOS initiatives in app and cross-sell. Prepaid net additions decreased by 70,000 in this quarter, but this not only represents a recovery from Q1, but also exceeds the results of last year. So in summary, a solid operational performance and a strong recovery from the previous quarter.

Now moving to Audiovisuals and Cinema business. A later Easter holiday and 3 strong releases led to a 44% increase in cinema ticket sales this second quarter. The Audiovisual segment also performed strongly, driven by Lilo & Stitch and Mission Impossible, and we had 5 audiovisual films ranked in the top 10 this quarter, boosting NOS performance.

On the financial performance side, NOS consolidated revenues increased by 3.2% year-on-year to EUR 458 million, driven by the resilient performance of the Telco segment and the robust growth of Audiovisuals and Cinema divisions. Telco revenues rose by 2.3%, primarily due to the strong growth on the B2B sector, which posted a 9.6% increase, supported by healthy growth in recurring services of 6%, along with a significant rise of resale.

The B2C segment experienced a slight decline of 0.3%, indicating early signs of deceleration due to increased competition impacting ARPU despite stronger operational activity. The new IT business showed a small decline of 0.8%, mainly driven by a reduction in the volatile resale of equipment and licenses. However, this was almost fully offset by a solid 10% growth in IT services. So IT net revenues accounted for EUR 49.3 million, while the gross revenues accounted for EUR 77.9 million.

The Audiovisuals and Cinema division reported strong growth levels, increasing by 31% year-on-year, driven by a 44% increase in cinema attendancy, supported by a strong lineup of movies.

NOS's operational performance and the solid results of NOS transformation program supported on Gen AI-driven efficiency program continued to deliver a solid 5.9% EBIT (sic) [EBITDA] increase, significantly above revenues with a robust contribution from Telco, IT and Media segments, which recorded increases of 4.2%, 18.8% and 34%, respectively.

At the same time, NOS CapEx decreased 2% to EUR 91.7 million, driven by a 3.6% reduction in customer-related investments and by a 2.3% decrease in base CapEx. Expansion CapEx, however, saw an exceptional increase this quarter, driven by a temporary peak in NOS FttH projects. IT CapEx increased by EUR 400,000 to EUR 1.7 million, driven by customer-related investments to support business growth, and Audiovisuals and Cinema CapEx declined 20% to EUR 4.2 million, reflecting a return to a more normal spending level. As a result, improved operational performance and efficient CapEx management drove a 22% increase in EBITDA AL minus CapEx.

Consolidated net income declined by 28% to EUR 58 million, primarily due to fewer positive extraordinary effects in second quarter '25 compared to the same period last year. These effects included the tower sale to Cellnex and gains from legal procedures, which resulted in a net impact of minus EUR 30.5 million this quarter. However, recurring net income increased by 16% to EUR 57.4 million, mainly driven by a strong EBITDA growth, lower depreciations and amortizations and reduced financial costs. This performance was achieved despite the EUR 15 million decline in noncurrent income, mainly driven by an interconnection favorable court decision during second quarter '24.

Very similar reality in free cash flow that declined by 72% to EUR 38 million, primarily due to a minus EUR 102 million in extraordinary effects related to the tower sale and gains from legal procedure. which positively impacted by almost EUR 83 million in second quarter '24. However, this quarter, these effects have a negative impact on additional EUR 23 million in taxes. Despite this, a strong operational performance, lower investment and the reduction in working capital contributed to a 9% year-on-year increase in recurring free cash flow even after accounting for higher tax paid.

Finally, this quarter, NOS' debt increased to EUR 1,145 million, primarily due to the Claranet Portugal acquisition and the dividend payment. Despite this increase, the company maintains a conservative financial leverage ratio of 1.7x, well below the reference threshold of 2x. Additionally, NOS benefits from a lower average cost of debt, now below 3%, representing a decrease of 0.3% quarter-on-quarter and 1.1% year-on-year, reflecting the lower interest rates. And at the end of March, the company held EUR 278 million in cash and liquidity.

With this, we conclude our presentation, and we are now ready to answer to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of [ Molly Witkin ] from Goldman Sachs.

I have a couple, please. Firstly, I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more color on the competitive environment that you're seeing in consumer, particularly with DG in terms of pricing and promotional incremental differences versus last quarter?

And my second question is, how should we think about the capacity for further OpEx efficiencies and synergies at Claranet? Are there any one-off integration costs that we should think about in the coming quarters or one-off CapEx amounts that we should incorporate?

Okay. Thank you very much, Miguel Almeida here. What concerns the competitive environment, so we have to be aware of the context. We have since November last year, a new player in the market that has entered the market with heavy discounts compared with the prices that were in place at the time. So this is the context.

When we look at the dynamics -- taking into consideration that this is the context, we are quite happy with the dynamics. You can see from the operational numbers that we are actually posting this quarter, positive net adds. And I think that tells you a lot about the churn we are having in the company.

We have seen from a trend point of view, the second quarter of this year in terms of operations was actually better than the first quarter. So things are progressing in the right direction. And overall, we are very -- well, given the context, I would say, happy with our performance and how things are evolving.

In terms of synergies or integration costs from Claranet Portugal, we will not have any integration costs. And what concerns synergies is not our priority. Our priority, as Manuel Eanes mentioned, is to grow the business. We have a significant ambition in terms of growth, and that's where our focus will be. So I wouldn't expect any costs and not much from synergies also.

Our next question comes from the line of Ajay Soni from JPMorgan.

I had a couple. The first is around your net adds, which obviously were pretty strong this quarter. I just wondering if you could give us a bit of color on what portion of those mobile net adds and fixed RGUs are coming from your second brand versus your first brand?

And my second question is around your naked broadband. So what's the main difference here? You mentioned it's a bit of a growth here for you. So a bit more detail around that would be helpful.

Okay. In terms of weight, if we take gross adds as the metric, WOO is still -- even though it's closed, it's still below 10% in terms of wireline RGUs. Of course, as you can imagine, if this -- we were talking about net adds, this weight is obviously bigger than that. But in terms of acquisition, it has been more or less stable, around slightly less than 10% of our gross adds.

In what concerns naked broadband, I'm not sure where your curiosity is. We have naked broadband offers in both brands, so in WOO and NOS at significantly different prices, and we believe also a significantly different customer experiences. So it's consistent with the overall positioning of both brands. It's -- in both cases, it's naked broadband. But what we are offering customers is different. And what we are charging customers is also, well, significantly different. It's almost twice as much at NOS than WOO.

Our next question comes from the line of [ Jose Osina ] from CaixaBank.

I have a question on the transformation program. Could you detail the expected savings from this program? How much out of them have already materialized? And if you could also explain the amount of provision, which are linked to this program. How much out of them have been already provisioned?

Okay. So about the transformation program, not easy to know the exact number that has already been achieved. Well -- but we believe that for the year, we have done already about 50% of the transformation that we expected, okay? But this is a long-term transformation program that we expect to continue to bring the efficiencies for a long time. But...

Yes. Well, you have different -- very different things under this umbrella, all with the same objective of efficiency. We believe that we will keep expanding our EBITDA margin for quite some time, meaning that we are far from over in our initiatives. To give you an example in what concerns Gen AI, the benefits of implementing company-wide Gen AI are just coming in. So we believe that it will increase significantly over the next few quarters. And we are talking about always recurrent costs that we are taking away from the company.

So we are very optimistic in what concerns margin expansion coming from this transformation program, coming from efficiencies, which, as I mentioned, have very different shapes and forms, but are far from being exhausted.

Okay. Just a further question. Could you indicate out of the improvement in EBITDA reported in this second quarter, how much out of it would stem from this transformation program?

Well, everything that doesn't come from top line is coming from this transformation program because on the other side, you have inflation, you have salary inflation, you have different areas of inflation. And the way to achieve this 6% growth in EBITDA this quarter is coming basically from the cost structure that is this quarter lower than it was 1 year ago. And most of it -- actually more than 100% of it is coming from this transformation program.

Our next question comes from the line of Antonio Seladas from A/S Independent Research.

I have 2 questions. First one is still with the price evolution. So according to your metrics, prices -- blended prices are coming down by around 1% in consumers. So this is something that we can expect for the coming quarters? You mentioned that you are happy with the results. So I guess that you were thinking about tougher pressure on prices. I don't know if you can comment on this.

And second question is related with your division IT. I don't know if you mentioned about growing the business. I guess that you have some -- you are expecting some synergies on the revenue side. I don't know if you can share with us what kind of synergies are you expecting?

I'm not sure that I fully got the question on prices, but we don't expect prices to evolve in any direction up or down in the coming months. We don't see space for that. Again, I stress this in either direction, up or down.

When you look at our revenues, B2C revenues this quarter, I think it's important to understand that we have 3 main impacts that drove the revenues on the quarter down from the same quarter last year. And 2 of those impacts are one-offs. So you cannot extrapolate from that. And the 3 impacts are basically the fact that this year, we didn't do the price increase linked to inflation, which is a one-off. And if we have done that, obviously, we would be discussing today year-on-year growth in terms of B2C revenues. But I stress, this is a one-off. It doesn't mean anything concerning the future.

The second one-off was the fact that we had new regulation concerning off-bundled data. And that has, again, a one-off impact. This was end of last year, it's a one-off impact. And if not for that, we would be growing revenues again.

And then the third one is the one that is not one-off is the fact that given the mix of our products, we are experiencing some price erosion, which will continue to materialize in the sense that we keep having today some weight coming from our digital brand WOO, which has lower prices and as such, brings ARPU down.

So basically, this is the dynamic, but most of the impact is coming from 2 one-offs and cannot be extrapolated. The third one, obviously, we are expecting to be around for quite some time.

Regarding B2B, we believe that there are 3 sources of revenue synergies. First of all, we have a full breadth of IT services coverage to help businesses perform their digital transformation. And this wider breadth put into a combined sales force will give us added revenue potential.

The second is that we have a wider coverage. Claranet did not cover the full market, not in enterprise and not in the mid-market and NOS in telecom does. So we believe that this added market coverage will produce results.

And the third is that we have basically doubled our scale in key practices. Scale -- global scale means double maturity and means more competitiveness and an aggregated value proposition. And we believe that this combination will give us a higher success rate in the businesses that we have in our deal flow. So we believe that this combination will produce a much better result.

Our next question comes from the line of Mathieu Robilliard from Barclays.

I had 2 questions, please. First, in terms of the price increase that you did not do. I understand that one of your competitors actually did increase prices. And I was wondering if that had any impact in terms of the profitability numbers between you and that operator positively, I would expect. But if you can comment on that, that would be interesting.

And second, on the IT division, you flagged the very strong growth potential of that division. And I was wondering if you could give a bit more color on the data center and cloud business. A number of companies in Europe have sold their data centers. I think you have kept yours. If you can confirm that. And also if you could give a sense of who are the main players and maybe even what is your capacity when expressed in megawatt hours, that would be very interesting.

Thank you. Well, you're right. One of our competitors did increase prices beginning of this year. I'm not in a position to know what exactly happened with them. What we can see in terms of portabilities, as you asked from us to them or vice versa, we didn't see any relevant change. So in terms of market dynamics, I cannot say that we witnessed some -- any kind of impact driven by that price increase.

So regarding the data center business, we believe that the data center business is depending on which scale you look at it, it can be still a big opportunity.

What we're seeing is that there is some move back to operate a cloud and to on-prem out from the cloud, given some bad surprises that some big customers had on cloud costs. So now the pressure to drive IT efficiency has driven some of them back.

The second is the sovereign issue, which is makes public customers that still haven't had their problems fully solved in the cloud environments to build or to share local environments in the cloud. So we believe that there is still room to grow in the cloud -- well, in the data center business. And we also are ready for that growth in the sense that we can grow still 3x our current capacity with the assets that we have and the assets that we acquired with Claranet.

So we're confident that we'll still able to help customers in their hybrid environments do whatever movements they feel are more appropriate to their strategy. And we believe that we have a role to play in the service area.

And can you give any color in terms of what kind of capacity you have or you're not disclosing that?

No. I wouldn't like to disclose that. But what I can tell you is that we can still grow 3x without changing our asset structure.

There are no further questions at this time. So I'll hand the call back to Pedro Cota Dias, Head of IR for closing remarks.

Okay. Thanks. So as usual, please get in touch if you have any questions or follow-ups. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope to see you after summer for the third quarter results. Goodbye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.