OTE Group Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Gaily, your Chorus Call operator.

Welcome, and thank you for joining the OTE Conference Call and Live Webcast to present and discuss the second quarter and 6 months 2026 financial results. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Kostas Nebis, CEO of OTE Group; Mr. Babis Mazarakis, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Panayiotis Gabrielides, Chief Marketing Officer, Consumer Segment of OTE Group; and Mr. Evrikos Sarsentis, Head of IR and M&A.

Mr. Nebis, you may proceed.

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our quarter 2 results review of this financial year.

Our first half performance demonstrates continued progress towards our strategic priorities and bring us closer to our 2026 growth ambition. Adjusting for the 0 margin impact of the gradual wind down of the international wholesale business, our revenues continue to grow strongly. Our EBITDA increased once again and accelerated slightly, supported by solid execution across core business and the ongoing transformation of our business model. This positive momentum is underpinned by the strength of our financial profile and market position. OTE's recent upgrade to A- by Standard & Poor's Global Ratings, making us the only company in Greece rated in the A category. It is a clear recognition of our resilience and further strength, confidence in our long-term prospects.

Let me now turn to the operational drivers behind this performance. Starting with the fixed segment, where despite intense competitive dynamics, we remain in a positive territory with sustained momentum across our FTTH, fixed wireless access, Pay TV and enhanced data communication services offered to our B2B customers. FTTH adoption remains strong. We registered another quarter of record-high customer additions, both in retail and wholesale, demonstrating the growing utilization of our infrastructure.

At the same time, we are making good progress with the advanced in-home connectivity solutions adoption, optimizing our customers' WiFi experience at home and in the office, while further differentiating our offering against our competitors. We continue to expand our network and lead the market in fiber availability, both in urban areas and in semi-urban and rural regions through our UFBB deployment. This progress reinforces our broader vision of advancing Greece's digital transformation, with measurements showing continued improvement in the country's fixed broadband speeds.

Next to our FTTH, we are also particularly pleased with the ongoing momentum of our fixed wireless product lineup. Our 5G WiFi fixed wireless access base has just crossed the 100 million -- 100,000 customers mark, addressing customer needs for higher speeds where FTTH is not yet available, allowing us to defend our broadband base against alternative technologies. In Pay TV, we once again delivered robust revenue growth while also achieving positive customer additions in the quarter that typically makes a small contribution to the annual performance.

Turning now to our mobile business. We sustained a positive trajectory driven by continuing strong customer migration from prepaid to postpaid plans and increasing adoption of higher-value data services. As a result, overall base ARPU continues to increase. Once again, postpaid customer growth reached record levels, with quarterly net additions at the highest in more than 17 years, while still relatively high share of prepaid customers compared to the broader European market, highlights further potential for future growth.

Our long-standing commitment to network excellence continues to differentiate us in the market. Ookla's recognition for our mobile network for the 10th consecutive year is a historic achievement and a testament to our sustained investment in network excellence. Importantly, according to Ookla, we are the only operator worldwide to have outperformed the competition for 10 consecutive years, consistently delivering superior experience to our customers. This distinction adds to 8 major recognition received during this year by leading industry benchmark, including both Ookla and Opensignal.

Let me now say a few words about our ICT and system solutions business. We have once again achieved strong double-digit growth in this quarter. As we move into the second half of the year, results will reflect the gradual termination of the RRF deployment cycle and a more demanding comparison base following last year's peak implementation phase. Nevertheless, we remain confident in delivering solid growth for the full year while building up a very solid pipeline for 2027, including both national and international projects, where we are expanding our presence in new organizations like NATO, like the UN and the European Food Safety Authority, among others, allowing us to diversify a big part of our revenues.

We are in parallel expanding our presence in high-growth areas such as cloud, cybersecurity and AI, having already introduced a new advanced cloud proposition, including GPU-as-a-Service and implementing the first set of AI agents for procurement, finance, HR processes, supporting our B2B customers in their AI transformation journey, setting another growth foundation for the future.

Data and AI are becoming an increasingly important part of our agenda and a key enabler of our internal transformation, driving greater efficiency. We are doubling down on the software development life cycle, our network management, our customer service introducing conversational agents, the productivity of our front liners with a number of AI agents while progressively shifting our internal processes towards AI augmented solutions, with the ambition to evolve into a digital first and over time, an AI-native company.

While at the same time, we are embedding AI into our commercial offerings to deliver richer and more personalized customer experiences, strengthening our value proposition to support future growth and further differentiate us in the market. One of these initiatives is around our core network communication services like voice, bringing the AI deep into our core network. With initial trials and deployments of services like AI calling expected in the next few months, we are laying the foundations for the reinvention, I would say, of the voice calling experience in an AI world. This broader transformation is also reflected in how we position ourselves in the market, and how we bring the full strength of our group to Greece.

This year, we are taking our brand transformation one step further, evolving from Cosmote Telekom to telekom. By leveraging the strength of the world's #1 telco brand, we are strengthening our market presence and further differentiating ourselves versus the competition. Taken together, these results reflect the strength of our strategic direction and the quality of our execution. Our solid core performance, network excellence, digital and value-added services portfolio and continued transformation of our operating model to unlock further cost efficiencies are the strengths that will continue to support our growth and our market leadership.

Looking ahead, we remain firmly focused on our vision and committed to delivering superior value to our customers and shareholders while achieving our 2026 targets. Our priorities are clear to keep investing in the networks and platforms and digital capabilities that will define the next phase of growth for OTE, for our customers and for Greece's AI-ready economy.

I will hand over to Babis now to provide more details on this last quarter.

Thank you, Kostas, and welcome to everyone from me as well.

Let me now take you through our financial performance of the quarter. Total revenues adjusting for the anticipated phase-out of the international wholesale business, however, with 0 margin effect, increased by 8% year-on-year, driven by strong system solutions, solid growth in mobile and resilient fixed retail business.

Fixed retail service revenues, including data communications, increased by 1.4% year-on-year, driven by continued customer migration to FTTH, alongside the solid performance of our TV and fixed wireless access businesses. Data communications continue to support the segment, benefiting from the growing adoption of next-generation productivity solutions.

In FTTH, net additions reached a new high record of 62,000, bringing our customer base to 687,000. This now represents 29% of our broadband base, while continued customer migration and solid wholesale demand further increased the utilization of our network to 42%. We remain on track with our rollout, reaching now 2.2 million homes passed and targeting around 2.4 million by year-end. And these numbers are based on the view of home passed with an active line and include the continued expansion of our UFBB network, reaching now a footprint of a bit over 150,000 homes passed and around 58,000 commercially available that should support FTTH adoption, particularly in rural and semi-rural areas.

Fixed wireless access maintained strong momentum, with 19,000 net additions in the quarter, bringing the total subscriber base to almost 120,000. As Kostas mentioned, the key element here is our advanced 5G WiFi proposition that is based on our expanded 5G+ network, exceeding as we speak, 100,000 customers. Covering underserved areas, FWA continues to strengthen our broadband proposition, supporting growth and customer retention.

Our Pay TV businesses continued its solid momentum, delivering another quarter of strong revenue growth in the high single-digit range. Customer performance also remained encouraging, with net additions once again positive, plus 1,000 despite the seasonally softer quarter as key sporting events concluded during the period. Stricter anti-piracy measures, the removal of the Pay TV tax and high-quality content continue to drive growth in this segment.

Turning now to our mobile business. Service revenues continued to grow, increasing by 2.3% on the back of strong postpaid momentum and the growing adoption of higher value propositions. As expected, the year-on-year growth rate reflects the normalization of last year's minimum prepaid recharge adjustment.

Postpaid performance remains solid, delivering record net additions of 62,000 and a record 8% year-on-year subscriber growth. Continued prepaid to postpaid migration, together with improving customer mix led to 3% increase in blended ARPU. Mobile average data usage remained strong, reaching 21 gigabytes per user per month, up 20% year-on-year. At the same time, 5G device penetration increased by 10 percentage points now to 50% of our active customer base, providing a solid foundation for the demand for higher value data services.

A critical enabler of our mobile growth continues to be our network leadership, which remains a key differentiator factor. Our 5G coverage now exceeds 99% and 5G+ coverage has reached approximately 84%. As Kostas pointed out, 2 days ago, we achieved a historical recognition for 10 years in a row for our network excellence.

Other revenues, excluding data coms, increased by 31.2%, driven by another strong quarter in system solutions, increasing by 52.1% year-on-year as demand remained robust across both public and private sector. I believe Kostas provided a comprehensive review of this business performance and gave us strong confidence in the ability to deliver solid growth for the full year, while building a robust pipeline for 2027 across both national and international projects.

Turning now to wholesale. The revenue decline primarily reflects the planned and announced phase-out of 0 margin international transit activities as we communicated also in our previous calls. The impact in the quarter was EUR 60 million, and will continue to weigh on revenues through 2026 and beginning of 2027.

On the national side, wholesale revenues maintained the expected trends, primarily reflecting the continued expansion of competition FTTH networks. On the other hand, we continue to see growing demand for our wholesale FTTH services as quarterly net additions reached a new record of 48,000, further increasing the utilization of our fiber infrastructure. Adjusted EBITDA after leases increased by 3% in the quarter, with margin improving above 40%, namely at 40.1%. This reflects continued service revenue growth, higher other operating income, mainly reflecting approximately EUR 3 million from copper sales and ongoing cost efficiencies.

Personnel expenses continued to decline, mainly supported by voluntary exit schemes programs. Marketing expenses were also down in the quarter by almost 7%, normalizing as expected the seasonal increase we saw in the previous quarters. Our transformation program continues to deliver structural improvements as reflected in the declining ratio of indirect costs to service revenues down to 28% from 31% a year ago. At the same time, we continue to expand the use of our digital channels with e-sales, digital payments and top-ups reaching 36%, 43% and 53%, respectively. As a result, we remain firmly on track to deliver the 3% EBITDA growth of what we have guided so far for this year.

Finally, let me touch on CapEx and free cash flow. CapEx spending amounted to about EUR 157 million, down 7.7% year-over-year, mainly reflecting lower TV content outflows in the quarter. We continue to expect full-year capital expenditure of approximately EUR 600 million as we invest in our key strategic priorities, notably the expansion of our FTTH footprint and the rollout of our 5G stand-alone network. These investments will support both our FTTH and FWA propositions.

Free cash flow after leases amounted to EUR 150 million in the quarter compared to EUR 161 million a year ago. This year-on-year difference primarily reflects certain timing difference of income tax payments of the previous 2 quarters. The prior year quarter benefited from a one-off tax refund following the absorption of Cosmote into OTE, which was subsequently offset through higher tax payments in the following period.

We reiterate our free cash flow guidance as we expect trends to unwind during the second half of the year. Reported free cash flow as derived from our financial statements is expected to be around EUR 750 million and adjusting for one-off items at between EUR 570 million to EUR 580 million.

At this point, operator, we are now available to take any further clarification questions. Thank you.

The first question is from the line of Stamatios Draziotis with Eurobank Equities.

Yes. Just a couple actually, if I may, please. Firstly, just wondering how you assess the strategic read-through for the Greek fixed market from the news around a potential JV between PPC and Vodafone and the extent to which you think this could lead to even higher competitive intensity in fiber wholesale or retail pricing over the coming quarters?

And the second question has to do with the spectrum renewal process. Is there an update on this timing structure? Any indication that the process could involve new entrants?

Thank you, Stamatios. Let me start with the first question with regards to this cooperation. I mean, to our knowledge, what has happened is that the 2 players have signed a non-binding term sheet, applying the key principles of the creation of a potential 50-50 JV with the merger of the respective fiber companies. I mean, this is a transaction that, for sure, it is still subject to final agreement and the necessary regulatory approvals.

Now, commenting about the potential implications of it, even if we have not yet seen any slowdown in the pace of Vodafone migrating their customers to our FTTH infrastructure, to the contrary, we have had another record high net adds in our wholesale base. I mean, for sure, looking forward into the outer years, we could expect some additional pressure on our wholesale revenues from Vodafone. Now the magnitude of which, for sure, will come down to the extent of their overbuild of our infrastructure. This is how far we can go at this point in time.

When it comes to the mobile spectrum, it is still, I would say, too soon. We would have to wait for the final assessment verdict from the regulator. I think that we will be smarter around October, November this year once the final list of participants as well as the structure of the spectrum auction will be finally decided.

The next question is from the line of Ajay Soni with JPMorgan.

First question is around your retail fixed and mobile revenue growth. So it feels like net adds have been relatively stable. And obviously, the growth has slowed. It feels like maybe the pressure is coming on the ARPU side of things. So, can you confirm that? And then also, where do you expect the growth of these 2 segments to fall within H2?

And the second one was really around the EBITDA trajectory. Q2 had this one-off benefit from copper sales of EUR 3 million. So, are there more of these to come? And then I think if we exclude this, your EBITDA growth is maybe close to 2%. And then if I look forward into H2, you've got RRF revenue dropping off. Maybe mobile and fixed growth is stabilizing. So, what makes you confident on achieving that 3% EBITDA growth for the full year?

Thank you, Ajay. Let me start with the first one. As far as mobile revenue development is concerned, first of all, we are very pleased that the postpaid base is growing very strongly. It is up 8% year-over-year with another very strong quarter of net adds. I mean, we have indicated a number of times, the big lever is, of course, the pre to post migration. For every prepaid customers we are migrating towards postpaid tariffs, we are increasing our ARPU by EUR 5 to EUR 6 these days. And still, we have less than 50% of our base on postpaid. So, a lot of room to grow further.

Now when it comes to this slowdown, we have already indicated that in the previous call that with last year's prepaid minimum top-up effect fading away in Q2, we should expect to see some rationalization in the growth trends. Still, we are very much confident that we are going to close this year along the same levels of last year's growth.

Now regarding the EBITDA, copper sales that you mentioned is not entirely a one-off item because it happens from quarter-to-quarter, depending on the extraction of copper that we have from the net -- from the ground. But apart from that one, we have to remind that it will bear the positive developments on our cost-cutting element that happened in the first quarter, where a sizable amount of our voluntary exit schemes has been implemented, not fully reflected in quarter 2 because it happened through the quarter. And it will have a full carryover in the coming quarters.

So the confidence for 3% comes, a, from the continuous performance of the top line, along the lines of this quarter, plus the additional cost savings that we will enjoy in half 2 because of the carryover of the optimization in the first quarter and the gradual enjoyment of the first wave of AI and digitalization benefits that is happening throughout the whole company. So if we blend all this together, then the confidence for the 3% is quite robust. And additional -- another point is that the -- as I said, the copper sales is I'm repeating that it's not totally one-off item, but it is recurring not every quarter, but every other quarter, maybe whenever the right stock of copper exists.

Yes. If I could add, Ajay, a bit on this one, and we have had a lot of questions in the past with regards to our ICT and system solutions business performance. Even if we have indicated that we should expect a far more reasonable trajectory in the second half of the year as a result of a lot of RRF-funded projects being materialized in the first half and part of last year. What I would like to highlight here is that we feel extremely confident looking ahead into 2027 in delivering another solid year based on this year's project pipeline that we have built.

A combination of different things. One is the great public sector ongoing digitization project. The other thing that I don't want to go unnoticed is that we are expanding our international footprint with organizations like NATO. I mentioned that in my script before. Just to highlight something, we won the first -- we won a fixed data center contract for NATO at the level of EUR 45 million. This is the total ticket of this project. This is just an indication of how strongly we are building our presence in the international environment, including, I mentioned before, the United Nations, European Food Safety. So, another strong pillar is us expanding our international footprint.

While at the same time, we are expanding our presence in high-growth areas, including cloud, cybersecurity, AI. I mentioned before that we have enriched our business cloud proposition, including traditional, but not only traditional but also GPU-based workloads. We have implemented the first AI agents for some of our B2B customers. So, we strongly believe that this is going to be a third pillar that will feed our growth in our B2B segment into the years to come. Just to highlight this one vis-a-vis or complementary to what Babis stressed on the cost side for the second half of the year.

The next question is from the line of Sofija Rakicevic with Goldman Sachs.

Two questions from me. The first one is you said that you expect to lose incremental EUR 50 million of wholesale revenues over the years from the potential PPC-Vodafone JV versus your original wholesale loss expectations. So, I'm just wondering on top of that, how much of incremental loss could come from PPC-Vodafone tie-up itself? And is there an incremental CapEx needed to cover areas, which were initially planned to be covered via Vodafone? So, that's the first question.

And the second one is, can you please provide us with your latest thoughts on PPC's competitive stance? Are you seeing any churn from their recent activity in the market?

Okay. Let me start with the second question first. So, PPC has been active for quite some time in the market now. Recently, they have also introduced their fixed voice services. I mean, for sure, we see some pressure. But I would not flag it with a material effect on our numbers so far. I mean, the biggest, I would say, argument is our base performance. We managed to defend our broadband customer base during this quarter as well as in the previous quarter, with the biggest levers being, for sure, our FTTH network expansion and the progressive migration of our customers there, but also the strong performance of our fixed wireless access service addressing areas where FTTH is not yet available. So, so far, so good as far as the base is concerned.

With regards to your question about the potential implication of this PPC-Vodafone partnership, I think that I have addressed this one. So as I said, we should expect once they set up this JV and it moves into operation, some extra pressure from Vodafone potentially moving some of their customers. But the magnitude of it will come down to the level of their infrastructure over built onto our infrastructure. This is difficult to project at this point in time.

The next question is from the line of Ioannis Noikokyrakis with Alpha Finance.

I have a couple of questions from my side. I guess both have to do with competition going forward regarding your UFBB rollout in the new areas. Can you comment if you may, please, regarding any risks from competition either from PPC joint venture, as you mentioned, or even so from the Starlink because I remember you commented the other time regard the growth from FWA services and the competition from Starlink that you managed to link into it?

The second question is from the competition coming from the TV segment and regarding the recent news flow from there. I mean, I remember you have a sports agreement with Nova expiring next year. Do you have any news on that? How are you going to proceed with sports content in your TV platform?

Thank you, Ioannis. Let me start off with the first question around -- first of all, you mentioned Starlink and UFBB. It is true that Starlink has been a big challenge for us for as long as we didn't have a product to accommodate our customers' needs for increased speeds. I have to say that this has changed materially since February last year when we introduced our fixed wireless access product. We have managed to slow down substantially Starlink's momentum. Indicatively during 2025, we estimate that they more than doubled or probably tripled their customer base.

Now based on our monitoring, we see them growing by 10% to 20% subject to demand, which is, to a great extent, the result of our fixed wireless access product, which as I indicated in less than 1.5 years has managed to attract 100,000 customers who are solving the problems with a far better service, far superior experience. This is one thing. While at the same time, we are working on the expansion of our UFBB. We have already provided commercial services to slightly less than 60,000 households. This number, we expect to go up to slightly less than 150,000 by the end of the year. We already have the first couple of thousands of connected customers on this network. So, we are really confident that once the network becomes available, the customer will move to this infrastructure. So, we are working on both fronts.

And as far as your question on Pay TV, I mean, the only thing that I can comment is that we are in discussion with our sports content partners, trying to secure as much of the sports content we currently have in our lineup as possible and in a cost-efficient manner. So, we are working on both fronts. Nothing to comment -- more to comment at this point in time.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everybody, for your participation, your questions as well as your interest in OTE. We will meet once again in October -- late October to discuss our third quarter results. Until then for the ones planning to go on holidays, enjoy your time. Have a nice day.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a great afternoon.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gaily, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the OTE conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the first quarter 2026 financial results. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Kostas Nebis, CEO, OTE Group; Mr. Babis Mazarakis, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Panayiotis Gabrielides, Chief Marketing Officer, Consumer Segment, OTE Group; and Mr. Evrikos Sarsentis, Head of IR and M&A.

Mr. Nebis, you may now proceed.

[Technical Difficulty]

Hello, this is the operator. Sorry to interrupt, we cannot hear you.

Sorry. I'm repeating myself. So warm welcome to everyone, and thank you for joining us today in our first quarterly call for the year. The results that came out today mark a strong start in the year and reflect the solid momentum that we have built alongside our continued focus on disciplined execution and growth acceleration.

Starting with the fixed segment. Our performance continues to deliver positive results. FTTH, TV and fixed wireless access all contributed to growth. We continue to accelerate the transition to the FTTH infrastructure. We achieved another record level of FTTH customer additions despite the absence of coupon support in the market, driven by the ongoing infrastructure expansion, the regulatory framework supporting the stop selling of FTTC services and our continuous effort to differentiate in the market. As part of this, we enriched our portfolio with value-added services, including advanced in-home connectivity solutions like Fiber-to-the-Room.

We delivered another record level of FTTH customer additions on the wholesale front as well. This momentum is evident in the increasing utilization of our infrastructure and highlights the strategic value of our agreements with key telecom operators. At the same time, the first ultra-fast broadband networks in rural and semi-rural areas are now commercially available, enabling us to accelerate fiber migration, supporting our strong presence in these regions. This progress reinforces our broader vision of advancing Greece's digital transformation, as reflected in the country's continued improvement in fixed broadband rankings by Ookla.

Let me now turn briefly to our fixed wireless access and TV performance, where we are particularly pleased. Our 5G Wi-Fi fixed wireless access product launched about a year ago continues to gain traction, allowing us to defend our fixed retail base against alternative technologies. In TV, we delivered robust revenue growth, demonstrating the resilience of our TV business despite the absence of pricing tailwinds since last year. This is proof that our conviction for a significant room to grow starting 2 years ago has been proven right.

Customer additions were more than double compared to Q1 last year, driven by our strategic partnerships, effective anti-piracy measures and the removal of the special tax as of this year.

Turning now to our mobile segment. We sustained our strong performance with service revenues growing at a solid pace, led predominantly by the postpaid segment. Robust growth was driven by ongoing migration from prepaid and increased adoption of high-value plans, supporting both ARPU and overall customer value. Postpaid customer growth reached record levels, reflecting the continued success of our commercial strategy. At the same time, prepaid churn remains above the average European levels, which highlights further potential for value uplift.

In prepaid, we recently introduced enhanced value propositions in digital channels to support our outlook and facilitate further the transition to postpaid plans. Our mobile performance continues to be underpinned by network leadership and a significant differentiation in network advantage, as all independent measures show consistently over the years.

In ICT, we enhanced our leadership in digital transformation across both public and private sectors, driven by accelerating demand, particularly in light of the completion of the RRF, the recovery and resilience fund program in 2026. During the quarter, we launched a comprehensive portfolio of advanced cloud services including AI workload capabilities such as GPU-as-a-Service, enabling organizations to efficiently develop and scale AI applications while supporting innovation and their digital sovereignty.

Our momentum remains underpinned by our network excellence, our solid commercial strategy and our ability to offer a full spectrum of services, including mobile, fixed and TV services, complemented by a growing portfolio of digital and value-added solutions. We continue to invest in our core strengths, safeguarding our leading position in the market.

In parallel, we are advancing our transformation agenda by leveraging data and AI to drive structural efficiencies with tangible progress reflected in the continued improvement of our indirect cost ratio. We're implementing AI applications already in our IT production that are accelerating the time to market in network management that improve maintenance and manage energy costs, in customer operations that facilitate a quicker response to customer requests and a series of other functions that will soon come onstream.

Looking ahead in the year, we remain focused on leveraging our technological leadership and our core strengths, ongoing operating model transformation and the power of the Telekom Group to drive further growth, accelerate this transformation and enhance Greece's position in the European digitalization scene. We remain confident in delivering our 2026 guidance and generating sustainable growth and long-term value for our shareholders and all stakeholders.

I will hand over now to Babis to provide more details of the quarter.

Thank you, Kostas, and welcome to everyone from me as well. As Kostas pointed out, the first quarter results confirm our positive trajectory.

Total revenues increased by 4.9%, mainly reflecting continued growth in mobile, positive performance in fixed retail and strong momentum in System Solutions. In fixed, retail service revenues grew by 1.1%, a trend similar to 2025, driven by strong FTTH adoption, the contribution to fixed wireless access and sustained strength in our TV business.

Looking in more detail. FTTH net additions exceeded 58,000, marking another record quarter despite the absence of state subsidies in the market. Our network expansion, now covering over 2.1 million homes, continues to broaden the addressable market, supporting both higher penetration and network utilization. A key contributor going forward will be our UFBB network in rural and semi-rural areas where we have recently made commercially available.

We remain on track to reach around 2.4 million by end of this year. As a result, our FTTH connect customers reached 625,000, representing 26% of broadband base, up from 18% a year ago. This strong momentum, combined with solid wholesale takeup, translated into higher network utilization, which increased by more than 10 percentage points, reaching a bit over 39%.

Fixed wireless access continued to build momentum with the total base reaching 100,000, reflecting strong uptake following the launch of our 5G Wi-Fi offering and is becoming an important contributor to broadband performance and customer retention. Importantly, the shift towards higher speed offerings, both FTTH and 5G Wi-Fi, supports ARPU and enables us to capture incremental value. As a result, across broadband, we maintained our market leadership despite continued competitive intensity.

In parallel, we continue to enhance the in-home experience with solutions such as Fiber-to-the-Room and mesh Wi-Fi repeaters, reinforcing differentiation and creating additional value.

Our TV business remained a key contributor to fixed performance with revenues up almost 10%, although we are now running without the benefit of price increases. Subscriber base increased by over 8% year-on-year and net additions reached 15,000, double those of the first quarter last year, supported by strong content, anti-piracy measures and the removal of the 10% pay TV tax.

Turning to our mobile business. Revenue maintained the momentum, recording an increase of 5.5%. The robust performance reflects the impact of two key pricing initiatives: the CPI adjustments implemented back in September now fully reflected in the numbers, while prepaid continues to benefit from the adjustments introduced in March last year, which are now fully annualized. We recently implement certain initiatives again in the prepaid, albeit to a lesser extent, with the introduction of a higher denomination in the digital channels as well.

The postpaid segment continued to expand with strong net additions of 51,000, up 7.6% year-on-year, a new record. Growth was primarily driven by ongoing prepaid to postpaid migrations, supporting incremental value for customers. Our network leadership remains our key advantage with 5G coverage above 99% and 5G+ at over 79%, while data usage continued rising with average monthly consumption per user reaching 19.3 gigabytes, up 22% year-on-year.

Turning to wholesale. The revenue decline in the quarter primarily reflects the planned phaseout of low-margin international travel traffic, as we have repeatedly communicated. The impact in the quarter was a bit over EUR 50 million and will continue to weigh on revenues over the next couple of years. On the national side, trends remain broadly consistent with the recent quarters. We continue to see pressure from fiber rollouts by other operators where we used to have copper, partly offset by increased utilization of our FTTH infrastructure by others. This is reflected in another record quarter for FTTH wholesale net additions, which reached 47,000 compared to 28,000 a year ago.

Total other revenues rose by 40% in the quarter, driven by System Solutions, which recorded a 76% year-on-year increase. This reflects the accelerated execution of digitalization projects as we progress through the final phase of recovery and resilience fund. Moving ahead, particularly in the second half, we expect this cycle to normalize. However, our strategic focus is increasingly shifting towards the private sector, supported by the expansion of our cloud, data center and cybersecurity offerings while we gradually strengthen our EU presence.

Total operating expenses excluding depreciation, amortization, impairment and restructuring-related costs increased by EUR 32.5 million year-on-year, entirely in line with revenue growth, driven mainly by higher ICT-related expenses. We also incurred higher costs related to the expansion of fiber connectivity, meaning the cost of connecting customers to FTTH, and the seasonal increase in marketing activity. At the same time, we continue to actively manage our cost base with efficiency gains, most evident in personnel, supported by ongoing voluntary exit programs.

Our transformation program is delivering structural improvements with the ratio of indirect cost to service revenues declining to 28% compared to 31% a year ago. In parallel, we continue to leverage our app and web channels, shifting customer interactions to digital with e-sales over 36%, digital payments over 42% and e-top-ups at 53%.

Adjusted EBITDA after leases further accelerated in the quarter, increasing by 2.8%. The small drop in margin to 39.4% compared to 40.2% a year ago reflects the higher contribution from low-margin revenue streams, particularly System Solutions. At the same time, ongoing cost efficiencies helped to partly offset cost increases during the period. This keeps us firmly on track to deliver EBITDA growth of around 3% in 2026.

Before moving to cash flow, a quick comment on net profit. Adjusted net profit amounted to EUR 154 million compared to EUR 162 million last year. The decline is primarily attributed to higher income tax, reflecting a EUR 10 million one-off benefit, which was reported last year from a foreign tax refund.

Now let's take a look at our CapEx and the free cash flow. On CapEx, while we see different allocation within the quarter, we reiterate our full year guidance of approximately EUR 600 million. Spending in the first quarter was reduced by 7.6%, mainly reflecting lower spending seasonal on TV content. Free cash flow after leases amounted to EUR 60 million in the quarter. This decline from EUR 106 million last year was primarily driven by the timing of income tax payments made at the beginning of 2026, in line with our scheduled plan and relating to prior year installments.

We expect the trend to reverse in the second half, and we remain on track to deliver our full year free cash flow guidance. Excluding one-off tax items mainly related to the Romanian disposal tax benefit, underlying free cash flow is expected to be in the range of EUR 570 million to EUR 580 million. And this assumes that the spectrum auction will take place next year, and we expect to provide further updates as more information becomes available.

Operator, we are now available to provide for any further clarifications or questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Stamatios Draziotis with Eurobank Equities.

Three, if I may, please. Firstly, just on ICT, which, as you said, was very strong in Q1. System Solutions, up almost 80%. Just wondering how we should think about the quarterly phasing of ICT revenues as RRF-related projects move closer to completion. So that's the first question.

Secondly, on fixed retail, which rose 1% this quarter. Just wondering because the KPIs are indeed quite healthy and a much stronger than the revenue growth, what needs to happen for this operational momentum to translate into a clear acceleration in fixed retail revenue growth, please?

And lastly, I'm not sure if you want to comment on PPC's participation in the consultation process regarding spectrum because it seems to raise the possibility of a broader telecom strategy beyond fiber for PPC. So just wondering how you assess the strategic significance of this move for the Greek market, please.

Thank you, Stamati, for the question. This is Kostas speaking. Let me start with the last one. I'm afraid it is too early for us to be in a position to comment on anything. The public consultation was over last night. The good news is that the starting prices are reasonable. Now, of course, the whole process will come down to the final list of participants and the spectrum bidding dynamics. I think that we will be smarter in the next few months once we know the final structure of the auction issued by the regulator. So nothing more to add at this point in time.

Now moving into the first question around ICT. For sure, this year the ICT revenues are front-loaded. I think that we commented, both myself and Babis, that there is an ongoing momentum around the RRF-funded projects, which will have to be completed in time. So we would expect progressively this growth to normalize as we move towards the remaining quarters of this year. Having said that, we are not standing still. We are preparing ourselves for the next year. We would expect to see the digitalization of the public sector continuing, possibly some new funding initiatives to support this one.

In parallel, we are increasing our focus when it comes to our Brussels office, competing for more European projects, including NATO. And as we have communicated in our previous interactions, we are doubling down on the private sector, including focusing on cloud, including AI-driven solutions and cybersecurity. Indicatively, probably you have picked it up that we have introduced the first kind of AI workload capabilities through our GPU-as-a-Service product launched recently. So a good enough, I would say, set of tools that would allow us to continue this momentum.

And your last question with regards to fixed retail. First of all, we are pleased with our quarter 1 performance, which is in line more or less with what we have already communicated as part of our outlook. The drivers are the usual ones like FTTH, fixed wireless access and pay TV. As we said when we provided the outlook, we believe that we are going to stay on the positive territory for this year even marginally, which is more or less what we see in Q1. So nothing more to add at this point in time.

The next question is from the line of Harry Soni with JPMorgan.

I hope you can hear me. I've got a couple of questions. The first...

I'm sorry. Can you please speak a little closer to your microphone because we cannot hear you very well.

Sure. So my first question is around the mobile growth, which was mid-single digits for Q1. So you've obviously got the full effect of your price rises now come through. So would you be able to break down this 5% to 6% growth in terms of what came through from CPI price rises, what came through from the upselling and what came through from the prepaid to postpaid migrations? And do you think this mid-single-digit growth could continue for 2026?

And my second question is just around the ARPU. So mobile ARPUs again were pretty strong, 5% to 6% growth in Q1. Fixed ARPUs, I think, took a bit of a deceleration from Q4 at around 2% to 3% down to maybe flat in Q1. So is there anything you can do on the fixed side of things, maybe you could do price rises as you've done within mobile?

Thank you, Harry, for the questions. So let me start with the mobile part. First of all, we are really happy. We also commented on the record high year-over-year postpaid base growth, which, of course, is to a great extent on back of the pre to post momentum. I mean, we have shared with you that out of every pre to post migration, we are generating roughly EUR 4 to EUR 5 incremental ARPU, which is a big contributor to the overall mobile service revenue growth.

This, of course, in combination with the full effect that we had in this quarter of the CPI implemented in Q4, but also the last quarter of the effect of a minimum top-up with more for more adjustments that we did in prepaid back into last year, are delivering an exceptionally strong Q1. Now with the minimum prepaid top-up effect fading away in Q2 '26, we expect some rationalization of the growth trend. But we are confident that we are going to be in line with our full year outlook and have a similar growth level in mobile service revenue as we had in last year.

Now when it comes to CPI, I mean, as I already commented, we implemented the CPI back in December 2026 (sic) [ 2025 ]. Any pricing decision is always closely aligned with the market dynamics. The competitive landscape in Greece continues to evolve, so we are actively monitoring the development to ensure that we have the right balance between value for the customers and sustainable growth.

The only thing that I can add here is that our outlook that we are confirming for this year does not assume any additional price-related measures beyond what has been implemented in December 2025.

The next question is from the line of John Karidis with Deutsche Bank.

I had three questions, please. Firstly, regarding ICT or System Solutions in Brussels, what is the incidence or not of OTE competing with Deutsche Telekom for business?

Secondly, coming back to Greece. Stop selling ADSL, to what extent would permission to do that be another meaningful positive for the company? And if the regulator is deliberating this, could you give us some sort of update on potential timing?

And then a numbers question. Miscellaneous revenues were up 50% year-on-year. Can we have some visibility on what the drivers there were, please?

Thank you, John. Let me start with the first question around T-Systems. First of all, for sure, we are not competing. We are complementing each other, and that's the idea in order to increase the likelihood of us again as many projects as possible. So there is nothing to worry. To the contrary, we are trying to make the most out of each other strengths, and there are a lot, I have to say, based on how we have managed to grow our presence in the last 2, 3 years.

Now when it comes to your second question, I mean, today, we are not selling any more FTTC-based connections in areas that have been covered with FTTH. And this is what the regulator has prescribed as of September last year, also reflected in the momentum of FTTH that has picked up. This is what we currently have. Anything beyond that going into the future, it has not yet been specified. We will be monitoring because, for sure, I mean, this is going to be another possible lever to accelerate the fiberization of the country and catch up with the rest of the European leaders.

Now on the miscellaneous, Babis, if you could help us.

Yes. Out of the total number which, as we reported, grew 40%, System Solutions contributed the most of it. And so from the remaining part, what accounts for the biggest part of the increase is the accounting recognition of the UFBB execution via our build-out of the subsidized program in the semi-rural, urban areas.

And these ones are booked both due to the complexity of accounting for subsidized implementation, accounting both in revenues, other revenues and other costs. And they cross out at the margin, EBITDA level. So it's a technical situation, and this accounts for the increasing rollout of the UFBB programs.

Can I just go back on the first question in Brussels? Is there other reasons to think that being part of Deutsche Telekom and part of T-Systems is actually increasing your success prospects outside Greece?

As I said before, John, I mean, whenever we are missing some specific capabilities that T-Systems can complement, we are making the most of it and vice versa. So we work collaboratively in order to increase our footprint, I would say.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Ioannis Noikokyrakis with Alpha Finance.

I had two questions, but I will limit this to one. The question goes like that. I mean we are in May this year, and we have run almost half of the year now. Do you see any change in market dynamics following PPC's proposition in the market? Do you see any pressure in the market, any change in trends?

Thank you, Yani, for the question. I mean, the Greek market has been competitive and remains competitive. There are a number of players in the market against which we are competing, trying to make the most out of our strengths including our networks, our comprehensive portfolio of services, reflecting into the numbers that we shared with you today, especially when it comes to fixed broadband that you see that we managed to keep are very stable despite a heated competitive environment. So nothing new or materially different. Just a lot of competition against which we managed so far to keep our relative position in the market.

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you all for your attention, questions and, of course, for your interest in OTE. We will be meeting again in late July to discuss the first half year results. Until then, have a nice day, and enjoy a wonderful weekend.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant day.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gellie, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the OTE conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Kostas Nebis, CEO of OTE Group; Mr. Babis Mazarakis, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Panayiotis Gabrielides, Chief Marketing Officer, Consumer segment, OTE Group; and Mr. Evrikos Sarsentis, Head of IR and M&A. Mr. Nebis, you may proceed.

Thank you, and warm welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining OTE's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results Call. 2025 was another successful year for OTE. We achieved solid results that highlight the effectiveness of our strategy and the dedication of our teams. Revenues increased, profitability growth gathered pace with positive momentum visible both in our Fixed and Mobile businesses. Throughout the year, our performance has accelerated.

And in the final quarter of the year, this momentum became even more pronounced. In the Fixed segment, we have seen a return to retail growth after 4 years, marking a significant inflection point. We accelerated the transition to Fiber-to-the-Home, leveraging on the ongoing expansion of our FTTH network. In 2025, we delivered record high FTTH customer additions and this strong momentum continued throughout the fourth quarter.

We have also seen increased utilization of our fiber infrastructure, which is essential for maximizing the returns on our investments. Additionally, the introduction of the new regulatory framework ending the sale of FTTC products in buildings already connected with FTTH will further support the shift to fiber connections.

This will bring increased customer satisfaction, lower churn and meaningful cost savings. We remain, by a long way, the largest fiber network provider in Greece and the recent strategic acquisition of TERNA FIBER for the UFBB projects will allow us to extend the FTTH coverage in the coming years. At the same time, as the project becomes commercially available, we anticipate it will accelerate the fiber transition process of our customer base. We are particularly pleased that our fiber investments are delivering measurable national impact. In 2025, Greece improved its global Fixed Broadband ranking by 18 positions based on Ookla Speedtest Global Index, primarily driven by our accelerated rollout.

This progress is fully aligned with our vision to elevate Greece at the forefront of digitization in Europe. Our FWA service launched in 2025 to bridge fiber connectivity gaps has gained strong momentum and is supporting our Fixed Retail positive trajectory. I would also like to highlight the outstanding performance of our Pay-TV business over the past year. We delivered robust double-digit growth, fueled by our strategic partnership for sports content sharing and the enhanced antipiracy measures.

Additionally, the recent removal of the 10% special tax starting this year supports our confidence for continued momentum as the product becomes even more affordable. Turning to our Mobile segment. We continue to deliver outstanding results, further solidifying our market leadership. In the fourth quarter, our Mobile business achieved particularly robust growth, accelerating further from the positive performance that we had achieved throughout the year. The ongoing transition from prepaid to postpaid plans, rising demand for high data allowances and higher adoption of 5G-enabled devices have all contributed to this performance.

We're especially proud to operate the only commercial available 5G stand-alone network in Greece, setting us apart from the competition. Through our 5G SA deployment, Greece now ranks fourth globally and first in Europe in 5G stand-alone speeds, once again based on Ookla global 5G stand-alone footprint, reinforcing our structural advantage in mobile.

Our commitment to delivering top quality network performance was further validated this year as we once again received certifications from both Ookla and umlaut. These recognitions underscore our ongoing dedication to providing the best network experience in the country. In B2B, OTE played a pivotal role in advancing digitization. Our ICT business achieved robust double-digit growth and expanded to deliver international projects as well, further reinforcing our leadership in digital transformation and underscoring our commitment to Greece's digital future. We have expanded our services to private and international segments outside Greece to fill the gap once the EU RRF drives out next year. We continue to invest in our core competencies while strengthening at the same time our market differentiation and reinforcing the value that we deliver to our customers.

Our non-phone services continue to grow and an energy partnership with Protergia brought new value-added benefits to our households. We introduced the Magenta AI platform, bringing the power of AI to the hands of our customers, a value-enhancing offering that fosters innovation, drives diversification and further strengthening our commitment to customer satisfaction.

Finally, I would like to say a few words about our shareholder remuneration. In 2025, we streamlined our portfolio by selling our Romanian operations. And this has significantly enhanced our annual cash flow generation and enabled us to deliver additional value to our shareholders. Today, we announced our new remuneration policy, which from now on will be based on the actual free cash flow of the previous year instead of the projected free cash flow, marking a significant step forward and towards enhancing visibility, transparency and flexibility.

We are proposing a 22% increase in the dividend and a 16% increase in our share buyback program. Our payout is virtually 100% of our free cash flow, clearly demonstrating our commitment to returning value to our shareholders. Beyond our financial performance, in 2025, we continue to pursue responsibly our growth. Our strong commitment to sustainability continue to deliver positive results as reflected in our sustainability statement. This year marked a major climate milestone since we achieved greenhouse gas neutrality in the group's own operation.

Looking ahead, we remain steadfast in our mission to accelerate growth, drive digital and AI-led transformation, leading Gigabit networks with a clear aspiration to become Europe's top digital telco. We are committed to enhancing our operating and production model by leveraging innovative technologies, notably AI to boost efficiency and performance. We are confident that we will meet the evolving needs of our customers, creating lasting value for all and position Greece among the leaders in digitization in Europe.

It is a strong market positioning that gives us the confidence to target a further growth acceleration this year to approximately 3% in EBITDA despite the challenges in the market. I will let Babis provide the details for the last quarter of the previous year. Briefly, I would like to emphasize that we continued our growth acceleration, boosted from all angles of our key revenue streams. Babis, to you.

Thank you, Kostas, and welcome to everyone on the call from me as well. Before moving on to the details of the quarter, let me briefly walk you through our new shareholder policy, which we consider a significant step towards delivering attractive and sustainable returns to our shareholders. And this reflects our strengthened financial position and reinforces our clear commitment to delivering value to our shareholders.

So following the completion of Romania disposal, we distributed an extraordinary dividend of EUR 40 million in December 2025. And now we adopt our new Shareholder Remuneration Policy to usual market practice by basing it on the actual free cash flow generated in the previous year, we call it [ ex-post ] free cash flow instead of the projected free cash flow, the example, free cash flow. This approach provides greater visibility and transparency on performance and the remuneration while maintaining the flexibility required to ensure a smooth and sustainable remuneration trajectory.

In 2026, we intend to distribute virtually 100% of the actual 2025 free cash flow, including the funds used to undertake the processing of the UFBB II project. Overall, this translates into total shareholder remuneration of EUR 532 million, comprising EUR 355 million in dividends, equivalent to EUR 0.8777 per share and EUR 177 million allocated to share buybacks. This represents a 22% year-on-year increase in dividends and a 16% increase in share buybacks compared to 2024.

Now turning on the quarterly analysis. In Greece, we achieved a robust 8.7% decrease in revenues, supported by strong performance in System Solutions, positive trajectory in Fixed Retail and accelerated growth in Mobile. Retail Fixed service revenues increased by 2.6% this quarter with higher FTTH uptake, the main engine of our Fixed Retail growth alongside strong TV growth and rising Fixed Wireless Access adoption.

Turning to our FTTH. We had an excellent fourth quarter, adding a record of net 58,000 additions, bringing our total FTTH customer base to 567,000. Retail FTTH represents 24% of our total broadband base compared to only 17% a year ago. This continued momentum together with sustainable wholesale demand for our infrastructure is driving higher network utilization, which has increased to 34%, highlighting both the strong demand of our FTTH network and the resilience of our wholesale partnerships.

Furthermore, the recently adopted regulatory framework allowing to stop-selling FTTC in buildings already connected with FTTH is accelerating the transition to fiber and improving the monetization of our network investments. During the quarter, we continue to make strong progress in the deployment of our Fiber-to-the-Home network, reaching 2.1 million home passed, in line with our plan and targeting 2.4 million homes passed by 2026.

Our Fixed Retail trends continue to be supported by our FWA, Fixed Wireless Access service, which continues to gain strong momentum with total subscribers reaching 55,000, highlighting the growing contribution of FWA to our Broadband business. Our TV segment delivered another robust quarter with revenue growth maintaining its double-digit momentum. Our customer base continued to expand, increasing by 7.1% with 19,000 net additions in quarter 4 of 2025, exceeding the same quarter last year, a nice achievement more than a year after the agreement implementation. We have now reached the anniversary of the benefit from the ARPU increase. However, the antipiracy legislation in place and the recent removal of the 10% special tax on pay-TV as of January 2026 gives us confidence in further adoption for legitimate platforms.

Turning to our Mobile operations. Service revenues grew by 5.2%, accelerating further and delivering the strongest quarterly performance of the year. Our Postpaid segment continues its strong growth trajectory with the customer base expanding by 7.2%, making the ninth consecutive year of growth. This performance was supported by ongoing pre- to post migrations and record postpaid customer additions of 60,000 in the quarter.

Postpaid customers account for 43% of the total mobile base compared to 40% a year ago. We are also seeing continued progress in the adoption of unlimited packages, while 5G device penetration has now increased to 42.2% compared to only 33.5% in 2024. The strong growth in our Mobile operations is underpinned by our network leadership, which continues to be a key one of our competitive strengths. As Kostas mentioned, this was once again validated this year by our performance across key metrics. 5G now covers over 99% of the population, while 5G plus nearly 78%. Data usage continues its strong growth with average monthly consumption per user rising to 18.3 gigabytes, representing a 30% increase year-on-year.

In our Wholesale segment, revenue declined by 5% in the quarter, reflecting the natural drop in national streams and the anticipated drop in almost zero-margin international wholesale activities, which began phasing out and are expected to decline significantly over the next 2 years with an estimated impact of approximately EUR 170 million in '26 and a further EUR 130 million in '27 in revenues with no impact in EBITDA.

On the national wholesale front, we continue to see a steady decline, while at the same time, experiencing increasing volumes on our infrastructure as a result of wholesale agreements. Indicatively, we added 135,000 wholesale net additions in 2025 compared to 60,000 a year ago. Other revenues grew by 26.7% during the quarter, driven by solid performance across our ICT portfolio. In particular, our System Solutions segment delivered an exceptional performance, recording a 57.5% year-on-year increase, reflecting strong demand and continued execution momentum in this area.

As the, Recovery and Resilience Facility, RRF, gradually reaches its conclusion, its value contribution is expected to taper off. However, nationally funded projects are anticipated to continue supporting activity levels, while our strategic focus has increasingly shifted towards the private sector and our EU presence. Total operating expenses, excluding depreciation, amortization and one-off items increased by EUR 65 million in the quarter, driven solely by costs directly linked to top line growth, most notably higher third-party fees recorded within other operating expenses, reflecting the strong momentum in our ICT.

We are also continuing to incur operating expenses related to the expanding FTTH adoption, particularly costs associated with the final phase of customer connections. At the same time, we remain firmly focused on our cost discipline across the organization with savings most visible in personnel expenses, supported by the ongoing benefits of our voluntary exit programs. In parallel, as part of our transformation of our model, we selectively deploy AI-driven automation to structurally improve efficiency supporting a further improvement in our indirect cost to service revenue ratio. As a result, adjusted EBITDA after leases increased by 2.3% in the quarter 4 of 2025, marking our strongest quarterly growth rate of the year.

This performance provides a solid foundation as we look ahead to 2026, where we expect to accelerate EBITDA growth to approximately 3%. Now let's have a look at the CapEx and cash flow. Firstly, CapEx in the fourth quarter amounted to EUR 174.5 million, bringing full year CapEx to EUR 612 million, up nearly 9% compared to 2024. The increase primarily reflects the continued expansion of our FTTH footprint as well as the ongoing rollout of our 5G stand-alone network, further supporting our FWA growth.

For 2026, we expect CapEx to be around EUR 600 million. Free cash flow after leases from continuing operations reached EUR 168 million in the quarter, up from EUR 145 million in the same period last year. The increase was mainly driven by higher EBITDA in the quarter and improved working capital performance, which more than offset higher CapEx. For the full year of 2025, free cash flow stood at EUR 543 million.

Turning now to our outlook for 2026. We expect free cash flow to amount to approximately EUR 750 million. This estimate is based on the assumption that the upcoming spectrum auction takes place in 2027. As you know, a public consultation process is currently underway and the final timing and costs have not yet been confirmed. Excluding the one-off tax benefits, which are coming from the Romanian disposal and the resulting lower tax prepayments, the underlying organic free cash flow for 2026 is estimated to be around between -- in the range between EUR 570 million and EUR 580 million. With that, we conclude our speech and we are happy to take your questions. Thank you, operator.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Draziotis Stamatios with Eurobank Equities.

Three quick ones, if I may, please. Firstly, on Mobile growth in Q4, which as you mentioned accelerated materially to 5.2% up. Could you just tell us to what extent this reflected pricing actions, i.e., what the impact of pricing was in isolation? Secondly, on the outlook for next year, the acceleration of EBITDA growth to 3% stems from what exactly as per your budget? I mean I know there are many things that you've considered, but what is the main driver?

Is it the stronger mobile setup? Is it cost savings? And lastly, on the cash returns, just to clarify, you've guided for this EUR 570 million, EUR 580 million underlying free cash flow generation in '26. Given you will have basically already ring-fenced the spectrum-related amounts. Is it fair to interpret this as the likely envelope for total shareholder remuneration next year, obviously, subject to Board decisions?

Thank you, Stamatios, for the questions. Let me start with the first 2. As far as the Mobile growth is concerned, I mean, we are really pleased that throughout the year, we have seen Mobile growing in a healthy manner with a positive momentum across all quarters. It is true that in the last quarter of the year, we have seen a slightly higher growth rate. To a certain extent, this is also due to a stronger December, also part of it coming from the CPI implementation.

Also the fact that the Christmas offerings of this year have had a slightly lower effect versus last year. So these are the 2 things. Now going forward, I mean, when it comes to the Mobile performance, we expect more or less similar trends like in 2025, and I'm referring to the annual trends. The levers, the growth levers are more or less the same. We are relying a lot on pre to post migration. We still have a big chunk of our customers still on prepaid. This is helping us drive ARPU up by providing extra value to our customers. This is one thing. The second one is also Babis commented, we are trying to push postpaid customers to high-value tariffs, including the unlimited.

We still have a big part of our customer base who have not yet migrated to unlimited. And at the same time, we are facilitating that by penetrating deeper into our customer base, the 5G devices. So these are the key levers based on which we have been growing our Mobile service revenue in '23 -- or in '25, and we expect similar trends in '26 as well.

Now when it comes to our EBITDA growth and moving from 2.1% that we managed to deliver this year to 3%, I think that the biggest difference is going to be on the IDC front on our costs because top line-driven growth, we expect more or less similar numbers as in 2025. But as a result of us running a couple of IDC-focused initiatives like a massive waste load reduction program in our front line. This in conjunction with our operating/production model transformation using technology, digital technologies, including AI, will help us also deliver an incremental boost to our EBITDA by rationalizing our costs. So this is the biggest difference comparing the 2 years.

Yes, regarding the forecast, our guidance for this year's organic or underlying free cash flow, as you said, this estimate to be between EUR 570 million and EUR 580 million. That will be the base, which will conclude and decide in 2027, what will be the Shareholder Remuneration Policy. Obviously, the payout and the split will be decided in early 2027.

That's clear, Babis. If I can just follow up on this. I know it's early days, but is there any reason why this amount will be lower? I'm just trying to think because could there be anything else other than spectrum? I mean of significant size. Or is there anything that could swing this number or actually drag it lower?

Well, the results of the spectrum auction cannot be predicted, of course, that's one thing. Also, what is -- what we are also taking under consideration, as it was mentioned in the Shareholder Remuneration Policy is the fact that all the one-off items which these years were the positive tax break and the prepayments that are associated with that one.

Obviously, this will be repeated -- will go the other way around in 2027. So our ambition here is to ensure that these one-offs are smoothen out in order to have a proper trajectory in our shareholder remuneration growth. So we'll take this under consideration when the time comes to decide the shareholder policy for 2027. However, I want to be very clear that the organic base to decide upon is the range between EUR 570 million and EUR 580 million.

The next question is from the line of Soni Ajay with JPMorgan.

I've got 2. And the first is around your fixed growth of 2.6% this quarter. So you stated FTTH is a key driver. TV is growing double digit. I just want to understand the building blocks to get to the 2.6% between the growth within FTTH, TV, Fixed Wireless Access and then maybe some of the headwinds, which could be from copper or FTTC, so that's the first question.

The second one was just a follow-up on -- you're talking about pushing clients to unlimited data bundles. I'm just trying to understand the size of the opportunity for you guys. So maybe a few questions within this, but it would be good to know what portion of your base is not on unlimited data bundles? And what's the ARPU uplift when you push them to the unlimited data bundle? And then also -- sorry, within this is maybe an understanding of how this trend has evolved this year? What have you been able to do so far this year on this initiative?

Okay. So let me start with the first question around fixed. Yes, indeed, I mean, Q4 was a very strong quarter. I mean on the back of both our Fixed Broadband performance as well as our pay-TV performance. I mean the main driver is, for sure, the FTTH penetration. So we recorded another record quarter, and we had a record year when it comes to FTTH net adds, moving customers from copper to FTTH is always coming with a plus when it comes to the ARPU. This is one lever.

The second lever is, of course, Fixed Wireless Access. That was an important addition to our Fixed portfolio lineup because this allowed us to be more competitive in parts of the country where we were suffering from Starlink, especially the poor copper served part of the country. With us positioning ourselves with the Fixed Wireless Access product, we managed to, first of all, defend our customers while at the same time, generating some ARPU uplift moving them from copper to Fixed Wireless Access services.

And pay-TV, I mean, we still believe that there's a lot more to come. The pay-TV penetration, the legitimate pay-TV penetration in Greece is still south of 35% when on average in Europe, it is ranging between 50% and 60%. So what we experienced now is all the benefits from the stricter antipiracy measures that the government has pushed through. This in combination with the fact that we have the elimination of the special tax levy that was effectively making the legitimate pay-TV prices 10% more expensive.

This is out of the 1st of January. These all 3 are contributing to the growth that we have seen for the first time after 4 years in the Fixed Retail revenues. And this is more or less what we expect to see also stepping into 2026. Of course, taking into consideration the challenges in the competitive environment. But we believe -- I mean, we feel confident that when it comes to the Fixed Retail revenues, we are going to stay on the positive territory during the course of 2026.

Now when it comes to Mobile, I mean, as I said, there are 2 key levers which are driving the Mobile service revenue growth. And these key levers have been behind this roughly 3% full year service revenue growth that we have experienced during 2025. As I said before, we are expecting a similar kind of growth trajectory in 2026 by moving customers from prepaid to postpaid. This is delivering roughly EUR 3 to EUR 4 uplift out of every transaction, but also moving customers from -- within the Postpaid segment from lower value bundles to higher value bundles including unlimited.

Now in particular to your question with what is the percentage of our base who are still not migrated to unlimited is roughly 60% to 65%. And by moving customers not only to unlimited, it's not only one tariff. We are trying to progressively step up the customers from lower bundle tariffs, data tariffs to higher data tariffs, including the unlimited. We are generating roughly EUR 1 to EUR 2 out of every of these migrations transactions, just to give you some indicative numbers.

Great. And what's that trend been? So what have you managed to move the unlimited base from and to during this year?

The unlimited base grew by 7 to 8 percentage points this year. This compares to roughly 10 percentage points last year. So this is the base. But we still have 65-ish percent of the base still not migrated to unlimited. So a lot of room to grow further.

The next question is from the line of Rakicevic Sofija with Goldman Sachs.

I have 3 questions. The first one is, what are the key risks that you currently see in the German -- sorry, in the Greek market and your execution with it? And also, overall, what are the key risks to your 2026 guidance? The second question is you have implemented price increases on Mobile, but how are you thinking about price increases in Fixed, including both fiber and TV? Could you do more in 2026 and beyond? And lastly, could this rising fiber demand drive incremental CapEx beyond your current plans? And how do you expect for it to impact OpEx going into 2026?

Okay. Let me take the second question first about price increase. I mean when it comes to pricing, I mean you need to understand we are constantly monitoring the market developments. We are operating in a very competitive market. And we are adjusting our prices accordingly, aiming to always provide the best value to our customers. So I don't have anything particular to comment at this point in time.

I'm just sharing our thinking and our attitude when it comes to pricing. When it comes to the FTTH and CapEx, I think that we have already guided for roughly EUR 600 million. This is what we have included in our envelope to support all our investment needs with FTTH for sure being one of the most important ones, but not the only one. And your last question -- I mean, your first question, when it comes to risk, I would not call them risk, we would call them challenges.

As I said, we are operating in a very competitive environment. So what we are trying to do is to stay focused on our priorities, on our strategic priorities on our investment plan and play on our strengths. And these are good enough and strong enough in order to allow us to defend our relative position in the market, but also to grow going forward. Babis, I do not know whether you would like to add something.

Just to add that the CapEx envelopes that we experienced in 2025, but also our guidance 2026 include already the rollout in the FTTH network that is necessary to support the growth that are supporting our guidance. So -- and as we, I think, repeatedly said in previous calls is that these levels of EUR 600 million is the peak that we see already as we are implementing the networks.

Ms. Rakicevic, are you finished with your questions.

Yes.

The next question is from the line of Patrick Maurice with Barclays.

It's actually Maurice Patrick at Barclays. I've got a few questions, please. The first one really relates to competitive fiber dynamics. We don't get a huge amount of details from PPC Group, although looking at your fiber numbers, it would suggest that really there isn't much disruption taking place in the fiber market from competing fiber networks. Maybe I'll ask the questions one by one. But if you could comment on your disruption from PPC and how you're seeing that impacting your business would be helpful.

Okay. I mean with regards to PPC, well, first of all, what we have seen out of them is that their activities have been limited to the introduction of a broadband-only product, in a relatively small footprint, at least compared to our footprint. I mean, to have -- I have to be honest here, we have not yet felt any material pressure or effect on our numbers. So we'll see how this is going to develop.

So we are managing to defend our broadband market share, as you can tell from our broadband numbers. And what we are leveraging is, first of all, our FTTH footprint, the one that we have already completed, the one that we are already building as well as our wholesale agreements with our partners and to repeat one more time that we have the most comprehensive and differentiated portfolio at this point in time in the market. So these are the things that are helping us defend our relative position. Now does this cover your question you asked...

Yes, that's good. So I was going to ask a follow-up, and the next question really was about wholesale. I missed some of the points you made about the revenue lower wholesale, high infrastructure point. I caught the point where you talked about 125,000 wholesale adds this year versus 60,000. But clearly, you have reciprocal arrangements with Vodafone and Wind regarding fiber where they sell in your footprint and likewise, you on [ their. ] So very helpful if you can put -- maybe repeat those revenue -- wholesale revenue numbers that you gave, I think, in the presentation, I missed them.

Okay. Let me start with the wholesale numbers, the wholesale fiber numbers on the back of the wholesale agreement. What we have seen in 2025 is us effectively doubling the net additions on to our fiber infrastructure coming out of us serving both Vodafone as well as Nova, so just to give you some numbers back in 2024, we have had 60,000 net adds on our infrastructure on a wholesale level. This 60,000 was -- has grown to 135,000 during the course of 2025. So more than doubled during the course of the year. And when it comes to the wholesale revenues, is this what you are asking for? Or you want to -- beyond...

I think you made in your prepared remarks a few comments about the wholesale revenue direction. I didn't catch them.

So the wholesale revenues for this year, as we also had guided in the previous calls, declined, the national wholesale revenues by roughly EUR 15 million. And we expect something similar lines also in 2026. So no change in the trend there.

Well, I understand that as we are rolling out, also Vodafone and Nova are rolling out in their part of Greece. And once they roll out, they are also migrating the customers to the retail customers to their own infrastructure, which has a pressure on our wholesale revenues.

Super clear. And then if I could ask a follow-up question to AJ's about FWA. So you've reported the FWA customer base. You seem to suggest in your remarks that it's really a defensive mechanism against Starlink as opposed to an alternative to OTE broadband. It would be very helpful if you could maybe expand a bit more in terms of what sort of -- what data usage do you see from these FWA customers? Is it typically in areas where you don't have fiber, where you're targeting them? Those sort of dynamics would be very helpful.

Good question. It is entirely in areas where we don't have fiber. So we have the right policies in place in order to make sure that this product is only sold in areas where we don't have fiber. And we call it more of a bridge technology in a sense that we are leveraging on our 5G network capabilities and particularly the 3.5 gigahertz and our stand-alone network, which allow us to allocate a slice of our network to these customers in order to provide faster speeds until we get there with our FTTH rollout, which takes more time in order to expand and to reach every corner of [ new countries. ]

Now when it comes to traffic, what we see is, I would say, very similar to Fixed Broadband usages in the range of 300, 400 gigs. This is what customers normally do. And this is a result of us providing a very competitive product to the one that they would get from Starlink. So this has helped us a lot kind of slow down a bit, at least the amount of customers that we were losing to Starlink until we launched the service at the beginning of the year.

And the traction has been extremely positive. We closed the year with slightly more than 55,000 customers now. We have exceeded the 65,000 customers. Very good reception from our customers, both as a defensive tool, but also in some cases, also as a slightly offensive one in areas where customers have chosen to take Starlink or some FMS solutions, we are not delivering on their expectations. But predominantly a defense and a bridge technology until FTTH gets there.

The next question is from the line of Karidis John with Deutsche Bank.

Firstly, can I ask about ICT revenue? It's really difficult from our side of the fence to sort of forecast this going forward. So anything you can say to help us would be useful. And in particular, on ICT revenue, with regard to business that you do outside Greece, how significant is that overall versus the total ICT revenue that you generate? And who do you sort of compete against? And why do you win versus your competitors?

Secondly, I just wanted to confirm that essentially, in any one period with regard to wholesale cost to access Nova's premium sports content. If you both have the same number of ads, then your net costs are nothing. But if in any particular period, you add more customers than they do, then you actually have an incremental cost. Do I understand this correctly, please? And then very lastly, in terms of energy costs, I'm trying to understand how we should think about these going forward, both in terms of OTE becoming more efficient and therefore, using less of it or maybe growing less fast, the usage, but also what's happening to unit prices, the ones that you have to -- that you incur?

Okay. John, thanks for the question. So let me start with the ICT. I understand the stagger. It is a multifaceted kind of initiative, which cuts across both Greece, including public sector, private sector, but also our efforts in the European Commission. So first of all, if we could provide some guidance, I would say we are expecting 2026 to be in double digits growth. I would say, in between 10% and 20%.

This is what we see out of the pipeline that we have already kind of lined up. This is one information I could possibly provide. Now with regards to the questions that what makes us different is, first of all, our credibility. We have a strong track record of delivering on time. This is the biggest challenge that all projects are facing. One thing is to assign, another thing is to deliver them. So we have managed to build credibility both in the Greek market as well as outside Greece, being very reliable.

We have the right people, the right skill set, but also the right track record that makes everybody feel confident that once they assign the project to us, it will be delivered on time. When it comes to the contribution of our European business, it is not immaterial. It is progressively growing. It is, I would say, something around 15% and 20% of our total System Solution business. Now your second question was about pay-TV. I think that you have picked it up rightly. So yes, if we outgrow Nova when it comes to the way we scale our base, yes, there is some extra costs, which are already factored into our P&L. So whatever you see reported also includes this cost element.

And regarding the energy, I think you framed it very well. We have, first of all, quite a few programs for energy saving around the network. So while we are expanding our network in terms of base stations and also via fixed infrastructure, we envisage that for 2026, we will manage to have a stable consumption. So therefore, whatever increase comes from the expansion of network is offset by the cost savings programs.

Now regarding the pricing, given the turbulence in the previous years, we are now having a good percentage of our total energy consumption under PPA agreement. So we have a little bit more -- high visibility for the costs. Therefore, overall, we expect 2026 cost of energy to be broadly in line with 2025 after a reduction in '25 versus '24, thanks to the PPA that we signed.

Congratulations to the entire team for a great set of numbers.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no audio questions at this moment. So we will now proceed with our webcast participant questions, the written questions. The next question is from Raciborski Piotr with Wood & Co. And I quote, "What is the exact value of the one-off tax item related to Telekom Romania sale? What apart from the tax item causes the difference between FCF and adjusted FCF?"

So as we explained in the call, the difference between the, let's say, the top line expected free cash flow of EUR 750 million and the organic, which is between EUR 570 million and EUR 580 million is directly due to tax items. This comprised 2 things. One is the direct tax break we have from the sale of Romania. This is in the area of EUR 130-plus million. And the remaining is the fact that because of the lower tax payments this year, we are also called to pay less of the prepayment of the tax for the next year because this is the structure of the Greek tax system, of a difference around EUR 40 million to EUR 50 million.

Now the latter part of the prepayment will be reversed next year because the tax break will not be present in 2027. Therefore, this prepayment that we see this year will be paid next year. So in order to normalize all these one-off effects, we have, I think, correctly guided for the organic part of the free cash flow, which is the base for our forecast.

The next question is from our webcast participant, [ Katsikas George with Banking News. ] And I quote, "Could you tell us what plans you have for the EUR 500 million bond that matures in September?"

The plan is obviously to refinance it. And as the time approaches to this date, we'll be coming more explicit about how this is going to be refinanced.

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.

So thanks a lot for your attention, questions and for your interest in OTE. We will meet again in May to discuss the first quarter results. Until then, have a nice day.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good evening.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gellie, Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the OTE conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the third quarter and 9 months 2025 financial results. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Kostas Nebis, CEO of OTE Group; Mr. Babis Mazarakis, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Panayiotis Gabrielides, Chief Marketing Officer, Consumer segment, OTE Group. Mr. Nebis, you may proceed.

Thank you, and good morning or good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to review our third quarter results. I would like to start with our recent exit from the Romanian market. We are very pleased to have successfully completed a key milestone that will lead to a substantial improvement in our annual cash flow and enhance shareholder value. In line with our commitment, we have adjusted our shareholder remuneration following the completion of this transaction by distributing an extraordinary dividend.

Before reviewing the quarterly performance, I would also like to highlight a recent agreement to expand the ultrafast broadband coverage in the remaining lots of rural and semirural areas across Greece through a subsidized projects covering a further 480,000 homes and businesses. This will further solidify our leadership in the market by connecting even more people to fiber speed networks. This initiative underscores OTE's commitment to providing to as many households and businesses as possible, the fastest, broadest and most reliable gigabit connectivity services, driving Greece digitization and transformation going forward.

Turning to our quarterly performance now. I would like to stress above all the acceleration of the recovery in our fixed retail service revenues that is supporting our overall growth in both revenues and profitability. The performance of our fixed retail services is accelerating, building on last quarter's momentum. This growth was driven by the increasing adoption of FTTH services, supported by the growing demand, voucher initiatives and our expanding network availability. We continue to lead with Greece's largest fiber network and further enhance our offerings to the customer premises. Our FTTH footprint is growing significantly, enabling more connections as we continue to record strong customer additions. The newly adopted regulatory framework for stop selling FTTC in FTTH already connected buildings will further boost the transition to fiber connection, further accelerating the monetization of our fiber network investments and offer improved services to the end users.

At the same time, our fixed wireless access solution powered by 5G stand-alone technology is gaining significant traction, effectively bridging Gigabit connectivity gaps, contributing to positive broadband net adds in a traditionally weak performing quarter.

In our TV segment, we are seeing the positive impact of strengthened antipiracy measures and anticipate additional support from the abolition of the special tax at the beginning of next year, making our Pay-TV propositions even more affordable to the end users. Our TV business continues its robust growth and strong customer acquisitions. Building on our leading FTTH network, rising fixed wireless access adoption and strong TV performance, we remain focused on enhancing customer value. In line with this, we have deepened our convergent services strategy by partnering up with one of the major energy providers to enhance further the value offered to our retail customers.

In the Mobile segment, we continue our strong growth driven by our network leadership and attractive commercial offerings. The successful transition from prepaid to postpaid plans, the optimization of our prepaid portfolio and the increasing adoption of larger bundles and 5G devices penetration, altogether contribute to our solid performance. The recent CPI adjustments, which were mild after many years of experiencing much higher inflationary pressures on our cost drivers were combined with additional customer benefits and we contribute to some extent in our future growth. We remain at the forefront of the market as the operator of Greece's only commercially available 5G stand-alone network, and the reliability and resilience of our network continue to reinforce our long-term trajectory.

We have also recently introduced the Magenta AI portfolio services, aiming to democratize AI access in the Greek market. By integrating the power of AI, we are delivering great value, further strengthening our commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction, partnering up with a number of global leaders in AI innovation, leveraging the partnerships of the Telekom Group.

Our ICT business continued its strong momentum with another quarter of double-digit growth, highlighting our pivot at role in advancing the digitization of diverse sectors, supporting the digital transformation and businesses and the public sector organizations across Greece. To highlight, our recent contribution with advanced digital services and innovative educational tools in the educational sector, bringing all stakeholders closer to the gigabit society. In addition, our international ICT business is also growing, including projects for several European agencies. We remain focused on our operating and production model transformation, aiming to build a digital-first organization by actively deploying digital and AI tools. We have already enhanced areas like predictive network maintenance and customer care with AI role in customer interactions steadily growing, boosting efficiencies and delivering further value.

Before finishing this review, I would also like to briefly mention that we have undertaken the initiative to provide free of charge high-speed connections to around 600 schools in remote areas of Greece, leveraging our FWA technology, opening up access to the digital world and offering equal opportunities to digitization for all students in Greece.

Our strong performance relies on our strategic directions. The strength of our integrated services portfolio provides tangible benefits and helps us confidently navigate competitive challenges while driving our future growth ambitions. Looking ahead, we remain confident in our ability to lead the market, capitalize on new opportunities and consistently deliver on our commitments to our shareholders, customers and partners.

Babis, on to you.

Thank you, Kostas, and welcome to everyone on the call from me as well. As Kostas already pointed out, the completion of our exit from the Romanian market marks a significant milestone. From a financial perspective, this transaction strengthens our free cash flow on a sustainable base. We have adjusted our shareholder remuneration and will proceed with an extraordinary dividend distribution of around EUR 40 million or EUR 0.10 per share in the next month.

Now turning to our quarterly figures. In Greece, we achieved a robust 5% increase in revenue, reflecting continued strength across our Mobile, TV, broadband and ICT segments, which more than offset the expected headwinds in areas such as national wholesale. EBITDA rose by 2%, keeping us firmly on track for our full year objectives. Retail fixed service revenues accelerated the growth this quarter to 1.3%. Our TV segment delivered another strong quarter with revenues increasing by nearly 17%, maintaining a solid double-digit growth trajectory.

Our customer base expanded by 6.7%, almost matching the net additions reported in the same period last year despite this being the second year of our content sharing agreements. While we expect the anniversary effect from last year's Q4 price adjustments to impact year-on-year growth comparisons, our outlook for this segment remains positive. The adoption of antipiracy legislation this year, together with the removal of the 10% special tax on Pay-TV, which will be effective January 1, 2026 are paving the way to further encourage the take-up of legitimate platforms and reinforce our strong position in the market.

Our broadband segment delivered a strong performance this quarter, achieving positive net customer additions despite the third quarter typically being seasonally the softer. We recorded [ 1,800 net profit additions ], driven primarily by the momentum in our fixed wireless access, FWA offering, which now serves 33,000 subscribers.

Turning to our FTTH services. There, we delivered another strong quarter, recording 38,000 net additions and bringing our total FTTH customer to 509,000. Our retail FTTH customers now represent 22% of our total broadband base, up from 15% in the same period last year. This robust growth, coupled with sustained wholesale demand of our infrastructure is driving increased network utilization and monetization. Utilization level has risen to 33%, reflecting both the ongoing demand for our FTTH network and the strength of our wholesale partnerships. In addition, under the new regulation in place, we have now started to stop offering non-FTTH services in buildings already connected with FTTH. This change serves as a key driver for customer upgrades and accelerate the transition to fiber to the home products.

Now turning to our mobile operations. Their service revenues increased by 2.7%, sustaining the solid momentum. Our postpaid maintains its strong growth trajectory with the customer base expanded by 6.4%, primarily driven by ongoing pre-to-post migrations. Starting from December this year, we will implement a CPI-linked increase in monthly fees for our mobile customers. The adjustment is modest, 2.6%, averaging less than EUR 0.5 and will apply to roughly 2 million postpaid customers and will support the continued growth of mobile service revenues in the coming quarters.

Our network leadership continues to serve as a key competitive differentiation. 5G coverage now exceeds 99% of the population while 5G+ coverage has expanded to more than 75%. Data usage maintains its strong upward trajectory, with average monthly consumption per user reaching 20.5 gigabytes per month, representing a 29% year-over-year increase.

In our wholesale segment, revenues increased by 4.2% in the quarter, but that was primarily driven by higher volumes in the low margin international traffic, which helped offset in revenue terms only the decline in national wholesale revenues.

Here, I would like to say that the international wholesale contributed approximately EUR 81 million in the quarter. However, we expect this revenue stream, international wholesale revenues, of course, to decline in the coming quarters as certain activities will be phased out. Specifically, we anticipate that approximately EUR 150 million in revenues will be removed from our records in the fourth -- at the end of the fourth quarter of this year and the small amount impacting the first quarter of 2026. The termination of certain agreements where OTE acts as transit carrier will have minimal, if [indiscernible] impact on profitability. Our national wholesale agreements on the other hand, continued to deliver solid volumes with 31,000 lines added to our network in the third quarter and 93,000 net additions year-to-date.

On the other revenue streams, our system solution businesses via core of our ICT segment continued its robust growth, delivering almost 38% increase in the quarter. This strong performance builds on the momentum established in previous periods, and we anticipate this positive trend will persist throughout the remaining of this year. The solid results in ICT helped to partially mitigate the decline in handset revenues, which decreased by 15%, primarily due to phase out of certain 0 margin activities there as well.

Total operating expenses, excluding depreciation, amortization and one-off items increased by EUR 34.3 million in the quarter, broadly in line with our revenue growth. The increase was mainly primarily attributable to higher costs directly associated with top line expansion, particularly increased third-party fees within our operating expenses, which reflect the strong momentum in our ICT segment, as we discussed before.

Additionally, we continue to incur certain operating expenses related to the growing adoption of fiber to the home, notably associated with the final phase of the connection of the customer. We remain, of course, firmly committed to cost discipline across all other several areas with continued savings most evident in personnel expenses, supported by the ongoing benefits from our [ X programs. ] As a result, adjusted EBITDA after leases increased by 2% in the quarter, maintaining the same positive trend as in the previous quarter. Our EBITDA margin reached 41%, representing a decrease of 120 basis points year-over-year, primarily reflecting a higher proportion of lower margin revenue streams. Overall, as we now approach the year-end, our performance reinforces our confidence in achieving our full year EBITDA target and guidance.

Now let's take a look at the CapEx and cash flow. First of all, CapEx was up 8.2% in the first 9 months, reaching EUR 437 million, largely reflecting continued rollout of fiber to the home and the expansion of our fixed wireless access infrastructure. Our full year CapEx guidance now stands at approximately EUR 600 million after stripping off the Romanian business. I would like to clarify that the acquisition of the [ repeat ] concession will not alter our CapEx guidance. We now anticipate that we will be covering nearly 3.5 million homes by 2030 as we continue our fiber to home rollout for a couple of more years and therefore, maintain the current levels of approximately EUR 600 million CapEx per annum.

Finally, free cash flow after leasing from continuing operations reached EUR 108 million in the quarter, up from EUR 100 million in the same period last year. The improvement was mainly driven by the higher EBITDA in the quarter. Income tax outflows and the working capital figures have been affected by different set limits amounts between these lines related to payments and receivables from the public sector. Today, we updated our guidance for free cash flow to EUR 530 million, up from EUR 460 million due to the disposal of the Romanian business. The revised guidance now reflects exclusively our Greek operations.

At this point, we conclude the presentation. And operator, we're now available to provide any further clarification.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of [indiscernible] Andreas with EuroBank Equities.

I have 3 questions from my side. The first question is regarding your updated guidance of free cash flow. You're currently guiding of free cash flow of EUR 530 million for 2025, which seems to be the new basis for your recurring Greek free cash flow generation. Could you tell us what is the read-through for the free cash flow from your recent agreement to acquire TERNA FIBER as you maybe have already mentioned that, that there will be no negative implications from this transaction. This is my first question.

My second question, which is also related to the free cash flow is regarding your usage of EUR 120 million cash tax savings related to the Romanian disposal, particularly to the extent to which this will be used to enhance -- this will be used to enhance your cash return or as a firepower for spectrum in 2027?

And my last 1 is on mobile. Lately, market participants have been rolling out inflation-linked adjustments to mobile contracts, which on our understanding, marks the first coordinating pricing move since 2022. Could you comment on that and then the magnitude of the pricing and whether this has been consistent across all the operators? Thank you very much.

For the questions. And let's start with the updated guidance. As it was clear, and you pointed out, this EUR 530 million, reflecting the organic, let's say, delivery of the Greek operations for this year. So regarding your question about what is the recurring base, this is the starting of this year, of course. To the extent that we expand the business in next year, this organic is also expected to enhance in the coming years.

Regarding the TERNA FIBER, there are 2 things there. The CapEx and the acquisition of this company. As we already guided, there is no impact in the cash flow from these acquisitions since it has been done in a symbolic amount. And regarding the CapEx, I have to say that the CapEx envelope, as we alluded to, is not going to increase versus what we have communicated also in the past that this will be the EUR 600 million we guided approximately is the flow -- is the ceiling actually for the coming years, including also the UFBB rollout, which will be rolled out for the next 3 years. And there is also an internal reshuffling of funds from other activities [ that one ] without, of course, impacting the strategic rollout to accommodate all of our infrastructure investment.

On the free cash flow regarding the tax break, the tax benefit of selling the Romanian business will be positive the cash item for 2026. And as I think also you mentioned, part of it or all of it or to the extent that this is required, we found the upcoming spectrum auctions, for which the timing is not exactly clear yet and the process is not open yet. So the organic cash flow would continue to be part of our shareholder remuneration. And the cash item being one-off items, I think it's wise in order to maintain a smooth trajectory of our operational, let's say organic shareholder remuneration to match any other one-off hit that we may have, which in this case is the spectrum.

Yes. As far as your question around mobile, first of all, I'm not sure I understood what you mean by coordinated. But anyway, I would only comment on what we have actually done recently or announced to do recently.

Just to give you a bit of historical information, we have started updating our contracts about 2 years ago, providing for this indexation clause. This is the practice that we see in quite a lot of European countries. So after having updated all our contracts and renewed our customers, we decided to apply the indexation clause, which is as per last year's inflation. This is the 2.6% that Babis also referred to. This is what we announced for our customers. We try to do it as fairly as possible by providing extra value to our customers. It is true that we have suffered out of inflationary cost pressure for a number of years, have adjusted nothing. And now we are doing that -- we are talking about less than EUR 1, which is going to be backed up with extra value to our customers, gigabytes in order to make it as smooth as possible. And this is it.

Okay. My question is regarding if this inflation-linked adjustments has been followed and also from other operators. And if there are changes to these adjustments between the operators, differences, I mean.

I cannot -- I do not know whether [ we have had any recent changes, ] to be honest with you. [ This is not something that I have picked up ].

The next question is from the line of Kaparis Efstathios with Axia Ventures.

Congrats on a solid quarter. I've got 2 questions, if I may. So the higher amortization this quarter, what does it relate to? Is it a one-off? Or will it continue in the following quarters? And also on the FTTH rollout. Traditionally, Q4 is a stronger rollout quarter. Would we potentially exceed the 2.1 million target by the end of the year? Do you see an acceleration as you build up know-how on the rollout?

Let me start with the question about the FTTH rollout. The answer is no. We do not expect to close the 2.1 million household. That was target since the beginning of the year. So we are more or less running in line with the plan. What we see being accelerated is the customer take-up. And this was the result to a certain extent or to a great extent, I would say, of the new regulation that allows us to stop selling FTTC in FTTH connected buildings. We have seen, first of all, a very strong quarter, which normally the summer months are not performing extremely well as most of the people are taking their summer holidays. We saw a more or less similar quarter in terms of net ads during Q3.

And on top of that, what we have seen is a record high net add in both October, but also the pace of November is following the same logic. So what we can confirm is an acceleration in the FTTH net ads. And yes, landing as far as the FTTH rollout is concerned, more or less spot on the 2.1 million households that we're aiming for.

Also regarding the depreciation and amortization, this is seasonalization of Q3. As you may have seen, the D&A at the end of the 9 months year-to-date is flat versus a year ago.

The next question is from the line of Rakicevic Sofija with Goldman Sachs.

So I would just follow up on a question on mobile. When it comes to CPI linkage, I'm just wondering if you have quantified the benefits from it on the top line growth over the next year or 2. And did you say earlier that this will also include some other services as well. I just wanted to check on that. And do you think that mobile could continue to grow in the range of like 2% to 2.5% into 2026?

And my second question is on TERNA acquisition. So you have clarified the expected CapEx spend, but I was wondering if you can comment on the rationale of this acquisition. And also, what is the demand for fiber in those areas actually look like?

And yes, the last question is how likely in your view is that the new entrants will manage to bundle telecom services with its energy offering.

Okay. Let me start with the first question on mobile. First of all, just to say the record straight, mobile has been growing by these levels of 2.5% to 3% for quite some quarters now. The delivery behind -- the levers behind the mobile growth are more than just the CPI. So we have been moving customers, prepaid customers to postpaid. We still have slightly less than 60% of our base on prepaid tariffs moving into higher value postpaid tariffs. This is the biggest driver of our portfolio growth.

The second thing is we still have a lot of customers who are not in unlimited mobile data by shifting them to buy more for more initiatives. This is also fueling our growth. The CPI is just a small on top that will contribute to a certain extent, I would say, a small extent into our total growth trajectory going forward. So yes, we expect to see similar trends in the coming months and moving into 2026. But predominantly on the back of pre to post and more for more postpaid customer development.

With regards to the effect of the CPI, I think that Babis has already indicated, we are talking about something less than EUR 0.5 -- slightly less than EUR 0.5 and we are talking about 2 million customers. I would like to repeat for 1 more time that this less than EUR 0.5 price adjustment comes with extra gigabytes in order to make it fair towards our customers.

Now going to your question about UFBB. I think it is important to highlight the strategic rationale of this initiative. We are talking about roughly 0.5 million households in semi-rural and rural parts of the country in the networks where we have the lion's share of market share, I mean, this is standard for all incumbents. And we also have -- we are also serving 100% out of our copper -- our wholesale customers, meaning both Vodafone and Nova. So there is a lot of value generated out of these networks. We estimated at around EUR 100 million. So us being in a position to preserve this value, first of all.

And second, I'll present also a big part of it as a margin as we will not be [ buying ] from someone else, makes this investment a very, very important one. On top of that, what we expect is that since we will be moving customers from copper to fiber space, we will be in a position to also generate some ARPU upside out of this customer migration.

And at the end of the day, adding up this nearly 0.5 million to be already committed the FTTH plan, we will end up at 3.5 million households in total at the end of our FTTH rollout plan, which is slightly more than 70% of the country.

Now, I mean, on your last question, I mean, I cannot comment about what our competitors intend to do. I mean, this is something that you should be asking them.

The next question is from the line of [ Colas Vasilis ] with [ Padala ] Securities.

I have 1 question about group's growth. The growth in adjusted EBITDA after leases has ticked to 2% while EU peers are running with growth rates above 4%. When do you think the growth will be higher following the government initiatives for accelerated FTTH takeup and stronger contribution from TV and Mobile as well?

Thanks for the question. We are also anxious to see this 2% stepping higher. I mean, just to remind everybody that we have to reflect a bit on the history. So we started off in 2023, we started off 2023, we landed at 1.2%. EBITDA growth, which moved up to 1.6% in 2024. Now we are just about to close the 2%, and we have provided an outlook of 2%. I mean, to be honest with you, looking into the underlying trends across a number of different fronts, both fixed and mobile as well as ICT, including Pay-TV, for sure, this is making us more optimistic looking into the future and in particular, looking into 2026.

The next question is from the line of Karidis John with Deutsche Bank.

I have 2 questions, please. So first of all, the experience across Europe is that when a late entrant comes in with very aggressive prices, it's sort of the second and the third players that blink first. And because they blink, they sort of rope incumbent into a bad situation. So I'd be very grateful if you could explain or share with us how you see the level of competition, particularly from the likes of Nova and Vodafone and how they're reacting to PPC. I note what you said about us asking them, but I just sort of wonder from your perspective, do you feel that these guys are close to sort of blinking?

And then secondly, I'm aware that of the 2 other operators that have been around for quite some time, one of them is not rolling out FTTH fast enough. Unfortunately, that's in areas -- sort of key areas where you have quite a lot of customers. And I just sort of wonder at what point do you sort of act in order to save these customers from going elsewhere given that you can't actually migrate them to FTTH as part of the collective wholesale agreement you have with Nova and Vodafone?

Thanks for the question, John. First of all, the fact that we have a couple of technologies available, both FTTH, including our infrastructure as well as our wholesale partner infrastructure, but also fixed wireless access is giving us optionality and what we are going to do is to make the most of both technologies in order to accommodate our customers' needs. This is on the second part of your question.

So the first part of your question, I mean, I think that I have already presented our strategy. We are pursuing an FMC strategy. So we are trying to provide extra value to our customers by combining a number of different services as compared to just having 1 broadband-only product. This is what is holding us extremely strongly in the market, defending our base but also growing value. We are providing fixed voice, broadband, Pay-TV services on top of that mobile. We have also introduced an extra element through our partnership with [ Metlen ]. We are also providing extra value through a number of different verticals, be it on the delivery, be it on the insurance.

So we feel that we have a very compelling proposition that is keeping our customers satisfied, providing a lot of value, hence, being in a position to defend our customer base, but also you can tell from our performance, our momentum going forward. This is what differentiates us in the market has been differentiating us for quite some time now, and we are trying to further strengthen that going forward.

I don't know, if I may, sort of follow-ups, if you want to comment at all, but a bunch of clients are simply sort of taking the retail price of the latest entrant and adding it in the retail prices of our Mobile and Pay-TV and they're still coming out with some that's less than the bundle that COSMOTE offers, and that's sort of a cause of concern for them.

And then the second thing is, I just sort of wonder, I think regarding my second question, do you feel that you can -- FWA is a good enough alternative in the middle of Athens, potentially sort of where the parliament is and the customers that you have around there. I mean, FWA is good enough for that, too, you think?

FWA for us, it's more of a bridge technology. So it is used in order for us to buy time until we manage to roll out FTTH or either us or a wholesale partners. This is how we have been using it. And based on what we have seen so far, I mean, we have more than 40,000 customers on fixed wireless access in less than a year's time, with very impressive NPS, these customers are very happy. So if it works well as a bridging technology, I'm not recommending a fixed wireless access to be used instead of FTTH. But it is helping us to bridge the timing gap until FTTH is available either in our networks or in other networks that our wholesale partners will be building.

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Thanks a lot for your attention, your questions and your interest in OTE, and we are looking forward to our next discussion, which is in February for our fourth quarter as well as the full year results. Until then, have a nice day.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good evening.