Telecom Argentina S.A. (TECO2) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning. On behalf of Telecom Argentina, I would like to thank everybody for participating in this conference call. The participants of today's conference call are Roberto Nóbile, Chief Executive Officer; Manuel García Diez, who recently joined Telecom Argentina as Chief Financial Officer and is participating in his first earnings conference call; Federico Pra, Financial Director; and myself, Luis Ubago, Head of Investor Relations. The purpose of this call is to share with you the results of the first half and second quarter ended on June 30, 2026. If you have not received our press release or presentation, you can call our Investor Relations office to request the documents or download them from the Investor Relations section of our website located at inversores.telecom.com.ar. I would like to go over some safe harbor information and other details of the quarter. We would like to clarify that during the conference call and Q&A session, we could mention certain forward-looking statements about Telecom's future performance, plans, strategies and objectives. Such statements are subject to uncertainties that could cause Telecom's actual results and operations to differ materially. Such uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the effects of ongoing industry and economic regulations, possible changes in the demand for Telecom's products and services, the effects of potential changes in general market and economic conditions and in legislation. A press release dated August 7, 2026, a copy of which was included in our Form 6-K sent to the SEC, describes certain factors that may affect any forward-looking statements that could be mentioned during this call. The company has reflected the effects of the inflation adjustment adopted by Resolution 777/18 of the Comisión Nacional de Valores, or CNV, which establishes that the expression will be applied to the annual financial statements for interim and special periods ended as of and including December 31, 2018. Accordingly, the reported figures corresponding to the first half of 2026 included the effects of the adoption of inflationary accounting in accordance with IAS 29. In this presentation, we will also include figures in historical values, which are easier to understand. The press release is complemented by our earnings presentation. Please read the disclaimer contained in Slide 1 and Slide 2 of this presentation. Today, we will go over our business and financial highlights and end the call with a Q&A session. Now let me pass the call to Federico, who will start with the presentation.

Thank you, Luis. Good morning, and welcome to everyone. Slide 3 summarizes our highlights as of June 2026. Before diving into the main variables and financial highlights, it is important to clarify that throughout this presentation we are presenting consolidated financials, including Telefónica Móviles Argentina or TMA, acquired on February 24, 2025. As such, in this presentation, we will mention consolidated figures in first half, including first 6 months of TMA contribution, consolidated figures in the comparative period first half '25, including 4 months of TMA contribution following the acquisition, figures for Telecom only, excluding TMA contribution and stand-alone for TMA for the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026. Having said that, our main financial achievements for the first half of 2026 were as follows: Telecom consolidated revenues totaled over $3.4 billion, up 23% year-over-year in dollars versus first half '25, while only includes 4 months of TMA results. On a consolidated basis, service revenues grew 16% year-over-year in constant pesos. Importantly, continuing the real service revenue growth trend we have previously highlighted, service revenues for Telecom, excluding TMA, grew in real terms, posting 2% year-over-year increase in first half '26. Additionally, Telecom Mobile, Broadband and Pay TV service revenues have been growing in real terms at a weighted average growth rate of over 5%. Our consolidated EBITDA margin reached 35.8% in first half '26, expanding by over 580 basis points year-over-year. This notorious improvement includes the effect of the deconsolidation of Microsistemas following the JV with Banco Macro, representing a positive 1.4 percentage point margin impact. At Telecom, excluding TMA, EBITDA margin reached over 39.7%, continued to mark one of the highest levels since the merger with Cablevisión in 2018, and would have stand slightly above 40% on an adjusted basis, excluding the impact of higher severance charges during the period. At TMA, stand-alone EBITDA margin reached 29.3% during the first half 2026 versus 22.9% during first half 2025. The second quarter of 2026 provides an evidence of the efficiency gains for both Telecom and TMA. With both periods reflecting a full quarter TMA contribution, revenues continued to grow with profitability expanded by over 9 percentage points, driving the EBITDA margin from 27.7% on second quarter 2025 to 36.8% second quarter '26 year-over-year. Consolidated CapEx amounted to over $0.6 billion for the 6-month period ended in June 2026, reflecting an intensity of 18.6% of our revenues. Investments continue to prioritize the expansion for both fixed and mobile access networks, particularly the rollout of our fiber-to-the-home network and 5G infrastructure. Our net debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio stood at around 1.36x in the first half '26, significantly improving versus the first half '25, while also extending the average life of our debt to almost 5 years. In addition to the solid performance of our core business, our digital ecosystem continued to gain scale. Personal Pay reached 6.1 million onboarded clients, up 20% year-over-year. Finally, our regional operations in Paraguay posted strong results as well during this half. Revenue grew almost 30% from $102 million to $132 million, while EBITDA increased 37.5% from $54 million to $74 million year-over-year, reaching an EBITDA margin above 50%. From Slide 4 onwards we'll take a closer look at the performance of our business, highlighting operational trends, commercial evolution and the impact of recent acquisitions on key indicators. Slide 5 highlights the positive evolution in real terms of service revenue and ARPU trends, both for Telecom and TMA. It is also important to clarify that Telecom does not determine TMA's pricing strategy. TMA continues to define and implement its own commercial strategy independently, in line with its specific market positioning and operational priorities. On a consolidated basis, total revenues as of the first half '26 amounted to over ARS 5 trillion, increasing 13% in real terms versus the first half 2025, showing a 50% nominal increase. Service revenues has reached almost $3.3 billion, increasing 16% year-over-year in constant pesos. Excluding the contribution from TMA, total service revenues grew by almost 2% year-over-year in real terms, reflecting a solid commercial execution. Trends continue to be solid across our connectivity and entertainment products under the brand Personal. Mobile, Broadband and Pay TV services revenue has been growing in real terms as a weighted average growth rate of over 5%, while on TMA stand-alone basis, the same services recorded a weighted average real growth of approximately 2% year-over-year. It is worth noting that our year-over-year comparison it is impacted by the fact that first half '25 included only 4 months of TMA contributions, while the first half '26 reflects the full semester of consolidated results. TMA on a stand-alone basis reported service revenue of over $1.2 billion in the first half '26, remaining broadly stable in real terms compared to the previous year. In U.S. dollar terms, ARPU performance varied across segments. Mobile ARPU delivered a strong growth up 29% year-over-year for Telecom, excluding TMA, and 11% for TMA. Broadband ARPU grew 5% and 10%, respectively, while Pay TV ARPU was broadly stable, up 9% for Telecom, excluding TMA, and flat for TMA. Overall, these trends are consistent with our continuous focus on value management across the portfolio. Slide 6 shows the evolutions of our products, where we continue to observe growth in most segments of our subscriber base. For Personal, in the Mobile segment, prepaid accesses reached 11.4 million in the first half '26, down 10.1% year-over-year. This decline was mainly due to the shorter activity period required to deactivate dormant prepaid lines, which led to the disconnection of low traffic lines primarily during last year with no impact on mobile service revenues. In turn, postpaid decreased 2.5% year-over-year, but increased 1% versus the 1Q '26, reaching a subscriber base slightly above 8 million accesses. The participation of postpaid subscribers over the total mobile subscriber base is currently 41% of our total mobile base, up from 39% in the first half '25. Additionally, the mobile segment continues to deliver solid top line performance with Personal's mobile revenues, excluding TMA, growing about 8% year-over-year. In Broadband, we have observed growth driven mainly by higher FTTH adoption. Our subscriber base was registered an increase of 2.7% year-over-year, reaching about 4.2 million accesses in the first half '26. FTTH now represents 36% of our Personal Fibra Broadband Base with more than 1.5 million accesses supported by the acceleration of our fiber rollout. In Pay TV, our Flow platform continues with a good performance as Personal Flow's Pay TV accesses has grown year-over-year. Personal Flow's subscriber base in Argentina has grown 6.6% year-over-year, reaching 3.4 million accesses, reflecting an improvement in real term of net adds, mostly due to the strong performance during the World Cup as heightened demand for sports content boosted subscriptions and engagement. During the first half '26, Personal Flow's unique customer reached 1.9 million, increasing by over 270,000 total clients or 17% when compared to the same period in the first half '25. TMA provide figures have shown solid results across its core segments, particularly in Mobile and Broadband. In Mobile, we have seen strong growth in postpaid customers with an increase of 2.8% year-over-year, reaching almost 9.6 million postpaid accesses. Postpaid customers represent 49% of TMA total mobile base. These figures, including machine-to-machine connections for more than 3 million accesses increased by 9% versus the first half of '25. In Broadband, TMA continues to demonstrate a solid expansion. Broadband accesses grew by 4.6% year-over-year, reaching more than 1.6 million accesses. Approximately 97% of TMA's Broadband customer base is on an FTTH technology. Pay TV continued to show solid growth with the subscriber base increasing 6.5%, reaching over 435,000 subscribers also affected positively by the FIFA World Cup event. When combining the evolution of both Telecom and TMA subscriber bases, we observed an overall growth across fixed segments. Broadband shows a combined growth of 3.2%, and Pay TV 6.6%. Mobile subscribers for the combined businesses showed a slight decrease overall, mainly driven by the prepaid segment, which declined 5.8%, while postpaid continued to grow [ up to ] 0.3%. Moving on to Slide 7. We continue to deliver strong profitability improvements across the businesses. Consolidated EBITDA margin expanded to 35.8% in the first half '26, up from 30% in the first half '25. Excluding TMA, Telecom reached 40.5% EBITDA margin in the second quarter of '26, reflecting the continued execution of our efficiency initiatives. At the same time, TMA margins improved, reaching almost 30% in the second quarter '26. Both Telecom and TMA achieved record EBITDA margin levels in 2Q '26. As both companies continue executing efficiency initiatives, this reinforces the opportunity for further value creation as TMA progressively converge towards the Telecom's profitability levels. Slide 8 shows the evolution of EBITDA year-over-year and the impact of the different components of revenues and costs. In real terms, EBITDA increased by ARS 470 million or 35% year-over-year, reflecting both the positive contribution from TMA and our ongoing efficiency efforts. The lines that contributed the most to the margin expansion versus the first half 2025 were: labor costs, mainly reflecting our continued effort to rightsize our operations, increasing productivity, efficiency and profitability. Fees for services, maintenance and materials, mainly due to the lower cost of maintenance, materials and supplies and fundamentally a process of automatization of our call centers. Commissions and advertising costs also contributed positively, mainly driven by lower media advertising revenues due to the deconsolidation of Personal Pay. And finally, lower handset costs driven by lower quantity of handsets sold. Now let me pass the call to Luis, who will continue the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, Federico. Slide 9 shows the company's consolidated net results and EBIT. Our consolidated EBIT increased in the first half of 2026 as we registered an expansion of the EBITDA in real terms. We recorded an operating income for the first half of 2026 of ARS 674 billion. The operating margin during the first half of '26 was 13% of our consolidated revenues in real terms, increasing by 800 basis points versus the first half of 2025. During the first half of '26, the company recorded a consolidated net income of approximately ARS 870 billion compared to a negative net income of ARS 100 billion in the first half of '25. The results in both first half of '25 and first half of '26 were largely driven by exchange differences. In the first half of '25, the real depreciation of the peso generated exchange difference losses, mainly related to the impact on our foreign currency denominated financial debt. Conversely, in first half of '26, the real appreciation of the peso generated exchange difference gains, which generated a positive net financial income. This dynamic together with the EBIT expansion explained the growth of net income in the first half of '26. Slide 10 displays a summary of the company's consolidated CapEx in PP&E and intangible assets during the first half of 2026, which amounted to almost ARS 950 billion or an equivalent of over $0.6 billion at the official FX rate. This represents a consolidated intensity over revenues of 18.6%. CapEx increased 47% year-over-year in constant pesos, mainly driven by continued investments in FTTH expansion and 5G deployment. Please note that the first half of '25 included only 4 months of TMA contribution, while the first half of '26 included a full 6 months of consolidated CapEx with TMA. Technical CapEx includes mainly investments in our access network and technology, representing 60% of the CapEx during the first half of '26. Over the course of the first half of '26, nearly 1,000 4G existing sites were upgraded, and we continue deploying 5G sites and our footprint reached more than 1,500 sites as of June 30, 2026. Approximately 32% of our CapEx during the first half of 2026 was allocated to installations and Customer Premises Equipment, or CPE, which are installations and equipment in the homes of clients and 8% to international operations. Slide 11 describes our consolidated cash flow generation during the first half of '26 compared with the same period of 2025. Our cash flow generation remained robust, mainly driven by the EBITDA expansion. Free cash flow before dividends and interest payments during the first half of '26 were approximately USD 400 million compared to the free cash flow obtained as of the first half of '25, which generated an increase of more than USD 200 million. Slide 12 shows our key figures for the last 12 months as of the first half of 2026 compared to the fiscal year of 2025. The conversion to U.S. dollars is obtained by dividing the figures in constant pesos as of the end of each period and using the end of period spot FX rate. Consolidated EBITDA on a last 12-month basis reached $2.3 billion as of June of 2026. Our gross debt amounted to almost $3.8 billion as of June 2026, while the company holds cash and equivalents for more than $0.6 billion, resulting in a net debt of $3.1 billion, decreasing in dollar terms versus the fiscal year 2025. Consequently, our net debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio improved significantly to 1.36x in the last 12 months as of the first half of '26, down from 1.74x in the fiscal year of 2025, reflecting stronger cash generation due to an expansion of the EBITDA and a solid balance sheet situation. Slide 13 shows the breakdown of our debt maturity profile. As a result of our liability management actions, we extended the average life of our debt to almost 5 years, reinforcing a more balanced maturity profile and ultimately reducing refinancing risk. Our maturity profile for the upcoming years is highly concentrated and manageable, and we will continue with our liability management strategy, aiming to reduce cost and expand tenors. Most of the refinancing efforts for this year has been already completed. And before we open the floor to questions, let me conclude on Slide 14 with some key messages from this quarter and the 6-month period and reinforce why we believe Telecom Argentina is in a position of real operational and financial strength. First and most importantly, we delivered a strong EBITDA margin improvement, and this recovery was broad-based, driven by both Telecom and TMA. On a consolidated basis, Telecom stand-alone margin expanded to 39.7% in the first half of 2026, which marks a record since 2018. It reflects the structural efficiency gains and disciplined cost management we have embedded across the organization. Second, the company continued to deliver real growth in service revenues. Telecom and TMA posted 2% and 1% real growth of total service revenues and 5% and 2% weighted average growth, respectively, of Mobile, Broadband and Pay TV service revenues. Third, we remain fully focused on the future with continued execution on our 5G and FTTH deployment. We are continuing with our investment plan, expanding the reach and quality of our network and positioning the company to capture the next wave of connectivity demand. Fourth, our cash generation was sound. We achieved solid growth in free cash flow before interest and dividends, and we closed the period with a strong cash position of over $600 million, mostly held in U.S. dollar-denominated instruments. This translated into a flexible and solid financial position. And finally, we have extended the average life of our debt to more than 4.8 years, building a smoother maturity profile supported by ample liquidity and diversified funding sources. Our balance sheet is robust. Our net leverage stands at comfortable 1.36x, and we have the financial firepower to fund our strategic priorities. Taken together, these results paint a clear picture: a company that is well positioned to continue creating value for our shareholders, growing in real terms, improving profitability, generating strong cash flow and standing on a solid and well-structured financial foundation. With this, now we are more than pleased to answer any questions you may have. Q&A session will be open immediately. Thank you very much.