Telecom Argentina SA (TEO) 2026 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good morning. On behalf of Telecom Argentina, I would like to thank everybody for participating of this conference call.

The participants of today's conference call are Roberto Nóbile, Chief Executive Officer; Manuel García Diez, who recently joined Telecom Argentina's Chief Financial Officer and is participating in his first earnings conference call; Federico Pra, Financial Director; and Luis Fernando Rial, 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 of 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 call.

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 telecoms products and services, the effects of potential changes in general market and/or economic conditions, and in legislation.

A press release dated August 7, 2026, a copy of which was included in a Form 6-K sent to the SEC, described 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 adapted by resolution 777/18 of the Comisión Nacional de Valores, which establishes that the pre-expression will be applied to the earn on financial statements for interim and special periods and letters off and including December 31st of 2018.

Accordingly, the reported figures corresponding with 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.

Our 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 Telefonica Mobiles Argentina, or TMA, acquired on February 24, 2025.

As such, in this presentation, we will mention consolidated figures in first half, including failed six months of TMA contribution, consolidated figures in the comparative period for half '25, including four months of TMA contribution following the acquisition, figures for telecom only, excluding TMA contribution and standalone 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 to 23% year-over-year in dollars versus first half '25 while only includes four 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 wage 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 effects of deconsolidation of microsystems 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 will have stand slightly above 40% on an adjusted basis, excluding the impact of higher severance charges during the period.

A TMA standalone, EBITDA margin reached 29.3% during the first half 2026 versus 22.9% during first half 2025.

The second quarter of 2026 provides evidence of the efficiency gains for both telecom and TMA.

With both periods reflecting a full quarter TMA contribution, revenues continue to grow with profitability expanded by over 9% 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 six-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 1.36 times in the first half '26, significantly improving versus the first half '25, while also extending the average life of our debt to almost five 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 to 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 increases 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 of the first half '26 amounted to over ARS5 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 personnel. Mobile, broadband and PayTV services revenue have been growing in real terms as a weight average growth rate of over 5%, while on a standalone basis, the same services recorded a wage 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 four months of TMA contributions, while the first half '26 reflects the full semester of consolidated results.

TMA on a standalone 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 US dollar terms, ARPU performance varied across segments. Mobile ARPU delivered a strong growth, up to 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 of 2026, down 10.1% year-over-year.

This decline was mainly due to the shorter reactivity period required to deactivate dormant prepaid lines, with lead.

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 first Q'26, reaching a subscriber by 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 to 39% in the first half '25.

Additionally, the mobile segment continues to deliver solid top-line performance with personal 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 fiber 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 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 subscription and engagement.

During first half '26, personal flows unique customers reached 1.9 million, increasing by over 270 thousand total clients or 17% when compared to the same period in the first half '25.

TMA provide figures that 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 buys.

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 FTTH technology. In Pay TV, continue to show solid growth, with the subscriber base increasing 6.5%, reaching over 435 thousand subscribers, also affected positively by the FIFA World Cup event. When combining the evolution of both telecom and TMA subscriber bases, we observe an overall growth across fixed segments. Broadland 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 to 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 second Q'26. As both companies continue execution efficiency initiatives, this reinforces the opportunity for further value creation as TMA progressively converge toward the telecom's provision ability 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 expansions versus the first half 2025 were labor cost, mainly reflecting our continued effort to right-size 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 hazard cost 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 ARS674 billion.

The operating margin during the first half of 2026 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 870 billion, compared to a negative net income of 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 ARS950 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 costant pesos, mainly driven by continued investments in FTTH expansion and 5G deployment.

Please note that the first half of '25 included only four months of TMA contribution, while the first half of '26 included a full six 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 thousand 4G existing sites were upgraded, and we continue deploying 5G sites, and our footprint reached more than 1.5 thousand sites as of June 30 of 2026.

Approximately 32% of our CapEx during the first half of 2026 was allocated to installations and customer premise equipment, or CPE, which are installations and equipment in the homes of our 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 $400 million, compared to the free cash flow obtained as of the first half of '25, which generated an increase of more than $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 US 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 1.36 times in the last 12 months as of the first half of '26.

Down from 1.74 times 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 five 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.

And before we open the floor to questions, let me conclude in Slide 14 with some key messages from this quarter and the six-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's standalone 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 US dollar-denominated instruments. This translated into a flexible and solid financial position.

And finally, we have extended the average life of Adele 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 a comfortable 1.36 times, 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.

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.