Good morning. On behalf of Telecom Argentina, I would like to thank everybody for participating on this conference call. The participants of today's conference call are Carlos Moltini, Chief Executive Officer, Roberto Nóbile, Deputy Director General, Gabriel Blasi, Chief Financial Officer, and myself, Solange Barthe Dennin, Manager of Investor Relations. The purpose of this call is to share with you the results of the nine months period ending September 30th, 2019. We would like to remind all those that have not received our press release or presentation that they can call our investor relation office to request the documents or download them from the investor relations section of our website located at www.telecom.com.ar. Additionally, this conference call and slide presentation is being broadcasted to the webcast feature available in such section and can also be replayed through this same channel.
Before we continue with the conference call, I would like to go over some safe harbor information and other details of the call as we initially do in this type of event. We would like to clarify that during the conference call and Q&A session, we may produce certain forward-looking statements about Telecom's future performance, plans, strategies, and targets. Such statements are subject to uncertainties that would cause Telecom's actual results of operations to differ materially. Such uncertainties include, but are not limited to the effect of ongoing industry and economic regulations, possible changes in the demand for Telecom's products and services, and the effect of more general factors such as changes in general market or economic conditions, in legislation or in regulations.
Our press release dated November 7th, 2019, a copy of which was included in a Form 6-K report furnished to the SEC, describes certain factors that may affect any forward-looking statements that we may produce during this session. As far as the figures, including the financial statements, the company has accounted for the effect of inflation adjustment adopted by Resolution 777 of 2018 of the Comisión Nacional de Valores, or CNV, which established that the reexpression will be applied to the annual financial statements for intermediate and special periods ending as of December 31, 2018 inclusively. Accordingly, the reported figures correspond to nine months 2019, include the effect of the adoption of inflationary accounting in accordance with IAS 29.
Moreover, over this presentation, we will discuss figures in historical values in order to aid the understanding and analysis of the earning evolution by user, in a similar way as analyzed by the management of the company, with the aim of reaching a better comprehension of this figure in numerical terms. Additionally, and with the aim of to reach a better understanding of the figure presented on our press release, we encourage our financial community to consider such release in conjunction with the earnings presentation. We know analysts and investors are aware of the difficulties concerning the impact of inflation on accounting standards, but we are confident that at the end of the day, it's not a driver of value other than a derivative effect, like for example, some social taxes.
Furthermore, we urge the audience of this conference call to read the disclaimer clause contained in slide one and two of the presentation. The agenda for today's conference call, as in slide three, is first to go over a general macro overview, which will be followed by the discussion of our business highlights, and immediately after, we will go into the evolution of our financial figures. Afterwards, we will end the call with a Q&A session, as is customary in our quarterly calls with the financial community. Having gone through these procedural matters, I would like to pass the call to Carlos Moltini, who would like to say some words.
Thank you, Solange, and hello to you all. I'm glad to be here once again. As was publicly announced, I will cease my duty as Chief Executive Officer of Telecom Argentina at the end of this year to assume new responsibilities in the company. As you know, I was nominated to be a member of the board and executive committee as soon as I cease as CEO. It has been two excellent years with great advances in the strategic plan that we promoted from the beginning. Today, Telecom advanced a lot in its integration with Cablevisión, its conversion company with fixed mobile networks that grew in coverage and capacity. We have a very good recovery of our NPS, and day by day, we grow in market share.
Our IT plan is soon to show its capabilities, the cultural transformation plan every day advance more and more, seeking to shape the idea of a new company. It has been a pride to be the CEO of Telecom, it will be a huge commitment to collaborate with the company from my new position. I really thank you to you for the support and the useful insight and comments that I received from you all in the past months. I hand over my duty as CEO to Roberto Nóbile, whom we worked together for more than 15 years transforming this industry. He has a broad experience and capacity in operation management of the company, he has been serving as Deputy Director General of Telecom Argentina and previously COO of the company. Now let me pass the call to Roberto, who will introduce himself.
Hi, everyone. Thank you, Carlos, and hello to everyone. We've been working with Carlos for almost 15 years, as you mentioned.
More than 15.
More than 15 years. We have been able to make this company grow and be what it is today. I believe that we will keep the track of making the company bigger and bigger year after year with consistent numbers and going forward with our market shares, NPS, and all the several projects that we are dealing with since the merge of the network, BSS transformation, OSS transformation, and all the projects that are transforming the company into the new company, the one we really think of and we envision. With that in mind, we will keep on working as we've been doing for the last two years with Carlos. I personally will be participating on a regular basis on the conference calls. I hope we can be in touch periodically.
Now having gone through this introduction, let me pass the call to Gabriel Blasi, who will go over a brief characterization of the macroeconomic context in which we operate.
Thank you, Roberto Nóbile. Please refer to slide five, where we included a summary of the evolution of some macro variables in Argentina regarding FX rates, inflation, and monetary policy. During the third quarter of 2019, the economic scenario was mainly responsive to the political calendar. The FX markets experienced a quiet season with no disruptive developments up to the primaries stage. In this less volatile context described, the exchange rate experienced a depreciation of almost 3% during July, and the country risk settled between 700 and 800 basis points. During the first days of August, volatility began to rise again as exchange rate depreciated another 3%, and country risk raised up to almost 900 basis points. Finally, after the primary selections, financial markets experienced a sharp movement, and demand for foreign currency began to accelerate quickly.
In this context, the central bank responded, banking on international reserve position with daily interventions in the exchange markets. As the loss in reserves became greater with passing days, the authorities decided to impose capital controls in order to prevent further dollarization in a context where the demand of pesos was downsizing considerably. As of the end of September, the peso experienced a depreciation of almost 36% during the third quarter, and the country risk reached levels above 2,000 basis points. Since then, demand for foreign currency stabilized in the FX markets only with an increased tightening imposed by the central bank. Amidst this scenario just described, interest rates experienced an increase in response to the greater withdrawal of deposits from the financial systems. After registering a downward trend up from March up to July, inflation accelerated as it was impacted by the FX rate increase.
After this renewed round of increasing inflation, it is expected that it will remain high for the rest of the year, currently reaching levels close to 54%. Turning to slide six, we summarize the evolution of the real economy's performance, in particular, the aggregate activity and the private consumption in order to describe certain economic trends that impact our businesses. According to last available data, the economic activity was reaching a turning point as from the end of the first quarter and during the second quarter. After the turmoil in the financial market just described, the most probable scenario should be a double dip in the economic activity. Must be mentioned that all economic sectors remain affected as of the end of the third quarter, with only specific exceptions such as agriculture.
In this sense, still a high degree of uncertainty dominates the behavior of economic variables, imposing caution when considering the future evolution of activity. As far as unemployment is concerned, it can be noted that the lower economic activity has taken its toll over employment, as unemployment has currently risen to levels above 10%. Of course, the evolution of employment should be very linked to the capacity of the economy to stabilize and return to growth over the long run. Finally, when observing past episodes of declining economic activity, it can be noted that household consumption has decreased very rapidly during this latter recessive period. In fact, that has been the cost of consumption of durable goods, which has been notoriously impacted, not only because of the reduction in purchasing power, but also because of higher difficulties to access consumer financing.
Recovery of consumption will probably be linked to the possibility of recovery in real income, over which the current authorities exercised several compensation measures after the primaries, and the reduction of the uncertainty over the evolution of economic variables. In this sense, the consumer confidence readings, although improving from minimum levels registered 2019, are still well below their long-term average. Notwithstanding the challenging macroeconomic context just described, Telecom Argentina has managed to achieve growth of the top line in real terms when comparing with the second quarter and maintain a solid operating profitability. Having gone through this introduction of the macro environment, we will go over the business highlights section.
Please refer to slide eight, where we are putting together some of the achievements the company has reached during the third quarter of the year. During the 9-month period of 2019, Telecom's revenues totaled ARS 159.7 billion, growing 39% in current pesos, although diminishing in constant currency. Please bear in mind that total revenues contain approximately ARS 21.8 billion and ARS 78.4 billion for the first 9 months 2019 and 9 months 2019 respectively, related to the reexpression in terms of the current measuring unit as of September 30, 2019. As far as the EBITDA, a total ARS 53.2 billion, implying a 33.3% margin over revenues, achieving a challenging economic context, remaining relatively stable compared with the previous quarter. In addition, fixed voice ARPU and broadband ARPU were up more than ARS 390 and ARS 967 per month respectively. Meanwhile, Pay TV ARPU reached ARS 1,066, and mobile ARPU reached ARS 281.
It is worth highlighting that all of these were expressed in terms of the measuring unit as of September 30, 2019. We would like to remind you that the general index of inflation is currently substantially influenced by the food and beverage component, with participation in the index at approximately 30%, not being this component a significant benchmark for the company costs. As far as our subscribers, mobile subs in Argentina amount to 19 million, of which 13.4 million were 4G clients. Pay TV subs total 3.5 million. Fixed broadband subs amounted to 4.1 million, and fixed voice lines came to 3.2 million. In relation to the total customer base, it is important to remark that in all mobile, broadband, and cable TV segments, the total number of subscribers increased when compared to the previous quarter, following with the trend observed in the second quarter of the year.
The increase is mainly explained by a set of actions, such as change of products, bundling, and upselling, allowing us to increase the weight of value customers and ratifying the company leadership in mobile portability, in broadband, and video platforms. This is a very important achievement for the company, as a higher client base will be the driver for revenue growth once inflation starts to decelerate and price increases perform, beginning to allow a recovery in real terms. As a result, the company increased the share of value customers and conversion clients that will allow to maximize ARPU in the future once the discounts and promotions start to expire, and when the economic context improves, letting increases of household consumption.
It should be remarked that during September, the company was able to increase revenues at a similar rate than year-over-year inflation, thanks to a greater demand for higher-value services and the full effect of price adjustments. This has been achieved in a highly volatile context, where nevertheless the significant devaluation of the currency and its effect on prices, the consumption allocation to telecommunication services remains stable. On the other hand, and regarding corporate matters, in September 2019, Núcleo Sociedad Anónima acquired 211,848 Series B shares, representing 30% of the capital stock of TuVes Paraguay, thus reaching a participation of 99.99%. Additionally, it is important to mention that the board of directors authorized a third cash dividend distribution of ARS 300 million on October 10, which were made available through the use of cash resources driven by the company's solid operating generation.
This dividend payment represented an amount of approximately $0.14 per share. The general extraordinary shareholders meeting held on October 24, 2019, approved the corporate reorganization, whereby Telecom Argentina, a surviving company, merges with Cablevisión Holding S.A., Última Milla S.A., and the split away asset of PEM. Before going in details to the evolution of the performance of our businesses, we would like to invite you in slide nine to a quick review of some of our initiatives and projects that we are working on with the aim of transforming the company capabilities in order to become a leading digital telco. In this sense, we may find four cornerstones, which we are basing our initiatives. FUN is one of the company's biggest projects that includes an entire BSS transformation.
This project foresees the integration of the different products into a friendly CRM with the user, which will allow us to enhance the digital experience of our customers. One of the main challenges is to centralize all the catalogs into one to generate a simplified view of our customers that allows us to respond in a personalized way to our clients' requirements. In this sense, great steps have been achieved. For example, the number of processes has been reduced notoriously. The customer display screens went from 20 to just two, and all the actions referred to plan changes were unified into a unique process. Moreover, the training time of employees was reduced in more than four times. SWITCH is a project that seeks the integration of all the self-management digital channels of the clients.
The advances in this aspect have been notorious, since today there are only two channels, while in the past there were about 20. The e-commerce solutions have been unified into one, and the number of catalogs has been reduced by more than half. The final objective is to create an agile model that improves the customer digital experience. Moreover, to improve our company processes and back office, we are carrying out another ambitious project denominated SAP, based on the unification of different corporate systems and the digital office concept. We are extending the standardization of different processes across the structure, the digitalization of internal documentation, and the unification of diverse applications and systems in order to reduce operational time and generate cost savings.
Finally, as far as the OSS project is concerned, we are aiming to improve the workforce management of our fields through platform unification, which allows to simplify the processes with new functionalities and unified visualization. Having gone through this brief description of some of the projects we are working on, let us move to the performance of our businesses. Please turn to slide 10. Well, here we can see the evolution of our service revenues and which services have grown the most. We can see that in the last three months, service revenues growth has taken an accelerated pace, which is related to incremental usage and price adjustment. Additionally, we can observe the breakdown of our revenues, where mobile services businesses still holds the main participation over Telecom revenues, followed by broadband and pay TV.
We can highlight that the current revenue mix has a participation of mobile revenues above 34%, followed by broadband revenues that represented near 23%, and afterwards by pay TV revenues, which accounted for almost 21% participation. In turn, fixed telephone and data represented almost 16%, increasing its participation, while devices achieved more than 6% of the total revenues, still strongly impacted by default in consumption of durable goods due to the economic context and high interest rate, but still with a positive margin contribution. As we already mentioned, mobile and broadband are the segment that mostly contribute to total revenues composition, generating revenues for ARS 54.8 billion and ARS 35.9 billion respectively. In addition, the pay TV revenues totaled almost ARS 33.4 billion, followed by fixed and data revenues with the aggregate amount of almost ARS 35 billion.
To a lesser extent, we can highlight the contribution of handsets and others with ARS 10.1 billion and ARS 0.5 billion respectively. It should be observed that in general terms, that although the company's revenues are growing at a faster rate when looking at historical values during this nine-month period of acceleration in the inflationary context during the last 12 months, as discussed in our macro chapter, has posed a challenge. This is basically reflected in the figure with respect to inflation. Notwithstanding, we would like to remark that during the third quarter, revenue showed an increase in real terms compared with the previous quarter. We will go in some details on this following slides. Let's move to slide 11 to review the evolution of the company's mobile businesses in Argentina.
As the intensity in data usage continues to increase, we can observe that there has been also a sustained growth in postpaid subscribers, which represent our high-value mobile segment. In fact, this segment has been growing steadily over the last nine months due to good results in the conversion offered to cable TV and internet subscribers that were not mobile clients of the company, thus leading the mobile Flow share in the market. Additionally, the company has been successfully upselling the top-notch mobile prepaid customers to postpaid, which also implies getting them accustomed to regular billing with a view to perform cross-selling initiatives later on. Notwithstanding, during the third quarter, we registered a significant increase in our prepaid customer base, which explains why the composition in % between postpaid and prepaid subscribers remained the same.
During the first nine months of 2019, postpaid subscribers accounted for 40% of the total customer base, up from 38% compared with the same period 2018. The company has registered a positive subscriber inflow in the last quarters, which reflects its effort to optimize the quality and capacity of the mobile network. Regarding mobile ARPU, currently, it's been impacted by promotions giving to incentive the capture of new clients, but it should begin to grow substantially once the 12-month period of this promotion expires. The intensity of mobile internet usage continues to increase, which as of the first nine months of 2019, has reached an average of more than 3.3 gigabytes per user per month. That represent a 27% increase versus first nine months of 2018.
When we focus in the evolution of our 4G rollout, we can highlight that there has been an important increase of 4G subscribers, which totals 13.4 million as of September 2019. This rapid growth in subscribers that use the 4G network has been the driver of increasing data traffic since 2015. Currently, the coverage of our 4G network reaches more than 1,670 locations, an increase of around 40 locations quarter-over-quarter. Moreover, Personal's 4G network is the fastest network in the country, according to the result of international reference who measure the network standards, the experience of the customers worldwide. Turning to slide 12, we describe the performance of our internet and pay TV services segments, which aim to differentiate and upskill through an enhanced customer experience.
Related to our broadband segment, we can point out that the number of subscribers grew almost 11,000 year-over-year, achieving 4.14 million users. Sorry. The aforementioned increase in subscribers was supported by the offer of higher connection speed. As a consequence, subscribers with a speed equal or above 20 MB have increased to 58% of the total client base, versus 34% over a year ago. ARPU expressed in terms of measuring units as of September 30, 2019, for broadband services reaching more than ARS 967 per month. Price adjustments applied on average broadband plans compared with those as of the first nine months of 2019 contributed to offset the ARPU decrease in real terms. It should also be noted that fixed products are enduring the positive mobile portability related to the discount performance to increase the bundling of services.
As far as the churn is concerned, it has increased slightly to 1.5% compared with the same period of last year. The company has assumed cases of change of address and our technology for churn calculation purposes, as in fact, those subscribers remain active within the client base. Data for previous periods has been restated accordingly with this criteria. Focusing on paid TV services during the first nine months of 2019, cable TV subscribers remained stable, showing a second consecutive increased quarter-over-quarter. Furthermore, Flow boxes achieved 871,000, almost doubling from figures observed over a year ago. During the last nine months, Flow, through its Flow App version, has continued to expand its penetration in areas where Personal has a great presence, that is, in the northern region of the country.
This has allowed an increasing capture of cable TV subscribers in regions in which the company reaches through its VDSL and FTTH network. In fact, this net has explained an important portion of the total cable TV capture as of September, contributing additionally to sustained ARPU growth. Finally, cable TV ARPU expressed in terms of the measuring unit as of September 30, 2019, reached more than ARS 1,066 per month in the first nine months of 2019, while churn increased slightly 1.3% year-over-year, remaining at same level of the previous quarter. Having gone through the business highlights, now I will pass the call to Solange, who will go over our financial performance.
Thank you, Gabriel. We will go over the impact that these business trends just described by Gabriel generated over our operating income. Let's move to slide 14, where we can analyze the consolidated revenues and EBITDA. For the nine-month period of 2019, consolidated revenues on current terms grew by 39%, reaching almost ARS 137.9 billion. When comparing in constant measuring unit terms, revenues amounted to almost ARS 159.7 billion, showing a decrease of 10% in real terms, reducing the gap with inflation in around 200 basis points when compared with the first six months of the year. Also must be mentioned that adjusted figures contain the effect of year-over-year inflation as of September 30, 2019, which reaches 53.7%.
It is important to highlight this impact when performing an analysis of the company's operational performance, as inflation adjustment has a considerable impact in terms of the reexpression of 2018 figures. In this sense, during the third quarter of 2019, the company was able to increase its revenues at a faster rate than the level of inflation, achieving a real increase in revenues quarter-over-quarter. In turn, service revenues grew even more, reaching a 41% increase, thanks mainly to a better performance of internet and fixed telephony and data services revenues. It can also be noted that mobile revenues are accelerating, reaching a nominal growth of almost 47% when comparing quarterly figures of third quarter 2019 and third quarter of 2018. Furthermore, price increases performed in May and September had an important effect on the aforementioned inflation gap reduction.
Moreover, EBITDA experienced a lower growth, growing by 34% year-over-year in current terms, and the EBITDA margin in current terms reached 34.1%. The EBITDA in real terms experienced a decrease of 14%, improving almost 700 basis points compared with the first six months of the year, while EBITDA margin in real terms was 33.3%, remaining stable compared with the first six months of the year. The margin decrease in the year-over-year comparison was mainly due to the temporary effect and one-off related to the merger transaction that impacted the EBITDA of the first nine months of 2018. In fact, operating costs before depreciation and amortization decreased 8% in real terms versus the same period of 2018. Please refer to slide 15, where we show the performance of the EBITDA and the behavior of the different components of revenues and costs.
As it can be remarked from the previously mentioned reduction of operating costs in real terms, it is noticed ultimately that most of the components evolved positively despite a challenging economic context, indicated in most of the cases improvements of our synergies. It should also be observed that the dynamic of cost adjustment is, in many cases, different over time than that of the increase in revenues. We can observe a positive evolution of handset cost with a positive margin contribution, which was mainly affected by a lower sell-out due to decreasing consumption of durable goods, registered at aggregate level in the economy, and also cost management has delivered good results, commission and advertisement, to lower charges for agent commission as a consequence of the sales channel reorganization.
On the other hand, other costs registered a decrease mainly as a reduction in operating leases was implemented due to the application of IFRS 16. This effect has been partially offset by a lower decrease in labor cost as the net decrease in recurrent labor cost as a result of a lower number of total employees, as well as increases in salaries to homogenize and harmonize salaries, was partially offset by non-recurrent labor costs. In the case of bad debt expenses increased year-over-year, but show a better evolution when analyzing quarter-over-quarter figures. The final outcome was a 160 basis point reduction in EBITDA in real terms when compared with the nine-month period of 2018, which as we mentioned, registered temporary savings and one-off in commission and advertising and labor costs.
Let's move on to slide 16, where we can verify that the company's current operating income totaled almost ARS 44.4 billion. The bit decrease in customers and units that resulted higher than that of EBITDA can be explained by the increase in depreciation and amortization and disposal and impairment of PP&E, intangibles, and right of use, which increased almost 15% in real terms year-on-year. In addition to higher depreciation and amortization due to the reexpression of non-monetary assets, the application of IFRS 16 since 2019 has entailed an impact of more than ARS 2.1 billion, mainly because of the aforementioned increase in depreciation amortization in real terms. Operating margins reached 9% of consolidated revenues.
Moreover, the company registered an ordinary loss before income tax of ARS 165 million in nine months 2019, improving 99.3% versus the same period last year, mainly reflecting lower net losses from FX results measured in real terms. As we observe the final results performance over the first nine months of 2019, we can verify that the company has registered lower negative FX results measured in real terms in nine months 2019 for ARS 8.8 billion due to depreciation of the Argentine peso against the US dollar of 53% versus an inflation of 38% during the same period. While negative FX results measured in real terms were registered in nine months 2018 for ARS 56.7 billion related to the depreciation of the Argentine peso against the US dollar of 121%, versus an inflation of 32% in the same period.
This has resulted in lower FX losses for more than ARS 47.8 billion, partially offset by higher negative net interest and lower RECPAM of ARS 4.8 billion, down from ARS 8.4 billion compared with the previous year. Meanwhile, the company registered a net loss attributable to the controlling company of ARS 12.7 billion during the same period, essentially due to recognition of the restatement by inflation for the calculation of income tax. Please turn to slide 17, where we can highlight the company's continuous investment effort to improve the network and quality of services. During the first nine months of 2019, Telecom has invested more than ARS 43.9 billion, being this amount 4% higher in real terms than the same period of last year. The consolidated amount of capital expenditure increased to 28% of total revenues from the 24% registered in the same period last year.
Taking into account the technical CapEx breakdown, an important amount of the technical CapEx was allocated to the network and technology, being the access network one of the most important components, representing almost 45% of network and technology CapEx. The remaining of technical CapEx was mainly comprised of installation and customer premise equipment and of investment done over our international operations in Paraguay and Uruguay. It is worth to highlight that during the first nine months of 2019, Telecom continued working in the improvement of its mobile network, deploying more than 300 new sites. Additionally, around 50 sites were upgraded to new technologies. The spectrum of more than 450 sites was increased, and over 1,850 sites were reformed to 4G technology. On the fixed network side, intensive work has been performed over the HFC network, adding new 1 Giga capacity to the network footprint and enable new DOCSIS 3.1 counters.
Finally, the IP telephony product was enabled in the AMBA and La Plata area with the objective of facilitate the conversion and gradual immigration of the copper network. Concluding, as remarked previously in our conference call session, one of the advantages of the company's CapEx plan is that investments are performed in a very modular way. They are not huge projects involving large blocks of investments. In this sense, the company has the ability to react to changes in the economic context, avoiding to harm its operational performance, competitiveness, or its generation capacity. In fact, the maintenance capital for the company is around $300 million, meaning that taking a conservative approach, the return for additional investment over this threshold is significant and will guarantee important improvement over the long-term EBITDA. Let's move to slide 18, where we can find a summary of our international operations in Paraguay.
Currently, Núcleo's operations are focused on the deployment of its fiber optic network in the biggest city of Paraguay, the promotion of the use of mobile financial services in the country, and the transformation of the satellite TV service with highly competitive products. In this sense, Telecom business in Paraguay is growing. Núcleo, the company subsidiary, registered around ARS 132 million and ARS 51 million in revenues and EBITDA in the nine months this year, respectively. This implies an EBITDA margin of 38.8%, improving 320 basis points compared with the same period last year. Growth in services accounted for 40% of the revenues, followed by voice with 26%, data with 15%, and TV services with 8%. As of September 13, 2019, mobile customers totaled 2.3 million, which represents a market share of 31.5%.
Moreover, the clients of Personal Pay, a mobile financial service that our subsidiary provides, reached 158,000, up from 149,000 in the previous quarter. Finally, fixed services subscribers amounted to 29,000, with a market share of 10%. The fixed network deployment in the main cities of Paraguay has been increasing rapidly during 2019, almost tripling the number of home passed of 2018. It is expected that these lines of business will continue to perform as they did during the course of this year. Additionally, Núcleo's Flow subscribers totaled 5.4 thousand, increasing 32% compared with the second quarter of 2019. Please, now let me pass the call to Gabriel, who will go over the final part of our presentation that will cover the company's financial management.
Thank you, Solange. Turning to slide 19, we present some pro forma key figures for the fiscal years of 2018 and 2019 in constant measuring units. Company revenues achieved more than ARS 213 billion for the last 12 months as of September 30, 2019. Meanwhile, EBITDA amounted almost ARS 68.7 billion for the same period. EBITDA margin for the last 12-month period as of September 30, 2019, was 32.2%. Regarding our gross debt as of the end of September 30, 2019, it amounted more than ARS 146.2 billion. As the company holds an important cash and equivalence and investment position, net debt reaching approximately ARS 105.4 billion, up 1% in real terms when compared with September 30, 2018. In fact, net debt to EBITDA ratio remains in level of 1.5 times. Lastly, on slide 24, we can analyze the breakdown on the financial debt.
The total debt outstanding of the company as of September 30, 2019, considering the new debt operations and cancellations in the period amounting to almost $2.5 billion. As we mentioned in our last call on July 18, 2019, the company successfully completed an international notes issuance for a total amount of $400 million and maturing in 2026. Part of the proceeds of the issuance were allocated to the refinancing of liabilities in order to optimize the maturity schedule of the company. In this sense, $100 million were allocated to partially prepay the term loan agreement due 2022, and $34 million in total were allocated for a tender offer of its outstanding 6.5% Class A Notes due 2021. Notwithstanding, the company is always working and looking for the best opportunities to improve its capital structure and maturity schedule that recognize its solid credit metrics.
As mentioned in previous calls, we deem important to emphasize the manageable debt profile that the company has, as well as the diversified source of funds currently available, such as vendor financing, local and international bank lines, and funding from multilateral credit agencies. The company looks for a permanent optimization for the term, rate, and structure of its financial liabilities. Having concluded with the presentation, but before going to the Q&A session, let me pass the call to Solange for a final remark.
Thank you, Gabriel. With this, now we are more than pleased to answer any question you may have. However, before we start, we would like to remind you the way to correctly address your question during the Q&A session. Remember that you should wait until you open the preferred space, and then send a message to AR Telecom Argentina through the Q&A menu, identifying yourself and stating that you have a question. We will let you know when it's your turn to speak, and we will unmute you so you can proceed with your question. Hello. We are just open for any questions you may have, so please let us know if you have questions, or if not, we will end the call. We will wait for your answer in the following minutes. Considering that there are no questions, we thank you for participating in our first teleconference call.
Please do not hesitate in contacting our investor relations department for any further inquiries you may have. Good morning to all. Have a nice day, and we expect to meet again soon.