Welcome to Prysmian first half 2026 integrated results webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be question- and- answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Massimo Battaini, Chief Executive Officer of Prysmian. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining this call. Quarter two result. We are super excited to highlight that this is the best quarter ever of Prysmian. EUR 730 million EBITDA, 13.4% EBITDA margin, 9.4% organic growth. As you see, it's a great quarter from the numbers perspective, but it's also great in terms of the achievement of the hyperscalers and Molex deals with the EUR 10 billion incremental revenues in the optical space over the next 10 years. Also on the sustainability side, we exceed our expectation with 46% of the current revenues linked to sustainable solution. When you read 46%, you need to read almost EUR 10 billion revenues, where we provide customer with low carbon footprint and solution that help them achieve their own targets.
42% is the amazing reduction of Scope 1 and 2 over the baseline of 2019, setting great confidence in achieving the net zero by 2035, well ahead of everybody else. Moving to this quarter two perspective, I think it's important to share these slides now moving. Right? It's important to share these different perspective, which we are very proud of. You see in quarter two, we deliver, we created the EBITDA higher than what has taken us more than 12 months in the past. In 2019, 2018, sorry, we generated EUR 700 million EBITDA over the full year. In 2022, it has taken us six months, one semester, to deliver a similar EBITDA. Now we did this in one quarter. This is a strong sign of the effectiveness and the good execution of the strategy that we designed years ago.
The strategy that is basically set on expanding the transmission business, growing leadership in North America thanks to the acquisition, and also shifting our focus from cable manufacturer that was our past driver of growth to solution provider. Entering to the Digital Solutions space with more detail. I think you read the press release. I'd like to give you more color around the deals. So these are EUR 10 billion revenues that applies to the optical space. Forgive us, there is a time lag in the slide change. You see at the bottom on the right that our Digital Solutions business cover three segment of business. One is optical, which account for 40% of the revenues in Digital. Connectivity, so components to connect cables, and MMS, which is copper cables. Both the last two accounted for 30% of the total revenue.
You see on the left chart, the green bars explain our involvement in data center activities. The horizontal line sets the scene relative to the past situation where we had in 2025 green data center exposure, data center exposure in green, and in gray, the fiber to the home business. You see that we add in this EUR 1.1 billion at run rate incremental revenue. At the same time, we are reallocating the best part of the original fiber to the home business to data center to gain even more share. When you look at the 2031 perspective, you see that the 90% to our revenues, and even more in terms of EBITDA, belongs to data center expansion. We see ourself as the company enabling the data center expansion better than anybody else, because alongside optical, we have the whole range of a broad range of power cable products.
Lastly to mention is the submarine telecom interconnection long haul, thanks to the Xtera acquisition. This is definitely a transformative opportunity for the Digital Solutions space in Prysmian. From a very cyclical business into a fast-growing business that is meant to achieve a sizable EBITDA by 2031. We will give you more detail about this at the next Capital Markets Day. Moving to the segment of business, transmission continues the strong journey in terms of EBITDA margin at 22%, 21.2%. In terms of organic growth, extremely solid at 14.3% in quarter two, and in absolute value, EUR 180 million in quarter two. When you compare this to same quarter last year, you see almost EUR 60 million EBITDA Accretion. In Power Grid, we confirmed what we basically told you last quarter.
You see a significant rebound in EBITDA margin from 12.4% 13.8% sequentially, with EUR 135 million EBITDA, supported by strong demand in U.S. and also strong demand in Europe. I would say that there is a kind of solid demand across all the other regions, because the strengthening of the grid is a very common and underlying driver of growth across all segments or markets in our geographies. The organic growth was particularly satisfactory at 13% increase in this quarter. Moving to Industrial Construction. Also here, we improved significantly to EUR 128 million EBITDA, EUR 20 million sequentially over 2025 quarter two, with a EUR 5 million headwind coming from ForEx. Even better when we excluded the ForEx effect. EBITDA margin rebounded from the 13% of quarter one. We had a very strong quarter two, especially in the United States, with a very strong month of June inside this quarter two.
Organic growth in the U.S. is higher than the group average at 13.4%, driven by data centers, so, but not only. Also driven by the normal residential market that has showed different signs, new signs of improvement vis-a-vis a kind of a flattish situation in 2025. Specialties is still suffering from weak demand in elevators, in oil and gas, and profitability under pressure in the automotive business that is remaining with us, but we maintain it stable. It is a solid driver of EBITDA in different regions, and it is a nice complement to the Industrial Construction business because those are sophisticated, sorry, cables that we couple with Industrial Construction business to electrify equipment alongside buildings. So it is an important complement and portion of our portfolio. Digital. Digital is the star of the quarter. You see the outstanding EBITDA margin, 24%, coming from 20.6% in quarter one.
24% is not the end of the game. It's not the end of the story. The 24% will go further up in the future. This is set to be the most profitable business from the adjusted EBITDA margin perspective inside our portfolio, beating the transmission business at 21% adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter. You see how sizable is the increase over quarter two 2025, EUR 60 million, out of which EUR 30 million are attributed to the perimeter change. Last year, we had Channell included in the quarter only for one month. This year it's for the full period. The rest, from EUR 60 -EUR 90 is Channell. From EUR 90 -EUR 122 is DSE's original perimeter. You see the power of pricing, efficiency, scale, and the shift from fiber to the home to data center. Our sustainability and innovation KPIs are also extremely satisfactory.
The 25% recycled content in quarter two is a sign of a lower reliance on the tight copper market in the U.S. We recycle more waste than we used to do in the past, lowering our cost and securing the supply chain and shortening lead time. 46% of revenues are commented already before. This 32% of Vitality Index is also an important indicator of a crucial and key for this company is to continue innovation. This is telling that one-third of our revenue has been achieved through products that we launched to the market in the last three years, and one-third of our revenue accounts for EUR 7 billion. We have in this year EUR 7 billion revenues generated by new products. Why is this important?
New product means a higher share of wallet, it means higher profitability, it means a different pricing power, it means a different value provided to our customer to strengthen our relationship. Key parameter for our growth in the future as well in the past. Two example of the innovation out there. hollow-core fiber is an innovative solution to convey data through air, 30% faster than standard glass technology, allowing data center to be further spaced out, evolving to greater congestion on existing energy grids, which is the real constraint to data center establishment. Also in the transmission business, a very innovative solution to bury cable at a deeper depth, greater depth than the standard methodology, making the network more secure, more resilient, and providing customer an upside in terms of reliability of the connection.
Let me hand over to Francesco for more details on the financial result of the quarter.
Thank you very much, Massimo, and good morning to everybody. As usual, let me use the profit and loss to recap some of the messages that Massimo has already passed. The organic growth in the first half was in excess of 7%, with a very good acceleration in the second quarter, reaching 9.4% in the second quarter. I have to say that all the segments of the company performed extremely well in terms of organic growth, with a growth of 14% in transmission, 13% in power grid, 9% in I&C, 18% in Digital Solutions, with the only little exception of specialties, which was substantially flat or slightly negative in the quarter. The performance was very strong in terms of EBITDA.
As Massimo said, the best yet quarter at EUR 730, with a sequential increasing EBITDA margin at standard metal at 15.4%, with a very substantial growth from the second quarter of last year, + EUR 125 million, but also sequentially from Q1, + EUR 130 million, as you see from the right box of this chart. The lion's share of this growth was taken by transmission and Digital Solutions, + EUR 54 million and + EUR 65 million respectively. Of course, with the support also of the great performance of Channell that Massimo mentioned. Power grid improved margin sequential, which is very important. As you have seen, organic growth in power grid, both in Europe and North America, was extremely positive. Electrification, particularly I&C, performed the best quarter in the last, I would say, 18 months. Very positive, specifically in North America.
Very good note also on the group net profit that reached EUR 569 million in the first half, by far the highest ever. This is other than the EBITDA and the operating result supported by a very nice drop in financial charges that you see here. A slight improvement also of the tax rate, and this assesses our group net profit estimate for the full year in excess of EUR 1.2 billion, which will mean a growth of earnings per share, which is significantly beyond the original targets that we had set. Let me now turn to the cash generation, which was solid, close to EUR 1 billion in the last 12 months of June. A bit lower than the one that we had in Q1.
The main reason, I would say the only reason, is the very high impact and adverse impact of the rising metal prices, which reached actually the peak in the Q2, and which will progressively decrease in terms of adverse effect in the second half. Massimo will show you the updated guidance on the free cash flow, we plan an extremely strong second half on the back, of course, of the contract with Molex, which will bring in a very substantial down payment. Even more importantly, on the back of a very strong cash flow coming from the transmission business. This year, the transmission business cash flow is mainly concentrated in the second half, we are also doing great in terms of improving our working capital performance and efficiencies.
All this will contribute to this quite, I would say, strong target that we have set for the year. Massimo will explain in a while. I think I am over, back to Massimo.
Francesco, thank you. Quickly, two main changes. For the EBITDA, we raised this EUR 2.7 billion of the original guidance to EUR 2.850, range of EUR 2.8-EUR 2.9. It is worth saying that we have super high confidence to be the EUR 2.850 and to end up in the top portion of the upper part of the range at EUR 2.850-EUR 2.9. You will see that EUR 2.850 itself is already quite close to the target we set for 2028 at the Capital Markets Day 2025. This means that we will certainly in the next quarter one, quarter two, 2026, 2027, sorry, we will go out for a new Capital Markets Day, providing and disclosing the trajectory from 2027 through 2030, 2031, with organic growth and the strong driver explanation of where we see this growth in the different geographies. Free cash flow is an amazing number.
EUR 1.7 billion is of course the highest ever free cash flow of the company. It is true that there is a EUR 550 million coming from Molex as a down payment. Equally important to mention that there are significant increase in CapEx, partly to support Digital Solutions capacity expansion, but partly to start showing the growth that we had to underline that we will disclose next year at the Capital Markets Day that is organic across many segments and many geographies, North America, but also Europe, also other regions, and transmission. The EUR 1.7 is the effect of Molex on the one end, some additional CapEx in 2026 that will continue stronger in 2027 and beyond, with the efficiency and the additional EBITDA offsetting the metal impact versus the original guidance. The metal impact is around EUR 250 million. With this, I move to the closing remarks.
Great performance. Super satisfied about the change in pace of the company. The company showed this quarter. As I said before, we have this unique opportunity to be the only one serving data center with the whole product range they need for this function. We are going to invest in growth in 2026 and beyond 2026. The acceleration pays the way for a new Capital Markets Day in the start of 2027. I would like to hand over to you for your question and more details about our success story.
As a reminder, to ask a question now, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. A moment for our first question. We will now take our first question from the line of Daniela Costa of Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question, Daniela. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my questions. I have two questions. I'll ask them one at a time. First, just wanted to follow- up on sort of the going forward, how should we think about fiber margins from here? Should we think about sort of having a linear step-up? I think in the past you have commented about mid-20% EBITDA margin, given all that has happened in that segment and your new exposures. Is that still appropriate? Sort of how the path is more linear and more back-end loaded? If you could give some color on that, then I'll ask the second one.
Daniela, thank you for the question. The path is pretty linear through 2029 because the shortage in the market will continue until then. We have accurate targets that we'll disclose at the Capital Markets Day. We see us in the upper part of the range at 25%-30%. We will beat the 25% mid-20s. Consider that not only fiber will drive the growth, but also connectivity, especially the Channell portion, which is also partly exposed to data center, will support the EBITDA margin growth in the coming quarters.
Sorry, 25%-30%, that's kind of like for the 2029 period that you've mentioned, or that's sort of throughout the period you-
It's linear from 2027-
Okay
...through 2028 to go as high as between 25% and 30% by then.
Got it. Okay. Thank you. Just second question. I think in the past you had tied up doing an update on the medium-term targets with sort of your M&A ambitions. I wonder if should we read anything into the timing of the CMD in that? If you could update a little bit how you're progressing on sort of your ambitions there.
We are making progress. We analyzed a lot of companies in the last 12 months. It could well be the case that we cannot comment much. It could well be the case that before then we will have a perimeter change. That new ambition will include both organic and M&A perimeter benefit, really additional benefit from the perimeter.
Got it. Thank you so much. I'll go back into queue.
Thank you, Daniela.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Vivek Midha of Citi. Please ask your question, Vivek. Your line is open.
Thank you very much, everyone. Good morning. Hope you can hear me well.
Yes.
My first question is around the Molex deal. You've highlighted the figure of over EUR 10 billion of cumulative optical data center revenues, of which Molex is EUR 5.5 billion. Within the other portion of that figure, could you maybe give us an indication of how much of that has already been signed as of today, versus how much you're anticipating in deals to come? Thank you.
Thank you, Vivek. The EUR 5.5 billion is the Molex, as you said. The balance is hyperscalers or players in the infrastructure deployment of data centers. The balance is not as long in terms of duration as the Molex deal, which is a 10-year deal. For the next five to six years, the rest is also covered by deals already signed. We are also thinking of making a second wave of capacities because there's still a lot of demand unsatisfied in the market. We keep receiving requests for additional volume delivered to existing customer, new customer, and I feel pretty confident that over the next two quarters, we will sign new deals in addition to the one that we agreed we landed in the last two months.
Thank you. Just to follow- up, to clarify, is that second wave of deals over and above the EUR 10 billion, or is it part of the EUR 10 billion? Just to clarify. Thank you.
It would be over and above the EUR 10 billion.
Okay. Understood. Thank you very much. My second question is on the I&C margin. It's a very strong organic growth, particularly in the U.S. The margin is down year-on-year. The U.S. is typically margin accretive in that business, or it is margin accretive in this business.
Yeah
Why is the margin not stronger? Maybe could you elaborate on how the margin has developed in both Europe and the U.S.? Thank you.
Thank you. U.S. is accretive. We also have another region that is highly accretive, which is LATAM. The margin in LATAM are not as high as U.S., but close to. In LATAM, we have a softening margin in a couple of countries. One is Colombia, one is Argentina. This is the reason why year-over-year, the margin are still slightly down. Also mentioned that the quarter two was a strong quarter in U.S., but June was the strongest month ever. April and May were not as strong as last year, when you compare the year-over-year, the margin of quarter two 2026 with 2025, bring into account that also U.S. did very well in June, but not as well as quarter two last year in April and May. Mainly, the major effect is this weakening in the LATAM region.
That's clear. Thank you very much.
No question.
Thank you. We will now take our next question. The next question comes from the line of Akash Gupta of JP Morgan. Please ask your question, Akash. Your line is open.
Yes. Hi, good morning. I got two as well. The first one is a follow-up on these framework agreements that you have signed in optical fiber cable business. Massimo, you previously said margins of Channell are higher than your remaining Digital Solutions business because they sell directly to hyperscalers, while your products were going through some intermediary companies that buy your products and then sell it to hyperscalers. The question is that when you sign these optical fiber cable framework, and you have Molex, you have directly with some hyperscalers, my question is that, does the margin in framework agreement directly signed with hyperscalers differs than when you sign with companies like Molex, or are they same? That's the first one to start with.
Thank you. Interesting perspective. The margins today are even higher than what we have in the long-term deals. The approach was that we wanted to trade a longer duration and security margin over a longer time than the best margin possible in the stock business. When it comes to comparing Molex to hyperscalers, the margin across these two different customers is pretty much the same. Of course, new deals or recent deals have better margins than what we signed two months ago. In some of those agreement, Molex was signed three weeks ago, but some of the other hyperscaler agreement were signed two or three months ago. There is a close alignment in margin between the two of them.
There is a certainty today in September or October, November, December, for sure, better opportunity to enhance margin with new deals because as I said, the capacity is still what it was one year ago, and for the next two years will remain unchanged. What matters is the ability to shift from all the old traditional fiber to the old customers to a data center. Also bear in mind that the market is buoyant within fiber to the old customer, because they are desperate for volume as well. Margins are similar across the whole customer base risk, but they will be progressively growing. New deals will give us a stronger profitability. Channell margin are higher because this is not cable, it is component, it is plastic, metal frame, and all the software, and a bespoke solution, partly for data center and partly for fiber to the home.
Thank you. My follow-up question is on guidance. Today you are raising guidance by EUR 150 million at the midpoint. I am curious if you can help us split how much of that is because of Digital Solutions versus the rest of the company. When we look at the upgrade that is coming from Digital Solutions, how much of that is already secured based on your renegotiation and higher prices from some contracts that are getting rolled over? Is there any scope for renegotiating some of the existing contracts in second half that might bring upside to this EUR 150 million? Thank you.
Thank you. Very pertinent question. The two drivers of growth behind this guidance is solidity in power grid and electrification, which is the baseline. Certainly transmission and Digital Solutions are the two main contributor to this EUR 150 million or to whatever the number will be that result, which I suppose it will be definitely higher than EUR 2 billion and EUR 150 million. Transmission this year will add EUR 200 million EBITDA to last year. Last year we ended up with EUR 580 million. You can imagine a number this year, EUR 200 million higher, and this is embedded in this guidance, not fully embedded in this guidance. Digital Solutions is adding easily EUR 50 million, EUR 70 million, EUR 80 million to the previous guidance due to the repricing of the old business. We see margin improvement in Digital Solutions every single week.
Every single week, we continue renegotiating contracts, frame agreements, more the contract with existing fiber to the home customers. Every single week we are disappointing customer because we have no fiber to give them. There will be additional chances to build extra profitability in Digital Solutions in the coming months. At a certain point we reach a balance. The market will be fully saturated by existing capacity. There will be no room for new deals, but new room for new deals will come from the additional capacity expansion that we are thinking of negotiating with other players, hyperscalers or other infrastructure players in the second half of 2027. EUR 150 million basically solving growth in power grid electrification on the one hand, stronger contribution from transmission and Digital Solutions to top up this number to EUR 850 million and beyond.
Thank you, Massimo.
You're welcome.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Max Yates of Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question, Max. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning. I just want to start off on the hyperscaler agreement. I think in that press release you said that you expected your hyperscaler revenues to be around EUR 1.1 billion by 2031. I was just trying to get a feel for how much of your total Digital Solutions you were expecting the hyperscalers to be. Look, where I'm going with this is I was slightly struggling to reckon numbers. I think you previously said hyperscalers would be most of your optical business. Your optical business is typically 60% of your total business. It just seems like quite a low number given where consensus revenues are. Maybe just any color around that, how much of that business should it be? That number actually doesn't seem that high in the context of where consensus is.
Yeah, I like to reset the scene with first of all, the breakdown of the Digital Solutions revenue between the three segments, optical, connectivity, and MMS. Take 2025 revenues, Digital Solutions amounted to EUR 1.6 billion. After that EUR 1.6 billion, you should see EUR 600 million, more or less optical. The rest is more or less equally split between connectivity and MMS. When I say EUR 1.1 billion data center is incremental, the EUR 600 million + EUR 1.1 billion will make EUR 1.7 billion in the optical space. The data center piece inside this optical space of EUR 1.7 billion revenue by 2030 will account for 85%-90% of the total revenue. Today in the last year, in 2025, the EUR 600 million revenues in optical, we are more or less EUR 200 million over data center revenues. From EUR 200 million data center to EUR 1.1 billion additional.
By the same time, the fiber to the home business, we are shifting to data center. Overall, inside the EUR 1.7 billion revenue optical total for 2030, take 90%, that would be data center. EUR 1.5 billion.
Is that very clear?
Yep, that's very helpful. Maybe just a sort of bigger picture sort of question on tariff. We've seen obviously a huge amount of moving headlines, and I imagine it's very difficult for you to kind of keep on top of. Maybe just sort of your latest on the ground perspectives of what all of these tariff headlines maybe split by copper and aluminum is actually meaning for your business in terms of kind of on the ground activity. How it's driving competitor behavior, whether you've seen any noticeable change in that in the last three months, and whether these kind of newer tariff headlines you expect any change maybe in the next three, six months as a result of any of the developments. Thank you.
I think we confirmed the trend that we noticed in the market in the last two months. As far as the aluminum cable is concerned, when they shifted from 50% tariff applied to metal to 25% applied to the whole value of the cable, we noticed changes in behavior in the market, importers became less relevant because they had to be clear the whole value of cable and pay on top of it 25%. This brought them out of competition in terms of price. They could not offer any longer a better price than the local player. We noticed aluminum building wire cables benefit from more pricing or margin in power in the last three months. As far as the rest is concerned, copper, nothing changed. As far as the future tariff is concerned, I don't have a clue.
I think all those tariffs will help again local players to strengthen their position in the market, to become even more relevant than importers and hopefully to benefit from incremental margins.
That's helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Max.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Sean McLoughlin of HSBC. Please ask your question. Sean, your line is open.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Can I start with Power Grid? Impressive organic growth, and you talk about the positive trajectory continuing. I'm just wondering where you are in terms of your current loading capacity, and if we look out over the next 12 months, what is driving that positive trajectory? Is it more capacity coming online? Is it pricing? If you could just maybe flesh that out a little bit in more detail. That's the first question.
The growth that we've planned for our perimeter in Power Grid is coming from additional capacity. We approved one year ago additional megawatt capacity in U.S. and in Europe. Two months ago, we approved another wave of megawatt capacity increase in U.S. Partly that capacity will serve the I&C, Industrial Construction market, call it EPC or data center expansion. Part of that megawatt will be for utilities, because don't forget, these poor grids that we have in U.S., but also in Europe, need continuous reshaping or restrengthening and hardening, because of additional electricity demand increase across the globe. We are also positive about the famous cost increase pass-through to the market. There's a time lag effect due to the existing formula.
Since the market is buoyant, level of prices is increasing the market, we should be able to restore this famous 14.5% or 15% EBITDA margin in the coming quarter, maybe quarter four, maybe quarter one this year, I would say. The growth opportunity is amazing. We are currently flat out in terms of capacity in Europe and North America. If we had more, we would sell more at a good price.
Thank you. That's very clear. The second question is back to Digital Solutions. Just on slide five, to understand firstly the cadence of the incremental revenues, which look to be peaking in 2028, and then you have a further pickup in 2031 after a fade. I guess 2028 is related to higher CapEx in 2026 and 2027. Just wondering what's happening on the tail. Also the substitution switch of current revenues into optical. Again, should we assume a linear progression 2025 - 2031, or is that switchout going to happen much more quickly? Thank you.
The steady level of capacity expansion run rate will be achieved by 2030. In 2030, we will have additional capacity equivalent to EUR 1.1 billion incremental revenues in the data center space in the optical segment of business. Until then, we will have marginal improvement on capacity from 2028 onwards, but the full run rate is 2030, but we will have an important benefit by shifting away from fiber to the home and to data center. I do not know if I answered the question, but imagine today we have, or last year we had EUR 600 million in optical business. In 2030, we will have EUR 1.7 billion in optical business. Today, last year, we had EUR 200 million in data center out of the EUR 600 million revenues. In 2030, we will have EUR 1.5 billion revenue in data center. I hope that.
Very good.
With these metrics, I answered the question, Sean.
Thank you. I suppose just to follow- up on an earlier comment you made about 2029, you are talking about the fiber shortage continuing up to then. Do you already then assume that by 2029 there is more of a supply-demand balance, or is there likely to be more, let us say, demand upside risk pushing that date further back?
Unfortunately, Sean, it would be unfair to say if I am able to read the market in 2029. The comments I would like to make is that it will take three years, 2027, 2029, for the players to build this capacity. Bear in mind that the players I am talking about is us and Corning, because none of the others are in U.S., and we are talking about U.S. fiber.
The fiber, the origin of country, the origin of production of the fiber has to be U.S. to avoid the unbearable tariff if you were producing fiber in China. The volume demand, I think will continue. I don't think we will reach the balance in 2029. In fact, we have a new opportunity to expand capacity now beyond what we already committed to doing for Molex and the others, because there is additional demand in the market. What else to say?
In the end of the day, as far as our contract is concerned, what the volume will be in demand that the market will be in 2029, 2030, 2031 is not that relevant because we have security of the margins in absolute value over the next seven to 10 years, thanks to the contracts. Personally, I believe that this imbalance will continue beyond 2029.
Very clear. Thank you.
You are welcome, Sean.
Thank-
Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Chris Leonard of UBS. Please ask your question. Chris, your line is open.
Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the time, maybe a few from me as well, one by one perhaps. Starting on Digital Solutions and thinking about the connectivity piece. Obviously, you've spoken about incremental revenues you see coming through fiber directly into data centers. I wonder if there's anything you can give us looking out to 2030 on the connectivity portion of the division, and whether or not that will also benefit from similar tailwinds, and how you think the Channell business will progress. Because obviously it's a very high margin. Thanks.
It is already, Chris. Thank you very much. There's already a great uptake in the performance of connectivity in the current month, because as the market rebounded in the U.S., cross fiber to the home and certain data center, also these components of connectivity, closures, boxes and vaults, all the stuff that the Channell makes, benefit from additional demand and better prices. We had in quarter one and also quarter two 2026, outperform the result of Channell in quarter one and quarter two 2025. Significant. We expect this to continue. At the same time, we are developing new products, larger boxes that goes underground for data center application. This will give us the opportunity to add additional CBO revenue to the Channell business that originally was only fiber to the home, adding the data center opportunity to Channell business.
The margins you have in connectivity Channell is as high as 35% EBITDA. That's 36%-37% EBITDA. Very accretive to the older division.
Thank you. Staying still on Digital Solutions. Can you maybe talk about the phasing of the Molex contract this year? Are we anticipating a more material step-up in revenue here for Q3, Q4? With that, obviously higher margins too, on the basis of that pricing being captured from data center customers, Molex being one of them. Equally, the new contracts you just pointed to that could be signed and maybe already have been signed to take you to EUR 10 billion or above, can those also contribute into the back half of this year?
Yes. I mean, the whole market is really demanding more already in 2026. The phasing of Molex and the other hyperscalers volume growth is consistent with, on the one end, our speed in expanding capacity in U.S., not only in U.S., but certainly the fiber space. With our speed in reallocating volume from existing customer. I tell you, we are proceeding at very high pace, both on CapEx and on shifting from fiber to the home to a data center. Quarter two is much higher than quarter one in terms of EBITDA and EBITDA margin. Quarter three will be higher, quarter four will be higher. This will be a journey that we see our capacity increase immediately released to the market.
Our ability to renegotiate existing contract with fiber to the home, adding profitability, our speed in reallocating volume from fiber to the home to data center, adding additional opportunities.
Just to follow up-
Sorry. The run rate level, as I said before, will be reached in 2030, when the full capacity will be coming online. Sorry.
Cool, that's super helpful. As a follow-up to your earlier comments of margin expansion being quite linear, sort of 25%-30%, and confident at the upper end of that range. Should we think 25% is achievable for your 2026 performance in Digital Solutions? Is that what you're pointing to today?
As at the rate of quarter four, for sure. Because the full year depends on, in quarter one, we are 20% because we were at the early stage of the pricing improvement. If you take first half, we are probably at 22.5%-23%. Yeah, we will end up slightly higher than 25% in quarter four. Full year average will be probably slightly over 25%, but 2027 the full year will be at a higher level of margins.
Of course, yeah. Thank you. Finally, going back to electrification and on the low-voltage side, and thinking about the margin progression here, as we've seen some evidence the European market is picking up. Is there any comments you can make in terms of what you see in terms of the pricing opportunity in Europe, and if you think there's going to be any sort of tailwinds in the next few years on what you can do there? Thank you.
We can't much more on the rebound that we notice in United States and what we're seeing in Europe. Europe is stronger than last year in terms of demand and pricing, still pockets of low margins in Europe, and as well in our nice country with high margins. The real upside from what I see is going to come from stable or mild growth in Europe, volume and margins, significant growth in the United States.
That's it from me. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Welcome, Chris.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Lucas Ferhani of Jefferies. Please ask your question, Lucas, your line is open.
Good morning. Come back on that phasing of the revenues in Digital Solutions. When I look at the 2027, I'm wondering where is the acceleration coming from versus 2026? Just because at that point, my understanding was that the repricing would be mostly done, and you don't have any new capacity yet coming online on 2027. Just wondering, what am I missing on the 2027, where it seems from the building blocks you can grow more or deliver more incremental revenues versus what you're delivering in 2026, where the bulk of the repricing is happening. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Lucas. There are three effects on 2027. There will be some marginal debottlenecking of existing capacity that will come online in 2027, which will bring additional volume. There will be repricing across the board, and we will probably be almost done in terms of repricing everything to the best possible level. There will be more share of data center business inside our total optical business in Digital Solutions. Those are the three elements that will compose the EBITDA growth and the EBITDA margin announcement in 2027.
Perfect. Thank you. On the EUR 1.1 billion incremental, is that assuming 100% of capacity is used, or is that the visibility you already have from the frame agreement, and there could be upside to that EUR 1.1 billion if you deliver on other contracts?
Lucas, it's basically the same. We took commitment at the level to central our capacity, or we raise our capacity to the level of the commitment. They are the same numbers, EUR 1.1 billion is additional revenues, EUR 1.1 billion is additional capacity.
Perfect. Thank you. The last one was just on the free cash flow. It's quite a strong upgrade there as well for the year. Very strong also conversion of EBITDA versus what we usually see. Can you help us a little bit on the building blocks here? Is just many big down payments coming in transmission or are there other things to mention for the higher free cash flow? Thank you.
I'll let Francesco giving you the main components of this bridge, EUR 1.350, EUR 1.7.
Yeah. Thank you, Massimo. Actually it's quite simple. We have the positive components coming from the additional EBITDA, which is plus EUR 150 million versus the prior guidance. Of course, you have to take out some tax effect from that. As I mentioned, we are increasingly improving our performance in terms of working capital, stock receivable, and this will contribute not a very different number compared to the EBITDA incremental effect. Substantially, these two positive elements will offset the negative metal impact versus what we had already embedded in the guidance that we quantify in the EUR 250 million. What is left are two elements partly offsetting each other.
One is the big down payment coming from Molex, EUR 550, net of a strong acceleration on the CapEx that we quantify in the year of approximately EUR 200 million over the level of the CapEx, which was embedded in the guidance. This is leading to the midpoint of 1.7, the +EUR 350 million. I don't know if I've been clear with it.
Yeah, all clear. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Lucas.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Monica Bosio of Intesa SanPaolo. Please ask your question, Monica. Your line is open.
Yes, good morning, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. The first is on Power Grid. Margins improved sequentially, they are still a little bit far to, I think, your target. Can you give us an indication of what do you expect for Power Grid by year-end? Is it 15% margins already achievable? My second question is still on the down payments and the structure of the framework agreements. The company will receive EUR 550 million of down payment. Should we expect further down payments from Molex, the next down payments will come from the additional and not yet identified frameworks agreements? Should we model the same, let's say, the same weight of the payments that you got from Molex?
In addition to this, as the preform production activity is very energy intensive, I was curious about the structure of the cost within your framework agreement. Are you planning a complete pass-through to the final customer to the hyperscalers? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Monica. Very articulated question. Let me start with Power Grid. The only reason why the margins are slightly behind the record margin achieved one year ago is because we are in a cost inflationary situation we have allowed to pass all cost increases to the market with a time lag. As long as the costs continue increasing, we will still suffer from this time lag. Should the cost inflation end one day, we will catch up with the 15% EBITDA margin immediately. The whole point is that the real question is: Is the market stronger? Because even if you had a good cost price adjustment clause, if say the market wasn't stronger, prices will go backwards. The market is super strong. There's no pricing pressure in the market. New tenders will be made at a better price.
This is, again, a temporary, and sorry for saying this, or mentioning this as a temporary situation which lasted a bit longer, but it's due to the inflation and the Iran war as at play into this. Don't be concerned, the market is demanding more voltage, more cables, more capacity, and therefore price is pretty sustained. We will catch up as soon as inflation will ease in the coming quarters. The down payment structure is such that we receive a down payment, and as we start delivering revenues after a certain number of years, we'll have to return the money that we had in advance. In 2030, 2031, we give back, 2032, 2033, we give back the vast majority of this down payment.
The structure of this deal is solid in the sense that, trying addressing your third question, not only do we have formula to pass on the cost, we have guaranteed volume, we take-or-pay, and guaranteed margin because we pass the cost immediately without suffering, on the contrary to what I said before in Hungary, from this famous time lag. In the given quarter, at the end of the quarter, the price will be adjusted based on the cost increase up and occur in that quarter. The margins in terms of dollars per fiber sold will be guaranteed throughout the whole period. Hope this clarifies your question.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Yes. Well clarified. Thank you.
Thank you, Monica.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Alessandro Cecchini of Equita. Please ask your question, Alessandro. Your line is open.
Thank you. Thank you very much for taking my questions. The first one actually is on electrification. You said that margins were down or slightly up quarter- on- quarter, but due to LATAM. Could you give us a sort of feeling what are you seeing in the market now from the first half to the end of the year?
Yeah
Incremental business or just to give some flavor on this. My second question is,
We have lost the line of the questioner. We will now move to the next question while waiting for him to reconnect.
Okay.
Our next question comes from the line of Nabil Najeeb of Deutsche Bank. Please ask your question, Nabil. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question.
Hello.
I just have one. Can you give us an update on the secondary listing in New York? It looks like the plan is back on with work being started on it according to your comments to the press this morning. Do you have a timeline in mind for the listing?
Thank you, Nabil. It's still a crucial point about value project for us, for value creation. Currently, we are very busy with a lot of stuff, the deployment of this data center opportunity, the contracts, new waves of capacity increase, M&As. It will be remaining our priority top one in the list, and the proper moment we will disclose the timing of this operation.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you, Nabil.
We will now take our next question from the line of Uma Samlin of Bank of America. Please ask your question, Uma. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for taking my question. Two for me, please. First question is on M&A. I guess you mentioned in the interview this morning you're interested in the M&A opportunities in the U.S. Would you be able to give us a bit more insight on what are the ideal type of business you find most exciting? Does it deal with Molex change your thinking in terms of how interesting a connectivity business for you versus accessories? Maybe we can start from there. Thank you.
Thank you, Uma. Our approach to M&As doesn't change. Molex is a way to organically expand the capacity. It's a fast-growing opportunity for us in terms of incremental EBITDA. We are still open to M&A in spaces adjacent to our cable piece because we want to reinforce the share of revenues in the company that are solutions rather than just pure cables. U.S. remain probably the best geography for those opportunity, given the high profitability in the market, both in power and electrification in Digital Solutions space. We're also looking at other regions, and I'm confident that in the coming quarter, we will be able to disclose more, of course, at the proper timing, at the signing of the projects.
That's super clear. Thank you very much. My second question is on your capacity ramp-up for the fiber production. If I'm looking at the slide five from the presentation, it's very helpful, that slide. It seems like you're already planning to have some significant capacity increase by 2028. Is that ahead of your schedule? How should we think about the phasing of your capacity expansion from there? I guess a follow-up also on the second. You were talking about the second wave of deals that could be above EUR 10 billion. How much more capacity would you be able to add on top of that two deals you have announced? And what would be the timeline there? If you do sign those contracts, would that be on top of the EUR 1.1 billion revenues then? Thank you.
Thank you, Uma. Yes. We will have the run rate capacity achieved by end of 2029. Part of the capacity increase will happen in 2027 in Europe. The rest will happen in the United States, where we are planning to more than doubling the fiber capacity located in U.S. By 2029, there will be this more than doubling. In 2028 will be the first chunk of this more than doubling U.S. capacity. Let's say one third, 40% of the run rate capacity will be already implemented by 2028. If you went for new deals, these deals will require additional capacity. We are not thinking to go too wild in terms of extra capacity, but the demand from different players and the usual hyperscalers, customers still unsatisfied.
We will for sure sign other deals, and this will bring the incremental revenues incrementally over the EUR 1.1 billion EB revenue added by 2031 or 2030 of the existing deals.
Yeah, that's super helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Uma. You're welcome.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Alessandro Tortora of Mediobanca. Please ask your question. Your line is open.
Yes, thanks. Hi, good morning to everybody. I have three questions, okay, if I may. The first one, let's say, relates to the transmission business. If you can, let's say, give us an update on the, let's say, second half outlook in terms of tender or award, if you expect any acceleration on this front. The second question is on, let's say, I understood your comment on free cash flow. If you could help us also to reconnect a little bit with the, let's say, outlook on the leverage, year-end leverage, considering also the incremental CapEx and on the factor you mentioned before on the upfront payment. The last one is, let's say, just a small curiosity. You mentioned the hollow-core fiber with the, let's say, this innovative solution that you are basically now under development from a commercial standpoint, industrial standpoint.
Can you give us an update on this, if you see, let's say, in a short period of time, five years of time, if you see, let's say, any update and that this solution can be commercialized with your existing, let's say, data center clients. Thanks.
Thank you, Alessandro. As far as transmission is concerned, the second half should be a bit more buoyant than first half. In first half, we won what was available from the market. Our backlog is still pretty high, EUR 17 billion. The overall demand in 2026, we estimate around EUR 10 billion in new projects awarded to the market. We expect to see this level be beaten in 2027, 2028 because there are projects in the pipelines that will in 2027, 2028. I'd like to defer to Francesco for connection to the leverage at the end of the year.
Thank you, Massimo. Based on this update of the free cash flow guidance, we estimate that the year-end net debt will be in the region of EUR 2.3 billion-EUR 2.4 billion, which means a quite outstanding improvement versus our original expectation. Actually, in terms of leverage, if you take the updated EBITDA guidance, means a leverage of around 0.8 time. A very low leverage.
Thank you, Francesco. As far the hollow-core fiber is concerned, we completed, let me say, the industrialization phase. Last week we were in the U.S., we handed over this cable. Not just the fiber. The fiber in cables to Amazon for an installation trial, an installation test that passed successfully. They tried to break this cable in all possible ways. They could not do it. They could not achieve it. We passed the test. We are now able to scale production to a different level. The demand is high. The level of margins is extremely interesting. It's all about how fast we can scale this up to a more mass production level. It will never be a solution that accounts for more than 10% of the fiber market demand, it would be pretty profitable from this perspective.
Understood. Just if I may, a quick follow-up on this.
Sure
that you have, let's say, this agreement or you invested into the Relativity Networks company. You're currently a shareholder of this company. Assuming that you're going now to start commercializing this solution, do you expect to do also a step up in terms of ownership into Relativity Networks?
Yeah. Good question. We are discussing this as we speak. It's probably too early stage to make a decision. We want to wait and see what happens the second half in terms is the ball is in us, in our field. We have to speed up the industrialization and addition of capacity. Currently, we are producing this in Europe. The ideal place for the rollout of extra capacity will be Claremont, North Carolina, U.S., where this demand is located. Probably towards the end of this year, we will evaluate additional ownership or additional opportunity with Relativity Networks, in terms of stake in the company.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. Welcome, Alessandro.
Thank you. I'd now like to invite Alessandro Cecchini of Equita for his questions. Please ask your question. Alessandro, your line is open.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, Alessandro.
Hello. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Thank you for this. I repeat maybe.
No, the first question we got.
Oh, okay.
The first question we got. If you want to move to the second, we answer both.
Okay. My last one was, I don't know because the line was down about the European opportunities in terms of margins electrification. If you can elaborate a little bit more on this, if you have plans to restructure or to improve margins in the region. I don't know if you answered this question.
Yeah. The first one, question was about the market development in other regions. In LATAM, we had.
Exactly
we are going through a normalization. LATAM, we had this spike in margins in the last two years in Argentina due to the country situation and in Colombia, now we suffer from normalization. Normal things like this. Things like this happen. Nothing extremely relevant. Of course, LATAM weighted a lot in terms of overall profitability because their profitability is pretty close to that of U.S. Europe, partly answer your second question, is mildly growing in terms of volume growth and in terms of profitability. We have plans to strengthen the growth through things that we cannot probably disclose too much. There will be some restructure, some additional capacity relocation. There will be some footprinting in Europe.
Mild footprinting, will help us strengthen our position in Europe and also become more efficient in serving customer in a way similar to what we do in U.S. with Encore Wire. This is more or less the essence of what we have in mind for European margin enhancement.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Welcome, Alessandro.
Thank you. We have no further questions. I'll now turn the conference back to the room for closing comments.
Thank you very much everyone for your time. I hope you enjoyed the call and hope you'll be also enjoying your holiday in the coming weeks. Thank you and see you soon.
Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.