Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to TIM Q3 2024 results presentation. I am here with the CEO, Pietro Labriola, the CFO, Adrian Calaza, and the rest of the management team. Today, we will present the highlights of the first nine months, followed by a review of the operating and financial results. At the end, there will be the usual Q&A session. I point out that Q3 marks the first quarter of the new TIM; hence, we report actual results for the first time, whereas in Q1 and Q2, we reported like-for-like estimates of the financial and operating performance. Pointing out our safe harbor disclaimer on page two, let me hand over the stage to Pietro. Pietro, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Paolo. Good morning, everyone. Let's start from a quick recap of the first nine months' results. At Group level, revenues were up 3.4%. EBITDA after leases increased 11%. CapEx was EUR 1.3 billion, representing 12.5% of revenues, and EBITDA after leases minus CapEx was EUR 1.4 billion, up 35%. Net debt after leases reduced by over EUR 100 million in Q3 and landed just below EUR 8 billion. At domestic level, revenues increased 1.8%. EBITDA after leases was up 8.3%. CapEx was EUR 0.8 billion, or 10.5% of revenues, and EBITDA after leases minus CapEx was up 38% at EUR 0.7 billion. Slide four. Let's now benchmark nine months' results against full-year guidance. You have a detailed slide in Annex. Here, I want to point out the following messages: Group revenues and EBITDA after leases are in line or above guidance.
Domestic top line and EBITDA After Lease are on track, considering the acceleration we expect in Q4, driven by favorable seasonality and easy costs. Domestic EBITDA After Lease is growing faster than revenues, meaning that OpEx are under control and operating leverage is emerging. TIM Brasil is delivering significant top line and EBITDA growth, translating into a robust cash generation. Net debt is reducing as planned. In Q4, we expect the trend to accelerate as it does every year, hence the reduction to become more material. In a nutshell, year-to-date, we are doing slightly better than guidance on group EBITDA After Lease, while CapEx is soft both in Italy and in Brazil. Therefore, we have a significant advantage EBITDA After Lease minus CapEx. On this metric, at year-end, we could be in line or slightly better than guidance, depending mainly on how much CapEx we will do in Q4.
Keep in mind that this is a peculiar year. NetCo separation triggered a significant level of complexity with many moving parts, and the new TIM has only been operational for four months. This is why we cannot be more specific on Q4 outlook. Let's now review the performance of the three entities. Slide six. For each entity, we provide an update on the competitive environment and on how our strategy is deploying, followed by a deep dive on the KPIs. Starting from TIM Consumer, in the wireless market, we see telco operators being aggressively, but we also see increasing pressure from energy players. If we combine the volume of broadband customers they are printing, it is as if a new player has entered into the market. Clearly, this situation requires a serious evaluation by the authorities.
Despite this, the market was broadly stable in Q3, while it remains to be seen whether energy players become a more serious threat in coming quarters. The mobile market is still competitive on low end. The good news is that the top end is marginally more rational, with record low volume in market number portability, meaning that the ARPU dilution effect of customer jumping from one operator to the other is less pronounced. In this context, TIM Consumer's volume-to-value strategy is paying off. This is the third year of backbook repricing for us. We've been able to stabilize or even increase ARPU without compromising customer satisfaction while keeping churn under control. We are also gaining traction on the customer platform with an increasing contribution from multimedia consumers and from IT services in the small and medium business segment. Let's now review the most relevant KPIs. Slide seven.
Year-to-date, TIM Consumer top line is flat and in line with the target embedded in our plan. In 2024, we decided to concentrate the price up in the first half in order to maximize the impact in the year. If we look at wireless in Q3, ARPU grew 8%. Net adds were marginally better than in prior quarters, and churn was remarkably stable. If we look at mobile, ARPU was still down year-on-year but improved sequentially in Q3. Line losses were lower than in Q2, and only half of the loss was reported in Q1. As I mentioned earlier, the customer platform strategy is gaining traction. In consumer, service revenue from add-ons is up 14%, with the penetration at acquisition growing significantly since July. In the small and medium business segment, fixed services revenue from ICT is increasing 10%.
Our strategy to sell adjacent services to increase ARPU and reduce churn is contributing to top line stabilization. Slide eight. Turning to TIM Enterprise, the competitive dynamic is radically different compared to the consumer market. First, the enterprise market is much less crowded, with a limited number of players capable to offer an integrated telecom and IT offer. This leads to a lower competitive intensity and more stable prices. If we split the market in two, the core connectivity component is broadly stable. The IT market is healthy, growing as expected. Our strategy from TIM Enterprise is to grow in IT while protecting the connectivity business, which is sizable but has already been impacted by competition and today contributes to just 50% of total revenues versus approximately 50% of European peers.
In this context, TIM Enterprise outgrew the market even more in Q3 than in prior quarters, thanks to cloud, security, and IoT services, where we reached a record high value of contract sign. In particular, cloud is gaining a lot of traction, benefiting from National Strategic Hub, which is ramping up beyond our expectation. Slide nine. In the nine months, total revenues increased 6% and service revenue 8%, with a further acceleration in Q3, respectively 8% and 11%. In the mix, the decline of connectivity was limited to 2%, while IT increased above 14%, driven by cloud, security, and IT. The total value of contract signed in the nine months increased 67% to EUR 3.5 billion. This backlog will turn into new revenues in coming years. You understand how much visibility we have on future growth. If we zoom on cloud, service revenue increased 22%.
A key driver is the National Strategic Hub, which is enabling TIM Enterprise to take the lion's share of the migration to cloud of the Italian public administration. Indeed, the order intake of National Strategic Hub more than tripled in the nine months at a faster pace than we expected, with robust growth in the rest of the year, also considering the positive seasonality of Q4. Slide 10. Turning to TIM Brasil, the mobile market is fundamentally healthy and rational. In the prepaid, we see some price pressure. In postpaid, last week, Nubank announced plans to launch a competitive offer, but I would say this is part of the normal market dynamic. The wireless market remains fragmented and competitive.
In this context, TIM Brasil is successfully deploying its strategy to be the most preferred mobile operator, leveraging on the best network coverage and service quality while pursuing new growth opportunities in B2B vertical. In wireless, the ambition is to grow the broadband business organically. At the same time, we monitor and manage scenarios in case we identify opportunities that are strategically relevant and value-creative. We continue to see growth of top line led by outgoing customer base increase, persistent growth in contracted revenue for B2B customers, and a strong focus on margin expansion and cash generation. Slide 11. TIM Brasil reported last week, so I will not review the results in detail. I just want to highlight that the growth trajectory is aligned with guidance and remains above inflation, despite the slower performance observed in prepaid services.
More importantly, TIM Brasil is outperforming peers in terms of EBITDA and cash flow margin, demonstrating strong operational and financial efficiency. The primary goal is to maximize cash generation and shareholder value. I now hand over to Adrian.
Thank you, Pietro, and good morning, everyone. Let's now focus on the domestic business and review OpEx and CapEx dynamics. While revenues grew almost 2% in the first nine months, our cost transformation initiatives allowed us to maintain OpEx broadly flat as promised. I point out that overcoming vertical integration makes our domestic cost structure more viable, hence access freedom. This is particularly true with regards to fixed network costs, which we can now manage with a flexible wholesale buy approach. We expect OpEx efficiency to further increase in coming quarters. In the nine months, approximately 25% of domestic OpEx were MSA-driven. As you know, in the master service agreement, there are no contractual commitments. Moving to CapEx, Q3 was a double split. Low CapEx in July and August as we were engaged in the handover activities following network disposal, while in September, we accelerated.
In the nine months, the gap versus our budget is approximately EUR 200 million, part of which we expect to recover in Q4. As Pietro said, the new perimeter has only been operational for four months, and the new business dynamics must be consolidated. This applies to MSA-related costs, and as I just explained, but also to CapEx, for which I think we will have full visibility on the structural run rate at the end of the year. We can expect room for improvement. As mentioned, we keep OpEx and CapEx fully under control, mainly thanks to the cost transformation plan, where we have already achieved approximately EUR 170 million savings in terms of EBITDA after lease minus CapEx, equivalent to almost 80% of the full-year target. Slide 13. Group EBITDA after lease grew 11% in nine months, and margin increased by 1.8 percentage points to approximately 26%.
Both Italy and Brazil contributed to the EBITDA growth. Organically, Italy contributed 42% and TIM Brasil 58%. It is clear the continuous improvement of our Brazilian asset. It is also worth mentioning that also domestic EBITDA is growing faster than revenues, so we have good operating leverage thanks to the revenue growth and tight control of costs. This was a clear commitment that we took during the capital market day, and we are sure that it will be the path in the coming years on both geographies. Slide 14. Last but not least, let's focus on net debt. Q3 marked an initial reduction to EUR 8.0 billion at the end of September. In the box on the left-hand side, you have the components that led to equity free cash flow of almost EUR 200 million in the quarter. As you can see, there was absorption from working capital.
This was also due to the shortening from 60- 30 days on the terms of payments to FiberCop under the new MSA agreement, an impact that was planned and expected. We expect net debt reduction to accelerate in Q4 and to reach the target leverage by the end of the year. In the waterfall on the right-hand side, you have the expected Q4 dynamic. Ordinary working capital will be positive thanks to the favorable seasonality, which we always have in the last quarter, as you can see from the average of 2022 and 2023. Ordinary working capital and positive EBITDA after lease minus CapEx will more than offset financial charges and dividends to Team Brazil minorities, while cash taxes will be broadly neutral. One final remark on financial charges. Following network disposal, you see that material is reduced and amounted to approximately EUR 120 million-EUR 130 million in Q3.
Here, we have some one-off optimizations and the non-correlated components and the impact of the Brazilian exchange rate. Excluding these effects, the run rate would have been higher, but we already see some upside versus the EUR 0.8 billion we initially indicated for 2025 and 2026. I remind you that the target leverage does not include the proceeds of INWIT stake disposal, which we expect to cash in at the end of November. And now, I hand over to Pietro for the closing remarks.
Thank you, Adrian. We see 2024 H2 is setting the stage for future growth. Following the successful disposal of NetCo, the new TIM is up and running. We reported a strong performance in nine months, and we confirmed full-year guidance. We have a higher level of financial flexibility, and we expect to cash in EUR 250 million from the INWIT stake sale at the end of November. We see room for further improvement to be confirmed at year-end with the update of the plan. Now, we can open the Q&A session. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Q&A session is now open. I'd like to remind you that if you want to register for your questions, you can do so by pressing star followed by one. To cancel your reservation, press star followed by two. Thank you. The first question comes from Mr. Giorgio Tavolini of Intermonte. Mr. Tavolini, please.
Hi, good morning, everyone. I have three questions on my side. The first one is on the domestic competition. On the fixed line segment, you mentioned that you are seeing increased competition from the energy providers. I was wondering if you are interested in striking partnerships with any providers to eventually market bundled offers with energy, as Wind, Fastweb, and Poste are doing, and on mobile, how do you view Iliad's request to abolish the below-the-line offers? The second question is on the recent agreement with Open Fiber. You struck this deal to lease 600,000 lines in the black areas, so beyond the economic saving or rental fee, do you see other opportunities for commercial collaboration with Open Fiber, and the third question is on capital allocation and capital structure optimization.
Today, press mentioned a letter from some funds invested in the savings shares requesting further clarification on the use of proceeds from non-core asset disposal and on the 1998 fees, as well as a possible optimization of the capital structure through voluntary and market-friendly deals. So I was wondering if you can provide more insight into your priorities regarding the capital allocation, the capital structure optimization? Thank you.
Thank you, Giorgio. Let's go line by line, and then I will ask also to Andrea to support me in the part related to the domestic environment. First question, are you interested to proceed with some partnership on the energy world? Yes. We forecast to do something by the end of March. Then it's clear that I would like to have a kind of fair competition. So perhaps if in the energy world there is the LED that allows to have a guaranteed return on investment, I know that I've sold the network. I would like to have a guaranteed return on investment on the 5G. But now, I'm joking, but for sure, we're working on that. But what is important is that we are playing the game of the bundling with further services since several years ago. Our way to compete would be based also on the content world.
As Andrea can highlight, today, the convergence between FTTH, mobile, and content is the main driver on which we are the only player in this playing field that can compete, and just to give a number, the level of churn of the FTTH compared to the FTTC is three percentage points better. The penetration on FTTH on mobile is seven percentage points better, and if you consider that we have on FTTH 19% of penetration of the condition that can have that allow us further improvement on the churn, you understand better also which is our strategy in the medium and long term, and now we foresee not to compete in the market share, but to compete in the share of wallet of our customer base to increase ARPU and reduce churn.
But coming back to your question, yes, we will sell also energy, and we started to sell also insurance. About the Iliad mobile request, it's clear that any player tries to ask what helps the most on the strategy. So if you ask me if I agree, my answer is no, I don't agree. And I think that we are more like the same position of all the other main players. I don't know if Andrea wants to add something on that.
Thank you, Pietro. Thank you, Giorgio, for the question. Yes, I mean, I can only add that on energy, we are working on an early trial on the business market, which will come even earlier than Q1 2025. We are working with a partner already in these days. On the position of Iliad, I can tell you a couple of things. I believe they already tried to bring this position last year unsuccessfully. I think, honestly speaking, we have to focus on the fact that Iliad not only is having a higher churn versus the previous period, but it is also reducing massively the gross adds. Their position is justified by their own situation and by the fact that they lost market share in gross adds quite massively during the last quarters.
I think that their position, we don't share because we see a portability market that has declined very much. 2024 is a year with record level, record low level of portability, which is good news for the main players.
Then, Giorgio, moving to the second question about the Open Fiber deal, I don't understand what it is referred to, but let's highlight the way in which we have the agreement with FiberCop in our MSA. We have an exclusivity in the area where there is the coverage of FiberCop in the other area. Just to give you an idea about, for example, the white areas where the FTTH is supplied only by Open Fiber, we can use Open Fiber without any kind of hurdles or limitations. Then it's clear that our goal now, we are a player exactly as all the others, is to try to optimize our cost base.
And as you have seen also in our presentation, all the network costs will be an area where we will work in the next two years to deliver exactly what we promised to the market in terms of efficiency and EBITDA creation. About the capital structure, let me try to state something in a clear way. When we had the capital market deal, we clearly stated that at the end of 2024, with the presentation of the plan 2025, 2027, after the first year of the new baby, the new team, let me call it this way, we will have much more room to give details about the return to, a possible return to the remuneration of the differential order. What is happening is that keeping on a side all the possible extraordinary cash in, the number that we are showing today are on track on that plan.
Or to be also more clear, during our presentation, we also expressed that there could be room in different areas to further improve the previous plan. There are rooms. I'm not giving any guidance. Then, as again, we are delivering and we are on track for that. Then we highlighted since the beginning that there could be possible opportunity not including the plan. The first one was in that we confirmed that by the end of November, we'll be delivered. Sparkle, we are on track on the discussion, so everything is proceeding. And the last, the Canone
Yes, thank you very much, Pietro and Adrian. Thank you.
Sorry, sorry, Adrian. Remember me, because I don't want someone to forget that there are also the potential amount from Open Fiber and FiberCop deal. So again, if I may, when we told that there could be in Sparkle in the Canone concession, it seemed that it was too far from now. Now, the things are happening. We must continue to be focused in the delivery of the existing plan, and this is what we are committed on. We are doing that, and we are more than happy that we could deliver also other elements that were out of the plan that, if any, can completely change the profile of this company.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Mr. Domenico Ghilotti of Equita. Mr. Ghilotti, please.
Good morning. Two questions. The first is on the concession fee. So if you can give us an update on where we are today, in particular related to the request for suspension of the payment and the potential discussion with the government on the topic. The second question is an elaboration, a follow-up on the comment that you gave on the areas of opportunities. In particular, I'm focusing on the free cash flow. So without providing clearly any quantitative guidance, but what are the elements, the drivers where you see some opportunities compared to the plan, or even some downside risk compared to the plan?
Thank you, Domenico. About the second question, I give some light and then I leave Adrian to talk about again. If you remember, and as you can see, we see a level of CapEx that is slightly lower than what we planned, and so this is an area on which we can continue to work to give a better level of guidance on this area. Then about all the financial expenses, I leave Adrian to give some ideas.
Yeah. Hi, Domenico. How are you? Clearly, I think that you noted in terms of what we even mentioned in the speech in terms of financial expenses, particularly this quarter, the financial expenses were lower than probably the run rate. But if we consider the positives included in this EUR 125 million that we had of financial expenses this quarter, probably the run rate should be something around EUR 160 million-EUR 170 million. So that's below the level that we communicated in the capital market day. The curve of our bonds are doing better. Interest rates are below the ones that we initially projected. So there could be some room there in order to improve. The second thing is what's coming from Brazil, that better cash flows or the companies are giving better cash flows, not only in terms of on the operational side, but also below the EBITDA minus CapEx.
Clearly, there is on the other side the exchange rate effect that we are working on in terms of hedging. So again, and considering what Pietro was mentioning in terms of CapEx, yeah, probably going forward, there could be some room to improve. We know that we are working already on our three-year plan, and we will give more information in February of 2025. But honestly, we are probably a little bit more optimistic without considering this as a guidance, but we are working on every side of the company and probably, and for sure, this side of the business is something that we're working on very hard. Yeah.
Domenico, about the first question that is related to the Canone concession, I think that it's important to highlight that while we are a listed company, so with formal process to go through, you can consider that more or less the same behavior will be on the government side because you have the Avvocatura dello Stato, Corte dei conti, and the Italian government is set to proceed through formal steps. What we are going to do is that we are going to ask for this execution of the payment. We don't know because if the Italian government asked already for the suspension of the payment. But to give some more details related to the process step, I leave Agostino to give some more details.
Okay. So if you wish, let's start from the appeal to the Court of Cassation. We've been notified, the appeal of the government, and we are preparing our opposition, and we will have a cross-claim from our side asking for additional money in terms of additional years of interest compared to the decision of the court of appeal and a higher revaluation rate. This will take some time. We expect to have a decision on the Court of Cassation end of 2025 or 2026, first half of 2026. As far as the decision of the court of appeal is concerned, it is executable, as Pietro said. So there is nothing preventing us to execute it, and we will do. It is likely that the government will oppose the execution, will ask for a suspension, or probably has already presented this request.
We have not been notified of any suspension request from the government. In that case, again, we will oppose the request of opposition or suspension, and it will be the same judge, still the court of appeal that already decided in our favor that we decided suspension. And probably the decision will come in approximately three, four weeks after the notification to our company.
In this period, there's nothing that does not allow to define a transaction between the parties. So what I think that is useful is to remember, as Agostino told that, if there is a request for an execution or a request for a suspension, the Court of Appeal will decide something by way of the media. And so in any case, the possibility to have discussion will be in this period of time.
Okay. Very extensive and very clear now. Thanks.
The next question comes from Mr. Fabio Pavan of Mediobanca. Mr. Pavan, please.
Yes. Hi. Good morning. I have also three questions. The first one is on consumer. Thanks for the update. My question is if you're already gaining more flexibility in your commercial approach after the NetCo sale, if you can tell us something on this. Second question is on enterprise. On slide nine, you show, as usual, the value of contracts. It looks like they're exceeding expectations. So when looking at 6% CAGR target, these start looking as conservative. Wanted to have a comment from you on this. And then follow-up on the 1998 litigation. So just in order to be sure we understood properly, there is a window for a potential transaction which may open these days and last until the end of this year. Is that correct? Thank you very much.
Fabio, about the last question that is related to the transaction. In theory, the transaction can happen also after the decision on the Court of Appeal that can happen by the end of December. But it's clear that if the suspension is approved or not approved, one of the two parties will have more power in this negotiation. Full stop. About the consumer, yes, we are gaining more flexibility, but I will leave to Andrea to follow up. And then about the enterprise, I will leave to Elio to answer, but it's important to remember that if we have opportunity to improve the guidance, we will be happy. Today, our approach is to be tied to the reality, to deliver the number, and step by step give eventually further improvements. But I leave to Andrea and Elio to give some more details.
Thank you, Fabio. Yes, indeed, as Pietro has highlighted, as soon as we had the confirmation, we could have some more commercial flexibility. We implemented some new practices, namely mostly tailored offer on systems. As you might know, this is a practice in the Italian market that was used by other players but was not allowed, especially convergence offer. And as well, bundling packaging content with broadband connectivity, which is proving extremely successful in the weeks. As Pietro highlighted, part of our strategy, the so-called customer platform strategy, is to use content more to differentiate our offer, and we are having very good early results in the packaging of content with broadband connectivity. We will probably implement further practices starting from Q1, but early results are promising.
Thank you.
Okay. Moving to enterprise, thanks for the question. I simply comment on the value of the contract time. Clearly, we see this trending very, very well. We told you that our bet was on the market registering a healthy growth, which is actually happening. The market is growing slowly below 5%. We are basically moving further ahead because we are north of 8% and 11% plus on the services. As we told you many times, we do believe that we have in this market a competitive advantage, which is based on four distinctive assets. The first one is that we have the largest infrastructure in the country for facing the challenge of the cloud growth, so data center plus backbone.
We have a sales force which, if you sum up the three competitors, Wind, Fastweb, and Vodafone, we have twice the number of people on sales versus the sum of the three competitors. We have a very, very good positioning on the public administration, which is actually accelerating due to the National Strategic Hub. And then we have the factories which had the asset that allows us to have an end-to-end value proposition on the ICT market. Let me just tell you what happens on the market growth. The reason why we are accelerating and we are registering a performance which is better than the market, and you can see this also on the acquisition of the contracts, which have two elements to value. One is that the amount of the contract is significantly higher than what the market is registering.
What is interesting in our case is that also the duration of those contracts is getting better because the average contract for us going forward is approximately of three years, which is a very good value when you look at the business going forward. The reason why we are growing faster than the market is because the market is growing at 2% on the enterprise and at 11% on the public sector. Being TIM Enterprise, the only company in the market having approximately 50% of the revenues on the public side, this is the reason why we are much stronger than the rest of the market. Hope I answered your question.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Next question comes from Mr. James Ratzer of New Street Research. Mr. Ratzar, please.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking the questions. So I'd like to, please. The first one actually directly follows on from the last question on enterprise. I'd love it if it's possible just to be a little bit more precise on how we should think about those contract increases and the National Strategic Hub increase actually feeding through into your revenues because you're showing some kind of very bullish numbers there of a 67% increase in the contracts, three-time increase in the NSH contracts. How does that actually translate into revenues over the three-year period, please? And then secondly, it would be really interesting to give us an update on the visibility you have on the earnout payments you might receive, and in particular, the EUR 400 million that relates to the energy rebate.
Can you give us a timeline on developments on that part of the earnout? Thank you.
Let me start from the second question, and then I leave to Elio to answer about the National Strategic Lab. About the earnout, I think that all the discussion that we are seeing about Open Fiber and FiberCop demonstrate that sooner or later, sooner rather than later, there's an overall interest towards a possible match. So when we talk about earnout, let's remember that the main part of the earnout is related to this component. About the ceiling on the energy, you can see also that there are some discussions in this period of time about the consumption of energy also related to all the data center world, where we are one of the main players in Italy.
And so we are trying to understand if it will allow us to open a door towards a review of the energy consideration of TIM as a high-energy consumer that could allow us to recover part of that earnout. But again, let's remember the sum of the numbers. EUR 150 million in it. We have some number around EUR 700 million about Sparkle. We have EUR 1 billion on the Canone concession. We have EUR 2.5 billion about the earnout, Open Fiber, FiberCop, and energy. You can start to put a percentage of risk on that. I think that some months ago, the percentage should be high. The more you proceed, the percentage is becoming low. So I'm quite optimistic that we will have some good news. Then I leave it to Elio.
I'm excited to ask Pietro, on the EUR 400 million that relates to energy specifically, when do you expect to see kind of approval actually from the government to be able to get that receipt? That was the one I thought you always felt you were more comfortable that you would get.
Yeah. It's quite complex to give a specific date because, as you can follow also on the press, there is a discussion in this period of time about the financial arm of the Italian government. In the meantime, there are some discussions about the possibility to change the code. I don't want to go too much into details at ECO that could define, for example, all the activity for the data center in a different way. So I think that we can have some more details by the end of January.
Thank you.
Back to enterprise. Thanks for the question. Let's say when you look at the chart that we presented, that was the chart number nine, we showed you that the value of the contract signs moved from EUR 2.1 billion- EUR 3.5 billion. Let's say we are getting better in a business that was already pretty healthy. When you look at the histogram of EUR 3.5 billion, you can notice that we have a 43% of those revenues which are basically for the 12 months rolling. This means that when you sum up the number, which, let's say, I don't need to help you, but it's approximately EUR 1.5 billion plus the recurring business that you have for customers that we won years ago that they are in a multi-year contract.
What we can tell you is that we have a number which is north of EUR 2 billion, which is already locked for 2025. So most of the effects that you see reflected in the total value of contract signs are already embedded in our plan. There is clearly, let's say, a cloud acceleration, particularly on the National Strategic Hub, which is getting better than what we were expecting. But what you need to take into account is that when you look at the 0.2 versus the 0.7, here we are talking about contracts which tend to be 10 years. So clearly, you have a significant positive effect, but you need to spread this effect in a number of years, which is pretty high. So the average duration of a contract, as I told you before, is approximately three years.
So for all the contracts that we have signed, you have a duration that goes from one year on a small amount of those contracts to more than five years for most of them, particularly on cloud. So here what we are registering is a strong acceleration on the cloud combined with a multi-year contract, which makes actually our value proposition like a bond because, as you can imagine, the more cloud you inject in the total amount of revenues, the more you secure the business because I don't see a bank staying with us for seven years and at the end of the contract moving to another ICT service provider or moving into another data center.
So let's say what it is. In my opinion, it is very interesting in what's happening to our business that the shift to a multi-year contract value proposition on the cloud makes the business on the safe side. Thank you.
Got it. Thank you very much indeed.
Next question comes from Mr. Luigi Minerva of HSBC. Mr. Minerva, please.
Yes. Good morning. I have two questions, please. The first one is on the domestic EBITDA growth, which on a headline basis is remarkable within the peer group. And I was wondering if you can go a bit deeper and explain what is driving it and how sustainable it is. Obviously, you put all the restructuring costs in the working capital, so that helps the reported figures. But nevertheless, it would be interesting to know a bit better about how you're doing it, essentially. And then on enterprise, just going back again, very strong growth. What kind of marginality the incremental business you're winning on enterprise brings? Is it accretive or dilutive versus the domestic average margin? And then often we see it with your peers that this growth in enterprise brings Ad Hoc CapEx. And so is there a downside risk on CapEx related to that enterprise growth?
Thank you.
About the domestic EBITDA growth, if you remember, when we presented to the capital market day our number, we told that the main target was to grow around a domestic level 2% on the revenue we are delivering. So part of the growth on the EBITDA should be driven by the growth on the revenue. Another component was related to the efficiency transformation project that we are putting in place. Now, what is happening? Exactly what we told. We are growing on the revenue, and we are able to keep the level of the OpEx flat. Let's remember that in 2022, we presented the three-year plan talking about a transformation plan for EUR 700 million at the beginning that was upgraded to EUR 1.2 billion, and we delivered EUR 1.5 billion.
I think that the automation of the process, the reduction of the number of employees, the efficiency on the call center, the efficiency on the commercial side are part of the element that are allowing us to deliver this number. Then, Luigi, you know better than me. Our business is a business of customer base. It's clear that we give a three-year plan guidance, but once you start to deliver the first tier of the guidance, the possibility to achieve the second and the third tier, it's much higher. Why? Because if you have seen before to arrive to something close to zero, we started the journey in 2022, and that's to remember to the number sometimes, - 15% EBITDA, then - 15%, then - 10%, then - 7%, then - 5%. And this is what happened usually on a business that is based on the customer base.
The fact that we are increasing the ARPU, we are reducing the churn, and let me say, we never declared that we should increase the market share on the consumer. Because if you look at our peers, there's no one that is increasing the market share. Everybody is losing market share, but the one that is able to grow in terms of ARPU, it's us. Our, with the strategy to bundle the different services, we are the only one that is playing the game of the content. We will add now, as we told, energy and insurance, and it will help. If I may, I need to add in just a second because I don't understand your question related to the fact that the reported number of.
Yeah, Luigi. Just to clarify, the difference between the organic and the reported is mainly the agreement with the unions that we did at the beginning of the year. So all the separation costs are considered in the consideration of the NetCo. So that's mainly the difference. EBITDA, the third quarter, the difference between the organic and reported in the third quarter is marginal. Okay.
About the enterprise, I need Elio to give some more comments about that. Sorry, but I know we give some element, but let's consider that today the amount of CapEx that are related to the enterprise segment out of our €1.3 billion of CapEx, it's not the main part, and we have just approved, and it is already included in the plan, the building of an expansion of a data center for 25 mega, that is water cooling, to help and to give us a further competitive advantage in Italy because we'll be one of the first Tier four data centers able to manage also AI solutions.
So thanks, Pietro. Just to complement the answer that Pietro gave you, let's say first on CapEx, we really don't see any risk. Just for you to know, 50% of our CapEx are infrastructure CapEx, so driven by infrastructure, and 50% are revenue-driven CapEx. So basically, if you have more CapEx on my side, it's because the business is getting better and better because, let's say, the more revenues you generate, potentially the more CapEx you're going to have. But let's say it's a nice problem to have. On the marginality of the business going forward, clearly, as we have told you many times, connectivity is a defensive business, and the game there is to stay basically where we are and keep margins safe on that side. What happens to the other side of the revenues?
You have a cloud basically generating approximately 20% of margins or more, and I will explain why the more, and then you have professional services, which is a space very well known, so in principle, you could argue that this could be potentially dilutive because clearly marginality on that side is not comparable to connectivity. In reality, what is the gold mine of this business? That you have EUR 3.5 billion of contracts that you have already signed, so you know exactly going forward what you have sold to customers and what you need to serve them, so that's basically the name of the game because if we are very good at insourcing the capabilities that today we are buying in outsourcing, marginality of those revenues can look significantly different. This said, let's say, most of what we have explained to you is already included in the plan.
So basically, we have already reflected the positive and the negative in the numbers that we have in our plan. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next question comes from Mr. Ajay Soni of JP Morgan. Mr. Soni, please.
Hi there. Thank you for taking my questions. My first one just goes back to the energy players. You guys have given some really strong performances in your fixed ARPU growth. So does the entrance of these energy players impact your ability to continue growing at that rate within your fixed ARPUs? So that's my first one. The second one is around the cloud growth. I know we've had a lot of questions on it, and it's obviously clear you have very good visibility with the length of your contracts. So you've obviously seen very good acceleration throughout this year. Do you expect that level of growth going into 2025 as well, or do you expect that to tail off a little bit? Because it feels like you have good visibility, so you should be able to tell us how that growth is trending into 2025. Thank you.
About the energy player, I leave that to Andrea to give some comments.
I will start from the enterprise side and the cloud business. So to be very transparent with you and to give you the sense of the direction, so first of all, when you look at how the business has been trending in the first three quarters of the year, we got from 17.5% growth in quarter one, 21.3% in quarter two, 27.5% in quarter three, and this will go up and up and up. If you look at the histogram of EUR 3.5 billion, in that histogram, you have approximately 1.2 billion and something more than 1.2 billion of cloud contracts already signed. And this is getting even better when you look at the right-hand side of the slide when you look at the National Strategic Hub.
Just to, I think that we told you last time, but I'm going to repeat the concept because this is the KPI that really is trending significantly better than we were expecting, meaning that all the partners, Leonardo, CDP, Sogei and TIM, which are driving the National Strategic Hub, all of us, we had in our respective plans, let's say, an allocation of revenues for 2023, 2024, 2025, which today has materialized as significantly better. And clearly, this is something that will keep trending very well because the adoption of public administration on the digitalization of their structure is increasing day by day. So the answer on the cloud side is that we are, as I told you before, we are the only player in the country having 16 data centers. Colocation for artificial intelligence and quantum will become more and more a necessity.
We are the only ones in the market today able to serve for that need. That's the reason why we feel very positive about our cloud value proposition. Thank you.
Listen Elio, also to try to give a helicopter view about what is happening in this market. I don't think that I've explained to you that the migration in the cloud is a market trend. It's not something that we are pushing, but if you look at the main technology providers like in software, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Google, whoever are pushing to move from on-premise to the cloud. The second, I don't have to explain to you that whatever we do in the cloud or on-premise is becoming more and more mission-critical and need for cyber security and security solutions. So if you look at the end, if you do that, you need to be connected with fiber. Why we are stronger than the other? Because we are the only player that is able to tie all these three elements in one place.
So if you're a bank, it's becoming inadequate to buy the three pieces on a separate situation, and then you have to try to understand if there is an issue who of the three is bottleneck. We are serving our customer base on that. That if you consider that we have 16 data centers, four Tier four, we are moving toward the Water Cooling data centers, so on and so forth, you can understand that this is a sustainable growth. Last but not least, we don't see today the potential upside that will come from IoT and 5G because the 5G will become mainly in the corporate segment a key element on which we can play again an important role. Then I need to add to Andrea.
Thank you, Pietro. Regarding the energy player, a couple more comments. So this year we've seen some activity from the energy player on promotional offers. We have seen, by the way, quite a high activity to actually push some energy offers, some fiber offers, especially because this year the market had a discontinuity and some players suffered a very high churn. So some players used the fiber discounted offer as a sort of churn retainer. The market is now evolving to a more normal trend after the summer and the discontinuity in the energy market. So we see that the promotional pressure is somehow diminishing. Anyhow, the situation, it has to be said also that we are working to enter into the energy market as some other competitors have done, and they have done successfully in some telco players.
So the positive thing is that we have something to gain also from the convergence of energy and connectivity. We believe that the energy players will have to tempt some of the promotional activities also because some of the offers are not sustainable and they are not profitable. And according to our view, they are also not fair from the competitive point of view. So we are arguing that also with the relevant authorities. By the way, overall, we think that the marginality of the energy sale for a telco player can be of interest and can generate probably more value than the threat from the energy providers. This has to be looked into the overall strategy of the customer platform that is, let me say, in-province churn and cross-service services. And of course, as Pietro said, we started with content with pretty promising results.
We have a wider portfolio than other players can offer.
Also in the case of Andrea, let me put another comment with helicopter view. What we are doing on energy, insurance, content, and exactly as Andrea mentioned, the customer platform strategy, it is an important element to optimize our cost base. What it means? The main asset of a telco player as TIM is the capability to charge more than 20 million customers every month on a prepaid basis or on a postpaid basis. And in Italy, the penetration of credit card as a tool for recurring payment is not so widespread. So this is an important asset. The second, we are the telco player with a lot of shops throughout the territory. Part of that are owned directly by us with a number of 1,000 employees, and the shops in a digital environment will be a competitive advantage compared to other players.
The third, once if you move toward the world of the digital, a caring service will be always important, having in mind that you are not an emerging market and the average age of the Italian population is high. These are all elements that on one side are a good part of our cost base. On the other side, can become a competitive advantage and the customer platform strategy allows to optimize this cost structure and allow us to grow in terms of revenue, keeping the cost flat. That is that to come back to the question of Luigi Minerva, is the way that allow us to have a growth of 8% in terms of the EBITDA.
Thank you very much for the detailed responses. Can I just have one follow-up on the enterprise side? You were kind of saying that your customers will buy cloud security and connectivity from you as a convergent package. I just wanted to focus in on the connectivity side. Obviously, it's declined a bit this quarter. Is there a specific one-off in there that's created that, or is that just pressure you're seeing? And is that pressure coming from the mobile or the fixed side? Thank you.
So thanks for the question. On the connectivity, actually, if you look at how the business is trending on a quarterly basis, quarter by quarter, quarter two versus quarter three, the business is growing. And the nine-month average is more or less where we were expecting the business to be. The compare versus one year ago has only one offsetting factor that doesn't worry us when you look at the business going forward, which is a small negative spike on roaming during the summer because there is a seasonality in, let's say, particularly in August, where we used to register a small spike. We got this effect a little bit lower than one year ago, but when you compare on a quarterly basis, the business, we are approximately EUR 260 million on a quarterly basis, and this is a kind of regular trend.
There was something on the cloud as well, but let's say on the cloud, connectivity also related to the cloud. Let's say if just to let you understand why this, as Pietro was saying, both on the cyber security side, IoT, and also connectivity does have an extended opportunity because this is like a big high-speed train and that needs a very solid rail tracks and a very good station, and guess who owns the rail tracks and the station are TIM Enterprise. So let's say they need to pass on our rail tracks and they will park their train in our station, so there is no other option for most of the customers in the market. Thank you.
Thank you very much, guys.
Next question comes from Mr. Joshua Mills of BNP Paribas. Mr. Mills, please.
Hi guys. Thanks for the questions. There's two for me. One is, could you just give us an update on any backbook price increases you've announced in the last couple of quarters so we can think about phasing for next year? And then maybe some broad commentary on how you're thinking about price rises into 2025. I noted earlier you were talking about the opportunity to keep pushing for higher prices given the quality of the network. And then secondly on CapEx. So you're one of the few telcos that we've seen this quarter come in below the CapEx expectation for consensus. And reading your guidance for four years, you're talking about a partial recovery in Q4, but reading between the lines, it sounds like you probably won't get to the 14% CapEx sales you targeted initially for the domestic business.
So my question is, why is that CapEx coming in lower? Is it just efficiency savings, or have you found that actually the level of network investment needed on the 5G side is actually tailing off? And if so, how should we think about the CapEx guide longer term? Because you're effectively saying on the medium-term view, you'll keep CapEx sales broadly flat and slightly down by 2026. Is there an opportunity to be more aggressive there? Thanks.
Thank you. Yes. So on backbook price up, so this year we implemented a very wide repricing campaign on the fixed and broadband customer base. We have been a bit more prudent on the mobile in the first part of the year, also because we noticed that one of the main players was not repricing this year, probably due to a specific strategy. And so we were a bit more prudent. We restarted already in Q4 a campaign of backbook price up on mobile. And we will definitely go on with more price up in the next year. We think this is sustainable for two reasons.
First, we have seen overall good results this year in terms of combination of ARPU wins and MNP stability, but also because we think that the likely combination of two players in the market will bring about also a change in the pricing policy in those players. Also, probably in their aggressiveness. Clearly, one of the players has been very aggressive on broadband and the other on mobile. We think that with the combination, their behavior will rationally change and will open up more opportunities.
About your second question on the CapEx, at the beginning of my speech, I told that this is an area on which we foresee opportunity for efficiency in the next new plan. It's clear that when we presented our plan, we were doing something that no one did in the world, and so there were a lot of moving pieces. So for sure, for the end of the year, we have some small delay because mainly during July and August, we were focused in the finalization of the separation. But we have room for efficiency that will be reflected in the new plan.
Got it. Maybe just to be a bit more specific on CapEx, are the efficiencies you've had so far coming on the network side, so network investments, or are the efficiencies coming from other areas of the CapEx like capitalized labor costs or capitalized costs related to customers? Just trying to understand whether this is a structural change or improvement in the underlying level of investment or a reflection of the better commercial trends you talked about. Thanks.
If we go in the phase, we are going or we are delivering efficiency in all the line from IT to network. For example, the strategy to move faster toward the 5G is allowing us to have a better efficiency in terms of transport cost per giga on mobile, and we'll have a further acceleration next year on this part. We are starting also some activity on the decommissioning. Sometimes the fact that we separated the network obliges us to look with different eyes in all the elements, then we are working on the right capital allocation. On the enterprise segment, we are preferring, for example, to move part of the CapEx from the rental of the mobile end sector to the data center. There's no one bullet that we are shooting to improve.
This is true on the CapEx and on the OpEx because if for me, now we are delivering a number below the level of CapEx that we have projected, but also on the OpEx, we are doing a great job because if we are the only telco player that is growing 8% on EBITDA, growing 2% on the revenue, it means that we are good to work on the cost base to improve the efficiency of the company. This is not the case. This is not a single point because we are doing that since 2022.
Got it. Thank you very much.
So I would like to finalize the call to avoid any kind of misunderstanding, to restate what I told before. In March 2024, we told to the market that keeping on a side, not considering any extraordinary cash in the new plan 2025, 2027, we should evaluate the possibility to come back to the shareholder evaluation. It doesn't mean that if we left the cash of extraordinary items, this could be a trigger for an acceleration on this evaluation. Thank you for everybody.
Thank you, everybody, for attending today and for this set of questions. We will be back in mid-February to present the preliminary four-year results and the update plan. Thank you. Bye-bye.