Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Juan Gaitán, Cellnex Director of Investor Relations, and I would like to thank you all for joining us today for our Q1 2024 Results Conference Call. Apologies for the delay, but we've had some technical difficulties. Today I'm joined by our CEO, Marco Patuano, and our CFO, Raimon Trias, who will discuss the main highlights of the period, and then we will open the line for your questions. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star five on your keyboard. Without further ado, over to you, Marco.
Thank you, thank you, Juan. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for your time today. Sorry again for the delay. The platform is a little bit bizarre today, and we have some problem in hearing the line. So I'll start commenting on our business performance. We are once again providing solid results this quarter, proving the resilience of our business model and aligning all the levels of our organization toward our public commitments. So this quarter has been marked by an excellent commercial performance and a consistent operational execution, with POPs increasing close to 11% compared to last year, around 7% on POP equivalent. Just as a reminder, we are providing you both physical POP and equivalent POP. Organic revenues, excluding from our numbers mainly the impact from change of perimeter resulting from the remedy process in France, well, organic revenues increased 7.5%.
Organic EBITDA after lease increased 11.1%, and our recurring levered free cash flow increased by 14.4%. Finally, our free cash flow reached EUR 103 million, benefiting from EUR 152 million received this quarter in the context of the second tranche of the French remedies. We are on track to meet all our short- and medium-term targets we have recently shared with you at the Capital Markets Day. Moving to the financial strategy and capital allocation, just a quick reminder of our priorities set out at our recent Capital Markets Day, which we reiterate: a long-term levered target of between 5x and 6x Net Debt/ EBITDA, which we believe we can achieve by 2025. Having obtained our investment-grade rating by S&P much earlier than originally planned, we confirm an unconditional commitment to maintain this credit rating level both by S&P and Fitch.
From the leveraging perspective, we're making remarkable progress thanks to the disposal of the sites in France, our agreement in the Nordics, and our recently announced exit from Ireland. This closing process is on track. We presented all the relevant documents to the antitrust, and leverage will be reduced by EUR 971 million when completed and paid. Despite having already reached full investment grade status, we continue to assess strategic options for our portfolio of assets, and we can confirm that the Austrian sale process remains on track with non-binding offers expected very soon. Please note that an early shareholder distribution in the form, for example, of a share buyback, could be considered following the disposal, subject to our leverage target and our rating commitment.
Finally, as you have seen in our investor materials, we have started to report providing a more granular level of detail in terms of organic growth, business line, geography, and uses of capital, and we hope this will allow you to better understand the performance of our key value drivers. Having said this, I will now hand over to our CFO. Raimon, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Marco. Good afternoon, everyone. We will now provide a few additional remarks on the period and the financial strategy. This has been another quarter of excellent commercial performance, with organic POPs growing at close to 11% compared to the same period last year. Remember that we are starting to report physical POPs, which in our view provides a better reflection of the addressable market and our commercial efforts. This growth is due to the progress made on our build-to-suit programs in France, Italy, and Poland, and colocation POPs generated mainly in Italy and Portugal, with the rest of our markets showing a steady performance. POP growth linked to new colocations has reached a strong 7.5% this period, while build-to-suit has grown 3%. Revenues increased 7% compared to the same period last year.
Our Adjusted EBITDA also grew 7%, our EBITDA after leases 9%, and our recurring levered free cash flow 14%. When excluding the impact from the change of perimeter that Marco mentioned, our revenues increased 7.5%, our EBITDA 9%, and our EBITDA after leases 11%. If we now move to slides 8 and 9, we are providing here, as anticipated at our Capital Markets Day, our organic revenues bridge for the period, as well as individual performance of our different business lines. As you can see, if we take our contribution to revenues from inflation, colocation, and build-to-suit, our organic revenues grow 7.5% compared to the same period last year. Going into the specific performance of our business, the tower segment grows organically 6.6%, fiber, connectivity, and housing services is growing 24%, the small cells and RAN grows 21%, and broadcast increased 2%.
Just a quick clarification on the average revenue per tower, which takes tower revenues expressed on an annual basis as per the last 12 months ended the last days of the reporting period. Our free cash flow has reached EUR 103 million, around EUR 240 million more than the same period last year, mainly due to the EUR 152 million that we have received in the context of the remedies process in France, as well supported by the improved recurring levered free cash flow to date. Free cash flow is expected to reach between EUR 250 million-EUR 350 million this year compared to the EUR 150 million generated in 2023. One factor that determines our ability to generate this metric is CapEx, so we believe it is important to continue giving you visibility on our different CapEx requirements.
Maintenance CapEx is expected to remain below the 4% on total revenues excluding the pass-throughs, and expansion CapEx should stay below EUR 500 million in the year 2024. Our expected build-to-suit CapEx is around EUR 1.3 billion in the year 2024, not considering the remedies. Going forward, our free cash flow generation will further accelerate as we are near the end of our build-to-suit programs, and this will underpin our rapid deleveraging and will give us additional flexibility to improve shareholder returns, as we mentioned in the Capital Markets Day. Moving to slide 10, we are illustrating our commitment with our previous lease efficiency plan, while underpinning the message we conveyed at the recent Capital Markets Day in terms of the importance for us to properly manage our main cost item.
So our program remains on track, and we continue to actively pursue efficiency measures in order to ensure a limited impact on our cash flow from rent increases and a large perimeter. Finally, let's take a look at our debt maturities profile on slide 12. As you can see, there are no maturities left in 2024 as they were repaid in January. Potential additional disposals may be partially used to repay variable debt in 2025, which today has a high associated cost as these lines are linked to Euribor, and we also might consider new debt issuance at fixed cost in the short term with the same objective. It seems that in the current environment, interest rates are likely to remain higher for longer, but we have a robust and well-designed capital structure which prevents us from assuming higher interest expenses. As you recall, 75% of our debt is fixed.
Short-term maturities are already being managed, so our average cost of debt will only marginally increase in the next few years. With this, we remain now at your disposal to answer any questions. Thanks very much.
Thank you so much, Raimon. First question comes from Akhil Dattani from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. You can hear us?
Sorry, can you hear me?
We can. Please go ahead.
We can. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Yeah, so I have a couple of questions, please. The first one is just a big-picture question around the share price development. And I guess the question is that if we look year to date, it looks like interest rates are still very much dominating the way your share price is trading, as is true for the wider stock market tower universe. So all the stocks are down 10%-20%. I just wondered how you think about that and what sort of levers you have to try and decouple that issue. And I guess one of the topics will get interesting in others too is the whole issue between public and private market valuations. You're obviously successfully selling assets like Ireland. You've talked about Austria as another lever.
I wondered if we think about more broadly, how do you think about what sort of other assets you may or might not be willing to sell? Marco, you mentioned you are considering this. Maybe you can give us a bit of color. But I guess the broader question is what are the sort of levers you think you have to try and get up with this interest rate sensitivity? Another section of questions just on the LandCo. Obviously, at the same deal, you talked about the importance of buying early.
Akhil, we are.
Please give us.
Sorry, Akhil, this is Juan. I'm terribly sorry, but we are really struggling to hear you. I mean, we are still having the same technical issues as at the beginning of the session. We don't really know how to continue the session because we cannot really hear you. I mean, the connection is just horrible because of the provider. Would it be possible for you to send me an email of your we will try. I mean, we don't want to cancel the session, so I don't know if you guys can send me your questions, and I will try to repeat your questions, and we will try to answer if that's okay, just to try to give continuity to this Q&A session. Can you hear us, Akhil? Akhil, can you hear me? Andrew, can you hear me, Andrew?
Hey, can you hear me?
We are having the same issue on connectivity. We don't really know if you can hear as well. I hope that is the case, but in your case, when we receive your questions, it's just we really struggle to hear you. I mean, it's.
We hear half a word every two.
Yeah, the line is super broken. We don't really know what's going on with the provider, but we are trying, and it's really difficult to understand your questions.
Can you hear me?
It's not you, Andrew. It's not you. I mean, we have been doing tests, and the line keeps breaking for everyone that is trying to participate.
I'll send you questions.
Yeah, if you don't mind, if you can send me your question, we will try to give continuity to this session in written. And the same to you applies, Akhil. Andrew, I have just received your question, so I will read your question, okay? And Akhil, if you are still on the line, if you can please send me your question.
So, who are the next?
Yeah, everyone. And we will try to do this in a different way, but we are trying to be respectful of your time, so we will try our best, okay? So, Andrew, based on your email, Marco, question for you. When is the earliest you could start a buyback if you sell Austria, 2025 or before? And also, if you can give us a sense as to the number of bidders for this Austrian process.
Good. To be very honest with you, I think that the answer, if we can do before 2025, is we're going to make a reset with the rating agencies, and we will try to give full visibility to the rating agencies on the status of the process of the closing of the Irish antitrust procedure. Based on this, as soon as it will be made available, we will start using the cash that should be in excess of our stricter needs for keeping under control. In terms of bidders, so please allow me to keep these a little bit confidential, but there is good interest both from industrial players and from financial players.
Thank you, Marco. I'm coming back to Akhil's question, which I have received. So Akhil, share price of tower companies in developed world, they have been down 10%, 20%. How do you think about what you can do to decouple this interest rate sensitivity? Can you accelerate broader asset sales, and if so, what assets can you sell?
Our share price is so linked to the interest rate. There is a big question, by the way. We are making regression analysis if we are more linked to the U.S. dollar bond or to the Bund or to some euro-denominated interest. It's unclear because basically it's unproven. Normally, it wouldn't be a problem because Europe follows euro rates, follow U.S. dollar rates, but it's unproven. And if in any moment there is a decoupling between the euro rates and the Fed rates, we are honestly very curious to see if being all our revenues in euro and being most of our almost everything euro-denominated, it's important to understand. Then what we can do? Well, we are still fairly sensitive to leverage. So we have to continue. We have to perform. We have to make the process straight to your questions. Yes, we are assessing our portfolio.
As we said at the Capital Markets Day, making a portfolio assessment is not a one-off event, so we are doing it periodically. There are business lines that we are asking ourselves if they can contribute or if they are giving us a return on invested capital long-term that we expect. And this is something that we are analyzing in this moment. You know me well, Akhil, so I prefer to do the things well one at a time. So in this moment, we are making the process for Austria. It's not a mystery that we are looking to the evolution of Poland. The evolution of Poland is we have a potential opportunity to consolidate the active market in Poland. If this will be the case, it would be appropriate for us to welcome a co-investor who can work with us. This can turn into some capital repatriation.
There are many projects. We are working. Our strategy department and our finance department are working together on this.
Thank you, Marco. And Akhil, second question was around the LandCo. If you can give us an update on our progress and how you think about what we will be spending this year and mid-term on land acquisition.
The progress is fine. So we are creating the LandCo. What we are thinking, by the way, we confirmed that the LandCo will be a Spanish entity because our tax due diligence was okay. So Spain is fairly efficient for placing the LandCo. We are starting to evaluate if it could be appropriate to transfer existing portfolios into the newly created LandCo or not. This depends very much on the tax efficiency of this process. So in terms of how much we are willing to spend, I need to. Raimon.
Yeah, for this year, we are looking more or less in terms of land acquisition around EUR 115-120 million. And as you know, we also have the efficiency CapEx that more or less will be around EUR 60 million.
So this is the very base case. As you know, I never made a mystery that I would like to increase this number. But when you start increasing your volumes, it's important also to have the machine working appropriately. So I would be very happy if we can increase this number by 40%-50%, but I think I'm not realistic that you should expect more than this.
Thank you, Marco. I have one follow-up from Andrew Lee. On the Irish deal, when do you expect the Irish antitrust to complete the process and the cash to come in?
It's very much depending on a couple of factors. One depends if the process will go to phase II or if it is going to be closed to phase I. So let's be pessimistic. So let's make the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is it goes to phase II. And if it goes to phase II, it should be around year-end, maximum beginning of the next year. So a phase II process should last a sort of nine months. We filed in March. So it should drive us to the year-end more or less. So this is the worst-case of a phase II.
Perfect. We have another question from Maurice Patrick from Barclays.
Yes.
Are we seeing any sign of Portugal organic growth slowing? Because today we have a new entrant, which is Digi, and wondering how long we should be expecting this outsized growth maybe to continue.
Well, in this moment, we have still some part of the request to be delivered. So we have another portion of this organic growth to come. But we assume that it's mostly a 2024 portfolio. And then it will tend to normalize in terms of growth because the programme of Digi possibly will be completed in Portugal.
Thank you. I have three questions from Jacob, which I believe Jacob most often has been covered because you are asking about Austria. Poland has already been covered by Marco and also our land acquisition strategy. But maybe incrementally, in terms of valuation for the Austrian process, maybe we might be expecting a lower price because of fewer natural buyers of this asset. So valuation expectations are around that.
You'll have to consider that in Ireland, we got honestly a very good price because the buyer had also industrial synergies, which, by the way, drove us to the antitrust filing that we are making. So we don't expect, given the fact that the Austrian market is much more consolidated than the Irish market, which was more fragmented, we don't expect a significant possibility that existing tower operators can successfully bid and pass through an antitrust process in Austria. It would be quite complex. And these drive our base case to a more prudent valuation. And then let's see. So we will see.
Perfect. Also, we have questions from Luigi Minerva from HSBC. He's asking about the POP execution in Italy that we are showing the progress, but is that sustainable? What can we expect for POPs going forward in the coming quarters? Also in Spain, where is the impact from the MásMóvil Orange consolidation?
Yes.
Any potential new business coming from Digi also in Spain?
Okay. Thank you, Luigi. So let's start from Italy. Well, the Italian delivery is mostly linked to a RAN sharing program that one of our core clients, Wind Tre, has put in place with another MNO. Again, this is a 2024 project. It's fairly material in numbers, as you saw, but it's mostly a 2024 project. And then it will go to network densification, as you can imagine. Spain. Well, the Spanish case is super interesting. So the MasOrange creation is raising many questions from the network standpoint because there are at least two factors that have to be considered. Factor number one is that the network quality, so please don't take as being offensive with anyone, the network quality of MásMóvil was not at the standard of the network quality of Orange.
But on the other side, the network quality of Orange is not capable to receive the entire customer base of MásMóvil. So what is clear is that MasOrange should make a fairly, I don't want to say complicated, but fairly big project of network redesign. In doing this, we are talking with MasOrange CTO in order to understand how we can support them in making efficiency in the periphery of the network where the network can be optimized. Possibly, there are sites, an antenna, both from MásMóvil and Orange, and it's not necessary to have both. But to densify the network where the density of the clients is higher. In this, there is the big question mark . You know that Orange had a RAN sharing with Vodafone in the so-called Jumping network. The territory of Spain was divided in two areas. Let's make a proxy.
The coastline was covered by Orange with the exception of Catalonia. Catalonia and the inner land was covered by Vodafone with their network. So also, Vodafone passed through a change of control, or better, is passing through a change of control. The future evolution of this joint venture is in a delicate moment because of all the changes at the proprietary level. Once again, we have a very strong MSA. Everybody knows. Our clients know. We know. But what we want to do, as we are doing in other countries, is not to defend the revenues by the strength of the contract, but we want to defend the revenues because our clients are happy. Digi. It's unclear what Digi is going to do. What is almost sure is that there are two points that are almost sure.
One is that they are not going to make a nationwide network. So the vast majority of their coverage would be through a RAN sharing. And the second is that in order to keep the frequencies, they have to use the frequencies. Otherwise, they lose the frequencies. So this means that they will do some RAN sharing and some new deployment. As you know, we have a very easy channel of conversation with Digi. So we are discussing with them. As far as I know, the only thing I can tell you is that the final decision has not been made by our client, but we are very happy to support them in making it work at convenient conditions for everybody.
Perfect. Luigi is also asking about efficiencies. Beyond what we have already shared with the market, if maybe we are thinking about additional efficiencies around operations, if we have quantified any potential scope and in which countries we could operate better what we already have.
Yes. We are working in several areas. Just to mention some, maintenance is an area of work. IT is very important because some processes can be significantly improved via automation, which not only drives down the personnel cost but makes the entire process leaner. So we are starting from the big countries as normal. In this moment, the four countries that we have under scrutiny are in this order: France, England, Italy, Spain. So those are the countries where we are starting concrete analysis in order to understand if we can do better. And it's important because those countries have many points of similarity. So a solution that can work in Italy possibly works also in Spain and in France. So we can replicate or we can replicate the best solution. Are we quantified? Yes. It's something that Raimon, our CFO, is in the process. So we are working.
For 2024, numbers are relatively small, as you can easily imagine. But it can be an upside on our plan going forward.
Perfect. Last question from Luigi, coming back to Austria and the potential proceeds. How are we thinking the trade-offs between share buyback or a special dividend or deleveraging?
Well, if it is true that higher for longer is the rule of the game, it seems that there is very little that can be share buyback in this moment in terms of value creation. So if the share price stays "depressed" because I think that from the industrial perspective, you see that we are performing very good. We are accelerating on every front. Honestly, I'm very happy with the response of the entire company. So the share price is basically dominated by this financial component. So I would say we have not to forget that we have to deliver because our sensitivity to interest rates remains high. But in this moment, I would say that market condition seems to give more likelihood to share buyback than other use of resources.
We have one question from Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. You may recall that at our Capital Markets Day, we were including the first payment associated with Omtel, our first transaction in Portugal, as additional debt in order to make that more comparable with the methodology used by credit agencies. Is there potential that we also have to include the Nordic call option?
No.
Very clear?
Sorry. I cannot add anything. The answer is short, but it's this.
Very clear.
We have two questions from Georgios Ierodiakonou from Citi. Other options beyond Austria that you may be considering or interest expressed by other parties, or will this be likely the last major disposal at this point? So if beyond Austria, we're considering more disposals.
As I told you before, I can't call it a disposal, but we are actively working on Poland. I don't know what you think, but Poland is big. It's a big operation with a huge perspective, forward-looking, both in terms of passive infrastructure because Poland should be more densified, not only densified. There is a quite significant lack of coverage when you go out of the major cities. There is the RAN component, both in terms of existing relation with Plus and the possibility of having a partnership also at play. This is a big project, something that we are looking at. Is there interest? Yes, there is interest. We are working with some counterpart who could be focused on this. We are looking to other possibilities, but since it's still on our desk, I would prefer not to enter into the details.
We are looking to. I think we demonstrated fairly consistently that we are open-minded in rotating our invested capital every time the industrial strategy meets with the financial strategy. So Georgios, yes, we are working more on other projects. But please allow us to keep in the kitchen.
Perfect. We have two questions from Usman Ghazi from Berenberg. Would you do a buyback before getting to your leverage target, 5-6x net debt to EBITDA? And the second one is, can you give us some insights into the return on capital employed-based ranking by country that you mentioned, if that has started internally?
The answer to your first question is my commitment is to stay investment grade. Then if I have a great opportunity to buy back shares and to stay investment grade, not staying in 5-6, but staying investment grade, believe me, I'll take it because at this price so just today, we announced that also board members are going to buy shares. So at this price, we should buy shares. We should buy more shares. So my strong commitment and the commitment of the board and the entire management team is it has been so painful to go back to investment grade. We want to stay investment grade. But if going to 5-6 takes me six months more okay, it takes me six months more, but we will take the opportunities that we will see on the floor. Sorry. Can you repeat the second question?
The internal exercise on return on capital employed by country, how that is.
Yes. Yes. It's a very interesting exercise because what is very clear is that countries where our deployment project is more mature have a very nice return on invested capital. Let me say Italy, Spain, the Netherlands. So the countries with good markets where the tenancy ratio is already. We had time to push the tenancy ratio up. It's evident that the return on invested capital is already well above our weighted average cost of capital. There are countries that are still a work in progress. The world champion of the work in progress in our case is France. We are still working a lot on BTS. We are working on fiber. Nobody's asking us why the fiber is increasing 25%. It's increased 25% because finally, the invested capital starts to turn into revenues. So this is very good. But France asks for more time.
It's so evident that the more the project is mature, the more we are doing good in terms of return on invested capital. There is a good correlation with the health of the market. The healthier markets with the higher ARPU support better the possibility for the tower operators to have good returns.
Thank you. We have received three questions from Ondrej Cabejsek from UBS. I believe, Ondrej, that most of them have been covered. If not, please correct me and send me an email. But I think that there is a new one within your questions, which is Iliad is now as a holder in Tele2, and Iliad likes to sell towers. Is this an opportunity to consolidate Sweden?
Well, we didn't start talking with Iliad so today, when we talk with Iliad, we are talking about other countries, existing countries. In particular, France, Poland are the main argument of our conversation. It's a matter of fact that Iliad is fairly open-minded vis-à-vis passive infrastructure. But please don't forget that the market structure in Sweden is terribly complicated because there are several joint ventures that have been created over time between different operators. And unwinding the joint venture is always a fairly complicated exercise. So the short answer is, did you already start talking? No, we didn't. Do you think that Iliad can be open-minded? Normally, they are. Do you think that Sweden is going to be an easy exercise to unwind all the joint venture? No, I don't think so. So we will keep monitoring, but I don't see something happening very much short term.
Short term, I think there is not so many chances to consolidate.
On other potential consolidation opportunities, Fernando Abril-Martorell from Alantra, he's asking, considering how fragmented the tower market is in Spain, what role we would like to play?
We will consolidate Spain. It's a matter of fact. I don't think that the question is if. The question is when and how. Obviously, American Tower invested a very significant amount in Spain in their acquisition of the tower from Telefónica. So my base case is that American Tower will be a long-term player. And we are here since ever. And so this is our home market, and we know it fairly well. But I think that you are right. I think that the Spanish tower market is four tower operators. And in a while, there will be more tower operators than operators, which means that this is something that possibly is going to happen. Then I ask myself if this will be a game of combination or a game of someone exiting from the market. I don't exclude that it could be a combination game.
We have three questions from Ottavio Adorisio from Bernstein. First one is, the majority of the growth CapEx is driven by tower adaptation CapEx. As Cellnex needs to reinforce steel and upgrade the connection with the grid. Of all the towers bought in recent years, how many have been upgraded to support multitenancy, and how many still need to be upgraded and by which time frame?
Ottavio Adorisio. Well, we started making the upgrade a sort of, let's say, mostly a couple of years ago. If you go back to three years ago, possibly when it started, the numbers were relatively modest. Then it started two years ago, which means 2021, 2022, and 2023 has been an important year. The count is fairly simple because using a big average number, let's say that reinforcing a tower can cost more or less between EUR 25,000 and EUR 30 ,000. So 1,000 towers, it's EUR 25 million. It means that in a busy year, we make 10,000 towers. Now, it's not true that all the towers need to be reinforced. The newly built were already by design multitenant in their configuration.
Well, it's true that some of the new equipment is a bit heavier, a bit bigger, but let's say that we consider that something between half and two-thirds of the tower portfolio for sure will require reinforcement in case of multitenancy. And the rest, it would be very much case by case. So to make a long story short, what do I expect? I expect that this number will decrease. It will not disappear. It will plateau in a number that possibly means a sort of 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 towers per year as a plateau. And the speed of going there depends very much on the speed of our success in increasing the tenancy rate. So if we are very good in increasing the tenancy rate without RAN sharing, it means that two times out of three, you have to make something on the tower.
I hope I gave you the drivers of your thinking.
Two final quick questions from Ottavio. Any update that we can provide on the CTIL contract renewal? Also coming back to Austria, maybe a JV with an existing towerco could be an option to be considered, similar to what we did in.
Sorry. Say again.
If in Austria, if we can consider a JV, a joint venture with an existing towerco as in the Netherlands.
Okay. The first question is, the contract is on the table of a very kind gentleman who seems to have a little bit of problem with the pencil. So the contract we've been working, the contract is basically designed, defined, agreed on all the terms. And so we are just waiting our counterparty, our client, to sign. So it's very advanced. And on Austria, well, our plan A, you know very well. But you know very well that we will never make a sale for a non-accretive price. So if by any chance, which doesn't seem to be the case, but if by any chance, we end with a price which is not going to be accretive, we will start scratching the head. For the time being, we are not looking for a plan B.
Perfect. We have one question from Fabio Pavan, from Mediobanca. Any impact from the announcement between Vodafone and Swisscom in Italy? And also, would you be tempted to say that this impact is maybe low in numbers, at the same time more healthy industry would support higher infra investments in the near term?
The impact on us is between modest and nil. So it's two operators that make a lot of sense what they did. Unfortunately, what they did is not making the market much healthier. So I think that the second part of your question, Fabio, is a bit optimistic that the market with this deal, with the Swisscom-Vodafone deal, could be considered repaired. I think that the market will continue to have four big guys in the same room, and they have to try to accommodate all of them in the same room. It's clear that the relative position of Vodafone, which was very good on mobile and not as performing, not as good in the fix, has improved. Same vice versa for Fastweb, very good on the fix, not so performing on the mobile. So the combo makes a very powerful player in Italy.
But the guy in the room remained four.
We have one question from Emmet Kelly from Morgan Stanley. Vodafone is selling their operations in Spain and Italy. The question is, does the fact that these two businesses will be under new non-Vodafone ownership present new opportunities to Cellnex?
Well, in Italy, I think that the limit for Cellnex in Italy is the antitrust. The Italian market in the infra is a two-player market, Cellnex and INWIT combined. I think we have 95% of the market. So the possibility of doing more, yes, it's very much possible that the Swisscom-Voda can look for some densification using also our site and not only the INWIT site. It is possible. But I wouldn't say that these will change the dynamic of the market. In Spain, I'm extremely curious. I'm extremely curious because the disposal in Spain is very different. In Italy, they sold it to an industrial player. In Spain, their partner is a very smart financial operator. So it is possible then and here, yes, I go to the point that Fabio was making one second ago.
It's possible that the attitude of the new owner of the previous Vodafone asset could be not the same. Traditionally, Swisscom is fairly CapEx intense. The declaration that the buyer in Spain made was for rationalization, optimization, and savings. It seems that the two approaches are not really the same.
Also, when do you expect to see 5G as a material driver in our top-line organic growth? And on fiber-to-the-tower , do you believe that it's a bottleneck and are we seeing more deployment of fiber-to-air sites?
We said very clearly that fiber-to-the-site, for us, it's something interesting, but we don't see a massive scale. So it will be of course, we are happy to make it if the conditions are okay. But we are not going to bring the fiber making a 20-km excavation. So ultimately, we are talking about a sort of 5,000 additional sites that we see as eligible to fiber projects directly delivered by Cellnex. Even if I'm wrong by 100%, it's not 5 instead. So what I want to tell you is not going to be a massive deployment. Is this a bottleneck for 5G? Yes and no. Because the new high-performance radio links for the backhauling are quite good and progressively more and more efficient in terms of energy consumption. So I think that the backhauling, yes, of course, it's something extremely important for the 5G deployment.
But I don't think it's really, really a bottleneck. I think that the health of the market is the real bottleneck. If you look at the market with the most advanced 5G penetration, most of them are three-player market: Switzerland, Netherlands, so the three-player markets. If you go to markets where there are four players, it's taken more time. But it will arrive.
I think that this bizarre conference call, I don't know how to apologize. Ladies and gentlemen, believe me, it's incredibly embarrassing to us. But ultimately, possibly, we hope it's being productive. Thank you so much for your flexibility and for your patience. I want to believe that we've covered the majority of the questions that you have sent us.
If that has not been the case, obviously, the IR team will be at your disposal to continue catching up and providing you with more details in the period.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, everyone.
Thank you so much.