Okay, good afternoon. Welcome to our full- year 2025 conference call. Thank you for being with us again. We have the full executive committee with us, corporate executive committee, and we'll kick off with Marco Patuano, CEO. A brief review of results, handing over to Raimon Trias for our financial overview, and then we're all available for Q&A.
Thank you. Thank you, Maria. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you again, as we open a new financial year and reflect on our results and our strategic progresses. In 2025, we deliver on all our premises, and we confirm how resilient our industrial model is. In a very volatile environment, we continue to execute our strategy with conviction and clarity, and deliver the results that demonstrate the point of our assets, and most importantly, the predictability of our revenues and organic growth model, and reaffirm the strength of the relationship with our cluster. We successfully deliver on our 2025 guidance, and we reiterate our 2027 outlook. We returned EUR 1 billion to shareholders through share buybacks, one year ahead of the plan, representing a total yield of 4.5%.
We initiated dividend payments at the beginning of 2026, as committed at our Capital Markets Day. We continue on track to meet our leverage targets, reducing leverage from 6.39 in 2024 to 6.28 in 2025. We have reached an important turning point, where year after year, we will generate increasing free cash flows, giving us greater flexibility to enhance our shareholder returns, fund industrial initiatives, and reach our leverage targets. In 2025, we grew organically in all fronts, with new points of presence accelerating throughout the year, showing continued demand for digital infrastructure. On a pro forma organic basis, our revenues increased by 5.8%, EBITDA by 7.1%, EBITDA after leases by 7.9%, with a 1.6 percentage point increase in margin.
Transformational industrial actions focused on boosting top-line growth, optimizing cost, and proactive lease management are unlocking the operating leverage of our business. Our Recurring Levered Free Cash Flow grew by 11.5%, and on a per-share basis, by 16.7%. The free cash flow grew to EUR 350 million, confirming the positive momentum. On our capital allocation strategy, we completed the disposal of the French data center business, allowing us to increase our focus on core telecom infrastructure assets. We have agreed to dispose our participation in the DIV II fund for circa EUR 170 million. DIV II, for memory, is a participation in a European infrastructure fund, underwritten in 2021, in order for us to explore minority investment opportunities in digital assets.
We successfully issued, in 2026, a bond for EUR 1.5 billion in two tranches to anticipate funding requirements, extending maturities, and securing a pricing at 3.4%. From an organizational standpoint, we also recently announced the implementation of a more streamlined and agile leadership structure, which I will give you more color on shortly. Returning to our guidance for 2025, I would like to highlight our delivery across all the key metrics. The fact that this guidance was set almost five years ago confirms the resilience and the predictability of our business. Consistent execution of our industrial plan is translating into operating results, which, combined with normalizing capital intensity, underpins a trajectory of growing cash generation and sustained profitability. As I mentioned, we announced a new organizational leadership structure in February, marking important progress in the next chapter of our industrial transformation strategy.
The new model is designed to bring sharper strategic focus, deepen customer relationship, enable faster decision-making, and stronger functional alignment, all essential to support continued organic growth. We combine geographic cluster with a pan-European vertical solution division, strengthening execution while ensuring consistency across markets. We're entering in a chapter defined by operational focus, team empowerment, and agility, ready to capture the opportunities ahead. I would like to give you a flavor of why we created our new vertical solution division. Several connectivity needs today exceeded the capacity of a traditional macro coverage and require solution very specialized by nature. Transportation, venues, city centers, public safety, defense, resilience, all of them are very different in terms of technical solution, but very similar across the geographies. We're deploying an operational model aimed to scale up every vertical connectivity solution, increase the commercial focus, and ensure execution discipline and improve accountability.
We are already leaders in Europe. Leveraging on our centralized design capabilities and our country execution power, we want to further improve our performance. Now, I hand over to Raimon to go over the highlights of our operating and financial performance. Raimon, please.
Thank you, Marco. Good morning, everyone. I would like to start by reinforcing our very positive performance in terms of organic growth and cash conversion in the year 2025. Robust revenue growth, combined with a continuous focus on operational excellence, is driving higher profitability, a stronger operating leverage, and expanding cash flow. Starting with organic revenues, we delivered a solid 5.8% year-on-year. EBITDA grew by 7.1%, supported by ongoing actions to increase operational efficiency. EBITDA after leases was 7.9% higher, reflecting our proactive lease management activity. Recurring Levered free cash flow rose 11.5%, supported by the disciplined implementation of our capital allocation strategy. Very important, the recurring Levered free cash flow per share rose by 16.7%, underscoring the incremental value we create for shareholders.
Moving to slide nine, as usual, we show you the bridge between reported and organic pro forma revenue growth. Starting from EUR 3,941 million revenues in 2024, the perimeter adjustment for Ireland and Austria brings us to a pro forma revenue base of EUR 3,790 million. From there, the combination of escalators and CPI, co-locations, and Build-to-Suit deployments led to organic revenue growth like-for-like of 5.8%. This strong revenue performance, as you can see in the next slide, is led by healthy PoP growth in the Q4 2025, and as Marco said, throughout the year. Gross colocation and Build-to-Suit accelerated to 3,043 in the quarter, demonstrating sustained customer demand and a strong commercial traction across the portfolio.
We recorded a strong colocation in France, 220, Italy, 887, and the U.K., 128. We continued BTS deployment across most countries, and overall churn was contained at 307 units. Net new PoPs have shown consistent quarter-over-quarter growth throughout the year. Moving to slide 11, the net PoP growth in 2025 has been 4.5%, fully absorbing a 1.2% churn influenced by the effects of two major consolidations in Spain and the U.K. In Spain, despite the MasOrange network reconfiguration process underway, we recorded year-on-year growth in total PoPs. This reflects the importance of the support we provide our customers in their ongoing network deployments and how we benefit from the unlocked potential for MNOs to invest after market consolidation.
The U.K. also posted consistent quarterly growth, driven by continued 5G deployments, amendment programs, and selective new site activity, illustrating the depth of demand and ongoing investment to catch up and improve network quality across the country. If we go to the next slide, the strength of our operational performance is again clear in this slide, which shows organic growth in tower revenues of 5.5%, driven by contractual escalators, colocation, and ongoing Build-to-Suit rollouts across our main markets. A reminder that these figures are adjusted for Ireland and Austria for comparability. Here we have selected a few practical examples that show how our industrial strategy is being translated into real-world execution across different areas of the business. First, 5G densification in Italy. Fastweb, Vodafone, and Cellnex Italia have extended their strategic agreement for an additional 12 years.
This enables enhanced coverage and improved service quality through the deployment of 5G, supported by over 1,000 points of presence across the country. Second, network resilience and power autonomy. Telefónica and Cellnex Spain have signed the first agreement of its kind between a TowerCo and an operator to strengthen power assurance across more than 2,000 sites. This initiative improves network resilience and energy security following the recent blackouts in Spain. There is potential to develop more energy-related business across our portfolio, providing interesting upside to our core tower services. Third, the new markets through non-terrestrial networks. We provide land acquisition and construction capabilities to support low Earth orbit satellite initiatives. Cellnex can provide essential getaways between LEO constellations and the terrestrial fiber backbone.
Together, these examples illustrate how our operational strategy is being deployed on the ground and how it is opening new avenues for growth while reinforcing our role in next-generation connectivity. Let's move on to slide 14. Fiber, connectivity, and housing services delivered a strong 16% increase in revenues, supported by the continued rollout of the Nexloop project in France. Growth in VaaS, Small Cell, and Granite service was driven by flagship deployments and the increasing relevance of neutral host solutions. With projects delivered across venues and high-traffic locations, such as Roig Arena in Valencia, La Cartuja Stadium in Sevilla, PGE National Stadium in Poland, 5G rollouts in Madrid Metro, and more than 40 parking facilities, as well as multi-operator Small Cell deployments in Portugal, and the renewal of long-term IoT agreements, such as Securitas Direct.
Our broadcasting business remains stable, with a 1.9% growth year-on-year. Importantly, we secured the renewal of our long-term contracts with the leading broadcaster in Spain. On slide 15, we can see that our industrial plan continues to scale and strengthened by the adoption of AI. The initiatives shown here aim to standardize processes, automate operations, and reinforce asset management across the group. This collective effort is making the organization more agile, reducing operational complexity, and improving our ability to respond quickly and consistently across countries. It is also visible externally. In 2025, customer engagement reached a new high, with customer satisfaction index increasing to 8.3 out of a maximum of 10, the best result of the past decade. We are on a path of coordinated transformation that is elevating efficiency, effectiveness, quality, and overall service experience.
This industrial platform has helped that our efficiency initiatives are translated in clear margin expansion, as you can see in the next slide. On a pro forma basis, we reduced cost per towers across all our key cost categories. 1.9% less in staff cost, 1.4% less in repair and maintenance, 4.9% reduction in SG&A per tower, and 1.1% reduction in leases. Land management remains a key value driver for us. We deployed EUR 270 million across land acquisition CapEx and efficiency programs, generating around EUR 24 million in efficiencies, displaying how our disciplined capital allocation strategy helps to offset volume and CPI-related inflationary pressures in lease cash outs.
These focused efforts have driven an increase in EBITDA margins of 300 basis points to 62.1%, up from 59.1% in 2023. The first part of the next slide shows the bridge from reported EBITDA and all the components that shape our free cash flow. In addition to our operating performance, this strong recurrent level of free cash flow comes from an efficient capital and tax structure. Combined with a continued decline in expansion and Build-to-Suit CapEx, free cash flow amounted to EUR 350 million. This free cash flow acceleration represents a turning point, as you can see in the next slide. Our operational improvements are clearly flowing down to cash. On a pro forma basis, the current level of free cash flow grew by 11.5%, almost EUR 200 million.
On a per share basis, the increase was even stronger at 16.7%, also reflecting the share buyback program, which continues to enhance value per share. Looking at reported figures, free cash flow reached EUR 350 million, with underlying free cash flow excluding or before the remedies, improving by EUR 307 million year-on-year. 2025 marked an important milestone for us, with the entry into a new phase of consistent and rapidly accelerating free cash flow generation that supports our deleveraging strategy, as you can see in slide 19. Net debt EBITDA improved to 6.28x from 6.39x in 2024, and 6.85x in 2023, keeping us firmly on track towards our 5x to 6x target.
I would like to note that the pace of deleveraging could have been faster if we hadn't brought forward EUR 1 billion in shareholder remuneration. Our leverage would have closed below the 6 x. Our recent EUR 1.5 billion bond issue that Marco mentioned before in January 26, successfully pre-funded most of our 2026 maturities. With a strong appetite from investor on the back of a good market momentum and our strong rating outlook, we managed to extend maturities and secure an attractive 3.4% pricing. Let me hand back to Marco so that he shares our guidance 2026 and 2027.
Thank you, Raimon. I would like to close our presentation with a message of confidence. The strength of our business, and underlying sector drivers, the continued execution of our strategy, and the power of our customer relationship, give us the confidence to firmly reiterate our guidance for 2027 and share our outlook for 2026. Let me highlight that our outlook has been adjusted to reflect three elements: the change of perimeter following the data center disposal, the discontinuation of our operation and maintenance business in Spain, and the incremental financial costs associated with the share buyback. As you can see, we are very optimistic about our continued growth, profitability, and cash generation. In summary, 2025 was a great year for us, and we're very confident going into 2026 and 2027. Our business model is intact.
Drivers of network investment are healthy, and customer relationship are stronger day by day. Our organization is thriving with renewed leadership, focused on growth, efficiency, and customer excellence. Our growth trajectory and increase in free cash flow underpin our commitment to enhanced shareholder remuneration and give us further capacity to outperform our CMD distribution targets. Thank you.
Okay. Before moving to the Q&A, I'd just like to highlight that in addition to the main slides in the body of the presentation, we've added a few new slides at the end. Some FAQ slides that cover many of the topics that you often ask us. We really hope you find them useful. And with that, we're now available to take your questions. The first question that we have on the lineup is from Roshan Ranjit at Deutsche.
Morning, everyone. Thanks, thanks for the questions. I just got three, hopefully quite quick, please. Marco, you highlighted the Spanish revenue pick up in sort of the colos. I guess, you know, this is the benefits of the kind of the merge co already coming through now. Could you remind us how many PoPs and the trajectory of that ramp up through 2026, please? Secondly, on the EBITDA pick up, a strong acceleration on the organic growth. Is this now the benefits of the run-rate of the land coming in, and we should expect that momentum to continue through 2026? Or is there an element of timing effect in there, please? Lastly, thanks for the additional color on the backup slide.
I'm quite interested in the RAN sharing slide. You've given examples across Europe. It's possible to get a sense of the kind of pricing premium across the different markets that you attribute from RAN sharing. Is it kind of a consistent uplift in the pricing, or does it vary depending upon market structure? Thank you.
Yes, very good. Your first question on Spain, I take question one and three, and I leave the EBITDA to Raimon. On your first question, Spain had the first phase in Spain was the redesign of the network coming from MasOrange. You see that at the beginning of 2025, we had a material churn in our point of presence. We started in the second part of 2025 to activate the RAN sharing agreement we have with Play, which was a part of the deployment strategy of Play in Spain. And we started the so-called rural project in Spain with MasOrange .
For 2026, we start entering in the densification process project that we have with MasOrange, we will continue to activate more PoPs with Play. 2020, 2025 was MasOrange very much focused on reshaping the network and the activation of Play, filling the gap that was coming from some discontinuation in MasOrange. 2026, on the contrary, will be MasOrange starting the densification project. Your second question on RAN. The question on RAN is pricing depends very much on not very much, to some extent on market conditions. You should imagine something between half of a colocation price and one-third of a colocation price, depending on the structure of the market.
Normally, they have very, very, very limited activation costs on our side. It's pure margin for us because there are basically no CapEx associated to this. Yes, there are some OpEx, because our engineers have to make some little adjustments, but it's pure margin.
The EBITDA perspective and the Lamco, as you will have seen, this year, we have done up to EUR 270 million worth of initiatives, both on efficiency and land acquisition across all the different countries that have allowed us to save approximately EUR 24 million in terms of savings of EBITDA. As you will have seen on the guidance, this trend will continue going forward. The idea is that over the next years, since we created Celland, we have accelerated the amount that we are able to buy, and we are buying more than prior years. It is true that we need to be careful not to compete with ourselves, and we need to keep certain level that normally we consider it between EUR 250 million-EUR 300 million for the coming years to keep on achieving this level of savings going forward.
That's great. Thanks. Just on the last point, Raimon. The kind of Q4 exit EBITDA growth could be something that we can expect through 2026 then?
I would say if you take the savings that we have achieved this year, there is part of it, as you are saying, no, there has been a bit more of activity in the last quarter, and a bit more of savings. You have to consider that for doing the phasing for next year. Next year will depend if we buy EUR 250 million, EUR 300 million, but the new savings of next year will kick in as well.
Okay.
That's great. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Roshan. Moving on to the next question. It comes from Rohit at Citibank.
Thank you for the opportunity. I have three pieces as well. Firstly, on the guidance for 2027. Now, I understand the guidance was initially given, it was a bit long dated, and you have a broader range. Now, given you are near to 2027, we are already in start of 2026. We still have, you know, I understand 5% on range on the revenue level, but that goes down to 20% range on free cash flow level. With a business like Cellnex, where you have a higher visibility, I'm just trying to understand what are the swing factors on recurring level free cash flow and free cash flow for 2027, that you expect, you know, number can move from lower end to higher end? That's the first one.
Second, again, there's a lot of noise we have seen, particularly recently in Italy, around renegotiation of contract. Just trying to understand, Cellnex could be any kind of beneficiary if, from, you know, if anything happens in Italy. Lastly, if you can just remind us around the derivative position that you have taken last year, the swaps just before the buybacks. I mean, is there a kind of termination date do you have on those swaps, given you do mark to market, and you have kind of cash outflow, potential cash outflow if you don't terminate that contract? Thank you so much.
Okay. so, on 2027, on 2027 guidance, yes, you know, I remember there was a bit of skepticism in the recent past, about our capacity to go to target. The more it was long term, the more the skepticism was higher. Today, I think, that the level we reached in 2025 give a good visibility over the how the Recurring Levered Free Cash Flow and the free cash flow are achievable. What are the factors that made them achievable? Well, we defended and protected the revenue growth. The revenue growth, despite a worse than expected, original expected CPI, we are maintaining a good level of growth.
This is important. As you saw, the idea of making a new organization that is in order to keep revenue growth. We are performing well in terms of efficiencies, Raimon just explored. Even more, our discipline in capital allocation was demonstrated more and more. The range for 2027 is what we confirmed at the Capital Markets Day. The more we get closer to this day, the more we see it feasible both in terms of Recurring Levered Free Cash Flow and even more importantly, in terms of full cash flow. Your second question was about contract renegotiation.
Look, what I can tell you is that we already renegotiated several contracts. renegotiated with Telefónica, we had no problems. We renegotiated with Vodafone, we had no problems. We renegotiated with KPN in the Netherlands, we had no problems. With Iliad in France, we had no problems. Our experience is that the renegotiation moment is a moment in which you sit with your client, the client will tell you what he likes and what he doesn't. The core elements of our contract have never been questioned. The fact that that is a long term is a long term. The fact that it's an all or nothing is an all or nothing, that has never been questioned until today.
On top of this, talking about Cellnex, what I can tell you is that the coming renegotiation are not tomorrow. We have the next renegotiation. We have one in Italy in 2030, and then we go to 2033, 2034, 2035, 2036, 2038, 2042, 2048. In this moment, of course, we are looking with attention what happens in the industry, but our experience as of today has not been traumatic. The last I leave to Raimon.
Yeah, on the last topic, I'm not sure if I understood properly, but I'm gonna try to answer what I understood. I think that you were asking why in last year, most of the return or all the return that we have done to the shareholders has been through the share buybacks. There are various reasons. The first one, if you remember, in the Capital Markets Day, we committed to a dividend starting 2026.
Why is that? You've seen the guidance that we have given. The free cash flow is between EUR 600 million and EUR 700 million. it allow us to pay a dividend based on the cash generation from the business. Last year, we had cash available, that it was coming partially from the cash generation of the business, the EUR 300 million that we have done, EUR 350 million, but it was coming also from the divestments of Austria and Ireland. On top of that, the share price was at a moment that was very attractive. That's why we also decided to use the proceeds for doing the share buyback. I hope it was well, it was clear enough.
it was regarding the swap contract that you entered last year, would you continue to have that contract?
No, the equity swap, it is still in place. It matures in June 2026. It was worth at EUR 32. We are today at EUR 31.5.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Okay, moving on to the next question. It's coming from Arnaud Camus at Bestinver.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. First, I assume the disclosure may be limited, but could you provide some indication of the size of the battery resilience agreement you have signed with Telefónica in Spain? Should we assume this is a replicable model to other countries of your footprint? And two, more broadly, regarding the forthcoming Cybersecurity Act, I know it may be early, but could you share any initial visibility on the potential CapEx envelope and implementation timeline, as you are an infrastructure provider to telecom operators? And is it already considered within your 2027 guidance? Thank you.
Yeah. The battery agreement is still. It's relatively sizable with Telefónica. We are discussing with them how to expand it more, because of what we agreed with them is to have modular development of this program, based on their network design. Our technical teams are working strictly together. The target is to have several thousand sites covered. And it's a super interesting business model, because what we do is like imagine not to be a pure infrastructure or a simplified infrastructure, but to be a service infrastructure provider.
We help to take care of the infrastructure from the bottom to the top. Having a program that allow us to buy batteries on a pan-European basis, we can have very good prices, and even more importantly, we have a very long insurance terms for the life protection of those batteries. We agree on the life protection up to 15, 20 years. Is it replicable? Yes, it's very replicable. We have several other customers that are interested in this business model exactly because of what I told you. We are negotiating very good prices on very good volumes.
Don't underestimate the fact that securing volumes in this moment in which there is starts to be a certain level of shortage on this type of elements, is clear. About the Cybersecurity Act, the CSA, I was in Brussels last week talking about DNA and CSA, so the two regulations that are expected going forward. The answer is yes, we are working very closely with the European community. There are still margins of non-clarity, non-perfect clarity in what is going to be the final outcome. To be honest, the different member states have a different interpretation of the scope. Some are more stricter, some are less stricter.
What we have in 2027, we are convinced that is full enough for what is going to be the requirement of DSA, the CSA. If you ask me if the CSA will be fully enforced in 2027, I'm not so optimistic.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, moving on to the next question. It comes from Fernando at Alantra.
Hello. Yes, good morning. Thank you. Two quick questions from my side. First, on the expansion CapEx, I've seen it is down 6% year-on-year on a pro forma basis. I don't know if you can elaborate a little bit on the main drivers behind this. Also, how should we think about its evolution for 2026 and 2027, the split, you know, between the different three CapEx items? Second, on POPs growth, you've accelerated throughout the year. Is it reasonable to assume a similar growth profile in 2026. Can you give us an indication of what share of new POPs will be linked to RAN sharing agreements? Thank you.
Okay. On expansion CapEx, there are two elements. A few time ago, Raimon showed you that on DAS, small cell, RAN, and other services that we grew almost 5%. The reality is that if you open this number between the DAS and small cell, RAN, and other, you would have seen that DAS and small cell were growing about 8.1%, RAN about 10%, and the other was growing much less. The real focus for us today is the DAS, small cell, and RAN. Going forward, what we see, the place we see having the CapEx is those two areas. DAS and small cells, in this order, more DAS than small cells.
The Small Cell take up is still low, even though there are some interesting use cases in some European countries that we're monitoring very closely, of Small Cells covering city center very efficiently and with a very low urbanistic impact. The other is RAN. Our RAN project in Poland is using some CapEx. This is about the expansion CapEx. Of course, there is a part of expansion CapEx that is linked to colocation, but this is tower expansion CapEx, that you know, every year we have more or less the same. About PoP growth, Raimon?
Yep. During the year 2026, you know that our growth in PoPs comes from two things. It comes from collocations, and it comes from Build-to-Suit. Build-to-Suit will slow down a little bit in the year 2026, basically because our programs of Build-to-Suit are reducing year-on-year as they come from the prior M&A deals. The normal colocation, we're expecting similar growth as this year, not a big difference. You were asking as well from a RAN sharing perspective. This year, the RAN sharing has mainly been in Spain with the entrance of Play. I would say that for next year, although you also have a bit in Italy, I would say that for next year, you have to consider that there will be similar RAN sharing coming from Spain, and a bit in Italy as well.
I would just consider that from the colocation, what comes from Spain is what will give RAN sharing.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
De nothing.
Moving on to the next question. It's coming from Ondřej at UBS.
Hi, thank you very much for the presentation. I had to step away for a moment, so apologies if I'm repeating the question. Please feel free to ignore. I have two questions, please. One is on the news that Iliad has decided to allocate part of the contract that you were mentioning at the previous quarter, that you are in kind of looking at the 4,500 sites in France. Iliad has allocated at least half of this to TDF.
I was wondering, Marco, if you can again, kind of explain to us your thinking about the returns on this project, why this is the second project with Iliad, specifically, that you are kind of turning that walking away from, presumably because of the kind of IR not meeting your standards. That would be question number one, please. Second question, related to France. We heard last week on the CMD that Christel, the CEO of Orange, was talking about again, kind of, you know, investment remedies. I was wondering if this is something that is already somehow kind of taking shape in light of various, you know, positive, say, developments.
For example, the European Council, openly suggesting that, you know, M&A should be allowed and, you know, investment is needed, remedies are needed in that direction. Any kind of color on developing talks around that potential situation would be very helpful. Thank you.
Okay, I answer Nemrod. Today with us, there is also our chief strategy, who is French, by the way. I will leave him to respond, Ondřej . On Nemrod, yes, we have been, we participated to the tender, and the tender itself is an evidence that there is more need of coverage and densification. This is, you know, I commented 1 million time in the past, and then there is a tender. The good part of the story is that densification needs are there. We've been looking to the tender. We submitted an offer, but we submitted an offer that was in line with our capital allocation rules.
Did make us not to reach the agreement with Iliad because it was out of our investment criteria and our capital allocation criteria. We decided that if there was someone offering more, we would have stayed disciplined. Our goal is not to catch up with every investment there is in Europe. We are disciplined. We know where we create long-term value creation, and so that's it. We will focus on other projects. Vincent, would you like to answer the second question?
Yeah, of course. Good morning, Ondřej . Yes, we are obviously very extremely close to our different customers. We're not directly involved, as you perfectly know.
within the discussion of the consortium. We are also, as Marco mentioned, pretty convinced that any consolidation, if it happens, will come with investment remedies, not only in new coverage, but also on the resiliency of the system. We have shown our proactiveness with all our partners there to support these remedies. As you perfectly know, in any case, what we will procure is to protect the NPV of our contract and giving some short-term flexibility in exchange of long-term growth that will come from these remedies without any doubt. This is what we will protect, this will result in the protection of the NPV of our contract. Okay. Thank you. Yes, I was with some members of the French institutional establishment.
What they told me is that they consider infrastructure investment a high priority for the country. There's no doubt that there will be more investment coming.
Good.
Okay. Now moving on to the next question, we have Abhilash from BNP on the line.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks again for taking the question. I just had one please. I wanted to come back to the topic of the guidance changes and specifically around the revenues. About 100 million data for 2026, between low and high end, 200 million EUR for 2027. Just wanted to understand specifically around revenues, what is the key factor there? Is it around inflation assumptions? Presumably not, you know, given it's so close. Is it mainly around colocations, or are there any other factors? Any color you could add there around the revenue ranges, that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. What do you want, Raimon?
In terms of the guidance, the only thing that we have adjusted, you have it in the presentation, is basically the change of the rhythm that is coming because of the data center disposal. We have adjusted the discontinuation of the operational maintenance activities that we had in Spain. If you recall, we decided to stop this something like 18 months ago, but it had an impact during two years still, because it took some time to discontinue the operations. The third thing that we have adjusted into the guidance is the impact of the increased share buyback that was not considered in our numbers in the capital markets. The rest of the guidance, 2027, has not changed and remains as it was before.
Sorry. Thank you. Apologies, if it was not clear from the way I framed the question. I was just maybe more wondering on what is driving the variance between the low and high end of the revenue range.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
What are the key factors?
Yeah, I think.
Thank you.
I think that the width of the range depends very much on somehow the future of Build-to-Suit programs if we're going to allocate more Build-to-Suit programs or not. An Emerald project enters, we have the full capacity in our cash flow to have such a project, and it contributes to your growth. The Emerald project doesn't enter, and we rely more on colocation and the existing commitments that we have. Having a or maintaining a certain element is absolutely normal. And by the way, it is also a decision of not to touch what we commit to the Capital Markets Day.
If we start touching one point, we then we have to make a full revision. But if you ask me, what can move us from the low end to the high end? I would tell you that what is going to come from colocation, rent sharing, et cetera. More or less, we have a fairly clear picture. What are the commitments that are already taken? We know even the scent. Is possible that something more materialize in the coming months before between here and the end of 2027? Yes. And we will evaluate, we demonstrate, we are disciplined, we're not going to make crazy stuff. If we do something, it's because it generates value, long-term value. I think it's fine.
If I can add to Marco, it's important that everyone understands the predictability of the business. This year, we have achieved the guidance 2025, that was given five years ago. The variance that can happen within these numbers is very small from that perspective.
Good.
Thank you. Thank you both for the color. Just to clarify, you're saying that the high end of the guidance is more sort of dedicated on additional Build-to-Suit projects over and above what we already have? If I understood that correctly. For the revenue guidance, I mean. Thank you.
Yeah. For going up to the higher part of the guidance, yes, there are other projects that should be one during the year, to be able to get to the higher part of the guidance. Correct.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you.
Moving on. We can follow up afterwards if you still have any questions. Now moving on to the next question comes from Fernando at Santander.
Hello, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. My two questions, in fact. The first one is related with a follow-up in the sense that you have been over the years about your confidence on the PoP growth for 2026. I'm going a little bit beyond, given that the Build-to-Suit activity is going to clearly decrease by 2027 and onwards, how confident are you of replacing the current PoP growth coming from Build-to-Suit with colos? The second question is on active equipment. You have already the project in Poland.
I just would like to understand at which extent you would be also, let's say, open for additional projects, and particularly I'm thinking in Spain, just, as a way to complement your current portfolio and even to, let's say, to give more visibility in the long term to your current business in Spain.
Uh, so the build-to-suit programs, as I, as I said one second ago, we are- we have, uh, a program of committed that what has been already committed. Uh, has a sharp decline, uh, after 2026 . 2027 will be, materially lower than 2026 . And, uh, so this is why we are working on analyzing future possibility, future opportunities that appear in the market. On your question on active equipment and especially on Spain, I would say that it's not our sweet spot. So if you ask me if is this your sweet spot, my clear answer is no. W e have the project in Poland.
We are performing the project in Poland, I would say fairly okay. Okay, in terms of how the project is going on, what are the returns, the relation with the client, et cetera. What I can tell you is that contributing with a material benefit to the client, we can do way more on the traditional perimeter than on the active component. You know, every case is different. Today, a case in Spain is, I think, more a press rumor than a real case. As of today, my answer is more no than yes. This is also something that is not so clear, if it is a real case or a speculation.
I would say more no than yes.
Very clear, Marco. On my question on the PoP growth is because.
Sir, we can't hear you very well.
Can you speak a bit louder, please, Fernando?
Yeah. Can you hear me very well now?
Much better.
Okay, perfect. Now my point is the following: There is a debate that at which extent your current PoP growth in colos is subdued by the fact that you are deploying the Build-to-Suit programs. In that sense, what should be, let's say, the, your, let's say, your base cases in terms of PoP growth? It is the total PoP growth that we are seeing today, or just the colos when the Build-to-Suit programs will be fading down?
Well, the colo that you see today is what we assume is going to be the rhythm of the colocation. Of course, if you see that the Build-to-Suit tend to reduce after 2027, we are going to push more on colocation. The point is, we are looking to an important market share on new colocation. What we are doing is maintain or eventually even increase our market share. In order to do this, our technical team is working with proactive models in order to co-design with our clients better coverage. This is something that if you want, we can explore and explain better separately. Okay?
Okay.
Okay.
Very clear. Many thanks, Marco.
Thank you very much, Fernando.
Moving on, next question comes from James Ratzer at New Street.
Yes, good morning. Thank you very much for taking the question. I have two questions, please. The first one is, you're seeing some very encouraging growth in the kind of just organic colocation on your towers. I'd be really interested just to hear more precisely where you're seeing that demand coming. Is this in kind of urban hotspots? Is this rural areas? Are these transport links, you know, and you're speaking to the MNOs, where are you finding they're particularly seeing this demand for organic, colocation growth? Secondly, kind of bigger picture, Marco, where do you see Cellnex's portfolio of assets going, let's say, over the next three to five years? I mean, you've announced here this morning another small disposal. I mean, how do you see yourself at some point ever going back into acquisition mode and growing the portfolio of the business?
I'd just love to hear a bit more conceptually how you think about.
Yeah
kind of strategic portfolio for the next five years. Thank you.
Yes. Very clear, James. On, on organic collocation, it's super interesting because when we go with my chief operating officer and we start looking at the detailed figures, we look at to our portfolio, splitting it between towers and rooftops, and then urban, suburban, rural, and deep rural. The more you are tower a non-super dense area, the more you have opportunity for collocation, which is good common sense. If I'm in the center of Paris, adding a collocation on an existing rooftop is not difficult technically. It's difficult urbanistically. You don't get the permit.
Collocations are most of all suburban, and suburban is the bigger roads, and transportation corridors, even inside the cities, because these generate traffic congest- data traffic, and not only car traffic congestion, but also data traffic congestion. The rural is going to be a mix of collocation and RAN sharing. The more you go in deep rural, the more we suggest to our client, to be efficient. We are making this, for example, in Switzerland. We are telling to our clients, RAN share more, because the industrial cost, is for them, not for me, for them. Industrial cost, make the investment, having a better return.
The more you look at tower and the more you look at non-super dense urban area, the more you have a opportunity for collocation. The more you have, you are densifying, dense urban areas, the more you have to think about more towers or eventually distributed Small Cell system or distributed antenna systems. I hope I made it clear, James.
Yes, very interesting. Thank you.
The second is, how do we see the portfolio medium to long term? Point number one, everything that is non-core and, you can easily understand the participation. We were a limited partner in an investment fund. Hard for me to say that this is core. We had a commitment of further EUR 50 million to be invested in the future, and, we could repatriate with a nice return, our old investment. Why not to rotate this asset? I think it was a relatively easy decision. We had a very good cooperation from the GP. The general partner cooperated with us very nicely. We made it. When you look at the, can Cellnex be on the buy side?
I would say for geographic expansion, I'm fairly categoric in saying no. I don't see Cellnex exit from markets and then re-entering new markets because of so. No, I don't see this. In terms of geography, I think we are pretty much okay. If the MNO are claiming that there is too much fragmentation in their market, I would say the tower sector, in some markets can say the same. In Spain, there are four tower players and three networks. In France, there are five tower operators, and if you count also smaller ones, you can eventually even consider it more fragmented. Those, those, U.K. is the same.
U.K. is pretty fragmented in terms of tower operators. Consolidation in market, consolidation in tower operator can make good synergies. The easy and evident one, I can manage more portfolio, more towers with less than proportional growth of people. There's the, let me say, the trivial one, the easy one. The most interesting ones is that when you put two portfolio together, you start realizing there are real overlaps between portfolios, and you can start decommissioning part of the portfolio, transfer to your client part of the benefit. And this is what make it very, very, very interesting. This kind of consolidation is not there today because the, there is nothing there today.
If your question is, how do I see it medium term? I think that this fragmentation, same as the MNO, are saying that it's inefficient. I can say that it's not particularly efficient, even in the tower sector.
Interesting. Thank you, Marco. I appreciate all your thoughts there.
Thank you, James. Thank you.
Okay, now moving on to-
We have another two, and then we-.
Yep. Now moving on to Graham at Jefferies?
Yeah, thanks. I'll just stick to one, if that's okay, and thank you for the question. Could I just ask a bit more on the reorganization that you announced that you took at the beginning of the year? Maybe if you could help us understand more about the characteristics of that business unit as to why it suits the cross-market leadership structure, and what the challenges were that you were encountering before this, that the new organization is looking to resolve. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Graham. The reorganization was based on two main drivers. One is, at corporate, we need to be more efficient. To be more efficient, we need to be more focused and more slim, if you want. Then we have to decide what we do and what, possibly, it's not, it's not, absolutely necessary. This is why we made our organization at the headquarter level, linear. Linear means faster, and means also it makes easier to make decisions. This is why we reorganized the headquarter. When we were looking at to the countries, we had some, let me say, some geographic combination that were a little bit hazardous.
We had Portugal together with Poland, instead of being together with Spain, which is honestly not very geographically natural. We've made some adjustments, because it could make available some synergies that are not you have not to imagine enormous synergies, but there can be some synergies. The last and most interesting part was what we call vertical solution. Today, what happens is that if you take a large country, like let's take two large countries. One is Italy and one is France. In Italy, the non-TowerCo business accounts for a sort of EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million. In France, it accounts for less than EUR 5 million. Okay? Do you mean that the French market is 10x smaller than the Italian market?
Do you think that with the EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million, we covered all the opportunities we had on the Italian market? The answer is no and no. The problem was that sometime each and every country is very specialized and very focused on the day by day, and sometimes some opportunities are simply not big enough, not priority enough, not specialized enough to make it, to make it possible. The idea was, okay, we are all together. If I take all my countries, we are the number one in Europe, but we don't, we don't play as the number one. We play 10x as a small operator, and we want to play one time as a big guy. In order to do this, you have first to think big.
If you think small, you remain small. We need to think big, and in order to think big, I need to put all the volume together and think central, act local is going to be the rule. I think that, yes, like every matrix organization, there are challenges, but it can work well. Do we have an example? Yes, Celland. It was a lot of small initiatives, each of them small. Now we have Celland, and it's doing phenomenal. Let's try to capitalize on good experiences.
Super interesting. Thank you, Marco.
Okay, now to turn the call, our last question from Andrew at Goldman Sachs.
Good afternoon. I just wanted to, just one question, just to dive in a bit more deeply into the Spanish densification reacceleration. You've obviously seen the equivalent POPs in Spain tick up, I think, as was mentioned in an earlier question. Could you just give us a bit more insight? Obviously, this is a key metric for us to be thinking about as to whether consolidation is a good or bad thing for telcos. Obviously, consolidation consensus thinks it's a bad thing, and you think it's a good thing. We're obviously all looking for evidence of densification acceleration. If that's happening now, what exactly does that look like? What will be the equivalent POP growth in Spain that you see in 2026 and 2027?
I think sorry, the company average or Cellnex average is 3.7% equivalent PoP growth in the Q4 . What does it look like in Spain with that growth acceleration that we're seeing from densification? Thank you.
You make my life a little bit difficult because you talk about equivalent PoP, and I talk about PoP. No. The concept of equivalent PoP was a concept that has been used by Cellnex some time ago, in order to facilitate the exercise of saying equivalent PoP time, average price equal to revenues. The world doesn't work in equivalent PoP nor in average price. Average is a bit tricky, a bit of tricky exercise, because now I'm eating an entire chicken, you eat 0, and we had half a chicken each. It's not true when we see if you are hungry at the end or not.
The growth in Spain, or what happened in Spain is, point number one, MasOrange had to take two networks, one built at Orange standards and the other built at MásMóvil standards, which were, believe me, very different, and to create the MasOrange network. We had to avoid duplications, we had to make new co-locations, we had to build or we have to build new sites, all at the new standard which is the MasOrange standard, which is the Orange standard. Top quality, top everything, carrier grade. Top carrier grade. This is what happened in Spain with MasOrange, which is first part of the year, an accelerated decommission of the PoPs.
Some of them anchor, and some of them second, and then a progressive re-colocation of some of those of those antenna, most of them anchor. Okay? On top of this, we are partner of MasOrange in their rural deployment program, rural Spain program, and in the beginning of 2026, we are completing the delivery of this program. This is the picture with the MasOrange. Going forward, what is gonna happen? It's gonna happen that they are working on improving, further improving the quality of their network. We're making available more co-location, and we both committed that we will build for them some of the new installation that they need. Second, part of the decommissioned sites that MasOrange made available have been taken by Telefónica. Why? Because it was a good, it was a good location.
There was a space on the antenna, which was made available by eliminating one previous antenna. Telefónica considered it interesting. This happened in the second part of 2025, and will continue progressively in 2026. Our relation with Telefónica is particularly good, as you saw with the battery program, we are discussing with them if we can make available more sites with them. In their case, we're talking about more co-location than Build-to-Suit. It's a very healthy relation. With Telefónica, we agreed on the activation of the RAN sharing program they have with Play. It was, it is a fairly big program. It's, it started in the second part of 2025.
I would say in the last part of 2025. It will continue in 2026. Why it took a little bit of time? Because we had not only to agree on a technical program, but also we had to amend our original contract in order to make available for them, the RAN sharing on our network that originally speaking, was not, was not considered. We made the agreement. This is another demonstration that when people say that every time there is to discuss about agreement, it's a fight. No, it's a discussion. It's a discussion between two adults. This is going to continue. To be honest, our relation with the VodafoneZiggo is not one of the largest relation, business relation we have.
The fact that there is a little bit of noise around this is not affecting us particularly. Of course, if we can support VodafoneZiggo and Vodafone in their network needs, more than happy. As of today, it has been relatively small, but of course, if they need, we do. What we see more? We see more densification coming. This is something we absolutely see. We see more densification coming in Spain, and the big question mark is if Play someday will deploy not only RAN sharing, but also some proprietary network they did in other country. As of today, it's not in the plans, at least in the plans shared with us, but you never know. I hope I answered Andrew.
No, thank you for your color, Marco. I guess the reason I'm using equivalent PoPs was just because it has a more direct correlation with actual revenue growth.
I know.
Whereas these days, don't so much. It's, really what we're trying to ask is, like, is revenue growth gonna accelerate? What's the revenue growth in Spain post-consolidation, post the kind of the rebalancing of 2025? That's the real question. It sounds like you're not able or you're not you can't answer that today, but I guess that's what we're really looking for.
What I can answer is that 2025 has been a little bit better than what we expected.
Yeah.
Let's take the small positives.
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's very fair.
Okay. Well, thank you, everyone. It's been a long call. Very, very productive, I think. Thank you for your continued support. As usual, the full team is available for following up, if you have any additional questions. Thank you very much.