Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Ferrovial's conference call regarding the relevant event published this morning on the sale of Broadspectrum. Leading the call today will be Ernesto López Mozo, Ferrovial CFO. Following his presentation, there will be a Q&A session, and all questions will be taken through the conference call. With this, I hand over the call to Ernesto. Ernesto, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Begoña, thanks everybody for attending this call on the short notice and in this season. Well, we have two slides. The first one is relating the disposal itself of Broadspectrum, then we get into the state of the different units inside the services division. Okay, with the disposal of Broadspectrum, we say that we have reached an agreement for the sale of the Australian and New Zealand services, Broadspectrum to Ventia. This operation doesn't involve the business that Broadspectrum have in North America and Chile. This is carved out for the purposes of this transaction. The main metrics are the enterprise value, I will mention the Australian dollar that is the base of the contract of AUD 524.5 million. At yesterday's FX rate, would be EUR 327 million. We showed the reported EBITDA for the first nine months of the year.
That is close to AUD 53 million. As you see explicitly, we haven't provided an EBITDA multiple, and there's several reasons for that. Of course, we have an estimate of how the year could close in terms of EBITDA for this unit, and probably it could close between AUD 80 million-AUD 85 million, could be a good range of estimate for the year. It doesn't make any sense to get into multiples. If you do the math, that is around six point something, because always there's discussion about what is the underlying. If you have reversals of provisions as you have in this case, you could have a lower EBITDA, but at the same time, the buyer being an industrial buyer could have a better EBITDA just because they could have synergies with systems and other operational cost reduction.
Therefore, we explicitly don't make an EBITDA multiple for this transaction. As I mentioned, I give some indicate, just see the nine-month figure, and it has been performing below our expectations in the last couple of years. It's true that at the end of the year, Broadspectrum has won some contracts that could put it a little bit back to where our estimates could be. Nevertheless, as I said, multiple could be anywhere between six and seven point something. Of course, to move from the EBITDA to the actual equity value, you have adjustments of debt-like items of EUR 24 million, and that leaves an equity, well, equity and intercompany loans for us of AUD 485.5 million. That is EUR 300 million with yesterday's exchange rate. We have a P&L impact that is negative, EUR 270 million in this quarter.
Also bear in mind that there was a correction in fair value in the third quarter, right? There has been an impact related to Broadspectrum mainly along the year. What is important for you probably is where the book value for the remainder stands. You can see that we have a EUR 1.3 billion mark at the end of the first nine months of the year. At year-end, of course, we will have to be assessed again. Okay. This EUR 1.3 billion you could see as split where Amey is around EUR 187, close to EUR 190 million, and the rest is Spain and international. Okay. The main messages I want to leave you with is that Ferrovial is committed to exit the services business.
It's true that we started the year with a process with more appetite for the whole platform, and this has given way to a more focused approach where some players are interested in specific businesses and/or geographies. In terms of timing for the process, this means that we could see things happening probably in the second half of 2020 and even materializing in 2021, even though some small divestments could take place before. It's going to take a little bit longer than what we expected. The interest from buyers has really changed the profile from the initial expectation. In terms of the business update, the main message is the good news that Ferrovial Services Spain and international are outperforming our expectations by maybe 3%-4% in terms of all the lines, revenue, the EBITDA, and activity and cash flow.
In terms of Amey is in a different situation. It continues its transformation. It has a new CEO with a focus on streamlining the business and maybe doing some partial divestments that have been on the press. They're looking to maybe do some partial divestments and then become more streamlined. Amey looking at the exit of this business as well. Of course, the U.K. sector is awaiting more clarity on budgets from public clients. We think that Amey is preparing for being in better shape for the transaction that we would expect to do as part of this divestment process. Okay. Without any further discussion, I would just close my speech before I take questions. Probably anticipating one of the questions, that is, when do you expect to close the deal? Well, it will close next year, probably between six to nine months.
Maybe it could be something faster, but never before three months. Probably more around mid-year should be a natural expectation for the close of this transaction. Without any further delay, let's get into the Q&A session that you will have to make on the phone rather than by email as in the past. Thanks. Let's start the Q&A session.
Thank you, Ernesto. That is star followed by one to ask a question today. Please ensure that your line is unmuted locally. As a reminder, that is star followed by one to ask a question. Our first question today comes from Stéphanie d'Issalène of RBC. Stéphanie, your line is open.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Regarding the other parts of services that are not divested yet, how comfortable are you that they will not be burning a lot of cash and eventually result in more provisions? I guess I'm personally thinking about the Amey part of the business. Given its asset held for sale, yes, how much disclosure will you give until those parts of the businesses are sold, in terms of what they are generating in terms of cash going forward? Thank you.
Thanks for the question, Stéphanie. I guess that here the main news is that we have positive activity cash flow from the remaining business, right? The main item here was in the U.K., Amey, you know that there was a settlement to get out of the Birmingham contract. This, at the end of this year, will mean that still to pay, there would be GBP 55 million in the next five years. This is something that is a liability that the company will need to be paying every year in installments. We expect the U.K. to generate positive activity cash flow in 2020. This year it would be a negligible number in terms of cash generation. We won't be bringing, let's say, activity cash flow, but definitely we expect to get improvement in the coming budget. It shouldn't be a burden.
The main thing is that for the rest, you have Spain and international that are generating a decent activity cash flow. Both Spain and international could be close to EUR 100 million of activity cash flow in 2019. Yes, we take a lot of care that this doesn't burn cash, and of course, as I mentioned before, we are committed to exit. It's taking longer, but we will be exiting the business.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Stéphanie. Next question please.
As a reminder, that is star followed by one to ask a question. We have four questions on the line currently. Our first comes from Fernando Lafuente of Alantra. Fernando, your line is open.
Hello. Good afternoon. Just two quick questions, Ernesto, please. The first one, in your conversation with the auditors, is there any chance or risk that they force you to bring back the services division to the business as usual, or you expect to leave them as held for sale as they are today? The second question is if you have any, you said More or less the approximation of the cash flow generation that you expect. Can you give us an indication of the dividends that should come to the corporate center or the parent company from the services division, please? Thank you.
Well, thanks for the questions. Regarding the auditors, there's two things that are important, right? One of them is the formal decision to exit the business by the company, by the board. The other is that the different indications from buyers. Our expectation is that it will be maintained as held for sale. I'm quite comfortable in that regard. Regarding the cash flow generation, yes, there's some dividends that could be coming to our Ferrovial at the end of this year. In general, we prefer to talk about activity cash flow. That is the cash flow that any buyer could be seeing in the business and pay for it. Yes, it's true that there could be some, not major, but some minor dividends from Ferrovial Services Spain coming to the corporate.
As I said, we will report the cash really as being part of the services division. Even though we could declare some dividend, we will provide more information at the results conference call. It's something that won't be really material.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Our next question today comes from Jenny Payne of Citi. Jenny, your line is open.
Hi, good evening. Two questions from me, please. Firstly, apologies if this was answered, I joined the call a bit late. Firstly, just in terms of the potential buyers for the residual services assets, obviously we've seen in the papers that Apax have walked away. Can you say at this stage whether there are still potential bidders with offers on the table, or are you starting from scratch now? Just to give us a sense of the timetable. Secondly, are you able to disclose what the net debt position is at the services business at that nine months, or whenever you last heard, in terms of you're comfortable sharing in terms of the net debt position? Thank you.
Okay. Well, thanks for the question. The first one, we don't make comments. I have not made any comments regarding any bidder or discussions. I won't be giving it now. Of course, when we say there's interest because people have approach with interest, but I don't disclose neither the type of buyer, nor the different parts of the perimeter they're looking at. No more information. Here, as I said, we are more likely to see smaller things happening before we see some of the bigger ones. There's no point in discussing timings of those because they could be different paths. Regarding the net debt position, the best thing to do is to publish at the year-end what is the net cash position. I said now there are different moving parts that could affect.
One of them is that services tends to have cash collections from payments from clients at the end of the year, and also we were looking to maybe getting some dividends from services. I think that the best thing to do is when those moving parts are already done, that would be by year-end, with the results conference call in February, we will provide you more information. The fair value that we provide in any case, I think reflects the kind of net equity that we could be collecting the remaining Ferrovial. For now, that is the main figure that you could have in mind. As I said, we'll update with other facts like net debt when we publish the results at year-end.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question today comes from José Arroyas of Santander. José, your line is open.
Hello. In the Q3 conference call, you announced you intended to retain several PFI projects. Is that still the intention or has that changed? Thank you.
Okay. Well, there was some confusion with this because people thought of retaining, let's say, a kind of services business. Some of them, even though that they sit in the services division, could be more like, let's say, PFI, where you have an availability. It's more infrastructure type. Yes, we are looking not to retain, but maybe we could divest some of them. When we're talking about streamlining the business, it's basically getting some of these things out to more natural buyers that usually are funds that are closer to infrastructure funds rather than people that would buy a services business. In the end, it's not that we are looking to retain these things, but they don't mix together in a transaction that is more relating services operations. We kind of remove this, and yes, we would be looking to rotating it. Okay.
I hope that answers your question. If yes, we could move on to the next question, please.
Our next question today comes from Tobias Minor of MainFirst. Tobias, your line is open.
Yes, good afternoon. You alluded to the difficulties in the U.K. and the business after, possibly, the elections starting to get more clarity and certainty. In that context, given that the sector has suffered significantly in the U.K., wouldn't it make sense to seek a transaction where you maintain a stake in a merged business?
Some buyers have offered us the possibility of just buying part and us remaining in the business with objectives being aligned. We have a preference for a clean exit. We don't rule out really things like what you're mentioning or even at one point in time, some capital markets activity. It's not the preference, and we are looking for buyers that could provide clean exits of the different businesses. We've had that kind of interest, but our preference is to get out cleanly.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Next question, please.
We have no further questions. I'll hand back for any final remarks.
Okay. Well, thank you for taking this call. I will just take the opportunity to wish you all a very happy Christmas, and we'll keep you updated on these processes and the results in February. Thanks so much, and bye bye now.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.