Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Prosegur Q2 2025 results presentation. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising you to hand this raise. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Juan Ignacio Galleano, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon and welcome to Prosegur first half 2025 results presentation webcast. Before we start, I would like to remind you that this presentation has been pre-recorded and that it will be available on our corporate website. I will now hand you over to our CFO, Maite Rodríguez.
Good afternoon and thank you all for your presence. We are pleased to present Prosegur results for the first half of 2025. As we shall see throughout the presentation, operating results continue to follow a strong path, showing good performance when compared to last year. From a financial standpoint, net income marked an impressive 80% increase year on year, evidencing a strong performance not only at an operational level but also from a treasury and tax perspective. For all the above, we are confident that we continue to be on the right track to comply with our main objective of generating value for our shareholders. All our commercial and financial teams are working side by side with that goal, and we expect the second half of the year to be marked by cash flow generation and further the leveraging of the company.
Now, with all this in mind, let's take a deep dive into the most significant aspects of the period. Our top line grew by 5.1% compared to the same period of last year, mainly driven by organic growth. Every region where we operate increased, with a special highlight in the United States and the APAC region. As we shall later see, in the former region, our Security Business continued to experience strong growth, while in the latter, cash volumes continued to increase at very healthy levels. As for profitability, EBITA stood at EUR 170 million, 15.9% higher year-over-year, mainly explained by the strong performance of our Security Business. Indeed, volume growth, jointly with an agile commercial strategy to pass through costs to prices, explained the result. Our Cash Business showed good operating performance in all major geographies.
However, results were somehow impacted by the devaluation of the dollar, which tended to trigger devaluation throughout Latin American currencies, and by the implementation of an aggressive cost-saving program. We will explain this in detail later, but for now, keep in mind that it resulted in high severance costs. For our Alarm Business, as we will see, operational performance was clearly enhanced, reflected in better and healthier indicators. In this framework, it is remarkable the fact that we have achieved 1 million connections. Thanks to an efficient working capital management and keeping infrastructure CapEx under control, the higher achieved profitability resulted in higher cash generation. Overall, net debt stands at 2.3 times relative to EBITDA, despite our typical seasonality in the first half of the period.
Let me remind you that our debt is not only very well structured in the long run, but also very cheap, with an average cost of 2.4%. A few words on Argentina are worth of mention. While the economy continues to normalize from a macroeconomic perspective, as inflation rate continues to reduce on a monthly basis, FX has recently shown some relative volatility. This has more to do with the upcoming midterm elections rather than to deep fundamentals. On the growth side, the sharp V recovery that the economy experienced throughout the first half of the year is already behind us, and now growth rates have normalized to more sustainable levels. Let's now turn to slide two, where I would like to deep dive into our sales and EBITA figures. As said, total sales during the first quarter increased by 5.1% over last year, reaching EUR 2.5 billion.
Discounting for the FX effect, almost the entire growth was organic, evidencing our strict policy when it comes to passing through inflation to prices. At the same time, volumes continue to grow both in our most traditional businesses without exception, and most importantly, in our transformation products. As for geographic sales diversification, it should be noted that growth continues to be the driver. Both USA and APAC region continue to grow at higher than average rates. We foresee to see the exact same trend for the upcoming years, positively affecting the sustainability of the entire company. Moving now to further review profitability, EBITA reached EUR 170 million, marking a healthy 15.9% increase compared to last year. Our Cash Business registered an EBITA of EUR 112 million, in line with the previous year.
This includes the extraordinary expenses incurred due to the implementation of the cost-saving program, coming from reorganizing the distribution of our stocks. If excluded, EBITA amounted to EUR 17 million, marking a 3.7% increase year-over-year. Turning now to our Security Business, EBITA amounted to EUR 38 million, 12.1% higher compared to the first half of 2024. Healthy volume growth, coupled with a strict discipline on cost, explained the enhanced performance. Technology sales further contributed to the good results. As we always explain, our ability to provide high-end tech solutions is one of our main competitive advantages and constitutes one of our main pillars. Lastly, our Alarm Business continues to be on good track, and good proof of this is the evolution of main financial indicators such as service margin and Churn Rate.
Let's now turn to our full P&L that, as it can be seen, showed a remarkable increase compared to last year. The better performance on financial results has a lot to do with the normalization of the Argentine economy. As explained, inflation rates are going down quite rapidly, resulting in a minor impact due to the hyperinflation accounting. At the same time, the abrupt narrowing of the FX gaps further contributed as dividend upstreaming became cheaper. Going further down to accrued taxes, the 279 basis points reduction in the effective rate should be highlighted. The rationale behind this reduction is twofold. On the one hand, we had better results in all individual geographies, and on the other, as just explained, negative results stemming from hyperinflation accounting and dividend upstreaming were significantly reduced.
All of the above led to a net income of EUR 64 million, achieving an astonishing 80% higher year-over-year. Let's now turn to cash generation during the period. As it can be seen, following the historical seasonality of the business, free cash flow resulted in EUR -36 million, EUR 8 million higher compared to the previous year. This is naturally explained by a higher EBITA, but also as a result of a strict discipline on DSO, resulting in less consumption out of working capital requirements and by lower CapEx. Net financial debt reached EUR 1.4 billion, resulting in a total net debt to EBITDA ratio of 2.3 times. It's worth highlighting that both the terms and the structure of our debt are very healthy, with an average cost at 2.4% and over 65% at fixed rate maturing between 2026 and 2029.
As already explained in the previous quarter, Prosegur Cash Bond matures in 2026, which has been recorded as short-term on our balance sheet, but we have practically completed the refinancing, while the new loans will mature between the next three to five years. That's all for me for now. I will now turn the presentation over to our Head of Investor Relations, Juan Ignacio Galleano, who will give you more detailed information on the development of the specific business areas.
Thank you very much, Maite. Let's now have a look at the results of each business line, covering the main performance indicators and the most relevant aspects of the period. Starting with our Cash Business, I would like to reinforce the almost 10% organic growth that we achieved during the first half of the year. This is a good testament to not only an effective commercial strategy, but also, and perhaps more relevant, to healthy volume growth. As we always stress, our diverse geographic footprint, coupled with our commitment to transformation products, are cornerstones to cope with a more challenging environment in developed countries. As for the latter, sales already exceed 34%, marking an impressive increase year-over-year. Cash Todays are definitely driving this growth, which leads me to the cost-savings program that we implemented.
The truth is that not only Cash Todays constitute an additional source of revenue and profit, but it also allows us to enhance the logistics of our traditional business. In particular, we can reorganize the distribution of our stops, enabling us to make a better and more efficient use of our fleet and to reduce workforce. At the same time, we've made several enhancements to the distribution of the routes, which, combined with the normalization of the Argentinian economy that we already referred to, allow us to further reduce stops. This will naturally redound in better margins in the months to come, but it negatively impacted the second quarter's result, as we had to incur insignificant severance costs. It's worth mentioning that we estimate a 1.5 years payback on this cost-savings program.
As it is shown in the mid-graph, once these costs are fully excluded, EBITA increased by 3.7% year on year, while EBITDA margin goes from 11.3%- 11.7%. Let's move now to our Security Business, which continues to favorably evolve. Total revenues reached EUR 1.3 billion, with the organic share reaching 16%. As usual, this is mainly driven by our volume-based strategy that leads to operating leverage, our capacity to pass through inflation to prices, and the outstanding performance of the operation in the main countries. The latter also explains the negative FX impact as the dollar continued to depreciate against the euro during the quarter. All the above, coupled with enhanced efficiencies and operating leverage, resulted in total EBITDA reaching EUR 38 million, 12% higher compared to the same period last year. Margins, for their part, continued to increase, reaching 2.94% during the first half of the year.
Even though all geographies performed, results were mainly driven by our operations in Spain and the USA. As we have explained in past results, macroeconomic stability in Argentina, evidenced by the significant reduction in the inflation rate, is very positive for the business. As for the USA, it continues to be a very important driver, and we are confident that it will continue to be so as we plan to further expand operations there. Operating cash flow resulted in EUR 16 million compared to the EUR -20 million registered during the first half of last year. This is by every means impressive and marks a new standard for the business. Indeed, we've already reached volumes and margins that imply positive cash flows, no matter how aggressive we are in sales growth. In fact, operating cash flow includes an EUR 11 million working capital impact resulting from higher volumes.
This is definitely a very important milestone for the company, as now all main businesses will contribute to our leveraging strategy. Let's now turn to the Alarm Business, where we reached another important milestone. Indeed, our client base surpassed the million connections, marking a 13.1% increase year-over-year. As we always highlight, growing in BTC is crucial for the business. It needs to be done in a healthy manner in order to be able to translate the growth into long-term value creation. In that end, it's clear from the graph that we achieved that, as every relevant KPI moved in the right direction, Churn Rate stayed in line in Prosegur Alarms and was reduced by 1% in Movistar Prosegur Alarmas, reaching the sweet spot of 10%.
ARPU and consequently the service margins, for their part, increased, reaching EUR 20 and EUR 22 per BTC for Prosegur Alarms and MPA, respectively, evidencing a strict discipline of our commercial team when it comes to passing through costs to prices. As for acquisition costs, the increase in both cases has to do with the leveraged strategy of increasing marketing expenses, while at the same time, we continue to invest in product enhancements. Let's now turn to the following slide to see how all these indicators flow into recurring cash flow. The combination of higher service margin coupled with either stable or lower Churn Rate naturally implies an increase in recurring cash flow, that is, the resulting cash after the clients that Churn are fully reacquired. In the charts above, what we are showing is the 12-month rolling recurring cash flow of both Prosegur Alarms and MPA.
The one on the right side clearly indicates that the generating cash flow capacity of the two businesses combined for Prosegur at EUR 76 million, 25% higher year-over-year. This concludes our analysis of the performance of each business line for the first half of the year. Thank you all for your attention. I will now hand the microphone back to our CFO, Maite Rodríguez, for her closing remarks.
Thank you very much, Juan Ignacio. Let me now share with you my closing thoughts on the most relevant conclusions of these results presentation. Overall, as we have seen during the presentation, all businesses reported enhanced operating efficiencies and strong results. On a consolidated basis, total sales increased 5%, despite the adverse effect of depreciated currencies. EBITDA margin reached 16%, while net income increased by a remarkable 80%, thanks to the good performance of all our business lines. In our Cash Business, the organic sales increased by 10%, while we put in place an extraordinary cost-saving program, thanks to reorganizing the distribution of our stocks that will allow us to increase EBITDA margins in the future.
Turning to our Security Business, sales volumes increased by 8% compared to the previous year, and we achieved higher margins, thanks not only to its scalability, but also to our robust client portfolio and efficient price pass-through. Even more important is the fact that the business will start to structurally contribute with positive cash flows from now on, probably excluding the first quarter due to seasonality. This is definitely, as mentioned before, a very important milestone for the company, as now all main businesses will contribute to our leveraging strategy. Lastly, our Alarm Business demonstrated very solid growth, surpassing the million connections. This growth is accompanied by a strong result in key management indicators. We have seen improvements in Churn, service margin, and ARPU. This strong performance translates into our rolling recurring cash flow of EUR 76 million, implying a 26% year-over-year increase and pointing to our robust cash generation.
As said at the beginning of the presentation, we reported a strong first half of the year, paving the way for achieving the objectives set for 2025. This was all on my side for this results presentation. I would like to thank you all once again, and we are now open for Q&A.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Once again, that's star one and one if you wish to ask a question. We will now take the first question from the line of Álvaro Bernal from Alhambra. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for taking my question. I have two. The first one is regarding the EBITA from corporates. I'm seeing in your accounts that for the first half, it has yielded EUR 20 million, if you can shed more color there. What is driving this result? I think something similar happened already in Q1, but it's repeated once again in Q2. If you can just refresh me what that was. The second question is regarding security standalone in Q2. We have seen growth when it comes to sales, but in terms of margin, when we look at it standalone Q2 versus last year, it has fallen. If you can again shed some color on the product mix here, it would be amazing. Thank you.
Thank you, Álvaro, for your questions. In relation to the first one, coming from what's happening with the overheads, why we have EUR 20 million positive overheads, it's mainly because there are like three reasons here. The first one is coming because we are also booking all the revenues coming from the rent of our buildings. As you know, we have a real estate that amounts more than EUR 300 million, and part of it, around EUR 70 million, is allocated in Argentina, in some towers that we have in a very prime area. The rent that we are receiving from there, they have also increased, so we have an increase coming from there, from the real estate.
The other one, as I also mentioned in the first queue, is coming from the trademark, mainly because the Security Business is achieving better results, so we are receiving a better income coming from trademark, but also because we have agreed with the Spanish Tax Authority a new brand royalty, and the one that is higher in comparison to previous years, and that's why it also has increased. The rest of the amounts are related to the markup that we charge to the rest of the businesses coming from the support area.
In relation to the second question about the standalone margin of security, you have to consider here, as we mentioned also on the first queue, that there was the pass-through in, as you know, we are all the year passing through prices during the year, and the first queue really has a very, very good result because we did it in advance. More or less, a 5% was done in advance, so that's why you have that difference. Even we mentioned it in our first queue result presentation that it was not going to be, we were not going to have such a big margin and such a big increase in the rest of the years, but it was mainly because of that, because the low inflation helps us also passing through prices quicker, and we are really doing very well this year.
It is one of the keys why we are still continuing having that good margin also in this second half, because, as you know, seasonality is one of our main impacts that we have coming from this passing through inflation to prices.
Perfect. A follow-up to both questions, if I may, regarding forward-looking statement on how we should view, on the one hand, the PGA and allocated EBITDA going forward. We should expect this to be recurrent. In terms of security, the margins when looking at them for the whole year. Thank you.
Álvaro, in relation to PGA, yes. For the rest of the year, the trend is going to be the same one. It's going to be positive. I can tell you that it's going to be like that from now on, also for the budget that we are doing for 2026, it's also positive. The second one, in relation to what's going on, what we expect in the security margins for year-end, we are going to keep this trend. As you know, as I always say, the Security Business is a volume business, so the improvements happen little by little based on our strict discipline in passing through inflation, in the controlling in the absenteeism, in the scalability, and so on. We will have a positive trend. We are going to have better margins than last year.
I think that the most significant milestone for this year is going to be that the cash flow is going to be, at least they are going to generate EUR 33 million, and we expect that even it's going to be more. That's going to be an important milestone for the year because, from now on, all the business units that Prosegur has are going to contribute positively on our deliveraging strategy. That's a very positive thing, and that's why we are also positive on the deliveraging for year-end.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand back up. One moment, please. We have another question from the line of Joaquín García Quiros from JB Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Thank you for taking my question. Just a very quick one. The alarm continues to grow at a very good rate. It continues to add lots of new clients, but at the cost of increasing the acquisition cost. It has increased quite significantly in both regions. Are these levels where you feel comfortable that you can maintain them at least for the next few years? When can we expect the acquisition cost to go down, if ever? Thank you.
Thank you, Joaquín, for your question. In relation to the acquisition cost of alarms, as you know, now we are investing a lot in marketing, in publicity, and in the product improvement, so that's why you are observing that increase. During the year 2025, it's going to keep it like that. I don't expect any decrease in terms of acquisition cost. For 2026, for sure that there will be a decrease. This year, no, because we, as you know, we are changing our marketing and publicity strategy, and this implies a higher investment in publicity, and that's why it's increasing. It's not going to be for the long run.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Maite Rodríguez for closing remarks.
Thank you very much for attending this presentation. If you need further information, please contact our Investor Relations Department, who is open to help you at any time. Have a nice day.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.