Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining our call. We're pleased to present our first quarter 2022 results. Without too much other well information or delay, I will just move to share with you our presentation. To start with the last element on the page and maybe just giving us a bit of guidance to our call. As most of you or all of you are very well aware, we've sold our Hungarian operations, and the transaction was closed in early January 2022.
It was both a successful closing and a good transaction for us, whereby we reached total sales proceeds of EUR 625 million. Because this was hugely transformational event for our group, we have changed slightly the basis of presentation for the numbers in this call. Most of the numbers that we are discussing are both for the current period, but also for the historical past periods, exclude the results of Hungary, so that we can speak on a comparable basis. Starting and going on, we generated revenues of EUR 361 million on a group level, 21% increase year-on-year.
Our customers grew 15% in the same period, reaching 18.7 million RGUs. Our EBITDA reached EUR 106 million, excluding IFRS 16 results, which also represents the 6% year-on-year increase. The main driver, and I'll be coming to this throughout the presentation. The main driver for our growth is the increase in the number of RGUs, the increase in the customer relationships that we serve across all our countries, Romania, Spain, and Italy.
In particular, Romania has grown 10% and Spain has generated an outstanding 41% growth, helped both by growth in mobile, almost 30% growth year-on-year, but also more than doubling of the customer base in the fixed services, as the broadband internet and the fixed telephony services. Moving on, you can see that Romania generated revenues of EUR 244 million in the quarter. Spain EUR 111 million. Total EBITDA, as I said, EUR 106 million, split into EUR 90 million Romania, EUR 60 million Spain. In Italy, we are positive.
However, in the third column of this presentation, we combine both Italy and our group headquarters operations, and for this reason, the result is neutral. As you see, RGUs reached a total of 18.7 million units. Once again, I repeat, this excludes Hungary. Going into the mechanics of our performance, as you see, and as we mentioned, we've seen good growth in the number of users. We've seen stable growth in profitability. We have also executed more or less steady CapEx plan, with Q1 capital expenditure amounting to EUR 117 million. Just, well, somewhat higher, maybe 10% higher, 15% higher in comparison to the first three quarters of last year.
It certainly is not comparable to the fourth quarter of 2021, when we recorded total CapEx of EUR 209 million. However, if you recall, we paid slightly over EUR 100 million of that number is represented by frequency payments that we made both in Portugal and in Romania. So, for competitive reasons, our Q4 CapEx from operations amounted to just a bit over EUR 100 million as well. EBITDA has grown, and I just want to add here, most likely we will discuss this during the question session.
Despite the inflationary pressure that exists across all the markets where we operate, and which of course comes from the energy segment, from the employee segment, but other, well, other segments as well. Indeed there is an inflationary pressure. However, we are able to absorb part of it also through continuous growth that we have. I did mention reaching 18.7 million RGUs. As you see, we continue growing in mobile, in broadband on a group level. Of course, Spain grows at a much faster pace in comparison to Romania. All in all, both mobile and broadband segments generate 20% growth, which is an outstanding achievement.
We generated year-over-year 6% growth in the cable segment in Romania. Our fixed telephony segment grew by 5%, helped primarily by the Spanish operations. The dynamic is opposite here. We are losing customers in Romania, and we are adding customers in Spain, all in all being a positive number. Country-wise, you see the same dynamic. Romania grew by almost 10%, Spain 41%, in Italy also an impressive 27% growth. Apologies, the slides got shuffled just a little. Maybe very few words on Spain. We reached a total of 575,000 broadband customers in the first quarter of 2022.
As you see, the dynamic is quite positive. We are very happy that Spanish customers choose our services in a market which is competitive and which is rich in offers and which is rich in very good offers. We also continued growth in the mobile segment, reaching 3.2 million users by the end of Q1. Again, a growth of more than 230-240 thousand RGUs quarter-over-quarter. Yeah, an impressive result for our colleagues in Spain. Maybe just a last remark.
As you see, we continue to be the number one portability destination for Spanish mobile users, with Q1 2022 being the top quarter in terms of net gains. We achieved 116,000 users that came with their numbers from other networks. This is, as you see it on this graph, the seventh consecutive quarter of being the number one portability destination in the Spanish market. All in all, we are again grateful both to our customers, but also to our colleagues for executing this strategy so well and achieving these results in the Spanish markets.
Yeah, well, coming back to the financial profile, we see on this slide the effect of the sale of Hungary. So as you see, the total gross debt as of Q1 is EUR 1.15 billion. Because, since we had almost EUR 320 million cash on the balance sheet, the net debt is EUR 833 million. The metrics are seen on the graph. Gross leverage 2.9x . The net leverage is 2.1x . You also see in the top right corner the repayment profile for the next years.
As you see, we are more than comfortable this year having no due financial repayments. We are pretty comfortable in the next years, 2023 and 2024, when EUR 35 million and almost EUR 100 million of debt come to maturity. Having gone through the slides, this is the presentation which summarizes our achievements and results for the first quarter. We do invite you to ask questions through the chat box, which we will address just in a minute's time. We will go through the questions. Christian Popescu from Swiss Capital.
Regarding total profit for Q1 2022, why attributable to non-controlling interest profit is rising to EUR 388 million euros? Well, thank you very much for the question. I think, yeah, I have to apologize. The report was rushed a bit, and the reason for that is that, from a financial point of view, we're still dealing with the effects of divesting Digi Hungary, and we are also busy with year-end closing accounts. That is a mistake, and EUR 388 million are not attributable to non-controlling interests, but they are attributable to all to the group and the controlling shareholders. Absolutely no issues there. It's just a mistake, and thank you very much for raising it.
We will correct the financials on the website in the coming one or two days so that it reflects properly the information and there is less confusion going on. Thank you very much once again. A question from Vlad Podea. Could you confirm that you will begin construction of the mobile network in June? How much CapEx will this entail in 2022 and 2023? I assume that Vlad is asking us about Portugal because he did not mention the territory. The answer is yes, we are closer now to start building, developing and building the network.
Certainly, the construction activities will initiate in the second part of the year. I mean, we have people on the ground even today, but the volume of activity is less relevant because as I mentioned earlier, these are mostly planning activities. They do not consume a lot of money, and they are very important for our future operations. It is clear that we will build networks in the second part of the year. However, in terms of budget, it's too early for us to say how much we will spend in 2022 and 2023. A question from Laura. She's asking if we can comment on the use of the remaining proceeds from the Hungarian sale. Yes.
Thank you as well. Look, I think we touched upon this in our previous calls as well. This is an important question, given that we also have to respect the rules of the bond documentation. While analyzing and going through all the provisions and the options available to us, the decision was to use the funds available for CapEx. This, and we do intend to use these funds by the end of the year. A question from Tomáš Chére . How do you think about pricing in this inflationary environment? Well, it's a repetitive question, and I'm not criticizing anyone at all, Thomas included.
The repetitive answer is, we have no intention to change our pricing in this environment. We are certainly evaluating our options, but so far so good. We believe we can still absorb these costs. Again, it's important for us to be able to grow, and we believe that we have a good way and, yeah, a good strategy to execute that. The question from Reino Pent . Please elaborate on the ARPU developments of all three markets. We see. Yeah. So I think it's a good question, which is well connected with the previous one. We see a bit of, let's say, let's put it differently.
Contrary to the inflationary expectation or the expectation of companies to raise the pricing, we see a bit of the price erosion, just because the current offering works in this way. To give you a couple of examples, our developments in the last quarters, but also few years, in Romania, are predominantly in the rural areas, where our prices are slightly differentiated and where our prices are slightly more affordable in comparison to urban areas. The services also differ little, so this price differentiation is justified. However, the important element is that having more rural customers, there is a bit of pressure on the total ARPU, which can be seen.
There are other elements there as well. For example, the decrease of termination rates or the decline of the roaming rates, which are discussed with the regulator. That puts additional pressure on the margin. However, all in all, we do not see this as an issue. We do not see this as an important element, because we believe that growth at this moment is leveling off for the price erosion and is able still to support the inflationary pressure. Again, if you can not read me in a very absolute fashion, it's not a perfect no that we will not reconsider raising the prices. It's just that it's not now.
Just mentioning the same on Spain and Italy. We have a small price erosion there as well. It's mostly related to the addition of new customers, especially in the mobile segment. It's mostly related to our activities related to the addition of new customers. Laura is coming back. What is our target leverage going forward? I think we. Well, our net leverage, as we said, is a very good 2.1x, with gross leverage being closer to three.
I'd expect that in the coming periods, we would target the midpoint of these two numbers, and we would like to place ourselves in the 2.5x area. Another question from Laura, why didn't you participate in the sale of the Romanian mobile assets from Romtelecom? Well, I can't comment on this, meaning this question, I think this question should be addressed to the sellers, not to the buyers. Yeah, other than that, I cannot comment. François Bouvignies , could you give us the amount of the RCF, the maturity and amount drawn at the end of March 2022?
At the end of March, we had RCF. Our RCF was totally undrawn, and it amounts to EUR 50 million. In addition to this, we have uncommitted overdrafts of another or extra approximately EUR 50 million, most of which were undrawn as of Q1 2022. The maturity of RCF, I believe, is between 12 and 18 months from today. I don't remember this by heart. In any case, we do intend to refinance and to prolong it, so I don't see any issues there. Should we understand that the 5 points impact on your margin in Romania is due to higher electricity and utility costs? Well, not only.
There's a mixture of factors. In Romania, I would put at least three factors that contribute to lower margin. It's indeed higher energy costs, including electricity and fuel for our car fleet. I would put there as well the salary increases, and I would put also costs associated with mobile communications, like decrease of interconnection costs. Yeah, interconnection fees. How should we look at it for the rest of 2022? Well, from a certain point of view, I believe the energy market has taken its hit.
I'm not sure if this is the end of the story for us or for the rest of the Romanian economy or for the rest of the EU economy. It may possibly go worse. However, we don't have further visibility on that. We would hope that we remain here at this level of costs, but we'll see. I mean, certainly we don't have perfect visibility. Are you experiencing more pressure in the second quarter so far? Yeah, just maybe marginally because fuel prices started to increase in the second part of February, so the first quarter has not experienced the full effects of the geopolitics with us and with other companies.
Can we talk a bit about the competitive environment in Romania? Well, yes, for sure. I believe it's more or less unchanged. Well, with one important change that occurred at the end of last year. Orange has acquired the fixed operations of Telekom Romania. In this way, it consolidated its number one position on the Romanian communication market, having revenues in excess of EUR 1.5 billion, having both mobile users and having fixed users.
Other than that, we believe the market is somehow in a continuous mode because while the Orange Telekom Romania transaction closed at the end of last year, from what we see in the press, from what we see from the declaration of our colleagues from Orange, they are busy integrating the operations. From this point of view, we do expect, but we have not seen yet any significant changes in the market. Certainly, they will come in the coming quarters, and we do expect competition to intensify and to be much stronger and much better, which I believe is a very good thing for the Romanian customers.
They will have the ability to choose the best services from the strongest and the best companies in Europe. Have you worked on your business plan in Portugal? Yes, we are working, but as I mentioned earlier, I think it's too early for us to share this information, and we will come back to market when we have decided to allocate proper funds and proper budget for this market. Thank you. It was a long discussion with Francois, a monologue from us. I hope we did answer your questions.
A question from Gabrielle: How much of your cost base is energy and employee costs, and how will you mitigate the increasing costs? Do you have a CPI index contract, and if not, are you planning to increase pricing to new customers? Yeah. I'm not perfectly ready to answer this question in a detailed manner. Salary cost is one of the largest cost factors that we have in our cost structure. Energy cost is a smaller cost, also, due to the fact that we run very good fiber optic passive networks, which require less energy in comparison to older copper or cable, classical copper or cable networks.
Let us kindly come back to you on this question later on separately. Next question is from Tomas again: What is the plan with the high cash on the balance sheet? As I mentioned earlier, the main use or the use for the proceeds of the Hungarian sale will be CapEx. The same question from Gabrielle. Could you please comment on how you'll use the cash on balance sheet? Will it be used in for the Portugal CapEx or M&A or debt? Well, look, it's the same question, but there's a small clarification here. We have to use the proceeds from the sale within this year.
I don't think Portugal simply is able to consume this level of funds in this short period and at the beginning. Certainly our investments in Portugal will start to be meaningful during the next year, but not this year. In terms of M&A or debt, these are both open questions and valid options, but there is no decision. For M&A, we have to have targets. For debt, we will consider this question continuously during the rest of the year. There's a question from Mihai: Given the low debt obligation for the year 2022 and high inflation rate, how do you plan to use the huge cash balance? Apologies, I'm reading these questions live, and I will skip this one.
Next question is from Marihu: Can I ask, please, which part of your debt will be redeemed using the Hungarian sales proceeds? Yes. We do not intend to use the Hungarian proceeds for repayment of debt. We do intend to use them for CapEx. This is our plan at this moment. Question from Alex: Can you comment on recent competitive dynamics in fixed business line in Romania? Can you give some indication on churn development for this segment? Once again, I think if you look at this. There's less information from our competitors. There's a bit more information from us in this respect.
If you look at our numbers, they are pretty robust, and they show, let's say, relatively constant growth and development effort in the last quarters. Now, I think this has not been asked, but I have to warn the listeners that we do not expect this growth rate to last just because important phases of our network rollout and development has been either completed or are close to the end. Most of the growth that came in the last quarters came exactly from these new territories that we have explored and developed, and grown. On top of that, as I said, we do expect much more competition, both from Orange and Vodafone, in the coming quarters.
We do expect these markets to be maybe in a different state of competition one year from today or two years from today. I don't know. I mean, it's more for the market and for the competitors to decide. However, this is the general dynamic that we see, and we are ready to share it with you. We hope you understand the way we see the market. One second. Yes. Just to find the proper question. A question from Alexi: Do you have any near-term M&A ambitions, and how will you use the existing cash? Could you please remind your dividend policy? Well, we don't have any M&A ambitions.
If we have suitable targets and we are open to opportunities, we will look and we will consider. There is no rule here, and we are not M&A-driven on the other hand. Having access to funds at this moment or having access to credit in general doesn't mean that we will certainly want to buy other companies. It's not our first priority. How will you use the existing cash? I think I mentioned it's CapEx. Could you please remind your dividend policy? The foundation or the basis of our dividend policy is that we allocate our funds in a priority fashion to servicing our debt, to meeting our CapEx intentions, which are related to growth.
Available funds we are ready to share. Remaining available funds, we are ready to share with the investors. On top of it, just to say, we have paid constant dividends since we listed ourselves back in 2017. The expectation is to continue these payments this year and in the coming years as well. A question from Vlad Pipoș : Do you believe you will be able to start offering services in Portugal as early as next year? It's too early to say. Probably on a large scale, not yet. Do you also plan to launch fixed services in Portugal alongside mobile? Well, yeah, thank you for the question. The simple answer is yes.
A question from Gabriel: Where do you stand versus your competitors in terms of ARPU, low or higher in line with competitors in Romania? I think, well, there is one distinction. I don't think we are significantly different in terms of ARPUs in the fixed services. I believe the offering of all competitors is more or less comparable. On the other hand, the ARPUs, our mobile ARPUs are maybe slightly lower than the ARPUs of our competitors. However, this difference was considerably bigger a few years ago. This difference is much closer now. We are not so far from Vodafone and Telekom in terms of ARPU.
I think Orange is slightly farther having somewhat higher ARPU here. But yeah, it's just statistics in a way. The leverage target of 2.5 times is gross or net? It's a good question. I think long term we think about it net because yeah, long term we think about it net. Is there an EBITDA margin level where you would start increasing prices in order to neutralize inflationary effects? So is there any margin floor? Our thinking is more complex. Certainly you can have such rules. Our thinking is more related to the purchasing power of the population.
However, we cannot ignore inflation whatsoever, because if money worth considerably less, and not in only one or two segments, be it energy or be it, I don't know, fuel or construction prices, then we certainly have to act. We don't have triggers set to share. We will decide at a later stage, if any. The next question is, with the exception of a question from Mihai. With the exception of Q4 2021, the history showed us that the CapEx is entirely financed by the EBITDA. Why do you need to use the proceeds from the sale of Digi Hungary? Yes, the. I mean, these are correct observations.
However, we believe that the best way for us to use the proceeds of the Hungarian sale is CapEx. I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure if this is helpful or if this fully answers the question, but this is our decision. Question from Tomas. Please elaborate on the drivers of Romanian mobile customer growth. Well, Tomas, if you remember, before IPO and at around the time of the IPO, we enjoyed higher growth. Then, there was a certain stall for about two and a half years going into the pandemic. This growth has come back.
If you are referring to this, dynamic, the simple answer to that is the following: We enjoyed the high growth during 2015, 2017. However, we also had to adjust the network quality and to basically make sure that the number of existing users, but also the number of the new users that we have or that we can possibly have on the network, will have the same very good, robust experience on the network with good coverage outdoor, indoor on the highways, with very, very good 4G signal and so on and so forth. That was the reason of our effort during all this period, starting with approximately 2014 and up until today, and this effort will continue.
This is the reason for the growth that came back. I mean, to me it's simply a much better quality of the service, much better availability of the service. It's very simple. It's nothing else. A question from Nora Nagy . What is the outlook for electricity costs for the rest of the year? Well, speaking of Romania, our main market, the electricity costs so far are capped by the government. What we enjoy as the level of, let's say, February, March, this is the expected level throughout the whole year.
At least that is the political declaration that was made by the government for the benefit of all consumers, residential and business. That is the policy that Romania has adopted. In a way it's helpful to see and to foresee the cost till the end of the year. Separately, can you please update us on the Romanian spectrum allocations this year? Thank you. Yes. Indeed, Romania intends to have its 5G auction. There is a possibility for it to happen this year. It can also happen later. As we understand from the declarations of the officials at the telecom regulator, the country is expecting to finally adopt the EU telecommunications directive.
Once this is finished, the auction will take place within six months. As such, I mean, it's a legislative process. It can possibly be completed within a few weeks, possibly within few months. Again, the algorithm everybody was given is that, we should count six months after that date. A question from Mihai: Do you have in plan to use some part of the cash balance to implement a buyback program in order to reduce the outstanding class B shares? Thank you for the question. We do not have such plan at this moment. Yes. So far, I have reached the end of the list. We will wait on the line few more minutes, and if there'll be more questions, yeah, we'll answer happily.
We have a few more questions from Jacopo. Of the EUR 117 million CapEx spent in Q1, how much of that was spent in Spain? Apology, I don't have detailed breakdown at this moment, so maybe we can take this question offline. The next question as well is pretty detailed. It's about if we can say how much salary increases have we had this year. If you could discuss this offline, it's easier for us. The last question is, when will you publish the expected figures for the year 2022? I'm not sure I understand. We do intend to report on Q2 numbers in mid-August, as usual. Well, thank you very much.
It was a very intense discussion. Well, we hope to see you all mid-August when we discuss the Q2 results. Once again, thank you very much for your interest, but also for your questions. Thank you. Bye.