Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Digi Communications MV Investors 2024 Preliminary Financial Results presentation. A copy of the corresponding report is posted in the Investment Relations section of Digi's website at digi-communications.ro. The conference is being recorded today, and a replay will be available shortly after. For today's call, please submit your questions for the Q&A session at the end of the presentation using the chat box. Before we can start, you are advised that certain statements in this conference call are forward-looking and therefore subject to material risks and uncertainties.
Actual results will differ materially from those that are implied by such forward-looking statements due to the risks and uncertainties associated with Digi Communications NV, which include, amongst others, various risks related to our business, risks related to regulatory matters and litigation, risks related to investment in emerging markets, risks related to our financial position, as well as risks related to the notes and the related guarantee. I would like to introduce the speakers for today's call: Mr. Serghei Bulgac, the CEO of Digi Communications NV, and Mr. Dan Ionita, the company's CFO. We may now begin the call.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for joining our results call for the end of 2024. We are excited to show you our progress and our developments for the last year and also for the last quarter. Without waiting longer, we shall go to discuss our numbers. We are very happy to show Group revenues increasing 13% year- on- year, exceeding EUR 1.9 billion, RGUs growing 16% for the entire group, reaching almost 28 million units, and EBITDA exploding IFRS 20 16, reaching EUR 580 million in 2024. All numbers growing, all numbers growing in line, both with our expectations, with our strategy, and with our efforts to both roll out and to provide services to our users. Romania is 7% up in terms of RGUs. We reached 6.6 million mobile users at the end of the year.
We are very happy to have become the second largest mobile operator by the number of users in Romania, following Orange, the market leader in this segment. On PayTV, we have a 3% year-on-year growth, reaching 5.9 million RGUs at the end of the year. In broadband, we have 4.9 million RGUs with 7% growth. For Spain, we have an outstanding result: growth of 30% and mobile users reaching 5.9 million users at the end of the year. Broadband, close to 2 million, but just slightly below, and fixed telephony, 600,000 users at the end of the year. We continue to focus on sustained RGU growth across all our markets. As I just mentioned, we see very strong performance for both our Spanish market and the Romanian market. Italy performed very, very well.
We continuously work on improving, extending, developing further our networks in Romania, with more focus now on the mobile, including the 5G expansion. In Spain, so far, mostly on the fixed networks, reaching 12 million homes passed as we speak, 50% of the country coverage. Also, starting with 2025, we will look at expanding our own, starting building our own mobile network and transitioning from MVNO operator to MNO operator. Portugal, we have launched the services on November 4. We are in the phase, just like in all our markets, legacy markets included, of further developing the network, improving the coverage, improving customer access, and this certainly will continue as we have just started in that market. Last, we launched alongside Portugal in December the Belgian market together with our partners at CityMesh, and this completes our recent build-outs and developments and international expansion efforts.
2024 was a very busy year, full year of activities, full year of achievements. I can't only, I should thank very much both our customers for choosing us, but I should also thank all our colleagues for difficult but also outstanding work during this period of time. Jumping on to recent developments, we have a couple of announcements here about the financings signed in December. We increased our Romanian 2024 facility of EUR 150 million to EUR 220 million, and we successfully syndicated it with our group of supporting banks. We also signed a EUR 60 million export credit agency facility that is used to finance mobile equipment and mobile expansion. One second, one second. We are very happy, and we are to announce our most recent results to Spain. So far, I did concentrate on results as of end of December.
However, we also announced a few days ago, our colleague Marius Barzaro announced to the Spanish public, to the Spanish press, the achievements of our subsidiary in Spain as of today, and the results are outstanding. As you see, we have reached more than 6 million mobile users. We have reached more than 2 million fixed broadband users in February 2024, 2025, excuse me. Our networks, the ones that we started building early in 2019, 2020, have reached more than 20% penetration, and this shows the quality of our assets, but also the response and engagement that we have with our customers in the Spanish market, and again, for which we are extremely grateful to all of them.
It also shows the quality of our partnership with Telefónica and our reliance on, first and foremost, on their mobile network, but also on their overall support in our operations in this country. So far, 12 million homes fast built, which represents approximately 50% of the nationwide coverage, taking into account that there are 24 million households in the country. Just maybe one last comment before moving on. Now, at the beginning of 2025, end of 2024, we reached a market share of 10% or almost 10%, both in mobile and in fixed. Again, this is an outstanding achievement, which demands an applause from us to our colleagues in Spain, but also a big thank you for support from our customers. Moving on, just a few words on the new developments.
As we discussed earlier in November, in our last investor presentation call, on November 4, we launched our Portuguese operations. We launched mobile broadband, fixed broadband, and TV services in Portugal, also fixed telephony. The prices are very attractive. One second, sorry, I missed something here on the screen. The prices are very attractive, with gigabit connectivity being offered at EUR 10 per month, 10 gigabit per second speed for the fixed broadband at EUR 15 per month. Mobile voice data packages start at EUR 4 per month, with options ranging from 50 gigabits to unlimited data. Television, we offer 60 channels today in our package for EUR 12, and fixed telephony is offered for EUR 1-EUR 2 per month. I think there were many questions about our possible commercial policy, about more details related to the launch.
We are very happy to be able to show these results to you as we speak. Belgium followed a month later. On December 11, 2024, we launched our operations. So far, it is mobile and fiber, I mean, broadband internet connectivity. For the mobile, we offer for EUR 5 per month voice, SMS, and 15 gigabits of data. For EUR 10 per month, we offer 500 megabit fixed broadband connection, and for EUR 15, it is a gigabit connection, and for EUR 20, it is a 10 gigabit connection for our users. Both markets, Portugal and Belgium, are at the very beginning and in infancy of their operations. We are very busy, us, our colleagues in these markets, as we speak, to provide the services, to improve the services on a daily basis.
As you may appreciate, it's not easy to launch a nationwide service, to launch a nationwide offer in two new markets in the same period. Yeah, lots of things still to fix, lots of things to improve, and we are very busy about that. Nevertheless, and as I mentioned both earlier and also in our last call, we are very happy with our initial response in both markets, both Portugal and Belgium, and we are really very grateful for the support of our customers. We believe that our engagement and our presence is for a long period, a very long period, and we appreciate the start as a very good one. 2024 highlights EUR 1.9 billion in revenues across all our markets, EUR 1.1 billion revenues in Romania, almost EUR 800 million in revenues in Spain, and other group companies generated EUR 43 million in sales.
Our total EBITDA amounted to EUR 580 million. Of course, most of it generated in Romania, more than EUR 450 million, with Spain following at more than EUR 150 million. RGUs we mentioned are almost 28 million users, with 18 million users in Romania and more than 8 million users in Spain. Basically, looking into more details at our numbers, I just repeat: sales EUR 1.9 billion, 60% growth year on year, EBITDA EUR 580 million without IFRS 16 impact, EUR 685 million with IFRS 16, depending how you want to look at it. Our CAPEX amounted to somewhat less or slightly less than EUR 900 million in 2024, and it was certainly higher than EUR 730 million a year ago.
Nevertheless, the CAPEX figure includes the payment that we made for Novo in Portugal of approximately EUR 110 million, and as you very well may appreciate, without this payment, we would be below the EUR 800 million mark as a total CAPEX for the year. Revenues, where the revenue growth was driven by customer growth in Spain and in Romania, Spain reaching 22% growth in revenues and Romania reaching 7% growth. EBITDA increased 40%, and it could probably be higher if we were not also present in new markets, which are, of course, still loss-making, but that's normal. That's something reasonable to expect. Moving on quickly and just looking at the profile of our customers, basically, you see the breakdown of the 28 million users by portfolio.
Mobile is the largest, representing almost 50% of our total RGU count, 13.2 million users, followed by broadband, almost 7 million users, and also, of course, followed by TV with almost 6 million users in all the markets. So far, we were offering TV only in Romania, but as of the end of last year, of course, we offered also in Portugal, and we have started recently offering TV in Spain. The numbers are not relevant yet. That's why they're not shown in these charts. I mean, the numbers of TV customers for Spain, but this is another development that we achieved, the milestone that we achieved. As of today, our service offering in Spain is complete. Looking at the markets, 18 million users in Romania, 8.4 million in Spain, almost 500,000 users in Italy, and 676,000 users in Portugal.
There are more details for the user composition in our report on the website, so not in this presentation, but basically, in mobile, we have 320,000 users. I refer to Portugal now. In broadband, we have 130,000 users. TV, we have 120,000 users, and for fixed telephony, it is 110 users. Of course, these numbers combine both the operations of Novo and the new operations of Digi. That is why while we started only recently, the numbers are pretty, let's say, meaningful. Okay, I move on. We had 726,000 customers coming to us through portability in Romania. We are the number one network in terms of number portability in our market, in our home market. Excuse me. In Spain, mobile portability amounted to over 1.1 million users in 2024 gross, and net portability gain amounted to almost 740,000 users. Fixed portability, 200,000 lines, and net fixed portability, 184,000 lines.
The Romanian numbers are gross numbers. These are not net numbers, but nevertheless, the number is significant in itself. Last, in terms of numbers, our leverage as of December amounted to 2.3 times net. As you see, after repayment of bonds, we have a well-represented repayment curve or well-managed repayment curve with EUR 200 million due in 2025, also EUR 200 million due in 2026, and EUR 300 million due in 2027. Of course, 2028 has higher exposure given that the EUR 400 million bond will be due in that year. This is, from my point of view, a well-balanced curve, and we will, of course, manage to manage all our maturities so that things are addressed well in time, well in advance. Just very few words on 2025 prospects.
We will not stop building, so we will continue building, expanding, improving our networks in Romania, focusing on mobile quality, focusing on expansion of our 5G network coverage and 5G connectivity. In Spain, as I mentioned, we are continuing with good speed, growing our fixed networks, but also in 2025, we will start using our newly acquired mobile frequencies, and we will start deploying our own capacities for our own network, transiting from MVNO to partial MNO operation in that market. Portugal and Belgium will continue using resources, and we will continue investing in these markets to grow our presence, to improve our presence. Again, we're just at the very, very beginning, and we will continue the effort of strengthening our operations over these markets. I hope with this I give you some glimpse, some ideas of what we achieved, how our year was.
Once again, we are very thrilled and excited about our results, but also we are very busy executing the 2025 plan rollout, and we feel that things, let's say, are well aligned for us to continue our performance as we did until now. Thank you very much. I close the formal part of the presentation, and we will start addressing the questions in a minute or so when they start showing up in the system. Let's go for the questions.
Can you give some information on the Belgian activities? How many customers did you win for mobile and fiber? A Belgian newspaper wrote today that you have between 40,000 and 50,000 customers, less than expected.
We are not ready. We do not intend to provide our customer numbers at the moment. For that reason, I will not comment on the numbers. I think in the last statement, less than expected, I'd say less than expected to what? Sorry. What I mean to say is we have started our operations. We operate. Customers come to our network, and we are servicing the customers. So far, so good. Yeah, we are pretty happy with the results of the rollout so far, given that we just started our MVNO operation in that market, and we certainly are at the very beginning. I'm not sure I can comment more, but I disagree with the statement less than expected. I think we are well aligned with our expectations. I hope it's helpful.
Ganesh Barclays, congratulations on your results. Press article indicates that you plan to have major mobile network coverage in Spain in three years. How many cities do you have now, and how much deployment do you expect in 2025? How is your traction in the Belgian market? Proximo says that your portability has gone down after launch. Could you please provide some color on this and how much subscriber addition you target in 2025? Also, how is your fiber deployment progress in Belgium?
Yeah, these are complex questions. I think I will touch them maybe, yeah, in a general fashion. Yes, we do intend to build our mobile coverage in Spain. In fact, there is a model to balance as we, on one hand, so up to now, we operated an MVNO network, but we will change the nature of our agreement mid-2025 from MVNO to MNO operation together with Telefónica as we activate the round sharing. From that moment on, we will balance the round sharing agreement that we have with Telefónica with new sites.
This planning is ongoing, and we have not decided how many sites and where we will do, so we cannot share these plans at this moment. Having said this, at no point in time, there will be any disruption or there will be no loss of quality because up until 2040, where we have our agreement with Telefónica for round sharing, we will rely on a significant portion of their network. Our network development will aim to just improve the coverage that we have today and not change it otherwise. Yeah, and I spoke generally. I gave you the direction, but I cannot give you the exact numbers. Sorry about that. How is your traction in the Belgian market? Now we comment on what Proximo said. Sorry, I cannot comment on Proximo's comments. We are pretty happy with the launch. Maybe things could have been done better.
I think we admit that. Having said this, as we speak, customers connect to our network. We provide meaningful service to them, and we are fully engaged. We can't complain. To say how many customers we will add in 2025, this is not our role. We are not providing guidance and forecasts, so we can't comment on that. How is your fiber deployment progressing in Belgium? Yeah, it's a good question. We are building fiber as we speak. This is probably our biggest focus at this moment because it's less intense to run an MVNO operation rather than build out the network. We are very engaged with municipalities, with local authorities to provide us access and to be able to build the network. Basically, we provide coverage as we speak.
Having said this, we will not provide—I can't give you guidance on how many homes, how much progress we expect in Belgium. It is anyway too soon, just too early. We have started building the networks relatively recently, and it is continuous work in progress. David Wetherbee, hi, good afternoon.
There seems to be management and cash crunch, liquidity crisis at Digi Belgium. Can you explain how do you plan to solve it? Does this involve buying out your Belgian GV partners?
Thank you. Yeah, it is a pity this call or these questions go into discussing the Belgian operation, although I believe any aspects of our operations deserve attention. No problem. Let's stay here for now. I hope you appreciate, and you saw the results earlier. By saying this, I hope you appreciate that there is no liquidity crisis and no cash crunch at Digi or at Digi Belgium.
I think I hope this answer addresses to the root most of the concerns or concerns, if any. I don't believe there should be any. Coming to the last point of buying out your Belgian GV partner, that is also a run question. Sorry, maybe just to come back to and to comment a bit on the news so that it is clear, and yeah, we don't need to answer questions without the context. We did announce a few days ago certain changes within the management structure of Digi Belgium. The management changes are intended to streamline and to realign the focus of the company to make sure that our intention to build the networks, both fixed and mobile, in as quick a manner as possible is satisfied. This is what is happening.
I believe the accent on potential problems or potential liquidity problems is totally wrong. Now, if one would ask on the opportunity of the changes that we made, I would say this is a wrong question. This is the wrong question because we are very young in Belgium. We have just started our operations, and we will refocus, and we will change our attention as many times as necessary to make sure that in the end, we are building efficient, well-run networks and that we offer our services to as wide audience as possible. This is our aim, and I believe we should not read more into the news than there is to read into that. Yeah, changes, restructurings take place every day, everywhere, and I don't think we are an exception. Jumping from here to liquidity issues or liquidity problems is just too much. That's why I paused to explain what is happening. Again, I don't think this should be the focus of our discussion. Okay. Wieszlaw Dubowiskis,
what is the approach of additional source of income? What is the vast strategy?
I'm not sure I follow the question, but we offer a wide range of services, and we offer to our customers mobile, all aspects of communication, including value-added services. Now, we are an operator in this equation. We are not a generator of value-added services, and we will remain so. We will certainly allow access. We will enable value-added services or any other services that the customers wish to use on the network, but I don't think we will originate them. I hope it's helpful. Time swinging though.
The same newspaper wrote that according to employee and former employees of Digi Belgium, the company is not paying its bills. They claim that the Romanian group is not providing enough money to its Belgian daughter. What is your reaction to that?
I think this call does not deserve discussing our day-to-day cash flow or operations in Belgium, so I will pass on. Thank you for the question. Thank you. Alexandre Tudor. good afternoon.
There is a common problem regarding reporting financial results for BVB-listed companies. Why does Digi also wait for the last day possible to report? One second. Sorry, I lost focus. Why does Digi also wait for the last day possible to report? Moreover, given your size, why can't Digi report full financials in preliminary reports, balance sheet, P&L, cash flow? It is really disappointing to see that after two months of period closure, the preliminary reports have four pages.
Alexandre, I'm really sorry to have disappointed you. I don't think you're asking something wrong. It is what it is. Maybe we are focused too much on our operations, on our growth, and maybe we have not looked more into this. Once again, I do sympathize with your question. We will do our best to change it. I do not promise it for the next year, but hopefully in two years' time, our report will be significantly more complete. Once again, don't take me wrong. We will do our best to change and eventually provide more information.
The entry in Portugal has been complicated. In Q4, it's a question from José Antonio Suarez. In Q4, your convergent market share was flat quarter and quarter, including Novo. What are the reasons behind? Where do you see mobile and convergent market share of Digi in Portugal in 2025 and going forward?
We will not provide forecasts. José Antonio, I think your take is somewhat wrong. We are very happy. We are satisfied with the ongoing traction in our Belgian market. If I understand well, you say that we did not add any users except for Novo users in Q4. This is wrong. We will not provide a breakdown of Novo and Digi customers, but we have grown significantly the customer base already in the first quarter. I think it is a very good dynamic. I believe your reading of our numbers is incorrect. I hope my question helps you to look further into the numbers, but that is how much you can disclose. David Wetherbee,
Are you ready to invest several billion EUR in fiber in Belgium, or would you rather wholesale from other fixed networks?
Certainly, we are not ready, and we do not want to invest several billion EUR in fiber in Belgium. Several billion EUR would be way too expensive. Would you rather wholesale from other fixed networks? Yeah, certainly. If we have good opportunities, we will wholesale from anyone. Time swinging though.
The same employee says that Belgium is not following all the rules on safety and labor conditions. Could you react to that?
I can certainly react to that. We follow the rules, laws, and all regulations in all our markets of operations. I disagree with this statement. The question follows.
Half of the Belgian management has been fired this week together with several dozen employees. What is happening in the Belgian company?
I believe I already explained, so I will not come back to this. I will address only new questions.
What is happening with the network built in Belgium of the mobile network and the fiber network? Is there a delay, as some sources say?
I don't think there's a delay. There's a continuous process. Yeah, it goes according to our plan. Whether it could be done sooner or later, I think speeds vary very much on a market-by-market and on territory-by-territory. From our point of view, we are growing as we speak. We are looking for ways to always improve our growth in all our markets, be it Spain, Romania, Portugal, or Belgium. This is the same dynamic. Once again, I repeat the same comment I made earlier. We are very, very young in Belgium. We have just started our services, and we are still at the beginning of building the network. It's too early to ask for meaningful results. I hope you can sympathize with what I say. A question from NH. Congrats on the great results.
Could you comment on CapEx spending during Q4? How much was it and what did you invest in?
Thank you. I'm not sure. Out of almost EUR 900 million, the biggest item was paying for Novo acquisition in Belgium, the biggest unique item. Other than that, I do not have the numbers in front of me. I think doing the simple difference between what we did in Q4 and, sorry, between what we did in the full year and in Q3 cumulative will give you the results. Sorry, can't help you now. A question from Vladen. Hello, congrats for the stellar results. Two questions from my side regarding Portugal and one about Romania.
It would be reasonable to expect the same decreasing trend in ARPU in line with Spain. Could you share any numbers inside regarding the synergies achieved in this market Novo acquisition? Could you share with us some new info regarding Telekom deal in Romania? Where are we right now?
Thank you. Sorry. Yeah, one second. Sorry. It would be reasonable to expect the same decreasing trend in ARPU in line with Spain. No, look, we do not expect our ARPU in Romania is pretty stable, and we do not expect significant changes to the Romanian market, mostly because of the size of the operation and because of our pricing policy, which has been pretty stable, to not change the markets, to not change the prices in this market. For Portugal, we have just started. We are migrating the Novo users to Digi offers and to Digi network. Due to that, there may be changes in the ARPU, possibly a decrease in ARPU, because I think Novo prices were higher than our prices in absolute terms. Yeah, we just started. We do expect changes in the Portuguese ARPU, Portuguese results, especially once again related to the migration of the Novo customers to Digi. Whether we can compare these markets with Spain, I do not think so. The synergies achieved in the Portuguese market, I think the focus of the question is somewhat, I am not sure it is, there are certain synergies to achieve, but it is too early to ask. We should speak about this in one year's time. Could you share with us some new info regarding the telecom deal in Romania? This is an ongoing process.
No significant changes since we last spoke in November, meaning we are in the process, in the advanced process of obtaining approvals from the Romanian authorities. This is an ongoing activity, and I think if I were to comment, it goes both according to the expectation and according to plan. We hope for a quick resolution. Now, when will this come exactly? I think the authorities were mentioning the results somewhere towards the end of first quarter, maybe around that date. That is our expectation as of today, but we do not have any further visibility. Once again, so far, so good. The deal is on a good trajectory, and we expect not necessarily the approval, but we expect meaningful input from the authorities in the coming weeks and hopefully followed by an approval. Okay. I move to time swinging though again.
These questions come from Bert Bruyens from newspaper Le Tige in Belgium. Zoom account mentions another name. No, thank you very much. Look, Bert, I hope I did address all of your questions.
I said that I'm not sure this is really the room to discuss the most recent Belgian developments, but no problem. We are happy to address all the questions in the context where we can. We don't see any issues or any problems in Belgium. However, we wanted to refocus, to reposition our operations a little bit, and we wanted to focus maybe both on faster growth and on faster growth and development of the networks. That's why we made the management changes. We hope they are correct. We hope they will help us be better, be faster.
Yeah, we really are open about everything we do, or we are pretty open about everything we do. We will not give forecasts. We will not give guidance on our achievements. It is not correct from the market communication point of view, but it is also quite impossible. Yeah, once again, we will continue working, operating, making sure that we reach our goals and that Belgium is able to benefit from Digi services nationwide as quickly as possible.
A question from Bojan Jurković 2025 CapEx guidance. Do you still see EUR 750 million as realistic?
Yes, we do. Again, let me comment on the 2024 number in the context. As you saw, we reported almost EUR 900 million in CapEx.
However, if you deduct the Novo acquisition, basically the CAPEX spend is EUR 775 million, EUR 780 million, pretty close to EUR 750 million, which in itself is a large number. Yes, the 2025 CAPEX guidance remains relevant.
Any news on telekom Romania?
I did comment. We are still in the process of obtaining our approvals from both the Competition Authority and the FDI Commission. The processes are progressing and pending.
FTTH sale in Spain. Please, quick status update of the project.
The agreement was signed in April, May 2024. The first batch was delivered to Macquarie in September following the approval of the relevant authorities in Spain. As of now, we continue delivering networks and comms passed to Macquarie. It is on track. The contract is on track to be completed in about two years from today. I think so far, so good.
By the way, I failed to mention during the presentation the outstanding profit that we achieved for 2024 of almost EUR 600 million. That is certainly driven by the Spanish sale. Once again, this is a historic result for us. This is a big achievement for the group. The last question from Bojan. Romania, price increases envisaged given inflation rate? No, not so far. Not at this moment. Not as we speak or not going forward. We are committed to continue providing high-quality, good-quality services to all our customers. We feel that within today, I do not know, framework of results, revenues, EBITDA, profitability, CAPEX for Romania, we are pretty balanced and no changes are required on this point. Question from Ruben Files. Has the launch in Belgium gone according to plan? Can you already report some statistics?
There have also been news reports about lack of funding, large amounts of—one second. I don't see the question. Large amounts of unpaid bills and big management reshuffle. Can you confirm this information and elaborate on what is going on? I think I did speak about it earlier. I will not stop now. It will be a repeat. Ricardo José Saraiva. When will inland areas of Portugal have Digi mobile phone network coverage? Currently, there are many areas without any type of coverage. At this moment, we cover more than 93% of population in Portugal with our own mobile signal. I believe it's a very good result for a network that has just been launched. As we speak, we increase our coverage. We continue to increase our coverage. This is an ongoing process for us.
I agree that because we are still new, young at the beginning, we may have white spots. We may have areas with lower coverage, but we are working continuously. So far, so good. I believe that you can't really compare us to the incumbents. It will take us some time to become on par with them. However, on the other side, we believe that the network coverage for a newcomer, 100% own network, no national roaming, no MVNO access, I believe the coverage is just outstanding. Bruno Rietkatting. What is your coverage in mobile population and broadband households for Portugal? I did cover the mobile population. For households, we are not disclosing the number. However, we intend to reach by the end of the year more than 50% of the market. By how much do you expect this to increase through full year 2025?
I hope I addressed that. What was the organic growth ex Novo acquisition? We're not splitting the numbers, but it is meaningful. What CapEx and Piotr Czyborski from Wood, what CapEx and free cash flow level do you expect for 2025? For CapEx, we did say what we mentioned earlier, EUR 750 million. That remains as our target and intention to spend for the full 2025. We're not changing this number. For the free cash flow, look, if you look just at the first two elements on the free cash flow equation and you look at EBITDA and you look at CapEx, the total still, the EBITDA less CapEx still remains negative for the group. Maybe in the area of, yeah, just one second. Maybe in the area of EUR 120 million-EUR 130 million. That is mostly driven by our new territories, which still consume cash.
However, they do not generate results. Nevertheless, we have funds both from the refinancings that are in place that are being done at this moment or from sources like Macquarie that basically cover this gap. Anton Jerzcim. How much of the mobile subscriber growth in Portugal was driven by Novo brand versus Digi brand launch? How many mobile subscribers was Novo adding per quarter before your acquisition? Sorry, I will not go into these numbers. I'd say the significant number of users comes from Novo depending on the segment, if it's mobile or fixed. Still, at least 80% or 90%, 95% of our customers are the Novo customers. So our results in Portugal and our customers in Portugal are predominantly Novo as numbers. On the other hand, the growth from now on is purely Digi growth. Basically, I think we have a starting point now, Q4 2024.
From now on, we will see the results, hopefully growing. The difference, of course, will be attributable to Digi. I can't really dissect all the numbers to your liking, but I hope it is helpful the way I did answer. Daniela Mundru, where do you see Spanish sales and EBITDA in 2025? Without providing exact guidance, as I said, we can't and we will not. Generally speaking, we are looking for growth in sales driven by new customer additions. We see a slight improvement in EBITDA margin in 2025. That is broadly our expectation and our intention. Piotr Czyborski again. What level of CAPEX do you expect in Portugal, Belgium, and Spain in 2025? Piotr, I'm not sure we have disclosed this number so far.
Let me, I will not go into details, but I will stick with the general guidance of EUR 750 million. What we can say about Spain is that Spain will have a continued CapEx, so no change there. While Portugal and Belgium may have mixed results, some of them requiring more, some of them requiring less CapEx. Overall, these will continue to be our focus markets and the markets we intend to continue. We will continue to invest funds. A question from Yusuf. What is driving EBITDA growth across the different regions you operate in? The very simple answer to this question is the EBITDA growth is driven by the RGU growth. We are a growing telecom operator present in all segments, mobile, fixed, broadband, P ay- TV, and so on. Our EBITDA growth comes from the expansion of our business. Anton Jerzcim, another question.
What are your expectations surrounding getting wholesale access to a fixed network in Portugal? Again, like in any market, we are pretty open to any cooperation, be it fixed, be it mobile. The same goes true for Portugal. So far, we were not able to obtain relevant fixed network access in Portugal. For that sake and for the record, neither relevant mobile access to a network in Portugal. Our main focus remains expanding our network there, our own network there. Piotr from Wood, would you consider increasing prices in Romania anytime soon? I think I did mention that. I'd like not to repeat, but for simplicity, the answer is no. Daniela Mundru, what to expect in terms of dividends out of full year 2024 net profit? Thank you for the question. We have an outstanding net profit.
However, of course, the intention is to reuse most of the proceeds, if not all the proceeds, for CAPEX and expansion. As you appreciate, we are a very fast-growing telecom group, pretty successful so far. I hope we maintain the momentum. I hope we maintain our profile. We certainly have directions and targets to invest into. Having said this, we will certainly, like we did in any other year so far, at least maintain the dividend that we paid last year. We will decide on a possible increase later when we announce our final results at the end of April and when we publish our invitation for the general meeting of the shareholders. Thank you for the question. I think it's the right one. A question from Nora Knight. Good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation. A few questions from my side, please.
Could you provide operational KPIs for Novo at the time of consolidation? What is the Nora? Very quickly, I think when we did the acquisition, there was an announcement on the company, and there were a few, but very relevant numbers on the RGUs. I think just referring to those is mostly helpful. Second question, what is the CapEx guidance for 2025? We did cover that already. Does that include the acquisition of telecom in Romania? Yes. The number that we provided includes also the possible or the expected acquisition of telecom in Romania. Could you please provide a geography breakdown for revenues in Q4 2024, excluding other operating income? Thank you. Yeah, excuse me. One second. Geography breakdown for revenues in Q4 2024. Yeah, we can provide.
Let me just follow up on the further questions, and we'll come back to this question in a minute. In a few minutes' time. Thank you. A question from Giovanni Reichenbach. Hi, can you update us on your liquidity profile, on drawn committed credit, facilities in place, RCF term loans, etc.? Giovanni, we had, how shall I say, we had cash and drawn facilities as of the end of 2024 of EUR 100 million or in excess of, anyway, in the area of EUR 100 million. We are referencing our Spanish facilities as we speak. Again, it's a referencing exercise. We are also increasing certain of our facilities in Romania at this moment. I'm not sure I can easily just help you with the numbers. Once again, we are in a normal financing referencing cycle, going through that as we speak.
A question from Andrew Webb. Can you give us an indication of expected CAPEX for 2025? We covered it already. Fiber coverage targets in Portugal. Any indication on build costs and timelines? Source of wholesale versus building. I think we did cover that. Apology, I will not repeat myself. José Antonio Suarez, how many households do your fiber currently pass in Portugal? Last call was around 20%. No comment so far, as we said a bit earlier. The expectation is to increase coverage to 50% of the market by the end of the year. What are expectations on mobile subscriptions towards the end of 2025 in Belgium? No guidance. A question from Bram. That was Giovanni Reichenbach. Another question. Please comment on the timing of the collection of additional proceeds from the fiber transaction in Spain. Do you plan to pursue similar transactions in Spain?
I'm not sure the second part of the question is correct. Shall I read it? Will there be another transaction like the initial Macquarie transaction in Spain? So far, no. We have just concluded the Macquarie transaction last year with the transaction being under proceeding. We are not working on any other transaction of this kind at this moment. The timing of collection of the additional proceeds from the fiber transaction in Spain is over the next two years and a half. We have collected roughly EUR 500 million in 2024. We expect to collect the remaining EUR 250 million over the next two years and a half or so. Regarding Portugal, Digi's entry was highly anticipated and generated great—it's a question from Daniel Sobral—was highly anticipated and generated great expectations. However, we have encountered several issues.
Service quality is a priority, and we must consider the company's experience. From the reports found in the news articles, forums, and specialized blogs, it is clear that the price alone is not enough. What are the short-term expectations for Digi operations in Portugal? Daniel, your question is pretty general. It indicates, or you try to say, that we should work on improving our quality. We fully agree that is a priority for us in any market, specifically for the Portuguese experience. Once again, we are pretty satisfied with the launch, with the rollout. We have to be grateful to our customers for having the patience to start early on with a newcomer while maybe not all operations, not all systems, not all procedures are perfectly in tune in comparison to the incumbents. We are doing great efforts to improve as we speak.
We agree with your comment, and we will certainly focus not only on price. We agree 100% with you that price is not enough. Price always comes second, if not third or fourth. Daniela Mundru, what CapEx have you planned for 2025? We covered that. José Antonio Suarez, also, how is connectivity in Lisbon Metro going forward? When do you expect to have access? We are working on these. These are the features of the Portuguese network, but not only. We are working to improve our access. No development or no comments here so far. Are you expecting to get a wholesale agreement with any of the three main Portuguese MNOs? We have not managed to get one so far. If we are able, we will certainly embrace it openly. A question from Conrad Musial from Pekao.
What level of CapEx should we expect for 2025 at the group level? Could you provide any split between countries? Sorry, we will not provide split. For the full CapEx, we did address the number earlier. Did you expect Italy, Portugal, and Belgium to still be loss-making in 2025, or will you break even? Italy is not loss-making. Portugal and Belgium will certainly continue to be loss-making, not only in 2025. It will be loss-making in 2026 and maybe further, although we have no visibility, we have no perfect visibility on that. The expectation is right here. Just to comment on Italy, you may be reading Italy operations wrong because on our financial statements, Italy is grouped with other, and it also includes our holding activities, which have costs but which have no revenues associated or no profit. That is why Italy is unjustly penalized.
Italy is a profitable country for us. A question from Ganesh from Barclays. Can you update on your view on Romania mobile consolidation? What is said on their call this week? They hope to conclude the sale of their mobile assets in the first half of 2025. My hope and my expectation is still around first quarter 2025, which is fully in line with Otis' statement. Once again, we are in an advanced stage of dealing, discussing with the authorities, engaging with the authorities. Once this process is over, we hope for a swift conclusion of the transaction. Is your mobile network built in Portugal RG complete, or is further coverage required? Any color on commercial trends would be great there. An operator's mobile network is never complete, and sorry for this generality. We are early on in Portugal.
We have done a very big effort in starting the full mobile service on our own network at the end of last year. We will certainly continue investing, expanding, and building our mobile network. I think there are certain reports, there are certain technical reports in the market comparing certain features of our network, like 5G connectivity to other operators, and we score or rank higher than the others. It is not enough to say that—I mean, it's certainly not the basis to say that we have the best network, but it really shows that we have a relevant network. Once again, we will continue investing and we will continue improving it. Thank you for the question. A question from Marius Ander.
Do you have any intentions of increasing the visibility of Digi's shares on the BVB by contracting market-making services and have liquidity targets for access to indices like FTC? Yeah, just one second. We would certainly like and love to increase the visibility of Digi's shares on BVB. We would certainly like our liquidity and BVB liquidity to be higher because, I mean, that's a wish for any listed company. That's the road for success. I mean, to have good liquidity, to have good price, to have good price tension in the market, to have good price levels and development. Whether we will contract market-making services, yes or no, we can't comment at this moment. No decision taken so far. A question from Jean René Medouri. Hello. Can you please give us guidance for CapEx for 2025 at the group level and by geography? We touched it.
We skipped this question. Any update on the acquisition of telecom Romanian asset? I think we've already covered this pretty extensively. Thank you for the question, but we will move on. Another question from Bram. Can you share more details on how you expect to increase ARPU in Belgium in the long run? Why increase? I mean, we've launched our services just recently. We believe that we provide a good ARPU level, and we do not see a reason to increase the ARPU. Our focus and our effort will be, of course, to grow our market presence and eventually our market share. Certainly, we will not focus on increasing the ARPU. A question from Ricardo José Saraíba. When will Digi Portugal have a serious and effective customer support service? Yeah, thank you for the critique. I hope it is constructive.
We have a customer support service working around the clock. We are available to our customers in all our markets, also in Portugal. We will certainly continue investing into resources and into our coverage. Yeah, once again, thank you very much for the question. A question from Ioan Mihai Angel. Hello. Any thoughts on share buybacks by Digi? Is this something you would consider doing, perhaps in the near future when CapEx is down after most of the infrastructure is built in the new markets? Thank you for the question. I think it's a right focus. It's a relevant question. We are pretty much, well, in line with your thinking. However, at this moment, we still prioritize CapEx versus buybacks. If this policy changes, we will revert to the market. We think this is not the wrong way to think about it.
A question from Ricardo José Saraíba. When following Romania's example, does Digi Portugal plan to implement the alert systems via cell broadcast? We are working on this. I personally cannot give you guidance at this moment. Hopefully, yeah, I don't know. We can certainly follow on this question, separately offline or on the next call if this will still be relevant. A question from Daniela Mundru. If you estimate that your FCF for 2025 will remain negative within the EUR 120 million-EUR 130 million range based on a CapEx forecast of EUR 720 million, we can imply for this year you're estimating a bid of EUR 625 million. Is this correct? I will not comment. Thank you very much. I think we are done so far. It was a pretty long hour of speaking on the questions. I hope we addressed everything. I hope we addressed the launches.
Thank you very much for the critical attitude. Yeah, we deserve it. It's always pretty difficult to launch new mobile and fixed services in Europe in 2024 and 2025 when the markets are very mature. I hope that you also appreciate that we had successful launches and we will do our best to make them even better. This is, I think, my conclusion to the call. We still wait for a minute or so to see if there are more questions. We have one more. When do you expect a positive free cash flow?
Yeah. We hope that we will still have lots of opportunity for growth. I wouldn't promise you a free cash flow neither in 2026 nor in 2027. Because if we are in the red from this perspective, it means we are growing. That is really our aim as a group. I hope that you appreciate that we are a growth telecom operator and not a dividend yield telecom operator. I think we enjoy one of the fastest growth rates among our peers in Europe. We certainly want to maintain it like that. I wish I could give you a positive answer, but I remain in this territory. Again, our priority and our hope is to have more growth going forward. I will ask Dan just to comment on Nora's question from a bit earlier.
Hello. I understood that the question was related to Q4 CAPEX. In fact, it's also in the presentation. The figure for Q4, it's EUR 329 million. It shows, as Serghei previously mentioned, it's mainly as a result of the completion of Novo's acquisition in Q4. Yeah, next to that, the completion of some other ECA, as it was, in fact, the case throughout the year. There's one more question from Yusuf.
Can you discuss the drivers of the margins for the different geographies? I am not sure we can discuss the drivers, but we can discuss the dynamic. In Romania, we have a pretty stable operation with healthy margins on an industry level. We do not expect significant changes here. Again, as all our efforts are made to both manage the growth, but also our cost base. In Spain, we have a mixture of MVNO operations so far and network operations. As we speak, the margins are expected to improve in the future as we transit from MVNO to MNO operation and as we operate and control our own network.
This change will be gradual, probably more accentuated towards the end of 2025, again, as we move from the MVNO agreement to a round-sharing agreement. This change will be even faster in 2026. We aim for EBITDA margin improvement in Spain. For the other markets, we are EBITDA positive in Italy, as we mentioned. We do not expect significant changes there. For the other markets, it is pretty early to say. Of course, we are in negative because we have costs and our revenues are still just starting to show. It is very difficult to comment really on the margins there. We will have to have more time and more history to comment on these numbers. Thank you for the question.
I mean, I hope I give you a bit of direction and you can understand the numbers for your modeling or for your understanding of the business. We are stopping here. Again, it's been a long hour and a quarter. We will release the full year results with balance sheet, P&L, and cash flow around the end of April. We will certainly follow with the first quarter results in mid-May. Bye to all of you before then. Hope to see you soon. Bye-bye.
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