Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Digi Communications N.V. Investors Q1 2025 Financial Results presentation. A copy of the corresponding report is posted in the Investor 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 could differ materially from those that are implied by such forward-looking statements due to the risks and uncertainties associated with Digi Communications and we, which include, amongst others, various risks related to our business, risks related to regulatory matters and mitigation, risks related to investments 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 N.V. , 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 first quarter results. We are very happy to present to you our achievements. Operationally, this was the best, one of the best quarters. We have grown by far, and we have grown most in absolute terms, RGU-wise, particularly in Spain, but also we were helped by our new markets like Portugal and, of course, not last, Romania. Without too much hesitation, let's go into the slides and follow up with the questions. First quarter revenues, almost 20% up to EUR 532 million in the quarter. RGU, as I was saying, it was an outstanding performance. We've added more than 1 million RGUs in comparison to Q4 last year, 4 million RGUs in comparison to the first quarter of 2024, EBITDA EUR 140 million, excluding IFRS 16 numbers. Romania, as I said a bit earlier, grew by 7%.
We grew across all our main segments. Mobile, 13% growth to 6.8 million users. Pay TV, 3% growth, reaching close to 6 million users, and broadband, 5 million users with 7% growth year on year. Spain, again, big congratulations, big thumbs up to our colleagues over there. We have surpassed two milestones: 6 million mobile users, in fact, 6.2 million mobile users, and over 2 million, 2.1 million broadband users, 25% and 39% growth year- on- year, respectively. These are outstanding numbers, and once again, most of our success in this quarter, most of the result is really driven by our Spanish colleagues.
We continue our strategy, we continue our operations with sustained growth across all markets, just like I mentioned a bit before, of course, backed by important, significant CapEx aiming to expand the mobile and fixed network, mobile network in Romania, the fixed network in Spain, and then combined mobile and fixed in Portugal. These are the main directions of our investment at this moment. As I said, we are very proud they pay off. Of course, last but not least on this page, we are very excited with the launches in Portugal and Belgium. Or probably it's more appropriate to say we are very busy with, we continue to be very busy with the launches in Portugal and Belgium. As you see, Portugal has surpassed 700,000 RGUs, and Belgium, it's an early start. We have over 50,000 mobile users over there.
Just very few words on the recent developments. As you see, we were pretty busy on the financing front at the beginning of the year or in the last three months. We have signed a couple of export credit facilities. We have financed ourselves in Romania with a new EUR 200 million loan for five years, and we have refinanced the entire portfolio, our entire credit portfolio in Spain with a EUR 275 million facility. Also, just a few days ago, or sorry, yesterday, we announced signing the EUR 84 million facility to finance the last tranche, the last one-third of Digi Andalusia development. It's a facility which is similar to Project Finance One, is very specific to that project. All in all, over EUR 600 million of funds raised. An important part of that was just for refinancing, and some of these funds are available for our further expansion.
EUR 532 million in sales in the first quarter. Romania, EUR 280 million, Spain, EUR 216 million, and Portugal, almost EUR 80 million. EBITDA in Romania, EUR 122 million, excluding IFRS 16 numbers. This is over 40% margin, very healthy. Spain, a 16% margin, and Portugal, of course, it is a negative result. We are working hard to make sure that we come into black as quickly as possible. We mentioned RGUs, 29 million. We will come back to that as we continue the presentation. To go more deeper into our numbers, the first quarter EBITDA was EUR 140 million, excluding IFRS 16 numbers. With IFRS 16, the number stood at EUR 170 million, a 5% growth. Looking at revenues, Romania had an 11% increase, Spain had a 22% increase, and Italy had, sorry, sorry, and overall the group had a 90% increase.
Italy was stagnating at EUR 8 million in the quarter, and Portugal generated almost EUR 18 million, as we mentioned before, but there's no comparison as last year we did not have these operations. You may notice that CapEx amounted to EUR 169 million. This is CapEx in our established markets, Romania, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. This figure excludes Belgium. As we mentioned on our last investor call, we maintained the guidance of making EUR 750 million in CapEx for the full year. As always, our growth and our substantial growth is achieved through customer increase across all our markets, and this is, yeah, this is by far the most important driving factor. As I said at the beginning of the call, we are very proud of customer evolution.
This was by far, or this was the best quarter we had on a group level, and this was also a good quarter in terms of financial performance. Revenue growing very robustly, CapEx being kept under control, 32% of sales, significantly lower than in the previous quarters or years, and of course, with good margin and EBITDA, excluding IFRS 16, of EUR 140 million. A few words on the RGUs. Romania reached 18.5 million from 17.2 million RGUs a year ago, so more than 1.2 million RGUs growth. Spain added more than 2 million RGUs from 7 million to 9 million. Most of them coming from mobile. Portugal stays at 755,000 RGUs, and Italy, 15% growth, 500,000 RGUs in comparison to 435,000 a year ago. All in all, 17% growth for the group. Mobile services, the biggest segment, amount to almost 14 million RGUs across four territories.
Broadband services, EUR 7.2 million, and Pay TV, EUR 6 million RGUs. Of course, so far, or previously, we were mostly reporting just one market, Romania, but since a couple of months, we started Pay TV services also in Spain. It is a good start. We have achieved 47,000 TV RGUs in Spain by the end of the quarter. Just a couple of words on mobile portability. We continue outstanding performance, both in Spain and in Romania. In Spain, with gross portability at more than 340,000 users during the first quarter, net portability 226,000 users, and almost 60,000 gross portability in fixed services, and over 53,000 net portability in the mobile services. Our gross portability in Romania amounted to 190,000 mobile users in the same period, first quarter. All in all, these are very good results for us, but also for the markets that we operate in.
Just very few words on the leverage. As we see, we stabilize ourselves at 2.5x times. The refinancing exercises helped us decrease the repayment efforts for 2025, 2026, and 2027. This year, we have a total of EUR 92 million to be paid. In 2026, it will be EUR 137 million, and in 2027, it has to be EUR 222 million to pay. Of course, as most of you recall, we have refinanced, we have repaid the EUR 450 million bond last September, and that helped our maturity profile significantly. Gross debt, EUR 1.47 billion, net debt, EUR 1.42 billion. The remaining EUR 400 million bond tranche remains outstanding for February 2028, and there is plenty of room and time both to address this maturity as we go ahead. A couple of words on our focus for 2025.
In fact, as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, not too many changes. We try to be consistent and to continue our operations. In Romania, we consolidate our technical presence in the mobile segment, improving mobile networks, rolling out 5G services, and also connecting new customers. Of course, same continues in the fixed segment, but with significantly less investments. Spain, again, we continue to roll out the fixed networks. We continue adding customers, both for our fixed and mobile services, and we will focus in the second part of the year on migrating from the MVNO model to an MNO model, along receiving the new frequencies from MásMóvil Orange, from the MásMóvil Orange joint venture.
In Portugal, we will focus significantly to expand our network coverage, and we focus on getting new customers on board, but also we will continue focusing on improving our, increasing our revenues and managing our costs to make sure that the red EBITDA becomes black towards the end of the year or beginning of next year. One or two words on the announcement of the upcoming general meeting of shareholders. The meeting was announced for June 18 to be held in Amsterdam. We intend to approve the annual report. We intend to continue to extend the mandate of KPMG as the auditor. Of course, we propose a dividend of EUR 1.35 per share. It is an increase in comparison to last year. Last year, we paid EUR 1.25 per share, so we keep our commitment to increase dividends since we listed the company back in 2017.
All in all, I think it's a very simple agenda, and I hope that most of you, all of you, can either attend or express your vote towards this meeting. I believe this is it. This is the presentation, and we will welcome the questions, and I think we'll start answering the questions in a minute or two. Yeah, we have our questions in the chat box. I will start going through them one by one as we speak. A question from Keval Khi roya. The first question, you have shown impressive subscriber growth in Spain, but your EBITDA margin performance has been weaker. What explains the higher OpEx pressure in Q1, and how do we think about margins going forward? Yeah, thank you for the question. I think, yeah, it's a good one. It's a valid question.
In absolute terms, our EBITDA has been pretty stable in Spain, so there's a marginal decline, or almost no decline, in Q1 in comparison with Q4. Indeed, in terms of margin, there's a slight decrease. It is driven by our changes to our pricing policy, the introduction of new products, the introduction of more affordable products to the customers. We expect this to be, how shall I say, the bottom of the curve, if I could say so. We expect a bounce back to the previous levels towards the end of the year. I hope this image is helpful to you, and once again, there's no other pressure to EBITDA or to our margin apart from our changes to our sales policy. Yeah, once again, they were expected, and I think we address them as we go. A second question from Keval.
Some of your peers have been vocal on the need for in-market consolidation in Europe and in Spain. Do you think that the Spanish market needs consolidation, and does Digi have a potential role to play here? Would you consider combining with another large operator in Spain? I would say we have the honor to operate in pretty competitive markets, both including Romania, including Italy, including Spain. Having said this, we have a strategy which our main strategy is related to organic growth. We are not looking for, we are not aiming to be a consolidator in any of these markets. If consolidation happens, we'll certainly take note, and most likely, we will just continue operations as we go. Once again, I think we all see the same, indeed, rhetoric.
We see the same intention to consolidate, but this is not necessarily something that we think is affecting us, or we think that will impact our operations. Question from Darius. Investment returns. What ROI or payback periods do you expect from investments made in 2023, 2024, and the ongoing key investments into infrastructure? I'm not sure we are that articulate on ROI and other metrics, but if we speak about payback periods to our efforts, generally speaking, we are long-term oriented, and we believe we are also safe from this point of view. I think our horizon is four, five years, and eventually plus. A question from Ganesh from Barclays. Congratulations on your results. Could you please provide some color on your subscriber trend in Belgium? Why is the portability to Digi coming down since launch? How is your mobile network development in Belgium progressing?
How much population coverage do you target to achieve by 2025, 2026? Unfortunately, I will be, how shall I say, quite poor in information about Belgium on this call, just maybe like on the last call as well. Why so? It is our youngest operation. I think it deserves more time and more attention to get started. As I mentioned, we have gained 53,000 mobile users by the end of first quarter. We are pretty happy with this number. We certainly see the trend continuing and growing, and we will certainly continue the effort. Having said this, it is difficult for us to provide you meaningful projections for fixed coverage or mobile coverage, or even comment on the portability. We're still very young, and I don't think you could expect a big momentum or big, yeah, big customer growth just in the first three or four months of operations.
Thank you very much for the question. Question from Nora Nag. Good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation. I have four questions. Could you please share an update on the acquisition of Telecom Romania Mobile? Thank you, Nora. In fact, it's an ongoing process, as we mentioned also last time on the call. This week, yesterday, the competition authority did announce the remedies proposed by the potential, sorry, by the buyers, the buyers being us and Vodafone. These remedies are available publicly on the website of the competition authority. I think there's a public process to comment on these remedies by the beginning of June. I think based on that, the competition authority will be in the position to make its final decision whether to approve these changes, this transaction, or eventually accept or ask some other remedies.
We sincerely hope that we are in the final stages of the process now. Second question. Could you please provide a breakdown of RGUs in Belgium? Oh, it is very simple. These are mobile RGUs. We have shared with you 53,000 mobile RGUs. Three. Is there a one-off in income taxes since it is pretty high this quarter? No. The income taxes are mostly affected by—I leave this question to Dan, but I think the income taxes are more affected by deferred tax rather than actual cash tax, as we did not notice any significant changes in our current tax. In addition to that, it is sale of assets in Spain that drives increase in tax. When we say sale of assets in Spain, we refer to the Macquarie transaction. The final question is, do you confirm the CapEx guidance for 2025? Yes, we do.
As we showed in our four markets in the first quarter, CapEx was EUR 169 million, basically in line with our expectation for EUR 750 million total CapEx. Questions from Yorick Dupon. Could you give more information about the launch of Digi in Belgium? Is 53,000 users in line with the expectations? When do you expect to be profitable with the business in Belgium? Have you anything to say about the job cuts that happened this year at Digi Belgium? As I said, there's not very much to say. We had a launch. It's a successful technical launch. We offer commercially the services. We're very grateful to our first 53,000 users, and we certainly hope that more users come to our network. In terms of the last questions on expectation about profitability, very difficult to say, certainly not this year.
Yeah, building an operator from scratch, launching an operator from zero is an expensive business, yeah, which we risk to venture into. For the last part, if I have to say anything about the job cuts that happened this year at Digi Belgium, again, nothing in addition to what was discussed also on the previous quarter call. We are early on in our operations. We are adjusting our needs, our activities, our performance as we speak, as we go. Yeah, we just realized that the organization was set up maybe to be a larger one than necessary at this moment, and we try to resize it and to rescale it. Just as I mentioned last time, we will do as many cuts or as many changes, personnel, strategy, management-wise as we need to make sure that we have the most effective operations also in Belgium.
Ultimately, our goal is to provide good services, affordable services to our users in all our markets, Belgium included, and we'll do everything we can to achieve that. The question from Bojan Jurković, Spain. What was in particular attributable to the impressive RGU growth? I stop here. It's a longer question. Look, there's a very simple answer to that. It's Spain. Spain all along. I mean, Spain accounts for, if I'm not wrong. Yeah, just one second to have a look. Spain accounts for roughly two-thirds of the growth that we achieve. This is a very good commercial momentum that we have. We have very good engagement with our customers, and we are extremely happy about that. Would it be fair to assume that at least partially came at the expense of ARPU? I'm not so sure. I don't think so, in fact.
We have a slight increase in, we have an increase in growth. However, it's not our first quarter of growth. Certainly, it helps, but I don't think it's the main reason. As always, our strategy, our results are based on a number of factors: quality of service, fairness, and the way we interact with our customers, but also price being a few of them. Where do you see Spanish ARPU going forward? We have changed our offers recently. We have seen existing customers changing packages, opting for more affordable ones. We see new customers coming. We don't think there'll be significant changes in the ARPUs going forward, but still, I would look at this with caution. This is something that, this is something that we'll have to look for, I think, for the rest of the year. The next question is on general finance interest expense.
What was the main reason for such a rise in interest expense in the first quarter? I think the main reason is the fact that we recycled a very cheap bond by repaying it partially with refinanced funds, partially with own funds. However, we also borrowed extra funds towards the end of the year, and all new facilities come at least at 2%-2.5% higher cost. It is really, and by the way, by saying this, I think we are efficient for operators of our size and operators of our standing in terms of interest cost. On the other hand, it is just that we were very lucky and we had a very cheap facility in place originating from pre-COVID era. Yeah, we pay higher interest, but all in all, there is nothing wrong with that.
I think the general context is that, as you will also appreciate, we all believe that we are in a declining interest market, so we do not expect this to worsen or to affect us significantly going forward. I hope it is helpful. The third question from Bojan, Belgium. When do you plan to disclose operational KPIs? Does the CapEx envelope of EUR 750 million include Belgium? Belgium is, at this moment, a joint venture, roughly 50/50 joint venture between us and our partner, Citymesh, our Belgian partner. As long as this company remains as a joint venture, we will not consolidate these results, and there will be no more disclosure on the operational KPIs. If this situation changes, of course, this discussion will also change. The third question, does the CapEx of EUR 750 million include also Belgium? The simple answer is yes. A follow-up from Nora.
How big was the CapEx in Belgium? Thank you. Just as I mentioned, we are not disclosing the CapEx and the numbers for Belgium. Hopefully, we'll speak this sometime later. Question from Vlad Poder. Hi. Thank you for the presentation. Can you provide more details on what caused the 49% year-on-year and 2.6x times quarter-on-quarter increase in interest expense, especially considering the overall decline in your report over the past quarters and the fact that most of the debt consists of floating interest loans? I think we addressed that. We used to have a very cheap bond, which was fixed. By very cheap, I mean it was 2.5% all-in cost. We can't borrow today at those rates anymore. A question from Piotr Raciborski . What level of CapEx and EBITDA do you expect in 2025?
CapEx, we mentioned, we maintain our guidance of EUR 750 million for EBITDA. Overall, year-on-year, we expect a slight increase in the low-level digits in comparison to 2024. When do you expect Portugal to reach break-even on EBITDA level? It is too early to assume. We will do our best that this happens quickly or relatively quickly over the next one or two years. A question from Anton. Can you please comment on your commercial momentum in Portugal? How many of the mobile RGUs ads were on Novo versus the newly launched DigiBrand? I think you have now the Q4 report, and you have also the Q1 report. You already have the dynamic, the commercial dynamic. In particular, during the first quarter, we added 67,000 mobile users. We've added 10,000 fixed broadband users, 4,000 pay TV users.
All these users were added on Digi's networks and not on Novo Network as we are not active commercially on the Novo Network. A question from Danius. How large was maintenance CapEx for in 2024, and how much should we expect for 2025? We're not really splitting our CapEx by growth and maintenance. I'd expect that our maintenance CapEx is in the area of EUR 150 million. How are you feeling about the Belgian launch? Is 53,000 RGUs satisfying start or not? It is very satisfying. As I just repeat what I said at the very beginning of the call, both Portugal and Belgium take a lot of work from our colleagues that are based in these markets. We try to support them as much as we can. We keep our fingers crossed. There's just plenty of work.
If you ask us, we feel very good about this number. It's a good start, and we are looking forward, of course, to much better results in the future. Another question from Darius. What is your revenue EBITDA outlook for 2025, and what is your longer-term growth outlook? It's difficult for me to really speak about long-term growth outlook, especially with two new markets being in incipient stages. I refer here to Portugal and Belgium. Speaking of 2025, I've already mentioned earlier a low single-digit level increase in terms of EBITDA and a low double-digit increase in terms of revenues. That's our expectation for 2025. A question from Giovanni Reichenbach. Hi. Can you please provide an update on your liquidity profile, Androne RCF, and all other available Androne committed facilities? Giovanni, I'm not sure.
Sorry, I don't have these numbers handy, but at this moment, especially due to lots of refinancings that we did in the last three months, as I already mentioned, I'd say we have between EUR 200 million-EUR 250 million Androne facilities as we speak, which I hope is helpful to anyone looking. A question from Simon. Please, can you confirm the current size of your proprietary fixed network in Belgium and the current state of negotiations for fixed wholesale access from other parties? What is your plan B if you cannot agree access terms with the other operators? Starting from the end, the plan B is to build. The plan B is actually plan A, which is always to build. This is our main plan, and this is something we are doing at this moment. We will continue doing.
In terms of announcing the size of the network, I think we are pretty much at the beginning, and there's very little to say about. A question from BS Erwe. Have there been some media reports on unpaid suppliers in Belgium after the year results? You said there were no liquidity issues, but the stories persist. Any update on that front? I just referred to the question Giovanni asked a bit earlier with over EUR 200 million of Androne facilities. Certainly, there are no liquidity issues. Having said this, I don't think this discussion should go into an operational update on Belgium. I think we mentioned this also last time, and we repeat this time. I hope it's okay for you and for the rest of the audience. A question from Joe House.
Can you share your views on how entrants in both Portugal and Belgium have been received by customers? Are you gaining customers in line with expectations? I think the best result is really shown through the numbers. Reaching between 80,000 and 90,000 RGUs in the first quarter in Portugal is certainly both helpful and satisfying. We are grateful to our customers. We are grateful to our teams for the great work. We will just continue working and building and developing the network. I would say it is more or less the same about Belgium with the comment that we realize that Belgium will move slower in comparison to Portugal or Spain or Romania. A question from Flavio Nunes. Can you provide more clarity on the current level of coverage that you offer in Portugal, both in mobile and fixed networks?
There have been complaints about faulty customer support in Portugal. What are you doing to address those issues? Flavio, I think the question is repeating itself a bit from the previous conversation. Our mobile coverage is exceeding 98% of the population. We kindly ask you to have patience as we just built this network very recently. We are continuously improving, updating, upgrading it. Coverage is changing and again improving as we speak and in days and in months. This is a continuous effort on our side, but also it's a continuous effort with our partners, CellNext and Vantage, to make sure that we provide the best coverage we can to our customers. In terms of faulty customer support, we are aware of the need to work and also to improve our call center and our support. We are working on that.
Yeah, we are trying to provide as good experience to our customers as possible. The third question, would you consider the launch of Digi Portugal a success? Is it meeting your expectations? Look, it's a difficult question, and I think on a personal note. To say that it's not successful is wrong because we operate, we have customers on the network, the customers are using the service, and we work hard on a daily basis to provide the service. To say that it is very successful is difficult. Again, it's very subjective. I think time will show how successful we are. Once again, we are certainly committed to the market, to the customers on a very long-term basis. Our interest is to continue to evolve our coverage, the quality of our services, the number of users, and we'll do our best to do so.
Another question from Bojan. Romania. Are you happy with the proposed remedies from the regulator with regards to Telecom Romania? Yes. The remedies were proposed by us to be very exact from the procedural point of view. They were reviewed by the regulator, and they are now subject to market test and comments from the market participants. Since basically they were proposed by us, they were offered by us, we certainly agree with the remedies. Okay. A question from Russell Waller. Hi. Can you give us an update on the fiber rollout in Portugal, please? Is the goal still for 50% coverage by the end of the year? Does the 50% target include any wholesale deals? Yes. We maintained the intention announced also during our last call for 50% country coverage by the end of the year. No changes there.
No, this figure does not include any wholesale deal. It is all our network. Another question from Ganesh. How many homes passed do you have now in Spain, and when do you plan to sell the next tranche to Macquarie? We have built ourselves more than 12.5 million homes in Spain to date. We deliver homes to Macquarie continuously as we speak. This is a process which will continue for the next one and a half years or so. This is something that is ongoing. When we say that it is a continuous process, it is a continuous process from the deal that we signed last year involving 6 million homes out of the 12.5 million that we have built in total by now. A question from Russell Waller. Is the intention still to get to 100% fiber coverage and over what timescale?
What % of that will be wholesale, do you think, please? I believe the question refers to Portugal. I think long-term, the answer is yes. We still intend to cover meaningfully, more or less, the entire country. I refer to Portugal. However, it's very difficult for me to say now how soon or how quick we'll do it. I'd rather defer this question to some later time. A question from Ganesh. How many home spas do you expect to build in Spain this year? I think the speed of rolling out the networks is more or less constant for us, and it's centered around 2 million-2 million plus home spas as we speak. This is the number. I hope it's helpful. Andrew Webb. How did your Q1 Portuguese results compare to your expectations? Yeah. Once again, I don't know. It's a complicated answer.
We are stressed ourselves by the negative EBITDA that we generate in these operations, to be very sincere and very open. We will focus, and we will do everything we can to reduce this gap between revenues and costs as much as we can and as quickly as we can. Having said this, there are lots of things to do also in terms of customer experience. On the other hand, we have users. We have happy users that are relying on our service. I think the service delivers what we promised, good quality service at an affordable price. From this point of view, I think it was a good launch. How is the repricing of the Novo customer base going? We are migrating the Novo customers to Digi Network. Along with this, there is also repricing. It is an ongoing process, and it goes well.
I will not tell you numbers. We will rather tell you when the process is finished. I think it's going pretty well, pretty good, and we have no surprises there. Are you on track with Portuguese FTTH rollout plan to cover 50% of premises by the year end? The answer is yes. Are you still considering wholesale agreements for Portuguese fixed line access in Portugal? We always consider wholesale agreements in all markets where we operate. We are very much open to such opportunities. So far, there were no possibility to access our competitors' network on affordable prices. Are you still exploring national roaming agreements with existing operators in Portugal? Also, this may be of interest to improve eventually access coverage of our network in certain areas.
However, as we launched our services at the end of last year, as we built most of our network with more than 98% coverage, I think the pressure and the need for such service is decreasing. A question from Russell Waller. Sorry, just to clarify, you said Belgium is not consolidated, but the EUR 750 million of CapEx guidance includes Belgium. How do I reconcile those two statements? Thank you. Also, does the EUR 750 million include the Romania or Portugal M&A cost? Starting with the end, yes, EUR 750 million includes the M&A that we expect in Romania. We do not expect any M&A in Portugal for this year. Yes, indeed, what you mentioned is correct. I did say that Belgium is not consolidated, but I also did say that EUR 750 million of CapEx is inclusive of Belgium.
If you looked at our numbers a bit earlier, we have spent CapEx of EUR 170 million in all markets, excluding Belgium, in the first quarter. Just doing a simple arithmetic and annualization that gives you the EUR 680 million total CapEx for the year. Again, I'm not saying this is the number, and it's just four times, but there's plenty of room for us also to support the Belgian operations in this number. I hope this is helpful. Your observations were correct, and thank you for the question. A question from Christian Caricas. How do you see the ARPU in Portugal by the end of the year and going forward? You mentioned in the last call that you expect it will decrease as Novo migration continues. Thank you. Yes, the overall dynamic, the overall strategy is the same. There are no changes.
From this point of view, there'll be a decline in ARPU, which we know that we expect or we intend to compensate with the increase in RGUs. However, it's difficult for me to comment on the exact levels as we have not decided the full calendar and the speed of the conversion. A question from Inês Pinto Miguel. Hello. Thank you for the presentation. I have a few questions on the Portuguese presence. What are your takes on the first full trimester of the operations in Portugal? Second, what was the impact of the blackout on April 28th? Yeah. Thank you. I think the first question was addressed. I'm not sure I should come back, but I would say everything we have in Portugal is a work in progress. Once again, we are extremely grateful to our customers for joining our network.
We're extremely very grateful for being first users and, yeah, trusting us and also using our services. For the second question, yes, it was an unfortunate event which affected both us and most of our competitors either fully or partially. Particularly in our case, we were hit also by the blackout. While for a few hours, our operations were available throughout an important part, half or more than half of the network in the second part of the blackout, and for a good number of hours after, our network was down as we were busy bringing it back. Finally, the network is back, and we have seen all our customers also coming back. Once again, it's another big thank you for the patience and for trusting our services. Yes, it was a one-off experience, I think, both for us, but also for our competitors.
We sincerely hope the energy sector will be more resilient, and it doesn't happen again. Question from Jeremy Ben Nathan. Are you still committed to 50% fixed coverage in Portugal by the end of 2025 and rolling out to 100 in the future? I think that we did mention this a couple of times already, and the answer is yes and yes. A comeback from Inish. I didn't understand your early answer. The RGU of the first quarter only has Digi. It doesn't have the Novo clients included. No, you should read the answer differently. The RGU numbers include both Novo and Digi customers because they are Digi group customers overall. What I wanted to say, and I'm just clarifying, is that the increase or the additions in the first quarter come from Digi network because Digi network is commercially active and Novo is not.
A question from Rohan Shankar. Do you plan to build 100% of Spain in FTTH home spas? If not, how do you decide on which locations, what % of total Spain to build? Yeah, it's a tough one. I'm not sure we intend to build 100% of Spain. Spain has a vast and complex geography. It's a big country. We are very happy with the build-out that we achieved so far, the 12.5 million homes. We're certainly not stopping here, but we will consider this as we go forward in the next two or three years, eventually, how big the network is and what the network coverage should be. When we build a network, we try also to assess the number of converted users that we have on our combined fixed and mobile network.
I think this is by far the most important criteria for us to expand the networks. A question from Dan Sica. Do you have any target for expansion of 5G coverage in Romania? Not really. We cover more than half of Romania with 5G services. We will continue increasing this coverage both this year and next year, but we are not committed to a number. Eventually, we'll announce when we build. Marius Kish, how many users do you need for a break even in Portugal? I think, I am not sure we think now in users, but I think, sorry, apology. We probably need to double our fixed customer base and to double our mobile customer base from where we are today to come close to a black position. This is just a rough estimation as we speak.
What do you mean Novo is not commercially active? I understood that you decreased prices at Novo to align them with Digi, suggesting you are still actively managing the brand. Is the long-term plan to rebrand Novo into Digi? There was a question from Anton. It was a comeback to a previous question. No, what I mean, I mean the following. Digi and Novo continue to operate as two standalone brands, and we are in an exercise to migrate Novo's customers to Digi network. As soon as they migrate, they come to Digi. They start using Digi services, and they benefit from Digi's prices. That's what I meant to say. When I say that Novo is not commercially active, we are not focusing on doing sales under the Novo brand. We are focusing on doing sales under the Digi brand. A follow-up question from Keval.
How many homes do you want to cover with fiber long-term in Spain? I think I mentioned this earlier. There is no target. We'll certainly continue building networks in the next two or three years. We'll have to assess this as we go forward. Once again, an important element to that is or can be our ability to sign wholesale deals. It's not that we're not interested to go to 100% of Spain. It's a question of how do we do that. We have to think, and we have to address that. The second question, you mentioned Spanish margins will improve towards the end of the year. What will drive this? I think two things are driving our Spanish margins. On one hand, it's the growth in customers, which is always helpful.
The second, as we were discussing on our previous calls, we are migrating from an MVNO to MNO type of relationship with Telefónica, and it has slightly different economics also, which also helps our margin to a certain extent. Yeah. So far, so good. I think we had a full hour with the presentation and questions, and the questions stopped. We will wait on the line for a minute or two, and if there are no questions, no further questions, we'll close the line. Yeah. I think, once again, a big thank you for all of you. Thank you for joining. Thank you for listening and participating. We'll meet again mid-August discussing the second quarter results. Thank you very much, and see you soon.