Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Digi Communications NV Investors 2025 preliminary financial results presentation. 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 stated or 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.
Thank you very much, Mariana. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I also want to introduce one more presenter for today. Just like in our third quarter call, we will have also Marius Varzaru, the General Manager, the CEO of our Spanish operations, joining our call and presenting our results from Spain. Having said this, thank you very much for joining. Yeah, let's start discussing our outstanding results. We had another successful, robust year of growth with both revenues and RGUs growing 15% on a group level. Revenues surpassed EUR 2.2 billion. Of course, this is also the year when we exceeded EUR 2 billion in revenues.
RGUs increased 15% in 2025, exceeding 32 million RGUs. Of course, Spain was the largest contributor in terms of customer growth, followed by Romania, the core and the established markets in our group. Having said this, we also had growth in our new operations, particularly, particularly Portugal, which we will discuss a bit later. I, I said Spain, and I will keep saying Spain during this presentation. Marius will continue.
I'd say this was the year of Spain, with revenues exceeding EUR 926 million year-over-year, with customer growth at very healthy 28%, with EBITDA growing from EUR 153 million to EUR 175 million. Really, I mean, this is the moment when our colleagues... We're extremely grateful and proud of our colleagues' achievement. Other than that, it was really a year of continuous operations for us. We continued expanding our networks. We continued gaining customers across all our markets. Of course, we also celebrate the first year in Portugal and Belgium, which will certainly contribute to our results in the years to come.
Couple of words on just to repeat some of the developments and to highlight some of the developments that took place in the fourth quarter. As we discussed a couple of times so far, on October the first, we completed the acquisition of Telekom Romania assets. It was part of the larger transaction done with Vodafone. As of today, we have integrated part of the spectrum licenses that we acquired through this acquisition, part of the towers, and also a significant part of the prepaid customers, which also show up in our year-end results.
We have also in October, also on the first, completed the Andalusia, Spain transaction, whereby we delivered 2.5 million new homes passed in Andalusia region, and the total financing for the project amounted to EUR 300 million equity and debt. We have refinanced successfully the 2028 notes with a new instrument, which is due in 2031. Six years, EUR 600 million, 4.62% interest rate. We believe this was one of the most important achievements from the financing point of view, as we secured our debt profile and maturity and maturity profile.
We will come up to this a bit later. I think we are in a very good shape to continue our growth and development from this point of view as well. Last, and certainly not least. We have just announced two weeks ago the intention to triple the number of shares in circulation from approximately 100 million today to approximately 300 million. This is a transaction benefiting our shareholders and benefiting the liquidity of the shares. All shareholders holding a share will receive two new additional shares for free through incorporation of reserves.
We expect the general meeting to take place on March 20. Once approved, the share capital increase should be complete before June 30. Once again, it's probably a small thing, but it should significantly help. Hopefully, it should improve our liquidity profile on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Coming back to the numbers, once again, EUR 2.2 billion in revenues, EUR 1.2 billion of revenues in Romania, of almost EUR 927 million of revenues in Spain. Romania EBITDA of close to EUR 500 million. Spanish EBITDA at over EUR 175 million. A healthy growth from EUR 153 million a year ago.
All in all, total EBITDA, EUR 585 million. It's a small growth in comparison to last year. Yeah, just pretty much on par with 2024 results. However, as you see on this table, this is really the result of launching the Portuguese operations, and we believe that this number will improve significantly going, going on, given the fact that we have very robust, very good performance in our established markets, Romania and Spain. Spain catching up quickly with EBITDA. Marius will explain it in much further, much better detail just in a few minutes from now. Also, speaking of Portugal, we know that this is the, let's say, most consuming year in terms of resources.
It's the first year of operation. It's the launch. This is the moment when, when we incurred all the costs, but still benefited from little revenues, as our customer base is growing, and we are certainly set to improve this loss figure significantly as, as we go forward. All in all, we expect EBITDA to continue growing, but not in line with 2025 results, but rather in line with previous years, whereby our growth was in the 10% area. We are extremely happy with the 32 million RGU numbers, RGU number, because this is the fundamental value of our company. Customer, customers, and customer relationships.
The very healthy growth of more than 4 million RGUs during 2025 shows that our efforts to build, grow networks, our efforts to provide sophisticated, high quality, good telecom products, but for affordable prices, work, and they work very well across all our geographies. So diving in a little bit into our numbers. So we mentioned the high figures, revenues, EBITDA. CapEx stood at almost EUR 800 million, EUR 798 million, to be very precise. This is more than 10% decrease from a year ago, in line with our expectation, and we are set to continue decreasing capital intensity going forward.
For 2026, we would expect CapEx to decline by in, in the area of 10% versus 2025 further. With total final CapEx being somewhere between EUR 700 million and EUR 750 million. The expectation, the intention is to decrease this number towards EUR 725 million range. All in all, very robust, very good performance in Romania and Spain. First year of operations in Portugal, which affected our EBITDA, which affected our net income. Once again, as we mentioned, we do not expect this trend to make us stagnate. We certainly expect this to improve, EBITDA and profitability to improve significantly in 2026.
RGUs, we used to be mostly a fixed operator, a fixed services operator, pay TV, broadband. As of last quarter of this year, mobile has exceeded all other segments combined. Mobile RGUs amounted to 16.1 million units as of December. This mobile continues to be our fastest growing segment certainly in Spain and in Romania, but also in all other markets as as we offer mobile in all markets where we operate. And this is, yeah, this is the segment we will continue focusing more, at least, in Romania. And this is the segment we will continue focusing also in our other existing markets.
Just mentioning mobile as a focus, we continue to be the leading benefit of portability, both in Romania and Spain. We've attracted almost 800,000 numbers or customers through portability in Romania in 2025, being the number one operator from this point of view. Our similar performance is in Spain. We attracted 1.4, 1.4 gross mobile numbers, of which 784,000 is the result of net portability. Portability gains adjusted for portability losses, given that the sum of all customers also left for other competing networks. We work hard to maintain the same position in the market and to continue the same result as we go forward.
Having discussed, broadly, the group, I will hand over to Marius, to discuss in much more detail, the outstanding results of our Spanish operations.
Thank you, Serghei. I hope you can hear me well. Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, yes, yes, we hear you.
Yes.
Yeah, you-- Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Please go.
Thank you, Serghei. Hello, everybody. Glad to be with you today and to present the results and the progress of Digi Spain for one more quarter. As you can see here on this slide, our most important critical factor of success in Spain is the deployment of our FTTH network in a vertically integrated model with our own employees. The solution of deployment allow us to roll out and to operate on a daily basis, very good quality networks, to deploy a future-proof network with the best available technology at this point, and based on the economies of scale, synergies, and cost efficiencies, to achieve very competitive economics, both for CapEx and OpEx for the FTTH network.
By December 2025, we reached a total footprint deployed by Digi, the footprint that we call SMART footprint, a level of 13.7 million homes passed, with an overall average cost of deployment of EUR 49 per home passed. A very competitive cost compared to the historical deployment costs that we've seen in the market. The speed of deployment continues to be high. In 2025, we rolled out 2.7 million homes, and in the previous years, 3 million homes. Our goal for the next five years is to continue to deploy FTTH networks and to reach a total SMART footprint of 21 million homes passed.
On the bottom part of the slide, you can see how the constant evolution of the take-up of the SMART footprint reached a level of 15.8% by the end of last year. On the top part of the slide, you can better interpret this blended average take-up by the individual penetration rates for each of the cohorts, depending on the year when they were built. In this sense, a couple of comments. Our competitive offer is very attractive and continues to generate growth in all cohorts, including in the initial ones of 2019, 2020, which reached, reached levels of penetration of 25%, 27% and still continue to grow. Also, newer cohorts benefit from higher take-up and faster ramp-up compared to the initial cohorts.
We reach faster levels of penetration of 25%, 27% like the initial ones. If in the initial cohort, we started with 3% penetration rates in the first year, newer cohorts start faster with 6% or even 7% for the 2025 cohort. Lastly, related to the network partnerships we concluded during the last two years, as Serghei mentioned, on the first of October, we concluded the delivery of the 2.5 million homes agreed for the Digi Andalusia project. For SOTA project, we are ahead of schedule. We delivered 5.45 million homes by the end of December, by the end of last year, and we will deliver gradually the rest of 150,000 homes during, during 2026, until December.
If we continue to the next slide, we can see how these great results in terms of deployment reflects, reflect also in our accelerated growth momentum. 2025 being the strongest year historically of net growth for Digi Spain, both for fixed and mobile services. For fixed broadband, we reached 2.58 million fixed broadband customers, with a growth of more than 630,000 net adds in the year. 100% of the net growth during the last two years came from the SMART footprint benefiting from the competitive products launched in October 2024 for this footprint specifically, reflected also in the gradual decrease in ARPU as new customers joining in Digi are subscribing products with lower pricing.
We've reached a market share of 13.1%, with an impressive increase of 2.7 points of market share during 2025, which is actually achieved only by the net growth in SMART footprint, which covers only half of Spain. This means that it makes a lot of sense for us to continue to expand the Smart Footprint towards the 21 million homes goal, replicate in other areas of Spain the same commercial success we have on the existing cohorts. For the mobile services, this year, we are growing at our fastest pace ever, which is a confirmation that the transformation of the commercial offer from an MVNO type to an MNO type of offer is effective. Even though the decrease in ARPU during the last 12 months is noticeable, it is compensated gradually by the growth of the customer base.
As 75% of the net adds for mobile lines are convergent, confirming once more the attractiveness of the Digi value proposition, as customers are bringing all their services with us. Continuing to the next slide. We can see the constant growth of revenues for the last five quarters, which is a mixed result of customer base growth and ARPU dilution. On the bottom part of the slide, we are presenting the gross margin evolution for fixed broadband, for the last five quarters, which improves due to strong operational leverage, expansion of the SMART footprint, and increase of its penetration rate. On the mobile side, the margin evolution for the past five quarters is determined by two moving parts.
One, starting with 1st of July 2025, the new model of mobile telephony cost, the MNO economics, as we call it, started to apply, improving significantly our margins for Q3 and Q4. For the past five quarters, the transition from an MVNO to an MNO model of commercial offer. In the next slide, we see how this evolution is reflected also in adjusted EBITDA, ex operating leases, which for the last five quarters reflects the effect of both fixed broadband and mobile gross margin evolution. For the second half of 2025, we clearly see the effect of the new MNO economics model, and for Q4 2025, the anticipated effect from last call, from our last call, for the latest commercial offer update from September 2025.
We anticipated a decrease in ARPU revenues with an effect of EUR 6.6 million, which was compensated partially by the customer gross growth, reaching a net effect of EUR 4.1 over the quarter. All in all, a very good result for the adjusted EBITDA ex operating leases for 2025, with EUR 175 million, up from EUR 153 million last year. In a like for like scenario, you would have to consider also that in 2025, the growth is even higher due to the fact that it's the first year of full year of SOTA-related costs, access fees for the network. Moving on to the next slide.
Going forward, we see the SMART footprint as our own main, our main engine for growth in Spain, both through new footprint that we intend to deploy towards the 21 million goal on the mid-term, and constant growth of the customer base on the SMART footprint towards more mature levels of penetration of 35%, as we already have seen in the initial cohorts. This, in turn, will drive growth for mobile customer base as well, as 75% of the mobile net gains are convergent, and we expect this trend to continue in the next years. Finally, in the next slide, we can see as all this, how all this translates into a forward-looking guidance for Spain, both for 2026 and mid-term.
For revenues in Spain, we expect to deliver revenues for 2026, somewhere in the range of EUR 1.04 billion-EUR 1.085 billion. For the mid-term, our expectation is for top line to grow in low teens CAGR, which is mostly driven by the ramp-up of the penetration rate for the initial 13.7 million homes of the SMART footprint cohorts already deployed, and for future deployments, which take four-five years to reach more mature levels. As we have previously seen, our historical cohorts have performed quite homogeneously, with the initial cohorts reaching 25% and still growing beyond it. For adjusted EBITDA, excluding operating leases in Spain, we expect for 2026 to be in low twenties, consolidating the levels achieved in the second half of 2025.
We expect a small EBITDA growth for Q1 compared to Q4 2025, in the context of a step up of the fixed costs related to mobile telephony, and we project constantly quarterly growth for the remaining 2026 quarters. For mid-term, we target to improve the adjusted EBITDA ex operating leases margin to above 30%, mainly driven by gross margin improvement, both in fixed and mobile. In fixed, due to a mix effect, as we will increase the penetration of customers in SMART footprint and expanding the Smart Footprint. And in mobile, as we will further benefit from the MNO economics model that we just started to apply. This margin improvement, which is in its nature also quite mechanical, we expect to be mostly front-loaded.
Beyond the midterm, we expect the margin to continue to improve further as the SMART footprint penetration for the new cohorts will grow towards more mature levels. In terms of CapEx additions in Spain, we are currently scheduled to invest around EUR 400 million in 2026 for CapEx additions, including here recurrent CapEx, gross CapEx, and new FTTH deployment CapEx additions. Our target for the midterm is for recurrent CapEx additions to remain below 10% of revenues, in line with our historical figures. In terms of gross CapEx and FTTH investment additions, we currently expect to invest around EUR 850 million-EUR 900 million in aggregate for the period 2027-2029, roughly half of which should be related to new FTTH deployment for the SMART footprint.
This investment will be front-loaded, we expect that the annual investment will gradually decline towards EUR 250 million per year in the midterm. This gradual decline should continue until we reach our deployment targets, subject to new potential development opportunities. We have a clear vision and plan in terms of absolute target and pace of deployment, which will naturally slow progressively with fewer employees dedicated to network deployment efforts in time. Once we reach that point, we will be covering with our own network, most of the urban municipalities in Spain. Beyond that, our strategy in Spain will be based on a number of factors that we'll take into consideration at that point in time, including competitive landscape, investment returns, or new development opportunities.
We want to reinforce the message that the investment, both on the mid and long term in Spain, is largely under our control and aligned with our growth vision and plans, and we have significant flexibility to adapt the speed and size of these investments. With this, we conclude the presentation for Spain. We can go back to Serghei.
Thank you very much, Marius. Just a small remark to the audience. This is somehow first time that we provide guidance. We feel that, as we mentioned for many times, Spain is a very mature market. Sorry, Spain is an amazing market, being both mature, large for us, but also continued growth. We thought that providing more detailed guidance on Spain at this moment will certainly help for those of you who are making your models to run them better. Just couple of words on leverage. Total gross debt over EUR 1.9 billion. Total net debt, somewhat less than EUR 1.9 billion, at EUR 1.87 billion.
As we mentioned, we have refinanced our 2028 notes in October last year. Yeah, we, we should have shown the, this chart, as when we spoke last time in Q3, but now you see very clearly and cleanly the maturities. 2026 is almost without upcoming maturities at 904,900, sorry, at EUR 94 million in payments, followed by 2027, EUR 260 million, and 2028, EUR 350 million. Leverage has gone a little bit, somewhat up from 2.3 x to 3.19 x as of end of last year.
This is really, I mean, going beyond 3x is really the effect of launching the new operations, in particular, both Portugal and Belgium. The EBITDA and the cash outflows that were necessary to support the EBITDA loss and the cash outflows that were necessary to support these operations. However, we see this moment of being higher than 3x as temporary. By the end of this year, 2026, we intend to go below 3x territory, and we intend to deleverage further in 2027 to being in the area of 2.5x to 2.75x, at least. I think this concludes our presentation. Yeah, and just final remarks.
We will continue in 2027, in 2026, focusing on customer growth, consolidation of networks. In some places, we still build out, like we do in Spain, like Marius mentioned. In other places, we just further refine, further improve the networks that we operate. But customer growth will be our biggest focus, driving growth, profitability, yeah, and overall group value. Thank you very much. Yeah, once again, hope our pace was good enough for you to absorb and digest our messages. We are more than happy to speak to you and to discuss. Just maybe few seconds for questions to start showing up.
They are in the chat of the Zoom. Yeah, once we, once we start receiving, we will speak to you. The first question comes from Arnaud Camus: Could you please confirm whether the EUR 2 billion cumulative CapEx guidance for 2024, 2030, both years included, as communicated at Digi Spain in June last year, remains unchanged? This is the first question. Second question: Regarding the reported below-market average deployment cost of EUR 48-EUR 49 per homes passed, could you provide more granularity on what is included in this figure? Specifically, does it cover customer activation costs, like installer visit, drop fiber, CPE, or does it refer strictly to passive network build up to premises?
I will let Marius to comment, as these questions relate to Spain.
Thank you, Arnaud. Related to the first question, the EUR 2 billion cumulative CapEx guidance for 2024, 2030. That is already ongoing. We maintain that the promise of investing in Spain more than EUR 2 billion in this period of time. We already had two years out of that interval investing. We think we will reach that level by that time. Regarding your second question, the cost we communicate for average deployment cost for home passed, for the network that we deployed, is strictly related to the network in itself, both the active and the passive part of the network. OLT is included as well. We do not include in this cost neither CPEs, nor drop fibers, nor cost of installation, nor anything related to that. It's pure network deployment cost.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We go on. The next question is from Jeremy Ben-Nathan: You have 71% of the 21 million homes passed in Spain owned by Digi. How many more homes of these can you potentially sell? Is it all, and at what sort of price per home? This is the first part of the question. The second part, the EUR 49 cost per home passed, does it include fiber from the home to your backbone network, or do you have to wholesale some of the network connectivity from Telefónica? If yes, what is the cost of that, please? Does the EUR 49 exclude connection costs? If yes, what is the cost to connect per home, please, including and excluding customer equipment?
How many homes passed did you have in Portugal at the end of 2025? What timeline do you now have for reaching 100% of homes passed? I will let Marius I think so some of the part, parts of the questions are repeating. I will let Marius just to comment on differences, and on what was not as answered before.
Thank you, Serghei, and thank you, Jeremy. Out of the 21 million homes that we will have deployed in midterm, we expect that 6 million homes will have been delivered to SOTA and 2.5 million homes to Digi Andalusia. For the rest of the homes, with our current thinking is to, to continue to own them. We unless something relevant would, would happen, we would not sell those, those homes in particular, no? Out of the total homes we have now, we will continue to sell to SOTA during this year, 550,000 homes, this, this is the initial objective of the project.
Related to the EUR 49 per home passed, as mentioned before, this excludes connection costs, so does not have any kind of cost included related to CPEs, installation cost or SAC. Until now, so we have decided not to disclose this detailed information related to what is our SAC cost or CPE connection cost for customers. Related to your second question, the EUR 49 cost per home passed, if it does include the fiber to the home to our backbone, once more, so the network, the cost for deployment includes all the passive and active elements, starting from the data center, so including OLT, all the fibers, including the customer distribution boxes, up to the building of the customers, and nothing else.
It doesn't include backbone network connecting this FTTH network to the national backbone and to internet, and does not include CPEs. Mm-hmm. For the question for Portugal, Serghei will, will comment.
Sure. We have around 2.2 million-2.3 million homes passed in Portugal. We are not concentrating... We, we will, we will continue building the network, so no question about it, but we are not focusing now on speedy rollout. We are rather focusing on exploiting the existing coverage, and, yeah, we-- there, there is no target that we want to assume in terms of the time to roll, to roll out 100% connectivity. Question from Ion Mihai Angel. Congratulations on the impressive RGU growth this year, particularly in Spain. It is highly noticeable that if we were to look at the group operations, excluding Portugal, the adjusted EBITDA growth would have likely exceeded 10%, a significant jump from the reported 1%.
From this perspective, could you clarify how much of the EUR 79 million loss in Portugal is truly one-time market entry expenditure versus recurring operational costs? Furthermore, at what RGU threshold do you anticipate the Portugal segment reaching EBITDA break even? No, you're absolutely right. If you just add plus, the positive geographies. If you look at pluses in our EBITDA, excluding the minuses, we would have generated EUR 675 million in EBITDA this year, which indeed is significantly more than 10% growth. Basically, we've achieved it in our legacy markets. Of course, we have to pay the cost of starting the operations in Portugal. It's...
I'm not sure I have the calculations ready to answer the second part of the question about one-time costs. We are certainly working towards diminishing the EBITDA loss through customer gains, through improvements in our cost base, through further integration between Nowo and Digi. The intention is to decrease this loss significantly this year, but I will not, I will not provide guidance as of now because this is work in process, and it's yeah, difficult to give you exact numbers. Once again, thank you for pointing it out, because other than Portugal, and in terms of EBITDA, our growth was amazing during 2025 in Spain, Romania, yeah, Italy. Thank you.
A question from Irina Railean. Are there any updates regarding a potential Digi Spain IPO? We have, I think we have disclosed in the last quarters, that or at the end of last year, apology, that we are continuously looking for opportunities, making an IPO in Spain is an opportunity to enhance value of the Spanish group, of the Digi group overall. This is certainly a possibility for us. However, as of today, we don't have clear and precise guidance on the moment and timing of IPO. Whenever we are ready, we will, we will certainly announce the market. The second question: What will be the cash dividend distribution policy for 2025?
Should we expect free share allocations to substitute cash distributions, or do you intend to continue both in parallel? Well, thank you very much for the question. I think it's very helpful. We, we do not, we do not consider that these two are competing. To the contrary, we want to continue the cash dividend policy in 2025, as we did this before, meaning the dividends will be on, on par with 2024. Sorry, the dividends will be in the dividends paid in 2026 will be on par or better to the ones paid in 2025. Yes, increasing, increasing the number of shares in circulation has no connection to this, so it will not affect the, the normal dividend distribution. Thank you very much for the question.
A question on Digi Spain net debt position as of 31st of December 2025. We have just published preliminary results at this moment. The full report is being prepared and is being reviewed by the auditors, by KPMG. We would kindly ask you to have patience until end of April, when we publish the full numbers, both for Romania, Spain, and the rest of the group. On Belgium: What are the main structural barriers you face in Belgium? Why is the market accelerating at a significantly slower pace compared to Portugal? Well, thank you very much. I think it's a correct question.
I will just come back to what we discussed for a few times, well, maybe not in the last six months, or maybe not in the last one or two conference calls, but before. We've always mentioned that our markets in Iberian Peninsula, both Spain and Portugal, benefit from much more developed infrastructure that is available in those markets and is provided by the incumbents, in certain cases, based on regulatory environment, in other cases, on a competitive basis. This infrastructure is lacking in Belgium, which makes us do an effort to develop our own. This does not change the attractiveness of the market or the project for us.
It, it will just take longer to develop and to achieve in comparison with again, Spain, Portugal. This is something we're used to. We have developed Romania from scratch. Of course, I would say jokingly, in the last more than 30 years. Of course, 30 years has no relevance in this example, but building organically networks is, is, something that we know and we're not afraid of. Having said this, we will exploit any opportunity to obtain access to existing infrastructure of the incumbent operators, or we will try to find opportunities again to do deals with them or with other infrastructure providers. Second question: When do you tend to fully consolidate Belgium? There's no guidance on that.
As you know, we are partnering in Belgium with Citymesh Group. As long as this partnership involves mutual control of business, we cannot consolidate Belgium. So far, so good. We are in this setup, so no change is expected. Yeah. Question number three: What is the effective CapEx budget allocated to Belgium for 2026? How much of this investment will be financed through local debt versus capital injections from the parent company? I think our allocation for our expectation for contributions to the Belgian market are in the EUR 50 million-EUR 60 million for 2026. This is relatively smaller number in the overall picture of CapEx that we want to deploy.
However, from the accounting perspective, this is not part of CapEx. These are not the funds that we're looking to obtain locally. These are the funds provided on the group level. Given the relatively low ARPU in Portugal, do you foresee price increases? What would be a target ARPU level that would make the Portuguese operations sustainably profitable? Yeah, this is the last question. I think this is not the right way to look at it. We believe that we have right, affordable, good prices in all our markets as of today. We have launched our Portuguese operations only recently, for slightly longer than one year.
There's no intention to do any price increases because we believe that the current prices work both for our customers and for us. So for us, becoming profitable is just a matter of volume, it's not a matter of price. We can certainly say that, yeah, now, mid-term, long-term, it's not, it's not our intention to adjust the prices. A question from Christian Petri. "Hi, can you comment on the cost per home in Spain of EUR 800 per home?" Sorry. Sorry. It was the first part of the question, and then there's a correction. "Sorry, EUR 48-EUR 49 per home, and how it is versus the competition?" I'll let Marius just to comment.
Thank you, Christian. Our cost of deployment compared to, to historical cost of deployment of our competitors, tends to be in the range of probably less than half of what they used to spend for it. This proves that the vertical integration model that we developed works great for us and allowed us to have a structural competitive advantage on long term. Being able to compete with lower pricing for fixed broadband services, but also with, with good margin, and with potential to grow the profitability on long term.
Yeah. Thank you, Marius. The next question is from Titus Victor. Which is the CapEx guidance for 2026? When free cash flow do you expect to become positive? Well, the CapEx guidance for 2026, I did already mention, we would expect roughly a 10% decrease of CapEx in 2026 versus 2025. From roughly EUR 800 million, we would like to go to EUR 725 million, plus, minus. I mean, could be EUR 725 million, EUR 730 million, EUR 735 million, or maybe a bit lower than EUR 725 million. We, we'll see. The intention is overall to decrease the CapEx intensity. If you paid attention... Sorry, I, I missed to mention this.
It was on on our slide number eight in the presentation. The CapEx intensity is anyway coming down as we spent in 2025 36% of CapEx from revenues significantly lower than 40% or close to 50% of CapEx spend that we had in the previous in the previous years. In terms of free cash flow positive, well, we are free cash flow positive in Romania, our largest and most mature and established market, and we are very happy about this. We will certainly work to become free cash flow positive in the midterm, in Spain, in line with the guideline that Marius mentioned a bit earlier.
In terms of free cash flow in the other markets, it's probably a bit early to say. Anyway, somewhere in the 10%-15% market share in mobile and fixed services, when we achieve both in Portugal and Belgium, we would expect to be free cash flow positive. The next question is also on Belgium, from Ben Bro-Smit. The growth of the number of mobile RGUs in Belgium has slowed in Q4. Is that a reason for concern for the group? No, you're right, but the growth is more or less in line. I mean, in absolute term, we have gained close to 100,000 RGUs by the end of 2026.
I think we are working to find the proper engagement with the customers. We are working to improve, to increase our sales, it's not materially different from what we had in the first part of the year. Certainly, there's no concern. We see, I mean, despite numbers being relatively small, we see healthy engagement with our products and with Digi Belgium by our customers. No, no, no reason to concern. Second question: What is the expectation of the growth of Digi Belgium in 2026 in the mobile area? We as I, as I mentioned, we will not really provide precise guidance, but we will we will certainly be on par with 2025, and we want to be better. Difficult to say more.
How is the construction of the fiber network in Belgium evolving? Did you reach the expected 100,000 home passed in 2025? What is the goal of 2026? Yes, we did reach the 100,000 homes passed, and we have accelerated growth of the network towards the end of the year. We would certainly be looking to repeat in 2026, what we achieved in 2025. We will see whether we can also accelerate it further. On the slide about the CapEx, Belgium is not being mentioned. Why is that? Oh, it's a very simple answer. Belgium is not consolidated, as we did mention, so the consolidated results are for the rest of the group.
Nevertheless, I did mention the amount of funds that we allocated internally for our Belgian operations, yeah, you can, you can draw your conclusions. I hope it's helpful. The next question is from Daniela Mandru. OpEx increased by 22% year-on-year. Could you clarify whether this increase includes any material one-offs, or if it primarily reflects structural cost growth? Some of the costs are certainly one-offs related to the launch of Portugal, but also Portugal is structurally to continue. Most of the costs are structurally there. We will work to improve the cost situation through growth in customer numbers and further improvement in, in the cost structure, in particular in Portugal, because this is where we need this most.
Now, because your question was general at the group level, yeah, there are also, of course, positives like Spain growing at a very fast pace, with Marius clarifying that EBITDA guidance for 2026 will be in the low 20s. You can appreciate that EBITDA growth just for Spain is expected to be at at least 30% in 2026, in comparison to 2025, just this year. The second question is: The share of loss of equity accounted investees was significant in 2025 and is expected to remain negative in the near term.
Should we view the current level as peak related to the ramp-up phase, or do you expect losses to widen further in 2026 before improving? When do you expect the equity accounted investees to reach breakeven at net profit level? We consider... Yeah, you're right. I mean, from, from a technical perspective, we have recorded the effect of Portuguese losses as part of EBITDA, and we recorded part, the biggest, the largest part of Belgian losses as part of gross profit, or loss that we reported. So, this year, 2025, was a one-off year because it has recorded all of the costs of Portugal and most of the costs of Belgium.
The Belgian costs were not just the costs related to 2025, but because of the equity accounting method. In fact, these are cumulative costs that we recorded over the last three or four years. These two, from the impact point of view, are not going to repeat themselves in 2006. From this point of view, you have only a positive ramp-up, and we do not expect the negative results to widen, to widen, in both markets. Moreover, we are working to increase sales both in Portugal and in Belgium, and we are working to contain and to reduce costs, so that overall our situation is improved.
As I did mention, we do expect at least 10% EBITDA group EBITDA growth on a group level in 2026 in comparison to 2025, taking into account all of developments, Romania, the Spanish positive development, also the improvements in costs in Portugal, like I'm discussing. I sincerely hope it's helpful. Thank you very much for the question. Question number three. Within the increase in net financial costs, how much is attributable to the end of interest capitalization in Portugal? How much relates to one of refinancing charges? I would just give you a very general guidance. I think the end of interest capitalization in Portugal is somewhere in the EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million range, closer to the higher number.
The one-offs for the refinancing, I would say in the area of EUR 10 million. You should also take into account that around EUR 10 million-EUR 12 million were the impact of Forex, Forex change that happened in Romania in the first part of the year, which has not impacted us in the second part of the year, as the exchange rate was relatively constant. Question number four. Given that Spain is structurally much larger telecom market than Romania, how should we think about the long-term EBITDA potential in Spain relative to Romania? Do you see scope for Spain to converge toward a similar contribution profile over time? Well, thank you very much for the question. I think it's, it's a very insightful and helpful.
I will let also Marius to comment, but from my, from my point of view, 3,000 km away, but also having the benefit of being at the group level, the answer is yes. The answer is yes for a few times. Spain is bigger than Romania. There is scope for further efficiencies, and there's certainly intention on our side to improve the profitability model to, well, towards 30%-40% margin area. Not in the mid-term, because in the mid-term, we expect it to be just over 30%. On the long term, it certainly should converge towards the Romanian model. Yeah, thank you very much. Marius, do you want to add more?
No, I think it's, it's correct what you said. Hopefully, from my point of view, also, Romania will continue to grow, so.
No, thank you. Thank you very much. Portugal, and yeah, all the other market, markets. Yeah. Thank you. The next question is from Aleksandar Petricevic. Hi, could you please share some color on the competitive environment in Belgium, particularly regarding customer net adds, mobile and broadband, and whether you are seeing any change in traction? Are you currently tracking below, in line, or above your targets? Well, we have not really set targets, at, at least for-- at least to have certain milestones achieved in a certain time. It's not that the way it works. We, we are setting up a broad model. We are working to refine it, we are working to repoop, improve it, and we are working to continuously improve traction. I think we're still early on. 2025 was an important year. We have launched two markets.
We, we have launched two markets as a group, both Portugal and Belgium. Strategically, it's more important for us to focus on the Portuguese operations. From this point of view, we let Belgium find its way at its own pace, and when it will improve, it will improve. Again, I think we, we're discussing this in a scattered manner across questions, but I, I think, I hope you follow the question. You, you follow our logic. The idea is, the long-term idea is we know that the opportunity is right and correct. We'll certainly find our way of growth there. We'll just not overspend before we do so. Question from Danny. Could you provide mobile breakdown in postpaid and prepaid customers of your operations in Romania?
Well, thank you very much. We up until October... Well, up until November 25, 100% of our customers were postpaid only. We have acquired a relatively small portfolio of prepaid customers from Telekom Romania Mobile. I would say, just as a, as a, as a reference number, the share of prepaid, prepaid customers in our total portfolio is relatively small. It's in the area of 5%, and once again, they are all newcomers to our network. They all arrived just in the last two months, November and December. Can you please elaborate on the Belgium operation? Okay, a question from Stefan Nazy. Well, I think we did touch on that, so it's a very general question, so we'll move on. Thank you very much.
A question from Giovanni Reichenbach. Hi, a few questions. What is the amount of undrawn commitment, committed credit facilities accessible by the restricted group, except Spain? Ah, Giovanni, I was going to give you the full figure, but you want it now split, you're one step ahead. Anyway, as of end of December, Spain had available EUR 100 million undrawn, and Romania had available between EUR 50 million and EUR 60 million undrawn. Yeah, you were one step ahead, but I think I kept up this time.
By the way, this number, which is more than EUR 150 million for both countries, does not include the expected proceeds from sale of assets to Macquarie, which exceed EUR 150 million as of the end of last year. Overall, availability of funds for the group is more than EUR 300 million as of the end of last year. I hope it's helpful. Second question: What is the amount of proceeds targeted from the IPO of the Spanish unit? Well, I wish I knew when we do the IPO and how much it will be, but it's too early to say, and we can't comment. Thank you very much. Third question: Regarding the SOTA footprint, what is the amount of proceeds that you still have to receive, and when will they be received?
Yeah, I, I did touch on that just a question before. Does access the network on a pay-per-line basis, or does Digi have to guarantee a minimum level of penetration on such SOTA footprint? Marius, can you please comment, so the SOTA footprint, whether we pay on a per-line basis or whether we guarantee a minimum penetration? So apology, I think... Yes. Sorry, sorry. Now, now we can hear you, Marius.
Yes.
So, so-
The answer would be yes for both. We pay per line. Nevertheless, we have a minimum guarantee level agreed for SOTA footprint, which we are constantly overachieving. From that point of view, we are paying per line.
Yeah. Thank you very much. I think it's very helpful. Thank you. The last question from Giovanni: The group's net debt has increased by EUR 160 million in the first quarter 2025 versus third quarter 2025. Can you please bridge the main items that drove the change? Yeah, sorry, it's a bit too detailed, but we, we, we, we don't have the numbers at this moment. If you remember, we acquired the Telekom Romania Mobile for EUR 40 million in Q4. We've paid certain mobile frequencies in some of our markets. These are the bigger outstanding items. Of course, on top of that, the, the normal CapEx and the normal effort that we do o-of growth. Sorry, can't help you more at this moment.
Question from, Ines Pinto, Miguel. Hi, how are the conversation with Lisbon Metro? Do you have any news regarding the blue and green light timeline? All it was said is the Metro will give you access until the end of the year. Thank you very much, Ines, for the question. I know the discussion is ongoing. I, I don't have more details to brief you on this call. We have launched 40 or so close to 50 stations in Lisbon Metro by the end of last year, beginning of this year. The discussions are continuing, but I have no more visibility at this moment. Another question: What was the overall investment in Portugal in 2025?
I think we will provide these numbers once we issue the full year report. What kind of investment are expected in 2026? We can, we can only comment at this moment that our project in Portugal is fundamentally, substantially invested in, and most of it's also paid. From this point of view, we have, how should I say? No, no pressure or no further no, no significant further requirements at this moment. We do expect CapEx to decline in 2026 in comparison to 2025, but I will not provide further or more detailed guidance. Thank you very much. It's a question from Justine. It's a question for Marius, excuse me. It's about Spain.
Can Digi Spain compete with the triple play fixed mobile TV offers of its competitors? How important is football?
Thank you for your question. We historically competed without pay TV services, so Spain is different from Romania from this point of view, and Portugal. It's a market that depends less on pay TV services in order to be able to grow for fixed broadband and mobile services. We are offering since one year ago, pay TV services, but without very exclusive content like football or specific type of movies or series, and with that, we are able to compete. Most of the Spanish customers access TV also through terrestrial digital television for free. The market for pay TV, it's only a segment of all the market overall. We think we can compete without having access to premium content in order to be able to grow both for fixed broadband and mobile services.
Yes. Okay. Thank you. Next question from Anne- Claire D'Asson. "At the beginning of the year, you were guiding on a consolidation of Belgium in 2025. Why is it still not the case?" I think this is something we discussed in our last quarter call. Ownership-wise, at this moment, we own approximately... One second, yeah, 70%. Close to 80% of the Belgian operations. However, because it's a partnership, as I mentioned a bit earlier on the call, the IFRS standards, the auditors would simply not allow consolidation. This is the reality of the rules in terms of for consolidation. It's not our choice.
A question from Piotr: "What was EBITDA after lease in Spain in 2025?" I will answer this question. It was EUR 175 million, and EBITDA before lease in Spain was roughly EUR 210 million. What CapEx and adjusted EBITDA in 2026 do you expect to be re-recorded by the group? Piotr, I broadly said that we would expect at least 10% growth in EBITDA and approximately 10% decline in CapEx. This is our expectation for 2026. Thank you very much. It's a moment of silence. Thank you very much for the quality questions that we received.
It was very helpful, and thank you very much again for the opportunity to explain in detail our results and our operations. We will end the call here as there are no more further questions, and we will meet you all in mid-May when we will discuss the first quarter results. Thank you very much. Thank you, and bye-bye.