Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Digi Communications 2026 Capital Markets Day, live from Madrid. My name is Zuzanna Kurek, I am Investor Relations Officer at Digi Communications. I will be your host and moderator for today. Let me briefly walk you through today's agenda. We have prepared two dedicated sessions for you. The first session will focus on Digi Communications at group level. During the session, the presentations will be delivered by the top management of the company, Serghei Bulgac, CEO; Valentin Popoviciu, Chief Strategy and Operations Officer; and Dan Ioniță, CFO of Digi Communications. After the presentation, we will be having an interactive Q&A session with the management team, which I will be moderating. Following the first Q&A session, we will take a 15 minutes break, we will come back with a dedicated session on Digi Spain.
The presentations for Digi Spain will be delivered by Marius Vărzaru, CEO; Carlos Sanz, CFO; and Cătălin Neagoe, Deputy CEO. After the presentation, we'll also have a dedicated 30-minute session for the Q&A with the management team of Digi Spain. At 2:30 P.M., we invite those of you who are here with us in Madrid to join us for a networking lunch, followed by a visit to Digi Spain headquarters. Before we begin, let me briefly explain to you how we will handle the Q&A session during this event. Digi Communications, as many of you know, is listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, and we have many shareholders who could have not joined us today due to logistical reasons.
We want to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to ask questions, both those present in the room and those joining us online. For this reason, we will be taking questions through our dedicated Q&A platform. To submit a question, please scan the QR code currently displayed on the screen. For those of you with us in Madrid, you have the QR code printed on the back of your agenda. The QR code will be also shown again later during the event. Once you log in to the platform, you will have two separate sections: Digi Communications Q&A and Digi Spain Q&A. If your question relates to group activities, please submit it under Digi Communications Q&A. If the question relates to our Spanish operations, please submit it under Digi Spain Q&A.
Finally, please note that we might be making forward-looking statements today during this event and that the actual results of Digi Communications may differ materially. We therefore kindly ask you to familiarize yourselves with the disclaimer, which you can currently see on the screen, and which applies equally to all statements made in today's conference. Now I can say the introductory part is over, and it is my pleasure to invite to the stage Mr. Serghei Bulgac, CEO of Digi Communications, to officially begin the first session.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Zuzanna. Thank you very much for the introduction and thank you very much to all of you who have joined our presentation here in Madrid today, physically in this beautiful room, but also online, those who watch from afar. It's a great honor and pleasure for us to meet you, our Digi Communications investors, here in Madrid. It's been a while. Last time we saw each other in this format was in 2018. It's this meeting was long overdue.
Also it's an amazing opportunity for us to not only show what we, Digi, have achieved in the last five, six, seven years, but also what our colleagues here in Madrid have done, in a way independently of us or with our support, but mostly with their hard work and with their very hard involvement in all this and how much value they contributed to our group, but also how much opportunity and prospects we have here. It will be a long presentation, so prepare for hard work, listening, paying attention. We sincerely hope we will do our best to explain you our model, to explain what we do, and to really show you what is also the opportunity here, because we strongly believe it's really amazing.
Having said this, we will, as Zuzanna said, the presentation will be split in two parts. I, my colleague Valentin and Dan, will run you through the group activities, through the group operations, and we will leave later the floor to our Spanish colleagues to go very much into detail into the Spanish operations. Let's start. Just briefly, at Digi, our goal, our philosophy is to use the latest modern, cutting-edge technology to provide the best superior communication services to our customers at affordable prices. Probably this statement, very briefly tries to summarize what we've achieved in Romania after more than 30 years of operations, what we are striving to achieve in Spain, and also what we intend to achieve in our new markets like Portugal, Belgium, and also Italy, where we operate today.
Of course, in various markets, we are in different stages of execution, but I think this statement summarizes or provides the common line between all of our activities. No, some of, for some of you it will be new. We are originally a Romanian-born company, an alternative operator, cable operator that was set up in the early 1990s, 1992 to be more precise, in Romania, and which has grown mostly organically. I think the line with 11% CAGR in the last 11 years doesn't really show so nice because for many years the growth was much smaller.
The financial people that will understand that it's a lot of work, again, given that more than 95% of it is really organic achievement. A few highlights from this slide, just to mention what we did in the past. We operate today in five territories, Romania, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium. We used to operate in a few other markets in Central Eastern Europe, which we exited during the 2010s. The most notable was sale of Hungarian operations in 2022 to 4iG in Hungary. We've listed ourselves back in 2017 on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. We launched our Spanish operations back in 2008. We launched our Italian operations back in 2010.
We started offering services in Belgium and in Portugal back in 2024. Pretty scattered developments along this slide. Once again, we will try to explain that despite diversified geography, there are very strong common elements that we do across all operations and that we try to implement across all operations, but of course, adapted for local realities. Today, or as of 2025, EUR 2.2 billion in sales on the group level, almost EUR 600 million in EBITDA and over 32 million RGUs. Probably this last mention about customers is the biggest gratitude that we want to express during this and many other meetings of this kind.
The whole of our success is really due to the trust and the support of our customers. Also it's somehow circular because we believe that it doesn't come just like that from nowhere. It comes, as I said, from very hard work, but also from few principles that are outlined also on the right side of the presentation, but in the, in the, in the corner below. We offer a superior infrastructure. We are extremely customer-centric in providing our services, in creating the packages that we offer, in doing the prices, the pricing, but also in the way we handle customers.
We are extremely integrated, and this gives us a big advantage, both in terms of ability to roll out networks, to develop networks, to build networks, but also to service them, which is very important to long term. We use the most modern technologies, 4, 5G type of communications in mobile. GPON, 10 Gb connectivity, XGS-PON connectivity for fiber. Again, these are the latest technologies available, and we benefit to the maximum from these in our operations. Fully integrated model across all five markets that we operate in. Of course, Romania is the most advanced. We started, as I said, originally as a pay TV operator back in the nineties, gradually expanded, expanding into broadband.
We were one of the pioneering operators offering DOCSIS services back in the 1990s. Of course, during the 2000s we replaced this technology with fiber optic GPON, also a very early adopter. We followed broadband with fixed telephony and later mobile communications, making it fully converged services. Of course, in Romania, due to size and scale, we also have a media presence. We have our own channels that are offered mostly to our customers, to users of our pay TV services. Spain, as I mentioned, is currently the second largest, by far the fastest growing market that we operate. Again, fully converged model. Since one and a half years, we also offer pay TV.
Before then, before that moment, we were offering only mobile and broadband. Followed by Portugal, again based on acquisition of Nowo at the end of 2024, but also launching our own services, Digi services. Again, we also offer a fully integrated model. The smaller markets, Italy and Belgium, so far, it's mostly mobile and broadband services. Of course, if scale allows, we will provide all services in those territories as well. So it's just a repeat of what I mentioned a bit earlier on a slide before, going a bit deeper into the key elements of our strategy. I will not stay on this summary slide too much but delve directly into technology.
I'll invite Valentin to help me and discuss in more details our, yeah, our technology footprint, both in Romania but also in other markets.
As Serghei said, for us the technology is very important and in terms of the services it's based on... It's working?
No. No, no.
I can speak louder anyway, so. Let's go. Yes. As Serghei said, thank you, Serghei, for that. The technology part is very important for us as we try to provide to our customers the same quality of service. We like to take advantage of most of the good parts that the technology would offer us in providing those services. That's why we started the fiber deployment. As we say, we have a superior infrastructure which is enabling us structural advantages for all the markets and for the all the services that we are offering. Of course, this is anyway the basis for the mobile services too. As we know, as we all know, the 5G, it's actually not mobile.
It's a combination between the mobile and the fiber, because any other services which would be on the future deployed on 5G and 6G would not work without the fiber or full fiber deployment and the dense networks of fiber. Starting with Romania, where we work on the fixed networks, for more than 30 years, we have a very large network which is covering 95% of the households in the country, and it's a very dense network covering both urban and rural areas. It's practically everywhere. The network is completely fiber, and we have FTTH and FTTB, and of course it's 10 Gb enabled. We have the latest XGS-PON technology deployed for our consumers.
We have a high, let's say, probability for the future to upgrade to any other future deployment of 50 Gb per second or whatever would be the next technology for the consumers and the businesses. Of course, we have deployed this gradually along the years with a large human effort, and we have done this in a very efficient way, which allow us to proceed further on in the future with our own model. The result is that we have approximately 9.1 million homes passed with fiber and more than 65,000 kilometers of fiber deployed. As I said, it's a very dense network, not only in the access part but also at the backbone level. Then in Spain, of course, it's the same deployment.
We are working on the same principle of fast and effective and efficient deployment, which allow us to have 100% FTTH to our customers and 93% penetration with 10 Gb service in the network, which is I think is the largest one by now. Of course, we have a combination not only of our Digi SMART fiber footprint, but also of the coverage of the other parts which are not yet covered by us through Telefónica NEBA. We have reached already 13.7 million homes passed with the Digi SMART fiber offering, and we already have more than 10,000 kilometers of backbone in place, which it's also the basis for the future deployment in new areas. Looking at Portugal, which for us it's an emerging market for now.
It's already started with a good pace of 2.3 million households, which we have now. This is based on our deployment and the Nowo acquisition. We think that it's already a good presence in the country as we are getting awareness of the brand and further services expansion. We are focusing on that right now to make it efficient from the customer take-up perspective. We have anyway further network execution in place, and you'll see more on the mobile slide coming up. Of course, we already work on the backbone side, we have more than or close to 2,000 kilometers of backbone in place. The backbone part in all the countries is very important also from the resilience of the network and stability of the services.
We have seen the effect also lately with the different, let's say challenges that all the operators in Europe would face with the climate change, with much more, let's say, or more events coming. We are prepared for that because we construct many redundancies in the networks based on our own fiber. Going further on to the mobile. We say that our mobile network is a modern and resilient mobile network and is based on the deployment of fiber because most of the sites are connected through fiber to be able to provide also not only 4G with a very good quality of service towards customers but also 5G. Starting with Romania, here we have the largest coverage which has been built in the last almost 20 years.
We are the actually the, at some point in time in 2017, new entrant in the mobile market by then. Since then we have managed to build the largest network in the country. We have the largest coverage, covering more than 99.5% of the population. Also, we have a large amount of base stations, which is 9,600 currently. We are still in expansion of the current base stations network because of course, not only the coverage but also the capacity of the network is important and we work on that, taking advantage that we have a good spectrum portfolio in 800, 900.
It's the low bands and the mid bands and also the upper mid bands like 3.5 GHz, which was one of the main 5G bands at the beginnings. We provide both 4G and 5G, of course. We have the largest coverage of the 5G in the entire urban environment in Romania, and we try to constantly enhance the quality of services and the network footprint and capacity in the years to come. We have already 7.9 million mobile users, and we have a good, very good dynamics for that, and you'll see later on in the slides. In Spain, we have made the transition from MVNO to MNO in the third quarter of 2025. It's a very good and major milestone for us.
We have already frequencies in 1,800 to 2,100 and 3.5 GHz bands, so we are practically active in the market with 4G and 5G services. We have a combination of our non-own network and the national roaming, which is providing us coverage in the country. We are targeting to get our own network with 10,000 mobile station by 2033. We already have 7.3 million users, and you already know the dynamics, and you'll see it later on in the slides. Portugal, which is a network which has been built. We have got the license in 2021, and we have built the network starting with 2022, so it's four years old.
We have managed to build already 4,600 mobile sites in this interval of time. If you look at the size of the countries, Romania and Portugal, both population and surface, it's a significant network already, which is covering most of the country. We already have 98.9% of coverage of the population, including the islands. So we cover also the Madeira and the Azores. Also, we have already good portfolio spectrum in 900, 1,800, 2.6, and 3.5 bands. Based on that, we provide both 4G and 5G in the country. We have a good 5G footprint already.
We don't stop the deployment here because we have announced already that this year, we'll add to the network another 500 sites, which will bring our network on par with the other MNOs in the market. We work on the quality and the stability and the capacity of the network throughout the following years. We already have 471,000 customers, which will grow in the future. Thank you.
Yeah. Do you hear me? Yeah. Thank you. I was coming back to our integrated model and customer centricity. What differentiates us from many, if not most other telecom operators, the fact that we run most of our operations internally from building, servicing, the networks, but also to call centers, complaints, customer handling, and any other adjacent operations that we have today, we have to do on a day-to-day basis. We have several or we have many advantages coming from them, not to mention improved costs, not to mention improved agility, but also quality of service in comparison to many other operators. All this makes our model much faster, much more resilient, and better adapted or flexible, better adapted to today's needs of the customers.
This is the reality. We are a service, a telecom service, which benefits a lot from technology, technological advancements, but also customers are very demanding, and we have to be there, using the latest and most advanced tools available. We are providing very simple packages, very simple options to our users. We pioneered more than 10 years ago, back in Romania, unlimited communications for mobile, whereby for a few euros, you were able to have unlimited voice, very large data packages, and also, generous, you had generous allowance to speak in roaming to our mobile customers. Not to mention that we provide also very affordable broadband and TV products to our customers.
Also, what's very important, we don't force any bundling on our customers. There are no additional, there are little or no additional incentives to combine the services. In most cases, the customers are free to choose whatever options they use. What's very important, there is very little fine print or very little strings attached that customers don't understand. We value this, we treasure this very much because it helps our relationship, it helps the connection with our customers. This is all embedded in our day-to-day operations. This is all basically a long-term proposition. This is something that we are not going to change or we do not want to change.
To translate it into a different way of putting or into a different way of saying, we get asked a lot, almost every time by investors, by analysts, by press, when do we increase prices? The answer is, we're not working on something like that now, and we are not envisaging to do it in the future because our model, our pricing works. We generate very healthy margins. In Romania, in the home market, we are generating good margins in Spain, which are set to increase significantly in the next period, as our colleagues will explain.
Of course, we are set to enjoy the same benefits and the same dynamic also in the new markets. Just, it's an opportunity for us, again, many of you here are from Spain. Many of you again watching us online probably don't know the Romanian market so much. Just to put some proofs on the table, to show that the model or the strategy works, these are the results that we achieved. What you see here is main slide of the part. These are the market shares on the Romanian market, as reported by the national regulator, as of June 2025.
As I said, so you see basically an alternative operator that was born in the nineties, has never benefited from any extraordinary support, either from the state or from anybody else. Of course, we were supported by our debt investors, by our creditors, by our banks, by our financial partners, by equity investors, by the financial markets. Apart from this, we are really a private operator that has reinvested all, if not most, if not all of its proceeds into our operations. The result is here. Basically, we have more than 75% market share in pay TV.
We have more than 70% market share in broadband, and we have still room to grow, and we have still work to do in mobile, where today our market share is 30%. Well, today, sorry. Eight months ago, our market share was 30%. It's certainly more than 30% today. We also wanted to highlight the mobile, and we showed the second line, where you see postpaid residential customers. Our market share is already 46%. This is the segment we treasure most, we favor most. Of course, there's nothing wrong with B2B. We also offer B2B services in Romania, and I think our offering and our engagement with our customers over there is also very good.
Our main focus also in Romania, but especially in the markets outside of Romania, Spain, Portugal, Italy, is residential customers. You see how good we are already in Romania over there. You saw on a slide earlier that average growth rate in the last 11 years, 10, 11 years was 11%. This is. There was nothing wrong with that slide. Just to explain that only in the last year, only in 2025, our growth rate was around 13%, 14%. It's not something that we used to enjoy in the past. We still enjoy very high growth.
You already see that despite being a very mature operation in Romania, we had 20% growth in mobile, 6% growth in broadband and 2% growth in pay TV. To us, these are amazing results. Yeah, we certainly will work to continue this dynamic in Romania. Of course, in absolute terms, not in relative terms. It's difficult to keep percentages running year-on-year. We are basically empowering or letting our colleagues in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium do the same. Of course, at its own pace when the time allows, hopefully, yeah, executing the same strategy and achieving the same dynamic.
Just a couple of words before I finish my introduction and before Dan says a few words on the financials, on the numbers. This is a brief summary, and of course, this presentation is very limited. Romania is very established, very strong operation, very successful, with market shares in the main markets exceeding being in the 75%-80% area. Very strong growth in mobile, which is set to continue. Having said this, what's very important, EBITDA margin over 40%, very, very strong. Again, it comes to all the explanations we tried, myself and Valentin, to give before. Own technology, very integrated model, extremely cost concise. Of course, what's very important, Romania is already a cash engine for the group, for itself and for the group.
Because the CapEx, as we achieved sales of more than EUR 1.1 billion, the CapEx intensity is decreasing, we will have more funds on one hand to delever our profile slightly, but also to invest into new territories. Spain, I could have spoken only about Spain, but we leave this to our colleagues. Basically, it's the growth engine of the Group. It shows outstanding results today and is set to continue them at least in the next five years. Of course, we also hope beyond that horizon. We have achieved scale with almost 11 million RGUs as of the end of last year.
We've achieved scale with run rate sales of almost EUR 1 billion, and we are also set now to improve further significantly our operations by increasing EBITDA from less than 20%, 19% during last year to more than 20% this year and significantly growing. Again, I will not go into details now. Marius will explain this more in the future. Of course, this all helps because it's a virtuous cycle with all the cash flow that is generated being invested or reinvested in the operations. It just helps us to grow further. Lastly, but not least, we are also focusing on the emerging operations. I think the markets expected from us q uick turnaround, immediate performance, both in Portugal and Belgium.
However, it is not so easy, and I think it's not so easy for any operator. We're extremely happy to have had the opportunity to participate in the mobile auctions in those territories. We are very happy to have provided coverage to approximately half of Portuguese population in terms of fixed networks. We are very happy to have built our own network and our own mobile network, covering almost 99% of the population in the last four years and expanding it significantly further during this year, as Valentin have said. We are set to consolidate all this presence and all these results, we are set to try to become EBITDA positive by the end of next year, beginning of 2028.
Of course, decrease the CapEx intensity. It all works for us. We have the patience, and we know that the model will work. With this, I finish my presentation. Dan will run you quickly through the numbers, and we will discuss the questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Serghei. Next. Sorry. In this slide, you can see the results that the group had in the last five years. You can see the tremendous growth, starting with RGUs, you can see there, and then revenue kept up for sure with the RGU. A slower growth pace. However, that was on purpose like that because, as my colleagues before mentioned, we are very keen in investing our success back into the business, and that means investing in our network and our customers. You can see also some figures, some key figures on the homes passed and the growth in this period. Romania, which is clearly the biggest market for us, grew quite healthy, up to today, having 9.1 million homes passed, which is entirely, basically entirely fiber.
All this fiber network covers 95% of the Romanian population, which is quite a number. Basically, we go into even remote counties and towns. Next is Spain, which shows the growth that I don't think any other operator can show. But on that and the take-up rate, the dwellings covered, which is now more than half, more than half of Spain, in terms of residential area, at least. My colleagues in Spain will tell you more because, yeah, it needs to be further detailed. We go into some more details with the elements presented before. First of all, RGUs per country. You see here the growth in pay TV, which was quite healthy.
Next is the growth in broadband, which more than doubled, we double that, we have the growth in mobile services, which tripled in this period. Least but yeah, maybe nobody expects, everybody would have thought that fixed lines are a dying breed. Well, not for us. We grew. We grew even the fixed telephony lines in terms of RGU, at least. This clearly shows that our vision is very successful, even when the industry shows dying segments. Okay. The RGUs, as seen before, are showing quite a growth. Clearly, Romania takes quite a healthy chunk of that, or it shows. Yeah, it's more than EUR 1 billion. Spain next to follow with very close to EUR 1 billion.
Clearly, as my colleagues showed before, Portugal as an emerging market for us, we will for sure after this first year, so basically 2025 was the first year for Portugal operations, and first year, which was a bit tough, we do have the operational base to show ever-improving figures there also. Adjusted EBITDA, only growth. Nothing more to say on that. Maybe just the fact that you see there the margins. Although we kept on growing, we kept on reinvesting, it's a very healthy and quite stable margin. Here it's a small summary of the 2025 results. You see again the revenues and a bit of other income, but these are basically telecom revenues, everything. You see at the end there a 15% growth.
Very, very healthy growth. Adjusted EBITDA, we present this number and maybe not. We present EBITDA ex- operating leases. We believe that this is a better metric and it shows the true business and not some financial engineering in which you don't present rent, which in telecom is quite the amount. Back to the figures. You see here again, very good growth, very good margins. Actually, the growth is not shown here, but anyway, it's a very good growth. Very good margins. You see the results of the first year in Portugal with minus for now.
As I mentioned before, the things are set to, everything is set to have a next year, which will be better and so on, until, as Serghei mentioned, we will reach in the next few years, breakeven and then for sure go into positive. Basically Romania, which is, Spain and then Romania, I would say show the future, hopefully. RGUs, nothing more to say. They are growing and growing, and again, they had a 15% growth this year, matching really the growth in revenues. Even some more details. A bit of flavor on EBITDA. We presented maybe just to have you, for you to have some comparison with other players in the market.
We also presented EBITDA, which is just EBITDA adjusted, so without the impact of financial leases, here mentioned as IFRS 16 impact. Yeah, you see the very healthy growth. Yeah, the 1% I forgot to mention before, the 1% increase is only 1% because of the start of the operations in Portugal. Otherwise, excluding that, it's clearly more than that. Okay. The group's revenue per country, very healthy numbers, as you see. Here, we add a bit more, actually another element, I should say, which is the CapEx. As one would expect, showing this year-on-year growth, significant growth in RGUs have to come with a cost. For us, that cost is CapEx.
Actually, it's not really, it's not really a cost since it's us building our asset base and building, basically a structural competitive advantage for the years to come. Yeah. You see the CapEx declined a bit in 2025. That is because 2024 had the impact in terms of CapEx of the Nowo acquisition in Portugal. The last slide, it's showing the leverage profile and a small summary of our debt. Now, it's true that the leverage is increasing. However, we say that this is a temporary increase, and this year was a bit larger than what we usually had as a result of a cumulative of two elements.
We invested a lot in the ramp-up of Portugal there, because clearly as you would imagine you need to build it and then they will come to have a paraphrase of a movie. We needed to build the network and then the customer started coming. It was this ramp-up in Portugal which came with a lot of CapEx, which is financed through loans in a significant portion. Actually, I want to say this. All our loans were used and are being used to finance the CapEx. We are, in terms of operation, positive, clearly at the group level. In terms of CapEx, we are a bit negative, we can't sustain all the CapEx.
This is all the loans are only for CapEx. CapEx, which in turn drive the RGU growth and drive quite healthy RGU growth. Coming back, it is a bit of a growth because of the CapEx that we had in Portugal, but also in Romania. We acquired some assets from Telekom, some assets which were very important for us. We, in Spain, again, we are building a lot, as you saw. In the same time, the other element clearly in the leverage is EBITDA. EBITDA was impacted this year, as you saw before, mainly by the Portuguese result, which clearly next year will be better. At least for us, clearly. I'm sure that for you as well.
If not, we are more than eager to answer any questions on that, on any other subject. We believe that it will be going down by the fact that or as a result of the fact that EBITDA will improve, will significantly improve we say next year, overall EBITDA that is, and the facilities that we'll take on next year will be significantly lower than what we had this year. Basically, this was my presentation. We are now waiting for questions that will, maybe shed more light on the opinion you have, and we have, we clearly hope you have a very positive opinion. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Dan, y ou remain on the stage with us. Please take a seat. I would like to invite also Serghei and Valentin. Thank you for your presentations. We can now move to the Q&A session. For those of you who would like to ask a question, please scan the QR code that you can see right now and submit the question through the platform. We already have the questions coming in, so I want to start with one that I believe is on everybody's mind. We saw the fantastic Romania slide, the market leadership. The question that keeps coming up is there still growth? Where can you grow? Which segments? What is the strategy going forward, and where do you see the most meaningful opportunities in the coming years?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Zuzanna. Thank you for the question. The answer is yes; there is growth. As I said, despite being a very well-established, mature operation, we are extremely happy to still have further opportunity with only 30% market share in mobile. We are set to improve our presence, and this happens on a daily basis. Our additions run constant in the last few years. Our monthly additions to customer base run constant. And again, these are mostly postpaid customers that we are gaining. Having said this, also other segments, broadband and pay TV, continue to add customers. While statistically it's improbable, in fact it's happening and we are very happy about it.
All in, I believe last year our growth rate was in the area of 7%. Again, we are not set to maintain the percentages, but certainly we expect a growth rate of 5% area for this year, and also next year, or at least similar growth rate raised in absolute terms. Yes, despite being very large, very set, we see a very positive dynamic and we hope it continues.
One of our analysts is actually asking if there is a targeted market position in the mobile segment?
No, not really. Not really. We don't set ourselves targets, but we are very happy with the dynamic and the performance. Thank you.
Another question was about any other new services. Is there anything else actually in Romania that you have thought or are thinking about introducing? I don't think there is much to be, but...
No, it's a good question, and the reality is it's something we are continuously looking for. It's just that we had so much work to do and so much results to deliver in our classical segments, telecom, pay TV, broadband, mobile, that we really concentrated on this so far. Yes, we are, we're constantly looking for new solutions, for new opportunities, and we may come up with new things. Too early to say. It could be enhancement of the existing services or like adding features to the media product, to the pay TV product. Also, or, but it could be also new products. Yes, for sure.
One of the things that you emphasized today during all of your presentations was the highly integrated model that keeps many of the capabilities in-house. Could you elaborate how this unique model translates into tangible advantages in terms of speed of execution, cost efficiency compared to traditional telecom operators?
We can link that to your previous questions related to the new services or addition to the new services. For example, in our case where our entire software stack and the OSS, BSS, CRMs in all the markets that we operate are integrated and operational, makes us from the delivery perspective of new services and additions to existing services, much agile and the time to market is very short.
From the moment that we decide that we need to provide a new feature or a new service towards our customers base, wherever they are, wherever, if they are in, regardless if they're in Romania or Spain or Portugal, for example, we can deliver that in a very short time and very efficiently, taking advantage both of the software capabilities that we have in-house, but also of the engineering teams, which is a very nice and great asset that we have already in all the countries that we operate in. Also the dynamics for us in getting the markets that we have independent from that from that perspective is very important and creates a high agility, which will bring us to the new service and the new addition very fast and very efficient.
One, another question that keeps popping up is related to the asset strategy. You previously sold some FTTH assets in Spain and across the group, across the whole Digi Communications group. What's the view on the infrastructure ownership going forward? Should we expect that you will keep or sell your built FTTH infrastructure and any mobile towers? Does that view differ per market?
Well, thank you. I think there's no precise yes or no black and white answer to this question. I think we will try to analyze any and all opportunities in their specific context. Indeed, we struck a partnership with abrdn early in Spain, and the project was completed at the end of last year. We've also sold network to Macquarie in SOTA project, as we call it internally. This is something that is ongoing and is on track to be completed mostly of by the end of this year. Again, these partnerships and sale monetization transactions, they were made in the context of an extraordinary opportunity that we have of growth in Spain. Basically, it's never say never.
Whenever we have sizable or comparable opportunities, we will look at any opportunities to find financing for such project, be it classical routes, debt, equity, or asset sale. Yeah.
Actually, because, this coincides with another question, the owning and controlling of infrastructure is not part of maintaining the competitive edge. It's not the only criteria to your competitive edge.
As Spain already showed, no.
Thank you. I would like to move now to Portugal, because one of the questions related to the target for the breakeven is what are the milestones that DG will have to reach in order for that to happen?
Yes, Portugal is a story in the making, story in progress for us. We like this opportunity a lot. I think the Portuguese market is a very good way, very good place for us to enjoy growth over the next years. We have closed the year with over 850,000 RGUs. The intention is to grow at least 20% or more than 20%, the RGU base, the customer base, also this year, and to continue.
I believe to, just to add more clarity to what we mentioned earlier in the presentation, but also to answer to your question, we intend to reach closer to 10%, of the market share by the end of 2027, early 2028, which will also put us into positive territory.
We have a question. I'll be going through the markets because I see we do get a diverse set of questions. Why did Italy, why didn't it follow the same path as Spain in terms of the RGU growth? Does it have something to do with the fact that DG doesn't provide the pay TV services there? Are you looking to change that?
Yeah, maybe I will, sorry, I will explain. Not, not all markets, not all opportunities are born equal. That's the reality. And I believe that in Spain, we had several advantages. On one hand, starting a bit earlier, two years, in fact, made a big difference. Probably the most important advantage is our very good, very strong cooperation with Telefónica, which is both the incumbent, but also the owner and operator of the best mobile infrastructure in the country. Having had the opportunity to be partner, to cooperate with Telefónica helped a lot. We did not have the same trajectory in Italy. We had, during our history, we started with a different MVNO host, and we changed hands three times, now being on the network of Vodafone Italia.
I think, technically speaking, or I don't know, in a nutshell, these are the biggest differences. These are the biggest change; these are the biggest difference between the Spanish and the Italian operation. Having said that, we like all our markets where we operate, and we believe that Italy is a great opportunity and a great market in itself. It's a very sizable economy. It's a very sizable country. We're certainly trying to enhance, improve our mobile offering further on. Last year, we've achieved 530,000 users on mobile, a 7% growth, which is a good performance.
We are also trying to expand our fixed, to build and to set our fixed footprint for now only in Torino, which If successful, and we are still in the test phase, will give us a way to develop our services further. Certainly, Italy is precious to us, although it's one of the smallest markets today. But we will continue developing and investing into it.
We go through all the markets. We have a question also about Belgium. It's the question that also come ups in our results calls related to the consolidation. What is the reason behind the fact that it's not consolidated? Also, if what's the commitment to the market, and if you consider that you would be able to transition to an MNO model there?
For Belgium, well, sorry about that, but I feel that there is one more difference, very important...
For Italy.
For Italy, between Italy and Spain. Spain, I feel I need to say, has a very, very, very good management. Yeah. I had to say this. On Belgium, basically it's a technical IFRS thing. We could not consolidate because we do not have full control. IFRS doesn't allow us to consolidate a subsidiary if we do not have full control. It doesn't really matter the percentage of ownership; it really matters the fact that you have or not full control. There we have a partner with which we need to discuss the main operations that we do there. That doesn't allow us to consolidate Belgium. It's a pure technical stuff.
And the MNO?
About the MNO part, we have a path towards MNO there because indeed we have a model which is similar with the Spanish model, with the national roaming agreement, while we do our own network mobile deployment because also the spectrum holdings that we have there in the JV that we have with the Belgian partners, it's a good amount of spectrum which allow us to deploy in both low band and mid band sites which will take up both 4G and 5G traffic, and we are on that path, and we'll see that in the future when we'll be announcing that.
A question about the pricing strategy that is one of the also the four pillars of Digi strategy, not only in Romania, but across all the markets. The question is, considering that you seem to hold the customer services prices frozen, what are your key factors to optimize margin per client? I believe the question refers generally to all the markets, but maybe we can give example by Romania.
Indeed, maybe not in the order of importance, but, it all, it's, it's really an integrated model. It all starts from the fact that costs are controlled internally, that we manage, put a lot of effort in managing, those. And, second, of course, it mostly comes from scale and volume. Basically, the scale allows us to maintain efficient and affordable pricing on a very long-term basis. Also here, there's no perfect black and white. It's not that we are making an effort, a good effort of, an effort in a good sense, to maintain our prices. However, there are factors we ultimately cannot really control.
Our pricing decisions, which also evolves during the time, be it salary inflation, be it energy prices or any other financing costs and so on. We are a company just like any other company, and we are not different from this point of view. We are exposed to all factors that exist in the market. What we are doing daily, we are putting a lot of effort into managing our cost base. We are putting a lot of effort to make sure that we have enough scale and enough dynamic to be able to continue and to maintain affordable prices for as long time as possible.
Also, we try to think of our pricing within the context of purchasing power for our customers and we are really trying to make sure that we are offering the right pricing level on a longer horizon, not for only today, one or two, three years, but really on a five to 10-year scale. What will be beyond is difficult to predict, and we're not trying. We just try to say that also in five years from now or in 10 years from now, we will not change our strategy. We will, we may change our prices, but we will keep the same attitude.
Basically, pricing is an element of customer centricity.
Yeah
... the element that you mentioned before. Yeah.
Yes, yes.
In this context, there is also a related question. In the case of higher inflation and interest rates, especially now that we're seeing the conflict in the Middle East, would you consider raising tariffs and/or to slow down the network rollouts in your new markets?
Well, it's, thank you. I mean, it's a complex question. I think the whole story is unfolding. Unfortunately, the reality of the last, at least four years, is different for us with the Ukrainian conflict unfolding now with Middle East being in turmoil. Of course, most businesses, as majority of businesses, we would prefer no conflicts at all, also for normality, for peace, but also business-wise. Having said this, we are really a global story now, we are a European story in all our markets. Positive elements from utility like businesses because none of us can envisage our day-to-day lives without communication, without mobile communication, without broadband communication, fixed communication.
I don't know, products like, news, Netflix, or just chatting to your family, on constantly. This is the reality, and we are offering these services, and we will continue offering these services. Having said this, we expose many elements of a defensive but also procyclical business, but also of digital economy. You can't imagine AI without a fixed or mobile operator. All these buzzwords, they show the importance of our operations, and we're set to continue. We don't see really, these global conflicts which unfortunately exist affecting us or making us, change our strategy or our operations, in any way.
We have several questions related to the Romanian operations, and the first one is related to CapEx in Romania going forward. What is the plan related to investments in Romania? What is the focus, and what happens when you already have the position.
Yeah
that Digi currently has?
Sorry. Normally it's a question for Dan, but let me take it. Yeah. Basically, we try to repeat the story from before. Romania is very mature. It's free cash flow positive, generative market for us. Certainly, Romania is on a declining pressure to spend CapEx. Having said this, we're maintaining this dynamic. Our fixed networks are thoroughly built. We cover more than 95% of the population. Our mobile networks are mostly complete. We are marginally improving the networks here and there, and this is something that will continue permanently. Again, marginal is the key word here.
We have just acquired mobile telecom mobile frequencies in Romania and few sites, a number of sites at the end of last year. There is a relatively small CapEx associated with integrating these assets into operations. Having said this, we are transiting not slowly, we are transiting during 2026, 2027, 2028, really into a maintenance model or mostly maintenance model rather than growth model because we're really complete. With the funds that are available, we are financing our Portuguese, Italian, Belgian expansion and any other expansion if we decide to go to possibly new markets. Romania is the cash cow, but also the cash engine in the group at this moment.
I will get back to the new markets, because this is of course the question that everybody asks. Before that, we got a very interesting question actually, is considering the upcoming boom on AI usage, is your network prepared for the increase in data usage, and what other main impacts do you expect in the business?
We don't foresee something in the network which would not allow any type of traffic in the future, because anyway, everything is based on fiber, so we have practically unlimited capacity. From the network deployment of the mobile, also our mobile network in Romania, for example, it's pretty new. It's recently upgraded in all the urban environment with 5G, this creates for us, together with the existing spectrum plus the additional spectrum that we took over from the former Telekom Romania, a large capacity to be used, just to give you some idea for you now.
We don't even use all the spectrum that we have, and we don't need yet to put it into place, and we don't forecast that for the next, I don't know, at least number of multiple years from now on as we have built a resilient and large capacity network, so don't foresee the need for that for now.
Yeah. I think, I believe it's a very good question. We indeed go live through a paradigm change because AI is new but is also transforming significantly the way we think about our future. It's not yet that heavy usage on the networks, on the telecom networks as of today, but again, this means nothing in today's context. Probably it's so transformational, it's so quick that new uses will show up in one year or two year. Now we can, I don't know, any of us can edit beautiful photos using AI. Any of us can do some very smart videos, something that was totally inaccessible to us in the past.
Hopefully, there'll be all the other uses not necessarily related to AI, like more enhanced video conferencing and so on and so forth. This, we are waiting for this. We're embracing all these changes because it's a great opportunity to use even more our network. We're ready for that. We as an operator, just to make a step back, we the Digi Group in all our markets, Romania, Spain, new markets included, we try to be very generous because as I said earlier, we have pioneered unlimited packages.
We are very generous in our offering on the fixed network, on the mobile network, and we will continue to do so because we believe that the customer deserves to receive the fair value or the real value for what they pay for. Perspective are welcomed because it will just bring some more value to our network, and the new services that we are discussing about earlier on, it will just materialize. This will bring probably some also new revenue streams for us in the future.
Yeah.
So, so-
To add a bit more on that, our network is really future-proof and later on, maybe Catalin from Spain will tell you about the 50 Gb tests that we conducted on Digi Spain's network. Our networks are all built by using the same design. That would mean that maybe Romania would be able to do the same thing. Basically, with the fiber that we have, we have a lot of capacity that we can use and yeah, we basically welcome more traffic. It means more business for us.
Serghei, you mentioned about offering the right services at the affordable, the best services at the affordable price. Now brings the question that repeats about the business-to-business segment. We saw in Romania the slide on business-to-consumer and the leadership in that field. The question is, if there is a strategy for the B2B segment, and do you foresee it as becoming a key business line in the future?
Well, we are already a very well-established and large B2B operator in Romania. It didn't show up on the slides, but our market share is in the 40%-50% area, pretty large. We are not concentrating on B2B segment in the new markets so far, really because we have so much work to do in residential segment, and we try to do things in order. Having said this, we're not excluding also offering B2B services, or going more into that direction, but just, we'll probably announce it at some point in time later.
A question about the strategy for the consolidation of presence of Digi across the markets. Is growing through acquisitions something that you're looking at to grow the share in any of the markets? Obviously, it already was part of the strategy in Portugal, but maybe you can elaborate a little bit on how do you see it.
Well, we are open to any opportunities. Well, we are mostly, as I said, or 95% at least, the result or product of organic growth. We're really open to any opportunities. Just recent examples would be acquisition of Nowo back in 2024, on one hand to integrate our mobile frequency package over there, but also to take over the existing Nowo customer base and to operate a larger operator from day one. There are examples that we did M&A in the past. We are open to opportunities. We certainly welcome any opportunity.
We have in the chat for the group the questions for Spain, which I am leaving for Marius, and his team a little bit later. There is one question that I do want to ask because I think it's an important one. Do you see any room for the loss of control in Spain? Is this something that you're considering?
This is not something we are considering. No. The simple answer is no. The idea. Maybe in this context, to say one or two words on the potential, on the possible IPO that we may do or we envisage possibly to do. I think, we're extremely proud and grateful to the achievements and to success of our colleagues here. We think they built a business which is amazing, which is mature enough and which has a good dynamic, and which by itself to be competitive, has to be somewhat independent from the Group.
This independence, we allowed them at the end of last year when we refinanced our bonds and we restructured the certain covenants and certain rules of engagement between the debt investors and the creditors in our group. We have not separated Spain at all. Spain is part of our group as it was in the past and as it will continue to be in the future. We allowed full flexibility to our Spanish colleagues to access capital markets, either equity or debt. We believe it's, it could be a great opportunity to capture value, to show value, to crystallize value, but also to enhance value in the future.
Also, it's a great opportunity for Spain to have all the tools, all means to compete, not only in the market, like commercial market with customers, with technologies, with day-to-day business, but also in the financial market. That is really, I believe it's the right moment now, and we try to help our colleagues to increase or to show their value so that our value is shown correspondingly.
Perfect. We're running out of time, but I have three last questions.
Go ahead, please.
The first one, shall we expect spectrum acquisitions, or renewals in the upcoming years across your geographies?
We'll have probably some renewals in Romania because we have some licenses which are expiring or could be extending the market by 2029. Definitely that's an opportunity there also for us because that could mean that maybe you can optimize whatever you have, because right now we have a much better view of looking forward from the 5G and 6G perspective. We'll take a look at that. That's anyway, something which is a normal cycle in the lifetime of the mobile networks.
According to the new Digital Networks Act, depends on how that will be or when that will become, let's say, operational and what will be the new rules there because there are some small spectrum adjustments there that we'll take care of and we'll look at it. Of course, we have some opportunities in the future to increase our spectrum allowance in Portugal because we feel that for the future growth we might need in the future and that will come with also some licenses in the market expiring in the next three, four years. Of course, everything is related to the development by then and the opportunities that we have because we have not to forget that the technology is evolving.
What we could see in the last year is that we could achieve more with less resources from the spectrum perspective and that technology path, it's very important for us. That's why we are efficient and we are looking at all the technological deployments that could allow us to increase the usage of whatever we have already because looking also back to your questions earlier on regarding to the improvement of efficiency, what we are doing constantly, it's all the time we try to get more from what we have. The optimization that will come not only with AI, but also with the new technologies and new deployments in integrating more of the fiber and the wireless part are important and that will help us also for the spectrum envisaging into the future and the path going forward.
Thank you. The question that our shareholders, many of them in Bucharest are asking is about dividends. This year, an important announcement was made also about the bonus shares that are going to be, if they're going to be distributed to shareholders as part of the dividend policy. The question is, does this change the cash dividend distribution policy?
No, not at all. Not at all. Indeed, we did announce that we want to triple the number of shares in circulation, through basically, through a share issuance by incorporation of reserves into the capital of Digi Communications. We are expecting to have the general meeting of shareholders now on March 20. Of course, we hope that it's approved by the shareholders. Once it's done, the technical operation should follow in the coming weeks or couple of months. Having said this, it will not change the cash distribution policy and we maintain what we always said that our dividends will be at least at par with the last year dividends or higher. No, no change there.
Thank you. The last question, the typical interview question, where do you see yourself in five years and does it include any new markets?
Well, we see ourselves with outstanding results in Romania and Spain. We see ourselves with break-even results in Portugal, Belgium. We see ourselves much better established in Italy, no question about that. In fact, we don't want dramatic changes. We just want what we have today in absolute terms to continue. This is more than enough for us. Yes, about new markets, it's true. The reality is that with Romania being at the end of the investment cycle, there'll be more funds, more resources available in the group. We may look at new markets, but we will announce the market when the time comes.
Thank you all very much. This concludes our first Q&A session. If you submitted a question for Spain, don't worry, those will be addressed in the next session. We are going to take a 15 minute break and we're going to be back with the dedicated Spanish session. Thank you all for joining us.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Good afternoon one more time. We are ready to begin the Spanish session shortly. I would like you to take your seats. Before we begin, I need to acknowledge the infamous disclaimer that you can see behind me now. Please note that the information presented today in this upcoming session is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer of securities. The presentations may include forward-looking statements and actual results may differ materially. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the said disclaimer currently displayed on the screen. The presentations will be available also on Digi Communications website tomorrow. I got a lot of questions from you when you will be able to access them. We're taking care of that as we speak.
Now we will be turning to Digi's most dynamic market, Spain, and please join me in welcoming Marius Vărzaru, CEO of Digi Spain, who will take us through the company's progress and plans in Spain.
Thank you, Zuzanna. Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us, both virtually and presently here. I think Serghei was mentioning before, previous Investors Day was in 2018. It was in September of 2018. Two days after we launched the fixed broadband services in Spain. It is very rewarding for us after seven years or eight years almost to have you all here in Madrid explaining you what we did in, during these seven years and how we managed to become a relevant fixed broadband operator as well in Spain. Just explaining a little bit about Digi in Spain, continuing with the identity that Serghei's shared before of the group.
We are a telecom operator focused on offering accessible telecom services, which we define and explain by high quality services with advanced technology, with a fair and transparent offer to our customers, very sensible, very simple and straightforward, and with competitive pricing, yeah? For us, this is a mix of goals that we are looking for, that we use also both for when we take strategic decisions, but on a daily basis on day-to-day operations, no? We are a long-term industrial player. We are a vertically integrated operator. We have more than 11,000 employees in Spain presently, out of which couple of us today present into the room that will present this part of the presentation. My name is Marius Vărzaru. I'm CEO of Digi Spain.
Since 2008, when we decided to invest into this company, which was an MVNO contract with Telefónica at the moment, a project. Before that, I've been Finance Director for the group for three years. Together with me, Cătălin, Deputy CEO, and Carlos, our CFO, who have been leading the transformation in the past five years in Spain, together with the management team. They will present themselves with more details afterwards. Who are we today in Spain? We are the first telecom operator. We are the market challenger. We are the fast-growing operator with market share of 13% in fixed broadband and 12% in mobile.
We have a fair and transparent offer, very competitive offer, with, high, valued by our customers with the highest NPS in the market for the past five years, more than 60 points, as we will see later. We are a fast-growing business. We've grown more than 20% year-on-year for the past three years in Spain. We reached almost we reached EUR 929 million of revenues last year, and this year probably we will turn over more than EUR 1 billion in Spain. We have meaningful and growing profitability, more than EUR 201 million if we analyze the last quarter of 2025 that we just reported. Seven years ago, as I mentioned, we decided to deploy fiber optic networks of our own, FTTH networks of our own.
We've reached 13.7 million homes, half of the residential markets in Spain or dwellings in Spain, and almost half of all the business units that we are addressing. Practically we've reached enough network scale to be relevant at national level. We have acquired spectrum from the merger MásMóvil and Orange, practically we've reached to have 60 MHz of spectrum. On top of that, we've reached agreements for long term with Telefónica that will allow us, first of all, to deploy mobile networks of our own through RAN sharing agreements, and also through to complement that with a national roaming agreement for long term, no?
Overall, with that particularly, we achieved network scale and network eco-economics both for fixed and mobile, being a strong foundation for the years to come and for the growth to come, no? In terms of our history in Spain, if we want, we can start from the right of the slide. Presently, we are a fully convergent B2C operator. We focus on the residential market mostly. We have more than 7.3 million mobile lines and more than 2.6 million fixed broadband customers. We are the fastest-growing operator in the market. We've grown consecutively for 16 quarters and as the largest market gainer of the market. Additionally, recently we became the third B2C operator for fixed broadband services in Spain.
Most probably during the next months, we will become our overall the third fixed broadband operator in the market, overpassing Vodafone, no? In terms of how we reached this moment and how we became who we are, we started back in 2008. We decided to invest into a project that we launched by the end of December 2008 as a prepaid MVNO mobile operator focused on a niche market that was the Romanian immigrants living in Spain calling abroad on the mobile network of Telefónica with an initial investment of around EUR 3 million from what we can remember, no?
Everything that Digi Spain is today started from that initial investment, the decision of the group to assist us and to help us in through growing and sharing with us practically their methodologies and their success stories and a lot of hard work that we've done together here in Spain, no? Gradually along the years, we grew, and we decided back in 2016 to expand our focus towards the value for money segment. We launched postpaid mobile services, and with that practically started to focus on a broader market and towards the general market of Spanish customers.
Complementing that in 2018 with the expansion towards fixed services, fixed broadband and fixed telephony, by accessing the fixed network of Telefónica at the beginning, and then gradually deploying, starting to deploy our own fixed network, FTTH network, for which we needed a couple of years, three, four years, in order to scale up the process of deployment in itself, no? Recently, as I said, we acquired spectrum from the merger MásMóvil with Orange, and together with the agreements we reached with Telefónica particularly, we transformed ourselves from an MVNO to an MNO starting with 1st of July last year. Probably you may know we are the fastest growing telecom operator in Europe. As I said before, we are growing 20% year-on-year for the last three years in terms of revenues. Similar results you see also in terms of EBITDA.
This is fast-growing telecom operator. We've seen in the previous presentation of the group five years ago we were invoicing EUR 250 million per year. Now we are invoicing almost EUR 1 billion per year. If you compare this with the rest of the operators in Europe, clearly there is, there is no comparable. If you compare even with previous challenger into the market, MásMóvil, we are growing more than double of what they used to grow previously to the merger with Orange. In our case, our growth is completely organic. In their case, part of that was inorganic as well, no? Quite a good rhythm of growth as, and as we can see later as well, with a lot of potential to continue to grow as well, no?
In terms of why we are successful and how we managed to obtain this success, we believe, and we will explain you today, that we are built different. We already shared the experience of the group and the strategy of the group of vertical integration and control of costs. Practically, similarly, in Spain we are built around three different strategic pillars which allow us practically to be able to compete with very good margins and with good quality of services and lower prices, no? If we start from the left of the slide, you will see the first strategic pillar which is we are intentionally designed for cost efficiencies. We started from zero. That is a great advantage. We don't have any legacies. We grew completely organically.
We haven't executed M&A and that helped us practically to grow as an organization very efficiently and to define ways of work focused on having cost efficiencies. The best example in this sense, as presented previously in the group presentation as well, is we are a vertically integrated operator similarly to the rest of the group. The group operates in all the countries where it is present in this model. When we decided back in 2018, once we decided to build FTTH networks to vertically integrate, we didn't have to explore this model and to do a lot of trial and error. We leveraged on the group experience in order to be able to achieve this goal of vertical integrations, which allow us practically two great strategic advantages.
One is to be able to have an end-to-end control of all the operations of the network and with that practically ensuring quality SLAs and level of service. Secondly, to create a structural competitive cost advantage which is very difficult to replicate by competition, and we will see this later into the presentation. Additional to that, we have developed similarly to the group an internal ecosystem that is completely developed by us and the group. With that practically we have complete independence from third parties. We have more agility and we have a cost control in terms of how we evolve this part of component of technology in our business plan as well.
Overall, together with what I was referring before deployment of networks and mobile owner economics we now have owner or owner-like economics both for fixed and mobile services. With that practically you could say that overall, we are able to put to value through quality of service and through competitive pricing due to this cost structure that we have, better offer to our customers without compromising profitability, no? The second strategic pillar that we have that we go in more detail later into the presentation is we offer best-in-class quality services to our customers. Just to give you one example, we were the first operator to launch XGS-PON services in Spain.
We invested massively in this technology from the very beginning, and we have now more than 93% of all the 13.7 million homes that we deployed with XGS-PON technology available. In Spain you can subscribe for EUR 25, VAT included, 10 Gb per second. What in other countries could be considered B2B type of service, no? Very cheap and very attractive technology. The third strategic pillar that we are presenting here is we have a truly honest and long-term approach to the relationship with the customers. In this sense, let me give you some examples to understand because it is based on principles of transparency, simple straightforward products that work in a rewarding, loyalty rewarding way in relationship with the customer, no? For example, all the prices, all the products that we offer for our customers are final.
They do not vary. They do not have better promotional prices at the beginning and then they vary in time. They do not vary in time. With that practically customers know that the products they subscribe with us are the best products that we can offer and they rely, they can rely on that. All the customers receive the same customer proposition value. There is no difference in between customers or the prices they can receive. Every time we improve our products or we decrease our prices, and we've done that recently as well and as we'll see later into the presentation. We apply these kind of changes throughout all the customer base first of all and then we offer it to the new customers as well.
From this point of view, you could say that there is no difference in between the front book prices that we offer and the back book prices that we have for our customer base. With that practically there is no back book risk in our case for any kind of promotional or competitive pricing you could see from competition. Lastly, we operate an open bundle type of commercial offer which allow practically customers to choose the products they want to subscribe. All the RGUs, all the services that you will see in the presentation that our customers subscribe is based on a conscious decision to choose those products.
In case we have 30% equivalent penetration for fixed telephony that is because our customers chosen to subscribe those services and they pay for it and they value them as useful, no? This in time practically generates satisfaction in the relationship with the customer because they perceive they are paying exactly for what they need and nothing more. Compared to models of our competition, when practically they are acquiring closed bundles with multiple mobile lines they don't necessarily need or other products they don't require, in this case, clearly, they subscribe exactly what they need.
And then practically with their satisfaction, we see that there is a significant effect of word-of-mouth effects or recommendation to other customers, referral, and also a reduced churn and intention to churn due to the fact that customers in the end they understand that they are paying for what they need, and they are satisfied with the service that we provide, no? The outcome of the way we organize our business, the output of that is, you could say, almost a clear path to almost mechanical-like type of growth. We managed to deploy networks of our own, and with that we managed to sell services on our network specifically, and with that practically we managed to gain more services from our customers. That depends specifically on our effort to be able to put that to value.
With that, due to the fixed cost structures that we have, with strong operational leverage and improve of improvement of profitability for the years to come as well. You have here some examples of how we managed to integrate vertically our business. In this sense, in order to explain ourselves, we have to compare ourselves with competition. In here you have in the two columns the main activities that we integrate vertically, so network deployment, where we perform, and operations where we perform 100% of our activity in-house. We are almost 3,000 employees in network deployment.
Second of all, service installation, more than 90% of our activity is developed in-house, so all the installations on our network and a significant part of the installations on the neighbor network as well, we perform with our own employees. Then sales, we do more than 85% of postpaid sales with our own employees, so practically most of the sales depend on our ability to sell and not on external factors. Then customer care is completely in-house. Most of that is localized more than 90% in Spain in three different cities. Then lastly, what I mentioned before, the software development, practically all the telco operation software, both on technical and commercial level, we develop and we operate internally, no?
This allows us practically to have an extreme end-to-end control of our operations and allows them practically to organize them, to streamline them in a way that it would be impossible to do in an outsourced model. In order to explain the outsourced model, typically our competitors when they outsource, not necessarily that they just outsource, they outsource to different parties. In this case, with our competitors, you will not see an outsourced provider, but five different outsourced providers. There is a great benefit of in-housing all these activities because allows you practically to be able to generate synergies that would be impossible to generate in an externalized model, no. With that, I mean, we have a lot of examples. Just to give one, we have 300 employees in network maintenance.
Out of the on a daily basis, we have very few incidences into our network. On a practical level, only 15% of the time it is dedicated to actually maintaining the network, so fixing incidences. The rest of the time, we put that to value for additional other activities into the network which are an investment objective, like for example, increase of the capacity of the network in the areas where we need to do that, no? This kind of leveraging is possible only into an internalized model like the one that we manage. Of course, with that we achieve very, very good economics for both deploying networks but also operating networks. As we will see into the next slide, there are some examples of that.
There are many others, these are easier to explain into differences or percentages of efficiency. For example, in network deployment, as we will see later, we deploy network with EUR 49 per homes passed historically. That means in between 40%-60% less than what our competitors used to do in the past. We have cost of operations of fixed networks which are half of what we estimate our competitors have. Also, as we sell with our own employees, we manage to have higher productivity per employee and in the end, particularly a better cost of acquisition of customers, so more efficient SAC, no?
Now, talking a little bit about our strategy of network deployment, going to this next slide, you can see on the left part of the slide, as we evolved and increased our capacity to be able to deploy FTTH networks in Spain. As I said, up to end of 2022, beginning of 2023, we increased our ability to deploy networks by hiring new teams in different areas of Spain. Now we deploy at full capacity since 2023 in most of the urban areas in Spain. We develop now practically in 50 provinces out of 52 of Spain. With that practically we are able to focus on all the urban areas, network deployment that we are looking for.
Going forward, we expect that starting from the 13.7 million homes that we have now to reach 21 million homes by 2030, which maximum, which means that we will continue to deploy networks in urban areas. Spain, from our estimations, has in the range of 23 million-24 million business units that can be deployed in urban areas. Out of that, we estimate that by 2030 maximum we will be able to reach to pass 21 million business units, no? This kind of deployment will continue to be urban profile type of deployment. The model of economics for deployment wouldn't change significantly due to the fact that practically similar dynamics of deployment will be met, no?
It's true that along the years, less dense areas we will find, so marginal cost for deployment will be slightly higher every year. Nevertheless, it's not similar to what you could see in the urban type of rural type of deployments in Spain, no? In terms of how we organized our model of deployment, you could say that it is very industrialized type of model, so like in a factory with very standardized activities of work that allow us practically to ensure predictability to the deployment process and all teams work with enough volume of work ahead of them, allowing them practically to be, to continue to be predictive, no? With that, practically, we can ensure two objectives. One is to have certainty of execution of the business plan of deployment. This is what we already experienced for the past seven years in terms of planning.
Secondly, a good cost control of the evolution of the deployment overall along the years, that will come, no? As I said, we reached 13.7 million homes, or footprint, Smart footprint as we call it, network deployed by ourselves. Presently, as mentioned before by my colleagues, not all the network is owned by Digi. We have three different models of ownership. One to the left is network owned by Digi itself. We own presently 5.7 million homes out of the 13.7 million homes, and we will own 12.5 million homes out of the 21 million homes that we will deploy up to 2030, no?
Secondly, we've sold 100% of the ownership of the network for 6 million homes to a group of funds led by Macquarie, which is called SOTA. Out of that, we already delivered 5.45 million homes, and we will deliver during 2026 the remaining 450,000 homes, no? The third model, which is co-ownership, we call Digi Andalucía, where we partnered with abrdn, where we delivered recently the last homes for this project and with these 2.5 million homes of ownership, no? This is a subsidiary of Digi Spain, so accounting-wise it is considered still a subsidiary of the group, regardless of the fact that it's a co-ownership, no?
For all these kind of projects, because we've seen many projects, many opportunities of this, like this, of selling network, ownership of the network in the past, we were approaching these kind of projects, from the perspective of reaching three goals, three objectives. First of all is to ensure long-term competitiveness of our commercial offer and our business by maintaining or obtaining competitive and relatively low compared to the market access fees. That was the starting point of negotiation for us. Maybe other projects in Spain similarly in terms of sale of network to fiber co started more from the perspective of the initial outcome, output or value that would be obtained by the seller. In this case, our objective was clearly to have a long-term access fee that was competitive.
Based on that, practically, we negotiated the price for those homes in particular. Second of all was we realized that in order to be able to be competitive, we don't compete based on the ownership in itself, but on the ability to put to value that network for the benefit of the customers, so operations and maintenance. With that, practically, we retain for all the projects that we are involved, including for the sold network and the co-owned. 100% of the O&M services are performed by Digi, continues to be performed by Digi. We are the only party that practically, on an industrial level, operates the network. With that, we ensure the same level of quality throughout all the networks that we operate, regardless of the model of ownership, no?
Third of all, as we've seen in Spain, evolving our technology from 1 Gb per second GPON to 10 Gb per second XGS-PON services. Similarly in the future, if we wish to do so, we can continue to be able to do that, investing ourselves into this network, including the ones that we sold. With that practically ensure that we are able to compete based on better technology and better quality and differentiate ourselves in the future as well. This would be an industrial decision that we would take as well, no?
For the rest of Spain, where we are still not present with our own network, we access alternative network, including the, and most importantly, the one of Telefónica, the NEBA network, gaining market share practically in that part of Spain as well, and this way practically having a complete offer at national level, no? Now, if you put this into the context of economics of network, you can see here, this is a very interesting slide where you can see how vertical integration transforms into the structural competitive cost advantage. On the left side of the slide, you will see that we achieved EUR 49 per homes passed cost historical for the 13.7 million homes that we deployed in Spain.
This is a very competitive cost of deployment, which is the foundation and the basis of our ability to be able to compete with better pricing than the market. When you compare this with historical cost of competition, as we were saying before, we are maybe less than half of what our competitors used to spend for this kind of objectives. With that, practically a structural competitive advantage that is very difficult to turn around once we deploy network, no? What I was explaining before, arguing before, on the right side of the slide, you can see how in similar situation in which we decided to sell network, we negotiated the access fees on long term that we will have for those networks.
On the left side, you can see an approximation of the cost that we have per customer for SOTA network that we sold. When you compare that with the green line, which is the smallest retail price we have in the market, which is EUR 8.26 without VAT, so EUR 10 with VAT included, you see that even with that price, we are able to generate good margin. When you compare that to the right side of the slide with the prices that we've seen from the market and competition for similar situations of indirect access, bitstream fees or selling network type of access fees to fibercos. For example, we've seen related to recent fibercos in the market, prices like EUR 9, EUR 10, EUR 11 per customer per month.
When you compare that with our pricing, clearly we have a structural competitive stock, strong advantage, which is difficult as well to turn around due to the fact that these are long-term contracts, both for us and for them. Also when you compare that with our retail price, clearly they have a cost that is even higher than our retail price. Quite sustainable model of growth for us in the future, knowing that there is less capacity to be able to react from competition. To conclude the part related to FTTH network strategy. Here, this is a slide we also shared in the Q4 and Q3 presentation of the group. This is a slide that explains very well why we say that our growth is predictable, almost mechanical-like type of growth.
Here, what you can see on the bottom part of the slide is we are constantly increasing our average take-up. We have an average take-up of 15.8% over the 13.7 million homes that we deployed in Spain, so 2.2 million customers. That take-up increases year per year on average, even though we expand accelerating, and we are expanding significantly the network. We deployed last year 2.7 million homes. The year before, it's 3 million homes. Even with that, we accelerated even the take-up itself. When we disaggregate this penetration per years of build, so per cohorts of build, you can see the blue line or the red line, which are 2019, 2020 cohort, the initial cohorts that we developed.
We already reached levels of penetration of 25%, 27%. Most importantly, we haven't seen yet a limit for that growth. We continue to grow quite healthy in all the course of cohorts, including in the new one, in the oldest ones. If you see on the left side of the slide, every year that is more recent, we start up faster, so with a higher take-up for the first year. If initially we were starting with 3%, 4% take-up, now we are starting with 6%, even 7% take-up for 2025 year cohort. Not only that, but also the acceleration towards the 25% level of penetration that we've seen already in the older cohorts ramp up faster and reaches faster.
By now, by year five, in between year four and five, you could see that newer cohorts reach that level of penetration, no? This is what from our point of view means that growth depends on us significantly. From our point of view, this is why we call it predictable and mechanical, because depends significantly on our ability to deploy networks, to make that effort of industrialization, like in a factory model, in order to ensure that we deliver homes fast and with that practically increase the competitiveness of our offer. Sell with our own employees, as we'll see later into the presentation, and manage to practically convince customers to join us, install with our own employees as well, and in the end, practically service them with our own employees as well.
This is a complete ecosystem that we built that depends highly on us and our ability to execute the deployment network and then the business plan in itself, no? We have couple of slides related to technology strategy that Catalin will walk us through, and then we'll pass through commercial.
Thank you. Good morning and thank you for your interest in our presentation. My name is Cătălin Neagoe. I am Deputy CEO of Digi Spain since 2020. Previously, I worked in Digi Group since 2002. 24 years ago, I started in Digi, and I was involved in the Digi Spain project since the very beginning. Now let me walk you through our mobile network evolution. We started in 2008 as an MVNO. Two years ago, we acquired spectrum, 60 MHz of spectrum, from the remedies of MásMóvil and Orange merger. For leveraging this spectrum, we entered into a RAN and spectrum sharing agreement with Telefónica that is complemented by a national roaming agreement. Both agreements are long-term, I would say very long-term, until at least 2040.
Through the RAN sharing, we already started to roll out our mobile network. The evolution from the MVNO to MNO is done by rolling out the network through RAN sharing and continuously to access Telefónica network through NRA. This is an advantage because not changing the network doesn't impact coverage and doesn't impact the customer experience. On the economics, we're transitioning from MVNO model, where the cost tends to be more directly related with the number of subscribers and their traffic, and we are transitioning to an MNO model, which has a more fixed cost structure composed of the NRA fees that are semi-variable, dependent on the number of subscribers and the network usage, the spectrum fee, which is a fixed cost. The RAN sharing fee which is a network cost and is decoupled from the customer growth.
On an overall, this MNO model gives us access to owner-like economics and we are already starting to see a positive economical impact since we started rolling out this model in Q3 2025. I would wrap up saying that the outcome of this transition is first of all strategic for us because it's long-term and the same as the spectrum validity. The agreements are until 2040, which gives us long-term predictability on the cost structure. The other outcome is on economics, which like I said, already started to show a very positive impact. It is a great moment actually to make this transition because we already had scale. We are actually quite large for an MVNO with 7 million subscribers, and MNO economics works very well with scale.
In this slide we are showing how our network, our mobile network is structured and is going to be structured. On the first line, you are seeing that we are going to start rolling out our network through our own mobile sites, leveraging our own spectrum, the 60 MHz of spectrum that we have in mid and high band. Also being our network, we are rolling out through the RAN sharing agreement with Telefónica that we are doing also spectrum sharing in high bands. All this will be complemented by the national roaming agreement to continue to give access to our customers to the whole nationwide coverage and also inside buildings where mid and high bands don't penetrate.
On the right side, you can see that we are estimating by 2033 when we are going to reach a mobile network of 10,000 mobile sites, we are estimating to capture 50% of the traffic. It's not only an actuation of numbers, it's also because our strategy or of rolling out the network focuses on the areas where the highest traffic is done by our customers. On the right side of the slide, you can see the unitary economics of these three pillars of the mobile network. On our own mobile rollout, of course, we are going to see the full cost both on CapEx and OpEx because we are supporting integral the cost.
On the RAN sharing pillar of the network, we are going to see a cost that is fixed per macro site, both CapEx and OpEx, but it is shared with Telefónica, so better than own sites roll. Because it's easier to activate the network and the mobile sites through RAN sharing than starting to building yourself. The third pillar, the national roaming agreement, the cost structure is on the OpEx side and it's semi-variable, like I said, dependent on the usage of the network and the number of customers. This is a slide about software development strategy. It's a simple slide, yet so powerful I would say. To sustain and enhance our unique operating model, we built a whole ecosystem of software application. I would give you an example.
On the network deployment side, we are sustaining with our software every phase, like Marius is saying. We have seven steps of network deployment from network design through network, to network activation. Instead of having to stitch together six, seven third-party application, we are developing and we have developed our own software that is fully integrated and more efficient. The result of this is on the cost structures, and we are very keen to maintain cost control and to do cost savings in all our operations. By enhancing the productivity, actually we are improving the cost structure. On the cost saving side, by being internally developed, there are no subscriber-based licenses, there are no employee-based licenses. Since it's 100% internally developed, so it is very efficient in terms of on cost structure.
The other advantage is that it is very flexible and it allows us to be very agile in launching new products or adapting to market changes or new structure of services. It is 100% custom-made and oriented to sustain our unique model of operations, not the other way around. We don't have actually to adapt our operation to an external software, but we are actually enhancing our operations, improving them with our own software ecosystem. Going forward and wrapping up the networks sections, both fixed and mobile, we are showing that we are very focused on delivering quality services to our customers. Not only best price, but also we are doing a lot of effort to deliver the best quality. We are recognized by Ookla Speedtest since 2021 as the fastest fiber network in Spain. Let me say that again.
For five consecutive years, we are awarded the fast fiber network in Spain. 93% of the fiber coverage is XGS-PON ready. XGS-PON is the most advanced FTTH technology and allows us to offer our customers up to 10 Gb per second products, and we are offering our 10 Gb per second product has the best price hands down in Spain, EUR 25 a month. We are not only the first starting to deploy XGS-PON, but we are the first ones deploying it massively. Like I said, 93% of the coverage is XGS-PON ready. Like Dan said earlier, we already done some tests with 50G-PON, so we are ready for the future technologically.
We are installing to all customer Wi-Fi 6 router, routers, and we are the first one, first operator to start installing Wi-Fi 7 because we understood that in order to deliver the fastest fiber experience in the house of the customers, we needed to complement the best fiber network with the best experience in-house in Wi-Fi. On the mobile side, our customers have access, thanks to the agreement we have in place, to the best mobile coverage in Spain, and they have access to the best mobile coverage for 5G and the best tier, speed actually in 5G. I will wrap up saying that we have not only the best possible prices in our offers, but we are also offering the best possible quality to our services through the most advanced, most technologically advanced networks.
I'll invite Marius to continue with the commercial part of the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Cătălin. Continuing to the commercial side of the presentation, we were mentioning in the group presentation the customer centricity of our strategy in other countries that we are present. I was mentioning before the principles of our offer, which are simple, straightforward, transparent, and loyalty rewarding in the relationship with the customer, no? What we are looking for, and this is the way we explain it to our colleagues internally on a daily basis, is to offer services that ourselves would like to subscribe. From that point of view, we shouldn't sell anything that we are not proud of, no? This is the basic idea that leads us practically to a very intuitive, modular, simple to understand offer that you don't have to struggle to understand and to decide what you want to subscribe, no?
It practically, it allows you complete freedom of choice and quite straightforward offer, no? That reflects into the NPS that we've seen for the past five years, more than 60, significantly higher than the competition and the very low intention to churn of our customers when they are asked if they would, they are interested in changing subscriptions, practically most of them, what they're saying is that from their point of view, they are satisfied with the services that they have, and when compared to the rest of the market, significantly better, no? This is based, our success, commercial success is based on three commercial pillars, which are product, price, distribution, and promotion, marketing.
Obviously, as I was mentioning, a very modular, very open offer that allow customers practically to choose the services they want to subscribe and pay for. Prices that are very competitive, 25%-50% lower than the competition, and we'll see later in more detail. A distribution model that depends significantly on our ability to sell and focused on selling our services and nothing more. With more than 2,500 employees, promoters that sell on a daily basely exclusively Digi services. That all leads to practically very good levels of awareness and consideration from customers when they decide to change subscribers, subscriptions.
In the end, practically concludes with a low level of marketing budget per year in the range of EUR 80 million, meaning that practically our growth doesn't depend on us spending to let our customers know our offers, practically are the customers who are recommending us, refer us to other customers in order to be able to sell, no. Let's walk through these quite interesting four pillars of our strategy. As I said, in terms of convergence, a very modular offer that allows you practically to subscribe, unsubscribe, upgrade, downgrade whenever you like the services that you want. This freedom of choice reflects practically in a lower churn, even though you are able to choose and to decide, even unsubscribe the services. In the end, customers are satisfied with that. Practically, we don't have to put barriers for the, for themselves.
From their point of view, even lower churn that you could expect. With a very good mix of convergence for our services, 1.6 mobile lines per each fiber service that is subscribed, 30% fixed telephony or overall three RGUs on average per each convergent contract. We never increased prices in the 18 years we operate in Spain. This proved to be a very good strategic decision, allowed us practically to attract customers based on our reputation of stable pricing and also on a reputation of complying to is what we promised, you know. From that point of view, also for 2026, we already stated that we will not increase prices, and with that practically we differentiate ourselves from the market.
In Q1 2026, most of the brands and operators in the market are increasing prices, whereas we continue to maintain them, no? When you compare our prices with the prices of the competition, you could see here we selected a couple of the offers of our competitors. In order to compare, we selected comparable products. In our case, you can start by subscribing services, convergence services, so fixed plus mobile from EUR 12 . Not necessarily that these are the prices that we offer, but these are just some of the combinations that we offer. You could start even with EUR 12 EUR instead of 25, as we were detailing there. Even in this kind of comparison, practically we are 25%-50% lower than the front book of the competition.
Taking into account that these are the best offers that our competitors are offering now but take into account that practically their back book is different than our front book. When we make this comparison in terms of market ARPU based on public data published by the regulator, you can see in the middle of the slide practically that the average ARPU that we have in Spain, both for fixed and mobile services, is 40%-50% lower than our competitors, meaning that on the back book side, which is where we are gaining customers from our competitors, we have prices that are over half of what our competitors are charging to their subscribers. Clearly a very attractive value proposition to our customers to be able to subscribe very good quality services with advanced technology.
Sometimes you can get higher speed for lower price with Digi than what you're paying to your competitor, no? Just take into account that these are average ARPUs that we have. In the SMART footprint, we offer even better pricing for our fixed services, so the difference in terms of back book, pricing compared to our pricing is even higher in the smart foot, smart mode, footprint area, no? In terms of distribution, as I mentioned, we are almost completely internalized, vertically integrated.
The only channel that we operate externally is the initial channel that we launched in Spain back when we were a prepaid operator, which is dealer distribution, the first one to the left on the top part, where we cover and we still continue to operate this for the prepaid services that we sell and for 10%-15% of the services that we sell on postpaid. That is a channel that allows us also to have capillarity and to reach areas of Spain where it's less affordable for us probably or economically affordable to reach. For the rest of Spain, practically we are complementing that channel with our own physical distribution channels, face-to-face channels like stands. We have more than 200 stands, more than 75% own stores.
Very specifically to us, maybe compared to the market, we have more than 1,000 employees in the door-to-door channel distribution, which is the only channel that we have and we operate that allow us practically to focus proactively only in the areas where we deploy our own network, no? Our colleagues practically on a daily basis focused only on the SMART footprint, allowing us practically to accelerate the penetration of fixed broadband in the network that we deploy, no? The face-to-face channel then we complement with remote sales channels like online channel that we operate ourself with our own employees practically 100%. All the advertising online campaigns we operate with our own employees. Practically all the euros that we spend are spent directly to advertising in this sense.
We complement that with call center type of sales channels. Most importantly, I would remark that we have outbound cross-selling channels that are focused on our customer base, but we don't sell outside our customer base. We think that the way to approach new customers is not by disturbing them with calls they didn't request for, no? From that point of view, we make an effort in upselling towards customers that are existing, and then we sell in call center with calling towards customers that already contacting us, requesting services from us, no? Overall, practically, we sell 85% of all the postpaid services with our own employees on a daily basis, no?
As mentioned before, all these efforts on being constant on our promise towards the customer, maintaining our promise, very competitive pricing and an effective distribution leads to customer satisfaction and referral word of mouth, which in the end allows us practically to make ourselves known and increase levels of awareness and consideration without having to spend a significant amount of money. Significant, we spend significantly lower amounts compared to our competitors, but most importantly, we don't have to spend in order to grow. The growth comes practically from the effort of sales and deployment, no? Putting this into numbers and growth, here what you can see in this slide is how we accelerated the growth momentum every year for fixed broadband net adds.
You can see that in 2025 we've grown 625 to more than 625,000 customers in fixed broadband. This is related to the fact that we invested, and we increased the SMART footprint volume of homes. We reached 13.7 million homes. 100% of the growth that we generated in the past two years comes exclusively from or net from SMART Footprint. Practically by deploying network and more network, we managed to grow even faster. If we put this into the context of the market share, we have now 13.1 points of market share. Last year, we've grown 2.7 points of market share.
If we put this into the context of the fact that we are growing in almost half of Spain due to the fact that SMART footprint covers almost half of Spain in terms of business units that we want to address. Actually, what we've managed last year is to grow more than 5.4 points of market share in half of Spain, you know. With that practically a very good reason or explanation of why we say that it is a very good investment to be able to continue to deploy networks to other 21 million homes that we anticipate we'll have by 2030 latest.
In terms of market dynamics, you can see here on the right side of the slide the evolution of churn that we've chosen to share with you today to understand how that evolved across the years and how resilient our customer base is towards competition, action and reaction with promotional prices and so on. You can see that we started with levels that were in the range of 14%, 14.5%. We've enjoyed a couple of years of less intensity of commercial activity, probably during the same period of more intensive M&A corporate type of restructuring of the market like MásMóvil Orange merger and the acquisition of Vodafone by Zegona. We came back during last year to similar levels like previously.
In the last part of last year, we've seen also more intensity of commercial offers, this time more focused with more competitive offers like our own, no? What actually this graph says and explains is exactly what I was mentioning before, is a very resilient customer base that shows that even with very competitive pricing that our competitors would be willing to offer on a promotional basis, our customers are not that interested in switching due to the fact that already the most important part of the savings that they could have obtained are already obtained when they came to Digi. The marginal savings that they could obtain now are not so relevant anymore, no?
In contrast to that intention, you can see here on the left side of the slide, even though with more or higher intensity of competition towards Digi, the best two quarters in terms of net growth for fixed broadband in Spain are the last two quarters of last year with more than 160,000 customers per month. Quite a healthy growth and resilient customer base, no? If we see this into the perspective of long-term growth evolution that we had in Spain, clearly shows that the decision to invest into SMART footprint is the engine of growth that allows us to continue to grow year-on-year and to accelerate that growth. Very good decision that we've taken in this sense.
100% of that growth for the last years is practically coming from SMART footprint. This is not a growth that we've created practically like an opportunity, accelerating specifically during last year. Practically this is a mechanical growth that shows how by deploying SMART footprint, we managed to continue to grow in fixed broadband services along the years and even faster, no. Putting that in the same perspective for mobile services, most of the services for mobile that we sell are convergent. 75% of the net adds for mobile services come from mobile convergent services. Clearly there is a direct relationship in between building network, selling fixed broadband services and mobile convergent services. In the end, it's the choice of the customers to subscribe these services.
Clearly there is a relevant demand for mobile convergent services. We've grown last year similarly like in the fixed broadband services in an accelerated manner with an accelerated momentum of more than 1.35 million customers per year. It's the best year we had last year. One out of five almost customers for mobile are from 2025 and 660,000 from 2.6 million. One out of four fixed broadband customers is a customer from last year. As I said, quite an accelerated momentum of growth that will continue for the years to come, no. We've reached 11.5 points of market share last year. Relevant market share now for the market.
We've grown 1.8 points of market share per year last year in mobile as well. That putting it in the same context of the market, very good growth, higher growth per year and per quarter as compared to the previous years. When you see, practically, it's quite a steady line of growth that accelerates during the year. This is not something that is conjunctural. It's practically built based on this ability to create growth. In terms of market dynamics, we are gaining customers from all operators, from the market in general. Customers more sensible to price are customers that are more receptive and more attractive to our offers.
From the point of view, brands that in the past were attracting customers based on price, like MásMóvil brands, for example, are more sensible to customers, their customers to our offer, no? Similarly to fixed evolution, mobile evolution continues to be constant. We continue to retain and be active and grow the customer base for prepaid. We haven't abandoned the initial business of Digi Spain. We grow significantly during the past years in convergent mobile, and we continue to grow and accelerated the growth also in mobile-only services, no? With that practically quite a healthy growth for the past years. I think. Carlos will follow on with the financial part of the presentation, the most important part, I think, the one that you are expecting.
I will wrap up with the rest of the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Marius. Good morning, everyone. 30 seconds to introduce myself. My name is Carlos Sanz. I'm the Spain Group CFO. Now almost five years in the company since Marius convinced me to join this amazing project. Very different today to when I started. Previous past experience in PwC for more than 20 years, last 10 of those as an audit partner role. First, I will say that everything that Marius and Catalin has shared about our integrated, fully integrated and cost-efficient business model with first-class operations is translated in this solid and continuously improving financials. I have also to return the beauty words we receive from our colleagues from Romania. We also, every time we see the figures from Romania constantly improving, we are always impressed.
I think that is also because the team in Romania is amazing. Before going into the detail of the Spanish figures, let me do a brief executive summary. I would like to highlight here, I don't want to miss anything. We have a strong track record of sustainable revenue growth, which is driven by a strong product and service quality value proposition. This growth is profitable, no doubt about that, and we are now expanding our margins, gross and EBITDA. We continue investing into our future growth, focused mainly on the deployment of our SMART FTTH network and now our mobile network.
We already deliver a strong cash conversion with very limited need of recurrent maintenance CapEx, and with a significant amount of our internally generated cash flows reinvested into the business to support the future, well, the future and current fixed network rollout and the future growth of our mobile and fixed businesses. Very important, as already introduced, we have already completed in Q3 2025, starting Q3 2025, the transition to this new so-called MNO economic model, which implies improved EBITDA levels, and which set the basis for our continued growth and future expected margins expansion. The good thing is that we are already there. Q3, Q4 2025 is already there. It is not an expectation. It is not something in a business plan or a PPT.
We are already starting to benefit from this new as we continue deploying our fixed and mobile networks. Let me now go into a bit more detail and take you three through each of these financial metrics, starting with revenues. In terms of revenues, we, well, we used to say that we are a growth powerhouse or growth compounder with consistent market leading and, very important, fully organic revenue growth of 20% CAGR in the last three years, compounded growth, which reflects our ability to combine market leading quality, very competitive and sustainable ARPUs with profitable growth. As you could see on the left, we have enjoyed a very significant growth in our RGU base with increasing net adds year-on-year and at a significant growth path.
Right below, how our blended ARPU has increased in time, mainly due to our success of bringing the SMART competitive commercial offer to a higher number of clients. Also, due to the improvements that we've been delivering in our commercial offer that we apply to all our customer base in a transparent and open way with the goal of accelerating growth and market share gain, but that has obviously an effect in our ARPU and also in our EBITDA in the short term. Both of our businesses grow, mobile and fixed, and grow in a very healthy way. Starting with our mobile business, as you could see, we have achieved a cumulative growth of 11.5% CAGR 2023-2025, growing 25% in terms of RGUs from 4.7 million to 7.3 million RGUs.
Also with an ARPU erosion effect, which is mainly driven by our commercial offer improvements and the mix of offers of our new clients coming into our customer base in comparison to our previous customer base. As already introduced by Marius, our growth is mainly driven by postpaid, while prepaid business is remaining broadly stable and with 75% of our postpaid lanes being convergent. Both businesses grow, but I would like to highlight the growth of our fixed broadband services businesses with an impressive 35% CAGR growth in the period 2023-2025, which shows our ability to monetize the investment that we are doing in our SMART FTTH footprint, in which we could bring a much better commercial offer proposition to our customers and at the same time being more profitable than in NEBA.
As said before, 100% of our fixed broadband net adds growth in the last 24 months are coming from a SMART footprint, with NEBA remaining stable. Also considering the continuous migration process that we apply as we deploy our network in new zones. The ARPU in the fixed broadband business also decrease but mainly reflects the latest launches of new cheapest offers. Our EUR 15 offer launched in March 2023, and the EUR 10 offer that we launched in October 2024, and that we have already experienced that we are able to recover, and more than recover, and compensate with significant growth of our customer base in a very short period of time. Let's move to profitability in terms of gross margin.
As you can see in the right-hand side graph, our gross margin evolution over the last quarters reflects our transition to this owner-like economic model, especially in the mobile business, and our operating leverage. The good thing is that Q3, Q4 2025 is just the beginning. We are sure there is plenty more still to come in the following quarters and years. As you could see in the yellow line, which is our fixed broadband gross margin evolution in the last quarters, it reflects the moment in which we start paying bitstream fees to SOTA in Q4 2024. Afterwards, it pick up during 2025 as the penetration in this network starts to improve.
On the other hand, our mobile gross margin, the blue line, have improved as we transition to this new MNO economic model in Q3 of 2025. Let me give a little bit of color on how we think that, sorry, this entire gross margin will improve in coming quarters, mainly driven by two mainly drivers. Sorry if I'm repeating. First, of course, is penetration, and we expect to reach that 25% benchmark in a very, let's say, secure or mechanical way that we say by the end of the projected years, by 2030.
Also considering network deployment, just, let's say, a stable penetration scenario, only with network deployment, our margins will improve because we will be able to bring a higher percentage of our total clients to our own network. As I think we have seen before, as we goes from the 13.7 million homes passed to the 21 million homes passed that we expect to build in 2030, the proportion in these 21 million homes passed of our own network will increase. If we consider our Digi own networks, excluding SOTA, the percentage now is 60%. In 2030, with 21 million homes passed will be around 21%. 71%, sorry.
If we exclude Digi Andalucía also, that we are consolidating and it's part of the group, but it is also true that we are deploying and delivering dividends. The percentage will change from a 40% now to a 60% in 2030 when we have reached that 21 million homes passed figure. Only with the deployment of our network, we will be able to have more clients in our own network, which obviously deserve a much higher profitability level as we have not to pay between fees to any third party. We also expect the mobile gross margin to improve in coming years. More related with the scale, of course, cost control and operating leverage as we continue enjoying our new MNO-like economic model with a more fixed like cost structure, less linked to our customer base.
I think this is more difficult, let's say, to reflect for the future, but I think that Catalin made a very good explanation of how the cost structure for the mobile parties and how this will evolve in the future with the scale within the different moving parts of the mobile business cost. Going to our cost base into a bit more detail, which is what supports our efficiency and profitability. You can see that a big part of it is salary cost, including sales force, call center, and support functions salaries. This structure is very influenced in terms of how we account for SAC and very influenced by our integrated model.
I know there is a lot of diversity in the sector in the accounting treatment of SAC, but in our case, with our fully integrated business model, we are especially not benefited from the rules, and we are only able to capitalize a very small part of SAC in comparison with other players, with other competitors that are also capitalizing SAC, for example, Zegona. This has a clear impact in our OpEx and CapEx comparability with our competitors because most of our SAC is expense. Here to give a bit more of detail, as Marius introduced, we have the 100% of the prepaid business and the 50% of our postpaid business, which is served and distributed by our dealers' distribution channel, external channel that we are able to capitalize.
Eighty percent of the postpaid business, which is delivered and distributed with our own resources, let's say that 85% of that part is expense. We are not able to capitalize that because they are internal employees and subject to a fixed salary structure. Only 50% of that sales force, we are able to capitalize it. Clearly, our cost structure is clearly influenced by how we treat and are, and are able to, capitalize SAC. Apart of salaries, we also have marketing expense. I think that we have also talked about that. Very limited, very low and very competitive in comparison with other competitors. We have seen the figures of the EUR 80 million of marketing budget for this year in comparison with EUR 70 million average of other competitors.
That's because our best marketing tool is word of mouth and vans in the streets. Very important to highlight here, as in the gray bar, that a big part of this cost base is related to growth. We think that we could reduce this. At that point in time, probably we could reduce approximately one third of this OpEx cost base and stop growing at that point in time with a different growth profile. Let me finish this slide, this part, emphasizing again how our current more fixed like cost structure remains more stable as business growth could also be achieved with a limited impact in our overhead cost base, which highlights the efficiency and scalability of our business model. Going now to EBITDA margin evolution during the last quarters.
Somehow, the gross margin evolution is translated into this EBITDA margin evolution. The introduction of improved commercial offers during the last quarters together with the switch to this new MNO economic model is what have driven EBITDA margin evolution during the last quarters, while our cost structure remains more stable and less linked to customer growth. We have introduced a good number of new commercial offers during the last quarters in a short period of time to try to reach to a stable and complete commercial offer fully aligned to our new MNO structure. At the end of 2024, we introduced the EUR 10 fixed new offer. In the first quarters of 2025, the last one in September 2025, we introduced new mobile commercial offers, more unlimited data-driven and also trying to improve convergence.
These new improved commercial offers obviously have a short-term EBITDA impact, which we also have the experience that afterwards we are able to more than compensate with customer growth. That you could see during these quarters starting 2025. When we reached Q3 2025, you could see how EBITDA jump up and we reach a 54.5 EBITDA in this quarter, benefiting from a net positive impact of more than EUR 10 million driven by a mobile telephony OpEx decrease that will continue moving forward. It's not a temporary effect. It's something more structural and linked to the new Telefónica contracts. Q4 is still impacted by this new last commercial improvement that we introduced in September and that we estimated that will have an impact of approximately EUR 1 million in Q3 and more than EUR 6 millions in Q4.
Obviously we have had a latest impact in Q4 due to this latest new commercial offer. You see here that we have reached an EBITDA margin of 23% in Q3 2025, somehow moderated in the last quarter. If we look at the half parts of the year, you will see how the second half in which we are completely applying this new MNO economic model, we are able to jump up in EBITDA margin levels reaching probably what we could expect for next year in the low 20s. If we analyze obviously this Q4 EBITDA figure, we will reach EUR 201 million EBITDA annualized for 2026 without any kind of growth component that we are sure we will get.
We are confident that 2026 EBITDA will be clearly above that EUR 200 million figure. Taking a look at our adjusted EBITDA excluding operating leases. My colleague Dan helped me to introduce this language and figure. This is like similar to EBITDA, conservative EBITDA. We are adjusting the operating leases expense previous to apply IFRS 16. We think, as Dan said, that this is a very prudent and good measure of the expenses that the business support to generate the income and the results that we are disclosing. You could see how the EBITDA have evolved from EUR 150 million in 2023 to EUR 175 million in 2025. As I commented, reaching a 23% EBITDA margin with a 23% CAGR growth, 2023-2025.
As we have seen in the previous slide, also expected in the low 20s in the second half of the year and probably a good measure for the quarters to come. I would like also to highlight here that if you see the evolution between 2024 and 2025 of the EBITDA and the EBITDA margin in 2025, it could be a bit misleading. 2025 is a bit of tricky year and to compare, to properly compare, we have to take into account that 2024 was only impacted by SOTA in one quarter, in the last quarter, while 2025 have been impacted by the SOTA bitstream fees for the full year. On the other side, we've only been able to take advantage of the new MNO economic model starting from July.
Let's say that 2025 year is not completely, let's say, a good, complete view. For me, the previous slide and the second half of 2025 is a more, let's say, comparable view of 2025. Moving to CapEx, investments. As previously said, we continue investing into our future growth, linked to the growth and continuous deployment of our fixed and mobile networks with cumulative investments of circa EUR 900 million cash CapEx from 2023-2025 focused on our FTTH network deployment, customer acquisition and the setup of a new mobile infrastructure. I will try to explain each of the components of this cash CapEx and what makes the difference between total CapEx and net cash CapEx that you could see that in 2025 is quite relevant.
Starting with the bubbles above, you could see that recurrent CapEx, recurrent maintenance CapEx is very limited and clearly below a mature competitor reference. We are clearly below, let's say, a reference of 12 or 10 CapEx compared to revenues of a more mature player. We are clearly below that. An important part of the CapEx is related with FTTH deployment, of course, and spectrum additions. With respect to FTTH deployment, in some kind of orange or pink here, this is clearly impacted by SOTA network because you could see that it is a bit misleading because it is decreasing and we continue deploying networks.
It is impacted by SOTA because the subsequent deliveries of SOTA are accounted for and considered as inventories because we are building this homes passed to be sold in the short term, and they do not flows through investing activities, through CapEx. They flow through working capital, so these are not considered here and are impacting this evolution, starting 2024 and probably also in 2026 as we finish to deploy the SOTA project. As explained before, this FTTH deployment has been deployed at a very efficient and competitive cost that will increase in coming years, but it still make the investment case clearly for us in terms of returns. Our capital efficient and disciplined approach to investments ensure that we could maintain a structurally low unitary cost while we continue expanding our network, both fixed and mobile.
In the case of spectrum additions, like you see there, EUR 99 million, this is the net present value of the EUR 110 million that we have registered in additions to a spectrum in 2025, while payments are deferred in time until 2028 in installments. You have here a big difference between our total CapEx additions and our net CapEx for the year because we still have EUR 18 million of spectrum pending to pay from 2026-2028 in three years installments. Globally speaking, more than one-third of CapEx is growth CapEx, growth customer-related CapEx, which includes SAC, CPEs, routers, and installation cost. In SAC, including that minor part of salaries, sale for salaries that we are able to capitalize.
It also includes the new 2025 RAN IRU investment in relation with the new Telefónica contracts, with the RAN sharing contracts, which also implies a significant difference between the additions that we are having in 2025 and the net CapEx because we are paying this CapEx in installments as agreed with Telefónica in monthly installments in a number of years. This being represented by a EUR 58 million long-term commercial debt that will be clearly detailed in our financial statements. I mean, if you take this 58 million figure and also the part of the spectrum, you will reach to that EUR 108 million broad difference between total CapEx addition and net CapEx to be, let's say, as clear as we could be. In terms of leverage and debt, we have debt.
We have financed all these investments mainly with our own resources, reinvesting almost all of the internally generated resources with the confidence of our financing banks, most of them present here some way or the other today with us, also together with the SOTA and the Andalucía transaction, I think that also accompanying us today here with us. In 2024, we received a significant amount of funds from SOTA that we partially used to significantly deleverage the company in 2024, as you could see in the graph. In 2025, we have completed a full refinancing of our syndicated loans with a new EUR 275 million facility, adding at the end of 2025 an additional accordion facility of EUR 100 million, which have not been used in 2025. It will be used in 2026.
Also, our affiliate, Digi Andalucía, obtained in 2025 a EUR 81 million facility to finance the acquisition of the last batches to finalize and complete the project, batch three and batch four, that we have completed in 2025, and that, as we consolidate as an affiliate, are part of our consolidated debt. At the same time, as previously introduced by Serghei, we have also completed a process to completely make independent, financially independent Digi Spain from Digi Communications. We are not guaranteeing Digi Communications, and Digi Communications is not guaranteeing Digi Spain. Romania continues to, let's say to kept the shares of Digi Spain and some guarantees around that, but that will be released in case of any kind of future hypothetical go-to-market decision.
At the same time, we've done all of this maintaining a very reasonable leverage level. We have closed 2025 with a 2.8x ratio that we expect to improve and decrease significantly in 2026 without any IPO consideration just because we have still to collect EUR 150 million from SOTA in 2026. Well, you have there some figures. I will prefer Marius to go through them in the guidance part. We are just introducing how will be the leverage, let's say, pro forma December, with any kind of hypothetical IPO considerations, that will help us to maintain the group, the Spanish group, in a very reasonable and healthy leverage level in the midterm.
I also would like to finish this part also highlighting that within that almost EUR 500 million debt figure, we are also including the EUR 58 million of Telefónica long-term commercial debt that is already included in CapEx additions. We think you should consider when making any kind of projections with this debt figure. Well, latest slides with respect to cash flows. I know there is a lot of questions around this. Key messages here from my side. Afterwards, Marius will complement. We already, as I said at the beginning, we already deliver strong cash conversion. We are already recurrent operating free cash flow positive. We are able to cover recurrent maintenance CapEx with our own resources, but not only that, also a big part of the growth commercial CapEx currently, 2026.
Not only pending to cover FTTH deployment and spectrum addition CapEx, which are obviously very long-term investment and usually covered with very long-term financing. We really believe it makes all the sense to continue investing into our high quality and future-proof networks. It is our priority. We will continue investing. We are confident that the new MNO economic model and the continuous deployment of our fixed mobile networks will drive us to the point in which we are also able to cover that part of the FTTH deployment CapEx, and not far away we will be in a positive free cash flow situation in order to compensate our partners. To wrap up, and just before leaving Marius with very interesting guidance.
Just to wrap up, we think we have a very clear pathway for the future years, starting with the deployment of the 21 million homes passed of a SMART network that will help us to increase our SMART FTTH RGUs base. It is all almost mechanical, but important thing is almost all in our hands. This deployment is very de-risked, so I think it is quite predictable. We will reach, we are confident, that 25% penetration figure as we continue deploying. It is also a lot in our hands. The increase of the FTTH RGUs will move the mobile RGUs in a parallel way considering the convergence ratio that we have now, and that we are also trying to improve with our latest commercial offer improvements.
In terms of profitability, as I commented before, as we continue deploying, the percentage of clients that we will have in our own network with much better profitability that the blended 53% that we said in the previous slide will increase significantly only with deployment. If we combine deployment with penetration, we think that we have a very clear path to increase our fixed broadband gross margin, and the mobile gross margin will continue, let's say, hand on hand if we maintain the convergence ratio and we continue enjoying our new MNO economic model with more scale and operating leverage. That's all. Marius.
Thank you, Carlos.
Thank you.
Moving on, we have couple of more slides, we can go to Q&A. I'll try to wrap up. Moving on to forward-looking guidance. We are saying that we have what we see a predictable mechanical-like type of growth. For the first time for the group and for Spain, we feel comfortable in sharing forward-looking guidance in this sense as well. For revenues in Spain for 2026, we expect to deliver some revenues in the range of EUR 1,040 million-EUR 1,085 million. For the midterm, our expectation for the top-line growth is in the low teens CAGR, which is only driven by the ramp-up of the penetration rate of the initial 13.7 million homes that we already deployed. The new footprint that will continue to deliver and the ramp-up of the penetration rate for that as well, no?
Regarding EBITDA, in terms of adjusted EBITDA, we expect 2026 to be in the low 20s, as Carlos mentioned before, consolidating the levels achieved in the second half of 2025, with the effect of the MNO economics. We expect going forward for 2026 a small EBITDA growth in Q1 compared to Q4 in the context of a step-up of fixed costs related to mobile telephony. For the rest of the quarters, we expect constant quarterly growth, no? Reaching that low 20s goal. For midterm, we target to improve adjusted EBITDA for margins above 30%, mainly driven by the gross margin improvement that Carlos was mentioning, both for fixed networks and mobile networks.
For fixed, due to the mix effect of the increase of the take-up proportion of customers in the SMART footprint and within the SMART footprint, our own network in itself with better profitability, no? For mobile, for further on benefiting from the MNO economics model, no? The margin improvement, which in itself is quite mechanical as well, we expect to be mostly front-loaded for the midterm objective. Beyond the midterm, we expect the margin to improve even further as the SMART footprint penetration for the newer cohorts will grow towards more mature levels like we've seen for the initial cohorts as well. For CapEx, moving to CapEx additions, we currently schedule for 2026 a level of investment overall in the range of EUR 400 million, which includes in recurrent CapEx growth and new FTTH additions.
Our target for midterm for recurrent CapEx, as Carlos must mention, is below 10%, meaning still a very competitive low level compared to more mature telecom operators in line with our historical figures. In terms of growth CapEx and FTTH investments on overall as additions, we currently expect to invest for the cycle 2027, 2029, around EUR 850 million-EUR 900 million, out of which half of that roughly will be dedicated to deploying new FTTH networks and the rest for growth. This investment also will be front-loaded. We expect that annual investment will gradually decline towards the end of the midterm, towards EUR 250 million per year. Still in that, in those years with significant growth CapEx as well included, no?
This gradual decline should continue until we reach our deployment target, subject to new deployment opportunities above the 21 million homes, no? From the point of view, we have a clear vision and plan in terms of absolute targets for and pace for deployment, which we will naturally slow progressively towards the end of the midterm with fewer employees dedicated to network deployment efforts in itself, no? Once we reach that point, we will be covering our networks 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 the competitive landscape, the investment returns, and any new deployment of opportunities in itself, no?
What we want to reinforce as a message, is that the investment both for the mid and the long term in Spain is largely under our control and aligned with our growth vision and plans. We have significant flexibility to adapt both the speed and the size of those investments in itself. Putting that into the context of operating free cash flow, as we were mentioning before, practically we're still free cash flow negative operating-wise. We expect to become positive based on this guidance on operating free cash flow towards the end of 2028, beginning of 2029, continuing on this path of deployment and growth.
In terms of leverage, our target for midterm for leverage is to be in the range of 1.5x net debt per EBITDA, subject to any new growth opportunities that could come and arise in the future, no? We are comfortable with the level of 2.8 leverage that we have now. As Carlos was mentioning, with or without the IPO primary component, we could deleverage, and we would deleverage organically during next years. In the event of an IPO of Digi Spain happening, we would take the opportunity to raise primary component as well. That would be in the range of EUR 150 million-EUR 200 million, and with that practically accentuating or accelerating the deleverage path and helping us reinforcing the investment plans in itself, no?
Just to wrap up, we'll say that what we want you to remember about us after this presentation for today is that we are really different. We have structural competitive advantages for cost and for operations. This allowed us to be the fastest-growing telco in Europe, and we believe we will continue to do so for the next years. We have owner or owner-like economics for networks, especially for the networks that we deployed historically on FTTH and for mobile network with the MNO economics. We have still significant growth ahead of us, not only on midterm, but on long term as well, with the attractive returns that will come with that. As you can see, we have a large team. We are 11,300 employees.
A couple of us are presenters who are here today in the room with a lot of experience of putting this model of growth to value and overall. I would say that hopefully after this presentation for today, you realize that the success of Digi in general and in Spain is not based on a secret recipe. This is not a Coca-Cola recipe, let's say. This is based on a lot of hard work and focus and determination of achieving our goals.
In Digi, we prove that it is possible to grow and to offer very good quality services, to invest into technology and networks, but also at the same time to offer very competitive pricing to have and to employ large number of employees, at the same time to offer good returns to shareholders as well and to create value to society, you know? With that, we can go also through to the Q&A part of the presentation. Thank you very much for today and for your patience for listening to our presentation.
Thank you very much, Marius. I would like to invite you together with Cătălin and Carlos to join me for the Q&A session. You ended up with the guidance. I would like to start with the guidance questions. Your guide for the growth CapEx is estimated to come down to approximately EUR 250 million in 2028. Is this the expected normal level or will it come farther down after this? Does it include the cost of acquisition for growth add-on? If yes, what is this cost?
Oh, that is a very good question. Thank you for it. I mean, we still see a lot of growth ahead of us. We still need or we want to deploy 7.3 million homes. That deployment will not be linear during the next five years. It will decrease gradually in terms of volume of CapEx invested. You will see more CapEx front-loaded in this sense for network deployment and less in the, in the end of the midterm. Up to EUR 250 million of estimated CapEx, that is due to the fact that we expect to continue to grow in customer base. There is still a lot of potential to grow. Once we will reach by midterm 21 million homes of network deployed, we will still have a lot of or part of the network that is less penetrated.
Practically, we'll still have a lot of potential to grow in customer base in this sense. The reason of the EUR 250 million value CapEx is estimation for gross CapEx for customer coming into the network practically, you know. Even beyond midterm, we expect that we'll continue to increase penetration and with that practically the profitability of the business, no?
Thank you. What do you expect the CapEx spend to be on building out the RAN sites to 10K in 2033? Is this included in the growth CapEx guidance?
The network deployment CapEx for mobile, it is included in the guidance for CapEx, both for midterm and for 2027-2029. It's as Carlos explained, it's a model of investment that mainly is performed through RAN sharing and in itself through the relationship we agreed with Telefónica through an installment-based type of payments. There will be no peak moment of investment into mobile networks, especially not front-loaded, but it will be distributed over the years, longer these years up to 2033 and later as well, no? From that point of view, it is included in the guidance and is distributed in between all the years that we have ahead of us, no?
How will the cost per homes passed for FTTH deployment increase in the coming years as you move to more semi-urban areas?
It's a very good question. I mentioned in one of the slides where we were showing the evolution of homes passed accumulated and deployed per year in the SMART footprint. We have a EUR 49 average cost of deployment. We started with probably in the range of EUR 30-EUR 32 per homes passed in the first years. Last year, Carlos, please correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's more than EUR 60-EUR 62.
More like 60.
Obviously, every year as we approach less dense areas in terms of homes, with the same effort, we manage to obtain a higher cost per homes passed. We expect that this trend will continue as we approach less dense areas. Anyway, it will not approach models of economics like the ones that you see in rural deployment for FTTH, and will continue to be very competitive compared to historical cost of deployment of competition in Spain, no?
Perfect. Thank you. We have several operational questions, following the first part of the presentation. Could you please explain how you have owner-like economics on the FTTH assets that you sold?
There is a context. First of all, we have two models of network that we sold. Via Andalucía, which from the business point of view accounting point of view is considered a subsidiary. For that practically there is no cost of rent associated to that. As Carlos explained, we are paying dividends in this project to our partners, to abrdn, and from the point of there is an indirect cost for that. Practically, accounting-wise, P&L-wise, there is none. With that practically we retained owner economics for that model. In terms of SOTA, we are paying a billing fee, and with that particularly clearly, we have less margin than on the network that we sold.
Starting September 2029, so five years after we entered into this contract, for customers above a certain threshold of penetration, we will incur very limited marginal cost per customer, and with that practically we will improve the average cost per customer, and with more penetration practically achieve owner-like economics for that model as well, you know. At least for customers coming in above that certain threshold, which we are not very far from, we will have very comparable cost of economics like we would have for our own network as well.
Your EUR 49 FTTH rollout cost excludes some subscriber acquisition cost and installation. How do you think about the customer lifetime value or returns after these acquisition costs are included?
The cost in itself, EUR 49, is cost of deployment. Nothing else.
Yes. Pure cost of deployment.
It doesn't include CPEs, doesn't include installation.
Mm-hmm.
Obviously, with levels of penetration like we already seen for the older cohorts, 25%, 27%, this is a very good investment to going further with. Doing a very fast calculation of return on investment or number of years you need to recoup that investment, you get very, very impressive results. Even though we will have marginally a higher cost per homes passed for the new cohorts, with the higher penetration that we see now, they are very attractive in terms of performing these kinds of investments, no? We have to take into account that customers bring with them not only the gross margin for fixed broadband, but also for mobile telephony and the rest of the services as well, so.
Yeah. We would like that the SAC part will be, let's say, higher in terms of capitalization, but it is like it is. In terms of SAC, it is not a huge, let's say, investment. Could be well, could be more.
Now a question that we always get at Digi Communications as well, which is, do you plan to increase tariffs in the near future?
We already announced that we don't for 2026. We recurrently every year reinforce this message for the year to come. It's difficult to predict the long term, so we prefer to work with this model of reconfirming every year. On a fundamental level, unless there is a significant change in the economics of our business that justify an increase in prices, probably we wouldn't recur into these kind of increases, like Serghei was mentioning before, on a group level as well. This model works quite well. It's based on the ability of attracting large number of customers into our business, and with that practically less necessity to be able to increase prices due to the fact that we have operating leverage that compensates for that, no?
So a question-
just to complement, I would like to say that we are not raising prices, but every year our competitors help us to, let's say, make the space wider between our cost and price and their prices, because they are increasing prices every year with inflation in January, February. So the difference between our competitor prices and our prices, increase every year even without any kind of price increase in our side.
In similar line of questions, since clients allocated in your own network are more profitable, what is the strategy with Telefónica as a long-term partner?
As a?
As a long-term partner.
Long-term partner.
Tema.
Telefónica is a long-term partner for us. We work with them since 2018, 17, almost 18 years already. They are a strong, reliable partner from that point of view, with whom we signed a long-term agreement for both RAN sharing and NRA.
Yes
... up to 2040. From that point of view, we think the relationship with Telefónica is mutually beneficial, win-win, and long-term clearly, especially in the mobile part of the business, no?
We, the last question on the operations is, given the large number of sales employees, including door-to-door, is there a scope for employee reductions when further scale is achieved?
It's a very good question. I mean, we have a significant and large relevant employee base. We think that this is the model to go forward. Proved very right for us and very efficient. We have ability to operate this model to adapt it to the volume of employees that we need at a certain moment in time. From what we've seen in network deployment, for example, in areas where we deploy less due to the maturity of the deployment that we already did, we move or re-qualify our colleagues from that activity to other activities like network maintenance or installations, for example. Sales kind of employment, like the one that we have now, stands, shops, and door-to-door, is focused and dimensioned with the rhythm of growth that we have.
In case we would see that we don't think that it will be the case, of lower demand, we can adapt the volume of employment we have through natural turnover of employment in itself without having to recur to any kind of layoffs. We don't think that that would be necessary because we're seeing strong growth practically ahead of us for all the period of the midterm. Significant growth, similar to the one we've seen last year, both for fixed and mobile, for the next years as well, no.
Now we can move to a set of questions on M&A scenarios. Do you see any room in Spain for potential inorganic acquisitions, for example, assets such as Avatel or Excom, which could potentially allow you to surpass Vodafone in fixed broadband market share?
It's a very good question. First of all, I mean, the other part of the M&A question that Serghei answered before, and we are very glad with the answer that the group provided for us, is they rely on our operations and have confidence in our ability to continue to grow here. With that, practically, we will continue to be a subsidiary of the group for long term, and we are happy with that model. Regarding inorganic growth, we haven't recurred to that until now in Spain. As Serghei was mentioning before, we are open to opportunities. We'll analyze them one by one.
It's true that we are growing very efficiently in an organic manner. Any kind of inorganic opportunity has to be valued against the value creation that can be done towards what we have as a cost for growing organically as well, you know? On a case-by-case basis, we will look at them and value them.
In a scenario that Telefónica buys Zegona, how would that affect Digi?
It's very difficult to answer that. We see ourselves as more agnostic at least on how market evolves. Our growth depends a lot on our ability to be able to deliver the deployment plan, and with that practically to be able to sell, penetrate the network, install the services to our network. In any scenario of consolidation to the market, we see potential upsides, but clearly we can continue with our model without having to be affected in any way by the consolidation of the market, no?
We have two financial questions. The first one would be about the current cost of debt.
Cost of debt, Want to say debt, probably we will be in the range of 4.5%. Could be a bit, the current part related with more confirming or leasing, which are less relevant, could be a bit above of that. I will say that average of 4.5%.
And we als-
Percent.
We also got a question for the clarification. In the Q4 results for Orange Spain, there is a EUR 63 million license sale proceed line. Could you confirm whether this relates to the 60 MHz remedies associated with the Orange MásMóvil? Additionally, could you provide some visibility on the remaining proceeds?
On the remaining proceeds, no?
We are talking about spectrum?
I mean, we are not familiar with the accounts that MásMóvil published, we would prefer not to specifically comment on their accounting treatment for that. As we said, last year, the spectrum was delivered, 1st of July. Formally, from that moment on, we are the owners of the spectrum and responsible for putting it to value. From that moment on, we recognized, Carlos.
We-
1st of July, the value.
Yeah
the EUR 99 million that we were showing there.
We recognized EUR 10 million last year as, let's say, payment in advance at the moment that the spectrum was granted. We recognized this year the rest of the spectrum from EUR 110 million, EUR 99 million, the net present value. As we were granted, let's say, the title of the spectrum, we were not able to control and obtain benefits for, from that spectrum until 1st of July because we have been, let's say, migrating.
The traffic.
... clients and doing a technical integration of the newer spectrum during the first part of the year. Operational-wide-wise, we took not, let's say, operational property of the spectrum until July 1st, which is the moment we have registered the spectrum in our books, if that was the question.
Mm-hmm. We are left to pay EUR 80 million for the next few years.
We are left to pay EUR 80 million now. We paid EUR 10 million in 2024 as a payment in advance. We pay EUR 30 million in 2025. We are still pending to pay EUR 80 million in installments between 2026 and 2028.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Thank you. What is the payback period for the rollout of your own fiber network?
See, that depends on two factors. One is cost, incremental cost for deployment. Every cohort that comes in comes with slightly higher cost. On the other part, penetration. Obviously, newer cohorts come with faster ramp-up of penetration, so one should compensate the other. With that, practically, we see a very fast return on each of the cohorts in itself, no? We don't disclose the calculation for the payback in itself. Probably each of us can do it, and it's quite straightforward. In itself, practically it's very fast return on investment, number of years of each of the cohorts in itself, no?
We have one question that's: Where would you rate the quality of your mobile services compared to peers on a scale from one to ten?
Well, clearly this is a question for Cătălin better than for us, the financial guys.
How we rank the quality, was the question?
The quality of the mobile services compared to peers on a scale from one to 10.
Compared to peers? 10, of course. We have We are struggle to deliver the highest quality to our services. If I may add, we are also delivering the best quality on customer care relating to both mobile and fixed. We are the fastest in solving customer care claims, for example, for both networks. We are putting a lot of effort in offering the highest quality services also for the mobile segment of our business. We are offering, like I said, the highest speed, I would say, for 5G, where our customer can reach almost 2 Gb per second 5G speed in Spain, which is amazing.
10 out of 10 it is. Now I believe we can wrap up, and I have a closing question for you, Marius. It does seem that there is a robust grounds for mechanical growth that you talked about. What's the ceiling for this growth, if there is any?
Well, we would say that that is a philosophical question or we could say. We haven't seen a limit for growth yet in any of the cohorts. I mean, we were very inspired by the slides of our colleagues from Romania in the first part of the presentation with the levels of market share and penetration that we've seen in other markets. They still haven't found that ceiling of growth yet, even after so many years with that level of penetration. We don't know where that is. Clearly there is high demand for value of money services. The customers appreciate our value proposition and understand it as fair and attractive. We hope we will continue to convince more customers in the future for that one, so.
I think we will have a quite late lunch, ideally.
Thank you.
We could continue the discussion later, yeah.
Thank you all for your attention. With this, we will wrap up this Q&A session, and the formal part of today's event is over. The event on its own is not over. For those of you who are here with us in person, we invite you to join us for the networking lunch. For those of you who will be joining us for the site visit to Alcobendas, I would like to kindly ask you to meet us at 3:40 P.M. downstairs in the lobby on the ground floor, where there will be a bus to pick us up and take us to Alcobendas. Thank you all for joining us today, we hope to see you soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.