Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Digi Communications and the Investors Q1 2026 financial results presentation. A copy of the corresponding report is posted in the Investor Relations section of Digi's website at digicommunications.ro. The conference is being recorded today, and a replay will be available shortly after. For today's call, please submit your questions for the Q&A session at the end of the presentation using the chat box. Before we get started, you are advised that certain statements in this conference call are forward-looking and therefore subject to material risks and uncertainties.
Actual results could differ materially from those that are implied by such forward-looking statements due to the risks and uncertainties associated with Digi Communications N.V., which include, among others, various risks related to our business, risks related to regulatory matters and litigation, risks related to investment in emerging markets, risks related to our financial position, and as well as risks related to the notes and the related guarantee. I would like to introduce the speakers for today's call. Mr. Serghei Bulgac, the CEO of Digi Communications N.V., Mr. Dan Ionita, the company's CFO, and Mr. Marius Varzaru, the CEO of Digi Spain. We may now begin the call.
Thank you very much, Mariana. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our first quarter 2026 results presentation call. I will try to explain or guide you through our results, helped by Marius Varzaru, my colleague from Spain, and Dan Ionita, the group CFO. Let's go into the slides. We had an outstanding quarter with EUR 583 million of revenues in the quarter, 10% growth year-on-year. RGUs exceeded 33 million units in the first quarter, 15% growth, and again, an increase of more than 4 million RGUs year-on-year during the period. EBITDA growth of 15%. EBITDA excluding operating leases, reaching more than EUR 160 million from EUR 140 million one year ago.
Romania, our largest, most mature core market, grew at 9% its RGU, RGUs. Mobile customers exceeded 8.2 million units, 20% year-on-year growth. Very impressive figure. Pay TV continues above 6 million for the second quarter, including both cable and satellite operations and broadband at 5.2 million RGUs, with 5% growth. Spain has increased overall, and with mobile being the largest growing segment. Sorry, the largest segment at 7.6 million units, 22% growth. Broadband, the largest, the fastest-growing segment with 2.8 million RGUs, 30% growth and fixed telephony, 900,000 units. Overall growth, impressive, 26% year-on-year.
Going on, we continued on doing what we do best, developing the networks, improving the current networks that we have, and of course, increasing the number of users, increasing the penetration or the usage of these networks across all our markets, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Italy. Our intention is to continue consolidation of networks and operations in Romania, further expansion of both fixed footprint and mobile footprint in Spain, as well as consolidation of operations in Portugal. I think this is our key focus and that will continue to be our key focus going forward. Of course, we are continuing to concentrate on the new markets, Belgium, and we've just announced starting operations in U.K.
Maybe we'll touch a bit on this later. Just to run quickly through our most recent developments, most recent events. We have published annual accounts at the end of April, and together with the publication of our results, we did announce the management proposal to offer dividend of RON 0.50 per share after the split. On a like-for-like basis, it will be RON 1.5 in comparison to RON 1.35 a year ago if we were not splitting the shares. Of course, with share split, the dividend is three times smaller, but overall, an 11% increase.
I just did mention, mid-March, we did close and we did announce a 51% ownership in Whyfibre Limited, a U.K.-based company. This partnership will allow us to develop networks, fixed networks in U.K. We intend to launch test services on a pilot basis in the areas north of London. Actually, we have started and we will continue the pilot that we started in the recent few days. Yes. Let's go on. We're coming back to the numbers. Overall, sales, EUR 583 million, EBITDA over EUR 160 million, as mentioned a bit earlier. EUR 127 million of EUR 160 comes from Romania. EUR 50 million in Spain.
Continuous number more or less from Q4, expected to increase, going forward in line with our, with our announcements and Marius will discuss this more as we discuss. An improvement in EBITDA loss, EUR 16 million in Q1 this year, better than in Q3, Q4 last year for Portugal. As I mentioned, an impressive figure of 33 million RGUs, more than 20 million in Romania for the first time historically, Spain at 11.4 million RGUs. Just a few numbers. Just coming back to the financials, EUR 584 million revenues, 10% up from EUR 532 million a year ago.
EBITDA, including the IFRS 16 numbers, EUR 1 94 million, up from EUR 170 million a year ago. Similar increase of over EUR 20 million, again, in line with growth of EBITDA excluding operating leases. CapEx, EUR 156 million, significantly less in comparison to Q1 last year at EUR 179 million, in line with our expectation for further CapEx decrease, just like we discussed in the previous call when we were discussing the Q4 results. EUR 771 million in CapEx that we recorded in 2025 was a significant decrease versus 2024. This year, we are going to have a number in the low EUR 700s million for the total CapEx.
All in all, the numbers are in line with our expectations and in line with what our strategy. Just a few words on RGUs. Mobile continues to be the largest or is the largest and continues to be the fastest-growing segment with 21% growth rate, of course, helped by Spanish operations and Romanian growth primarily. Broadband remains the second-largest segment with 13% growth. Pay TV continues 5% growth with 6.4 million RGUs in comparison to 6.1 million RGUs a year ago. The largest growth comes from Spain this time, not Romania anymore. In Romania, both our market and our position is very mature.
We praised our colleagues from Spain with 26% growth, and Marius will dive more into details describing these numbers and overall the Spanish operations. Other than that, Romania grew by 9%. Portugal added 20% to the customer base, reaching 905,000 RGUs in Q1 from 755,000 RGUs a year ago. Of course, the fastest-growing segment is mobile and followed by broadband, more or less like in other markets that we operate in. Just a very few words on portability because this shows the health of our growth and health of our development, both in Romania and Spain. As you see, most of the growth and additions is backed by portability results.
In Romania, we had a gross portability of 188,000 users in the first quarter. In Spain, gross portability of over 416,000 RGUs and net portability of almost 200,000 RGUs. A very healthy dynamic and basically showing the superiority of our offerings and our engagement with our customers in those, these markets. Going on, I will ask Marius to continue and discuss our Spanish results.
Thank you, Serghei. Hello, everybody. Glad to be with you today and to share the results and the progress of Digi Spain. We had another excellent quarter, Q1 2026, of growth for Digi Spain. With accelerated growth both for fixed and mobile services and the expansion of the smart network footprint. The speed of deployment of the FTTH network continues to be high. In the first quarter of 2026, we rolled out more than 570,000 homes passed, reaching a total of 14.2 million homes passed. Our goal is to continue to deploy and to reach a footprint overall of 21 million homes, the latest by 2070. As you know, our most important critical factor of success in Spain is the deployment of FTTH networks in a vertically integrated model with our own employees.
This solution of deployment allow us to roll out and to operate on a daily basis very good quality networks. To deploy a future-proof network with best available technology at this point, and also based on the economies of scale, synergies and cost efficiencies to achieve very competitive economics, both for CapEx and OpEx for the network. In this sense, by the end of the quarter, for the whole 14.2 million homes passed month footprint, with its overall historical average cost of deployment of EUR 50 per home passed, a very competitive cost, less than half of the historical cost of deployment of our competitors in Spain. On the bottom part of this slide, you can see how the constant evolution of the take-up of the smart footprint reached 16.3% level by the end of last quarter.
On the top slide, on the top part of the slide, you can better interpret this blended average take-up by the individual penetration rates for each of the cohorts, depending on the year when they were built. Our smart footprint commercial operation generates constant growth in all cohorts, including the initial ones of 2019 and 2020, which reached levels of penetration of 21%, 20%, 28% and 25% by the end of the quarter. Newer cohorts continue to benefit from higher take-up and faster ramp-up compared to the initial cohorts. In the initial cohorts, we were starting with 3% penetration in the first year. The newer cohorts start with 6% or even 7% for the last cohort of 2025.
Lastly, for this slide, the SOTA network deliveries continue to be ahead of the initial plan, and we've reached 5.6 million homes delivered already. The remaining 375,000 homes will be delivered until the end of this year. Also, EUR 131 million of cash inflows will come from SOTA for the next three quarters. On the next slide, we can see how this great result in terms of deployment of network reflect in our accelerated growth momentum in Spain, consolidating the already best year of net growth, 2025, both for fixed and mobile services. We are the market leaders in terms of net gains for the past 17 quarters consecutively, both for fixed and mobile services in Spain.
For fixed broadband, we reached 2.76 million customers with a growth of more than 175 net adds in the quarter, which is the best historical net growth quarter year. 100% of this net growth during the last nine quarters came only from the smart footprint, 100% of that. Benefiting from the competitive products we launched back in October 2024 for this footprint, reflected also in the gradual decrease in ARPU as new customers joining in Digi are subscribing products with a more competitive price. We are the third B2C fixed operator in Spain already. In a couple of months we will become the third fixed broadband operator in Spain overall. We reached a market share of 13.9%.
It's an impressive increase of 2.8 points of market share during the last 12 months, which is actually achieved only as I mentioned before, in the smart footprint, which covers only half of Spain, meaning that in the smart footprint area we are growing at an impressive pace of 5 points of market share per year. This reinforces our determination to continue to expand the smart footprint towards the 21 million goal, and replicate in other areas of Spain the commercial success of the existing cohorts.
For the mobile services, we reached 7.58 million mobile adds, with an excellent quarter of net gain as well of 312,000 net gain mobile adds, out of which 80% being convergent mobile adds, confirming once more that the attractiveness of the Digi value proposition is very sound and customers are subscribing all the services with us. In the next slide, continuing, we can see how the constant growth of the revenues over the last five quarters is reflecting the mix of customer base growth and ARPU dilution due to the more competitive offers we launched in the last quarters. On the bottom part of the slide, we are presenting the gross margin evolution both for fixed and mobile mobile services.
For the fixed broadband, for example, for the last five quarters improves, the margin improves due to strong operational leverage, expansion of the smart footprint and the increase of its penetration rate. On the mobile side, the margin evolution for the past five quarters, as you might remember from previous presentation, is determined by a couple of moving parts. First of all, starting from first of July last year, the new model of mobile telephony cost, the MNO economics, as we call it, started to apply, improving significantly starting with Q3 2025. Q4 2025, the margin decreased as an effect of the latest commercial offer update from September 2025. Lastly, in Q1 2026, as anticipated in our previous call, a step up of EUR 4 million per quarter compared to previous quarter of fixed costs related to the expansion of the mobile network started.
Most of the transition of the MNO economics model is well advanced and going forward. For the next quarters, we do not foresee any further downward impact on the mobile telephone margin. Continuing to the next slide, we can see the evolution of the adjusted EBITDA ex operating leases for the last five quarters, and how this is reflecting the effect of both fixed and mobile gross margin evolution. Starting with Q3 2025, we clearly see the effect of the new MNO economics model and in Q4 2025, the effect of the latest commercial offer for updated in September 2025.
In Q1 2026, we see the effect of the step-up of this fixed cost for mobile networks expansion of EUR 4 million compared to previous quarter, leading to a slight growth of EBITDA compared to Q4, as we already anticipated during our last call. For the rest of the year, we expect constant growth for EBITDA for each quarter in line with the guidance for 2026. All in all, it's an excellent quarter of growth for Digi Spain with record net adds confirming our strategy for continuous growth for the years to come.
Based on the expansion of the smart footprint up to 21 million homes, with almost mechanical-like type of constant growth for the customer base on this footprint towards the 25% penetration levels we already see in the initial cohort, which paired with our significant operational lead to a strong potential also for improved pro-profitability. Now, Serghei will continue the presentation with the financial profile.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Marius. Total gross debt close to EUR 2 billion. Net debt EUR 1.9 billion. Net leverage ratio 3.15x . Repayments very small this year, EUR 57 million, and repayments of EUR 284 million during 2027. All in all, just as we were discussing, we think the Q4 numbers were the highest in the recent history going back and also going forward in terms of leverage. We are on the path of delivering our exposure, our financial exposure, as we said, towards less than 3x by the end of this year and towards less than 2.75x by the end of 2027.
This almost concludes our presentation. As a summary, we are continuing our day-to-day work in Romania. We've said it many times, we are very large, we are mature, we have consolidated presence, but there's always opportunity and possibility to improve operations through efficiencies, and other investments. We will continue doing so while trying to increase the penetration and usage of our primarily mobile but also fixed network. For Spain, as Marius has said, we concentrate on expanding further the fixed and mobile networks. We are aiming to continue the growth and enhancement, large investment in profitability, in line with our end of 2025, but, and further.
Of course, we concentrate on the new markets to improve efficiencies and scale in Portugal, but also to help continue starting the services in Belgium and U.K., the most recent addition. I think we are now at the end of the presentation, and we kindly invite you to submit your questions in the chat box, and we will read the questions, and we will try to our best to answer. The first question comes from Daniela. Q1 2026 revenues rose 10% year-over-year. Is this a fair run rate for full year 2026, or should growth accelerate in coming quarters? Well, thank you for the question.
We have a mixture of geographies, some of them having significantly higher growth as we have shown on the slides. We have Romania, which is a very mature market. I'd expect 10% still to be the lowest boundary for growth. I'd expect growth to be to exceed 10% during 2026. Of course, helped by the growth markets, most and then by the Romanian operations. Romanian operations, due to their size, of course, affect these results significantly. The second question from Daniela. RGUs grew strongly, but ARPU declined across key markets.
Should full year 2026 revenue growth remain mostly volume-driven, or do you see ARPU stabilization? Well, we have always concentrated on volume growth and not ARPU management. For sure, this will remain the foundation and the base for our growth going forward, including 2026. ARPU declines vary market by market. In Romania, these are mostly the results of Forex devaluation that took place around May, June last year. We have also another series of devaluation that took place recently in the last two or so weeks. We'll see how we address that.
For Spain, there was a certain price readjustment and certain change in behavior of customers, resulting in ARPU decline. For Portugal, ARPU decline is driven by conversion of Nowo customers to Digi products, which generate smaller fees. All in all, I think this is all in line with our expectations, and we don't see any negative development on this side. Again, as always, we concentrate on volume. Third question from Daniela. Romania revenues rose 5.8% year-on-year. How should we model full year 2026 growth considering mobile RGU gains, TKR and prepaid and ARPU pressure?
Well, we still continue growing in Romania, but probably the level is in the low percents. Yeah, difficult to say more. Having said this, we will continue growth in Romania as well. The question number four from Daniela comes for Spain. Spain remains the main growth engine. Should its EBITDA margin keep improving in 2026, or is further expansion likely to be limited? I'll ask Marius to address this question.
Thank you, Daniela. EBITDA margin will continue to improve. We already provided guidance both for 2026 and for mid and for EBITDA. The guidance continues to be valid. In this sense, for 2026, we were providing guidance for low 20%s, consolidating the margin for the second semester of last year. For mid-term, for EBITDA margin that we think that it will reach about 20%, 30%.
Well, yeah. Let's move on. Two more questions from Daniela. Question number five. Group adjusted EBITDA margin improved despite softer revenues. Is the Q1 margin sustainable for the rest of 2026? Well, I disagree with softer revenue growth. I mean, 10% is, I think a very good result, for the group level, again, given the very mature market, that we have in Romania. As I described before, for sure, we consider the Q1 margin is both sustainable, and it will improve, primarily helped by our Spanish operations, but not only, because we are working to improve further our position in Portugal, and we are working to improve further our EBITDA in Romania. The answer is yes.
The last question, based on Q1, is high single digit to low double-digit revenue growth and mid-teen adjusted EBITDA growth for 2026 realistic? Well, for sure. Question from Jeremy. In Belgium, can you please help us understand the difference that duct access would theoretically make to the cost of the roll per household for fiber? For example, if you can pay for using someone's ducts, what happens to your cost to pass per home? How important is that access to your overall business plan?
Look, it's a broad question, the broad answer is certainly having access to someone ducts, primarily Proximus, the incumbent, is helping you roll out faster because digging your own trenches to put your ducts and to put your magistrals, first of all, takes time, and second, of course, is costly. Overall, it's certainly an improvement. Having said this, it's difficult to discuss the economics per home because at this moment, there is no finalized or concrete offering on the table. What are your ambitions in the U.K.? How much is your FTTH cost to pass in the U.K., please? Will you look to have a nationwide product?
Would you wholesale from others or just do your own roll? Are you looking at a possible MVNO deal? Well, I think the answer is yes to most of these questions. Meaning, we are keen to develop our U.K. presence just like we do in every other market. I would probably qualify this statement a bit. U.K. is a large market, larger than any other markets that we operate in, including Spain at this moment. Certainly, we will probably approach this opportunity on a step-by-step basis, trying to roll out smaller footprints in selected areas and growing from smaller base to a larger presence. Having said this, certainly we're interested to have a nationwide product. It's just that it will take time. Will we wholesale? Of course.
If we have a good offering, we will do so. If we're looking to do an MVNO or similar deal, yes, because we think that offering a mobile product, a converged product, mobile and fixed, is probably more appropriate than offering just a single product, as we speak today. A question from the last question from Jeremy. Any update on the Spain IPO process? The market is volatile, but telco valuations are near all-time highs. What are you waiting for? Well, we thank you. Thank you also for the critique. It's really helpful. We have decided not to do the IPO in the window which ended just couple of days ago. Really for the reasons of the market.
Despite very positive feedback from the investors, we couldn't predict the geopolitical volatility. We couldn't predict the market's outlook or the market's situation. We've chosen to not proceed with the IPO at this moment. However, we're certainly very keen and very open to complete the IPO. Whenever the next opportunity or the next window shows up, we will come to the market. Having said this, we will certainly want to take benefit of a calmer market. Once again, I come back to your critique and saying that valuations are all-time high. Yeah, we just didn't have the guts in these volatile times. Probably more importantly, our growth continues at a very fast pace.
So with more than 30%, or significantly more than 30% growth in EBITDA this year, we want to capitalize this opportunity as well. So whenever we come back to the market, we want to benefit from a good market, but also a reflection of our results so far. And maybe, Marius, would you add something more to this question so that we so that we just complete this topic?
I think the answer is quite complete. I mean, we had a very good experience in interacting with investors, and we've seen a lot of interest. Unfortunately, the moment where we were in the market was not the best one in order to capture the attention of investors. We prefer to wait for a calmer quarter and market, as you mentioned before.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Also, thank you for the question. Alina is asking, could you give us an indication of the prepaid share within Digi's Romanian mobile base following the Telekom prepaid acquisition? How you expect the prepaid, postpaid mix to evolve going forward? I think prepaid share in our RGUs is not significant. It's somewhere in the 5% to 7% area. Yes, as you see, we continue to be mostly a postpaid business. About the evolution, we have taken over a relatively small base of users from Telekom Romania Mobile. We are, we have resumed prepaid operation, and we will continue doing so.
Having said this, we noticed that our traction and our ability to sell postpaid product is bigger, is stronger. Having said this, we are growing also in the prepaid segment. Again, having said this, there's a legal market for prepaid, which we didn't concentrate on until now, but we will continue being present and operating on this market as well. As we realize, there is an issue of customers who demand this product for various reasons. We will offer these products going forward in Romania as well. A question from Christian. What are the plans in U.K. in terms of RGUs ARPU? Well, so, difficult to say. We are still very early one.
We're in the test phase of an initial pilot, covering North London areas. We've launched our product offering with 500 megs product. It's GBP 15 and 1 Gb product at GBP 20. We see interest from customers for these products. We also see interest from our customers to buy higher speed products, 2.5 Gb, 10 Gb products. At this moment, it's too early to say, and it's too early to predict anything. So far, so good, and we are really in the first days. Yes. The second question: Please explain penetration rates in slide 10. Smart footprint average penetration rate is cumulative penetration of Digi in groups. It covers the penetration rate in year one.
What it covers in the first year. I don't understand why penetration in year eight is 16.9%, but in the slide you say for 2019 and 2020, it's 28% and 25%. I'll let Marius answer this. Probably you are mixing the overall penetration of the network with penetration in certain cohorts, in the earlier cohorts. I'll let Marius explain it in better detail.
Thank you, Serghei. You're right, Serghei. 16.3% is the average take-up we've reached by the end of quarter one 2026, which is practically part of the 8th year of deployment for us. When you see this in the upper part of the graph, disaggregated by cohorts, you will see the red line and the blue line, which are 2019, 2020 cohorts that reach levels of penetration of 28% in the case of 2019 and 25% in case of 2020. This shows the potential of growth for the rest of the cohorts towards the 25% along the years that will come. The overall average take-up that we expect to improve to 25%, no?
6.9% penetration you are referencing to, it's year one penetration for the latest cohorts, 2025. Just one year of activity for recently deployed network that reached already by the end of 1st year 6.9% penetration. Hope this is helpful.
Two more questions from Christian. I think both for Marius for Spain. Why ARPU decreased to EUR 5.5? I'm not sure I follow. Marius, if you do, please help me. The last question: Where do you see the margin stabilize in Spain in the owner model?
I'm not sure about the EUR 5.5 decrease of ARPUs. We haven't decreased ARPUs in Spain, never. From the point of view, we grow every quarter. Especially this quarter, we had record growth in fixed broadband ARPUs, the best quarter historically. Please clarify what you are referring to. Regarding margin stabilization for owner model, I imagine you're referring to mobile network, to MNO economics, which practically now reached a stabilization effect of margin, and from now on will continue to improve quarter by quarter. We haven't provided a guideline, a guidance for the margin in itself, only for EBITDA. Practically, the guidance for EBITDA reflects also the margin evolution for mobile networks, for mobile business for the next year or so. Hope that is helpful.
Yes. In the meantime, Christian has clarified. He meant EUR 5.5 decrease of ARPU from EUR 5.7 a year ago at the entire group level. I think we did cover that. Various markets have different explanations. All in all, we are growing our volume and we're growing our revenues, and we're very happy about it. Just very quickly to recap what I said already during the presentation. Romania, effect of, mostly effect of Forex. Spain, effect of price changes in certain products and change of customer behavior, choosing more attractive packages. Portugal migration from Nowo packages to of Nowo packages to Digi prices. Overall, these are the explanations. Christian has one more question.
In the owner model, what is the depreciation amortization in terms of percentage of revenues? We'll try to look into it. I'm not sure we'll be able to answer during this call. If not, we'll come back to this later. Thank you very much. Andrew, I hope to better understand the opportunity you see in the U.K. fiber market. It appears highly competitive from both a wholesale and retail perspective, particularly in urban centers such as North London. How are you thinking of scaling this investment? Well, it's true, I think, I don't know. I think I'm not sure I can answer it necessarily for the U.K. market. I could probably answer it overall. We rely on a strategy and a philosophy that favors latest technology, high quality of services and affordable prices.
I believe there's a niche of this kind in most markets, if not in all of them. We're trying to explore this niche across in the markets where we operate, U.K. included. I think this is it, and basically having answered in this way, it's difficult for me to compare us to any other operators and the situation on the ground. If you think that GBP 15 per broadband service is not affordable, is not relevant, let us know. A question from Ben Bruns. Hi, I'm late on the call, the question might already have been asked.
On Belgium, how do you explain the growth of mobile RGUs in Belgium, only 8,000 in Q1, the lowest number on record. What do you expect for this and the coming quarters? Where are you on the fiber rollout in Belgium in homes passed, and what are your plans? Are there any talks going on with Citymesh on the put option they have for their remaining stake in the joint venture? Thank you. Well, I will not comment on our discussions with our partners at Citymesh. I think this is private before it becomes public. On the previous questions, look, we're still trying to learn our ways around Belgium. We are growing.
Indeed, 8,000 is not a large number, but we are consistent, and we will continue doing so. No changes here. We are really adjusting the resources that we have available for the Belgian market with, yeah, how much we want and how much we can spend, with the trade-off in the volume of growth and so far so good. We are happy about this. Thank you very much for the question. Question from Irina. The regulatory fees increase, could you provide more details from which market or what drove this increase? Will this increase persist? No, I think there was a misunderstanding. There are no regulatory fee increases. Oh, sorry, Oleg. One second, please. One second.
I'm coming back to Irina. Dan is helping me to understand the question. You must refer to increase in spectrum fees that we have shown in the P&L. The spectrum fees have increased in our Romanian market, due to the fact that we've acquired significantly- sorry, in Spanish market, due to the fact that we acquired significant spectrum holdings in both market. In Spain, as a result of remedies taken as part of the Orange, MásMóvil merger, and in Romania as part of the Telekom Romania Mobile acquisition. These are not regulatory fee increases. These are spectrum fee increases. The second question from Irina.
There's a draft Romanian regulation under discussion that would require Digi and other telecom operators in Romania to convert euro-denominated tariffs into RON at the official National Bank of Romania reference rate. Assuming the draft becomes law, how will this impact Digi P&L? Not at all whatsoever. If you are following the press around this announcement, Digi was praised as the only operator in the market that already converts its euro-denominated tariffs into Romanian lei using the National Bank of Romania. No impact for us whatsoever. A question from Ines. Hello. Portugal reached 905,000 services, but how many clients do you have in this market? What are your plans regarding Portugal this year? Is there investment planned?
Your competitors say that there is impossible to invest with four players in Portugal and that the market will consolidate. What is your view on that? Well, indeed, thank you. We've reached 905,000 RGUs. Unfortunately, we're not tracking on a day-to-day basis the number of unique customers. I'd expect the number to be in the area of 600,000 to 700,000 users. This is an expectation. I hope it's helpful. Regarding our plans, I did mention during the presentation, we are consolidating operations with the view to improve our losses, to diminish our losses. We are consolidating operations with the view to increase sales, which is gradually happening. Of course, the associated revenues.
Yes, we continue to do investments in improving the mobile coverage, in improving the network of sales points, and of course also improving the fixed coverage. The last mention, which is really not a question to us, but it's really a comment, that probably the other players say it's very difficult for them to invest and they look for consolidation. I think it's it doesn't affect us one way or another. We invested in Portugal and we very much like both the market and the opportunity, and we're here to stay. If the market consolidates, most likely it will be around us, not. Yeah, never say never. We'll see.
A question from Conrad: Do you consider re-entering in Hungary or expanding to other CE markets, for example, Poland in the future? Well, Conrad, we're always looking for opportunities, certainly. Thank you for the question. If there'll be welcome opportunities, we'll have a look. At this moment, We've just announced U.K. a few weeks ago as a new market. It's a very big opportunity for us. I would answer very, very, very shortsightedly. At this very, very moment, we are not involved and we are not working in any other opportunities. Again, as I did mention, never say never. A question from Christian, it's a question to Spain, really for Marius. Can I pick to EBITDA margin in Spain?
You target 30% in the midterm, from what you've said in the presentation. I think Christian is asking us to confirm whether we are targeting 30% in the midterm. I think just to clarify, what I did mention, I did mention more than 30% growth this year, but I'll let Marius to expand because I think you were picking up on what I said.
Thank you. Thank you, Christian. The target for the EBITDA operating leases for mid-term is to reach levels above 30%, and that would be mainly driven by gross margin improvement both in fixed and mobile services. In fixed due to the mix effect of deploying new smart footprint and increasing the penetration both in existing footprint and future network. In mobile, due to the increase of the ARPU and also due to the MNO economies operational leverage that we have that will improve our portability.
A second question from Christian regarding the U.K., what region you are in, what major towns, what population? Yeah, thank you, and thank you for the question. I didn't mention it before. We have started in Luton, our pilot is in Luton, but we will follow with other towns surrounding. But yes, our pilot is in Luton. I should have said it so more clear, clearer. Thank you very much for the follow-up question. So far so good. These are the questions. We'll wait maybe a minute or so. If there'll be more questions, kindly let us know. Otherwise, we will close the line. Thank you very much. I think it was a very helpful call, and thank you very much again for discussing our results for Q1.
We will meet you all mid-August, discussing second quarter results. I hope just as good and better. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.