Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for waiting. Welcome to the earnings call for the Q3 of 2024 at Unifique Telecomunicações S.A. I wanna highlight that if you must use simultaneous translation, we have this tool available on our platform. To access, please select the interpretation button through the icon of the globe on the bottom part of the screen and choose your language of preference, Portuguese or English. For those listening to the earnings call in English, you have the option to mute original audio in Portuguese by clicking this. We'd like to let you know that the earnings call is being recorded and will be provided on the IR website, ir.unifique.com.br, where you can also find the complete release and information on our earnings for the quarter. You can download the presentation on the chat icon as well, which is also available in English.
During the presentation, all of the participants will have the microphone closed. After, we'll begin the Q&A session. In order to activate the Q&A icon, you can select that on the bottom part of your screen, write your question and enter the queue. As you're announced, we will ask you to open your mic, and then you must activate the mic to be able to submit a question. We'd like to instruct you that all questions should be submitted at once. We also wanna highlight that information contained in this presentation and possible statements that could be made during the earnings call related to business perspectives, forecasts, and operational targets and financial targets by Unifique Telecomunicações S.A. represent assumptions and beliefs of the company's management, as well as information that's currently available. Future statements are not a guarantee of performance.
They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, as they refer to future events, and they involve circumstances that could or not occur. Investors must understand that general market conditions and other operational factors may affect the future performance at Unifique Telecomunicações S.A. and lead to results that differ materially from those listed in such statements in the future. Today, we have the presence of our executives in the company, Fabiano Busnardo, CEO, and José Wilson de Souza Jr., the financial director and investor relations. Now I'll pass the phone to Mr. Fabiano Busnardo.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for your time. Today, we're here to present the results and discuss these results for the Q3. Some highlights I wanna bring, and we have a history of organic growth.
This year, the Q1 was 4,000 net adds, and in the Q2, we had 8,000. Now in the Q3, we are discussing how we reached 15,000, and we consider this to be a positive advance. If we consider that, we have some efforts, of course, to accelerate sales, but we're still able to keep our churn rate, and we consider this to be extremely healthy. We also have another point which we considered here with a plan, which is a welcome plan to be able to encourage our sales more. In the first three months, we provide a discount on the monthly fee, and then this improvement, we feel in the billing more now in the next period.
I also wanna highlight that we are still dedicating our time to really deploy and launch our mobile services for 5G. In the first semester, we had 30,000 accesses. Now in the Q3, we had the possibility to expand a bit more to about 30,000, reaching 60,000 accesses. We also plan to finish this year with 100,000, and we're gonna have to accelerate a little more. We still have some challenges with the systems, and people are still adapting some system details on the system to have more speed in the sale and activation. We still have some developments, of course, that are gonna help us in the future.
As I mentioned, we have this target of 100,000 for this year, 300,000 for next year, and 3 million chips for 2030. At this moment, we have only 67 ERBs that are active, but from now on, this will be accelerated. Besides the development of new towers, we also have some contracts underway that we've signed recently, and we believe that this will provide greater speed for the development. As a consequence, we'll be able to encourage a bit more of our growth in this vertical, which is our biggest bet for the future. It's a deal where we made BRL 2.8 million just in this quarter. That's less than 1% of our sales.
We do hope to make about BRL 8 million in the year of 2024 in this vertical. It's gonna be our first year, and we believe that by next year we should be having about BRL 65 million approximately. I have no doubt that in 2026 this vertical will be really accelerated, and we'll be able to think about something close to maybe BRL 200 million if our actions really lead to the desired effect. I'm really confident about this. This gives us also a really good perspective because 80% of the sale of our chips have.
Of course, this varies a little bit depending on each week, but this is really we hope that with this we can keep our churn rates, which we're already at a level that are quite interesting, and who knows, we'll be able to improve this even more. It's obviously not easy, but we have been dedicating efforts to this, and I think that we're moving in the right direction. After this introduction here of these two points, that I discussed, I'll pass the floor on to our CFO, José Wilson de Souza Jr., and he's gonna get into more details about this with our numbers as well. Thank you so much for now.
Thank you, Fabiano Busnardo. Good afternoon, everyone. Here we'll move on to our presentation where we can also talk about the company's performance in the Q3 of 2024. Moving on to the first slide, we have some highlights of the Q3 of 2024. In the Q3, we were able to reach an operational revenue of BRL 319.4 million, an increase of 10.9% if you compare with the same period in the previous year. In the B2C segment, the increase was 10.1%, and in the B2B segment it was 14.2%. This growth justified by the M&A that took place in January 2024, where we performed the acquisition of X, and there was about 28,000 accesses.
Considering the organic net adds in the Q3 of 2023 and 2024, where we had an add of about 33,000 accesses, and from this total amount, 15,000 accesses took place in the Q3 of 2024. That was a growth of 76% if compared to the Q2 of 2024. Here we have another point we wanna highlight also that contributed to the growth of the operational revenue, was the low churn. As we mentioned also by Fabiano, in the Q3 of 2024, we were able to reach a churn index of 1.61, and this is mainly due to the actions that the company had with the prevention of cancellations, where we offered alternatives or incentives so that customers could reconsider before canceling services. Also customer service, which were points we highlighted a lot.
That's where we really improved support also for our customers, and we started being a little more agile in problem-solving. Ever since the beginning of the year, the company, Unifique, has been increasing its own service team and field technicians also to provide services. In regards to the EBITDA, we were able to reach a recurring EBITDA of BRL 121.5 million in the Q3. 7.6% if compared with the same period in the previous year. We were able to achieve an EBITDA margin of 50.2% in the Q3 of 2024, so an increase of 2.3 percentage points if compared with the Q2 of 2024.
One of the main points that we wanna highlight here at Unifique, and I think this is really important, is the conversion of the EBITDA into operational cash flow, where in the Q3 of 2024 it was 93.9%, and then in the accumulated results in nine months it was 96.5%. That indicates high efficiency in cash generation, which is so important, and that also reflects the capacity that Unifique has to keep solid operations. That's one of the points we really value, especially in a scenario with low leverage, where the company has this, and kinda generates a high operational cash generation. This is really important. This performance demonstrates the sustainability of the operations and the efficiency in the management of the financial resources.
Moving on to the next slide for economic and financial performance. Here we have the EBITDA in the Q3 of 2024, we were able to achieve an EBITDA of BRL 128.3 million, an increase of 8.9% if compared to the Q3 of 2023. If we compare with the Q2 of 2024, then we had an increase of 5%. The EBITDA margin in the Q3 was 50.2%, and that was stable considering the margins considered in the Q2 of 2023. The expenses with personnel were one of the main events that impacted the EBITDA margin in the Q3 of 2024.
We had an increase of our employees from 2,448 employees to 2,822 in the Q3 of 2024. We also had an increase of 5% through a collective agreement signed with the union in this category in June 2024. In exchange, the EBITDA in the company also was impacted positively by the registration of the fiscal credits in the federal environment related to Lei do Bem that add up to BRL 8.7 million. The net income here in the Q3 of 2024 added up to BRL 46.4 million and an increase of 13.3% if compared with the Q3 of 2023. Moving on to the next slide, where we have the debt level in the company.
In the Q3 of 2024, we had a total debt achieved of BRL 856.9 million and a net debt of BRL 305.4 million. The net debt versus the EBITDA was 0.63x. Demonstrating the good financial health that Unifique also has, and that's something we always like highlighting. The capital structure that the company has to be able to continue being a consolidating company. It's a structure that we have that's adequate, the capital structure. Debt level is low, and it's a company that's always really prepared to have something that's transformational.
It's very difficult today to be able to have something transformational with other players due to their characteristics, but at Unifique, we're really prepared to work on this operation. Moving on to the next slide about operational performance. In the Q3 of 2024, we were able to achieve 3.4 homes passed. If we compare with the Q2 of 2024, we had an increase of 0.9%. Here, ever since the Q4 2023, Unifique has reduced significantly the construction of ports. Now we just have ports to provide some relief in the network, or if we have a new neighborhood where you really need to build the network, then we're kind of following along this line.
At the moment, amidst all of this, the investments in the fixed assets in the company are really related to the acquisition of equipment to activate customers, improve infrastructure in the network, and also exchange equipment for customers, just as Fabiano mentioned, the infrastructure for the mobile networks also. The investments we had in this exercise in radio base stations are at about BRL 8.4 million. In the Q3 of 2024, reinforcing this point, Unifique had the organic net adds of 15,123 accesses.
This event happened due to the deployment of new strategies for digital marketing, new partnership models that were very important with sales consultants, and optimizing sales processes, which is kind of like what I mentioned with having the teams more prepared to be more agile in this process. Another point we want to highlight also in this slide, which is extremely important to highlight, is the fact that in the Q3 of 2024, 80% of the sales for mobile phones were connected to the combo sales. This should make the churn at Unifique, which is currently 1.61%, be even lower, especially when we look at the histories of telecom companies. This is a well-known strategy, the combined package, and it's a common practice in the telecom sector.
Which is adopted by many companies, and it really makes the loyalty among customers grow, improve customer experiences, and also reduce the turnover. It's a really positive sign in the churn aspect for the company when you consider the mobile phones adding on to about 80%. Moving on to the market share slide. Here in this slide, we reinforce the leadership that Unifique has in the state of Santa Catarina. In this period from the Q3 of 2023 to the Q3 of 2024, we had an increase of about 65,000 accesses in Santa Catarina exclusively. With this, Unifique was able to keep its leadership in the state of Santa Catarina with a market share of 20.9%.
above the 16.9% that Claro has, and the 7.1% that Vivo has. That's a positive sign also because between the period of the Q2 and the Q3 of 2024, Unifique had an increase of approximately 2,000 accesses in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. If you take a look at our release, you'll see that Rio Grande do Sul is a state where we were suffering a bit. But in the last quarter, we were able to provide a positive response.
There's still a lot to be done in this growth, and it must be a significant growth, of course, but we've already moved on to a more positive scenario, and that's where that sometimes even got in the way of the growth we were presenting in Santa Catarina. We're following along with a very positive path in this scenario. One point that we wanna highlight here is the growth of accesses that Unifique has between the year of 2000 until the Q3 of 2024, where we presented growth of 184%. It's a company that really keeps up with its growth levels. The next slide is on the coverage of our mobile network and our own infrastructure.
Just to give you a review there on this point, on this slide, we demonstrate that Unifique already operates in 8 cities with its own coverage, and we were able to reach a milestone of 59,700. Within the period of the Q2 of 2024, Unifique had a growth of 88.8%. We have accelerated growth when we talk about mobile phone. That's the scenario when you're looking at the day-to-day of the company, and we can see that it's something that really makes us excited with the amount of opportunities that are presented here. Moving on to the next slide, to the last slide where we talk about MNO and MVNO operations at Unifique.
Here you just have another point we wanna reinforce just. Then from August 2024, Unifique started operating as an MVNO that's authorized in the states where it does not have the authorization to operate with its own network. Just to make things more clear, in Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, Unifique operates with its own network. In the other states in Brazil, it's been operating through an agreement with the TIM network. When it comes to the presentation, that's what we had to present. In this way, we wanna move on to questions, possible questions.
Now we're going to begin our Q&A session. We would like to remind you that to submit questions, you must select the Q&A icon at the bottom part of the screen and write your question.
As you're announced, a request to activate your mic will appear on the screen, then you can activate your mic to submit questions. We'd like to ask that you please submit your questions all at once. Let's move on to our first question. It's from Maria Clara, sell-side analyst at Itaú. Maria, we will enable your audio so that you can submit your question. Maria, you may proceed.
Hi, guys. Good afternoon, and thanks for this opportunity. I just wanted to ask you guys to explore a bit more of the growth trends up ahead, especially considering the mobile and 5G. Do you guys imagine some acceleration in 5G in the short term, and how can we consider this in the company's 5G journey throughout the next years? Finally, I wanted to ask you guys to talk about your profitability trend, right? We saw some investments, and they're mainly related to personnel expenses. Is it fair to say that these investments should already start being distributed in the short term?
Hi, Maria Clara. This is Fabiano. Well, we are probably at the worst moment from the launch of 5G because we've set up the infrastructure, we started sales, and then in the beginning of the year, but there's a learning curve, right? However, we already have a pretty big team of engineers, and maybe that's why you've noticed an increment in our personnel expenses, and all of this is connected to this new vertical that we're setting up.
Please note that in the first semester, we had sold 30,000 accesses. In the Q3, we had already sold 30,000 accesses, so we basically doubled the sales that we plan to now accelerate this. We would like to wrap up with 100,000 chips sold this year, which means that we'll have approximately an accumulated revenue of BRL 8 million. It's still very little . To give you an idea, we've already expected that this should grow by tenfold next year. I talked about BRL 65 million before, but I would not be shocked if this becomes BRL 80 million next year. Why? Because what's interesting is that you kind of increase the base, and then this recurring revenue will add on.
If I'm able to wrap up with 100,000, that means we have an average ticket of about BRL 40 , gross. It's an average ticket that's a bit higher than the market level because at this moment we're only selling post-paid, and we're focusing a lot on the joint sale with Fiber, so it's a plan with more added value. Just to give you an idea, we're gonna make BRL 8 million, and we're gonna reach 100,000. We're already making, like, BRL 4 million per month, which would already give me BRL 50 million next year, even if I didn't sell anything else. Yes, we'll continue to accelerate. We're reaching in the Q3 something close to about 10,000 chips per month on average. Of course, that started back in July. It was a little less.
August was a little more. September, a little more. Now in October, we're already accelerating a bit more. You can notice, we were selling about 10,000, 11,000, and now we're selling 18,000 broadband. I don't know why in a short period of time we wouldn't sell more chips than fixed broadband. This will accelerate things a lot. We have this target for 2025. We would like to wrap up with 300,000 accesses, which would already be about BRL 12.5 million in revenue, and that would represent an annual revenue of maybe BRL 150 million.
The sales are gonna remain, and we have a program to be able to reach 2030 with at least 3 million accesses, keeping up with this ticket of about BRL 40 gross. We would be able to. If we are successful in this plan, we would basically be able to double the size of the company at the moment with a new vertical. What's cool about this moment we're experiencing is that this new vertical won't destroy revenue from the fixed broadband. It is true that the fixed broadband is not growing at the same speed it had a while back, but now we were able to resume growth a bit.
When you add up both, I think the biggest year for 5G at Unifique within the timing we're expecting to deploy, you can notice we're kind of conservative here, and we at a moment with really high interest rates in the country, so we're a little more conservative. We've been balancing out these investments because I'd say that the biggest point in 5G is in 2026, right? That's where we're gonna have the speed of our sales already working really well, and then we'll be able to accelerate the growth to be able to in a way where you guys will start noticing this with greater ease quarter-over-quarter in the numbers.
Very clear. Thank you.
We want to remind you all that if you guys have questions, you must select the Q&A icon at the bottom part of the screen and write your question to enter the queue. Now I'm going to pass on the floor to the company to respond to the other questions we received by chat. Fabiano will answer the question here from Eduardo and from GDI about the TIM Ultrafibra arrival in Rio Grande do Sul and if we believe in this growth.
There's 750 companies. They're exploring the fixed broadband market. We compete in some of these cities with TIM Ultrafibra, but we respect their competition. However, we don't think that it really moves the needle, right? The scenario is very competitive, and it's gonna continue to be competitive.
We don't think that's gonna bring in some new elements in the future for us. Another point is also that TIM normally doesn't have its own network. Normally, they use the neutral networks and maybe from V.tal or IHS as well. We understand that this model using neutral network does not allow these competitors to be too competitive because you have a lot more cost. Normally, these guys are a little more well-behaved, let's say, if you think about a war on prices. I hope I answered that, Eduardo. Now I'll pass the floor on to Caio from Banco do Brasil, and we'll move on to our CFO since that's related to debt issues.
On your question here, you asked about 79% debt indexed according to IPCA. Considering that Gabriel Galípolo will take on his role in the Central Bank next year, this could lead to an increase in inflation as a consequence of the drop in the Selic rate forced by the government. Wouldn't this situation represent a risk for the company? Yes. For us in the company at the moment, it does not represent an issue because in this debt level, we have an extended debt that is IPCA, which are debentures, and we also have a lot of operations that are indexed at IPCA. These are the acquisitions we made for our M&As. The IPCA debentures, last one we issued were IPCA + 6.5%. What we have here, and these that are considered positive points, we have excellent banking capacity in the company. This banking capacity really...
We have discounts in CDI. Up until the moment in the scenario we're looking at, there was nothing that would call our attention too much. We've already done this in the past with CDI. This was positive for the company. At the moment, we're waiting to see what the scenario will look like. CDI is still in a scenario of increases, although you have this scenario with the modifications by the central bank chair. Actually yesterday we saw an increase of the interest rate. We're analyzing this and looking at the market, and most of what we acquired as debt from M&As that are short-term are already maturing. We're gonna have a big debt maturing in the beginning of the next period.
We don't really see a risk in this sense, and the cash condition in the company also gives us the conditions for this. If we need to consider a swap in CDI, if we think that's the best path, you can be sure that most of the company's cash position will also be applied at CDI with a natural hedge, right? We're not that concerned. Great banking capacities. Our cash position's also very good, and it's applied at CDI, and the capital structure allows us to change anything if necessary.
We have two questions that kind of approach the same topic. Let me just look into who the question came from. This is from Marco Hoda from Valor Econômico Investimentos, and his question is about the strategy for expansion. The company performed different acquisitions in the last months. What's your guys' mindset from now on when it comes to volume and timing? We also have another question from Johnny on the vision for the current scenario of mergers and acquisitions in the southern region.
I'm gonna answer both. The company really went through many acquisitions, and we needed some time to reorganize and reconsider all of these incorporation processes. Today, we feel a lot more comfortable to get back to analyzing this market as we search for opportunities, especially in the southern region, so that we can increase our penetration even more, and even in some cities that are closed, that we don't service yet, that could be considered. We really believe that, yes, this is a possibility.
Now we must also understand that we have this moment we're experiencing where the assets are maybe a little less valued, and performing acquisition at this moment would maybe be a little more difficult. Yes, we have kept our eyes open. We have the available balance sheet and appetite to be able to perform some transactions once again, as we've already done in certain periods with new acquisitions.
Well, I'm gonna pick up another question here from Mitul Correa. He's asking about the evolution of the gross revenue in the state of Santa Catarina and also Rio Grande do Sul. Because if you look at Santa Catarina, you have an evolution in the Q2 of 2024 to the Q3 of 2024 of 2.4%. In comparison, in Rio Grande do Sul, we only had 3.2% negative.
What we saw as main phenomena in this case were, first of all, the big effect was that we had impacts with the Rio Grande do Sul catastrophe, which is now normalized. We also had another point, which was, just as we had, some situations in Rio Grande do Sul. Although we had an increase in revenue for our sales in Rio Grande do Sul, this still did not reflect on the actual revenue. We believe that this evolution in Rio Grande do Sul will reach the same levels we've presented in Santa Catarina, should be reflected effectively in the Q3 of 2024.
Moving on to the question by Gustavo. This is Roberto Correa, and he's asking about the challenge to provide a 5G in all of the cities with less than 30,000 inhabitants up until 2030, and how we're facing this challenge, right?
These kind of obligations, they start having to be delivered from 2026 onwards. We've already worked in some cities, and we're working on some other cities with these kind of characteristics. We are also prioritizing cities where Unifique already is present with its fixed network. That gives us a lot of synergy. We already have people working. We have the network, and the cost of deployment for 5G is really minimized. Of course, quicker we can explore the new service considering the structure we already have. Of course, at some moment we'll have to work on cities that are maybe a little more distant, right?
In order to do this, we have up until 2030. The strategy to be able to reach the objective is, first you have the cities where you have more structure and capacity to monetize the investments quicker, cities where we already have a bit of a presence, and where we are also working in different cities that are not even in our obligation, right? We have cities with 300,000, 500,000, 100,000. We have many cities because that's really where we have the economic conditions that are better, and then we can monetize this investment quicker. Of course, we have this obligation with the cities that have 30,000 inhabitants, and certainly we'll honor this. We also hope that over time, 5G will gain more volume, and who knows?
This is something that always happens in technology. Maybe the costs of these equipment over time can also lower a bit, and that's where it would make life even easier.
We have another question also from Rodrigo Azevedo. On the evolution of FTTH and how the performance was in October, and what's the average we could expect for the Q4 2024.
I think we're gonna be in the Q4 , I think close to the levels in the Q3. We had 4,000 net accesses, about 8,000 in the Q2, and now we reached the 15,000 accesses. I believe we should have, we should remain around there.
I believe that's a number that's feasible and possible.
We also have some questions here on our robust cash position and the issue with getting back to the acquisitions.
That's something I already mentioned before. I agree with it. We have the balance sheet, and we're gonna be looking at opportunities more and more in the market. Then we have Eduardo from GDI. He's asking if we could clarify a point we discussed on BRL 40 ticket for 5G, and if that would be for, like, a post-paid plan. At this moment, we're not selling prepaid. That doesn't mean we can't in the future, but we're still assessing how we will be able to proceed.
The Q&A session is officially ended. Now we're going to pass on the floor to the company for their final remarks.
Well, guys, thank you again for your presence here in our earnings call, and we're of course available should you have any questions. We've been working to be able to deliver better results, and I wanna pass this on to Fabiano so that he can present his last comments. Right? Well, guys, for 2024, from the operational aspects in the company, I think we had significant evolution in the Q3 compared to the first and Q2s. We've been working on this constantly to be able to improve our processes and our operation. We also have this challenge with 5G that's kind of hindering our results a bit because we're setting up the structure and that kind of leads to this process that's gonna take a few periods.
If you analyze our P&L numbers carefully, you're also going to see that it's nothing that terrible. We are also at the right path, and I'm super confident about the opportunities we have from now on and in the future. In fixed broadband, we're gonna be able to improve that as well. We have opportunities also to perform re-acquisitions. We are always looking at this. We had taken our feet off the accelerators to kinda organize things a bit, but this phase is over. We reached churns of, like, 2.42%, then we brought that to 1.61%. All of this, when you perform a lot of acquisitions, it really takes a lot of work in the first periods.
Over time, I think we proved that we were able to have the skills and capacity to perform this work and then also deliver good results as well as M&A will also bring in positive results, maybe not in the next quarter, maybe we'll still have, we'll see this in 2025 only. Month after month or quarter after quarter, the company has been developing, growing, and moving towards the path we intend to go through for growth and good performance. It's a company that has fantastic results and many opportunities. I really believe in the company's future, and that we'll be able to grow a lot and deliver positive results, and soon we'll become a major dividend payer. Okay. Thank you so much.
The earnings call for the Q3 of 2024 at Unifique is officially ended. The investor relations department will be available to answer other questions you may have. Thank you so much to all participants, and have a wonderful afternoon.