Okay, hi, good afternoon. Welcome to our full year 2023 results conference call. As usual, we have the full executive committee on the call. José Ferreira, our CFO, will give you a brief rundown of the main highlights of the results, and then we'll be available for Q&A.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for, for joining the call today. I'd like to start by highlighting three fundamental messages that will guide our presentation today. Firstly, NOS continues to be a pool of profitable growth, cash generation, and strong returns. Our strategic choices and investments, either in 5G and FTTH, are key drivers for our commercial, operational, and financial resilience. And finally, we continue to focus our capital allocation on ensuring competitive advantage, balance sheet quality, and solid shareholder returns. Within that, let's jump into some of the figures for the full year. In terms of the results on page four, I think these numbers reflect a bit the messages I just conveyed, and I would like to highlight some of them.
Firstly, in terms of consolidated revenue growth, we had 5% for the full year 2023, and 4.2% for the fourth quarter, driven primarily by the strengths of our telco operation. In terms of consolidated EBITDA after leases growth, we had 10.1% for the full year 2023, and of around EUR 603 million, and 12.3% for the fourth quarter of around EUR 135 million. In terms of EBITDA after leases minus CapEx, we increased it to EUR 260 million in the full year, an increase of roughly EUR 164 million year-on-year, and with an underlying free cash flow growth of roughly EUR 120 million to EUR 148.5 million euros.
In terms of dividends per share, our proposal of EUR 0.35 represents a roughly 99% payout of net income and a 10.6% dividend yield. In a way, these figures reflect the strength of our business, and I'd like now to break down a little bit of these results. So moving on to the next page, please. When we look at our revenues, I would highlight that in terms of consolidated revenue growth, we had 5% year-on-year, and this was driven primarily by the strength of our B2C telco revenues and our continued year-on-year recovery in terms of our audiovisuals and cinema operations.
For Q4, consolidated revenues were 4.2% higher year-on-year, which combined with a 5.5% increase in telco revenues, helped offset a decline in our audiovisuals and cinema due to the less popular slate of movies exhibited in the quarter. Looking into telco revenues, total revenues were 4.3% higher in 2023 and 5.5% higher in Q4 2023. In the B2C segment, in particular, revenues grew by 6.2%, with RGU growth and value mix leading the performance, with average revenue per family increasing by 5% to EUR 50.3 in the full year. In B2B, underlying revenues grew more than 5%, reflecting a strong momentum in the soHo segment and in large corporates.
Despite this, total B2B revenues were marginally lower in the full year of 2023, essentially due to the reduction of low-margin, project-based contracts, which have almost equivalent positive impacts on OpEx. The main impact of this was felt in the first half of the year, with Q4 revenues already posting a significant 11.9 year-on-year increase. The wholesale and other aggregate was relatively flat in the full year of 2023 at EUR 100 million. However, quarterly performance reflected the typical volatility of low-margin, mass calling service revenues, posting a decline of 9.7% in Q4 2023. Finally, in our audiovisuals and cinema business, with movies going almost back to pre-pandemic levels, our cinema exhibition and movie distribution business saw an increase in revenues of 11% in the full year of 2023.
The strength of the first nine months of the year was reversed in Q4, with a lower number of blockbusters, driving a decline in our cinema and audiovisuals revenues of 17.9%, for the quarter. Now, looking into our operating profitability, it is grounded on the quality of the revenue mix and structural efficiencies and business transformation we have been pursuing in the past few years. Not only we benefited from the revenue growth, but also from the ability to contain our OpEx after leases growth at 2.2% year-on-year, with cost optimization and business transformation initiatives being materialized. Our consolidated EBITDA after leases grew 10.1% year-on-year to EUR 603 million, as I mentioned before.
Within that, telco contributed with 10.6% growth and audiovisuals and cinema with 3.6% growth. In Q4, in particular, EBITDA after leases growth was even stronger at 12.3 year-on-year, led by a particularly good performance in telco operations, with increased 17.3%, which helped to offset the weaker quarter for audiovisual and cinema. In terms of margins, EBITDA after leases margin expanded to 37.8% for the full year, a growth of 1.8 percentage points. Telco margin grew 2.1 percentage points to 37% year-on-year, and audiovisuals and cinema margin for the full year was 36.5%.
In terms of our major direct cost items in 2023, the main areas of year-on-year decline were cost of goods sold on one hand, due primarily to the lower level of project-based contracts mentioned in the B2B revenue segment, and savings of the variable components of sports channels programming costs. In total, direct costs reduced by 0.8% in 2023. However, the year-on-year saving was offset by an increase in commercial structure and operating costs, the main drivers of which being higher wages and increased network costs related to our continued network deployment. As previously guided, pre-peak CapEx is behind us, and our total CapEx decreased by EUR 108 million to or 21.8%.
The amount of expansionary telco CapEx fell by 52.6%, essentially due to the end of our accelerated 5G deployment cycle, which has reached a population coverage of 94%. This was a primary contributor to the decline of telco CapEx, which finished the year at roughly EUR 368 million. Within these more normalized levels of CapEx, NOS will continue to extend its FTTH coverage within the context of its sharing and wholesale agreements, and will continue to maintain a robust level of investment for ongoing upgrades and existing platforms and systems. As a proportion of telco revenues, in 2023, technical CapEx amounted to 14.7%, down from 22.1% in 2022.
As a summary, our, as a result of our EBITDA performance and significant decrease in CapEx, we have seen a very robust increase of our operational cash flow to EUR 260 million, which represents roughly 4.2 times last year's results. So again, reinforcing our company as a bastion of profitable growth and sustainable returns. So with that, maybe let's do a bit of a deep dive on our strategic choices that are driving this operational success. Firstly, in terms of our strategic decision to accelerate 5G deployment, reaching now, as I mentioned before, over 94% of the population in just two years, it is bearing fruits, as reflected in the strength of our operational momentum. More than 70% of our subscribers are taking higher value integrated offers within the context of our convergence strategy.
We are particularly proud of having been awarded the independent recognition as the fastest mobile network in Europe in the most recent Ookla Speedtest, with a speed score of 183.36 Mbps, well ahead of other operators. Regarding FTTH deployments, in 2023, NOS FTTH footprints increased by 675,000 households, reaching roughly 75% of its total 5.4 million household gigabit fixed network coverage. In addition to that, being consistent with an economically rational and more sustained approach to network deployment, in January of 2024, NOS announced an extension of its FTTH sharing agreement by an additional 1.1 million households. Finally, in terms of operational metrics, our operational success is reflected in all business lines, with growth in total RGs to roughly 11 million.
The main driver of growth has been mobile, with 183,000 net adds in 2023. In fixed services, we grew our customer base by an additional 25,000 fixed pay TV and 28,000 broadband customers. Particularly relevant, given the already very high levels of penetration of these services in Portugal at over 95% of household penetration in both cases. The value proposition of our integrated and convergent solutions is highly valued by the market, with households on average subscribing to five services, combining broadband connectivity, mobile communications, and our award-winning OTT-linear and OTT platform, NOS TV. On average, the revenue generated by our residential customers in Q4 2023 amounted to roughly EUR 51. Looking at B2B, NOS is making significant progress in its innovative cloud and IT-based solutions that are helping drive revenue growth.
Not only that, but NOS's positioning as a partner for the business transformation is reinforced by the strength of the asset base that I just mentioned, and the local innovation ecosystem in which we are present. So with all of this, maybe moving into the media and entertainment business, and just doing a bit of a deep dive on what I mentioned before, our cinema theaters enjoyed a significant boost in movie-going through the year. Box office sales returned to close to pre-pandemic levels of 2019, driven by blockbuster hits such as the Barbenheimer phenomena. Despite a softer Q4, for the full year, NOS registered roughly 29% increase in tickets sold in comparison to 2022, and in terms of revenues, we grew 31% year-on-year to EUR 66 million for this full year.
All of this combined takes us now to a very robust financial performance. In terms of net results, NOS had a growth of 30.7% to EUR 181 million, excluding the impact of the 2022 tower transaction. In terms of highlights, I would point out: the year-on-year improvement in net results is primarily driven by a strong EBITDA performance. The main additional impacts below EBITDA include the effect of a higher interest rate environment on net financial expenses, which amount to an impact of roughly EUR 34 million. And in addition to that, NOS has also recognized non-current income of EUR 38.5 million from a favorable court ruling regarding a claim for the settlement of activity fees with the regulator, of which 15.6 million has already been received in 2023.
Net results were also impacted by a negative contribution of EUR 70 million from our share of associate companies in JV, due primarily to the negative exchange rate fluctuations impacting the results of our 30% financial holding in ZAP in Angola. When looking at the underlying free cash flow, excluding, again, the cash in of the tower transaction from the previous year, given the significant growth in EBITDA after leases and the main peak in 5G deployment behind us, underlying cash flow generation increased to EUR 148 million from EUR 29.2 million in 2022. Having said this, cash flow performance in 2023 was negatively impacted by two main effects.
Number one, increase in interest charges at EUR 23.9 million due to the higher interest rate environment throughout the year, and an increase in taxes paid at EUR 29.1 million, due primarily to capital gains recorded from the previous year for the tower sale transaction, and payments on accounts in 2023 due to the higher results of the previous year. In addition to that, and as explained before, in Q4 2023, we already received EUR 15.6 million from the favorable court ruling regarding the claim for settlement of the regulator's activity fees. In terms of our balance sheet strength, I'd like to highlight that at the end of 2023, our net financial debt to EBITDA after leases ratio stood at 1.81x, well below our strategic funding target of 2x.
Net financial debt amounted to EUR 1.089 billion, with a total debt including leasing contracts, according to IFRS 16, at EUR 1.786 billion. We have available unissued commercial paper facilities of roughly EUR 300 million and cash and equivalents of approximately EUR 18 million. These elements combined provide us a comfortable total liquidity position of roughly EUR 317 million. Due to the high interest rate environment, average interest cost increased to 3.5%, 48%, in full year 2023, versus roughly 1.35% in 2022, and this reached a peak in Q4 of 4.2% versus and 1.8% in Q4 2022.
As of December 2023, 26% of NOS debt was issued at fixed rates, and an additional 34% was covered by interest rate covers. Total average maturity of the debt at the end of the year was 2.7 years, and with the EUR 300 million issued at the end of the year, financing needs for 2024 are covered. Today, almost 90% of our debt is linked to ESG performance targets, reiterating our commitment to achieve global sustainability performance.
Finally, and to wrap up the presentation, in terms of shareholder remuneration, our board of directors approved an ordinary dividend per share of EUR 0.35, which represents roughly 10.6% dividend yield. This dividend represents an increase of 26% year-on-year and a payout ratio of 99% of net results. It is, again, a confirmation of our strategic guidance to deliver a consistent and attractive shareholder remuneration. With this, we conclude our presentation and would be ready to take any questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, you can press star one and one again. Once again, that's star one and one on your telephone if you would like to ask a question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Thank you. We will now take our first question. Please stand by. First question is from the line of Molly Whitcomb from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, and thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. One just on salaries. I know that was a, an increase in cost this year. Just wondering if you could give us a little bit, more visibility on what the salary increases is, are going to look like for 2024? And, my second question, please, just on the news around, Altice from Saudi Telecom at the second. Just wondering if you had any thoughts, around that, slash any thoughts on the Digi delay? I know they said they were gonna launch in, Q2, but now looking at 2024, so a little bit on the M&A front there. Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much for your questions, Miguel Almeida here. In terms of salaries, we are expecting in 2024 an inflation around 3%-3.5%, something around those numbers. And regarding the second question, which relates to our competition, we don't have any non-public information, so actually we don't have no information about what could be happening on Digi's plans or Altice's plans. So to be completely honest, I don't think we have anything intelligent to say about those two issues.
Fair enough. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. Next question is from the line of Nuno Vaz from Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Two from my side as well. First one on the dividend increase. I understand one of the main metrics is, you look at, is the net income. In 2022, you had the capital gain from the sale of towers to Cellnex. Would you consider that as an exceptional part of the dividend? This year, you do also have almost EUR 40 million of exceptional coming from this court judgment. Why not consider that as an exceptional as well, especially since your underlying free cash flow is not yet covering the dividend? Are you confident free cash flow and EPS next year can grow enough to cover the dividend? Or you're just not worried about coverage as long as your net activity is below 2x?
And then second question on the operational side. As you mentioned, you have positive net adds on fixed. But when I look at the multi-play market shares disclosed by the regulator, I find it a bit puzzling that Altice continues to grow market share on multi-play, despite having above 40% market share. While on your side, you're sort of trending down in terms of market share. I just wanted to hear your thoughts on how can this be the case when you offer exclusive pay TV content, you have arguably the best 5G network in the country, relatively cheaper pricing. Just wanted to hear your thoughts on this competitive point and what can be done to combat it. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your questions. In terms, starting with the dividend. You mentioned an extraordinary effect that impacts net income in 2023. There are other extraordinary effects that have also an impact in the other direction. So we look at these results and the dividend that paid or is going to be paid based on that result, as something that is sustainable and something that we plan to grow, at least for the short term. So it's not that we see those one-off effects as something that will affect the net income going forward and thus affecting our ability or the dividend going forward. There are a number of, as I mentioned, one-off effects, some negative, some positive.
But all in all, if the reason behind this decision to pay this dividend is, basically we are comfortable with this level of dividends as an ordinary dividend going forward. In terms of the market shares, I will start by highlighting a different metric of market share, which is revenues and retail revenues, which also is published and reported by ANACOM. If you look at that, in terms of revenues, we are actually gaining market share, growing market share, and gaining market share to the competitor you mentioned. And at the end of the day, I think that's the key metric, because the way we compute the other metrics, we have different criteria, different operators have different criteria.
And I just will add another aspect that I think helps answering your doubt, which is there are a lot of rural areas where Altice is present and we are not, and they keep expanding on those rural areas where we don't have access. So it's not that surprising that they keep gaining market share in terms of subscribers. But again, I would highlight that in terms of revenues, that's not the case.
Okay. Thank you very much for the call. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Next question is from the line of António Seladas from AS Independent Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. So I, I have two. On the business services, the performance has been, a good performance, and nevertheless, has been volatile, so I don't know if you can provide some color, what should we expect for 2024, in terms of underlying trends? And regarding costs, also for 2024, you mentioned, wages, increasing by 3.5%. I don't know if you can provide more color in the other items, namely because, costs, I think that will, you don't have the benefit that you had in the last year. So that are my questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Well, I'm not sure that I fully understood the first question, but if I understood it correctly, it's a question around the volatility of B2B revenues, and those are-
Sorry, yes, exactly.
Yeah. So those are fully explained by some projects, some one-off resale projects that generate very low margins, but can make the top line fluctuate a lot. So in terms of profitability, that fluctuation is not critical. What is critical is the service revenues, and on that, you can see a trend, a positive trend, actually quite positive in 2023. Revenues, recurrent revenue, service revenues are growing, and our expectation for 2024 is that they keep growing, not necessarily at the same pace, but for sure, keep growing in 2024. In terms of costs, I was answering the question around salaries, not around the overall cost structure.
Our expectation is that costs will not increase in 2024, as we become more efficient, mainly because our digital transformation program continues to deliver. We believe that will be enough to offset some upward tensions, like the salaries. But all in all, our expectation is that 2024, we will deliver margins that are, if anything, better than 2023.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Your next question is from the line of Fernando Cordero from Banco Santander. Please go ahead.
Hello, thanks for taking my two questions as well. The first question is relating on, is related, sorry, with, with your churn evolution. Just to understand which of them have you seen any kind of changes on, on your commercial impact in terms of churn, if we should be paying attention to any, any change on that front? And the second question is, sorry, is related or, as well as a follow-up on, on the, on the OpEx side and margins, but just focusing on lease costs.
In that sense, given the performance of leases during the year 2023, where you have seen, particularly at the end of the year, higher growth in EBITDA rather than in EBITDA, just to understand if the expected leases cost performance for 2024 is going to be in the same direction, that is, providing or supporting better trend in EBITDA than in EBITDA. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Fernando. If I understood correctly, the first question was around churn and what we expect of the trends in churn. We are actually running at historically lower levels of churn. We don't see on the short term reasons for that to change. We all know that in medium term, there could be reasons for that to change, but I will not go over and over again around the same issue that you keep pushing. So, for the time being and looking at the next few months, we are very comfortable that we will continue to run at very low churn levels, historically low. And then, of course, we will see what the market dynamics is going to turn into.
Hi, Fernando, José here. Regarding the leasing costs, leases costs, as you know, there are some small portions of portfolios of towers that we still expect to alienate. And in that sense, we would expect a slight increase in the leases costs throughout the upcoming years, reflecting those sales.
Okay. But excluding these, let's say, non-recurrent, or thinking on the underlying performance of leases, should we expect that EBITDA margin should perform better than EBITDA margin?
I'm not sure I got your question, but I would say that we don't expect any impact on the EBITDA margin regarding changes in lease costs with-
No, no.
Taking out the sale.
Yes, no, what I was saying, I'm sorry for my misunderstanding or my miscomment is the fact that the margin expansion in EBITDA is being a little bit higher than in EBITDA. And just trying to understand if on an underlying basis, excluding this elimination of towers to Cellnex, if this underlying trend is going to continue with leases growing less than the EBITDA.
No, I would say that the underlying trend should be to maintain the same relative difference.
Okay, fair enough. Many thanks for the answers.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. This is from the line of Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Oh, great. Afternoon, everyone. I've got two questions, please. Firstly, I think I read earlier this year that you, following the trials, you guys are no longer charging a premium for 5G services. So I'm trying to understand that, given you are championing your superior network quality, both fixed and mobile. So, again, I appreciate the change in the landscape that could be coming later this year. But, what's the rationale there, just on the 5G premium being removed? And secondly, on wholesale access, again, I assume nothing has changed, but has there been any approaches for accessing your fixed network, given that you know, the new entrant only has more localized fixed exposure? And would you be open to entertaining wholesale national coverage? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much for your question. So, actually, in reality, we never charged any premium for 5G. We provided that option when we launched 5G, but since the commercial launch of 5G, it has been offered to customers. What changed recently, and you're right, there was a change, was the fact that there was commitment from the operators, from one operator, and the others followed, to never charge that premium. So, we never had... We never charged in the past. What changes the commitment that we will not charge it in the future? That doesn't take away the huge potentials we see in our significant advantage in terms of mobile network and mobile experience superiority. We have much better customer experience.
We mentioned this European award as the fastest network in Europe, and obviously, when you're fastest in Europe, you are fastest in your country, by definition. But we look at the way our development in terms of 5G rollouts has been happening in recent months and our competitors' rollouts, and we keep seeing this significant advantage, which, in a way, is also driving our very strong performance in terms of mobile.
So yes, no specific premium charge for 5G, but still, the investment we made in 5G is clearly paying out as we speak, and we believe that will continue to be a significant driver going forward in terms of our ability, our superior ability to attract customers. In terms of wholesale requests, I'm not sure that I would share with you if we had any, but in reality, we didn't have any approaches from new or old operators asking for wholesale access to our fixed network.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I will hand the conference back to the speakers.
Okay. Well, thank you very much for being on the call today. We're available, as always, to take your questions. Thank you very much, and look forward to speaking to you in the near future.