Hi, good morning. Welcome to our third quarter 2022 investor and analyst conference call. As usual, the full team is in the room with us today. José Pedro Pereira da Costa, our CFO, will give you a brief overview of the main highlights of the results, and then we'll be available to take your questions.
Okay, good morning, everyone. Starting with the key highlights of the quarter. This last quarter was our best quarter this year so far in terms of commercial activity. We had around 142,000 RGU net adds. Main area of growth, again, being mobile, taking advantage of convergence and the 5G momentum. Overall performance is also improving in our cinema operations, with attendance and revenues growing in absolute terms. This is also our best quarter post-pandemic. The strong operational performance, particularly in Telco, allowed very positive financial results in the quarter with consolidated revenue growth of around 4.1%, Telco units growing 3%. Consolidated EBITDA grew 3.9% year-on-year.
Telco unit posting a strong 5.1% EBITDA growth, even more impressive considering that we already have some areas of development inflation, namely energy. Total CapEx reached around EUR 120 million in the quarter, similar level of the average of the first two quarters. As expected, high levels of technical CapEx explaining the year-on-year growth. Finally, free cash flow in the quarter reached EUR 150 million benefiting from the execution of the tower deal. This strong free cash flow generation allowing us to go to 1.85x net financial debt to EBITDA AL, well below our target level of 2x . Now, starting with the operational review, as we said, we have posted around 142,000 RGU net adds this last quarter.
As we said, the best quarter of the year so far, growing well in all services. Again, mobile performing extremely well, but also fixed growing in a robust way. Again, very strong mobile numbers. We have posted a positive 113,000 mobile net add number with 107,000 post-paid net adds and 6,000 net adds in prepaid, with conversions being the driving force behind these numbers. On the fixed area, we have posted solid fixed broadband net adds of 12,000 and also very positive fixed pay TV net adds of 13,000, taking advantage of increased uptake in new FTTH areas.
Giving a bit more color on the convergence trends, we have added this quarter 19,000 convergent customers, ending this quarter with 1,071,000 convergent and integrated customers, representing close to 67% of the fixed base. This represents over 5.5 million total convergent RGUs, with net adds in the quarter of 121,000, with average number of mobile cards growing from 2.2 to 2.3 per customer, highlighting the strong results we are achieving in terms of densification of mobile over our fixed customer base. In terms of our cinema operations, we had our best quarter in the post-pandemic period in terms of total attendance with over 1.7 million tickets sold. Still, the comparison versus 2019 was not so positive as in the second quarter.
Basically, as we have warned in the last call, we had a very tough comp since the third quarter of 2019 was our record ever quarter with the best performing movie ever in Portugal in terms of gross box office revenues. This, together with the movie slate for this last quarter, which was not a very strong one, led us to stay 35% below 2019 numbers in the quarter. Still, the movie slate for the last quarter of this year is very promising with movies like Avatar and Black Panther, so we remain confident we will continue to recover until pre-pandemic levels. Now, moving on to the B2B segment. We have continued to launch innovative offers focused on providing always the best services in the market.
Following up on being the first operator, and for the time being, the only operator to offer Disney+ in our top-end TV set-top boxes, we launched a special customer delight promotion to start using this OTT platform with our boxes, whereby every NOS customer can subscribe Disney+ for free for the first three months. Also, we have launched a new easy-to-use and affordable security service that works exclusively for our customers, protecting them against cybersecurity issues while being connected in our mobile and fixed networks. These first results are proving to be very positive. Finally, we continue to grow and increase market penetration of our new home smart security alarm service for residential and SME customers.
On the B2B front, we have been leveraging our 5G hub in Lisbon, an innovation center, to develop 5G use cases supported by the first standalone core 5G private network, one of the very few already implemented in Europe. A number of success cases have already been implemented with several key corporate customers. We would also like to highlight some of these use cases. The first one, the augmented worker application using augmented reality, allowing more efficient remote support to field operations while reducing paper usage by switching to digital process. Also, our outdoor traffic analysis application allowing to monitor traffic activity through real-time image analysis. Finally, our smart irrigation system, fully remote managed irrigation system supporting more efficient and rational water and energy consumption.
Following up on our accelerated 5G rollout, our mobile network is standing out, getting all the relevant awards in the market. Last year, we got the Ookla Award for fastest mobile network and mobile coverage. Already this year, we got the Product of the Year Award for the leading mobile network, the Opensignal Award for best mobile experience. Again, the Ookla Award being recognized as the fastest 5G network, and finally the Portuguese Consumer Association, DECO PROTESTE Award, as having the best mobile internet network in Portugal. On the fixed network front, our FTTH rollout continues, reaching a total of 3.1 million homes passed. That is around 59% of total coverage. Almost 200,000 FTTH homes passed this last quarter. Most of these were what we call brownfield homes passed over our current HFC footprint.
On the ESG front, we continue to make good progress on several ESG areas. We would also like to highlight a few. First, we have recently submitted our gender equality plan for 2023 with diversity and inclusion initiatives update, and also reaffirming again our objective of having 40% women in management positions. On climate-related areas, we launched again in October the campaign already implemented successfully in April, whereby during five days for every sales transaction, we committed to plant one tree. As a result of this October campaign, we have committed to plant around 15,000 trees in addition to the 11,000 trees of the April campaign, compensating therefore Scope 3 emissions.
Also, we have revised with more ambition our energy efficiency targets in line with our overall emission reduction targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, committing to reduce energy consumption per gigabit of data traffic by 70% until 2025, and by 80% until 2030. Finally, on our digital front, it is also worth mentioning the launch of the new project, Zero 1, which aims at fostering computer education for children and teens, preparing them for digital futures. Now moving on to the financial review on page 17. We had again strong group revenue growth of 4.1%, benefiting from a solid 3% growth in the Telco unit on the back of strong operational activity and also from the recovery in cinema and audiovisuals.
We have a very positive recovery overall in terms of cinema and audiovisuals having reached 23% growth. On the Telco unit, the several segments also performed very positively. The consumer segment posted an impressive 4.1% year-on-year growth on the back of RGU and ARPU growth, improving versus the 2.4% and 2% of last two quarters, showing a very positive sequential trend. B2B segment declined slightly by 2.3% in the quarter, impacted by a decline in lower margin software and equipment resale contracts. Adjusted for this impact, the B2B segment would have grown slightly above 1% year-on-year, with the performance in low-end SMEs being quite positive with mid-single digit growth in the quarter.
Finally, the wholesale segment grew 9.3% year-on-year, benefiting especially from roaming and revenue recovery and also a slight increase in low margin mass calling services. Now turning to the EBITDA lines. Consolidated EBITDA in the quarter grew by 4.1%, benefiting from strong Telco EBITDA growth of 5.1% above last quarter growth, benefiting from operating leverage and also helped by cost contention efforts and efficiency gains achieved that more than compensate the inflationary pressures we are already feeling in some areas, the more relevant of which being energy. Cinema and audiovisuals EBITDA declined by 11.9%, but this was a purely accounting impact related with the end of the transitory IFRS application during the pandemic that allowed rent discounts to be accounted above the EBITDA line.
Adjusted for this impact, cinema and audio EBITDA would have grown 3.7%. Just a quick follow-up on energy costs. The impact of the current higher energy prices represented in the quarter around 1.5% Telco EBITDA, which should have grown 6.6% instead of the actual 5.1% if it wasn't the energy cost increase. Given the current challenging context, we believe our energy provisioning strategy allowed us to be today in a well-protected situation regarding the impact of the rising energy costs. We now have just about 30% of our energy consumption on the spot market.
This situation is set to be maintained in the long run. The remaining energy consumption being provisioned around 50% through a ten-year PPA until 2033, contracted at very low prices and the remaining 50% being contracted through the regulated markets with controlled prices. Now moving to the net income. We have reached in this last quarter a record EUR 106 million, driven by the strong performance at the EBITDA level and of course benefiting from the capital gain registered through the additional sites transaction representing about EUR 75 million. We also benefited from a positive impact from our share of JV results due to the positive performance of ZAP, compensating the higher level of depreciation due to a decrease in the amortization period of terminal equipment to improve the tax efficiency.
Total group CapEx in the quarter ex leasing reached EUR 120 million in the quarter, same level of the average of the first two quarters and a year-on-year increase of around EUR 10 million versus last year, reflecting basically an increase in Telco CapEx to around EUR 75 million in the quarter, reflecting continued FTTH rollout and particularly the 5G deployment effort and a slight increase in customer CapEx reaching EUR 38 million. Relatively similar number to the last two quarters, supported by continuing low levels of churn and efficiency gains in areas like equipment refurbishment and self-installation. Moving to free cash flow, EBITDA minus CapEx reached a robust EUR 58 million, same level of last year with increase in EBITDA compensating the increase in CapEx.
Free cash flow after interest and tax generated in the quarter reached almost EUR 150 million, benefiting from the strong operational cash flow generation and in particular by the around EUR 120 million cash in resulting from the sale of additional sites. On the tower deal, this cash in of around EUR 120 million represents around 75% of the total cash in related to the sale of the second package of sites communicated this last April. The remaining 25%, that is around EUR 40 million to be fully executed until year-end. Finally, on the capital structure, this free cash flow generated in the quarter allowed net financial debt to decrease to around EUR 1,000 million . This net financial debt representing 1.85x EBITDA level adjusted for lease payments.
As we said, well below our stated target of 2x. Average cost of debt was kept in the quarter, still at low levels of 1.3%, a level which is expected to increase over time, given the current interest rate context. Still, our low leverage will allow us to continue benefiting from attractive spreads and cost of debt will remain at low levels, relative to peers. Cash and unused credit lines reached around EUR 160 million at the end of the quarter, reflecting the cashing of the tower deal received in the last day of the quarter. With this slide, we finish the presentation and, operator, we are now ready to start the Q&A session.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Once again, star one one to ask a question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Thank you. We'll now take our first question. Please stand by. This is from the line of Pilar Vico from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two on my side. The first one is linked to the current macro environment. Looking more into 2023, what is the estimated impact that we could expect from this 30% exposure to spot rates and also the incremental impact we could expect in terms of interest costs? The other one is more looking into the EBITDA margin. I guess that this higher impact of energy and supply costs will have an impact next year, but how sustainable is this high figure? Should we consider this high figure as a normalized levels going forward? Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Pilar. On your first question, in terms of, I'd say overall macro environment, well, we already have some good level of inflation reflected in our numbers already. As you know, we mentioned that and reflect that during the presentation, energy being the most relevant cost component, in terms of cost increase. This represented overall for the first three quarters, close to 1.5% of total group EBITDA, which is a relevant number. In terms of exposure, to the spot market, we mentioned that today we just have this 30% exposure to the spot market, which is set to be maintained during the next few years.
We have a long-term rate which basically covers around 30%-35% of total energy consumption that runs until 2033, the rest being contracted under the regulated market. If energy prices are set to be maintained at current very high levels, we are not expecting any significant additional inflation regarding energy for 2033. Of course, we have other items that will be exposed to some additional inflation. Namely, we have a few areas where we have contracts during 2022 that were contracted either 2020 or 2021, and those were fixed during this year.
New contracts that we'll have for 2023, which are being renegotiated as we speak during 2022, will have, of course, some level of inflation and will be exposed in particular contracts that reflect a high percentage or a high proportion of labor content. We have a few to name in terms of field force, call centers, or even our own stores in which we have outsourcing. Also, our IT outsourcing are areas in which we expect to have also some additional level of inflation for next year. Still in terms of margins, and the EBITDA margins, I don't think that, particularly you gave the example of energy, that we won't feel any additional pressure next year compared to this year.
Regarding interest costs, as we refinance our debt, next year we have around EUR 350 million of debt that has to be refinanced. This new debt will be contracted at higher levels than the current debt that we have today. We'll see interest costs going up over time, but that's something which is we are not the only case. That's something you will see across all peers in the Telco industry. Still our low leverage puts us in a, I'd say, relatively comfortable position. The spreads we are seeing today to refinance this debt are still relatively low spreads.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll now take the next question. Please stand by. This is from the line of Luigi Minerva from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the competitive environment and how do you see it developing going forward? You know, there is obviously a track record of annual price increases, but on the other side, there is increasing pressure in terms of cost of living. I'm wondering, you know, what are you seeing in terms of you know, competitive dynamics getting into 2023? The second question is on the FTTH strategy. Having reached 59% coverage with your own network, I mean, what are the options now going forward, you know, for the residual part? How much will be your own build? How much can be co-investment, and how much just wholesaling other people's infrastructure?
Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you for your questions. In terms of competitive environment going into 2023, we don't expect any significant changes from what we have witnessed over these last few months, actually more than a few. We don't expect any developments on that front, at least until we have what is expected, which is a new operator coming into the market. Still, overall, in terms of big numbers, we don't expect competitive dynamics to significantly change as we go into 2023. In terms of FTTH, we are planning to go up to 70% of footprint covered with FTTH with our own investment. Most likely shared investment under the sharing agreement that we have been executing for the last five, six years.
The remaining, we have rural areas network, which we are already using and most likely increase their footprint. We are expecting a public contest for what is called the white areas, which will be an open network to all operators. There are a number of options to cover the remaining 30%. Some of those or most of those, we will probably use third-party networks.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. This from the line of Martin Hammerschmidt from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for taking my questions. If I can come back to the EBITDA question that I think Pilar Vico was asking earlier. I think in the first half, in the first nine months of this year, you basically average growth of around 4.5% on EBITDA in the Telco business. The way you sort of frame 2023 with limited impact of energy, maybe some wage impact, but also possibly some price increases. What would be the reason why you can't sustain the 4% EBITDA increase into 2023? That would be my first question. The second one is, in the report, you stated that the underlying revenue growth in B2B was positive.
Can you maybe give us a bit more color on, first of all, how you define the underlying revenues, and then how we should think about it going into 2023? Should we expect non-recurring revenue to sporadically appear in numbers, or is this pattern essentially over? Maybe a third question, in terms of the new entrant, the actual launch of the new entrant still might be sort of 12 months out. What are your priorities in the meantime, for your customer base? Is it sort of to push up convergence? Is it upselling customers? Is it sort of going and winning customers? I.e., so where do you place the biggest focus on at the moment in terms of customers? Just a follow-up would be great. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Martin, for regarding your first question. When I answered the first question, I didn't mention what type of EBITDA growth we would be targeting for 2023. I'll just flag that in the case of energy, we're not expecting any additional significant headwinds versus the ones we have in 2022. I mentioned a few other areas in which we'll have inflation, but as you rightly pointed, there are other ways in which we can compensate these inflation in costs, which lead us to believe that we will continue with the trajectory in terms of EBITDA growth. I'm not giving out at this stage any particular number, but we are confident that we should be able to continue sustaining EBITDA growth at positive levels.
In terms of B2B revenues, let me just flag that we had a couple of quarters, in particular the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year, in which we have very high non-recurrent revenues related to software and equipment resale, which are not recurrent in nature. These quarters will have a tough comp to compare, so we'll give out numbers without this resale effect. We have to consider this in the numbers in terms of B2B projections for actually for the next couple of quarters in terms of year-on-year comparison. Of course, what we consider recurrent revenues are the basic revenues generated in terms of, say, on the low-end SMEs in terms of connectivity services.
Then on the higher end, corporate segment, not only the connectivity services and the connectivity revenues, but also the more IT-related revenues that are more recurrent in nature. Not these software and equipment resale, which are more volatile and lumpy. In terms of our priorities, our focus for the next few months, they will not change dramatically. It's the same strategy we are pushing for customer-based growth, based on our superiority in terms of quality of service. We have been pushing and still pushing for convergence. We believe that the convergent customer not only adds more value, but it's a more loyal customer which has with us a longer customer life cycle. We are growing in mobile, as Pedro mentioned. We are gaining market share.
We continue to improve the quality of the service we provide to our customers, both in fixed with a number of initiatives in Wi-Fi service and in mobile, both in 4G and 5G, where we are clear leaders. We will continue to push for growth beyond traditional Telco boundaries in adjacent areas, both in B2B. A good example is our home security initiatives, but also in B2B with growth beyond Telco products in cloud, IT or managed services, all those different revenue streams. We will continue to push basically the same strategy, which we believe will put us in a position and a stronger position and a much better position to fend off any new entrant.
Thank you very much. If I can just quickly go back to the first question, in terms of price increases, how do you see sort of capacity to implement price increases in the market, also considering sort of your competitors' reaction? Thank you.
Well, if you don't mind, we would prefer not to give our opinion on price increases and possible competitor reactions precisely for competitive reasons. So we have our views, we will take our decisions, but we are not in a position where we can share those views in public since that could be badly understood by regulators. We don't want that to happen. We don't want to signal anything.
Understood, fair enough. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. Question is from the line of Clara Ng from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on energy costs, because you've managed it quite well. Would you be able to quantify kind of the trend of the increase in H1 and in Q3? And then secondly, what else are you doing on that other than the hedging policy? Has energy consumption decreased a bit? And share a little bit more about how you're doing that. And then the second thing on wages, are there any wage negotiation timelines to keep in mind? And thirdly, just maybe could you share your updated thoughts, capital allocation and priorities going forward? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. On energy, I'm not sure I understood 100% your question, but let me just rephrase what I've been mentioning. Today we have what we think is a relatively well-protected situation with just 30% of energy contracted in the spot market, and this is set to be maintained during a very long period, given the way that we have structured and provisioned energy for the next few years with a PPA representing a good portion of our energy consumption. Again, we are not expecting any additional significant headwind from energy next year compared to this year.
Also on the other front, I didn't mention that, but we are doing all the efforts we can to, of course, contain pretty much what we can in terms of the actual energy consumption. With that in mind, we have been implementing a significant number of energy saving measures that range from network to administrative buildings to even our cinema units that have also been allowing us to, well, to contain pretty much as we can, the energy consumption levels. In terms of efficiency, the way we measure it as energy as a percentage of the data traffic that flows in our networks.
The idea is that we become more and more efficient over time, and for that purpose, we have even set more ambitious targets of reduction of 70% until 2025 and 80% to 2030. In terms of salaries negotiation, we don't have the what we call the collective contract agreement. This is a decision that we have to take on our own and that we will take in due time. There's no negotiation with unions or any type of workers representatives for this matter.
Thanks. Capital allocation, any updated thoughts on that?
Well, capital allocation, again, we have gone through this very intense CapEx phase, which we are now finishing. 2021 and 2022 clearly our key years in terms of CapEx. 2021 with the 5G spectrum licenses, 2022 with the 5G deployment. 2021 over EUR 500 million of CapEx. 2022 with close to EUR 500 million, not reaching EUR 500 million, but on the high EUR 400 million numbers. Then over time, the idea is that we come back to the normalized levels of CapEx that you've seen, in a normal period. We should go below the EUR 400 million number next year. Normalized levels, EUR 370 million-EUR 390 million for 2023. Over time, we should be even able to go below those levels.
The idea being always to have the best technology, the best networks in the market, but acknowledging that the most of the effort has already been made. Also Miguel mentioned that regarding FTTH, we'll be pretty much done with close to 70% of FTTH coverage over our total footprint by the end of the fiber sharing agreement with Vodafone. Again, on that front, on the fiber front, most of the investment is already done.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. This is from the line of Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the questions, Scott. Three, please. Firstly, on the net adds, KPIs, another very strong quarter here. Is it possible just to get a sense of what has kind of caused that tick up, which I think, you know, has been more pronounced over the last couple of quarters? Is it, you know, you have highlighted network quality. I guess if I am to think about your fixed network, you know, your network was, I guess, very, very fast, and, you know, you always talk about a high quality cable network. Is that a case of just more customers migrating to fiber? What is the driver there?
On the mobile side, the mobile adds you are adding, I've seen the mobile SIM cards per RGU tick up a bit. Are these kind of primary SIMs that you are adding or are they more the secondary type customer? Secondly, on the power purchase agreement, again, earlier this year you talked about the kind of low-hanging fruits around your efficiency programs being achieved and further efficiency savings being a bit more long-dated. Is there actually upside from this power purchase agreement? I think you struck the price back in 2019. So are things actually working out a bit better than what you thought and that is kind of helping the EBITDA trend? Lastly, apologies if I've missed this in your.
One of your earlier responses, the cost of debt you are saying is 1.3%, that includes some of interest rate swaps. Is it possible to get the blend between your fixed, as in your pure fixed, and your pure variable, gross debt component? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. Starting with the net adds one. Well, basically, in the fixed segment, most of the explanation for the good numbers, good net add numbers comes from historically low levels of churn. We have been making a strong effort in terms of the quality of service, both on the access networks, but also critically on the Wi-Fi experience at home. What we are witnessing over the last few months is very low levels of churn, low compared to historical levels. Of course, we would rather have lower levels of churn, but still, that's basically what explains the solid numbers in terms of net adds on the fixed business. On mobile, I would say, to be simplistic in the answer, there are two main reasons.
One is the significant improvement in terms of quality and of the network, both in coverage and capacity. It is our clear leadership in terms of 5G availability, which is increasingly more relevant to customers. From a commercial point of view, it is the push that we continue to do in terms of convergence. In mobile, we are clearly gaining market share thanks to this strategy. These are primary SIMs, going back to your question. The number of second SIMs in the Portuguese market is not increasing. These are basically primary SIMs. That's it.
Okay. Regarding your two other questions on the PPA, this is a long-term contract in which we are provisioning good part of our energy consumption through a fixed price, which was contracted well before the current energy crisis. We are benefiting from it and that's it. On that front, I would say that there's no additional upside. Just we are happy to have completed this and we'll continue benefiting from this deal for the next 11 years. You mentioned also some efficiency savings and those efficiency measures and efficiency initiatives, which we have been implementing. We continue doing them and the PPA is just the power purchase agreement.
I'd say just one example, so I can give you a lot other examples of efficiencies that we have been implementing. I would say most of them are driven, but by what we call our transformation digital project. The migration of interactions from physical to digital is taking place. And we are seeing, for instance, in areas like customer service, much higher interaction through digital, by, through our own applications and websites, resulting in fewer call center calls, more efficient handling of customer calls through first time resolution, for instance, reduction of follow-up calls on the same topic.
also you mentioned and that is something we would also like to highlight, that the quality and reliability of our networks, which as we said, is being recognized by a good number of independent entities, is helping us in terms of containing the number of service issues and the fact that most of our customers today have access to the latest generation in terms of customer equipment, in particular routers and set-top boxes, is also helping in generating fewer technical issues, which means, again, also less calls to the call centers, fewer service issues in terms of maintenance and field force technician support. There are a good number of efficiencies that we have been implementing and that we will continue doing over time.
In terms of cost of debt, in terms of the breakup of fixed and variable debt, today we have close to 60% of our total debt, which is either contracted at fixed rates or hedged into fixed. That's basically it. Just to give you some more additional color on debt evolution for next year. Out of the EUR 350 million debt matures next year was contracted at fixed rates, so it will have to be refinanced next year at, I'd say, considerably higher rates than the rates that we are paying today.
As we said, being NOS a company with a robust balance sheet and with a relatively low leverage, we are comfortable and confident that we should be able to continue to access to relatively low credit spreads when compared to peers. We will not be able to avoid the interest rate context that we are facing, but on a relative basis, we'll continue to have lower costs of debt than majority of our peers. That's our expectations.
Great. That's super helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. This is from the line of António Salgado from AS Independent Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, also related with costs. I'm sorry to insist on this issue. First one is related with your cost performance over the third quarter. That was really nice. I think it was the lower quarter in terms of costs of the year, and while the top line was the highest top line. That is the result of the measures that have been mentioned or is seasonality. That is the first question. Second question is related with your costs for 2023, for the coming year. You are comfortable with the costs. Should we understand that you are still comfortable with your operating margin, so flat margin in terms of comparing with 2022? Thank you very much for your questions.
Well, regarding OpEx, I gave in the last answer a few examples of the efficiency measures that we've been implementing, and we will continue doing that. I think the good performance in terms of cost has to do with this. Basically is a lot of cost control and cost discipline and trying to be as efficient as we can. We are now reaping the fruits of the investments we have done in the past, I'd say three, four, five years in the transformation and digital program, which we are now starting to see some clear results. In terms of outlook for 2023, I won't be at this stage much more precise. I already mentioned that we have a few areas in which we'll have some inflationary pressures.
I also said that we have ways to compensate some of these inflationary pressures at the cost level. We remain confident that we should be able to continue growing EBITDA at positive double digits we have been doing this last year.
Okay. Thank you very much for your questions. Congratulations for the figures.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. This is from the line of Fernando Cordero Barreira from Banco Santander. Please go ahead.
Hello, and thanks for taking my three questions. As a follow-up on the previous question on fiber plans, you have said that you are targeting 70% footprint with your own deployments. Correct me if I'm wrong, it will be implying close to 2 million homes in which you will be having an overlapped cable and fiber network. In the past you have said that your strategy regarding cable to fiber migration is basically related with, let's say, the normal rotation of the market. I would like just to understand if, for example, the current situation with energy costs and with other costs attached to the cable network have made your mind to change and to accelerate-
Fernando.
The potential migration from cable.
Fernando, I'm afraid your line isn't very clear. Could you repeat that, the second part of the question?
Yes. Can you hear me right now better?
Yes.
Yes. Now, what I'm saying is, if considering the current situation on energy costs and other type of costs affecting the network operation, I would like to understand if, considering the increased part of your network, which is overlapped between cable and fiber, if you are planning to accelerate the potential migration from cable to fiber in that part of the network, and consequently, what kind of synergies you could be obtaining if you accelerate that? The second question is regarding the usage of the proceeds coming from the latest tower transaction.
In that sense, just given that you are below the 2x net debt threshold, should we expect that part of the money that you're receiving from this second tranche of the tower assets could be allocated to increase the shareholder remuneration? The third question is, you have well explained what is the inflation impact in your OpEx. But I would like to discuss a little bit if we should be concerned or we should be paying attention to the inflation impact in CapEx. Are your CapEx contracts locked in to inflation, particularly on technical CapEx? How are the CapEx related with customer acquisition also performing in terms of inflation? Just one call on that. Many thanks.
Well, thank you, Fernando. In what concerns migrations, yes, it's true that increasingly we have overlap of the two technologies, HFC and FTTH. But for the time being, we don't have any plans to proactively migrate customers from HFC to FTTH. We are delivering, if we look at the data rates and the overall quality of service that is provided by a fiber access compared to what we provide today in HFC with DOCSIS 3.1, is not different. As such, there is no difference for the client, which means that there is no reason why we should proactively migrate clients for the foreseeable future.
Okay, Fernando, I'll take your last couple of questions. First, I'd say in terms of use of proceeds and shareholder remuneration. As you know, shareholder remuneration, we don't have a formal dividend policy, so dividends have been proposed by the board to the AGM when we've announced the full year results. You should expect that. Of course, this gives us an extra free cash flow that for the time being we are using to reduce the debt level. Our view is that over time and looking into the next few years, our recurrent free cash flow allows us to fully cover the dividend that we have been paying, the EUR 0.278 per share. That is pretty much what we can say at this stage.
We have a lot of flexibility. We have a robust balance sheet. We have basically been investing, as you know, without having any type of restrictions in terms of implementing what we think is the best mobile network in Portugal, deployment of 5G. Again, this usage of proceeds have helped us in the last couple of years to finance this investment peak, maintaining a robust capital structure while still paying an attractive dividend. That's an equation which we would like to preserve for the next few years. In terms of inflation in CapEx, the answer is yes, we also have some inflation in terms of our CapEx levels.
To begin with, we have in what we call customer-related CapEx. We have commercial costs and technical costs, and those are basically driven by labor costs, so there is inflation in that component. In terms of technical equipment, there is also some inflation, in this case probably a little bit more driven even by the euro-dollar currency depreciation. The fact that we buy a lot of our equipment in US dollars is making it more costly. On a positive note, I'd say that the fact that we now have most of the investment done, in particular the 5G-related CapEx, again contracted in the time when this impact was not so relevant, is also helping us because as most of our peers will still have to do this investment.
In our case, by the end of this year, we'll be pretty much, I'd say, 90% completed on the deployment.
Okay. Many thanks. To go to António.
Thank you. We have no further questions, so I'll hand back to the speakers. Thank you.
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