is being recorded, and all participants are on listen-only mode. After the company's remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Before proceeding, let me mention that the company information discussed today may include forward-looking statements regarding the company's financial operating performance. Please refer to the detailed note in the company's presentation disclaimer. I'll now turn the call over to Marcelo Bermúdez, Entel CFO. Please go ahead, Marcelo.
Okay, thank you. Good morning, everyone. I hope you're doing well. As was mentioned, we are here to review our results for the second quarter as of June 2024. We're delighted that we are posting a strong performance in this quarter, so we'll review in detail both consolidated figures, and we will go through in more detail on Chile and Peru. That's why, as was mentioned, we invited Matías del Campo, our VP for the B2C business, and so he will be able to explain in more details the advances we're doing in mobile and fixed business. Paula also will help me to review the Peruvian performance. So if we go to the main highlights... Paula, go ahead.
Just, I want to review very quickly, and we're very honored to celebrate this year the 60th anniversary of Entel Chile. I'm not going to go into any details, but basically, we're very proud of all the accomplishments we have performed during all this year. We're a very relevant company in the country, especially in the telco sector. We have been leading different stages of development of this industry, so we'll be celebrating this year together with other customers. Also, we are celebrating the 10th year of our presence in Peru, being very aggressive in the market, bringing new technologies and moving a little bit the market with breakthrough technology and marketing commercial performance.
So, it's very worth noting that we're in this position this year, and this is a year to celebrate, and hopefully, our results go in hand with the celebration. So basically, just to summarize the latest events of the second quarter this year, we already started implementation since July of the shutdown of our 2G network in Chile. And this is a very interesting project for the company, and we are working very closely with our different, also ESG, manager and all the commercial side, just to perform a smooth transition, helping our customers and leaving no one behind, jumping into the new technology. So it's something that we're very proud. We'll be developing in the...
During the rest of the year and hopefully part of the next year also. And also, worth noting that this shutdown will have an impact in re-reducing our energy costs also, so it's very worth noting that. Also, we're very proud as a team, not only from the IR's side, but as a company, to have been also awarded one of the most honored company in the last institutional investor review. We got mentions not only as a Best Board, Best ESG program, but also in terms of investor relations, and some also awards, CEO, investor relations officer, and CFO. So we're proud of that also. And third place, we also are implementing the new tariff rate, starting in July.
The invoices of July already are adjusting the tariff that will impact a little bit more than 2.32 million customers in Chile. That will be roughly a little bit less than half of the customer base. This tariff increase is complementary to the price increase we performed at the beginning of the year for our new customers. This tariff increase will be applicable to existing customers, so we might be noting the impact in the revenues for the rest of the year and the coming years. So this is something that we also notify our customers some month ago, so it's something that is already expected.
And finally, we're also very proud that Entel was recognized as one of the most valued, telco brands, in the country by Chile 3D brand valuation study, and that, that's something also that, that our, commercial team is very proud of. So that, this is basically one of the latest events and news I have to, to comment. Then, just a quick summary of the, consolidated view and also by country in terms of, of activity. We're going to talk about the mobile users, as you can see in the, in the chart. Just know that there is a significant growth in postpaid year-on-year. In general, we're growing, in Chile 6.4% in, in mobile users. That's a, a very, significant growth. Also in Peru, it's also very relevant, 4.3%.
Although when we know that the prepaid are in both markets decreasing, it's part of the strategy to change customers more to the postpaid business. So that is something also that may have impact in our margins. So it's good news. Matías will go through more details in each market about that, so that is something that we expected to continue. But it's good news as of now. Same in fixed business. As you see, fiber and TV also growing in Chile with 23% year-on-year growth. Although we know that wireless internet as older technology is going down, and we have talked about that in previous meetings. That's something that we expected.
But the most relevant is that we are growing in fiber, and also Matías will mention we're capturing a lot of the growth of the industry, especially in fiber. And same in Peru, where with this still, we are not deploying an additional network. We're still waiting for the approval, as you may know, from the antitrust authority, for the PangeaCo transaction in Peru. So we're not deploying or growing in fiber yet, and wireless is same as in Chile, is decreasing. So that will might change once that transaction is approved. And in terms of results, this is the consolidated view, and we are posting in the first half of this year strong growth in EBITDA.
As you can see, 18.3% growth compared to last year, especially driven by Peru. Chile is kind of flat with some decrease in the margin. And when you look at revenues, also, we are posting a little more than 9% growth year-on-year. So this is also very good news. You can see that we're growing on a consolidated basis in mobile services, very strong growth also in handsets, and with some lower growth, but it's still very interesting in the fixed business. So as of now, it's good news.
Still, in terms of overall, customer base, you can see in the middle of the slide, Peru is almost half of the customer base and already accounts for one third of the, of the total EBITDA revenues, basically. So the challenge now is, in the, right-hand side, you can see, the revenue distribution, basically. The our, our main strategy here is try to grow in, in B2C, in the red part, which is basically fixed. We we are growing that, as we, already mentioned. We have a challenge in Peru to bring that 1% that is in red to a figure similar to Chile and continue to grow like in Chile.
And also in B2B, our challenge is to also grow in Peru, also in fixed, but also in everything that has to do with fixed in B2B. There's a lot of challenges in growing in the services we provide to corporations and medium and small-sized companies in Peru. There's a specific path to that growth, and that's one of the main strategic issues that we will be deploying in the next, in the very short term also. When we analyze the main financial highlights for the consolidated figures, revenues, as I mentioned already, compared to last year, same quarter, growing 10%, and also growing compared to the previous quarter of this year.
In general, you can see also EBITDA, EBITDA is growing a little bit above 3%, almost 4% compared to last year, but accelerating compared to the first quarter of this year. With the EBITDA margin, stabilized a little bit below last year. We will mention in the next slide that, we have had some significant impact of the increase in exchange rate, energy costs, and inflation in our cost structure. So, there's some good news in that aspect. We already seen the results and the benefits of our cost-saving program called Entel Plus Reloaded. As of June already, we have seen a positive impact that we expect to accelerate, in the coming months. So as of now, we see some slight drop in margins compared to last year.
Also, there is a change in the mix of higher participation or higher share of mobile handsets sales. That has lower margins, they have lower margins, so that will imply or result in a lower overall margin, but it's part of a change, a slight change in mix. Also, very worth noting that because of the lower exchange rate in the quarter, in the second quarter compared to the previous quarter of January to March, we're posting also a very strong growth in net income of reaching CLP 45 billion just in the quarter. And that offsets part of the first quarter losses in terms of net profit. So you you...
I explained this effect in previous meetings, that normally we have an impact of exchange rate in the tax line in the net profit. Normally, when the exchange rate goes down, we benefit from that with a lower tax payable or tax expense, and when this exchange goes up, it's the opposite. So it was a good quarter. At least we were able to post a strong net profit that is in line with the results that we have been showing in the EBITDA. However, EBIT is a little bit more challenged, if you want, wanna see compared to the last year. That EBIT is considering the impact of higher leases.
Basically, that's including the higher leases, IFRS 16 from the expansion of our network, but also the impact of the OnNet deal that is shown in that quarter too. So basically, the leases, the typical rents plus IFRS 16 amortization, it's impacting our EBIT. That is something that was previously noted, and last year it wasn't the case. It was included as a normal lease expense in the EBITDA, and now it doesn't show in the EBITDA, but it's in the EBIT. Also, if we could summarize, we performed this cascade analysis comparing second quarter last year EBITDA to this year.
Quarter to quarter, it's very important to mention that business-wise, we're posting a very strong growth compared to last year, CLP 16 billion just in the quarter. We wanted to point specifically the impact of the efficiency, efficiency program. Just in the second quarter, we already got CLP 9 billion in that program. We will see later that the whole first half impact is higher than that, and we expect more in the future. But unfortunately, as I mentioned, the combination of higher inflation, and that already is 2% in this year, and more than 3.5 points compared to the last year, and the exchange rate inflation also is impacting our expenses.
Mainly, I will point out the many contracts that are indexed to dollar, talking about satellites, TV contracts, and other contracts of interconnection that are also very tied to the exchange rate. So, I would say that the efficiency program is trying to offset that impact or more than offset that impact. And as I mentioned before, there is CLP 11 billion also of other leases and rents, including the fiber on the payment to OnNet. In that account, that is $11 million... CLP 11 billion, similar to $11 million of impact. So with that all, we still are growing CLP 7 billion year-on-year in terms of EBITDA, thanks to a very strong business performance that allow us to offset the higher cost.
Just to note that not only the efficiency program is helping, we are also working to mitigate the impact of the exchange rate with some hedge in terms of operating costs and CapEx. So that is also helping, not necessarily in the EBITDA, but in terms of cash flow. As I mentioned before, the cost efficiency program that we're performing since the end of second half of 2023, but with a already noticeable impact this year, is working. Here I tried to depict a little bit the main initiatives on the left-hand side in different areas, B2C, B2B, network, SG&A in general, plus other 150 different initiatives throughout the company. This is on Chile and Peru.
We see that the ranges of savings that we're trying to or aspiring to get in consolidated is close to $80 million-$120 million a year in run rate. Run rate we expect to occur during 2025. Of those $80 million-$120 million in expected impact, we expect that $70 million-$100 million will be in OpEx, but also we're working on CapEx, where we expect between $10 million-$20 million of total impact. And this close like is mentioned in the chart with a lot of focus in B2C, we could mention field force optimization, both in OpEx and CapEx, channel mix performance, also very relevant, and revenue assurance in B2B.
and also many initiatives, but, depicted here, the most relevant one in terms of network: energy efficiency, price consolidation, and smart CapEx. Smart CapEx is very important because we are working to manage wisely our network expenses, the way we spend our CapEx, both in Chile and Peru. So that's part of the aim we're working there. And in general, SG&A, we mentioned just two initiatives here: procurement, including AI. We're working in different initiatives, including AI, not only in procurement and other areas. And also we are using analytics for our credit risk analysis and collection strategies. So, those are two very interesting and innovative in terms of using the latest technology on data analytics.
So we expect these initiatives to accelerate during the second half of the year, and mostly during 2025, with full run rate at the end of 2025. In summary, cash flow, I already mentioned the changes in EBITDA. When we compare to the first half of last year, we just have to know that the EBITDA of last year considered CLP 33 billion of bad debt adjustment. So, even when we add that adjustment to last year, we still are growing in terms of EBITDA. With, in general, changes in working capital being more negative this year, mainly explained by the VAT payment we have to pay in January this year because of the transaction fiber that was closed in December last year.
So that explained CLP 36 billion out of those 59 that you can see in the chart. And also, we are including the impact of all the payments we have, all the deferred payments we did for the Starlink transaction, that is also affecting that change in working capital. And basically, other impacts are minor. But in general, working capital, in terms of receivables or accounts receivables and payables, is pretty stable. So these are more like one-time effects. And also worth noting, the CapEx is very similar to last year, in spite of the strong impact in exchange rate.
So we are, as I mentioned before, trying to perform and manage CapEx steadily, trying to save in different areas, but focusing on the most valuable areas for our customers, for our network. We are focusing on really impacting the quality of our services and investing wherever is pays off in terms of margin. So, we will still are aiming, and I mentioned this in previous meetings, to have, at the end of this year, a total CapEx in the range of a little bit below 20%. We're aiming at the range of 19.6%-20% in total. That's considering Chile and Peru.
But it's very relevant, and Matías will mention that later, that a significant portion of the CapEx of this year is related to the fiber deployment, both in Chile and Peru, and impacts of exchange rate. And the rest of the network is case by case. This is basically the level we'll have for the next two years. We will be in the range of 20, going down once we start reducing the expenses in the fiber deployment, which will be by the end of 2027, roughly. You know, and the rest of the cash flow has been explained by dividends and also the payment of we reduced our debt in the first half of this year.
We paid roughly CLP 70 billion , plus other effects that offset those payments, and we're reflecting CLP 45 billion of financing flow, which is basically debt payment. But in total, it was a positive half of year if we not consider all the one-time impacts of VAT and other impacts in working capital. Oh, go ahead. As a result of already the EBITDA performance and the reduction of the debt that we performed in the first half, what we see is that our net EBITDA ratio, considering cash for sure, increases a little bit compared to the first quarter.
Basically, although we reduced our debt, we also reduced our cash that was oriented to fund dividends, CapEx, as I mentioned, and also, VAT from the fiber transaction. So basically, the end-of-year picture and the first quarter picture, the ratio was very, very low, and now we started to spend a part of the cash position we're holding. So that's natural that we'll see a slight increase in the net debt ratio, but it's still very healthy. As you can see, we're keeping very strong credit risk ratings from Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings, as of now. So we feel comfortable with that, with the level of leverage that the company is sustaining.
So basically, we still believe that we'll be able to keep our debt in the range that we have already mentioned in other meetings. We have to always below 3.0. We are aiming in the range of 2.7, 2.85 at the most, depending in the coming years, depending on the deployment of our CapEx for fiber. So we feel comfortable with this figure in the short run. And now, I will turn it out to Matías. Matías, this is all yours, and so to mention the Chile results.
Okay. Thank you, Marcelo. Hello, and good morning to everyone. I'm very happy to be here today. I can share a little bit about what's happening in the market and Entel's strategy, and luckily, we're having very, very good results to show. First, if we see at the evolution of the mobile and fixed sector, in the mobile, there's a continuous tendency to post-pay, to migrate customer from pre-pay to post-pay. That is still happening, and it's been happening for a long time. In the fixed, fiber is king. Fiber is the segment that is growing, and Entel is being part of this trend.
At the bottom of the slide, we can see that even though the market is, it has not got big or a lot of growth, we are still capturing a big share of that, and we will see more of it in the coming slides. So in... please, the next one. So here, we can see the market growth divided by each competitor. And the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of this year, and this is one quarter behind what we're seeing in the financial, because this is—these are public figures. You can see that Entel has very strong growth on mobile, and I also know I don't have the public figures for Q2, but I have Entel figures for Q2, and we grew 94K, which is the highest in the series.
So you can see that with all what is happening in the industry, we've been able to grow a lot in a very challenging industry. Why and how are we doing that? It's because we have invested, and we have a widening customer satisfaction gap that is based upon the investments that we've made on the network on one side, which takes a long time to be reflected, and also on customer service, we see all our channels and our digitalization moving forward, bringing efficiency, but also customer satisfaction, so we are able to capture all this growth.
And so in the next one, we'll see that we're not only growing in customers, but at the same time, we're holding a delicate equilibrium between customer growth and revenue growth, and how we have been able to do both. There's a lot of pressure of inflation and exchange rate, as Marcelo has said in the previous part of the presentation. So this needs to be dealt with in the cost structure, but also on the top line. And in the top line, we can see that the entry price plan has been, we've been able to move it upwards at the same time that we grow, and we have the highest value customers in the market, that we are oriented toward those, and we'll see that a little bit further as well.
But here you can see that some of the competitors that were the cheapest, they're not the cheapest anymore, and, and there are others that are becoming strongest by being cheap, and we saw that in the previous slide with the growth. And so we are happy to be able to have the best customers in the industry. And one last remark: it's very slow how the raise in new customer tariff reflects on the financials. That takes a long time for this new customer to impact the customer base, but this is a very important step to be able to raise customer base tariffs, which we have done in July, as Marcelo said before. How can you do that? Well, you cannot only raise the base and not new customers, because then you don't have customer satisfaction, right?
So we first raise to the new customers, and then that permit us raise to the customer base, which has an instant impact in ARPU and revenue. Then we see the trend of the growth of post-pay, 6.4% in post-pay. As I mentioned before, this is because of the strategy we've had of having the widening gaps in customer satisfaction, and that's why we're being able to grow. And in the fixed market, you can see the last quarter, it's the second of 2024, there's big growth in fiber.
We are ramping up strongly from mid-Q1 2024, and now we're, our sales are up by three times what they were before, and that's why the customer base is growing, and we're profiting for the new deal with OnNet, which give us access to many more household in Chile through their fiber network. And now in revenues, we see the reflection of this increased customer base, and in the EBITDA margin, we have some impacts, so service revenue is good. Handset was good as well in the second quarter. We will see more details about this, but we had a good quarter. The handsets have lower margins, so they lower the EBITDA margin.
But then there's, there's been some regulatory adjustment on the wholesale access charge, which is the income that the mobile companies receive when someone calls them, and that went down at the beginning of the year, and that won't happen again for some years. So it's a one-time impact. And then the other one that's been impacted is fixed EBITDA, and that's the... Now we are renting the network, and before we were investing in it, so it was CapEx or depreciation, right? And so those were not impacting EBITDA, but now the renting does impact EBITDA, so it, it's a change. And also, we have more customers, and of course, we pay more for that with us.
Next, if we go a little bit deeper in the mobile sector, on the size of the slide, sorry, we can see that the handsets, it's up by 25%. So we have—we see an upward trend since the fourth Q of last year. People are again renewing their handsets. It was quite low before that, but now it's healthy. We see that tendency that started in the fourth Q of last year, sustaining through first Q and second Q this year. We had a great cyber in June, and especially we gained market share in the premium handset sector, which targets toward the customers we're looking for, and so we gain upon our competitors, and we also gain upon retail, which also sells handsets in Chile. Okay.
And, revenue share, well, with the measures we've seen before and the customer growth, we can see that we have a growing market and revenue share here. It's been coming slowly but strongly for a long time now, and this is only till Q1. As we saw before, we grew a lot in Q2 and Q3 as well from the customer perspective, and also we raised tariffs. And one number that really reflects the strength of our proposal is the port out rate, which is customers leaving Entel. And so we see a big gap between the customers that leave Entel each month, in the blue line at the bottom, and the rest of the industry.
And that is, that reflects loyalty, a better proposal, and also means financially a lot of efficiency, but because those are 0.5% or 0.6% of our customer base that we don't need to renew each month, and that, it's, it means a lot of efficiency and savings on acquisition costs. And about ARPU, these changes we made at the beginning of the year, we can't see what's happening in the customer base in July. We will see the impact of that in the future. But yes, we can see what we've done with the new customers, which is coming to feed the growth of the ARPU in the customer base, which we can see here with the growth on the first Q.
Also, we see the big difference and the big premium that we're able to capture because of the extra service we give to our customers, and we can see the gap between Entel's ARPU and the ARPU of the rest of the industry. How can we do that? Well, because at the end, we give a better, and we lead in customer satisfaction on the bottom left side, and on the top the brand, we have a very strong and healthy brand as well, with a gap with our competitors. And why we give customer satisfaction?
As I said, in channels and contact points, but also, and now I move to the other side of the slide, because we have a difference in the network, in which we have been investing for a long time, and we believe this is a very profitable investment in the long term. It was, it- this is what enable us to have this different premium, and you can see that in many dimensions, Entel leads in network quality.... And now we are moving to the fixed side of the business, which is growing, and I will get a little bit into the fiber, which is the one with the highest growth.
It's 32.5%, the light blue part of the graph, and that's, that is where all the commercial, we have a lot of commercial focus now, and there's also growth in IT, data, and internet service of 16.4, which, since it's the biggest part of the income, it helps raise the total to 7.3%. So, moving into the fixed side of the business, we see that the FTTH is dominating, and this is the future that's for Entel. We have good customer satisfaction, a strong brand, but a low market share in the middle of the slide because we were not really present. We didn't have a big household access.
Now we have it, and we can see in the last part on Q2 how Entel is capturing a lot of the growth of the industry, even outpacing in some months the growth as the industry as a whole, since we are getting customers from other competitors of the industry. So we have a lot of room for growth here in the future. There here we can see our internet connections, so 18.6% year-on-year growth, and on the other side, we can see how the network grew. So now we have access to 3.5 million households. That's why our penetration went down, because we're growing and this is bringing a lot of, let's say, positive stress on Entel, new energy.
We now are trying to stabilize our sales channels and our contact points because multiplying by three the customers we get in, it takes a lot of hard work, and that's what we're doing right now. And in the next slide, we can see... Can we move forward? Thank you. So we can see how we have some rising costs. This also reflects the moving from investing on the network to renting the network. That's happening as well, but also reflects the investment we're making on the commercial machinery of Entel, marketing on the fixed. We need positioning throughout the whole country because we were not present in many places, and so we need to tell everyone that Entel is here now.
And also our sales channels and the Operations team that need to go into each household to install, and all this needs to be done in Entel's way, which we need to be very careful about. And on the other side, we see the reflection on the CapEx. This, it's an expensive business, so each new customer takes a lot of equipment and an installation CapEx, and so we're trying to be very responsible here. We don't want to just grow everywhere and at whatever cost. We're trying at the same time to be efficient and really get the customers that we need.
Here in fixed, we see similar figures that we see in mobile, a strong brand power, even though we are quite small, 7%, as we saw before, and also customer satisfaction is high, compared to the second biggest operator in the fixed sector. Some of the questions we get sometime is: "Well, but if you share the network, then how would you be able to differentiate from your competitors?" There's several answer to this. So, one is that is only part of the network and part of the of where what tell us of the final experience the customer has, but there's many other things.
So one of the main one is the Wi-Fi or the internet connection within the house, and then that is done by Entel's technicians, and you can make a big difference there. We are trying to measure this, it's between 60% and 70%. Then there's a TV platform that goes on top of the internet access, and that's different for each competitor as well. So we see many places where we can differentiate, and we're working to make those extraordinary and have this extraordinary experience for our fixed customers. Okay, that was for today. Thank you very much, and now I would turn back to Paula for Entel results. Thank you.
Thank you, Matías. Thank you, Matías. Regarding Entel Peru results this quarter, we are celebrating our 10th-year anniversary as we entered in Peru as positioned as the second operator in mobile service revenue, so we're very proud about that. In an industry that it's with a high revolving, with high promotions and discounts. In the second quarter of this year, Entel leads the growth in the postpaid lines, growing mainly because of the increase in channels, in Express stores that we are leading over all Peru. Now we are having 100 Express stores, and we are expecting that we are going to have about 200 Express stores over this year. So that it's allowing us to have more capillarity and to have a higher revenues. Mm.
The revenues, as you may see, they increase mainly because of this increase in service revenues, and EBITDA also have an important increase over this quarter with the first time in EBITDA margin with a 27.5%. This is mainly because of cost efficiency that we generate mainly in distribution channels and more capillarity. And also, in revenues, we have an extraordinary gain regarding a fees refund that we received from other gains in this quarter. Going forward to the details of the revenues. The mobile revenues increase in the third quarter of increasing that we were seeing, mainly because of this increase in distribution channels, experienced a significant growth, bringing the high quality also in customers with a competitive dynamics and gaining mobile share.
On the side of the revenue share, now we have been positioning as the second operator, sorry. As a second operator, with a 24% of revenue share, with a very low gap in churn rate. The port-out rate to date, also we are in the second position. This is mainly because we've been increasing in the quality, in the service revenues that allow us to have a good quality and lower churn in the market. All this has been done because we've been, since we entered to Peru, we've been very aggressive, changing the quality of the services. We've been breaking a higher value on a allow us to have a very good brand power.
Today, we are also in the second position of brand power, and we lead in the experience of the customers in prepaid and postpaid. That's mainly because of all the campaigns that we have done with Entel Lovers and with lines for families and with special promotions. Also, ARPU, it's been increasing to $5.4 per line in postpaid. Also, because of reflected of the focus that we've been having in high-value customers, that it's been representing with an important market share that we have in Lima. Also now we are investing in having higher coverage also in high-value locations in Lima and also some of them out of Lima.
So over this, we are very happy with the, our results in, in this quarter in Peru, with the highest, EBITDA margin that we have reached and with important also, cost efficiency that we have reached, during this year. Now, I will turn to Marcelo to the final remarks. Please, go ahead.
Thank you, Paula. So in final remarks, I would like to point out this is a summary of six points. This and reflects basically our strategic focus, bringing down to the efforts we're doing this year. I will mention firstly, we all know that the industry is still facing a very stiff competition, a lot of revolving both Chile and Peru, and volatile exchange rate and inflationary pressure that are headwinds to continue to grow. But rest assured that we are doing everything that is in our hands, and we already mentioned cost control. Matías also mentioned the how we are being able to increase prices to new and our customer base.
In Chile, at least, as Peru is a little bit more hard, and that would allow us to continue offsetting and then increasing our margins in total. So, I think that's very, very important. Also, even in this scenario, the sustained growth of EBITDA, net income, we are holding a very strong liquidity position. Our cash today is roughly $400 million, and part of that, you know, that will be oriented to fund growth, some of that is in fiber. And so we are keeping a very healthy leverage ratio of 2.57, which is in the middle of our target range, and we will continue to keep that ratio in a healthy level in the coming future. And also, the...
Besides the liquidity and debt, we are being able in the last years to keep an attractive dividend policy, that we are holding to that aspiration to continue to do that in the future. So the results, if they work on that way, we will be able to do so. And also, in Chile, even in this scenario, we have been able also to capture 60% of the net customer base increase. That's very important. That's well above our market share and revenue share, so we are being a leader in the capture of the market growth. That, that's very, very nice. And we are also seeing the same in fiber.
Although we're growing in fiber, we're capturing a lot of the growth in the industry, and we'll also pointing to continue to do that, that also in fiber. In Peru, very good news, in a very strongly, very competitive market also Peru. We are being, I would say, very successful in our network strategy, deploying very rapidly, more than 100 Express stores. Very soon, we will be already having 200 stores in Peru, this retail with different formats throughout the country, and reaching a customer base that was hard to reach through more online services and others. So we're proud of that. And finally, we are seeing progress in diversifying our revenue.
We'll talk about the impact of terminals, handsets, but also we're deploying very aggressively fiber, and we're seeing good results and margin increase in B2B, IT services to corporations and digital. So that's working as planned, and we're going to—we're also very optimistic on the growth of that area. So that's basically it. And now, Paula, I guess we're going to do Q&A.
Thank you, Marcelo. Thank you, Marcelo. Yes, please, we can go ahead with the questions, please.
Thank you very much for the presentation. We'll now be moving to the Q&A part of the call. If you are dialed in via the telephone, you may ask a voice question by star two. That's star two for voice questions. If you are dialed in via the web, you may ask a text question. If you've already asked a text question during the call, please note you already have it, and we'll get back to you shortly. The first voice question comes from Mr. Carlos Legarreta from Itaú. Please go ahead, sir. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I have two questions on my end, please. The first one is, regarding the handset sales. Obviously, you have, you've had very good performance both in Chile and Peru, not just in this quarter, but in the whole semester. And I'm wondering if you can discuss a little bit the driver behind that, if, if we're seeing both volumes and prices increase, or it's one or the other, in both countries, please. And then secondly, I'm wondering if you can discuss or quantify, if there will be any relevant savings from the 2G shutdown network in Chile. Thank you.
Okay. So I'll take the first part-
Yeah
... about the terminals and phones. So the margin of each sale remain quite constant or sometimes even goes down a little bit because premium handsets have less margin, but we're gaining market share, far outstripping what we lose in this basis point margin that we may lose. So we're not making big offers and lowering our margins, but there is a mixed effect. And as I said, so higher value phones have lower margins, so sometimes the margin goes a little bit down. But on the total, we get a lot of EBITDA from this. And do we see...
And so we've seen this trend starting from last year up until now, and it's sustaining because, before that, there was some time where the ratio of phone renovation went down, and of course, the handset market got older, and now at some point, people really need to renovate again. So now it—that has picked up.
Okay. Thank you, Matías. And for the second part of the question, I would say that the 5G, well, this 2G shutdown will have an impact in cost efficiency in energy savings, but it's. That would be just a part to mitigate or offset the impact of the higher energy tariffs that we will be experiencing during the second half of this year and the next year. So, just to give you an idea, the impact this year will be in the range of $1.7 billion on during the second half of increased price. For the next year, the price increase in energy will also impact at the double that figure, $3.54 million a year. And that...
So this 2G shutdown will be able to compensate a minor portion of that, could be in the range of 5% of that figure, or 10% at the most. So it's it works, but it's it's not sufficient enough, it's not enough. So it's something that we have to do, also.
Okay, I appreciate the call, Marcelo and team.
Okay.
... Okay, thank you very much. Just a few seconds for any additional voice questions before we move on to the text questions. So star two for any voice, for those dialed in by the telephone.
Okay, so we have another, a text question from Germán Wagemann, Inversiones Los Lagos: "Thank you for the presentation. How much CapEx, mandatory or not..." I'm sorry. Oh, I lost it.
For 5G.
What is left for 5G deployment in Chile? Do you expect consolidated CapEx to decrease in the coming years?
Do you want me to take that, Matías? Okay. So basically, as you know, we completed all the mandatory 5G investment. With the commercial, it never ends. I wouldn't call it directly 5G. If you will see the details of our CapEx for this year, it's a mix of improving 4G and 5G, because you know that 4G works as anchor for this 5G, so working on both, huh? So in total, I would say. But you will see that the availability of 5G, it starts to increase in the coming years because of that investment.
But in general, what we see is that, we're always been mentioning that we believe that having the best network in the country pays off in terms of customer loyalty, port-out rates, et cetera. So we will see once we finish the fixed expansion, we will be able to convert from the... I mentioned the range of around 20% of CapEx of revenues in total to a level in the range of 18%-18.5%. So we could save after the deployment of fixed. But in the long run, we're not seeing a dramatic drop to levels of 15%, if you look at it in total, consolidated, huh? So we will see some reduction in total, but in the levels close to...
In the future, I'm talking about three more years at least, in the range of 18-18.5. Mm-hmm.
We have another question: "Do you have a target for dividend payment for 2024? Also, for the Entel 2024 bonds, planning to upsize, or it's just a refinance it with other local loans?
Yeah. Just for this year, the policy is, you know, up to 80% of our net profits, we'll keep that. And, but we have considering, I would say after we finish the fiber deployment, I'm thinking about 2026, 2027 even, a higher distribution rate of extraordinary dividends, if there are funds remaining from the OnNet transaction at that point, huh? But not for this year, and not for... Nothing special with 2025 at the moment, just the policy. And, the second part of the question was,
It's regarding payment of the debt.
Ah, about the debt refinancing. Yeah, we're analyzing that. We're still trying to assess where the market is going, but we have no rush. We have strong access to the market, and could be a mix of some local bank refinancing with a local bond, but we're not decided yet, so we're still waiting. Hopefully, we have more clarity on that by the year-end or the first quarter of next year. But we see many opportunities. We're gathering with different banks and we're seeing the opportunities, focusing on having flexibility, for one, and lower interest rates also. So we're still working on that. That's the answer.
Thank you. There's another question: "Can you provide more details on competition in your mobile business in Chile? For fixed B2B EBITDA in Chile, it appears that there was a restatement in 1Q 2024 figures. Can you provide more color on this?
If you can-
The first-
You can take the first one. Yeah.
Okay. So thank you for the question. On the levels of competition in the mobile business in Chile, I would say they remain high. If you see the overall price level of Chile as compared with the OECD or any other countries, we're in the top bottom 10%, 15%, so prices are very low. Quality is high, meaning there's we're doing a lot of investment. So I would say there's mobile number portability, so several pieces of making a country competitive stays the same. So I would say it remains a very challenging and competitive sector. I don't see that has changed in the last months, and but I do see Entel developing very well within that.
The squeezes that we're having from inflation and electricity and everything. It's affecting everyone. If you do it better, then you can take an advantage of that.
I suggest, Paula, that for the second-
Mm-hmm
... part of the question, we can answer it directly-
Yes
... if you can work on that. Mm-hmm.
... Have you seen competitors increase prices in the line, in the line with Entel, or are some more aggressive? Do you believe ClaroVTR will be more aggressive? Do you expect to participate in new spectrum auctions in 2025? What are the other outflows of the investment cash flow?
Okay, so in the first one, as we saw during the presentation, we have been raising prices, and some of our competitors have been doing the same. If it's more aggressive or less aggressive, I would say we have the highest ARPU in the industry, and so our prices are a little bit on top of everyone else's. But the other ones are... We see they're also raising prices. As the reason behind it, I can only assume they have the same pressures that we have, but that's not for me to answer. I can only tell you that I see Entel rising. We are the top ARPU on prices, and I can also see the rest of the industry raising prices as well. Not everyone, but many of them.
As with the strategy of another competitor, I cannot tell that. You would need to ask them about that.
Yeah, but in general, we don't see other relevant outflows in terms of investment. It's 4G, 5G, fixed plus core network in general, that's, those are the most relevant. There are no other investment cash flow.
What will you do if the churn rate in the Chilean postpaid mobile segment spikes in the coming month to 1%... from 1.5% to 2%? Will you maintain the price hike, or could you do some promotional activity to avoid losing too many subscribers?
Okay, so, we have several leverage that we constantly move to tackle growth, ARPU, and, and we're every day moving these levers. So, it's hard for me to say what we will do if in the future this happens, but I can tell you that every day there's an equilibrium between capturing more clients, moving ARPU, because of how competitive the industry is and the information, and the mobile number portability, which move customers every day, we are constantly adjusting our offer, our prices, our promotions, the overall offer with the phones, and so we're tweaking all these levers daily, I would say, to sustain the business model. I don't... So, this is something that is constant, and we will keep it doing when everything in, anything moves in the industry.
But just a quick comment on that before going to the next, is that in the last price increase, we saw a temporary spike in port out, and that normally could take a few months, and Chile could be longer in Peru when we have done some, but normally it converts to a higher stage in terms of price and quantity and cube. So at the end, it pays off. That's what I would say.
What's the pricing strategy in fiber to the home to win new clients? Promotional entry price for some months?
Okay. So, in what we do is that we do some conjoint analysis because the fiber offer has different pieces. So one piece is the internet bit, the inside home Wi-Fi installation, and there's also the content or the TV bit. And so we see the target that we want to have, the customers that we want to have, and we tailor our offer toward those clients. So we don't see a very aggressive pricing strategy right now. We have not done that up to now. We're growing with the strategy we have, so we don't have to make big changes, and we know that we need to be efficient in this business because acquisition cost is high.
Yeah.
And so it's working well with what we have now, and we are constantly doing some updates to it.
Yeah, just to give an example on that, Matías, to put more on ground, the offer that we provide for certain segments, not... To avoid competing on price, for example, could include more equipment for in-home Wi-Fi. So if you have a larger house, you will need more repeaters or whatever comes-
access
... within the house. So normally, it's not only price. You can provide a limited Wi-Fi for a small apartment. That's more like a commodity, but for larger homes, you adapt your offer with better equipment and quality inside, which is also very valuable for many customers. Mm-hmm.
Is there any progress with the direct-to-cell connection Starlink alliance? How and when will it be implemented?
Okay, so for an NDA agreement, I cannot go into the details, but I can tell you some public information, and the public information is that none of the operators in the world that are part of this agreement have launched. And it's also known that they're very close to the T-Mobile, because they are of the same country, but with everyone, they have, none has have launched, and what is public information is that this could be happening by the end of the year. That's what I can comment on now.
We have another: How do you think consolidation plays out in the mobile market in Chile, and is Entel interested in acquiring any assets?
Yeah, I can answer on that. Basically, we're always interested in acquiring a, at a good opportunity spectrum or, or assets. So we're always looking to different opportunities, to different kind of companies in different segments. So that's the only thing I can comment on that. I cannot go into any further detail, but we're always looking.
How are you planning on addressing this negative outlook of Moody's? How would you view the competitive environment in mobile if there was consolidation between two of the players?
Yeah. Basically, we feel comfortable with the level of EBITDA growth and leverage we have as of today. Yeah, we believe that there were not any further adjustment in Moody's in the near future. But if, for sure, if there is consolidation in the market, we will see, actually, I believe that some improvement in the margins. If does not occur and we face stiffer competition, that will might have an impact. Although we believe we're in a very strong position, cash position, we can defend our margin.
I believe personally that every savings adjustment we perform in our cost structure throughout the network, I'm talking about commercial expenses, the SG&A expenses, field force, channel expenses, that will be one of our key levers to really be the most profitable company in the market, and sustain any level of fierce competition for a while. So that's the only leverage we have in our hands. So I don't see for now an issue with the outlook from Moody's. We will—I expect that there will be not an issue in the short run.
Okay. Last one, I think. Thanks for the presentation. I would like to ask about the plan for the 2025 and 2026 debt. Are you considering new issuance to repay, or we should expect other source of financing?
Yeah. I think I just mentioned before, basically, we're still... It's a work in progress. We expect to two questions: Well, we'll pay the amortizations, and we expect to refinance that. We are still analyzing the tenor of that refinancing. It could be a mix, as I mentioned, of medium-term bank loans, more flexible, and could incorporate also part of that as a local bond issue. We are not, as of now, expecting a large U.S. dollar issuance, but could be possible depending on the trend of the interest rates and how the markets are evolving in the next, I would say, 8-9 months. But it's a work in progress.
Okay. So I think we have ended with the questions. If you have other questions, we can expect another meeting with me, and I will help you with the questions that you couldn't get answered during this call. And thank you so much for everything for connecting today. And we kindly invite you to our Investor Day that will take place here in Santiago on October 16th, and it will be here in Santiago, in person and online. So it will be great if you can join us in that important event. Thank you, all of you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marcelo. Thank you, Matías.
Thank you. Thanks, Matías. Thank you.
Thank you.
Bye, all.
Bye-bye.
Thank you very much. This concludes today's conference call. We'll now be closing all the lines. Thank you and goodbye.