Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Bezek's twenty twenty four Third Quarter Earnings Call. I'm Toby Fishbein, CFO of the Bezek Group. Joining us from the senior management team today, we Tomer Rabe, Bessek's Chairman Mr. Nir David, Bessek's Fixed Line's CEO Mr.
Ilan Seagal, CEO of Telephone and ES. Before we start the call, I would like to direct your attention to the Safe Harbor statement on Slide two of our Q3 investor presentation, which also applies to any statement made during today's call. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded. Following the presentation of our quarterly results, we will have a Q and A session. With that said, let me now turn the call over to Tomer for his opening remarks.
After his introduction, I will continue the presentation of our group's financial highlights, followed by Nir, who will discuss Bezek fixed line results and Niran, who will cover the result from Telefon and YES, and I will conclude the presentation with basic international results. Tommen?
Thank you, Toby. Welcome, everyone. Let's start on Slide three. So despite the challenges of the war, all the group companies posted another quarter. That evidences the implementation of our strategic plan as well as our resiliency as a company and as a country.
We recorded an increase of over 2% in core revenues, mostly due to 4% growth in Beldec fixed line despite the war impact on telephone roaming revenues. Adjusted EBITDA was impacted by the reversal of the Universal Fiber Fund in Q3 twenty twenty three, as well as the war's impact on roaming revenues. After adjusting for these, Bezek fixed line and telephone EBITDA adjusted EBITDA increased by 26%, respectively. Group adjusted EBITDA decreased by only 1% after adjusting for these. We continued to grow in our strategic drivers, recording a 50% year over year increase in fiber subs and 25% growth in five gs subscriber plans.
I am very proud that we have now reached 2,500,000 home passed, faster than expected, and already have 31% take up on our network. This reflects over 780,000 fiber subs. And for the first time, we have more fiber subscribers than copper subs on the network. Our strategic focus on the group's core activities led to the sale of Bezek Online last week for 50,000,000, contributing to financial efficiency and reflecting our commitment to creating value to our shareholders. On the following slide, we represent the highlights of the quarter.
After adjusting for the Universal Fund and the roaming revenue of the Telephone, adjusted net profit decreased by 2.6%. Free cash flow declined this quarter mainly due to an increase in CapEx. However, we reported 2.2% growth in free cash flow for the first nine months of the year to over 1,000,000,000. The next slide shows some KPIs by business. Bezek fixed line had 65,000 fiber net adds in Q3.
The retail broadband ARPU growth continued to grow nicely, increasing to 131, thereby reaching our midterm ambition that we communicated to you three years ago. Moreover, we are now on path to reaching our 140 ARPU guidance that we gave in the previous earlier this year. On the mobile side, we saw continued growth in our five gs subs reaching over 1,200,000 subs. This equivalent to 53% of total postpaid subs and our cellular business continued to thrive and without the roaming impact demonstrated significant growth in both top line and adjusted EBITDA. The TV sectors continued to be extremely competitive, but CS market share has been relatively stable with a moderate 1% decline in TV subs.
On Slide six, we see the evolution of all our businesses to where we are today, as well as the roadmap to the midterm. At the beginning of the year, we published the group's business roadmap, and we are on our way to achieving all the ambitions in the medium term, including the completion of the fiber deployment, the completion of the migration from satellite TV and significant growth in free cash flow from the combination of higher adjusted EBITDA and lower CapEx. With the great progress in these milestones and the successful execution of our strategy, we remain focused and confident in our ability to deliver our target of increasing EBITDA minus CapEx by NIS 400,000,000 to NIS 500,000,000 in the midterm. Now I would like to turn the call over to Toby to discuss the financial results in more detail.
Thank you, Tomer. Slide seven shows a 2.1 increase in core revenues, primarily due to the growth in core revenues at Besik fixed line. Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net profit were impacted by the continued provision for the Universal Fibre Fund compared to the reversal of the provision in Q3 of last year, which resulted in a 30,000,000 impact, together with the effects of the war on telephone roaming revenues. On the next slide, the nine month results showed 1.1% growth in Group core revenues as well as 2.2% increase in free cash flow. Turning to the next slide, we show our operational metrics.
I would like to highlight the 6% increase year over year in our retail broadband ARPU, along with a continued increase in cellular and five gs subscribers. The next slide highlights a decrease of ILS two ninety million or 6% year over year in our net debt to billion, while improving the coverage ratio from 1.6 to 1.5 times. We remain committed to maintaining our high credit rating. I will now turn the call over to Nir, who will share more detailed results from our fixed line operations.
Thank you, Sloby. On the next slide, fixed line core revenues increased 3.6% to $970,000,000, mainly due to higher revenues from broadband services, transmission and data communication as well as infrastructure projects. Broadband retail customer reached over 500,000 daily and ARPU rose 5.6 to 131 in the third quarter. On the following slide, we show that adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter was impacted by the reversal of the provision of the Universal Fiber found in Q3 twenty twenty three as well as higher salary expenses. Turning to the next slide, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net profit in the 2024 were impacted by lower telephony revenues, mainly in the 2024 due to the MOC tariff reduction.
Turning to Slide 14. In the third quarter, we saw moderate growth in broadband revenues, mainly due to a decrease in wholesale tariffs for use of the passive networks. Moving to the next slide, we show the take up trends. Q3 saw 45,000 retail fiber net adds and 42,024 wholesale fiber net adds. Turning to the next slide, we show continued fiber deployment with an increased focus on take up.
Today, we have over 2,500,000 home pass and over 780,000 active subscribers in fiber networks, resulting in continued growth of our take up rates, which has reached approximately 31% as of today. Slide 17 shows continued revenue growth in the 2024 in transmission and data communication. Other revenues were positively impacted by higher recorded revenues from infrastructure projects. The next slide shows an 8.5% increase in operating expenses, resulting from higher expenses related to the Universal Fiber found due to the reversal of the provision in Q3 twenty twenty three as well as higher subcontractor expenses related to infrastructure projects for the defense industry. Salary expenses increased 6% due to increase in minimum wage, wage creep as well as lower vacation days used due to the world.
With that, I will now turn the call to Ilan to discuss telephone and guest.
Thank you, Neil. Moving to the next slide, telephone posted stable revenues despite the impact of the war on roaming revenues, which is estimated at 20,000,000. The results were driven by higher ARPU from cellular plans and an increase in equipment revenues. In addition, five gs subscriber plans continued to grow with 52,000 net adds in the quarter. Moving to Slide 20, we show five gs subscriber plans reached over 1,200,000 subscribers as of today.
Subscribers on five gs plans amounted to 53% of postpaid subscribers today. On the next slide, we see that adjusted EBITDA decreased 5.9% due to the impact of the war and the reversal of the provision for the Universal Fiber Fund in Q3 twenty twenty three. Free cash flow was negatively impacted by timing differences in the payment of the frequency fees. We saw similar trends for the nine months results on Slide 22. Slide 23 shows the Q3 key operational metrics.
As seen, we recorded an additional increase in postpaid subscribers, including five gs subscribers and a decline in prepaid subscribers due to the impact of the war. ARPU rose 2 shekels from the previous quarter despite the impact of the war on roaming revenues. This is our third consecutive quarter with an increase in ARPU. Turning to yes on the next slide, we continue the migration from satellite to IP with 456,000 IP customers today. Fiber continues to grow and we have now reached 68,000 as of today.
The Q3 and nine months financial highlights show declines in revenues due to the increased market competition and the non billing of customers in the line of conflict, partially offset by higher revenues from the TV fiber bundle. Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net profit were impacted by the decrease in the revenues and the timing of the provision for the Universal Fiber Fund, partially offset by lower content expenses. On Slide 27, we show YES Q3 key operational metrics. YES saw continued growth in the IP based TV subscribers, which increased 20% in the period. As of today, 81% of YES subscribers are watching TV through IP.
We also recorded growth in fiber subscribers, jumping 120% year over year. With that, let me now turn the call back to Toby.
Thanks, Ilan. Moving on to Besik International. Revenues and profitability metrics were impacted by lower Consumer and Business ISP revenues due to the Ministry of Communications Unified Internet Regulatory Reform as well as lower International long distance revenues. The decrease was partially offset by higher ICT revenues from cloud services. On the next slides, we see similar trends in the quarter and nine month results.
Let me point out that free cash flow in the quarter and nine month period was positively impacted by timing differences in working capital, a decrease in CapEx and lower employee severance payments compared to the third quarter and nine months period in 2023. Turning to the last slide, I want to reiterate that we remain focused on executing on our strategy by focusing on our Group's core activities and key growth drivers: robust fibre take up in Bessek and ES, continued growth in BSEC's data business, as well as consistent growth in five gs subscriber plans at Penfold. Finally, I would also like to mention that we will be attending the Morgan Stanley European TMT Conference this week in Barcelona. For those attending, we look forward to meeting you there. With that, I will open the Q and A session.
If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand virtually. As you hear your name, please be sure to unmute your mic and ask your question for the benefit of the people in the room. Please introduce yourself and share the name of the company you represent. We will address questions as we see the hands raised. And I will now pose for to poll for questions.
First question from Liran Lublin, IBI. Hi, Liran.
Hi, guys. I have a quick question about your guidance. You're obviously falling behind the 3,800,000.0 EBITDA that you guided for. But on the other hand, CapEx is also well behind the numbers that you guided three quarters ago. How should we think about CapEx for this year and for next year?
And about EBITDA, what are the main reasons that you're falling behind? And what are the drivers for the next quarter?
So Liran, I'll start. Hey, thanks for the question. Toby, feel free to add if you have anything. So great question. Look, the impact from the war is not material, but it, as you see, definitely has some impact mostly coming from the roaming side of things.
We'll likely be a little bit below on EBITDA guidance, around the 2% -ish, not more than that, but CapEx will also be below. So free cash flow will actually be better than expected this year, while still meeting all of our investment plan and even rolling out more fiber than expected. So keeping our plans as planned, but free cash flow will be better, slightly better by the end of the year. On the adjusted net income side, we expect to meet our guidance for the year and reiterating that number that we gave out. Going forward to your question, we are at the end, really very end of the CapEx cycle, given that we are nearing the completion of our fiber project and the migration from satellite to IP.
So you'll see sometime second half of next year and definitely into 2026, a significant drop in CapEx and with the growth of EBITDA really reaching towards our midterm guidance that I mentioned around EBITDA minus CapEx of increase of up to 500,000,000 in that metric. So overall, everything is working according to plan. Yes, there is some slight impact from the war on EBITA this year, but nothing significant or nothing that makes us worried.
Okay. So just to follow-up on that one. So considering that cash flow is going up and your net debt is obviously very low. Any thoughts about increasing the dividend payouts?
Yes. And it's part of our communication also with the market and the guidance that we gave. We just this past March increased our payout from 60% to 70%. We will evaluate at management and the Board level in the coming March again, the dividend policy, and we'll communicate to the market. Obviously, the metric supports this ongoing trend.
Thank you, Lidar. Next question from Tavy Rosner from Barclays. Hi, Tavy.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three, please. First, I wanted to ask about the Universal Fiber Fund. How should we think of the operating assumption next coming quarters?
Will you just use a flat 50 basis points? Or do you see a chance that the MOC might lower the requirement to a lower percentage going forward?
I'll answer. I'll take this one. Complicated topic, but simple for you and the guide on the line, because you know the material well. So as you see, the Minister of Communication also offered to Baede to take on more areas that were unsuccessfully covered by the Universal Fund, and we two took components ourselves, additional areas that all of the most of them were covered this year and some will be rolled out next year. This led last year to basically the MOC not to basically charge anything from Universal Fund, it was 0%.
There was a draft published by the MOC that this year, it would go down from 0.5% to 0.2%. We expect it to be less this year, and we expect this to be resolved in the coming weeks before end of year. With that said, we since the country is almost rolled out, we do not expect to have significant Universal Fund provision going forward, but it's still TBD and looking for more formal communication from the regulators around that.
Okay. That's helpful. On to my next question. In my note, I have you guys putting about 300 employees on early retirement next year. I'm wondering if that's the correct number and how should we think of onetime costs and also potential cost saving benefits down the road?
So as you are aware, we have every year under our agreement with the employees at the Bezac six line, we have the option to retire 50 people. And in the last year, going into 2025, 2026, we have additional 300. It's an option. We're probably going to use a significant part of that option, given that we are nearing the completion of the fiber rollout next year. And so we will communicate properly next year regarding numbers and plan and savings.
I think it's premature to provide numbers. But yes, it's an option that we will seriously contemplate using next year.
Okay. And lastly, structural separation, I think the MOC said they would finalize this issue in Q4. We're late November now. Do you still expect them to make some kind of decision now? Or it's just going to get pushed away to next year?
First, I expect MOC always to abide by its work plan. But I think the regulatory environment incurs across the country delays. So it's an active work stream between us and the MOC. I think it's too early to provide time line on that. But as you correctly alluded to, this is part of the formal workman of the MoC.
It's an active work stream, too early to provide additional color on that.
Okay. Thank you. I'll get back to the queue.
Thank you, Tavi. Next question from Sabina from Lidar. Hi, Sabina.
Hi. First of all, on the quarter. It's good to see that you're continuing to show and report strong results despite everything that is happening in the country and the market and the competition. I have one follow-up regarding the regulations and then another one regarding the TV sector. So should we expect any developments in the next coming futures regarding the wholesale tariffs?
And if because I understand that the processes within the Ministry of Communications are slow. So in case maybe there could be a delay or it would take longer for them to decide on the updated wholesale tariffs. So is it possible that we'll see agreements with another companies like something that you have with partner maybe we should see additional spares making same deals or similar deals with Bezek?
So I'll start and Nir if you want to add anything. But look, we first on the regulatory front, the MOC set the tariff to be valid by June 2025. So we fully expect them to have some sort of hearing or announcement around wholesale rate in the coming six months. We do not know whether they will stay the same or potentially change up or down. But connecting into your second question, we are always open and in discussions with all the players in the market regarding wholesale rate, IRUs.
We are very open to that on that front. Most of the players in the market wholesale our network on the regulated fees, partners did sign an IRU. We may see more in the future, reminding you that we did made a change. We did make a change in the IRU with partner to allow them basically to resell two smaller players at the same term of our IRU, meaning everybody can use the same term by reaching out to partner. So I hope that answers your question.
On the T
and T
side, Feliz, go ahead.
Yeah. Well, my question was regarding the recent announcement of Cellcom about the transaction with HOT. Do you believe it should impact or could impact the timeframe regarding the transaction between the Essent partner?
Hi, Sabine. It's Ilan. How are you?
Fine. Thank
you. Actually, we still don't know. We believe that we will have some answer in the next few weeks. We will understand where it goes. The authority made us believe that in few weeks we will have any kind of answer which direction it will go.
But can I reasonably assume that there is more than 50% probability that both of the transactions will be approved?
Maybe. Okay. We really don't know.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sabina. There are no further questions. Let me okay. If there are no further questions at this time, I would like to thank you all for taking the time to join us today. Should you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to contact our IR department, and we look forward to speaking to you on the fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four earnings call.
Thank you.