Unifique Telecomunicacoes SA

Unifique Telecomunicacoes SA

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Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 13, 2026

Operator

Regarding the business prospects, projections, and operational and financial goals that Unifique may... Unifique Telecommunications may have, constitute beliefs and assumptions of the company's management as well as information that's currently available in the market.

Future considerations are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as they refer to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.

Investors should understand that general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operating factors could affect the future performance of Unifique Telecommunications SA and lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking considerations. Today, we have the presence of the company's executives with us: Fabiano Busnardo, our CEO, and Luiz Bogo Junior, Chief Financial and Investor Relations Officer.

I will hand the floor to Mr. Luiz Bogo Junior for him to begin.

Luiz Bogo Junior

Good afternoon to everyone, and thanks for coming to Unifique's second quarter 2026 earnings call. This quarter, we continue to demonstrate operational evolution and continued our sustainable growth strategy.

Besides launching important initiatives that strengthen and underscore our value proposition to customers, we also want to continue demonstrating this through to our investors. Throughout our presentation, we will go over some of the main results and some of the best happenings in the period.

Let's go to the operational performance. For broadband, we continue to demonstrate a consistent growth trajectory, focusing on the quality of our base as well as our user experience, as we have always prioritized.

We ended the 2Q 2026 with about 3.9 million homes passed and 909,000 customers connected, which means a 78% expansion of our customer base over the last 5 years. Net organic growth in the second quarter of 2026 was 5,409 new accesses, below what was recorded in the 1Q of 2026.

This performance reflects a more challenging market scenario. Macroeconomics have been more challenging for the telco market, as well as the company's strategy to prioritize the quality of our customer base.

Thus, we have managed to keep the focus on reducing delinquency, controlling churn, and the profitability of the operation, instead of only pursuing accelerated growth at any cost. In addition to organic growth, we incorporated approximately 24,000 accesses from the acquisition of ISUPER Telecom in the state of Paraná.

The sale of mobile phones and broadband combos has contributed significantly to the reduction of churn. In the second quarter of 2026, 19.9%, almost 20, of our broadband accesses were already in the combo, showing the strength of this strategy towards convergence and loyalty of our clients.

As a result of these initiatives, the monthly average in churn for the second quarter 2026 was 1.48%, in line with the churn of 1.50% recorded in the 2Q. Consolidating as the lowest churn in the telecom sector, this result reinforces the satisfaction and loyalty of our customers, ensuring greater retention and contributing to the sustainable growth of our base.

We continue to strengthen our leadership position in Santa Catarina, which is a state where Unifique is the market share leader, with about 22.3% of market share, according to the Anatel data from June 2026. This result is clearly because of our continuous effort to expand presence as well as strengthen our relationship with our customer and user base in Santa Catarina.

At the same time, we continue to make strong efforts to expand into Rio Grande do Sul, where we currently have 4.4% of market share, and also into the state of Paraná, which represents an important growth avenue for the company. For mobile telephony, we have been gaining traction.

We ended the 2Q for 2026 with about 338 accesses, an increase of almost 50% of almost 50,000 new accesses this quarter. This has demonstrated significant growth throughout the quarter, which also shows significant expansion in revenue in the mobile sector, being that the second quarter totaled $35.5 million, an increase of about 148% when compared to the second quarter of 2025.

These results are driven by the continued expansion of our infrastructure and the increase in the customer base. We ended the second quarter of 2026 with 211 cities being covered by Unifique's unique coverage, 123 of them in Santa Catarina and 88 in Rio Grande do Sul.

We consider this to be relevant expansion because it allows us to reach a population of almost 5.9 million people with our proprietary network. For information purposes only, of these 211 cities with mobile coverage being offered by Unifique, 167 are part of the obligations in the 5G auction and 44 have over 30,000 in population.

These numbers reinforce the company's commitment to expand its operations into cities with higher populational density, which ensures a better return on investments. An important point to consider is that of the new accesses registered in the second quarter of 2026, 48.3% or more correspond to ported lines that came from or clients coming from other operators.

This data shows that our users have a lot of trust in the quality of the services that Unifique is offering in such a competitive market, which is the mobile broadband network. Today, everyone has a mobile line.

In addition, 85% of mobile phone base is accessed through our combo packages, which also underscores the attractiveness of our integrated portfolio and how our sales strategy has been very efficient. In 2026, we also started providing and offering mobile services in new cities through our partnerships.

This operation has already reached about 6,000 accesses, spanning our presence beyond the locations that are directly served by our proprietary network. Services have also demonstrated an evolution of mobile.

Though you can see this reflecting directly on revenue, you can see that we still have internet and media as our main solutions, but mobile telephony represents 8.6% of our revenue, outdoing television and other services, which shows how the portfolio has increased. First quarter was 7.8% and now we're at 8.6%.

We also continue to diversify our services like connectivity with energies, cloud, and IT solutions. All of these services are based mainly on delivering quality internet, which is still our main product, be it through fiber or 5G.

Within this strategy, we launched in April a product called Assured Connection, which is a pioneering solution in Brazil, which keeps clients connected through the mobile whenever there is a lack of fiber connection. In practice, this is the way it works: if there is an interruption in the broadband connection, then the client can continue using this on their mobile during the period in which the service is unavailable.

This is a strengthening of our quality and our commitment to assure an improved experience for our users. Let's go to our finances.

The numbers for the second quarter of 2026, financial consolidated numbers, we delivered another of consistent growth. Gross revenue reached almost $412 million in the second quarter of 2026, an increase of almost 17% when compared to the second quarter of 2025.

In the accumulated of the first 6 months of the year, that's a growth of 17% when compared to the first 6 months of 2025. This performance was mainly driven by the advance in sales for our mobile phone plans as well as our combos, mobile plus broadband.

The main adherence that users have seen is with these products plus the new acquisitions that were made throughout the period, all contributing to the expansion of our revenue. The company also recorded significant growth in gross profit, reaching about $170 million in the second quarter of 2026, which is an increase of 17% when compared to the second quarter of 2025, and an increase of 18% in the comparison between in the first 6 months of 2025 and the first 6 months of 2026.

This result reflects the company's discipline in managing operational costs. In addition to our reduction of taxes and deductions of gross operating revenue, these effects contributed to offset the increase in costs associated to the expansion of the mobile operation, maintaining gross margin at a stable level when compared to the recent quarters.

Adjusted EBITDA reached $169 million in the second quarter of 2026, an increase of 17.5% when compared to the second quarter of 2025. In the cumulative of the 6 months in 2026, the advance was even more significant, about 22.5% when compared to the same period of the previous year.

EBITDA margin was 49% in the second quarter of 2026, showing a small decrease when compared to the previous quarters. This is mainly because of the increase in SG&A expenses, and this also reflects the higher expenses with personnel, as well as expenses made on marketing, campaigns, and the expenses related to the auctions for the mobile operation.

Even in face of these pressures, the company maintains a disciplined management of its operating expenses. Strategically, we are directing our resources to the projects which are priorities for us, especially towards the expansion of our mobile operation.

We remain focused on capturing operational efficiency and evolving profitability over the next few quarters of 2026. Net income reached $45.9 million in the second quarter of 2026, which remains in line with the results recorded in the second quarter 2025.

In the cumulative of the first 6 months of 2026, net income grew 19.2% when compared to the same period of the previous year. In the second quarter of 2026, the result was impacted by the increase in financial expenses, though, mainly due to the funding that was necessary and was carried out throughout the first half of 2026 the first quarter of 2026.

Even so, the positive evolution of net income in the first half of the year underscores the consistency of our results and earnings, and the generation of value for shareholders. Moving on to the next slide, where we talk about our debt, we have been working to keep our capital structure very healthy.

Unifique's net debt reached $387.3 million, reflecting a solid capital structure with leverage of 0.58% at the end of June 2026. This is one of the things that gives us the necessary flexibility to continue investing, even in this challenging macroeconomic scenario.

We have been able to maintain our solid cash position, which totaled $736 million in March 2026, also underscoring our financial health and our ability to continue investing in the expansion and improvement of our services. Our gross debt has a healthy and elongated period, with 90% linked to the IPCA, which helps us mitigate the impacts of short-term fluctuations and preserve the solidity of the capital structure.

It's worth noting that last week the company paid $30 million in JCP, which demonstrates our commitment to create value for shareholders. This was the event that we organized, and it's important to share that with you.

Before we reach our closing remarks and our Q&A session, I'd like to close by saying that we have had an important highlight and a milestone for Unifique this quarter. We completed 5 years as a listed company on B3.

Throughout the period, we have significantly transformed the scale of our operation, expanded our geographic presence, and also strengthening our results, our earnings, and advancing our governance structure, with great care to numbers. It was a path of great growth, but also marked by different challenges and market cycles.

This demanded discipline and adaptability and focus on the execution of our strategy. We are convinced in the quality of the assets we have built, in the solidity of our operation, and above all, in our ability to continue delivering consistent results.

We will continue to work towards this evolution, even if the market has not always been agreeable. We will continue to work so that the evolution of the company's value generation can be increasingly recognized by the market over time.

Unifique's purpose, and I love to repeat this, is that we continue to be a telecom company that is the most desired in Brazil, and to move in that direction, we continue focused on our main strategic priorities throughout 2026: expanding our operations through the south of Brazil and now into the state of São Paulo, which is helping to bring quality connectivity to more and more people. We want to encourage organic and sustainable growth in net accesses, it's broadband, with special care to our excellence and user experience.

We also work to maintain a healthy cash flow and a low level of leverage, assuring financial stability and the growth value generation for our shareholders. Besides this, we would like to strengthen the importance for our clients with a churn that is projected below average for the sector, and also commit to the quality services we are providing the states.

We continue to maintain our commitment to shareholder remuneration. In our market, we are still offering one of the best indexes of dividend distribution, well aligned with our sustainable return and payment policy.

With that, I want to end by thanking our employees, our customers, our partners, and you, our shareholders, for your trust throughout this trajectory. We remain committed.

All of our Board of Directors is committed, and all of our Administrative Council is committed to the sustainable growth strategy and the long-term value creation. We would then like to close our presentation and open for the Q&A session.

Operator

We will now begin the Q&A session. Just to remind you, to ask a question, you should click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen and write your question to join the queue.

When you are announced, a prompt to activate your microphone will appear on your screen. You can then activate your microphone, ask questions.

We would also like to ask you and request that the questions be asked at once. Let's go to our first question from Bernardo Guttmann from XP.

We will open your mic so that you can ask your question, Bernardo. Bernardo, please.

Bernardo Guttmann

Hi. Good afternoon Luiz, Fabiano, and Unifique team.

I have two questions. The first question, I'd like to go over how competitive the mobile sector is.

How do you see competition on this front? We've seen big operators reacting to offers of players like Nubank and some ESPs as well.

Has this begun to appear, show up for you more clearly in pricing, in churn, or how do you see this environment? Second question also connected to mobile is about your margins moving forward.

Margins fell in the second quarter as you continued to accelerate your mobile operation and increase coverage. Is this level of margin that we saw now something close to, let's say, the max, or is there still room for some extra pressure before the scale of mobile starts bringing in more operational leverage?

Thank you.

Fabiano Busnardo

Hi Bernardo. Fabiano here answering.

Thank you for that question. Regarding the competitive nature of the market and competition in mobile, we don't see in our area of action any big changes in the position of big operators.

Our sales continue along the same lines. Of course, we need to consider that the Unifique's main focus with mobile is selling combos now, right?

What ends up happening is that you have this aggregate in the package, let's say, you have an add-on, right? It's not just an issue of competition from mobile to mobile, since we have this correlated package.

At the moment, I think that the market, when we started selling 2 and a half years ago, continues to be strongly competed for. It's also reaching out to so many people.

Everyone has a chip, and we're in the fight, I think it's business. Now, about margins that you asked, that was your second question, I think what happens, ever since the beginning of the year, because of some of the acquisitions in different regions, Paraná was an acquisition, São Paulo, and we have commitments to reach, we had to thus accelerate the growth of our structure so we could support this expansion.

Considering that, it's in a short period of time, this was already equated for when we were in Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, but once we added Paraná and São Paulo, two other states, we had to be a little more careful about the structure. We had to hire more people to work in Paraná and in São Paulo to assure the quality of the services, and this, in fact, yes, ends up having a more direct impact on our margins because, as expenses come first, and then later comes the profit.

Now we're going to try to reach into the revenue in these sectors, which I think will only start showing up more intensely at the beginning of next year. Regardless, it's not in our plans to make this margin diluted significantly.

It can also flex up or down a bit, but it'll be a little, 1 point, 1 point and a half. We don't predict anything too significant in that front.

It does happen because of the decision to significantly broaden our area of action. Thank you.

Bernardo Guttmann

Thank you for that great answer, Fabiano, and congratulations on your 5 years in B3.

Operator

Our next question comes from Leonardo from Itaú. Leonardo, please.

Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, Luiz, Fabiano. Thanks for the call.

Thanks for taking our questions. I first want to start by exploring your CapEx dynamics for 2027.

Do you expect that these new regions you're moving into, São Paulo, Paraná, states in the north, will have more impact, or can you think of more expansion and more ESG? Also if you can talk about M&As in the pipeline, what's in the pipe, areas where you're not very present in, what do you think of more M&As?

Luiz Bogo Junior

Thank you, Leonardo, for that question about CapEx for next year. We have projected CapEx for this year of 500 and something million.

We think that for next year, understand that in 2026, we already have to deliver 30% of our obligations. Same way next year, we have to deliver about 30% of our obligations as well.

We shouldn't have a big variation from '26 to '27. I would estimate then that for the next year, we're talking about 500 and something million as well.

Of course, I can't assure this. Everything we buy is very dollarized, if the dollar goes up, this amount may go up 6%, 7%.

I don't see any big changes on the horizon or anything that needs to be warned. Regarding new areas, we continue to be very focused in partnerships, so that we can dilute these obligations a bit, having more people come on board to help us.

We're talking about big business here and we're now negotiating dozens of partnerships. I don't have a number of how many we've signed, but since we're talking about at least 10-year contracts, there's always a contract that ends up requiring more time to be concluded because it's an important commitment and a significant deadline, not a 1, 2-year contract.

We're talking about a 10-year contract that needs to be respected here, people act with more caution, but then things take off. We have dozens of these negotiations underway and we also brought in our structure in the sense that we strengthened, at least on our end, and assured more agility, we could then traction these partnerships more quickly.

Thanks, Leonardo.

If you don't mind also mentioning something on the M&A pipeline?

Luiz Bogo Junior

Oh, of course. I'm sorry.

I overlooked that question. To my surprise, it doesn't seem that we have as much business as we would like in the pipeline.

We have a few conversations underway. It's all smaller business so far.

We think that this year we'll probably close on one or two other deals. In fact, this is surprising to me because we believed that given this scenario, it's more challenging scenario because of the higher interest rates and the fact that people have more trouble investing and growing in these scenarios.

It hasn't happened yet, and if it does happen soon, you can be sure that we have an appetite for that pipeline, we're ready for that business, and we would execute. This year, we haven't had a lot of rich conversations, maybe one or two business deals, but nothing very significant to announce to market.

Thank you. Thanks for the clear answer.

Operator

I would now pass the word to the company so they can answer the questions in the chat.

Fabiano Busnardo

Okay. We can see that there are some questions in the chat that we hadn't noticed.

Gustavo is asking about the challenge in Paraná and São Paulo as well as the obligations. I think I ended up answering this in the last question quite a bit when I spoke to Bernardo about margin.

Yes, it's a big challenge. It was a decision to broaden our obligations quite a bit and we had to increase our structure so we could support this demand, this bigger demand of obligations.

We believe that we are in a and I wouldn't say an easy space, but I do think it's something that we will be able to do. The margin, as I told Bernardo, ends up suffering a bit because we had to speed things up.

Let's say if in the past we went through this for Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, we put money first, we did the deal, and now we're starting to see the revenue go up. Revenue is doing well.

It's a healthy number. We couldn't, in any hypothesis, lose this opportunity or miss this opportunity.

I think that it is challenging. I think that it will demand a much greater effort on our end, but we can't neglect an opportunity of this size.

I think we believe that a pathway towards the future of the company could be this and I think that we are very well prepared. We have the know-how.

We do need to improve the structure. We need more arms and heads, let's say, and we might need a bit more investment as well, we can honor all of the obligations.

Then starting next year, I also hope that these regions at the beginning of next year can bring us more revenue. Alongside this answer, there is the issue of the partnership that we are negotiating as well.

We hope to contribute and collaborate to more easily answer and reach these obligations. If we look at the general questions in the chat, I can answer some of these questions all together.

Someone asked about pricing, if we would raise prices. The company does have a policy to update the pricing for clients, starting this month, given the fact that we have strong impacts on our expenses because we recently went through dissídio.

This is our biggest expense. This had a big impact on our payroll and this also can be well, repassed into the contracts which allow us to do so.

I think CapEx-wise, we had $77 million CapEx in the quarter. Of that, $30 million went to mobile and we'll probably see an increase in the second quarter because we have a commitment.

We have a schedule for commitments, but it will be within what we expected for the year because beginning of the year we did a little bit less than what was made. On average, it's going to be the same.

We understand that we're quite confident about our resources, our cash flow, and everything is aligned, organized within our schedule at least, that at least what we had established thus far. I also have to mention, and let's not only talk about the good things, but net adds was lower than what we had projected.

It was 5,000 and something accesses, expected more there. We had done 12,000 first quarter, there was a drop.

Bernardo talked about competition in mobile and I actually say for fixed broadband, the competition is even more violent. I'm not sure exactly why these net adds dropped in this quarter.

Let's see what the third and fourth quarter look like. It may have been a moment.

We know it's a moment with a certain amount of we need to be a bit cautious. Families are in high levels of debt.

We understand that our service is essential. Nobody lives without the internet anymore, mobile.

Unifique is offering high-quality services and we're able to keep delinquency controlled. When we start talking too much about family debt, obviously that turns on a red light for us in terms of if delinquency will increase or not.

We are being very careful, very cautionary with this issue. Let's see if we can increase these net adds and work on that.

I would like to once again repeat, we're less concerned with mobile and more concerned with competition on fixed broadband, but the combos have helped us to sell better. I always like to say that selling chips, selling net adds is important, but I think that selling well, selling quality, that those economics are more important to us.

We continue with a very rigorous credit policy so we don't have any problems with delinquency or high problems with delinquency, 'cause that would demand more energy to solve. If not, we end up wasting time with problems.

I think that's basically it and I would say we're confident that the company has developed and is developing, we're on the right path. We brought a few new challenges in-house, but we consider that the choices and opportunities were the right ones and thank you, everyone, and thank you for your presence and for listening.

Operator

Our video call for earnings in the second quarter of 2026 for Unifique Telecommunications is closed. The Public Relations and Investor Relations departments are available to answer other questions and clarify your doubts.

Thanks to everyone for coming and have a great end of day.