Unifique Telecomunicacoes SA

Unifique Telecomunicacoes SA

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Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 14, 2026

Operator

From Unifique Telecomunicações S.A., for those who need to use simultaneous translation, the tool is available on the platform. In order to access, click on the button "Interpretation" located at the globe at the bottom of your screen and select your preferred language, Portuguese or English.

For those who are listening on the video call in English, the option to mute original audio in Portuguese, click on "Mute original audio". This video conference is being recorded and will be made available on the website for Investor Relations on unifique.com.br, where the complete material of our earnings call will also be available.

You may download the presentation as well on the chat icon in English. During the presentation of the company, all participants will have their mics on mute.

Then we will begin the session for questions and answers. In order to ask questions, click on the Q&A icon on the bottom of your screen and write your question down to enter into the queue.

Once you are announced, a request to activate your mic will appear on your screen, which you should then unmute your mic to ask questions. We would like to ask that all questions be made at the same time.

We would like to highlight that the information contained in this presentation and other declarations that may be made during the video conference related to business perspectives, projections, and operational goals and financial goals from Unifique Telecomunicações S.A. are based on beliefs and premises from the administration of the company as well as available information.

Future considerations are not guaranteed. They involve risks and uncertainties and premises because they refer to future events; therefore, they depend on circumstances which may or may not occur.

Investors should understand that general economic conditions, market conditions, and other operational factors may affect future performance of Unifique Telecomunicações S.A. and may generate results that differ materially from those presented today.

Today we have the presence of the executives of the company, Fabiano Busnardo, CEO, and Luiz Bogo Junior, Financial Director and of Investor Relations. We pass the floor to Mr.

Luiz Bogo Junior.

Luiz Bogo Junior

Good afternoon to all. Thank you for your participation in our earnings call for the first quarter of '26 from Unifique.

We will begin with the highlights which we separated for this period, where we had one more quarter marked by serious work with the company and with a lot of focus on results. We closed the first quarter of '26 with an adjusted EBITDA of almost 171 million, a growth of 28% in relation to the first quarter of '25, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 51.9%, an increase of 2.3 percentage points.

That's a result that reflects our discipline in cost adjustments especially. Another highlight is with mobile telephone services, where we continue to gain space.

We closed the first quarter with a bit more than 288 net accesses, being that more than 40,252 net accesses were made during the quarter. This event is aligned with our strategy of increasing our infrastructure with increasing coverage.

Another important point to highlight is our capital structure, which is very solid, with a leverage of 0.58 times EBITDA, which guarantees us flexibility and more comfort to be continue investing in this scenarios that Brazil presents today. To finalize the highlights, I could say that we also had an improvement in our churn for fiber in relation to the first quarter of '25, which we closed at 1.49% of churn in this last semester.

A little bit about our operational performance: in the segment of broadband, we are still presenting a trajectory of growth. This is always aligned to the quality of our infrastructure.

We close the first quarter with approximately 3.8 million homes passed and almost 880,000 connected clients. If we consider '22 to now, that's a growth of 72% of expansion over these years.

The net organic growth in the beginning of '26 was a bit more than 12,000 accesses. This reflects a strategic change which we had in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, focusing more on the quality of our base, taking care of our delinquency, and not as focused on accelerated growth, but on the quality that I just mentioned.

The sell of combos of mobile services with broadband has also grown in a relevant way in our base, so much that in the first quarter of '26, 22.8% of our base of broadband was part of the combo. That demonstrates our strength in our convergence strategy and the loyalty of our clients.

Still on market share, we have a very strong leadership position in Santa Catarina with 22.5% given ANATEL data, and we still seek to increase our presence and strengthen our relationship with all clients, even in the more challenging areas such as in Rio Grande do Sul, where we only have 4% of market share, but we have strategies for growth there as well. For mobile phones, we have demonstrated a consistent cycle of expansion and gains in scale.

The slide shows us that we close the first quarter of '26 with around 280,000 accesses, as I said in the highlights, accompanied by an expansion in the mobile segment, which completed in the first quarter of '26 29.5 million. This is an advance of 175% in relation to the previous year.

It's important to highlight and reinforce that these results are conditioned by the continued expansion of our infrastructure, which increases our client base. We finished the first quarter of '26 with 166 cities with their own coverage, 102 in Santa Catarina and the rest in Rio Grande do Sul, which gives us 5.1 million people with our own coverage of our network.

From these 166 cities with mobile coverage, 128 are part of the obligations of the 5G auction, and several of them have more than 30,000 inhabitants. At the same time as we are operating to reach our obligations of the auction, we are also operating in areas of higher populational density, which guarantee higher returns over investment.

Another important point to highlight is that from the new accesses registered in the first quarter of '26, 52.6% of the base corresponds to lines coming from other providers. This is the evidence of the confidence of our clients in the quality of our service provided.

Besides this, 86% of our base of mobile phones are clients with the combo services. This reinforces the productivity of our portfolio, which has been integrating our efficient commercial strategy.

Here we'll talk about our services, our pie for our gross revenue. Mobile telephone services already are part of our pie.

It is now 7.5% of our revenue over fixed telephone services and over TV services. Besides that, I can also say that we continue advancing in this diversification, the services that go beyond connectivity, such as energy, safety, solutions for IT, which are all under this pie as well.

Let's go to financial performance, please. Here, as I already said in the highlights, we have delivered consistent quarters of growth, with gross revenue of 393 million, 17.2% growth if compared to the first quarter of '25.

This performance, in a very quick way we could say, was pushed forward by the combo plans that were sold, which were acquired by our clients, and also through the application of readjustments on internet plans in the segments of B2B and B2C, which were applied ever since last year according to a commercial strategy that the company adopted. We also registered specific growth in our gross profit, reaching 60 164 million in the accumulated numbers of 100 of the first quarter of '26, which is a growth of 19%.

We were very careful here to present this because this reflects in total the efficiency of control that we have and also our fiscal control. A little bit about EBITDA, which has been an EBITDA which was quite surprising to us, we had an adjusted EBITDA of 170.6 million in the first quarter, an increase of 27.7% in relation to the first quarter of '25.

Our EBITDA margin is at 51.9%, and here this demonstrates our capacity of maintaining profitability even with the advance of the mobile strategy and all the costs associated to it. I would like to highlight that we continue with rigorous control in all of the operational expenses.

Our control of our strategic budget is also highly refined, and all of this has directed funds to specific projects such as expansion of the mobile phone lines. In relation to our net profit and net margin, we are at 52.1 million, a growth of 40.8%, which is a reflection of the trust of our shareholders.

About our debt and our leverage, we maintain a very healthy capital structure. Our net debt is in line with last year's, 369 million.

Since the EBITDA improved, it reflected in a leverage of 0.58 times at the end of the month of March of this year. Our cash position is solid: 776 million by the end of March, demonstrating financial health and the capacity to continue investing in the expansion of the mobile and fixed network and improving our services as well.

Our indebtedness, almost its totality, has the portfolio of being [hinged?] and connected to IPCA.

This helps us to combat the oscillations in the market. Also, another highlight in the first quarter of '26, we paid dividends at the amount of 27.5 million.

This also demonstrates our commitment with the creation of value for our shareholders. I can also share with you from subsequent events, we had two subsequent events that were important soon after the closing of the first quarter.

One was the acquisition of the control of the operation Amazonia 5G on the 2nd of April. Now this month, 10 days ago, we won the auction of 700 megahertz promoted by ANATEL, where us and our controlled company Amazonia 5G were the winners, and now we have this acquisition operating with the frequency of 700 and primary.

Before going into the Q&A, I would just like to close here by saying that based on everything that we demonstrated in our results, we would like to show to all of our stakeholders and shareholders that we have been consistent, working very seriously, but very dynamically, focusing always on positive results. I would tell you all, ladies and gentlemen, that all of our executive administration is focused on these strategies, and we are making these strategic decisions very aware to think about the future of the company.

We know what the future of the company is, and we are doing our homework to get the best scores possible. You can all be sure of that.

Thank you.

Operator

Now we will begin our questions and answers session, remembering that in order to ask questions, click on the Q&A icon on the lower part of your screen and write down your question to join the queue. Once you are announced, a request to activate your microphone will appear on your screen, and then activate your microphone to ask questions.

Please make sure your questions are asked all at the same time. Let's go to our first question from Santander.

Please open your audio so you can ask your question. Cesar, please go ahead.

Cesar Devanco

Good afternoon, everyone. Once again, congratulations on your solid results.

I have a question here. Once again, you have positive profitability although you continue to expand mobile, which should initially break for margin.

What do you expect in terms of performance of profitability over '26? My second question is actually a request if you could tell us more about your entrance of the consolidation 5G, which doesn't only include the Amazon region, but also São Paulo, and what you expect from this operation.

Fabiano Busnardo

Hello Cesar, Fabiano here. Thank you for that question.

Yes, about the profitability for '26, Cesar, the point that you bring up is true. Mobile is still a detractor in our profitability, but at every quarter that we advance or at every month that we advance, it is going down.

We expect that until the end of the year it will no longer be a detractor, and it begins to contribute positively with our results. That means that the profitability could be better than what it has been presented here?

Yes, it can in '26. Will it happen?

It's possible that no. Why not?

Because we are still calibrating the speed of our advance of mobile so that we do not harm our results too much. Also, at the same time, we have the obligations of the auction and the public call, we have to maintain this speed.

We have cities that are mandatory to enter, and we've also done many cities that were not mandatory, there are several cities that were not mandatories, but the non-mandatory cities are much larger and they have much larger sites, therefore more investment. The problem is not even investment; the problem is that when we add a site, we bring in that cost for the allocation of the land, costs of maintenance of the operation, of the property.

We're calibrating this implementation and deployment of mobile together with the advance of the revenue to find a balance and improvements. Our commitment is to maintain our margins during this period, even during this period where we are making this investment in mobile, which per consequence ends up carrying our OPEX as well.

We are working so that it doesn't go lower than 50%. This is our objective at the company.

In the first quarter, we were able to improve a bit. We also need to consider that the first quarter starts a bit slower because it's January, everybody's coming back from their holidays.

There are a lot of holidays between the last week of December and first week of January, it also reduces our costs and we could have had more help there. On the other end, we also have been improving the entry of revenue from the mobile vertical, which also has been counterbalancing this.

In our estimates, we have at least until '29 investments to make to build our mobile network, which we already are doing very successfully. The margins will continue to be good.

It may be that they oscillate higher or lower, but we are talking about very small changes and that things should probably stay as they are. During the phase of implementation of mobile, after that is done, I believe that we will present much more surprising results in relation to that.

Perhaps results that have not yet been seen in our market. In relation to our movement with Amazonia 5G, what matters there is the state of São Paulo.

We had already acquired Paraná in January, if my memory is not wrong, and then this opportunity for the state of São Paulo also came up, which is a fantastic state, especially connected to the southern part of the state of São Paulo, which has 50% of the GDP of Brazil in that area. We believe it is a very promising area considering that for mobile data, in order to reach the expected results, we would need to increase our scale.

We believe that with the movements we've made now for the 700 auction, we will have more possibilities to accelerate because the fixed costs of the operation already exist. Every month we can lower them a bit and we improve our performance in that vertical, of course.

On the other end, we have the installation of the towers, which carry some OPEX as well, but it's a very good calculation. At the rate in which we accelerate our sales, we collect great fruit, we have more than 5 million people with our own coverage.

This is a wonderful number, but we still have a lot to do. In terms of the obligations that we have, we still have opportunities.

There is a group of companies that will be participants in the project, and we believe that with this union of strength, we will end up being successful and be more accelerated success than we imagined when we finished the year of '25. All of this happened initially because of our confidence.

Today we have a mobile operation that is working very well, where we can already understand that by having scale, this vertical will continue to grow very strongly. We have a sensational avenue for growth.

We have an improvement above all of being able to sell the combo of fixed and mobile data, and we can stabilize our portfolio at the level of 1.5, and as we grow our percentage of 28.6% of fixed broadband and mobile, if we increase that percentage, we believe that our index or our rates will improve even more, which is what we always are very careful about in our company, because a high churn destroys value, and low churn helps us build a much more sustainable and robust business. Thank you, Cesar.

Cesar Devanco

Thank you, Fabiano. That was very clear.

Operator

Our next question is from Leonardo Cintra from Itaú. Leonardo, please go ahead.

Leonardo Cintra

Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Fabiano.

I have two points here. The first is more focused on M&As, if you could update us on how the pipeline is doing considering your penetration in regions that you have no presence in yet, and what are the rules of inspection that ANATEL may have in that sense.

Then a follow-up question in relation to the mobile expansion, if you could update us on what you envision in the rhythm of this for '26, '27, for the next few years. It would be excellent for us to have an idea.

Thank you. Leonardo,

Fabiano Busnardo

good afternoon. On your point of the pipeline of mergers and acquisitions, we have a few businesses we have our eyes on.

We have a PPP that we're interested in. We have the appetite, we have the financial conditions for that.

I believe we will have some M&As over the year. I do not see huge transformational deals happening this year, but basically in line with the track record that Unifique has been presenting.

I think we'll continue along the same line: smaller acquisitions. We have a very efficient internal structure to be able to absorb and make these integrations and standardizations in our platform.

We will insist and continue building businesses in this way. If it works, then well, we depend on reaching the adequate valuations which we believe makes sense for both parties in these transactions.

I do have the impression that something may happen this year. I am not sure if it's going to be very relevant or not, but we would like to have more than 1 million accesses, but it's as I said, we have this objective, but we will reach it if it is in a healthy and sustainable way.

If that opportunity doesn't come up, we rather reach our goal because what matters most is generating value and not just reaching the goal just to reach the goal. In regards to the mobile expansion, that's a very good point because we are doing very good in sales, but they are limited to the operations of Unifique, basically within our portfolio.

In the last month, 86% of our mobile sales were connected to the fixed broadband, we have a very good number, which is very positive. Let me just take a sip of water.

We have this vertical doing very well, but I would reaffirm that we have been able to sell very few chips on their own. We are working to improve this avenue for growth.

Why does that happen? Because we do not have market reputation in selling mobile, but we are recognized in the market since we are selling fixed optical fiber accesses in the market.

Now we are steadily selling mobile, although we are in many regions with a consecrated brand, we are consecrated in the market for selling another kind of product. Now we are beginning to change the mindset of our population so that our clients can understand that we have a mobile operation, that they can buy a chip, activate their number, and change their number to our operation, independent of buying the combined service with optical fiber, since we are operating with mobile in many cities where we don't have the fiber network.

We are making an effort in this sense. However, a bet that we have and should, well, we already signed a few contracts on this, is that specifically in the cities where we did not have the presence of Unifique, we will connect the MVNOs with the SOPs that are there, we can develop our platform to support this characteristic of services of partner companies.

We already activated the first companies now in the first quarter. The number is still very modest.

We believe there are 3,000 chips on that line. Now we understand that when we started with mobile, we started with a few chips in the first month, and so now we are around 20,000 per month.

We believe that this vertical in the next few months may have an increase, an interesting increase. I don't like to talk about the number of chips, although it is a number calculated by ANATEL, because that talks about the economic numbers.

I can throw out a bunch of chips that are very cheap in the region, but that won't generate any effects. I prefer talking about results.

What are our goals to have in revenue? 60 million in mobile during the year of '26, and next year 300 million.

We already have this goal defined. I believe that if our program of partnership goes well this year, we won't change too much.

I think we will maybe be a bit higher or lower than our goal, but with a very small difference. Next year, the 300 million, we expect it to be even more.

We will be able to accelerate, but if you ask me how much, I can't give you that answer yet, because otherwise I may be getting ahead of myself, but I can say that 170 this year is assertive, and for next year it will be relatively easy to do that. This year will be very similar, and for next year we expect an increase given our partnerships.

Thank you very much.

Leonardo Cintra

Thank you, Fabiano.

Operator

We remind you all that in order to ask questions, please click on the Q&A icon at the lower part of your screen, write down your question in order to enter the line. Now I pass the floor to the company to answer the questions that we received via the chat.

Fabiano Busnardo

I'll try to quickly summarize the questions we got here. We have some questions on products for internet via satellite, if that can affect our revenue.

I see the possibility as zero. Although Starlink has advanced in Brazil, Brazil is a continental country with gigantic areas which have absolutely no land connectivity, where the only alternative is the satellite system.

Their product is very good. I am a client myself in the countryside of Starlink because it's still unfeasible to take land network there, and when you use internet satellites not as good, but I do not see this project or this product as a competitor of the land internet.

It is a complement. That's how I see it, and until now, that's what has happened.

If someone tells me that something new will be invented in the future, I am not sure that we are so close to that happening yet, because although the satellite systems evolved, the land systems has evolved a lot. Before it was 1 mega, 2 megas, now everything is in gigas, 50, 20 gigas.

I use both services, and the performance of the satellite itself, although the technology is good, even with the low-orbit satellites, it's not even close to the performance of a land network. As people need applications more and more and have more needs, it seems to me, in my opinion, that it is not a competing factor, especially in the short and medium term will not be a problem.

There is a question here on the CAPEX from now until the end of the year. We will maintain the 350 million for fixed internet and mobile internet, 50% for each.

That will be maintained. Although we increase our area, we do not believe that we will leave very far from what is already projected.

What other questions do I have here? Here we have a question about the MVNOs, which we can enable the SAPs of our area of operation.

I think before, on Leonardo's question from Itaú, I sort of explained already what our strategy would be with partnerships and unions. The important thing is that our platform is already apt and enabled to operate in this segment.

I think that the other questions here have already been answered in the other explanations that I made. Perhaps we could just complement in writing.

There's something that we have some questions about a question that's here. To finalize, everyone, I would like to say that we continue to be moving firmly with a very promising horizon, working in the present so that the company has healthy results, it can generate cash flow and so that we can make the investments that are mandatory as well as those who are not.

As you saw, we have already covered a good part of our obligations, and this has not in any way jeopardized our results. This is all within our plan, and it's important that this vertical will give the future of growth for the company.

We are just getting started. This mobile plan, if there were motives 1 year ago to doubt our capacity of having a competitive mobile operation, I guarantee that that doubt should no longer exist.

Our operation has shown itself to be of very high quality and very competitive from the cost point of view. We will be unbeatable in this competition in the future when our network is ready, and for this, we already have several examples in several cities in which we have been able to advance very quickly in market share.

This is a point which, although it has not been so significantly relevant in the company, of 7.5% coming from the mobile income, I do not doubt that in 2030 we expect that fixed internet grows, but in 2030, we will be having more revenue from mobile phones than fixed internet. I think we definitely have a fantastic operation here.

We overcame all of the technical risks that were keeping us for advancing in this segment, which was the realization of the last 700 megahertz auction, which was fundamental for us to have the safety in the future of having a feasible operation that was also economically competitive. We also have the obligation of taking this mobile coverage to the countryside, to the people who are after many decades of mobile-deficient services in Brazil, which many people still do not have the service, and we have the obligation to carry out, but it's not an obligation for us.

For us, it is an opportunity. There might not be as much money there as we have in the large urban centers, but I can guarantee that there is money there, and we are showing that doing that is profitable.

We are accompanying the evolution. The problem is that we just need scale.

We have 300 and something thousand accesses. We're getting very close to the breakeven of our operation, but we have a structure that has already been created to help us have millions and millions of accesses, and evidently this has the time for execution, but I do believe that we are proving at every quarter that it is possible to be done and that it is a gigantic opportunity.

Besides all of that, we can still give a contribution of taking accesses to hundreds and millions of people in areas that have no services, better internet on the roads, which is a desire of the population. All of this will be incorporated to our brand, and it will be a reputation that we have been able to cultivate over the years through fixed internet, broadband internet.

We will be able to build this positive reputation for mobile data as well, and I am sure we will have this market recognition very soon, bringing us a fantastic success for the development of our company. Thank you so much to all.

Luiz Bogo Junior

Our earnings call related to the first quarter of '26 from Unifique Telecomunicações S.A. is closed.

The Department of Investor Relations is available to answer any other questions and issues. Thank you so much to the participants, and have an excellent afternoon.