Marius Varzaru
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today on our second quarter of 2026 results presentation call.
Following our successful IPO on the Spanish stock exchanges back in July, we are excited to begin our journey as a listed company today with our first earnings call. First, just as a reminder, you can find today's presentation and the interim report on our investor relations website, digispain.es.
This morning, I will begin with opening remarks and second quarter operational performance highlights, and Carlos will walk you through our financial performance in more detail. Q2 was another excellent quarter of delivery for Digi in Spain.
We had an outstanding first half of the year, with revenues reaching €515 million, 16% growth year-on-year. RGUs reached 11.9 million units by the end of Q2, an accelerated growth of 23%, with a fantastic increase of more than 2.2 million RGUs in the last 12 months.
Adjusted EBITDA, excluding operating leases, for first semester of 2026 reached more than €104 million, with an impressive growth of 48% from €70 million one year ago. These outstanding results are sustained by our engine of growth, the expansion of the SMART footprint, that reached a coverage of more than 14.8 million building units, out of which 2.44 deployed in the last 12 months, 20% growth year-on-year.
This footprint, in turn, enables us to gain competitiveness in our commercial offer, reflected in the growth of the fixed broadband customer base, with more than 35% growth year-on-year on this footprint, and in growth of the mobile customer base, especially through convergence, with 19% growth year-on-year. Our results reflect the strength of our model, built around three strategic pillars.
First, strategic cost competitive advantage accomplished through vertical integration, performing all operations telecom operations in-house with our own employees. This in turn allows us to provide best-in-class quality services and best available technology, especially in the FTTH network that we deploy, the SMART network.
The third pillar, the long-term approach to the relationship with the customers that we implemented based on principles of transparency, simplicity, and fair treatment. Based on these excellent results, we are reconfirming our guidance for 2026 for all its components, as all of them are on track: revenues, EBITDA margin, and total capex additions.
As key developments for this year, the recent IPO, we are very happy with becoming a listed company on the Spanish stock exchanges. It is an amazing achievement for Digi Spain after 18 years of operations and pure organic growth, and the success of a great and committed team of more than 11,900 employees, to which we are very grateful for it.
Now, a new chapter begins. We still feel like we are at the beginning of our journey, and we welcome the new investors of Digi Spain and thank you for your trust, which motivates us even more to continue to implement our long-term industrial plan.
During the IPO process, it was very rewarding for us to receive your support for our vertical integration business model as a strategic competitive advantage for Digi Spain. We believe that in Digi we prove on a daily basis that it is possible to provide very good quality services with advanced technology and competitive prices, and at the same time to create employment, value for the society in general and for shareholders.
We'll continue with this focus for the years to come. With that, let's turn to slide six.
Here, I would like to summarize that the second quarter mainly I would like to summarize the second quarter mainly by the flywheel effect that we already seen from the constant investment in the SMART footprint, which leads to significant growth of our customer base, then our revenues, and due to our competitive cost structure of owner and owner-like economics, with strong operational leverage potential, finally leading to an outstanding growth of 48% year-on-year on profitability as well. Now, let's discuss our FTTH network deployment evolution.
We've reached more than 14.8 million business business units passed by the end of June, with 1.2 million BUPs deployed during this year, 621 in the last quarter—621,000 in the last quarter. This year would be the fifth year consecutively that we will deploy more than 2 million BUPs per year in Spain.
This is a high-speed deployment, given that all this deployment is performed 100% internally with our own personnel and expertise, driven by a very committed team of more than 2,900 employees. Our goal is to reach not later than 2030, 21 million BUPs of coverage for the SMART footprint, which will be mainly located in the urban and semi-urban areas of Spain.
Our process of development is completely industrialized with standardized activities, which allow us to achieve both certainty of the execution of the deployment plan and a controlled cost of this deployment. Now, continuing to the next slide, I think you will be able to appreciate why we say that our model of growth is predictable and quite mechanical in its nature.
On the below part of the chart of the slide, as you can see, we are detailing the SMART footprint penetration rate for end of Q2 that reached the levels of 16.7%. The constant growth along the years means that we are gaining customers even faster than we are expanding the FTTH network.
Now, if you look at the graph on the upper part of the slide, you can see how this average penetration disaggregates by cohorts based on the year they were built. For example, the earlier cohorts of 2019 and 2020, the blue line and the red line of the graph, already reached levels of penetration of more than 28% and 26%, and they continue to grow.
In fact, all cohorts are growing with no exception. Starting from the left of the graph, you can see how each newer cohort starts up faster.
If initial cohort started with 2% or 3% in the first year, newer ones start with 6%, even 7% initial penetration for 2025 cohort, and then they ramp up faster towards the more mature 25% penetration rate that we already seen in the initial cohorts. For the deliveries related to the sale of network to SOTA, we continue to be ahead of the initial plan.
We already deliver more than 5.7 million BUPs out of 6 million initially agreed, and we expect to deliver the remaining part by December this year. With that, let's turn to slide nine.
You can see how the SMART footprint deployment enables us to grow our customer base as well. First, fixed broadband services.
For the first half of 2026 is our best semester in terms of net growth, with more than 317,000 customers gained on net. 100% and more of this net growth is related to the SMART footprint, underlining the strength of our commercial offer in these areas.
We have grown more than 1.4 points of market share in the first six months of this year. Taking into account that we are growing only in the half of Spain where the SMART footprint is present, I hope you can appreciate these results even more.
They reflect not only the competitiveness of our offer, but the quality of the service and the market-leading advanced technology we are offering with this network, recently appraised for the sixth year in a row consecutively by Ookla as the fastest fixed broadband operator in Spain. Continuing to the next slide.
Customer base wise, we've reached 2.9 million fixed broadband customers by the end of June, 634,000 more than one year ago. Out of this, 2.5 million customers are operated on the SMART footprint, our engine of growth, with more than 648,000 customers gained in the last 12 months.
One out of four customers one out of four customers we have on this network is a customer of last year. An impressive achievement, taking into account the scale of the customer base we have already.
We can't emphasize enough on both how satisfied we are with these results and how determined we are to continue with this path of growth, both on existing cohorts and future cohorts of SMART footprint that we will build towards the 21 million BUPs goal. In terms of fixed broadband churn, we reached for the last 12 months a blended level of churn of 17%, and for the SMART network 15.4%, the best churn level in the market.
Starting with September last year, competition became more intensive, which was reflected in a peak of churn during Q4 and gradually decreased in intensity during Q1 and Q2 this year, with a Q2 annualized churn already showing levels below the last 12 months average churn. Now, let's continue with mobile telephony net gains evolution.
We've grown 558,000 in the first half of 2026 customers, out of which 246,000 customers in Q2. This growth reflects an excellent growth for postpaid services, with more than 634,000 mobile lines gained, with mobile convergence representing 90% of total net growth of the period, with a very stable and predictable convergence rate of 1.6 mobile lines per each new fixed broadband customer gained.
This basically underlines the strategy and the focus of Digi Spain, which is quite straightforward and depends significantly on our ability to execute it: the operation and expansion of the SMART footprint, which with which we gain competitiveness of our convergent offer in more areas of Spain, and then gain fixed broadband customers and mobile convergent lines. The growth in postpaid services was partially offset in the period by a decrease of 76,000 mobile prepaid customer base, with little effect on prepaid revenues, which, in fact, increased in Q1 versus Q2 Q2 versus Q1 this year with 4%.
Overall, for mobile telephony, we reached a market share of 12.7 points, growing more than 1.1 points of market share only in the last six months. In terms of mobile network rollout, we have accelerated it, reaching 1,363 active macro sites by the end of the quarter for our mobile network, with a goal of reaching 5,000 macro sites by 2028 and 10,000 macro sites by 2033.
This allows us to provide our customers with very competitive unlimited data-driven offers with the best-in-class mobile coverage. By June, we reached a total of 7.8 mobile million mobile customers, 1.27 million more than 12 months ago, out of which more than 60% of that are convergent mobile lines, which is our engine of growth.
Now, Carlos will continue the presentation with a financial overview of our operations.
Carlos Sanz Tejedor
Thank you, Marius. Good morning, everyone.
In terms of revenues, we continue earning consistent, market-leading organic revenue growth in a very competitive environment, with a 15.1% growth quarter-on-quarter and 15.7% in the first half of the year, as said before, in line with guidance for full year 2026. This is driven by significant and consistent net adds growth and an ARPU decrease trend as a result of the change in product mix for new fixed broadband SMART customers, penetration of SMART offering, and transition from MVNO-like to MNO-like commercial offer.
We are healthy growing in both of our businesses, with fixed broadband as the growth engine, with a 23.2% growth quarter-on-quarter, and mobile representing the largest revenue contributor, with an 8.3% growth quarter-on-quarter, with 100% of fixed broadband subscriber growth in terms of net adds from 2023 to 2026 coming from our SMART footprint. Fixed broadband ARPU evolution reflects change of customer mix and rapid SMART adoption, while mobile ARPU is already stabilized, following the change in pricing and offering adapted to the own network strategy during 2025.
Moving to profitability, slide 16. Our gross margin evolution over the last quarters reflects our transition to owner-like economics, especially in the mobile business.
As you can see in the graph, fixed broadband gross margins, in yellow, reflects the moment in which we started payments of Wholesale fees to SOTA, start in Q4 2024, dropping to 50% levels coming from 64% margins previous levels, and have since then pick up during the last quarters as penetration increased in the SMART network, now reaching in Q2 2026 a 55% margin and growing. On the other side, mobile margins, in blue, have improved as a transition to MNO economic model starts to apply in Q3 2025, reaching a level of 37% margin that we consider a good preference for the future.
This margin has decreased in Q4 2025 and also in Q1 2026, as a consequence of the introduction of the last commercial offer improvement in Q3 2025 and a step-up of MNO fixed costs from 1st of January 2026 in relation with the new Telefónica contracts, which is non-recurrent in the rest of 2026, and is now being absorbed in Q2 2026 with customer growth and operating efficiency, stepping up structurally to approximately 33% as transition to MNO economics was accomplished. In terms of EBITDA quarter evolution, our adjusted EBITDA ex operating leases has grown a very significant 48.6% in Q2 year-on-year, reaching a quarterly amount of €53.6 million, €104 million for the half-year, meaning at 20.4% margin, expected to further improve during 2026 in line with the low 20s guidance objective.
H1 2026 margin uplift, 20.2% versus 15.8% in H1 2025, is mainly driven by higher SMART footprint penetration, with operating leverage as rollout advances, disciplined cost management, and scale benefits of the MNO economics model in our mobile business. Our current more fixed-like cost structure remains more stable as we scale, and less linked to subscribers growth, as business growth can also be delivered with limited overhead cost increases, highlighting the efficiency and scalability of our integrated model.
Now, looking to capex and cash flow, we continue investing into our future growth, with cumulative investments of close to €205 million in the first half of 2026 versus €150 million in the same period of 2025, while the capex figure in Q2 is only slightly above Q2 2025 figure. H1 figure in line with our guidance objective of approximately €400 million for 2026 full year.
This being mainly explained by the effect in Q1 2026 of a new batch of mobile antennas billed by Telefónica in January 2026, which will not be recurrent during the rest of the year. In terms of recurrent capex, as you can see, we continue delivering our mid-term goal of keeping the recurrent capex revenues ratio below 10%, 9.6% in Q2 and 9.1% in H1 2026.
Approximately 40% of total capex goes into FTTH deployment, building out the footprint and upgrading capacity, all at an historical cost of €15.8 per BUP, and focused on urban areas. In terms of cash flows, operating cash flows and recurring operating cash flows have significantly improved in Q2 and H1 versus the previous year, 31% and 74.8% in Q2 quarter-on-quarter, which is also quite aligned and now closer to our objective of becoming operating free cash flow positive in the mid-term.
Finally, in terms of debt and leverage, all previous mentioned significant investments have been funded mainly with our own resources, the confidence of our financing banks, and now of our investors. We have done all of this whilst maintaining a very reasonable leverage level.
We reached in Q2 a leverage level of 3.1 times, including a new short-term loan to finance the annual spectrum fee payment and new facility dispositions, which transforms into 2.4 times pro forma with the net IPO proceeds, which will also help achieve mid-term target leverage of close to 1.5 times, also considering that we have still to collect €120 million from SOTA in 2026. I would like to highlight that our debt figures includes €94 million of payables to non-current asset suppliers related to the Telefónica RAN IRU capex, which is a commercial debt, and that we are now independent from the group in terms of financing, providing us flexibility to optimize our capital structure and access funding independently.
Marius Varzaru
Thank you, Carlos. With this, we conclude the first part of the today's presentation.
As a conclusion, I want to say that we are very much committed with our objectives and long-term industrial plan in Spain. We are focusing in FTTH network deployment, growth of the fixed broadband and mobile services customer base, especially in the SMART footprint areas.
Lots of work to do. We certainly will continue coming back to the market with strong net adds results quarter-on-quarter, but also with profitability rate increase as we already did in the past quarters.
Having said this, you are welcome to start the Q&A session. A kind reminder, questions from the media will be attended separately as usual through our communication department.
Now, we think we already have questions coming in, we will start attending them one by one. First question from Arnaud Camiu from Bestinver: On churn, could you elaborate on the main drivers behind the increase and whether you see these levels as temporary or structural, particularly in the light of MásOrange's recent comments questioning the depth of the ultra-low-cost segment and the upcoming launch of the Finetwork by Lowe's convergent offer?
Thank you, Arnaud. I would say related to churn, clearly started with August, September last year, competition intensity increased with more specific offers targeting Digi customer base.
That is the reason why we've seen during Q4 an increase in churn, and then the annualized quarterly churn for Q1 and Q2, we've seen already trends of decrease compared to that. We think that that competition realized that competing with with very low margins and with high cost of retaining customers is not is not the way to go.
We cannot speculate about how this will continue, if it will be temporary or structural. Nevertheless, leading the second part of of your question, I would say that maybe we can go back to slide seven, that we are covering now 52% of our addressable market with SMART footprint, which is our engine of growth.
As you can see here, out of 28.6 million homes addressable market for us, we cover 14.8, with the goal to reach 21 million homes in the mid-term, meaning that we will be reaching by that point 75% of our addressable market with SMART footprint. Now, if we continue to the next slide, I think you can appreciate how the market is structured and where our growth for fixed broadband customers and then mobile convergent customers come from.
You can see in the initial cohorts we already reached levels of penetration of 26% or 28%, which are significantly higher than our average market share of 14.5% or our average penetration rate of 16.7%. Still, we have a lot of new cohorts, recent cohorts that we deployed in the past years, which have levels of penetration significantly lower yet than these more mature levels of 25%.
Now, going forward, our goal is to continue to deploy up to 21 million homes not later than 2030, and with that practically reaching levels of penetration of average of 25%, like the ones that we already seen in the initial cohorts. That means that we are we are growing now only in half of Spain, and we will continue to grow in that part because we still have cohorts which are less penetrated than the more mature cohorts, but also we will continue to deploy network and bring the value proposition that we have we share now in only half of Spain in in another part of 25% of Spain as well.
For the second question related to capex: Q2 capex came in at €85 million per quarter, with gross capex materially lower sequentially, while FTTH deployment remained elevated. Should we interpret the lower gross capex as mainly timing-related, or does it suggest scope for FY 2026 capex to come in below your previous expectation?
Maybe we can go to to the capex slide, which is capex 16, and with that will highlight that in the first quarter of of the year, as as Carlos mentioned, we had an addition of RAN IRU assets related to mobile deployment, which practically generated a higher capex for the first quarter, and now it is not recurrent during the year. From that point of view, the level of €85 million is more more relevant going forward than capex for first year.
In this sense, I think we are quite aligned with with the guidance, I wouldn't say that not necessarily that we have lower expectations of capex during this year, no? Hope this answers your your question.
Next question we have from Fernando Cordero from Santander. Thank you for our question, Fernando.
It is related with EBITDA margin: After three consecutive quarters of basically same EBITDA margins, between 20% to 20.5%, what kind of margin do you expect for the second half of the year? Now, what I would say is Q2 of this year is the first quarter with no significant moving parts in terms of elements of cost or revenues compared to previous quarters.
As you remember, during Q4 during Q3 last year, we transitioned towards MNO economics, then in Q4 we improved our commercial offer, which decreased revenue ARPU for our customers, and then in Q1 this year, we also incurred an increase of the fixed cost, a step-up of the fixed cost for mobile network, no? In Q2 this year, there are no moving parts, and this is the reason of no other relevant moving parts, and this is the reason of the increase of EBITDA rate to 20.4%.
For the next quarters, we expect stable growth of EBITDA margin in a similar fashion like the one we've seen for this quarter. We have no more questions, but we'll we will wait for a couple of minutes to see if new questions come in.
Yes. We have a question from Russell Waller: Do you think that there could be 4-to-3 consolidation in Spain eventually?
Would you be interested in consolidation in the market? (parenthesis: Segona) Thank you for your question, Russell.
Now, as you may know, historically in Spain we've grown completely organically in the past 18 years. That proved to be a very very efficient and and quick way of gaining critical mass of our customer base in Spain.
We managed to grow organically very efficiently. Any kind of opportunity of inorganic growth we would be open to analyze, in general.
From that point of view, in order to be attractive for us, we would have to compare it with the way we grow organically, which is, as I mentioned before, very efficient, and with that practically to be able to create value for for the company and shareholders. I wouldn't comment specifically on any scenario in itself, but I wouldn't say that we we want to grow only organically.
We are open to inorganic growth as well, as long as it makes sense from an economic point of view for us. Thank you.
We have a question from Daniela Mandrou: Could you please clarify the SOTA accounting and cash flow treatment for 2026? You recognized €14.9 million of SOTA-related other income in H1.
Could you please update us on the cash collected from SOTA during H1 and provide the expected P&L recognition and cash collection for Q3 and Q4? Let me just to make a general comment, and Carlos, you can you can help me with the with the answer for this question.
I will say that so except for the initial delivery of homes at the moment we we initiated this agreement, the sale of the network, which was treated as a sale of fixed assets, all the rest of the sales are treated as sale of inventories. Both the investment of of the network that we deploy as FTTH additions for SOTA and then the receipts from that are not passing through through cash flows through investing activities, but practically through operational activities.
Then we still have to collect during this year, for the second third quarter and fourth quarter, more than €120 million of of funds from SOTA, mainly by the end of the year in December, no? Maybe Carlos, you can help me with the rest of the question.
Carlos Sanz Tejedor
Thank you, Marius. I was trying to recall the figures for the Q1.
Let me see how many homepassed, I have not all in my mind. I think that we have delivered in the first half of the year between we closed 2025 with 5.45 million homepassed transfer, and we are now in 5.7.
We transferred around 3 3,000 homepassed 275. That meaning we are transferring €125 per homepass, and collecting 80 and collecting 15% of the whole amount upfront, and let's say delaying 85 or close to 85% of the total amount until December 2026.
With that figures, I think that you could make an overview of the amount of homepassed that we have transferred and the amount that we have collected and are pending to collect in 2026 for the homepass that we deliver in H1.
Marius Varzaru
Thank you, Carlos. Maybe as a completion of Carlos's answer, I think in the prospectus for the IPO, we provide extensive information of the accounting for SOTA, and please refer to that, because I think it's quite thorough explanation for that, no?
The second question from Daniela: Net leverage increased to 3.1 at the end of June, but this is clearly a pre-IPO balance sheet snapshot. Taking into account the primary IPO proceeds and the remaining SOTA cash collections and investment requirement for the second half, where would you expect the leverage to stand by the end of the year, and how quickly can you move towards the 1.5 mid-term target?
Thank you, Daniela. It's true.
I think we can go to slide 19, where we are detailing the pro forma calculation for net debt post-IPO proceeds, primary component. With that, practically we would be in the range of 2.4 times debt per EBITDA.
As you mentioned, clearly with the investment plan and the negative operating free cash flow for the next two quarters, plus the SOTA receipts that we will collect by the end of the year mainly, we would be able to reduce even more this level of net debt, leverage. We don't provide a specific guidance for the net leverage for next year, but we expect that this would be lower than what we calculate as pro forma 2.4, maybe trending towards 2.2, but still remains to be seen.
On the mid-target of 1.5 times debt per EBITDA, when we provided this mid-term target, we already factored in both the SOTA proceeds and the IPO primary component. From this point of view, by the end of the mid-term, we would expect to be in the range of 1.5 times debt per EBITDA.
There are no more questions, but we will wait a couple of minutes more to see if new questions come in. Yes, we have couple of more questions from Andrei from UBS.
Thank you, Andrei, for the questions. First question is: All the big three MNOs have seen an acceleration of revenue growth year-to-date, and it seems that not at your expense.
Can you please elaborate on how your gross adds have developed in terms of who they are coming from today versus one year ago? Is the market overall accelerating in terms of gross, you think?
It's an interesting question. I wouldn't speculate about the acceleration of the revenue of our competitors, but I would say that typically for us Q1 of every year is the fastest-growing quarter of the year, partly due to the increase of prices of our competitors, and that generates additional net adds for us, customers unsatisfied with this changes that choose Digi as their operator.
That is one of the reasons we've grown faster in Q1, and then maybe just to mention Q2, I think it is mentioned in the presentation as well, typically tends to be a slower quarter during the year, and clearly lower than Q1 being the best quarter within the year, no? In terms of gross adds, we continue to generate a good momentum and volume of gross adds, and clearly even with higher churn, we continue to grow even faster.
From that point of view, we generate higher gross adds than one year ago, and with the same type of dynamic of origin of customers from operators as we presented during the IPO process as well. MásOrange brands, then Vodafone brands, and then Telefónica brands, no?
In terms of market overall, I wouldn't say that it is accelerating. I think continues to grow in a similar fashion like in the previous year as well, from what we can see.
The second question is: Can you please elaborate on the non-recurring nature of the Telefónica MNO payment in Q1 2026 and how this fits into the overall MNO economics? I think Carlos mentioned it.
There is a direct effect both on capex additions and on incremental cost, fixed cost for the mobile network that we've seen during Q1. The incremental cost is stable from that moment on, we've grown €4 million additional cost per quarter starting with Q1, and that delivery of a new batch of antennas practically generated that increase.
There will be no additional deliveries of antennas during this year, we don't expect additional increase in fixed cost neither or also increase in capex additions for that during this year, no? That is how it fits into the MNO economics.
We have a couple of more questions from Daniela Mandrou as well: How should we think about the EBITDA margin trajectory into 2027? Where do you see margins next year relative to the low 20s level expected for 2026?
Thank you, Daniela. I think we can go in the appendix of the presentation, we have a slide 25, where we share the guidance that we provided to the market during the IPO process back in March.
You can see that for EBITDA, we are sharing a mid-term guidance targeting more than 30% EBITDA margin of revenues expectation, with the margin improvement being front-loaded, in the first years with some more acceleration for that. We don't provide more detail for that, but we expect that in the next two years, 2027, 2028, important part of that growth to be shown into our results, no?
We have a new question from Fernando Cordero from Santander: Regarding mobile ARPU, we saw a growing quarter-on-quarter comparison in second quarter of 2026. Should we expect the declining trend in mobile ARPU has ended?
Thank you, Fernando. I think it's a fair assumption.
We see that new customers coming in for mobile services now bring a similar ARPU to the back book, we would expect that ARPU would continue to evolve during the year according to seasonality, but the most important part of the effect of reducing prices of Q4 last year was already incurred, and we haven't seen more effect during Q2 related to that. We have a new question from Daniela Mandrou: What would you consider a normalized annual capex level for Digi Spain, and when do you expect to reach that level?
Thank you, Daniela. Maybe we can come back to the same slide of looking forward guidance for mid-term, which is slide 26 25.
Yeah. What we are guiding for mid-term for capex is for each of the two components that we have, first of all, we are guiding for recurrent capex 10% margin out of total revenues, rate of recurrent capex, which we expect to maintain for the mid-term.
Additionally to that, for gross capex and new FTTH deployment additions capex, we expect for the period '27-'29 to have a volume of capex around €900 million, out of which 50% of that to be related to FTTH deployment. The capex evolution for this €900 million would be front-loaded, gradually trending towards the end of the mid-term to €250 million euros per year, no?
Capex overall would be the sum of recurrent capex and then capex additions for gross and FTTH deployment. Hope this answers your question.
We don't have more questions, we will wait for a couple of minutes to see if new questions come in. We have no more questions.
With this, we conclude our first semester 2026 results presentation. Thank you all for joining us today, especially during the summer vacation.
We wish you happy summer holidays and see you soon for the third quarter results call.
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