Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Prosegur full year 2025 results presentation conference call and webcast.
At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session.
To ask a question during the session, please press *11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised.
To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please note that today's conference is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker Juan Ignacio Galleano, Head of IR. Please go ahead.
Juan Ignacio Galleano
Good afternoon and welcome to Prosegur full year 2025 results presentation webcast. Before we start, I would like to remind you that this presentation has been pre-recorded and that it will be available on our corporate website.
I will now hand you over to our CFO, Maite Rodríguez.
Maite Rodríguez
Good afternoon and thank you all for your presence. We are pleased to present Prosegur results for the full year 2025.
As you will see throughout the presentation, the company's results exceed those of the previous year in terms of growth and profitability, especially in the Security and Alarm businesses. This performance resulted in a more diversified and therefore more sustainable cash generation profile.
It is worth highlighting that this should be the case now for the foreseeable future. Focusing on the P&L, consolidated net income achieved an impressive 54% increase, demonstrating not only the strong performance of the businesses, but also an efficient management of treasury and taxes.
For all the above, we are confident that we continue to be on the right track to comply with our main objective of generating value for our shareholders. Now, with all this in mind, let's deep dive into the most significant milestones of the period.
Sales grew by 0.5% compared to the same period last year. Organic growth reached 10%, although it was mostly offset by the FX effect.
Meanwhile, the Security business has consolidated itself as the main growth engine of the group, driven primarily by increasing penetration in the USA, along with a solid performance across the rest of the geographies. Regarding profitability, EBITA reached €357 million, an increase of 8.9% year-on-year, mainly driven by the healthy growth in the Security business.
Indeed, volume growth, together with an agile commercial strategy to pass through costs into prices, explains this performance. Our Cash business continues to be affected by the macroeconomic situation in Argentina, which can be summarized in three key points.
First, although the trade balance has improved, this has not yet translated into domestic consumption. Second, the Argentine peso has depreciated against the euro.
Finally, monetary policy remains highly restrictive. Despite this impact, the business EBITA margin remains at 12%, mainly explained by the accelerated growth in the European region, the double-digit growth in APAC, and the strong performance across the remaining LATAM geographies.
For our Alarm business, as we will see, operational performance was clearly enhanced, reflected in better and healthier indicators. This is true for MPA, as well as for Prosegur Alarms.
As for cash generation, we were able to partially offset the slowdown in our Cash business thanks to the impressive full-year cash flow generated by the Security business, which delivered €87 million and has consolidated itself as a solid contributor to the group's diversified cash flow profile. As mentioned, and as we will review in detail later in the presentation, the combination of the cost-saving program, FX volatility, and the macroeconomic uncertainty in Argentina negatively impacted cash generation in our Cash business.
We continue to maintain a strong and solid debt position. Indeed, net debt stands at 2.4 times EBITDA, slightly impacted by the decrease in the value of our Telefónica shares and the cash outflow associated with the extraordinary efficiency plan in the Cash business.
We would also like to highlight the proposed €90 million dividend for 2026, which further reinforces our commitment to delivering value to our shareholders. Let's now turn to slide 2, where I would like to deep dive into our sales and EBITA figures.
As said, full year 2025 total sales increased by 0.5% over last year, reaching €4.9 billion. Discounting for the FX effect, mainly in LATAM, almost the entire growth was organic, evidencing, on the one hand, our strict policy when it comes to passing through inflation to prices, and on the other, our capacity to capture additional volume as we continue increasing our market share.
As for geographic sales diversification, it should be noted that ROW continues to be the main driver of growth, despite the macroeconomic situation in Argentina. Europe is accelerating its growth, and both the USA and the APAC region continue to grow at above-average rates.
This is highly relevant and highlights the future growth avenues of our main businesses. As you are aware, in our Security business, we remain firmly committed to the US market, given its scale, profitability profile, and the considerable potential for further penetration, supported by our strong portfolio of products and services.
In our Cash business, our strategy follows two paths. In most mature markets, we are accelerating diversification through transformation-driven solutions, while in the APAC region, we continue to experience a strong growth in our traditional service offering.
Moving now to further review profitability, EBITA reached €357 million, marking a healthy 8.9% increase compared to last year. Our Cash business registered an EBITA of €238 million, marking a 5% decrease compared to the previous year, recovering part of the drop seen in previous quarters.
This includes the extraordinary expenses incurred due to the implementation of the cost-saving program, fully offset this quarter by extraordinary income of a similar amount resulting from a lower deferred payment related to the acquisition of Change Group. Turning now to our Security business, EBITA amounted to €19 million, 10.7% higher compared to 2024.
Healthy volume growth, coupled with a strict discipline on costs, explained the enhanced performance. Technology sales further contributed to the good results .
As we always explain, our ability to provide high-end tech solutions is one of our main competitive advantages and constitutes one of our main pillars. Lastly, our Alarms business continued to be on good track and good proof of this is the evolution of main financial indicators such as service margin and churn rate.
Let's now turn to our full P&L that, as can be seen, showed a remarkable increase compared to last year. The improvement in financial results, as previously noted in past presentations, is largely linked to the ongoing normalization of the Argentine economy.
Inflation has been declining rapidly, significantly reducing the impact of hyperinflation accounting. At the same time, the sharp narrowing of FX spreads has also helped, making dividend upstreaming considerably more efficient.
Moving down to accrued taxes, it is worth highlighting the 561 basis points reduction in the effective tax rate. The rationale behind this improvement is twofold: on the one hand, we recorded strong results across nearly all geographies, which have enabled us to offset prior year losses; and on the other, as mentioned earlier, the negative effects from hyperinflation accounting and dividend upstreaming were significantly reduced.
All of the above led to a net income of €118 million, representing a 53% year-on-year increase. Let's now move on to cash generation for the period.
At first glance, the €26 million reduction in operating cash flow stands out. However, one point must be properly highlighted: the €15 million in extraordinary severance payments related to the previously mentioned cost-saving program in our Cash business in LATAM.
Although there was an offset at the P&L level through extraordinary income, there was no positive impact at the operative cash level. Excluding those €15 million, the pro forma net cash flow amounts to €137 million, which is €4 million higher than in the previous year.
As already mentioned, net financial debt reached €1.35 billion, representing an €11 million reduction compared with year-end 2024. With that in mind, the net debt to EBITDA ratio stands at 2.4 times.
Although capex control and improved working capital have supported performance, net debt remains above the level initially projected, primarily due to external factors beyond our control, namely the depreciation of LATAM currencies and the decline in the value of our Telefónica shareholding. Excluding these two effects, we would have achieved our targets.
That's all from me for now. I will now turn the presentation over to our Head of Investor Relations, Juan Ignacio Galleano, who will give you more detailed information on the development of the specific business areas.
Juan Ignacio Galleano
Thank you very much, Maite. Let's now review the results of each business line, focusing on the key performance indicators and the most relevant developments of the period.
Starting with our Cash business, I would like to highlight the solid 5% organic growth achieved compared with the previous year. Our growth drivers remain robust.
Volumes from our traditional business continue to expand at double-digit rates in the APAC region, and transformation products continue to deliver strong results, already representing 35% of total sales. It is also worth noting the acceleration of growth in Europe.
Taken together, these developments provide a solid foundation for more sustainable growth in mature regions going forward. At the same time, revenues from our traditional services in regions outside APAC continue to increase, partly due to effective inflation pass-through, but more importantly because underlying volumes are still expanding.
Regarding EBITA, we have already referred to the extraordinary impact of the macroeconomic environment in Argentina, as well as the severance costs associated with the cost-saving program deployed in LATAM during the year. This latter extraordinary effect has been positively offset by another extraordinary impact related to an update on the deferred payments debt.
Despite these headwinds, the business EBITA margin remains stable at 12%, demonstrating both the resilience of the business and its strong performance delivered across all countries. Moving to cash generation, operating cash flow reached €171 million, reflecting a 26% reduction versus the previous year.
As previously explained, the €15 million in extraordinary costs related to the cost-saving program, along with FX effects, largely account for this decline, with no positive offset at the operating cash flow level. A further positive aspect is that the annual cost of upstreaming dividends from Argentina now stands at only €1 million, a significant improvement compared with prior years.
Given the country's improving macroeconomic dynamics, with inflation far below previous levels, we expect this cost to remain negligible going forward. Additionally, the recent credit rating upgrade of Argentina by Standard & Poor's to CCC+ provides yet another indicator of the country's ongoing normalization and recovery.
On a final positive note, we should recognize the strong discipline maintained in both capex and working capital requirements. Let's now turn to our Security business, which continues to show a solid and positive evolution over time.
In fact, this business line has achieved a historical record in revenues. Sales reached €2.6 billion, with organic growth exceeding 12%.
Growth was driven mainly by the Spanish and US markets, with the latter consolidating its position as the primary growth engine of the business. The strong contribution from the US also explains the negative FX impact, as the US dollar continued to depreciate against the euro during the quarter.
It is also worth highlighting that in addition to these key markets, all geographies contributed positively to the business's consolidated performance. These factors, combined with enhanced efficiencies and additional operating leverage, resulted in EBITA of €90 million, representing a 10.7% increase versus the same period of last year.
Margins also continued to expand, reaching 3.47%, driven mainly by a greater scalability, improved operational efficiencies, stronger commercial productivity, and effective price pass-through alongside tighter absenteeism control. Operating cash flow reached an amazing figure of €87 million, compared to the €17 million registered in the previous year.
This is an impressive milestone and sets a new performance benchmark for the business. We've now achieved volumes and margins that will consistently generate positive cash flows, regardless of how aggressively we pursue sales growth.
That said, the extraordinary cash flow generated by Security in the period has been positively impacted by approximately €20 million that should be taken into account. This comes from a positive effect from the use of tax credits from previous years, a one-off impact that will not recur in future periods; and extraordinary advance collections at year-end of approximately €5 million, which will be difficult to maintain going forward and will have an impact on working capital during 2026.
Under a stable growth scenario, recurring cash flow from the Security business should range between €60 million and €70 million. Thanks to the strong cash generation of this business, further debt reduction as part of our strategy becomes increasingly secure and achievable.
Let's now move on to the Alarm business, where we keep improving most of KPIs quarter by quarter and year by year. As explained during the December Investor Day, the business strategy strongly focused on profitability maximization and investment efficiency, supported by the various initiatives in product development, redefining a more prudent marketing strategy, improving the customer service experience, and applying operational efficiencies enabled by AI.
All of this is having a direct impact on each of the KPIs, which continued to improve in the fourth quarter, maintaining the positive trend in 2025. Looking at the client base, we are pleased to report that year-on-year growth reached double digits, with a 10.7% increase.
Toward year-end, we decided to anticipate our strategy of increasing the acquisition income—that is, the price we charge when acquiring a new client. This will result in a healthier and more robust client base, thus increasing ROC and reducing paybacks.
Evidently, this impacted negatively in the number of acquisitions during the fourth quarter. As we always emphasize, growth is only meaningful when it's high quality in nature, which is why we are very pleased with the achieved results.
In MPA, we continue to reduce the churn rate, with a stable level of 9%, a reduction of 1 percentage point versus the previous year. In Prosegur Alarms, churn has shown more resistance to decline, mainly due to the economic situation in Argentina, where severe financial pressure on households is negatively impacting churn behavior.
Once the situation is now stable, we expect a churn reduction in Prosegur Alarms little by little. Both ARPU and service margins continued to grow at very healthy rates.
It is important to note that going forward, we will report margins excluding depreciation expenses, following market practice. Regarding acquisition costs, the increase in both businesses is the result of a deliberate strategy, rising marketing investment while continuing to enhance our product offering.
In this regard, it is worth highlighting that new acquisition channels are expanding rapidly. We plan to continue investing in these channels as they provide high-quality connections at lower costs.
As their share grows, overall acquisition costs should progressively decrease, even as we continue investing in marketing and product enhancements. Let's now move on to the next slide to review how all these indicators translate into recurring cash flow.
The combination of higher service margins, together with a stable or declining churn rate, naturally leads to an increasing in recurring cash flow, that is, the cash generated after fully reacquiring the customers who churn. The charts above show the 12-month rolling recurring cash flow for both Prosegur Alarms and MPA.
The chart on the right clearly illustrates that the combined cash generation capacity of both businesses for Prosegur now stands at €81 million, representing a 14% increase year-over-year. As we have highlighted in previous presentations, recurring cash flow is consistently reinvested to fuel further growth.
Even so, it remains the best reflection of the true cash generation capacity of the Alarm business, clearly demonstrating its strong ability to generate sustainable cash flows. This concludes our review of the performance of each business line for the 2025 full-year results.
Thank you all for your attention. I will now hand the microphone back to our CFO, Maite Rodríguez, for her closing remarks.
Maite Rodríguez
Thank you very much, Juan Ignacio. Let me now share with you my closing thoughts on the most relevant conclusions of this results presentation.
Overall, as we have seen during the presentation, all businesses reported enhanced operating efficiencies and strong results. On a consolidated basis, total sales increased by 0.5%, reaching €4.9 billion, despite the adverse impact of currency depreciation and the macroeconomic situation in Argentina.
EBITA increased by 9% while net income increased by a remarkable 53%, thanks to the good performance of all our business lines. Normalized consolidated operating cash flow reached €316 million, once the €15 million extraordinary impact are excluded.
In our Cash business, organic sales grew by a solid 5%, while we continue rolling out an ambitious cost-saving program. This was supported by the strong adoption of our transformation products, which will enable further improvements in EBITA margins over the coming months.
Turning to our Security business, sales increased by 4% compared to the previous year, and with margins reaching 3.5%, driven not only by scalability, but also by a robust client portfolio and effective price pass-through. Even more importantly, the business generated €87 million in free cash flow, marking an all-time record.
Lastly, our Alarm business delivered very solid growth, accompanied by a strong performance across key management indicators. We saw improvements in churn, service margin, and ARPU.
This strength translated into a rolling recurring cash flow of €81 million, representing a 14% year-over-year increase and confirming the businesses' robust cash generation capability. As mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, we delivered solid results this year, paving the way for the new 2026-2029 strategic plan that we have just launched.
This concludes my remarks for today's results presentation. Thanks you all, once again, for your time and attention.
We will now open the floor for questions.
Operator
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To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. We are now going to proceed with our first question.
The question comes from the line of Carlos Torres from CaixaBank BPI. Please ask your question, your line is open.
Carlos Torres
Hi, good morning. Carlos from CaixaBank.
A couple of questions on my side if I may. First, to have a better understanding on the reported EBITA, overheads contributed positively with €20 million in the first half and we're told to assume a positive evolution on this line.
I'm wondering if you have allocated some of this margin across the rest of divisions, and if so, in what proportion? Second, you also mentioned a harsh backdrop in Argentina, and we were told Argentina margins in Cash were higher, I would like to understand if it all comes from the efficiency measures and therefore if we can think of similar margin going forward, and whether there's upside once Argentina activity and inflation reduction picks up, or conversely, a lower inflation backdrop is weighting in volumes, or any comment to understand Argentina's drivers a bit more?
Finally, if I may, similar for Alarms. Reported EBITA is also high compared to the first half and I'm having trouble to get to this figure.
I'm wondering if there's any change in SAC capitalization or if going forward we can think of a similar or incremental figure year-on-year now that, as you mentioned in the Capital Markets Day, you're more focused on cash flow generation in this division. Thanks.
Maite Rodríguez
Thank you, Carlos, for your questions. In relation to the first one about the overhead, here you have to consider that this year, and as we have been mentioning during the rest of the previous quarters, we have a higher royalty coming from trademark, mainly because of an agreement with the tax authorities that we signed last year.
This has supposed, finally, with final figures, because as you know those royalties goes in relation to the EBITA of the year, finally that increase in comparison to previous year has supposed €8.5 million. The differences between overheads of last year in comparison to this year comes from this 8.5 million, but you have to discount here some extra costs or extra expenses mainly coming from additional provisions of some bonuses and some 50 years old costs that has discount like around €3 million those staff here.
That's where the differences are coming from this 4Q. Maybe your question is also more related because it is true that in the second and in the third Q, the differences between 2025 and 2024 were higher, and it was also because the headquarters overheads were in the businesses and now it's in this PGA.
When you compare 4Q this year with the full year with the full year last year are exactly the same, you are comparing exactly the same figures. As it happens in the first Q, second Q, and third Q, but the difference is just that at year-end is when we booked this headquarters expenses.
Moving to your second question in terms of what's happening in Argentina, yeah, the drop is mainly coming from the macroeconomic situation that we are suffering there, with, as we have had a 60% depreciation of the currency, 30% inflation impact, and those efficiencies amount €15 million, €3 million for this 4Q, so that impacts and we'll have a the run rate of those efficiencies will come in 1 year and a half, in 18 months more or less. It is true that the economy of for this first Q, the improvement of Argentina that we expect for 2026, it's going slowly, and for example for this first Q it's not going to be it's not going to be better, there isn't still an improvement, it's going very, very slowly.
In relation to your final question about the Alarm, it's mainly coming from the difference is coming from the hyperinflation effect of Argentina. There is a big impact.
As in the Alarm business we have big amount of assets that, like around 35% of the acquisition costs, we book them as a bigger asset, and we have to hyperinflate those assets, and that's why we have this impact this year, because last year was smaller. Or sorry, higher.
Operator
Once again, as a reminder, to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again.
We are now going to proceed with our next question. The question comes from the line of Enrique Yáguez from Bestinver Securities.
Please ask your question.
Enrique Yáguez
Good morning, Maite and Juan. I was late at the conference, and I don't know if this question may have been asked, but I will ask anyway.
The first one is if you could provide what has been the impact of the increased royalties received by the holding company in Cash and Security? In other words, what would have been the adjusted EBITDA margin excluding those impacts, because probably was higher than reported?
The second question, with the artificial intelligence disruption, I don't know what impact can this have in your AVOS business? How likely is to suffer a disruption from this trend?
Thank you.
Maite Rodríguez
Quique, in relation to your first question, I just have in my mind the difference is those €8.5 million of increase between 2025 and 2024. If you want later on, Juan Ignacio could provide you a higher detail, because I really do not have it now.
In terms of the AVOS question, I couldn't hear you well, if you could repeat it again?
Enrique Yáguez
How likely is to be affected by the artificial intelligence disruption, taking into account that is affecting companies in software, back office, support, this kind of stuff?
Maite Rodríguez
Thank you. It's an amazing opportunity.
We are really working hard on implementing a lot of artificial intelligence on the full business, as we have front, back, and other specific systems like Sisnet related to more specific customers, but the AI, it's going to really change this business, and that's why we are investing, even in our new strategic plan, there is a high investment in AI in this business. Even if we compare it with other big businesses that we have, it's sometimes with some of them it's even in parallel.
We think that we really could have a lot of efficiencies and a lot of different type of providing service for the future. It's a huge opportunity for this business, and we will see how this evolves.
Just for your knowledge, in our new strategic plan, we are planning to double our sales in this business and also the margin.
Enrique Yáguez
Thank you, Maite.
Operator
Thank you. We have no further questions at this time, I hand back for you for closing remarks.
Maite Rodríguez
Thank you very much for attending this presentation. If you need further information, please contact our investor relation department, who is open to help you at any time.
Have a nice day.
Operator
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating.
You may now disconnect your line. Thank you and have a good rest of your day.
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