Rai Way S.p.A.

Good afternoon. This is the Coral School Conference Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the RyeWave First Quarter 2023 Results Analyst Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Giancarlo Benucci, Chief Corporate Development Officer of Raiway. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. Let me start thanking all of you for joining us today, and welcome to our first quarter 2023 results presentation. Today, I have the pleasure of sharing the floor with Roberto Cecatto, the new CEO of Raiway. Despite only 10 days at the helm, Roberto is obviously pleased to introduce himself, share his first impressions and priorities, as well as the highlights of the first quarter. Afterwards, Alberto will take you through the financial performance in more detail to conclude with the usual Q&A session. Let me, therefore, hand the call over to Roberto. Please, Roberto, go ahead.

Thanks Giancarlo, and good afternoon to all of you. My name is Cecatto, Roberto Cecatto, and it's indeed a real pleasure to be here with you today for my first call. As you know, since April 28th, I have been appointed as the new CEO of Raway, and I take on this position, together with the rest of the directors, with great enthusiasm and sense of responsibility towards the shareholders and all stakeholders and towards the company itself and its team's employees. Let me spend a few words regarding my person. I am born as a tech engineer and I came back in a tech infrastructure company. Let me say it's the circle of life. For 18 years, I was the director of the largest Rai business unit, let me say a company inside the company, the TV production department. 4,000 people, considered that is more than six times the people of Rai. Lastly, in the past two years, I was director of regional and foreign production and also the director of real estate department. 1 billion euros of real estate assets, developing for the first time in Rai a 10-year plan to revamp and increase their value and rationale. But Raiway is not a stranger to me, because in the various roles held within the Rai group, I have often, and very recently, worked and cooperated with Raiway, always appreciating it for its expertise and quality. I'm taking the helm of a solid company, constantly growing over time, cohesive with clear strategic lines. Thanks also to the efforts spent of the former CEO, Aldo Mancino, my very good friend. And I believe it's a promising future. Let me add that I decide to accept this role because, believe me, I trust in this company. To put it very simple, we are in front of a company with, first point, an outstanding infrastructure, not replicable and with clear features in terms of location and uses. Second point, a core business referring to broadcasting and tower hosting, stable, but with excellent visibility in the medium term and significant cash generation. Third point, cash generation which, moreover, fuels a capital structure with very little debt and a large financial flexibility. Therefore, it looks reasonable to operate in On one hand, we will work to maximize as much as possible the value and the cash generated by the traditional business, whether it is through the feature of existing contracts, e.g. CPI Link, deeper efficiencies, new business opportunities. I speak about the possible rollout of DAB networks, hosting for 5G networks, understanding of transmission contribution services, and also possible industrial opportunities to generate synergies. The second direction is to use the cash generated and financial flexibility, this is very important, to invest in value-accretive diversification in new businesses on which railway can have a competitive positioning. Huawei, as I already mentioned, has already done a significant amount of work on this front. Obviously, the board and I, this is important to underline, just arrived, and we will now go through all the growth initiatives. But in general terms, it's fair to say that one of the macro trends to date, among the most visible and concrete, is the digital transition. Therefore, the plan to contribute to the creation of the infrastructure needed to enable digitalization processes and low latency services, I underline low latency services because it's a factor of differentiation about other subjects, while exploiting synergies with the current portfolio and expertise and assets, makes sense. And this is also the feedback we are getting from industrial and financial operators. It's not only a dream. Moreover, this infrastructure could also be leveraged to introduce new services for existing but also new media customers, for example, supporting more efficient content distribution on IP networks and platforms. As said, we already started to review internally all these initiatives in terms of opportunities and risk, from the waste positioning to where we are in terms of rollout to future commercial setup. And at the moment, there are no elements that differ from what the company has already shared with you in terms of rationale, timing, and results. Therefore, the messages I would like to share with you today are full awareness of the development path undertaken by the company, and I think this is fair considering the results recorded by the company in recent years, but let me say, last but not least, this last quarter, and the industrial interest gathered on new initiatives. And that's the focus of mine today. of the new board on the time management must be on rapid and effective execution. Of course in the execution I will bring my own methods and expertise. I have only been here ten days and have confidence in the work done so far by the company, but in my experience every change brings the opportunity to see things and organization in a different perspective. So there will be great focus on speeding up execution and seeking possible additional areas of optimization and efficiency. The mission is to push forward the initiatives with the best risk reward for the company and, where possible, accelerate the process to crystallize the existing value and to create new value by acting on clear operational and financial levels. And all this will fed into the elaboration of the new industrial plan and we will be working in the coming months also in view the aspiration of the current one that terminate on the 23. Coming now on the first quarter performance. The start of the year confirmed the strong growth path we expect for 2023, thus leading us, as we see later, to reiterate the full-year guidance. I think this is very important. In particular, revenues are up to 12.8%, mainly as a result of indexation of inflation typical of our contracts. and the growing contribution of the new regional multiplex business. These drivers, together with the nice trend in hospitality to fiber-to-wireless access operators and radio broadcasters, pushed third-party revenue growth to over 30%. As Adalberto will explain in detail below, Despite the progressively declining energy price in the first part of the year, electricity costs still suffer from an unfavorable comparison with first quarter and 22. Remember that when prices were contractually fixed at early 21 levels, with the negative impact related to the price effect of over 1.5 million euros in the quarter. Once energy price and other non-core effects are excluded, like level of personal capitalization on prior year adjustment, OPEX show a manageable increase, especially when compared to ongoing inflationary dynamics, demonstrating a cost control that we intend to continue in the future. As a result, ABTDA is up 12%. with marginality at 65.5%. Percentual growth that rise to 25% at net income level. Also considering the traditional lower level of investment on the first quarter, Cash conversion and recurring cash generation were strong at 97% and over 30 million, respectively. Net financial position, we include also the IFR leasing addend, stands at under 100 million. And with this, I give the presentation to Adalberto, to provide you with the details of the main items of our results. Please, Alberto, go ahead.