Rai Way S.p.A.

Conference Operator, welcome and thank you for joining the Raiwai 9 Months 2024 Results Analyst Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in this and 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 your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Andrea Moretti, head of IR of Raiway. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Beatrice. Good evening and welcome to everybody. Before starting today's presentation, I would like to remark that from now on, participants will have the opportunity to join our quarterly updates, both via phone and via web. Webcast viewers will be able to intervene and submit their questions during the final Q&A sessions as well. As usual, today's speakers will be our CEO, Roberto Cecatto, the CFO, Adalberto Pellegrino, and Giancarlo Benucci, our Chief Corporate Development Officer. Let me therefore hand the call over to Mr. Cecatto for an overview of financial results and operating achievements. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good evening to everyone from me as well. If we were to summarize the first nine months of the 2024, Let me say that the trends confirms that very solid performance of our traditional business, allowing us to approach with confidence without compromising the continuous growth trajectory and diversification path that clearly does not replace but will combine and complement the existing one. The nine months confirmed the CPI plus revenues grow profile of the traditional business, sustaining in particular by good result of third-party customers, plus 5% underlining in the third quarter. Both in the media distribution area, thanks to the contribution of regional multiplex, and in the digital infrastructure area for the time being represented by tower hosting. With the solid performance of fixed wireless, mobile, and especially radio operators. Performance that still demonstrates the good fit of our tower infrastructure with the need to extend telecommunication networks into less urban areas. A day-by-day level, even excluding the benefit of some non-core factors, such the higher level of other revenues and capitalized personal cost, The higher sales coupled with a very tight cost control, which mitigated at OPEX level the significant increase in energy tariff, you know, due to the lack of the 2023 incentives, and the rising startup cost of the new initiatives, we together accounted for an additional burden of over $2 million compared to the nine months of 2023. Recurring cash generation also continued to steadily grow at over 95 million. Let me say that it's impressive really considering that in nine months we have exceeded the full year value recorded only two years ago in 2022. reflecting the ability to translate our growth into shareholders' value. Again, with reference to traditional business in terms of status of the industrial plan activities, in addition to the progressive improvement of RISE DTT network coverage, the negotiation for the extension of RISE DAB, the digital radio network, the support to the rollout of 5G fixed wireless and DAB networks for third-party customers, as proven by the good trend of tower hosting in third quarter, and the planning and the permits application for the photovoltaic project as a way to improve the use of our portfolio of land. I would also like to highlight the progress on the improvement of operational efficiency, also thanks to the real estate management. In this perspective, starting from the first half of the next year, Railway will have a new headquarters located in the center of Rome. As you can see in the slide five, the move from the historical building in Via Teulada inside the Rail Production Center, which has been hosting Railway since its foundation, will involve all the corporate function involving more than 200 people. And in addition to the expected savings of at least 200 kilo euros, we are confident it will contribute to strengthen our corporate identity, very important, better communicate our brand and enhance the quality and the productivity of our employees. Looking now at the diversification project, you can see that the relevance that they are assuming in our capital location, since they account for more than 50% of the development capex in the nine months. As already anticipated in our last touch point in August, the first five age data center became operational in the third quarter, and the trial activities on the edge video delivery network are underway, involving leading content providers who see the proposed architecture solution as a valid tool for improving the quality of the streaming, especially for live contents. Much of our efforts is now on the developing of the best sales strategy for the new assets. also based on the feedback from the first weeks on the market. The characteristics of physical proximity, latency, and quality reliability clearly represent an appreciated proposition. At this stage, the target is mainly the small and medium enterprise segment, either for the off-premises relocation of their servers, or for the deployment of private and hybrid cloud architecture. This is why we are working on the creation of an ecosystem of partners and resellers, such as system integrators and private cloud operators, happy to strengthen their offering proposing our proximity data center. to complement our direct coverage of larger customers and the most interesting sector we see, especially IT, also leveraging on the ongoing reinforcement of our commercial department. As a result, we expect first revenues contribution from new service. Okay, so we will continue.