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.

Sorry and apologize. We will go on.

So, I repeat the last statement. Sorry for this accident. So anyway, as a result of what we have spoken before, we expect the first revenues contribution from new services in the 2024 to be live with the expectation, albeit still limited, and to fill now the pipeline for 2025. Before leaving all the economic and financial details to Adalberto, the CFO, I think that in light of these results, it's not a surprise to look with increasing optimism to 2024 and thus confirm the EBITDA growth target. It's now time to have a more detailed look to the economic and financial performance on the first nine months of this year. I will accordingly leave the floor to Roberto. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Roberto. Good afternoon to everyone. Before analyzing each metric, let's start as usual with an overview of the main financial KPIs on slide six. Nine months revenues were up 1.1% in line with the plus 1.2% growth recorded in the first six months. Adjusted EBITDA confirmed the positive trend of the first two quarters with a slightly lower pace because of a number of positive and negative factors that we will go through in a while. Let me highlight that the BIDA still reached a new record high, both in absolute terms, hitting 142.2 million euro, both as a percentage of revenues. Adjusted BIDA margin reached, in fact, 68.9%, over one percentage point more than the same period of last year, and six points higher than in 2022. Net income was also up. We recorded €70.5 million, corresponding to a growth of 1% over the first nine months of the year. Moving to CAPEX, in the period we invested €25.1 million, €2 million less than one year ago. The decrease is totally attributable to the maintenance CAPEX, while development CAPEX were stable. Compared to 2023, we have accelerated our effort in diversification, as we already commented in the previous call, which accounted for more than 50% of development capex, while last year they represented only 16%. Investments and dividend payout impacted on net financial debt, which grew to 148.2 million euros from 105 at the beginning of the year. Finally, the financials just commented are boosting our cash conversion that reached 96.2%, being 94% last year and more or less the same figure in the first nine months of 2022. On slide seven, we dive deeper into revenues, providing a double breakdown, the new view coherent with the industrial plan and the old one by client category. On the top left, we analyze media distribution and digital infrastructure trends, both on a positive trajectory. Media distribution segment revenues increased by 1.5% to 182.8 million euro. The growth rate was higher than CPI, whose contribution was 0.7%, thanks to the full effect of new regional DTT networks, which recorded a strong increase. Digital infrastructure, which currently means our hosting, posts revenues up by 1.5%, turning into 3% plus 3% in the nine months, 3.9% in the third quarter if we scrap non-ordinary phenomena. The second chart shows the old revenue breakdown. with third parties revenue posting a plus 3.3% pushed by the positive trend of business with fixed wireless access player and radio operators. This trend is even clearer if we take off the residual impact of refarming and other non-core items effect. In that case, the nine months performance would be 4.4% and the quarterly performance almost 5%. Let's move to OPEX, slide 8. Please keep in mind that we are considering as usual cost net of extraordinary adjustment, namely the incentives that we paid out last year to former employees. Looking at the performance, let me first highlight the slight year-on-year decrease of OPEX, minus 0.3% to 65.9 million euro, despite the startup cost of diversification initiatives that we show on the bottom of the chart. In the first nine months, they accounted for 1.7 million euro, more than doubling last year level. Racking down the OPEX, personnel costs were down 2.3% because they benefit once again of the high level of capitalization, 1 million more than in the first nine months of the previous year. Without considering that, personnel costs would have been broadly stable. Other operating costs increased by 0.6 million, corresponding to 2%, impacted by energy. a trend that we have already seen commenting the result in our previous call. Over the nine months, despite a slight decline in our energy consumption, the lack of incentives granted by the government during the the first six months of 2023, caused an increase of more or less €1.2 million, which we were able to partially offset thanks to the reduction of other cost items, saving €0.7 million. All in all, if we exclude the positive effect of personnel cost capitalization and the negative impact of electricity tariff, total OPEX were down 0.5 million euro. Once again, despite diversification startup cost. The favorable trend of core revenues and OPEX that we may see in slide nine, translated into an increase in adjusted EBITDA, which grew by 2.7% to 142.2 million euro, as we can see. Here you may also see the increase recorded in Q3 by our other revenues and income items, due to a one-off impact amounting approximately 1.4 million euro. Given the presence of this effect as well as other known core factors such as the already mentioned higher capitalization and energy tariffs, we want to help you better understanding our underlying profitability. That's why in slide 10 we highlighted how not only the reported figures but also the underlying clean dynamics of our EBITDA continue without continuing also in the third quarter on the same trajectory as in the first half. In fact, even neutralizing those non-core contribution, EBITDA growth from the traditional business remained very solid in the quarter, amounting plus zero, almost plus 1 million, 0.9 million to be precise. That quarterly performance offset the startup cost of diversification project, totally in line with the assumption and facing of the plan. Going back to the previous slide, to the nine months profit and loss, we remarked the constant increase of DNA and financial charge, our strong investment activities It reflects, of course, on DNA, but also on the amount of total debt, so on financial charge. The latter are also impacted by interest rates and by a derivative we had in place last year and effective till October 2023 when we have signed the new financing agreement. In light of a stable tax rate, we finally registered net income, as we commented, that reached 70.5 million euro. Moving to slide 11. We have the nine-month evolution of our net financial debt, including €30.9 million of IFRS leasing. At the end of September, we recorded a net debt of €148.2 million, slightly higher than €146 million recorded at the end of June. Cash generation over the nine months, standing at 96 million euros and over the quarter, equal to 32 million euros, remained very strong, but we registered a significant absorption at working capital level, typical of the third quarter, amounting to 34 million euros, that was connected to the tax and CAPEX payment cycles. So on that, the amount of 148.2 million euro correspond to a leverage ratio of 0.8. As per the outlook of the remaining part of the year, let me turn the floor back to our CEO, Roberto, please.

Thanks for your analysis, Alberto. The result that we have presented so far make us definitely comfortable about the 2024 targets, so that we are pleased to confirm our guidance as restated during the presentation of our first IRF result. In more details, let me remind you that we expect an increase in adjusted BDA over 2023 levels, despite the lack of energy tax credits, and the setup cost of the new infrastructure cost for diversification. This is going to be achieved mainly thanks to CPI, for sure, for the impact of regional refarming, positive impact, and better than expected performance of tower hosting, but let me say with the very strong cost control actions, Action 7.0, deeper than initially expected, as it was one of the drivers of the first self-guidance uplift. On top of that, we also benefited from certain non-recurring, non-core factors, such as higher level of capitalized personnel and other revenues, as already seen in the first nine months. As per capital expenditures, both maintenance and development capex are expected substantially in line with the previous year's level. That's all on our side. We thank you for your attention. Sorry for the interruption in the audio. And now we are ready to answer to your question.

This is the Coruscant conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Giorgio Tavolini in Termonte. Please go ahead.

Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the evergreen topic on the consolidation with the EI towers. If you had... any update or incremental news regarding potential combination with them. The second one is on the financial expenses trend. Since I understand that there was an increase in Q3, so I was wondering if it's right to assume roughly 7 million financial expenses in Q3. for a full year basis, so for this year and a declining path from 2025 and then a pickup in 2026 since there will be higher investments related to the capex cycle for the extraordinary activities. And the third one is on the run rate savings of 200k euros related to the new headquarter when we should expect this savings to occur on an annualized basis, so from 2025, and if it's an upside on ABDA. Thank you.

Okay, thank you for the question. For the first question, the other question, let me say that I fully understand your question on this topic. But you know that it's not entirely up to us. You know very well our position. It could be a logical step for the sector that needs at least to be explored, analyzed, and discussed to find the right condition, especially for the right shareholders, right-way shareholders. But there are regulatory, financial, legislative limitations that make this opportunity not only in our end. Let me say that we must be patient and wait for the discussion to enter into full swing. I understand that the patience can turn to tiredness, but we are not distracted. And meanwhile, we continue the healthy management, as you can see, to increase the value of the company for all the shareholders. For the second and third question, I leave the floor to Adalberto if you could give more details. The third one is very simple. We try to finalize the transfer in the second half of this year, and so we expect, apart from some startup costs, to have the benefits for the last quarter of this year.

As concern the interest rate, the number you mentioned for 2004 makes sense, broadly speaking. Just let me give you some more color because actually probably in the first months of the year we had the impact related to the higher level of Euribor, while we are seeing a progressive decrease. Actually, we just finalized an interest rate swap till the end, till the termination date of our financing we have in place, that is October 2026. with basically on 65 million euro, we will pay 2.3, more or less, percent of Euribor, plus, of course, the margin that is applicable to all our financing, that is 1.1%.

Many thanks.

I don't know if you were asking some more clarification.

Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press Q&A on the left side and send your request or press star one on your telephone. The next question is from Milo Silvestre, Equita. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everybody. Just one quick question about the Azure Data Center, if you can elaborate about the commercialization phase and how much of the capacity installed is basically committed or sold to some clients. Thank you.

Ciao Milo. As you know, there is no pre-committed capacity. And let me say, this is not a market where customer purchase decisions come in a day. The decision often part of a cloud migration process or IT infrastructure upgrades of the clients that take a little bit of time. We have chosen to start with the marketing activities of these assets only after they have been completed in order to have a certainty on timing and the possibility to show the real quality of the asset and not just PowerPoint presentations. And the contacts that we are having now are several and hopefully contracts will come.

Thank you.

As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press Q&A on the left side and raise your hand or press star one on your telephone. The next question is a follow up from Giorgio Tavolini in Termonte. Please go ahead.

I was just wondering if you can update us on the inflation rate because we are entering in the November end. So basically... I don't know what are your latest assumptions for 2025 when applying. I had 1.5% inflation rate, so I guess it will be a little bit lower, and you apply the November end. CPI. So I was wondering if you have any updated, if you are updating this number, we should expect slightly lower revenues for 2025.

so the 1.5 that you have is the one of our industrial plan actually the last official figures from east that are referred to september even if there is a preliminary view also on october and typically we focus on the increase vis-a-vis november 2023 And the official figures at the end of September, the magic number was 1.1% vis-à-vis November 2023. It seems from the preliminary figures announced by ISTAT that in October, the level is expected to be flat. and let's see what's happening in the last month in order to see the full comparison November vis-a-vis November, November 2024 vis-a-vis November 2023.

Okay, and should we expect any update on 2025 in early March on the outlook, I mean,

As usual, we will provide a proper outlook on 2025 figures. As concerns CPI, when we will announce it, at least the CPI will be the official one. So, on March, we will see some more update on 2025 figures also in relation to the CPI trend.

The next one is on the CapEx development. I was wondering if we should expect to catch up in Q4 since in the nine months it was lower than the CapEx year, even though you had an higher working capital absorption for the delay. So I was wondering if you expected to catch up with an higher CapEx year. development topics in Q4?

Yes, absolutely. Normally in the last quarter of the year we do, even if we look at the past, basically more than the amount that we do in the first nine months. So this is what we expect to have also this year.

And you should have a releasing working capital since you have already accrued the absorption in nine months. Am I correct?

We should have typically the capex that we have in the last quarter. They're going not to have any significant impact on the cash flow. So we will see. broadly speaking, all the amount of the capex as an increase of the trade payable that then typically will be absorbed during the first months of the following year. Exactly same trend that we have seen this year. OK, thank you. You're welcome.

For any further questions, please press Q&A on the left bar and raise your hand. or press star one on your telephone. Mr. Moretti, gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.

It's fine. Thank you, operator, and thank you all for your participation. We remain available for any follow-up questions, and we wish you a good evening. Goodbye.

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