Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones S.A. (ENTEL.SN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Entel's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Paula Raventos, Investor Relations Officer at Entel, and I'm joined today by Marcelo Bermúdez, Entel's CFO. Today, we will give you a more concise presentation of our [indiscernible] financial and operational highlights for the quarter to allow time for questions. The detailed results by country will be available in the annexes of the presentation that will be uploaded in the website. Please note that this event is being recorded [Operator Instructions] I want to start with some recent events that were positive news for -- during this quarter. Yesterday, Entel Board of Directors has approved the distribution of an interim dividend charged to the net profit of 2025 amounting to CLP 34 billion, equivalent to CLP 115 per share. Payment shall be made commencement on November 20, 2025. Also, another highlight is that Moody's rating affirmed Baa3 long-term issuer rating with an outlook that was changed to stable from negative. Moody's mentioned in their report that this rating reflects our strong market leadership, resilient operational performance, disciplined financial management and enhanced liquidity position. Another highlight is that we held on October 23, our Investor Day with more than 160 international and national analysts and investors that participate online and in-person. For the first time, the event featured a distinguished international speaker, Thilo Klein, who addressed the global landscape of the telecommunications industry. And also during this event, the CEO of our company and the CFO and the Vice President, B2C, outlined new objectives and defined strategic priority for the company. Another highlight for the quarter is that we maintain our leadership position in 5G technology with a 40.7% of market share. Today, we have 3.3 million active connections as of June 25, and this is standing 16 percentage points above the second competitor. Another highlight is that also we were recognized with the first place in mobile telephony category of the Alco 2025 Consumer Loyalty Awards, a distinction that acknowledge excellence in customer loyalty and positive experiences. The company was the most valued in the sector and achieved the highest rating in pricing policy, appropriate product or service offering, fulfillment of promises, flexibility and speed as well as interest, empathy and courtesy. Now moving forward to how was the performance of our activity in Chile and Peru. I will -- we see that -- also in Chile and in Peru, we have growth in our postpaid mobile and fiber base. In Chile, as you can see, mobile customers reached 10.2 million customers in the first quarter '25 with growth of 7% year-on-year on postpaid due mainly to the increase in our commercial activities through different sales channels and the commitment that we also have to offer the first -- the best network quality and customer experience. We have -- also this has generated a significant share on postpaid growth in the industry despite also the new regulations that came into effect in the first semester of this year regarding to portability and biometric. Prepaid segment decreased 29% year-on-year in Chile due to a database cleanup that we performed during the current period and also explained because of the new regulation that came into effect since February of 2025 that requires the identity verification of biometric face recognition. Regarding our fixed services, you can see that fixed services grew 6.3% year-on-year, mainly due to the expansion in fiber and OTT and TV services. Now as you can see, as we've been mentioning over the last quarters, we are growing in fiber-to-the-home in a competitive market by implementing commercial strategies to attract convergent customers, which has allowed us also to improve churn during this quarter. Regarding Peru, the total mobile customer base reached 10.3 million customers. Postpaid customer growth has a -- grew 11.1% due to the expansions mainly in the express stores, the implementation of customer acquisition's initiatives and the strengthening of our in-person channel. Despite the stiff competition that we are measuring in Peru, we have maintained a steady and high-quality growth. Now I will turn to Marcelo to continue with our results. Please go ahead, Marcelo.

Thank you, Paula. Good morning, everyone. Third quarter was a good quarter. We're very optimistic. And we can see that the trend in revenues speaks by itself. If we go to the different revenue streams for the consolidated figure, we can see that third quarter '25 compared to same quarter of the previous year showed an 11% increase in revenues, already it's a pretty outstanding figure and driven by a very interesting growth in mobile services. That is still very good news. That is on top of the also outstanding growth that we have seen in handset revenues for the period. So handset revenue has been supporting, even outpacing the growth in service. That's a very strong news. Remember, handset revenues, we provide not only -- we sell handset, but also do the finance of handsets both in Chile and Peru with very good margins. So that's also very good news. In fixed, Paula already mentioned that we are expanding the connections mainly in Chile. That also accounted for 8.6% growth compared to the previous year. And in general, we see that this is a very positive trend. And just to summarize, we always mentioned that Chile accounts for 64% of consolidated revenues and Peru is already 35% of revenues, both with a little bit more than 10 million customers in each country with different splits in B2C and B2B between Chile and Peru. Chile is still much more into the B2B, digital and fixed services for corporations. Peru is still growing in that. I always mentioned that we are pushing a little bit B2B and digital services in Peru. So we can have ideally in the medium-term structure similar to the one that we see in the Chilean market. So for now, in terms of revenue growth, good news for the quarter. And in terms of EBITDA and EBITDA margin, also, we are happy to see that the third quarter was much higher than the previous one, second quarter '25, you can see the quarter-on-quarter, the growth is above 5% and almost 10% compared to the third quarter of 2024, the year-on-year figure. Those are very interesting, growth in EBITDA. We also like to mention that the -- specifically the mobile margin, which is the most relevant, I would say, baseline for our EBITDA in general is still very strong with 33.7%, a little bit below the figure of the same quarter of previous year. And this is mainly because of the impact of the growth we have experienced in fiber in general, in fixed, also including B2B, but fiber is lagging a little bit, our EBITDA in general as a whole. But mobile is still strong. We'll see later that we are having some pressures specifically in discounts in Peru, which is impacting the mobile margin, but Chile is still very strong. We will see though the detail on each market in the next slide. But still, in general, consolidated figure, very strong results for the quarter. In EBITDA-AL which is EBITDA after leases, also, we see a significant growth year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. And the EBITDA-AL margin, it's improving compared to the previous year as in a similar level to the last year. So even though we are growing, and we are increasing our leases and in general, we can see that the margin generation is pretty strong, stable, and we have already increased the trend compared even to the first quarter of 2025, which was the lowest point of the year. Also in net income, the third quarter was interesting, CLP 31,000 million of net profit, which is below the third quarter 2024. But I just need to mention that you can see that last year, third quarter '24 and fourth quarter '24 has a lot of volatility, mainly given by the impact of our exposure in Peru, basically an exposure that was affected by the change in exchange rate that was normally had an impact on our income tax line in the P&L. So we were able to hedge all of that position during 2025. So you can see by each quarter that the amount of net profit that we're able to generate in each quarter is much more stable. So it's not actually comparable to the figures of last year. I will see the trend. And I would say that it's also a very positive news for the market. We go into more detail in terms of revenues and EBITDA for the Chilean and Peruvian market. Just to note that, as already mentioned, the mobile services and the revenue from mobile services is growing. That's a strong foundation for our continued growth in the future, but we cannot really -- I cannot really focus more on the positive impact of the handset business, growing almost 14% year-on-year in Chile, pretty stable compared to the previous year, but that's a massive growth, very profitable and similar figures in Peru. You can see also in Peru that mobile services are growing a little bit more than Chile, even 4.2% year-on-year, even higher than the previous quarter and also handset revenues is providing a very strong support on the whole revenue growing more than 12% compared to the previous year. We see a positive trend. We have been cautious on the credit risk that we are taking in both markets. We are still very healthy bad debt figures and collectibles, so we feel very comfortable with the existing trend we're seeing in this business that is supporting the mobile services as a whole. And also providing more value to our existing customer base and even new customer base that we're trying to bring from other companies, both in Chile and Peru. And in terms of EBITDA margin and EBITDA, we also can be very optimistic. We see a 6.8% year-on-year growth in Chile, similar figure in Peru, both EBITDAs are growing. Our margins looks pretty stable. Peru, you can see the last 3 quarters, all around 25%, a little bit above that figure. In Chile, we came back to above 30%. We have 2 quarters of figures a little bit below that figure, and we're coming back to that figure, helped mainly by the strong momentum, I would say, we have in customer base, coupled with still in Chile growing ARPU. And in Peru, although we are facing very stiff competition, and there's a huge impact, at least for our expectations on discount that we have to provide to our customers, still the margin is pretty stable. And it's very relevant to mention that the Peruvian figures we're seeing in this chart are in U.S. dollars. And we will see later that -- and we have commented also in the press release that when we consolidate figures from Peru, there's a significant impact in -- because of exchange rate -- sorry, I'm going back to this one, of the exchange rate of pesos to sol, mainly if you consider the appreciation of the Peruvian Sol and also which is dependent on -- for the year is around 8%. And if you take also the appreciation during this year of the Chilean peso, which is around 3%, in the same period, you see that the net impact of that is around 5%. That 5% is impacting the figures that we are consolidated from Peru in our Chilean peso P&L and balance sheet around 5%. That is relevant to note, but still the underlying figures from Peru measures in dollars are pretty strong. Just to note, the revenue share in Chile still very strong, above 40% of the market, almost 41%, a little bit below the previous quarter, but we're very optimistic that for October, we will be again above the second quarter figure. We have the third quarter figures for Entel. We are still waiting for the rest of the industry, but we'll see that there will also again an improvement, hopefully similar to the first quarter. So we'll see that improvement in the next report. And in terms of the same revenue share for Peru, you will see that if you compare to the last several quarters, pretty strong but -- and stable revenue share for Entel in Peru, around 24%, more or less in that area. But it's also worth mentioning that the yellow operator, operator #4 is posting a very strong growth as of the second quarter 2025. Hopefully, once we have the figures for the third quarter, we will still see some growth in that operator. We have been able to really defend our position in Peru. Just remember that, that operator in Peru is really taking advantage of their new 5G network, similar to the case of the third operator in Chile, which is also growing. The red one for the last quarter, you see compared to the second quarter of 2023 in that chart, it has increased more than 2 percentage points or 2 percentage points in that period. So it's a strong growth, also taking advantage of the 5G network and the increase in the presence of coverage and quality of 4G and 5G. So what I'm trying to say is that we will -- we are seeing more competition in certain players in both markets, but we have been able to sustain our position, keeping up with our differentiation in terms of customer service, quality of network, but at the same time, being very competitive in terms of pricing. And so that's why we believe that our position will maintain. In terms of market share, it's pretty much the same. It doesn't account for the difference in ARPUs in prices to customer, but still, we are pretty flat in terms of market share in Chile and in Peru, same position. And when you see the portal rate, which is a proxy of churn, which is basically our customers that through the portability regulation law go to different other operators. You see that even taking into account that there were some adjustments. For example, you see in the first quarter, a customer base cleanup that was performed by Subtel in the first quarter. And after that, you see that the gap in terms of portability that Entel is keeping compared to the rest of the market has sustained and is still very strong. Basically, you can see the same pattern in Peru. Peru, we have a portal gap compared to the rest of the -- on the industry. We also noted some interesting facts in Chile, we noted that in 2025, we also have changes in the regulation related to portability and the use of biometric validation for doing the portal process. So basically, what that has implied is that the market has some frictions to allow customers or to allow customers to do the portability in a more easy manner. So those frictions that we believe will -- are being solved and the market is already at this point -- already in the third quarter -- end of third quarter and the beginning of fourth quarter, we believe that it will be more like a normal market in terms of the impact of this regulation has also implied that Entel has been able to keep their portal rate. And in Peru, we also have the anti-spam law, which also provided some friction. But in this case, it helped and tell to widen the gap compared to the rest of the market. Normally, we -- because of the market segment that we are mainly focusing in Peru, we are being targeted by other operators in terms of through spam trying to get part of our customer base. Given the anti-spam law, that trend has diminished. It has been more complex for our competitors to really try to capture part of our customer base. So that gap means that we are being able to keep more our customer base. And that is really positive in terms of keeping customer base and also in terms of profit margin for the company given that the churn rate at the end is lower. So what we see is that a competitive market in both countries, but still Entel keeping or improving its gap compared to the other operators. And that is also translating into ARPU. ARPU for Entel in Chile has been growing, steady, keeping a strong gap compared to the rest of the operators. Even we are anticipating that for the third quarter 2025, our ARPU will be even higher than the one that we are showing for the second quarter. We still don't have the figures for the rest of the industry. But at least for Entel, we are being able to -- because of that -- it's a combination of the customer base, the value customers that we are being able to retain and capture that is really sustaining and improving our ARPU. This is not yet the result of any price increases for this year. Just remember that we performed the last increase in tariff by the middle of last year with impact from the third quarter. So this is mainly a matter of segmentation, and that's very good news also. In Peru, pretty much the same, but ARPUs have been kept steady. We see a much stronger competition because of the yellow operator and normally the leader in Peru, which is the one in red. Normally, the amount of discounts that are being provided in the market are still strong. We have seen that market very competitive, the revolving of customers. So normally, what you see in that case is that we are all the time providing discounts and that has been impacting. And we expect that trend to continue the rest of the year, a little bit at a slower pace, I would say, but still we have been able to keep in average the ARPU for Peru even in that scenario. Just to remember, some of the figures we just mentioned in our last investor meeting was -- a few days ago, we want to really emphasize that the CapEx for this period, we still keep -- are keeping our aim to end this year 2025 with a CapEx to revenues on a consolidated basis around 16.5%, mostly related to the growth in mobile compared to the previous year. Although you know that we have been pushing a little bit more the CapEx in Peru. You can see that the trend compared to the year 2023 in Peru, where we ended the year 2023 with 14% of revenues. This year, we expect to be a little bit below 17%. And so Peru is part of the focus. But Chile is still at levels of 16.4% for this year, much lower to the previous years because of the stage of development of 5G, but we still are investing in 5G in Chile, supporting our 4G network. So we still will be around that 16.5% at least for this year. Just to note, we put in the chart the actual figures for the first 9 months of the year. We posted on a consolidated basis, 14.6%. So we should expect for the fourth quarter of this year an acceleration speeding up the CapEx, so to end up with the figure we are expecting for the rest of the year. So on the right-hand side, mainly which are our focus, as I mentioned already, not only mobile, but also supporting our growth in fiber in Chile. Hopefully, next year, we're going to start also a little bit of that investment also in Peru on top of the development of the network in Peru and the development of the 3.5 gigahertz spectrum in that country. In terms of cash flow, I would say also it's good news. You can see in this chart, the -- we're comparing the first 9 months of '24 to the 9 months of '25. We ended the September '24 with $400 million in cash last year. Just to remember that part of the cash was coming from the sale at the end of 2023 of our fiber network to On-Net. We kept that cash for the first half of the year 2024. And just to remember that in the last quarter of 2024, we also pay last amortization of a local bond, was around $150 million in that period. That's why we ended the year with $274 million in cash, which is the figure that is on top of the right-hand side column. And then started with $274 million for this year, given a good cash generation for the year, similar leases, IFRS 16 comparing both periods, we end up even with a growth in EBITDA after leases for this year compared to last year, even being more efficient, I would say, in working capital. That's a mix of -- the last year, we included in working capital, the VAT related to the sale of fiber. This year, we don't have that VAT. So it's also -- but even considering that, we are being more efficient in terms of working capital, even growing in the handset business that normally provide -- needs more working capital. And in CapEx, as I mentioned, being more shy compared to the previous year, even shier than our initial expectation. And that's why we are improving our cash flow from operation to 124 for this year. And the rest is pretty much stable, lower dividends as of now compared to the previous year. And all the activities from financing had really been lower than last year. And we ended the September period with $240 million roughly in cash. And we expect for the rest of the year to end the December with a figure of around $200 million roughly. So this will be a strong year in terms of generation, being cautious and more in terms of CapEx, and that has helped us to end up with a pretty strong cash. And I will hand it over to Paula, just to mention the -- all the financial issues.

Well, as we mentioned also in our Investor Day, during this third quarter of 2025, we have continued to strengthen our financial position through the execution of our comprehensive refinancing plan. This process includes debt payment and amortizations totaling CLP 542 billion in this third quarter, along with securing new sources of financing amounting of CLP 380 billion. Among the most relevant operations that we hold is that we have a local bank loan of CLP 80 billion in July, the re-structuration of cross-currency swap contract of CLP 200 billion in August associated to the 232 (sic) [ 2032 ] bond. and an international bank loan of CLP 96 billion in September of this year. As a whole, gross financial debt decreased 16.9% compared to year-on-year. This reduction was primarily driven by the debt repayment and the amortization. Also, net debt to EBITDA, including IFRS-16 ratio decreased to 2.5x. All these actions have contributed to optimize our capital structure, reducing debt levels and financial costs and consolidating our company's financial position. All-in-all, this refinancial plan that we've executed has allowed us to establish our solid structure that it's flexible with very favorable cost and term conditions, that it's also enable us to prepay or refinance in the future if in the future we have -- better conditions arise. Also, we now have a very comfortable future amortization schedule that support our investment grade. In fact, Moody's updated our outlook from negative to stable a couple of weeks ago. Now, we will go for our final remarks, Marcelo.

Thank you, Paula. Just to finalize before going to the Q&A, just to know, this is really the 4 points we need to remark, we still are in a highly competitive landscape for operators in -- for both markets. But even in that scenario, we have been able to expand our revenues, keep strong and stable EBITDA margins in both countries. So we see that as a very strong advantage for Entel even in this kind of environment. That's a very strong news. Also, we are doing everything we can just to keep that for the future. Also, in terms of CapEx, we have been able to manage the level of CapEx. We are always analyzing the competitive environment, and we also are sure that we can adjust and being very careful given the competitive environment and when we analyze the competitive environment, we see exactly what are the other operators doing in terms of their networks, in terms of using the networks for different growth in certain areas for pricing, et cetera. So we have been -- or trying to be smart and wise in terms of the best value for each dollar we put in CapEx in both countries. We need to accelerate a little bit more Peru because we need to expand. We need to capture market in Peru outside Lima mainly, and we are protecting and keeping the gap with other competitors in terms of the Chilean market. So our goal of 16.5% for this year, we believe is in line with that strategy. We are always reviewing that figure just to balance our performance compared to the other operators in both markets, but also our financial health and liquidity. Also, we're very glad to be sure that our investment grade is holding strongly. And Paula already mentioned the last update from one of our creditors or the credit rating agencies, basically Moody's. And so we are also committed to maintain a strong financial position. I mentioned the almost $200 million in cash for the end of the year -- this year. And we have been able -- also with all the refinancing we did, we have been able to even reduce our gross debt, keeping our net debt stable compared to the beginning of 2025. So that also is helping to lower a little bit our EBITDA plus IFRS 16 to -- sorry, the net financial debt plus IFRS 16 divided by EBITDA ratio in the range of 2.5, which is we believe is healthy for our condition. And we expect to keep that figure around that area. And finally, in terms of fiber, we continue to grow. We reduced a little bit the speed of growth in the last, I would say, 3 to 4 months. We have mentioned that we want to grow but healthy with customers that also ideally are convergent to Entel that had lower churn and with value. So we have been adjusting our commercial strategy to that. It's working. And we expect after the September figure, which is normally because of the holidays kind of lower, we are seeing a much stronger October figure. So we are confident that we will continue to grow in fiber, very healthy, and we're happy because of that. So I would say that's the summary of the third quarter results, Paula.

Thank you, Marcelo. And now we will move into the Q&A please. We will wait a couple of minutes. You can send your questions through the chat, please.

We already have some questions starting from Marcelo Santos. One question is, could you please comment on the competitive environment in the Chilean broadband market?

Okay. So I can go with that one. Yes, so basically, the Chilean broadband market, it's very competitive. We have mentioned that for -- in each home, you have multiple companies' operators providing services. So what we've seen as of now is that the market hasn't necessarily accelerated or changed its competitiveness. So we see that it is stable and what we believe are the different operators are trying to keep their financial position with growing healthy, growing in customers where each one sees value. We, as Entel, we see value in certain segments, specifically in certain areas, although we have a full -- more than 4 million home passes with the OnNet Network. We have been selecting where to really push our growth and trying to capture customers that are really convergent and with lower churn. And we believe that the other players are kind of in the same stretch. So basically, it's a very competitive market, and we are all trying to grow in different areas. But we at Entel are trying to make it profitable. That's the only thing I can measure. Profitable as soon as possible, I would say.

Thank you, Marcelo. There's another question. How do you see the outlook for handset revenues going forward?

I mean just optimistic. It's -- the handset business and financing is very complex because at the end, these handsets are sold by different operators. You can see in the retail stores. So we believe that the value we provide to our customers is having a good commercial strategy in terms of pricing, having the availability. We just have a very successful launching of the last iPhone at the end of September. Even that's very strong, even we can outpace in this kind of launching or other activities, the normal retail market. And also, we're providing financing, and providing financing to customers and noncustomers when they really pass the different thresholds we have in terms of credit quality. And we're providing financing to Chile up to 36 months, a very convenient rate. So we believe that we are in a better position than the rest of the operators because of our liquidity because, as I mentioned before, growth in handset financing, for example, needs a very significant amount of working capital because you need to finance, as I mentioned earlier, from 12 months to 36 months, and that's a significant amount of resources. So we believe since we are in a strong position, at least healthy financial position, we are able to do that. I'm not sure that all of the operators at this point can say that exactly. And so we're confident that we see a strong and stable growth in that area, not only in Chile, but also in Peru. That's kind of what I can say.

Thank you, Marcelo. Then we have another question from Vitor Tomita. Looking into mobile service revenue in Chile, could we see further recovery in Q4 given improving trends in B2C results?

Yes. We believe, at least in Chile, we're being very confident, although, as I mentioned earlier, we don't have for any adjustment in prices, but we have been improving the reach for certain market segments, customers of higher value. As I mentioned, also the certain restrictions or issues we have with portability might have been solved in Chile, also that may provide certain growth for the last quarter of this year. And also in Peru, as I mentioned, still very competitive, but we believe we are even kind of helped by the anti-spam law. We have been having a positive tailwind to at least being able to sustain our results for the fourth quarter of this year.