Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones S.A. (ENTEL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
August 4, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Paula Raventos
executiveGood morning, and welcome to Entel's Second Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. Thank you for all of you for joining us today, August 4, 2026. I'm Paula Raventos, Investor Relations Officer, and joining me today is Marcelo Bermudez, our Entel's CFO. Please note that this event is being recorded [Operator Instructions] We delivered a solid second quarter 2026 with revenues and EBITDA growing 8% and 8.4%, respectively, and net income reached CLP 26 billion, up 39% year-on-year despite a highly competitive and dynamic environment in Chile and Peru. EBITDA margin reached 28.1% and earnings per share came at CLP 315 in the last 12 months, excluding extraordinary gains. Postpaid voice and fiber broadband continue to be the engines of our growth, supported by the differentiated customer-centric and value proposition. Taking the first half as a whole, revenues increased 7.4%, EBITDA grew 9.3% and net income 29% up. One of the most distinctive milestone on the period is our leadership in direct-to-cell satellite connectivity. Thanks to our strategic partnership with Starlink, we are the first and only company in Latin America offering direct-to-cell technology, providing satellite messaging in Chile and Peru in zones without terrestrial coverage. SMS is included in all our plans for all compatible equipments with updated software. And from our $20 plans, our customers also connect over satellites through WhatsApp, X, AccuWeather and Google Maps, delivering on our brand promise of connectivity where others can't. Commercial traction is already clear. During the second quarter, 10% of our customers porting into Entel say they choose us specifically because we have Starlink. Also, during the period, our Primera Respuesta climate emergency relief initiative drove 120% rise in satellite messaging, which shows how relevant this capability becomes exactly when our customers need it the most. Regarding our latest events on sustainability, we remain in the Dow Jones Best-in-Class Chile and MILA indices for the sixth consecutive year, and we are the only Chilean telco in both. On Corporate Sustainability assessment, score is more than double the global industry average with our strongest showing in the social dimension. We also ranked first in our industry in the Brinca-UAI Sustainability Ranking, which assessed 64 ESG indicators. In efficiency, Entel Peru became the first Latin America operator certified by TM Forum for network energy efficiency using AI-driven automatization. This is worth noting because it's where ESG and cost disciplines met. The same programs deliver emission reductions and operating cost savings. On network and brand, nPerf recognized us for the best mobile network performance in Chile, leading in downloading speed, and we ranked first in the Internet and telephony in the B-Brands Study. Regarding the performance of our activity, despite competition, we continue to grow in postpaid mobile and fiber. In Chile, postpaid remained the engine of our quality growth, increasing 4.9% year-on-year and 1% quarter-over-quarter, supported by our differentiated value proposition and improved customer experience, while prepaid continued to decline, down 16% year-on-year, largely reflecting the ongoing impact on regulatory changes, the cleanup of the inactive SIMs and the migration to postpaid. At the same time, on fiber, our strategy keeps delivering growth. Fiber grew 24% year-on-year and almost 7% quarter-on-quarter, taking total fixed RGU 14% up year-on-year, supported by a stronger commercial execution, a rising share of convergent customers and improved churn. Regarding HFC connections was down 54% year-on-year and almost 9% quarter-on-quarter. Customers are migrating from legacy wireless fixed onto fiber, which offer highest quality, lower churn and better economics. Regarding Peru, postpaid is expanding strongly, increasing almost 15% year-on-year and 4% quarter-on-quarter to almost 6 million subscribers due to a solid commercial execution through the essential channels. Prepaid is contracting 18%, in line with tighter security-driven regulation, industry restrictions to wholesale and street channel SIM distribution. On fixed Peru remains in a transition phase today. However, following the agreement we signed with Wi-Net in December '25, we expect to launch fiber Peru in the third quarter of this year, expanding our convergent position and position us to capture growth with more attractive fixed offering. Now I'll turn to Marcelo to continue with the next slide. Please, Marcelo.
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveThank you, Paula. Good morning, everyone. I will take the rest of the presentation. Well, based on what we just saw in the activity, in general, the competitive dynamics in the industry, both in Chile and Peru haven't changed. We have new ownership in the last 1.5 years, both in Chile and Peru. So the market dynamics are still pretty much the same, I would say, in the last quarter compared to even the end of 2025. But I would say that the second quarter and even the first half of this year for Entel has been very good. We are confident that the company is doing what it is part of the strategic plan. Basically, we are growing in areas that are profitable, both in mobile services in Chile and Peru, also in fiber, we are growing healthy with the right customers in terms of having lower churns, providing the different product mix that also is oriented to increase convergence in our services. So we're very happy that the strategy is really showing the numbers. We'll take a look at the trend in revenue growth and EBITDA. But in general, we're very confident that this is the good strategy, and we are doing the right thing. So in general, our consolidated revenues also show that we are posting a year-on-year growth of 8% in revenues. For sure, it's worth mentioning that we are growing in mobile services, 8.8%. That's really remarkable given the market situation and the industry level of competition. And with a sound and massive growth also in handsets. Handsets, we have performed, I would say, strategies that have been delivering. We are increasing our share in the industry of handsets, especially in that business, providing a lot of value for our customers in -- not only in the handset itself, but also in financing, both in Chile and Peru, growing in that market. So that is very good news. And what we can see also in fixed, Paula already mentioned our growth, especially in fiber, putting aside the decrease in the home wireless, which is mainly fixed wireless TV services that we sold to a third party, taking that outside of the equation, we are growing in fiber almost 17% maybe a little bit below our expectations for this year, our plan. We will see later that the industry, specifically in Chile is very aggressive, very competitive, but we are capturing a significant portion of that growth. We are growing. So the fundamentals for the rest of the year for Entel, I would say, is very positive. We can see normally on the right-hand side, the -- how the revenues are split between Chile and Peru. Peru is 35% of our business, Chile accounting for 65%, almost 10 million customers in each country. That hasn't changed a lot, although we are growing in both markets. And the B2C, which accounts for most of the revenues in Chile, that hasn't changed. But it's worth noting that in B2B, we are doing specifically some efforts to continue to grow, grow profitably, reviewing our customer base. We'll see that later in the trend in margins in B2B. We need to grow healthy and with good margins and good ROI for -- really make that business growth in the future. So we are doing that. The same strategy in Peru with B2B and digital services that are every quarter growing a little bit and really trying to mimic the share on revenues of Chile. So we'll continue to expand in B2B and digital services in Peru, trying to really get a little bit more depth in that market. This is the right one? Yes. If we take a look at the EBITDA trend and EBITDA margin trend, I would say also it's very good news, growing year-on-year 8.4% quarter-on-quarter, almost 3%. And also, we see kind of a stabilized compared to last year mobile margin in the range of 28.1%, which is similar to what we posted in the second quarter of 2025, but with a positive trend compared to the end of 2025. There are many issues going on in the market. So I would say that this is a very positive news for the -- for Entel that we have been able to sustain our margins in mobile, even growing a little bit. You see from 32.8%, specifically mobile to 33.3%. And when we see the whole picture for the company, 28.1% is pretty good. We adjusted for organic growth in the little chart below, the 8.4%, if we take out specifically some one-off impacts in the second quarter of 2025, mainly related to the SERNAC PVC, which is the -- an impact of CLP 9.5 billion we had last year. If we take that out from the equation and also adjust for, I would say, nonorganic impacts in second quarter 2026, the growth rate would be 6%. So still putting aside the one-off impacts, both negative or positive, the growth rate is still very positive. So we're confident that, that is really the base for our growth in the following quarters. The same in EBITDA to leases and its margin, pretty stable in 22% or a little above 22% and a positive trend in the EBITDAaL quarter-to-quarter, growing 3.6% quarter-to-quarter and almost 9% compared to last year. So this is positive news that passed into the net income. Net income, just remember that finally, since we have last year hedged in full our -- because we did structurally -- we converted the -- our exposure in Peru, we have an exposure last year that was hedged now is structurally hedged because we did the restructuring that put aside. We don't have that issue anymore. That allow us to really focus on what the business is performing without FX impacts in our P&L. So what we see is that the first quarter 2026 and second quarter 2026 are posting pretty stable levels of net income at the end, which is comparable to what we saw in average last year, but take into account that we -- for example, the fourth quarter 2025 had a one-off impact in net income, if you remember well, is related to the structural change we did in our investment in Peru that generated a deferred tax impact in the P&L, which was positive. So we need to take that also out. But the good news is that we are stable results in general, growing EBITDA, growing in the margin, EBITDA and very stable net income. If we take a look into more details for Chile, as I mentioned, mobile services are growing 10% year-on-year, kind of marginally for quarter-to-quarter and handsets very good for the year-on-year. Although we are seeing some contraction, if you see the 9% drop in the quarter-to-quarter figure, that is mainly explained by the increase in prices of the handsets that are related to the increases in cost. I mean it's probably to know that the increased cost of the chipsets that go -- going into the different handsets brands have had an impact in prices recently. We are seeing that impacting a little bit contracted sales of the market, although we are capturing a lot -- increasingly capturing a higher percentage of that market. Even though the market had shrink a little bit in the second quarter, we are gaining traction to capture more of that market. We will see later that we did some strategic or tactical moves in the first quarter. And even at the end of last year, we started doing that, that we were taking some incremental positions in inventories related to handset that we bought at good prices before the price spike that allow us to really have a strong level of inventories and that also implies that we are being able to capture a significant portion of the handset market, not only in the second quarter, but we have a strong position for the coming quarters. This will be an issue, the availability and the cost of the handset, and we took the decision to increase our inventories temporarily. We will see that impact in inventories will fade by the end of the year. So we'll see later the impact that it had in our working capital. But we believe it's very good tactically to have build up inventories to pass this year and capture more market in handsets, healthy, healthy in terms of quality of customer, quality of financing, and we will see that later. And the rest is already talked about that. The growth is significant, at least for the year-on-year growth in fixed still above 1%. It's marginal. But we know that quarter-to-quarter, we're improving our growth, but there is still a lot of competition. We'll see the details of competition in the Chilean market in fixed, especially fiber later. And in Peru, which is pretty much is similar. We're growing a little bit more than Chile in terms of mobile services, but a very interesting growth for handsets. Also pretty much the same strategy, the impact in cost of the chipset impact normally much -- has a much higher impact in lower priced handsets since we did that increase in inventory, we were able to manage the spike in prices for customers of the handset, passing a little bit of the price increase, but managing since we have built up inventories, that price increase for -- and the impact it has for our customers. So the result is that we will see later, we are posting very good margins from financing and handset sales in Peru and that should continue to be very positive for the coming quarters since we build up these inventories. Also very healthy growth in terms of uncollectibles and the quality of our -- of the revenue services we are providing also in Peru. In fixed, in Peru, we haven't started yet. So it's very small accounts or amounts, but the margin is still positive. And I would like to focus on the mobile service revenue share in Chile. As you see, very stable, even growing compared to the second quarter of 2025, going back to figures that we had at the beginning of '24. And the main trend we saw in the last year quarter-by-quarter was one of the -- our competitors, the red one growing in revenue share against the rest of the industry, but not against Entel. So Entel was able to really keep its leadership in revenue share. We always talk about the -- how relevant our strategy in terms of network quality, customer experience and provides really a cushion and really an engine to grow in revenue share and to keep up our market position and differentiate ourselves from the rest of the industry. And this chart, in my view, really shows that, that we are very strong and can support profitably this level of competition. Same story in Peru. You see that Entel has been really growing in terms of revenue share compared to the last quarters, similar to the end of 2024 in spite of the a lot of revolving in that market. You see the yellow line trend growing against the green one, that's a lot of revolving and there are a lot of customers that are moving from one company to the other. But the leader, which is the red one, and Entel have been able to really sustain their position and sustain the margins within this really tough market. And in postpaid, pretty much the same story, although we're growing postpaid compared to the last year, same quarter or in the margin, 34% and the rest of the industry really have been having a lot of issues revolving, changing positions -- so we're really tapping our differentiation and sustaining our market position in Chile. Peru, pretty much the same. We are really around 26%, a little bit above that figure, which is more than 1 point higher than the second quarter of 2025, even though you can see also the yellow and green line really set in, I would say, in a really complicated competitive landscape. The red line and Entel have been able to sustain the position, sustain margins, and that's mainly part of the quality, as I mentioned already, of the network services and pricing. Also, we can see that in our port-out rate. You see postpaid, the monthly average, we are keeping the gap in Chile, actually expanded a little bit compared to the last quarters. The blue line is Entel, 0.74% of port-out rate, keeping and widening the gap compared to the rest of the industry. And in Peru, also, we have really a very good port-out rate below the rest of the industry, which is 1.96% compared to 2.22%. And in that case, we are -- have been able to keep the gap against the rest of the industry. So that's also very good news. And ARPU, which is normally something we follow very closely, the -- actually, we put the figures for the second quarter of 2026 at the end of June. We don't have that -- those figures for the rest of the industry. But you can see that those CLP 10,326 is a relevant increase compared to last year. It's more than 10% increase in ARPU, a little bit above last -- quarter-to-quarter, which is 1.5%. And the rest of the industry have been barely keeping up in terms of ARPU, although the red line has been in kind of the same level increasing a little bit, but the market has been very competitive. So even in that market, we have been keeping a strong gap against the rest of the industry, the 28.2% gap is very positive. And that means that our customers value Entel more are willing to pay more because of the same issues already talked, good quality of network, good service and reliability. For sure, there are some other issues that Paula already talked, for example, the value, and we will see some details the value of the new services we have also with Starlink that also provide some impacts in lower churn and provide more value for our customers. So everything is really tied together. In Peru, I would say that the -- in terms of ARPU, we see also a slight increase in ARPU, more in the margin, but keeping a gap compared to the rest of the -- to the second player here of 24%. The red one is still above our market, but it's very also good to know that the yellow line has -- after the fourth quarter of 2025 has been -- has started already to increase a little bit the price in a really in a different market bracket, which is very more lower segment than the segment of Entel. Fixed, if you see I already mentioned that in Chile, we have been growing in -- mainly in fiber with 25% year-on-year growth. We already have more than 515,000 customers of fiber growing. Although we're not the only one to grow in the market, you can see in the middle chart, we already posted a 12.3% market share in fiber connections. But the market has really evolved in the last quarters. You know that the red line means that there's another player that really is growing in their customer base. I would say, more easily since there are already those customers in a different technology. So that's part of -- I would have had expected that since the on-net network is part of the -- it is an open network for different players. So what we have to do now is to continue to grow in -- specifically in convergent customers, which is what we are showing in the right-hand side. We are already -- almost 60% of our fiber customers are convergent customers. That's very important. That has a huge impact in churn. You can see in the green box there that this huge decline year-on-year of 68 basis points in churn rate. Normally, we had last year, same quarter, 3.3%. That's a high churn rate for fiber. We dropped that to 2.6%, mainly because of convergence, but also there's some other explanation like the quality of our analytical system to assess which areas of market and customer we connect where we grow. So this is something that is still evolving. We continue to grow. You can see in the middle chart, which are the players that are suffering a little bit more this competition. So we are doing what we can do, grow with quality, grow with good customers, profitable customers in terms of pricing and providing value, and that is convergent basically. So this is real quick. In terms of network quality and presence, I would say, that we measure presence and the ECQ index and also in the right-hand side, what we call the mobile network experience in Chile and Peru. Just positive news. You see the blue line is growing at least 1 point or 2 points compared to the previous measures. So in Peru, also pretty much the same, very stable, stable figures with a slight decrease, I would say, the ECQ, but still very far away from the rest of the industry. You see the 73 points compared to 60-something of the rest of the industry. We need to now continue to monetize that gap in favor of Entel. But in Peru, in the right-hand side, we really have in terms of network experience, mobile network, leading position in each one of the dimensions that are measured. So we're confident that we will continue to capitalize that market position. And for that, the normal question is how that would impact that quality of the network and services implied in our CapEx. We -- if you see this chart, we come from a year 2024. These are consolidated figures that we spent -- invested 17.3% of our revenues in CapEx, mainly mobile. In 2025, we -- because of the market dynamics, basically, we were able to reduce a little bit the CapEx intensity to 15.1%, increasing in fixed and lowering a little bit mobile compared to the previous year, both in Chile and Peru. And if you take a look at the June figures accumulated for this year, we are posting 14%. So that's mainly a very kind of in the range of 14% for Chile and Peru, a little bit higher Peru, 14.9% and Chile, 13.5%. What we expect for the rest of the year, we are kind of comfortable provided a range for the consolidated CapEx, consider mobile and the fiber expansion in the range of 16% to 17%. It should be in that range, not more than that. So I would say that, that is also good news for our cash flow expected for this year. We will see that later. This is very contingent to the market dynamics. If this is considered that we will continue to see both in Chile and Peru an industry in the same behavior, I would say, that we have seen now. There will be a lot of competition, but we believe that we have been able to serve tactically with -- in that ambient with our competitive advantages basically. So we expect could be 16%, 16.5% at the most, 17%, I would say that's the top of the range. So I think this is important for the cash flow. And this is what -- this is the cash flow that normally we provide in this presentation when comparing the first half of 2025 to 2026. As you see, in terms of EBITDA, we are growing a little bit in margin, very stable in leases, which are the IFRS16 line and growing thus in EBITDA after leases, posting CLP 340,000 million, which is a little growth of [ CLP 30,000 million ] compared to the same half year of last year. But in working capital, if you see we went from use of funds of [ CLP 21,000 million ] last year to this year, [ CLP 99,000 million ] of use of proceeds are mainly explained by CLP 54,000 million of additional inventories, which is mainly what I explained early. The bulk of that, I would say, 70% of those CLP 54,000 million are in Peru, a little bit less in Chile, and that has allowed us to gain a competitive edge in both countries with this inventory, which will be normally, given the market trend, diluted by the end of the year. So I would say that June or July are the peaks in terms of inventory that were bought, I would say, mainly in May and June. So that will start to go down for the rest of the year. So you can -- if you run your models, you should normalize that. So taking that out, I would say it's -- and with lower CapEx, you see even lower than last year, the cash flow from operations would be a little bit higher than last year if we adjust for the incremental inventories. And if we go down the net financial cost, just remember that last year, we had different impacts in net financial costs, mainly related to the hedge of our investment in Peru. This year, the financial cost is normalized, doesn't have these extraordinary effects because we don't need to hedge any more the investment in Peru since it's done structurally. And in taxes, Same story. Last year, we had a pretty big chunk of taxes that we paid in April related to the year 2024, also, again, because of the profits that we had of our investment in Peru related to the exchange rate fluctuations in 2024 that impacted the taxes paid in 2025. That was not the case of this year because 2025 was in terms of the investment in Peru fully hedged. So this CLP 9,000 million in taxes are more like a business as usual. And going down, dividends pretty much same. And in terms of financing activities, the cash flow, basically, those CLP 39,000 million are mainly explained because we had to pay in January of this year, CLP 44,000 million in -- related to the hedge -- the settlement of the hedge of the investment in Peru that was ended at the end of 2025, but was paid at the very beginning of January. The year 2025 was the opposite. We were doing the refinancing of our -- part of our liabilities. And so we have this positive impact of CLP 99,000 million. And finally, the green line, you see the net cash flow of this half of the year looks more negative, CLP 112,000 million negative. But if you adjust for the extraordinary inventories, and if you adjust for the payment of the hedge of Peru in January, which is something that was normally of the previous year, the cash flow -- net cash flow for the first half of the year normalized is close to 0. It's even. It's very similar to the one of the last year, which I would say is the organic cash flow. So after financial expenses, after leases, after dividends, what you would expect is having a balanced cash flow for the whole year 2026. That's what we are expecting, which is still positive because also we are expecting a controlled CapEx for the rest of the year. And that would end with a better cash position than the one we're seeing. We're seeing CLP 138,000 million in cash. We are expecting to build up some more cash for the rest of the year. We just got some new very relevant payment settlements that we are both related to the business and related to some financial positions we have. So we are expecting by the end of the year, for sure, a cash position -- just cash, not considering the cross-currency swap of above $230 million, $240 million in cash. So we'll keep a strong cash position, an even stabilized net cash generation. And that means that we will hold these strong levels of at least good levels of liquidity, having not -- we don't see any surprises in net debt-EBITDA ratios or in our net levels of gross debt, net debt. So we should be keeping same ratios and holding our credit risk ratings, hopefully, for the rest of the year. So we don't see any surprises. Finally, the -- what we just saw, just a summary is we're delivering solid growth in revenue, EBITDA and net income, even expanding margins in the margin in a very competitive landscape still. So what we can do is really focusing our profits in B2B, good margins, always assessing efficiencies and also that translate to efficiencies and be managing our CapEx level for the rest of the year. And this disciplined approach will allow us to keep our financial position, which we believe is solid for this industry. And basically, you would expect for the rest of the year some normalization of this, I would say, one-off effects related to the working capital, but I'm confident that this tactic is paying off, and we will see the impacts also in the margins of handsets and for the rest of the year. So in general, it was a good quarter, a positive growth in a very -- still very competitive landscape and with, I would say, positive news in terms of cash flow. Cash flow I'm not going to say it will be positive massively, but still stabilized. And for this industry, that's very good news, and we are building -- continue to build that cash position for the rest of the year. That's it.
Paula Raventos
executiveThank you, Marcelo. Now we will open for questions. As a reminder, you can send it through the chat or in the platform, please. We already have some questions. Okay. So we have some questions from Lydia. Can you give us an update on how mobile competition has been evolving, specifically given the recent changes in players?
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveYes. We can touch that. I mentioned some during my presentation. But basically, we see a lot of competition. I would say, not only in Chile, but also in Peru. Remember that both markets suffered or had change in operators in ownership of the different players or changes in their strategies. In Chile, specifically, I would say that the market is still very competitive. There's a lot of day-to-day tactics and competition related to discounts. Discounts are one of the tools normally operators use to gain traction in the market. Same we are experiencing in Peru. Normally, Peru is normally a very -- is a market that operates a lot with discounts. But in Chile, we see the same -- and that normally implies that you have some commercial strategies, not only for one line but for multiple lines, it's where some companies are targeting more price-sensitive market segments and trying not to erode their customer base. Since this is an industry that needs -- is very capital intensive. Everyone defends their customer base. So you will see in the margin competition in that customer -- those customer base that are more price sensitive, but at the same that are more [ insensitive ], I would say, there are higher churn. So normally, you end up seeing and paying that on time. So we'll see more revolving. We're not directly in that game. We need to focus in our more -- in a customer base that is more -- or values more the quality of the network. It's not really going for the last price of the third or fourth line they have. Normally, they tend to value different things. And we play in that field. We don't play in the margin. We can do some really discounts, but we play in the quality strategy. So the conclusion is the market is still very competitive. I would say it's a little bit more cautious in doing very aggressive permanent discount. Normally, what we see is tactical discounts in certain market segments or in certain customers that tend to be of short-lived basically.
Paula Raventos
executiveNow we have another question. In the past weeks, we have picked up peers lowering prices and restructuring offers from front book plans in Chile. How do you see those moves? How should we expect Entel to respond? Any outlook from the ARPUs? You have already answered part of the question.
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveYes, it's part of the same question. We don't see -- in terms of ARPU, ARPU is expanding aggressively, but at least they're not decreasing. Really, that's important. Also, what we see in the fixed segment, which has the same issue, we've seen a lot of -- even in Chile, one of the players trying to defend their big customer -- fixed customer base other player trying to capture market in fiber coming from -- not for fiber, but they have their customer base that they have to move to fiber. So it has been really interesting. We are playing in that field. And normally, what you see is discounts for different periods, 6 months, a year. So we have to see how that competition evolves. It's normal to see that market movement. We are competing with better quality of TV systems. Basically, we are really happy that we are in the first position in customer experience in terms of quality plus TV. So where our focus is really quality and convergence. But the market is very competitive, especially in fixed, fixed is very competitive.
Paula Raventos
executiveThat is also a regarding question that we have a question. We saw negative EBITDA in the fixed line business widening versus the prior year. When do you expect to reach breakeven in Chile's fixed segment? Can you reiterate CapEx guidance?
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveDo you want to answer that?
Paula Raventos
executiveYes. Regarding the fixed EBITDA, what we are seeing is that we are scaling, we are getting more customers. You saw that we grow in connections or home connected more than 20% during this year. And that means that more scale. We need to pay more leases regarding this scale. So part of that increase is regarding the cost of connections that will still -- we are in an increasing range until we got more scale. So as we've been speaking over other calls, we are expecting to have a breakeven in this business by the year -- by the beginning of the year 2028, while we will have the scale settle with the cost. That is mainly the reason why we saw this negative EBITDA during this period.
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveAnd there are 2 questions, Paula, about CapEx guidance. Just I want to reiterate that. Basically, what we're expecting for the whole year 2026 is consolidated CapEx to revenues in the range of 16% to 17%. Yes. And also, that's for 2026. We don't see a spike, although we're going to start building up the network -- fiber network in Peru, we don't see a spike in 2027, which is also one of the questions. We should remain in the level of 16% to 17%. Even I would say that even in 2027, expanding our network in Peru since we will also have different adjustments in the mobile CapEx, we wouldn't be out of that range. We don't see also in 2026 levels of 15%. We'll be in the range, I would say, of 16%. That's the more 16%, 16.5% in 2027.
Paula Raventos
executiveThe 2 points higher of CapEx that we mentioned in the slide of CapEx was with respect 2025, where we have a 15% CapEx over revenues. So that means that we will -- we are moving from the 15% to this 17% that we are expecting for the end of this year.
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveYes. So it's not 19%.
Paula Raventos
executiveIt's not 19%. Yes.
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveUp to 17% this year, repeat, 16% to 17%. And with a slight reduction, I would expect in 2027. But it's more forward looking. So it's more -- it's harder to assess, but in that range.
Paula Raventos
executiveYes. There's another question regarding cash flow should even out in the second quarter '26, given the lower CapEx in 2026. Should we expect cash flow to go negative in 2027 as CapEx starts ramping up again? Is the CapEx plan subject to the level of competition you encounter?
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveYes. I kind of answered that already. But in summary, given the expansion we expect in EBITDA for 2027, considering better fixed because Chile will be already reducing their negative impact that we have, some negative, but a minor scale in Peru because of the expansion in fiber, but very positive because of the price actions we have taken in Chile this year, some minor tax actions in Peru that have been taken, we expect a positive, what we call the revenue walk continuing for the rest of the year and 2027. So we expect an expansion in EBITDA generation in 2027 with even similar or a little bit lower levels of CapEx compared to this year. That's what I mentioned in the range of 16% to 16.5% for 2027, yes, which is a little bit lower than this year, not very dramatically, but a little bit lower. So we expect at least an even cash generation or profit positive in the margin a little bit but not negative, depending normally on the level of dividends, but we adjust dividend normally on that. And the level of CapEx is not always related to the cash flow. It's more related to the market dynamics normally. But one of my concerns as a CFO is to having a balanced cash flow for the year. So we normally will take a look on efficiencies, not only in OpEx, but also in CapEx. And in CapEx, there are many initiatives that are related to efficiencies just to reduce that level of CapEx for the coming years.
Paula Raventos
executiveYes. There's another question. Should we expect the results acceleration and especially cash flow built during second half of '26 to be used mostly to remunerate shareholders? Or will we see lower net leverage going forward?
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveIt's a good question. We have to see. But normally, we try to balance our financial position or balance position and our shareholders. So I would say it will be a mix. Normally, we try to provide sound and strong dividends to our shareholders. So we don't have, as of now, significant needs in terms of new investments or new debt, for example, so normally, we feel comfortable with the levels of the net debt to EBITDA. We know that organically, just because of the growth in the EBITDA, our EBITDA to -- net debt EBITDA will go down in the coming years from 2.4 we expect in the next 2 years going more in the level of 2, 2.1. So that will go -- that will happen organically. So we don't need necessarily to use those funds to repay debt. So it will be used in a very smart way in the future. But I cannot commit to anything. But normally, we do provide some benefits to our shareholders. But that's something that the shareholders' meeting, we need to approve. It's not me.
Paula Raventos
executiveAlso, we have seen strong activity in handset sales in Chile. Is this largely explained by expanded financing options to clients? Is the credit quality of these clients behaving in line with your projections despite sluggish economic activity in Chile?
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveYes. This is a very interesting question. And what we see is that we have been able to capture a higher chunk of that market against -- this has evolved in time. In the last year, I'm going to talk about the year from now, the last year, I would say we captured market from different retailers. Even from other operators in the industry that were not able to provide a lot of financing because of cash constraints, there were at least one other player that started to ramp up a little bit their cash position allocated to financing, which is very intensive. And just to remember that normally, the average financing term in Chile is 18 months. In Peru, it's 1 year. We do provide financing to certain market segments to up to 36 months. So in that market, even though we know that there are some constraints in terms of disposable income, we have been able to grow and grow very healthy. We have seen since last year, a continued drop in our uncollectible rate and the level of provision we build up, even considering the -- what we call the forward-looking adjustment, which we just performed given the negative adjustment in expectations of economic growth, interest rate, et cetera. So even considering that we expanded a little bit with some initiatives in market segments that have a little bit more risk, even considering that, it's really pay off. It's a low uncollectibles, that's low provisions of collectibles and also very good returns on capital. So that's why we rely on this business. We -- and I always mention this, we have a very strong analytical systems similar to the one that a bank may have that has allowed us to have a very good system of customer onboarding to which we provide what level of line of credit, the term that we provide and which really valves we need to open and close depending on the -- how the market really evolves on time. So this is a very sophisticated because it needs a lot of information, data analytics and being very close to the business, to the front line to really see to which customer are we capturing. And this is a tool we use also to capture more loyal customers that when we provide financing of a kind of expensive handset, normally, those customers tend to remain in Entel. So it's a win-win situation, and we are taking advantage of that.
Paula Raventos
executiveWell, with this, we end this conference call. Thank you so much for joining us today, and we look forward to talking to you in the next days. Thank you so much.
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveThank you.
Paula Raventos
executiveBye-bye.
Marcelo Sáenz
executiveBye.
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