Telecom Argentina S.A. 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Good morning. On behalf of Telecom Argentina, I would like to thank everybody for participating of this conference call. The participants of today's conference call are Roberto Nóbile, Chief Executive Officer, Manuel García Diez, who recently joined Telecom Argentina as Chief Financial Officer and is participating in his first earnings conference call, Federico Pra, Financial Director, and myself, Luis Rial Ubago, Head of Investor Relations. The purpose of this call is to share with you the results of the first half and second quarter ended on June 30 of 2026. If you have not received a press release or presentation, you can call our investor relations office to request the documents or download them from the investor relations section of our website located at inversores.telecom.com.ar. I would like to go over some safe harbor information and other details of the call.

We would like to clarify that during the conference call and Q&A session, we could mention certain forward-looking statements about Telecom's future performance, plans, strategies, and objectives. Such statements are subject to uncertainties that could cause Telecom's actual results and operations to differ materially. Such uncertainties include, but are not limited to the effects of ongoing industry and economic regulations, possible changes in the demand for Telecom's products and services, the effects of potential changes in general market and economic conditions, and in legislation. Our press release dated August 7, 2026, a copy of which was included in our Form 6-K sent to the SEC, described certain factors that may affect any forward-looking statements that could be mentioned during this call.

The company has reflected the effects of the inflation adjustment adopted by Resolution 777/18 of the Comisión Nacional de Valores, or CNV, which establishes that the real expression will be applied to the annual financial statements for interim and special periods ended as of and including December 31 of 2018. Accordingly, the reported figures corresponding to the first half of 2026 included the effects of the adoption of inflationary accounting in accordance with IAS 29. In this presentation, we will also include figures in historical values, which are easier to understand. Our press release is complemented by our earnings presentation. Please read the disclaimer contained on slide one and slide two of this presentation. Today, we will go over our business and financial highlights and end the call with a Q&A session. Now, let me pass the call to Federico, who will start with the presentation.

Thank you, Luis. Good morning and welcome to everyone. Slide three summarize our highlights as of June 2026. Before diving into the main variables and financial highlights, it is important to clarify that throughout this presentation, we are presenting consolidated financials including Telefónica Móviles Argentina, or TMA, acquired on February 24, 2025. As such, in this presentation, we will mention consolidated figures in first half, including full six months of TMA contribution, consolidated figures in the comparative period, first half 2025, including four months of TMA contribution following their acquisition, figures for Telecom only, excluding TMA contribution, and standalone for TMA for the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026. Having said that, our main financial achievements for the first half of 2026 were as follows.

Telecom consolidated revenues totaled over $3.4 billion, up 23% year-over-year in dollars versus first half 2025, while only includes four months of TMA results. On a consolidated basis, service revenues grew 16% year-over-year in constant pesos. Importantly, continuing the real service revenue growth trend we have previously highlighted, service revenues for Telecom, excluding TMA, grew in real terms, posting 2% year-over-year increase in first half 2026. Additionally, Telecom mobile, broadband, and pay TV service revenues have been growing in real terms at a weighted average growth rate of over 5%. Our consolidated EBITDA margin reached 35.8% in first half 2026, expanding by over 580 basis points year-over-year. This notorious improvement includes the effects of the deconsolidation of Microsistemas following the JV with Banco Macro, representing a positive 1.4 percentage points margin impact.

At Telecom, excluding TMA, EBITDA margin reached over 39.7%, continuing to mark one of the highest levels since the merger with Cablevisión in 2018, and would have stood slightly above 40% on an adjusted basis, excluding the impact of higher severance charges during the period. At TMA, standalone EBITDA margin reached 29.3% during the first half 2026 versus 22.9% during first half 2025. The second quarter of 2026 provides an evidence of the efficiency gains for both Telecom and TMA, with both periods reflecting a full quarter TMA contribution, revenues continue to grow with profitability expanded by over 9 percentage points, driving the EBITDA margin from 27.7% on second quarter 2025 to 36.8% second quarter 2026 year-over-year. Consolidated CapEx amounted to over $0.6 billion for the six-month period ended in June 2026, reflecting an intensity of 18.6% of our revenues.

Investments continue to prioritize the expansion for both fixed and mobile access networks, particularly the rollout of our fiber to the home network and 5G infrastructure. Our net debt to EBITDA leverage ratio stood at around 1.36 times in the first half 2026, significantly improving versus the first half 2025, while also extending the average life of our debt to almost five years. In addition to the solid performance of our core business, our digital ecosystem continued to gain scale. Personal Pay reached 6.1 million onboarded clients, up 20% year-over-year. Finally, on regional operations in Paraguay, posted strong results as well during this half. Revenue grew almost 30%, from $102 million to $132 million, while EBITDA increased 37.5%, from $54 million to $74 million year-over-year, reaching an EBITDA margin above 50%.

From slide 4 onwards, we'll take a closer look at the performance of our business, highlighting operational trends, commercial evolution, and the impact of recent acquisitions on key indicators. Slide 5 highlights the positive evolution in real terms of service revenue and ARPU trends, both for Telecom and TMA. It is also important to clarify that Telecom does not determine TMA's pricing strategy. TMA continues to define and implement its own commercial strategy independently, in line with its specific market positioning and operational priorities. On a consolidated basis, total revenues of the first half 2026 amounted to over ARS 5 trillion, increasing 13% in real terms versus the first half 2025, showing a 50% nominal increase. Service revenues have reached almost $3.3 billion, increasing 16% year-over-year in constant pesos.

Excluding the contribution from TMA, total service revenues grew by almost 2% year-over-year in real terms, reflecting a solid commercial execution. Trends continue to be solid across our connectivity and entertainment products under the brand Personal. Mobile, broadband, and Pay TV services revenue have been growing in real terms at a weighted average growth rate of over 5%, while on TMA standalone basis, the same services recorded a weighted average real growth of approximately 2% year-over-year. It is worth noting that our year-over-year comparison is impacted by the fact that first half 2025 included only four months of TMA contributions, while the first half 2026 reflects the full semester of consolidated results. TMA, on a standalone basis, reported service revenue of over ARS 1.2 million in the first half 2026, remaining broadly stable in real terms compared to the previous year.

In US dollar terms, ARPU performs varied across segments. Mobile ARPU delivered a strong growth up to 29% year-over-year for Telecom, excluding TMA, and 11% for TMA. Broadband ARPU grew 5% and 10% respectively, while Pay TV ARPU was broadly stable, up 9% for Telecom, excluding TMA, and flat for TMA. Overall, these trends are consistent with our continuous focus on value management across the portfolio. Slide 6 shows the evolutions of our products, where we continue to observe growth in most segments of our subscriber base. For Personal, in the mobile segment, prepaid accesses reached 11.4 million in the first half 2026, down 10.1% year-over-year. This decline was mainly due to the shorter reactivity period required to deactivate dormant prepaid lines, which led to the disconnection of low traffic lines primarily during last year, with no impact on mobile service revenues.

In turn, postpaid decreased 2.5% year-over-year, but increased 1% versus the first quarter 2026, reaching a subscriber base slightly above 8 million accesses. The participation of postpaid subscribers over the total mobile subscriber base is currently 41% of our total mobile base, up to 39% in the first half 2025. Additionally, the mobile segment continues to deliver solid top-line performance, with Personal's mobile revenues, excluding TMA, growing about 8% year-over-year. In broadband, we have observed growth driven mainly by higher FTTH adoption. Our subscriber base has registered an increase of 2.7% year-over-year, reaching about 4.2 million accesses in the first half 2026. FTTH now represents 36% of our Personal fiber broadband base, with more than 1.5 million accesses supported by the acceleration of our fiber rollout.

In Pay TV, our Flow platform continues with a good performance, as Personal Flow Pay TV accesses has grown year-over-year. Personal Flow's subscriber base in Argentina has grown 6.6% year-over-year, reaching 3.4 million accesses, reflecting an improvement in real terms of net adds, mostly due to the strong performance during the World Cup as heightened demand for sports content boosted subscriptions and engagement. During the first half 2026, Personal Flow's unique customer reached 1.9 million, increasing by over 270,000 total clients or 17% when compared to the same period in the first half 2025. TMA provided figures have shown solid results across its core segments, particularly mobile and broadband. In mobile, we have seen strong growth in postpaid customers with an increase of 2.8% year-over-year, reaching almost 9.6 million postpaid accesses. Postpaid customers represent 49% of TMA total mobile base.

These figures, including machine-to-machine connections for more than 3 million accesses, increased by 9% versus the first half of 2025. In broadband, TMA continues to demonstrate a solid expansion. Broadband accesses grew by 4.6% year-over-year, reaching more than 1.6 million accesses. Approximately 97% of TMA's broadband customer base is on an FTTH technology. In Pay TV, continued to show solid growth, with the subscriber base increasing 6.5%, reaching over 435,000 subscribers, also affected positively by the FIFA World Cup event. When combining the evolution of both Telecom and TMA subscriber bases, we observe an overall growth across key segments. Broadband shows a combined growth of 3.2% and Pay TV 6.6%. Mobile subscribers for the combined businesses showed a slight decrease overall, mainly driven by the prepaid segment, which declined 5.8%, while postpaid continued to grow up to 0.3%.

Moving on to slide seven, we continue to deliver strong profitability improvements across the businesses. Consolidated EBITDA margin expanded to 35.8% in the first half 2026, up to 30% in the first half 2025. Excluding TMA, Telecom reached 40.5% EBITDA margin in the second quarter of 2026, reflecting the continued execution of our efficiency initiatives. At the same time, TMA margins improved, reaching almost 30% in the second quarter 2026. Both Telecom and TMA achieved record EBITDA margin levels in second Q 2026. As both companies continue executing efficiency initiatives, this reinforces the opportunity for further value creation as TMA progressively converge towards the Telecom's profitability levels. Slide eight shows the evolution of EBITDA year-over-year and the impact of the different components of revenues and costs.