Telecom Argentina - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 2

Good morning. On behalf of Telecom Argentina, I would like to thank everybody for participating in this conference call. Participants of today's conference call are Roberto Daniel Nóbile, Chief Executive Officer, Gabriel Blasi, Chief Financial Officer, and myself, Luis F. Rial Ubago, Manager of Investor Relations. The purpose of this call is to share with you the results of the six-month period and second quarter ending on June 30, 2024. 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 inversorestelecom.com. 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 Argentina's future performance, plans, strategies, and objectives.

Such statements are subject to uncertainties that could cause Telecom Argentina's actual results and operations to differ materially. Such uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the effects on ongoing industry and economic regulations, possible changes in the demand for Telecom Argentina's products and services, the effects of potential changes in general market and our economic conditions, and in legislation. Our press release dated August 12, 2024, a copy of which was included in a Form 6-K and sent to the ASCC, describes 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 re-expression will be applied to the annual financial statement for intermediate and special periods ending as of and including December 31, 2018.

Accordingly, the reported figures pertaining to the first half of 2024 include 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 in 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 Gabriel, the CFO, who will start with the presentation.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Luis. Good morning and welcome to everyone. Moving to slide three, it summarizes our highlights as of June 30, 2024. Our main operational and financial achievements were our EBITDA margin for the first six months of the year was 29.7%. Thanks to our effective cost management and pricing strategy, we were able to improve our margins on a year-over-year basis despite the challenging macroeconomic environment. In the first half of 2024, our CAPEX was approximately $246 million, equivalent to 13% of our revenues. The current focus of our CAPEX is on the expansion of our fixed and mobile access network, focusing on our fixed fiber to the home network and 5G in mobile. Due to the real appreciation of the peso observed during the first half of 2024, we registered a net income profit of 859 billion pesos, associated with real exchange gains included in our financial results.

This is mostly generated by the effect of the macro variables over our debt in U.S. dollars. Our mobile subscriber base continues to grow, increasing over 3% year over year. Mobile usage of that data measured in average monthly gigabytes per user has grown 18%. In broadband, our fiber to the home accesses keep growing rapidly, and during the last quarters, they have contributed to increase our customer base, while our HFC network has remained mostly stable. Additionally, we have achieved a growth on broadband ARPU above inflation for the year-over-year period. Flowing unique customers reach almost 1.5 million, increasing 11% over year. Additionally, our Pay-TV business continues to grow in Paraguay. Our fintech Personal Pay continues to grow, reaching almost 3 million onboarded clients as of June 2024 and achieving a relevant market position.

During the first half of 2024, we registered a strong improvement in our financial net debt/EBITDA ratio, indicating a reduction of the relative leverage and highlighting the company's strong resilience to FX volatility. Finally, during July 2024, we have returned to international debt capital markets with successful note issuance due 2031 for $500 million. Investor support for this transaction was very important as we reached a total amount of offers of over $1.3 billion, underlining the strong credit quality of the company. Additionally, we executed two liability management transactions, a tender offer for our 2025 notes and an exchange offer for our 2026 notes. We will provide a commentary afterwards. Slide four shows the company figures for 2024. Telecom Argentina's revenues total almost $1.83 billion.

Revenues measured in constant pesos decreased 13% year over year, improving the trend registered during the previous quarter and registering growth in real terms of 5.6% quarter over quarter. Our EBITDA amounted to $1,543 million, equivalent during the first half of 2024, while the EBITDA margin increased 1.3% points versus the same period of 2023. Telecom Argentina's mobile subscribers in Argentina amounted to 21.2 million, increasing more than 578,000 when compared to 2023. Broadband and Pay-TV clients have totaled 4.1 million and 3.3 million, respectively. Fixed voice subscribers considering IP telephone lines amount to 2.8 million during 2024. Our regional operations remain very solid. We are the second most important player in the mobile market in Paraguay and in the Pay-TV market in Uruguay, with 2.4 million and 117,000, respectively. Slide five shows our pricing strategy during 2024.

The accumulated inflation in Argentina for the first half of 2024 was 79.7%, while year-over-year inflation as of June reached 272%. We continue to adjust prices on a monthly basis during the first half of 2024. Even in a context where year-over-year inflation remains high, we managed to have a positive evolution of our service revenues in real terms quarter over quarter. They have grown 3.5% above inflation versus the first quarter of 2024. Additionally, due to our successful pricing strategy, we have observed an important recovery of ARPUs in US dollars in most segments, where broadband and fixed voice have reached growth above the levels as of June 2023. It is important to highlight that we are also focused on minimizing the stress that price adjustments generate over our subscriber base. In that sense, we also perform retention actions, mainly discounts and promotions granted to our clients.

Slide six shows the evolution of our products. As mentioned before, our pricing strategy has yielded positive results in terms of the evolution of our subscriber base. In our mobile segment, we have observed a total increase of more than 578,000 subscribers, representing an increase of 2.8% year over year. This was mainly related to the good performance of our prepaid segment, where we registered a stronger customer recharge rate. We managed to increase our subscriber base for the seventh quarter in a row. Our postpaid participation over the total mobile subscribers is currently 38% of our total mobile customer base. In broadband, we have observed growth in FTTH accesses, while our HFC accesses have remained relatively steady. Our broadband subscriber base has registered a more decreased year over year, where we are focusing on retaining our subscribers in a challenging economic and competitive environment.

In turn, we have observed a reduction in the XDSL accesses, which we are migrating to FTTH. FTTH currently represents 18% of our total subscriber base in broadband. In Pay-TV, our Flow platform continues to perform well, and our Pay-TV accesses have remained steady quarter over quarter. In the second quarter of 2024, Flow's unique customers reached almost 1.5 million, increasing by 141,000 total clients, or 11% when compared to the same period in 2023. We observed a good performance for our Flowflex product, which currently represents around 6% of our Pay-TV subscriber base. Pay-TV subscriber base trend continues with a similar evolution as of the previous quarter, with an improvement in terms of net ads as of the end of the second quarter.

Our fixed voice segment continues to register a reduction in accesses, mainly in our traditional fixed copper network, which we are replacing partially with the new IP telephony accesses over our HFC and FTTH networks. Slide seven shows the breakdown of our revenues. Service revenues total over ARS 1.3 trillion, decreasing 12% in real terms versus the first half of 2023, showing a 235% nominal increase, mostly due to the price adjustment we performed. Our revenue breakdown as of June 2024 shows an increase in the participation of fixed and data services when compared to June 2023, mainly explained by the growth observed in data services in foreign currency, mostly corresponding to our B2B segment. During the first half of 2024, the participation of revenues in foreign currency, including our subsidiaries, over total revenues was 20%.

Mobile represents 40% of the revenues, while broadband and Pay-TV add up to almost another 40%. The rest is composed of fixed telephony and data revenues, representing 13% of our revenues, and equipment sales finally represent 6.8%. During this quarter, we have managed to increase our revenues in real versus the first quarter of 2024 in our three most important segments: mobile, broadband, and Pay-TV, reaching growth of 4%, 9%, and 2%, respectively. Slide eight shows our regional operations. Our operation in Paraguay continues with a good performance. We come with 2.4 million mobile customers, which have grown 5% year over year. Our fixed broadband and Pay-TV offering in that country also continues to show good results. Our broadband and Pay-TV subscribers amounted to 297,000 and 110,000 subscribers, growing 17% and 10% year over year, respectively. Personal Pay clients in Paraguay amounted to 291,000.

This operation has a strong EBITDA margin of 54%, while remaining almost at level, with a negative net debt/EBITDA ratio of -0.32 times. Our operation in Uruguay is currently focused on Pay-TV, and we have 117,000 Pay-TV customers there. We have a potential to grow in the global broadband market as we are obtaining licenses to offer these services in certain locations in the country.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Gabriel. Beyond our regional operations and core business, we are growing in the fintech business in Argentina through our digital wallet, Personal Pay, which currently counts with more than 2.9 million onboarded clients. We launched this business in 2022, and in an industry with exponential growth, we already have a relevant market position. In this sense, as of June 2024, the total payment volume of Personal Pay has multiplied by 61 times, while the total payment number has multiplied by 21 times in comparison with the figures as of June 2023. Moreover, as of June 2024, the digital wallet counts with funds invested from its clients in mutual funds for $311 billion pesos. This positions our fintech as the second most important in terms of clients' account balances in the market. In slide nine, we provide an overview of our main financial figures.

Consolidated revenues grew by 229% in nominal terms during 2024, reaching almost $1.4 trillion pesos. When analyzing said figure adjusted by inflation, revenues amounted to almost $1.7 trillion pesos, showing a decrease of 13% in real terms versus the same figure in 2023. We increased our prices, but we also focused on maintaining our subscriber base. In this sense, the lag versus inflation in our revenues is explained, among others, by the effect of certain discounts and promotions we grant after price adjustments to retain our customers in a strong competitive environment. This lag has been reduced during this quarter, as we achieved growth of our revenues in real terms quarter over quarter. EBITDA increased by 265% year over year in nominal terms, generating a nominal EBITDA margin of 32.2% during 2024. In turn, EBITDA margin in real terms was almost 30%.

In June 2024, we reached the fifth quarter in a row, maintaining or increasing our quarterly margin compared to the same period the year before. This is a good indicator that our pricing and cost management strategies are guiding us in the right direction, and in this sense, we were successful in improving the operational profitability of the company. Slide 10 shows the evolution of EBITDA year over year and the impact of different components of revenues and costs. During the first half of 2024, the company was able to contain the pressure coming from inflation in most of its cost lines, and this has contributed to generating an expansion of the EBITDA margin versus the same period of the previous year. The main expansion factors were the following: in terms of labor costs, we observed that in average during this half, salaries have increased below inflation.

Salaries have started to decouple versus inflation since December 2023, and this has contributed positively to our EBITDA margin. We registered good performance additionally in commission and advertising costs, mostly due to our reduction of commercial agents and collections commissioning, and to some other items such as flat debt, which has reduced from 2.5% of sales as of the first half of 2023 to 2.1% in the first half of 2024. Concept costs were also lower due to the lower quantity of devices sold. Slide 11 shows the company's net results and EBITDA. Our EBITDA increased in the first half of 2024 as we registered lower DNA expenses. The operating margin during the first half of 2024 was -3.7% of consolidated revenues, and in historical figures, the same margin was 25.6%.

Due to the result of high inflation and stable effects during the first half of 2024, the company had a net income of $859 million pesos. These results are financially in nature. The strong appreciation experienced by the peso in real terms during the first half generated positive results, mainly in connection with our financial debt denominated in foreign currency. This led to positive exchange differences in real terms, which amounted to $1,400 billion pesos during the first half of 2024. Slide 12 displays a summary of the company's CAPEX in PP&E and intangible assets during 2024, which amounted to almost $225 billion pesos, or an equivalent of $246 million at the official effects rate. This amount is 2% lower when compared to the previous year in constant pesos.

In turn, our consolidated amount of CAPEX for the first half of 2024 represented 13.5% of our revenues, increasing versus the same period of the previous year. Technical CAPEX was mainly composed by investments in our asset memory and technology, representing 49% of the CAPEX during the first half of 2024. During the first half of 2024, 44 new mobile sites were deployed, while other 606 existing sites were operating. We are advancing in the rollout of 5G. We count with over 100 5G sites working in a 3.5 GHz band, and we expect to count with 200 sites as of the end of 2024. We are essentially adding 5G equipment to our existing sites, while additionally targeting the mainly populated cities of Argentina for our first stage of deployment.

In our fixed access network, we increased the deployment of new fiber to the home over 4,300 new lots, including the overlay of our HFC network. We also improved the upstream capacity of our HFC network by 7,000 lots. Approximately 40% of our CAPEX for the first half of 2024 was allocated to installations and customer premise equipment, or CPE, which are installations and equipment in the homes of our clients, and 12% to our international operations. Slide 13 describes our cash flow generation during 2024 compared with the same period of 2023. Our cash flow generation remained robust. It has been affected mostly by an increase in working capital needs due to the normalization of our commercial landlord financing after the restrictions to access the official FX market observed during 2023.

The remaining components measured in US dollar terms have experienced little variation versus the first half of 2023, and this is good news since the huge devaluation of the FX that occurred in December of 2023. Our cash flow generation before dividends and interest payments was equivalent to $151 million. Slide 14 shows for CAPEX for 2024. A conversion to US dollars is obtained dividing the figures in constant pesos at the end of each period and using the end of period spot FX for each year. Our gross debt amounted to $2.8 billion as of June 30, 2024. As of June 2024, the company holds cash and equivalents for $411 million, and thus our net debt was about $2.4 billion. We have built a liquidity reserve in US dollar denominated sovereign bonds, which was partially applied to cancel local short-term loans.

EBITDA for the last 12 months at the end of the first half of 2024, using the aforementioned conversion method for figures in pesos to US dollars, was equivalent to more than $1 billion. Last 12 months EBITDA as of June 2024 in US dollars increased by 52% as with the same figure as of December 2023. This important increase shows that the company has the ability to recover its operational profitability in US dollars and that it is resilient to FX depreciation. In slide 15, we give more insight regarding the impact of the macroeconomic situation on our figures and net debt. After the huge devaluation occurred by the end of 2023, our main figures, among others, revenues and EBITDA experienced a decrease when measured in US dollars. Because of this, our net debt/EBITDA ratio increased temporarily.

Thanks to our effective pricing policy and the FX stabilization, we have been able to increase our main figures measured in dollar terms. Our EBITDA for the last 12 months as of June 2024 was equivalent to almost $1.1 billion, where our net debt was $2.4 billion. In this sense, the net debt/EBITDA ratio as of June 2024 was 2.2 times, practically in line with levels observed before the December 2023 devaluation. Slide 16 shows the breakdown of our financial debt. Our total outstanding debt principal, as of June 2024, amounted to more than $2.7 billion. We currently have a very manageable maturity profile. We have access to the official FX exchange rate market for all of our maturities scheduled according to our current central bank regulations. In fact, on August 6, we have made the scheduled amortization payments for 2025 notes.

This was one of our main cross-border maturities for the year. The remainder maturities for this year are substantially lower. In this sense, we expect to continue accessing the local capital markets for our potential financing needs during this year, as we have been doing lately. Let me pass the call to Gabriel, who will continue with the presentation.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Luis. We'll present a summary of the liability management transactions we conducted during July and August and the impact over our maturity profile. The credit quality of the company was made clear through the issuance of our 2031 notes. We managed to issue a sizable US dollar denominated quote of over $500 million, with yield below the 9.7% yield with an interest throughput of 9.5%. In fact, investor support was high, and the total amount of offering was about $1.3 billion. The main use of proceeds for this issuance will be the repayment of certain multilateral loans with IDB and IFC, and the payment of the considerations for the tender offer of the 2025 notes. This means that this transaction will be debt neutral and will significantly improve our maturity profile. Moreover, this transaction was launched in connection with two other liability management operations.

A tender offer for our 2025 notes, which concluded with a principal amount tender post-amortization factor of $19.8 million. After having made the payment of the principal amortization on August 6, $112.4 million remained outstanding. An exchange offer of our 2026 notes for our 2031 notes, the principal amount tendered by the early participation date and accepted for exchange was $115.3 million. This reduces the amount of maturity for 2026 and extends them over 2029, 2030, and 2031. Additionally, we issued the local dollar link notes for $81.3 million and $33.7 million, with the use of almost 2.9% and 1.5% respectively. This has contributed to extend our local short-term debt to a range of between 1.5 and two years, with a very convenient cost of financing.

All these operations taken together have yielded an improvement in terms of our maturity profile, and we estimate that we will be extending the average life of our debt to three years, while additionally improving the total cost of our debt. Finally, in slide 18, we conclude with some financial remarks and highlights for this period. We achieved an expansion of our EBITDA margin in a challenging context. We managed to grow our customer base in mobile and stabilize our broadband and Pay-TV customer bases in a very competitive environment. Our fintech Personal Pay is currently a relevant market player, with almost 3 million subscribers and the second most important player in terms of remunerated account balances. We have shown resiliency in terms of our business model, with a strong recovery on top of line and EBITDA figures, despite high FX depreciation and inflation.

The company's financial management continues on the right front. We have a solid and stable free cash flow generation before dividends and interest payments, generating between $400 million and higher than $500 million annually during the last years, considering ordinary CAPEX for each year. Our cash position is strong and is mostly denominated in U.S. dollars, allowing us to lower the peso volatility risk. Finally, through the liability management transaction we discussed, we improve our maturity schedule, extending the average life of our debt, and what is more, we improve our financing cost. Thank you, Gabriel. With this, now we are more than pleased to answer any questions you may have. However, before we start, we would like to remind you how you can address your questions during the Q&A session, which we will open immediately.

Please use the raise hand button to let us know that you want to formulate a question. We will let you know when it's your turn to speak, and we will unmute you so you can proceed with your question. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Hi, we have a question from Marcelo Santos from JP Morgan. Marcelo, we will unmute you so you can proceed with your question. Thank you.

Roberto, Gabriel, Luis. Thanks for the opportunity. I have two questions related to margins. The first is on the consolidated margins. When you look at the margins on a year-over-year basis, they had a great expansion. When you look on a quarter-over-quarter basis, they declined a bit. I wanted to understand this a little bit better because this is the first quarter that you post a sequential increase in real revenues for a while. I think it would be more natural to expect a bit of margin expansion. Are there some seasonal factors that somehow pressure margins or some specifics? Just wanted to understand a bit better. The second question is on Paraguay's margin. I think there was a strong year-over-year improvement in the margins. Just wanted to understand better the factors that are driving this improvement. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Okay. Thanks for the question. Starting the first part of the question, I don't have a single answer. In fact, what happens is a mixture of different effects, Marcelo. Number one is that we have some type of seasonality. If you look at what happens to our margins on a yearly basis, you will see that typically we start with margins on the upper part of the curve, and then they slowly came down. That would be like the normal situation. In this case, on top of that, you have the effect of inflation that during the period has moved very differently. We started with a much higher inflation, and the drop has been very significant.

The relative effect of this drop, remember what we always say regarding how the company behaves on the high inflation environment and on the drop, that has helped a lot in terms of improving the margin. That's why you also see a very significant change between quarters because during the first quarter, inflation was two digits, and the second quarter, we had an inflation of one digit. Now at present, inflation continues to drop below even 5%. Maybe we don't, and this is just to give you some color, we don't think that inflation would probably drop to zero. There is some resistance on the core inflation, and it's more likely to stabilize on the 2%, 3% area. We expect that our margin generation will be more normalized from now to the end of the year.

I understand that this has not been for sure very clear on the explanation over the phone, but I offer if you want, we can do a separate call, and we can dig in the details to make you get a better understanding of what happened on a quarterly basis.

Speaker 2

Sorry, Gabriel. I would add, thank you, Marcelo, for the question. This is Roberto. There are several, I would say, important projects that have to do with our backend modernization that were achieved by the end of last year. All the Salesforce implementation, we finalized that project in December of last year. We have started to have the outcomes of having all our B2C customer base in one site, one building, one way of contacting us. We have increased our digitalization. We have 60% of our contacts that are going through our own digital platform. There are a lot of outcomes that are coming from this type of modernization that we have done during the last years. We are reducing the amount of hours that we are buying from our contact centers. We are increasing our digital contacts.

These are the type of things that are really improving our margins despite any seasonal thing. Going back to the seasonal thing, if you take a look into the first quarter of 2023 and you compare it to the first quarter of this year, usually in the previous years, we would increase prices in January and then wait two or three months and then start increasing again. That type of things would make the first quarter look much better than the rest because we were increasing a lot in January. Since April of 2023, we started increasing prices every month on a monthly basis. There is no seasonal thing. There's a pass-through of inflation. We are trying to do the pass-through to inflation as fast as we can. We are going on a monthly basis. We are trying to get rid of any seasonal thing that we used to have.

I don't know if I was clear. Marcelo, can you please repeat the second part of the question, please?

Sure. Thank you for the first answer. The second part is Paraguay had a very nice margin increase on a year-over-year basis. I just wanted to understand what are the key elements driving this margin improvement.

What is driving the margins are the broadband business. We have achieved 35% of market share. We are still growing. That is a whole new revenue stream that is adding to our P&L. Of course, it's expanding our EBITDA generation. Despite that, we have been able to, on the mobile side, compress costs and increase margins as well. It's a mix between the mobile situation where we are very stable and the improvement on the fiber to the home business. Thanks. We are going to the next question from Ernesto Gonzalez from Morgan Stanley. Ernesto, we will unmute you so you can proceed. Thanks.

It's on your outlook for the second half, if you could discuss a little bit on any resistance that you expect from customers on potential price increases, and overall any color that you can provide on your expectations for the second half. Thank you.

Roberto, I don't know if you want to proceed or I can answer. I can start if you want, and you can.

Speaker 0

Okay.

Speaker 2

Sorry for the misunderstanding, but we are in different locations. That's why we are talking on live. July and August are very, very good months. I would say that they are on the same trend as the first half. We are working heavily on the sizing of the company, and that is something that you will probably see the results by the next quarter. That means that we are preparing the company for 2025 to be in good shape to keep on competing. On the revenue side, the slowdown of inflation rates helps to softland our customers' expectations and our customer needs. We have also launched a new promotion that sets the price for the next until the end of the year.

That price is calculated in a way that it will give the customer enough observability or expectation on what the price will be month by month, but will also give us the chance of keeping on increasing our ARPUs by the end of the year. There's a mixture. We are seeing customers slowing down their requests for promotions. That's a very good sign, and I think it will keep stable until the end of the year. Okay. Okay. We will move to our next question coming from.

Speaker 0

I'm sorry. No, you also asked for some view in terms of our expectations for the rest of the year. I think I say something related to that on the prior question. As I mentioned, we foresee a reduction in inflation. Maybe, although the government is pursuing reaching a zero monthly inflation, probably that is not going to happen. It's difficult, but we think that it's likely that we are going to have a milder inflation in the range of with a floor of 2%. That gives you some better color on what type of scenario we are foreseeing. Also, and this is an interesting piece of data, if you consider, for instance, delinquency rates, what is happening in our services, our delinquency rates today are among the lowest in the history of the company. Of course, we have improved our practices.

We have added a lot of intelligence in what we are doing in terms of collection and in terms of trade scoring. It's very interesting that in this environment, those rates are low. Another aspect that I would like to stress that might give you some color, and we may have a lot of discussion if it is a predictor or not, is that the consumption of prepaid phones has increased significantly. We have grown in our portfolio. We have grown in prices and we have in usage. This is also, I think, a good indicator, meaning that maybe not in a general way, but we are foreseeing some small green lights that allow us to be cautiously optimistic about the closing of the year.

Speaker 2

Okay. With that, we will move to our next question coming from Lorena Reid from Lucro Analytics. Lorena, we will unmute you so you can proceed with your question. Thanks. Lorena, I don't know if you are there.

Speaker 0

Yes, we can hear you.

Sorry about that.

Speaker 2

No, it's all right.

Good afternoon, everyone. My question is a bit related to the previous one because it's on prices. Given the removal of the cap on price increases, I was wondering what's the expectation for price increases going forward and if you expect a positive impact on profitability because of that, or you see that given the strong competitive environment in the industry, that's not going to happen. You've been doing a great job at reducing costs to keep very good profitability in spite of the price cap. Given this news, do you see any changes going forward?

Speaker 0

Maybe, Lorena, there is some type of misunderstanding. What has happened on the legal front is that the decree 690, which was an intention of the past administration to regulate prices in the sector, has been declared new by the Supreme Court, by the Appellation Court, gives you the idea that this relieves the ability of the company of increasing prices. This situation never took place in terms of a restriction because the legal measure that the company took about two years ago always allowed us to do so. Really, although the past administration intended to put some type of cap to the price increase, it never was binding for the industry as a whole. Having said that, what is driving our pricing policy is related to the evolution of our portfolio. As we have seen, we have been growing very positively on the mobile.

We keep a stable portfolio on the broadband and on TV with minor movements up and down. Yes, we have a downtrend on the fixed telephone as everywhere in the world. I would say we don't expect a significant change to that.

Speaker 2

Okay, we will move with another question coming from Mariano Andrade from Clave Capital. Mariano, we will unmute you, and you can ask your question. Thanks.

Thank you very much. Hello, everybody. Two points I would like to clarify. One is when you mentioned the comparison of cash flows, first half 2023 against first half 2024. If I'm not mistaken, you mentioned that part of the there was a component of not accessing foreign capital. I don't know if I picked that up correctly, but if you could clarify. The second point is to what extent do you intend to do further liability management for the maturities of 2024, 2025, and 2026, which appear to be the heaviest commitments you have to honor. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Jeff, I will answer. Maybe I am not quite sure if I understood properly the first part of the question, but I'll do my best. Regarding restrictions, what happened was that the last administration established, between the different types of restrictions on the foreign exchange market, didn't allow the companies to pay for their imports. A certain commercial debt was accumulated in Argentina as a whole. That debt was in the range of $35 billion. During the last part of last year, we began to have restrictions to pay our imports as part of the local systems, of course. Having said that, when this administration took office, they changed that. By the month of February, they established a mechanism allowing the company to pay those creditors by the acquisition of specific bonds that were issued for that purpose, the name Bob Real. The company went to that system.

We acquired with pesos those bonds. Our total outstanding originally was $200 million. At present, we have something in the range of $60 million pending negotiation, the process that you get in a negotiation with the supplier, or you may give them the bonds directly. They are dollar denominated, or you can sell the bonds, and we can sell the bond against dollars and pay for the dollars. All the difference between the present outstanding of $60 million, about $600 million. Yes, I forgot. Okay, $600 million. And the $200 million originally was already fully paid with no loss for the company, meaning that no additional cost was paid for this. We simply get the bonds, and we give those bonds to the suppliers. How that was possible? These negotiations have like three different brackets or groups.

One is the group of suppliers that we are constantly making transactions with, that we are acquiring, and we have a very fluent relationship. That's part of the business. Everybody understands what it entails to do business in Argentina from time to time. The second group of suppliers might be more precise or with other types of considerations. We've been, I will say, debating with them and reaching a final agreement. Up to now, no price difference was paid by Telecom Argentina. The third group was the group that when we did the imports, which was probably the group of imports that were established in the last part of the year, the restrictions were already in place. Everybody had a clear picture, and it was already established in the original transaction what was going to happen in case the government didn't comply because the restriction was already there.

The good news, in brief, is that the situation is almost completely solved. It will be solved by the end of the month, and we don't expect any significant outcome on that. That explains mainly the most relevant variation of working capital that you can see in our figures because of this. The second part of the question regarding the liability management, the company has a very active position in terms of dealing with its debt book. We have stabilized it completely about something in the range of two years ago, or even more, probably three, with minor movements. The reason why we started to do liability management is that we want to orderly begin to change the structure of the debt and to gain tenor and decrease costs. That was what happened.

The company, about a third of our debt, typically like in the range of $1 billion prior to this liability management, is multilateral debt with different types of loans. All of them are floating, are pre-cancelable loans. Then we have about a third of the debt is local debt in the local capital market, which has been issued during the last two years at minus something, in average, minus 10% rate dollar adjusted. The last issuance is you have them in the presentation. The rate has been, or the yield has been in the range of 2% and 3%. That debt, we continue to use that debt as a way of taking advantage of the surplus of pesos that we have in the market. We cannot think that that situation will last forever as the monetary policy normalizes and the Banco Central is getting more rational and more logical.

All the rates are going to align, and the surplus of pesos is going to be replaced by a more healthy demand on credit, which is slowly happening. That's why the rate of those loans from minus 10% now are in the range of 2%, just to give you some color. It was a good practice to tap into the market and do this liability management, reducing the maturities as you have in the presentation for the next two years. Was there an urgency to do that? Probably not, but we think that if we can do it timely, we are going to provide a good environment for our investors to keep everybody happy and with the exposure that the company has. Some additional color that I can add on this is that we have a very good participation.

We were offered $1.3 billion of total consideration, and more than half of the money that we received was real money, which is very positive. It is also important to address that we have a very strong investor base that really follows the company and that this transaction not only allowed us to increase our tenor about one year and a half, but also we have a reduction in the total cost of debt of the company in the range of 25 basis points, meaning that our interest charge has also lowered. You might think that as Argentina becomes in better shape and the conditions get better, we might continue to gain the market as a part. Also, important to address for our investor base is that the company listed a shelf registration program that allowed us to issue securities in the United States at any moment of any type.

That also gives us a lot of flexibility. Taking into consideration that we have a very important individual base or private banking base of investors, it also gives us a lot of flexibility to go with the different outcomes that the market might provide, not only because of Argentina, but also because of international volatility as a whole.

Speaker 2

As we don't have any more questions, thank you very much for participating in our quarterly conference call. Please do not hesitate to contact Investor Relations for any further inquiries you may have. Good morning or good afternoon to all, and have all a nice day.