TIM - Q1 2024
May 7, 2024
Transcript
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to TIM S.A. 2024 first quarter results video conference call. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded, and all participants will be in listen-only mode during the company's presentation. There will be a replay for this call on the company's website. After TIM S.A. remarks are completed, there will be a Q&A session for participants. At that time, further instructions will be given.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to TIM S.A.'s earnings conference for the first quarter of 2024. Thank you for joining us. I'm Vicente Ferreira, Head of Investor Relations. Today, we will share our highlights on video and then begin our live Q&A session with our CEO, Alberto Griselli, and our CFO, Andrea Viegas. Before we discuss our results, I remind you that management may make forward-looking statements, and this presentation may contain them. Please refer to the disclaimer on the screen, which will also be available in our earnings materials and in our investor relations website. With that, we move to our results.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Hello to everyone. I'm Alberto Griselli, CEO of TIM Brazil. I'm very satisfied that we started 2024 at a solid pace. We are reaping the benefits of a well-designed plan and a sharp execution. We continue to see a healthy mobile market supporting a more for more strategy. We are taking advantage of favorable market dynamics to develop our three Bs approach further and deliver solid results across the board. We have a solid above-inflation expansion in service revenues, growing above 7% year-on-year. With costs under control, our EBITDA grew double-digit, and the margin expanded by more than 100 basis points. Our proxy for operating free cash flow reached a record high for a first quarter, growing approximately 60% year-over-year. These solid financial results are accompanied by consistent improvement in our services, offering innovation and a consistent development of our infrastructure.
5G rollout continues to be the main focus of our network strategy. As I mentioned, our best service, best network, and best offer are at the core of our strategy and serve as the foundation for building the best value proposition. Consequently, we continue to work on these three fronts. Still, we are also intensify the activities related to convincing clients and potential clients of the transformations we are implementing at the company. During the first quarter, in the best service category, we consolidated our efforts to improve customers' experience with several achievements, as, for example, the efficiency award from the Consumer Protection Agency of São Paulo, reminding you all that it's now almost a year that TIM is the only company in Brazil to have received such important recognition.
In Best Network, we expanded our 5G coverage, increasing the number of cities, and more importantly, broadening the coverage inside the cities for a better experience. In March, we were recognized by Opensignal as the operator with the best reliability experience in Brazil. Besides consolidating our number one position in network quality. In Best Offer, we boosted our in-flight connectivity package, adding support for streaming services. We combine all these initiatives and others to deliver the best value proposition in the market to help change customer perception and improve brand recognition. This is a long process, and it is challenging, but it is the only way to achieve our aspiration of becoming Brazil's preferred mobile operator. Gradually and consistently, things are moving in the right direction.
In mobile, we saw improvements in postpaid churn with a rate of 0.8% per month in the first quarter, which reflects improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. At the same time, postpaid net additions total 415,000 new lines with a solid sequential improvements quarter by quarter, while migration for prepaid to postpaid increased by 11%. Total ARPU expanded close to 9% year-over-year, surpassing the BRL 30 mark. Maintaining the value strategy with improvements in volume, we were able to process solid growth in mobile service revenues of 7.4% in the quarter. Our B2B endeavors continue to evolve fast. We are now putting all our efforts under the umbrella of a TIM IoT solution brand. To start on the right foot, we launched the first offer in partnership with CNH Industrial, bundling our connectivity with Case Smart Machinery.
We also closed a large partnership with BP Bunge. As for fixed broadband, we are performing well despite a very tough environment. Our revenues grew more than 9% year-over-year, while our base increased by more than 10%. We maintained the focus on the right balance between growth and profitability, and this is how we build the next generation TIM bit by bit.
Andrea Viegas (CFO)
Hello, everyone. I'm Andrea Viegas, CFO of TIM. Alberto already pointed to solid and consistent results. The implementation of our plan is bearing fruit as the long-term benefits of the consolidation become increasingly clear. In the first quarter, the top line grew 7.3% year-on-year, with positive contribution from all revenue lines. With costs under control, our EBITDA grew by almost 11%, with the margin increasing by 140 basis points to reach 47.4%. Regarding leases, EBITDA after leases grew even faster, by 20%, and amounting to BRL 2.2 billion. This performance continued to benefit from the decommission project, which has reduced recurring lease payments by BRL 100 million since first quarter 2023. The EBITDA after leases margin grew impressively by 400 basis points due to efficiency in OpEx and leases.
Despite the negative impact of financial expense, our net income grew by 19%, benefit from the tax shield provided by interest and on equity, and a consistent performance in D&A. In addition, we record a strong increase in operating cash flow of almost 6%. Seasonality have a net negative impact on working capital and CapEx, but this is no cause for concern, as they are developed in line with our plan, and will improve as we move forward this year. In this scenario, we maintain a strong balance sheet while navigating the uncertainties of the Brazilian macro and political environment. Once again, I'm pleased with the figures we are delivering, which makes me confident that we will achieve our guidance by the end of the year.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
The first quarter also marks the moment to disclose the evolution of our ESG initiatives and update our plan to all stakeholders. In the updated plan, we are committing to, 1, increase Black employees in leadership with a target of 25% to be reached by 2025. Number 2, addressing the digital divide by covering rural areas in a total of 32 million hectares by 2026. And 3, expand our solid waste treatment with reuse and recycling to above 95% until 2026. In April this year, Great Place to Work recognized us in diversity and inclusion rankings. We were ranked among the top companies in Brazil on 4 categories: ethnic, racial, women, LGBTQI+, and people over fifty. We are the only telco to have such a solid position. In our journey, we have achieved ESG targets, value diversity, and promoted inclusion.
We set off the year at a robust pace. We post the best first quarter numbers in the history of TIM Brazil, sustaining a solid financial performance as we accelerate our commercial speed. We expect to see additional development in our B2B in the coming months, seizing the opportunity we uncovered. We will continue to push forward to maintain our network leadership, and with the help of 5G, improve customer experience. AI pilots are confirming the potential to improve caring services, so we will continue to testing the models to start full implementation. As for the offers, we are preparing for the arrival of new partnerships and the evolution of our portfolio to keep pushing the boundary of innovation. We are on a long journey to become the most preferred telco in Brazil. This can only be achieved with an outstanding, highly committed, and focused team like ours.
Now, let's move to the live Q&A session.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you. Before starting the Q&A session, I will pass the floor to Mr. Alberto Griselli to the initial remarks. Please, Mr. Griselli, you may proceed.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Good morning, everyone. I would like to start this call with a few words about the emergency that we are facing in Rio Grande do Sul, and also anticipating possible questions that might arise during the call. In the face of such a dramatic event, with loss of life and families' life disrupted, we organized a crisis group to address four main fronts. The first one was to confirm that our employees are 100% unharmed, in safe places, and without risk to their health, and this has been achieved already. The second, which is ongoing, is the tireless effort of our technical team in the field to guarantee the recovery of our infrastructure and the minimization of the outage due to the extreme conditions and power, power loss.
The third one was meant to our own clients, and guarantee the possibility to keep on communicating with their families and be updated throughout this period. Therefore, we awarded additional gigabyte to our customer base to be in the position to use their services, and we opened roaming across all operators to increase the availability of the networks in the region. Finally, we are working with the authorities at all levels and supporting the purchase of materials and products for what is required by the people in the Rio Grande do Sul, and we have been using our Instituto TIM, or Instituto TIM, to this objective.
I would like to thank everyone for their effort, and particularly my colleagues from all the other operators who are united with us in the time of crisis. So we can move now to the Q&A session, please.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Mr. Alberto. We'll now start the Q&A session, and if you wish to ask a question, please press the Raise Hand button. If your question has already been answered, you can exit the queue by clicking on the same button. You can also send written questions throughout the Q&A button. Wait while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from Marcelo Santos from JP Morgan. Please, Mr. Santos, your microphone's open.
Marcelo Santos (Senior Sell-side Equity Analyst)
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask a first question about growth. I mean, you're growing a bit above the guidance you gave for the year. Is there upside to the guidance, or is there something that you think might weigh more on the second half, or in the rest of the year? So that's the first question. The second, if you could do a deeper dive on the subscriber versus ARPU dynamics. So when we usually look at Anatel numbers, you tend to have a little bit less adds, especially on the postpaid. I'm talking more on the postpaid. A little bit fewer adds on the postpaid, but the ARPU has been coming pretty strong. So just wanted to understand what's the dynamics, why these results come like this?
If you could enlighten us, that would be great. Thank you.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Yeah, so Marcelo, let me take this question. So in terms of guidance, so we got a good quarter all in all. It's a bit early to comment on a potential upside there, because we're just in the first quarter and there are a number of moving pieces ahead of us. I think that we are actually in line to what we pretend to do, so increasing revenues above inflation in the range 5%-7%. We are coming out at 7-point-something, and increasing a bit faster than this, and double-digit on the free cash flow. So I would say that we need to wait another quarter to answer you with more profound elements to your questions.
When it comes to the subscribers versus ARPU dynamics, I would say that when you look at our postpaid revenue growth, what we are aiming to is to grow on a balanced way in terms of ARPU growth and customer base growth. So this is, I think, a balanced way, the way we look at this. So increasing both levers to support our postpaid revenue growth. And so when it comes to the customer base revenue growth, if you look at our track over the last quarters, you will see that we have been slightly increase our speed across quarters. So in the first quarter of...
In the second quarter of last year, which is this, the first quarter clean of Oi consolidation, we were growing on postpaid at roughly 1.3% versus our own customer base. We have been increasing the speed, and we reach 1.8% in first quarter 2024. So I think we are in the right track to slightly increase the component coming from postpaid customer base growth. When you look at the ARPU dynamics, basically there are a number of things that we are doing in order to increase ARPU. So there is the More for More strategy that we are implementing in this quarter, so second quarter 2024.
We got the migration, so we migrate customers from one plan to a plan with a which is a bit more expensive but with better benefits. And this is the comment, for example, you'll find in our presentation, which is the 10% increase from Prepaid to Control, but it is also happening from Postpaid to Postpaid, Control to Postpaid. And the third lever that we use is primarily add-ons. So when you sum up all this, you got the drivers of the ARPU increase. And therefore, when you look at our Postpaid revenue growth, it's a balance between customer base growth on Postpaid and ARPU growth due to the levers. In the first quarter this year, we don't have any price adjustment besides the migration and the plug-in sales.
Marcelo Santos (Senior Sell-side Equity Analyst)
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from Marco Nardini from XP. Please, Mr. Nardini, your microphone's open.
Marco Nardini (Equity Research Associate)
Hello, Alberto, Andrea. Thank you for taking my questions. So regarding CapEx, we observed higher-than-expected investments in the first quarter, particularly due to 5G. Are there any adjustments anticipated to meet annual CapEx guidance, or are you, like, confident in maintaining your original forecast? And regarding 5G, can you walk us through any updates on the whole rollout and how this can contribute to top line and margin growth going forward? And do you believe that FWA could also have a positive impact on that matter, please?
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Okay, so Marco, on the CapEx side, so it's a bit of seasonal thing here. So, we will maintain our guidance, and so that's the commitment that we have. And, the fact that we anticipated a big 5G deployment this year is we wanted to have a head start in the year with something, and this comes to your second question. So we anticipated a bit of the deployment 5G, because 5G brings to us some benefits that are important to us, and so we wanted to have more quarters in front of us, so with these benefits already in place. The benefits basically are related to the perception and the delivery of a better network experience.
So, when we deployed 5G, the way we deployed is that it's meant to support the increase of customer quality in the cities where we deploy this. And so we know that 5G is an important lever to achieve this objective. And, when you look at the metrics that confirm that the customer quality is improving, you will see that this is happening real. So if you look at the quality of the network across Brazil and in main capitals, we are number one. And when you look at another award, that has been the recognition that we achieved in this quarter, which is another Opensignal, we have, we have today the most reliable experience in Brazil.
So there are a number of things that we are doing in order to achieve these metrics that are important for our position in terms of network superiority. And what we are doing is working, and so that's the reason why we anticipated a big 5G. When you come to how it's going... how this is going to support the top line, I think that the best answer at this point of deployment of 5G in Brazil is that this supports our more for more strategy. And so we are providing a better service to our customers, and this is important in terms of retention, and this is important in terms of supporting our growth in postpaid.
Because by changing the perception of our customers in terms of network quality, we are in a better position to attract them. There is another benefits, which is the network efficiency, but this is already, let's put this way, captured by our guidance. So this is something that has been designed when we developed our current plan. And so in terms of top line, I would say better quality to our customers, so this translate in churn reduction and a more appealing value proposition in general for Brazilian customers, and therefore the postpaid and prepaid growth in our strategy.
Marco Nardini (Equity Research Associate)
Thank you, Alberto.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from André Salles from UBS. Please, Mr. Salles, your microphone is open.
Andrés Salles (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)
Hi. Hi, guys, can you hear me?
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Yes, we can hear you.
Andrés Salles (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)
Okay. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the presentation and for taking my questions here. I have a couple of questions on the tower renegotiation process. Recently, we saw some news related to IHS Towers being reportedly considering exiting Brazil. Do you see this as a potential risk for the renegotiation of tower contracts? And could this impact the I-Systems operation on your end? Thank you.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
André, the tower renegotiation process is... So it's a let's say, when you go to the tower, we got the existing portfolio and the new portfolio. So the existing portfolio is the commissioning that we've been discussing over the last quarters. And this decommissioning, basically, it's sort of completed. And when you look at the results of this quarter, basically, the result of this quarter already capture all the optimization that have been running for the last 12 months. So when you look at the portfolio going forward, so you got basically two dimensions. The existing portfolio that is subject to what?
This is subject to inflation adjustment that basically happens in the first quarter, so last quarter and this quarter. And then you have the network expansion on that portfolio. So when we put 5G, we occupy more space, and therefore, we need to pay a bit more for the rental of the tower. And then there are the initiative that we are doing in order to optimize, which is basically negotiations with the tower company. And so that's the first thing that we're doing. And then there is the second thing that is related to new towers. And so the deployment of new towers, where basically we are looking for better condition for the new towers that we are deploying.
So IHS is a partner of ours primarily in the existing portfolio and in some of the challenges, together with our players. So nothing has changed in the relationship with them so far, and there will be no impact in terms of challenging the existing portfolio, the new portfolio, because we got a number of partners contributing to this effort. So whether with IHS or without IHS, we don't see any impact in the objective that we want to achieve.
Andrés Salles (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)
That was pretty clear, Alberto. Thank you. And could you comment on the I-Systems operation? Do you anticipate any impact on that, or... I mean, everything that you can comment on that would be helpful for us as well.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
... Yes, André, it's for the I-Systems, you know, we don't see any operational impact so far. And so, we decided to operate with a neutral network approach. We have two partners that we are using to reach our commercial objective, I-Systems and V.tal. They focus on different geographical areas because their coverage is different. And so, so far we don't see any impact, that if they decide to sell, there will be another guy taking over that. And so, we will continue to work with the new guy if this happens.
I don't see any change in our strategic positions or, so far in our operational activities, due to the possible intention of IHS to, let's say, to create value with the assets, on a global scale, so in Brazil and elsewhere.
Andrés Salles (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)
Got it. Thank you very much, Alberto.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from Vitor Tomita from Goldman Sachs. Please, Mr. Tomita, your microphone's open.
Vitor Tomita (Equity Research VP)
Hello, good morning, all, and thanks for taking our questions. Two questions from our side. The first one is on prepaid. If you could give us a bit more color on prepaid ARPU trends and how you expect those to develop going forward? And a second question, a bit related to the previous question, is if you could give us an update on the fiber business, specifically on your strategy of expansion using those neutral networks, I-Systems and V.tal, in some areas, and how that has been faring and how that has been benefiting your overall commercial efforts? Thank you very much.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
You will basically, if you look at this quarter, this quarter is a bit seasonal, and so you would see that if you convert our speed of growth versus the previous quarter, we slow down. So the slowdown is basically driven by a few factors. So I would say that the first one is the fact that on a year-on-year basis we don't have a favorable comparison. Because last year, I don't know if you guys remember, we migrated 1 million Control customers to Prepaid, and so last year, Prepaid was pretty good in the first quarter because of this migration.
And then, I would say that, the second element is related to a quarter that we see generally, as a sort of negative seasonality versus the previous quarter, so the last quarter of last year. And then there is some activities that we are doing to migrate prepaid customer to Control customers. So if you take all these elements, this explain a bit, the speed of our prepaid, versus the fourth quarter, for example. When we're going and we're looking this forward, some of these things will remain, like the prepaid to Control migration. Some of the other things, may dissipate, so the seasonality, the first quarter could be different in the second quarter.
So when you look at the ARPU, basically the ARPU is a combination of customer base and the revenues. And so I would say that what we look at, we look at spending, and spending is increasing. And so if spending is increasing and if, given the cancellation policy that is going to remain constant, we should see some kind of ARPU growing in the next quarter. But it's not really the metric that we're looking at, because we're looking at spending. And so I would say that this is it. And your second question was related to the fiber business. So in the fiber business, if you look at the year-on-year performance is quite positive. If you look at quarter-on-quarter performance, you will see that we slowed down a bit our customer base growth.
There is no real change in strategy versus what we discussed in our investor day and what we have been doing over the last quarters. The fact is that the market remained tough, and therefore, we keep being selective on the way we expand our coverage. At the same time, we are adapting our commercial model in a way that we can, let's say, be more efficient in a very competitive market. What does it mean? That, for example, we are adapting our commercial machine, relying less on what we call a push channel, and relying more on what we call pull channel, because the quality is better. And so we got a good footprint at this point in time with V.tal and I-Systems.
We are consolidating the position, our position in the cities where we operate, fine-tuning the commercial machine, and looking at the competitive environment. And when we see that the conditions are good, we may expand a bit our footprint going forward, but subject to what I just said.
Vitor Tomita (Equity Research VP)
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from Lucca Brendim from Bank of America. Please, Mr. Bordin, your microphone's open.
Lucca Brendim (Equity Research Associate)
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I also have two on my side. The first one is more of a follow-up from the previous question. On prepaid, specifically talking about the plans for some regions, I know this will vary from state to state and region to region, but in some regions you introduced your 30 gigs per month offer on prepaid. So I just wanted to know, how are you seeing the dynamics for prepaid going forward? Is there a space for price hikes on the actual plans being offered, or not? And then if that has had any impact on the price, the modifications you did in the past, had any impact on the upsell strategy? And then second, on margins.
For the past few quarters, you have had a very positive dynamic in terms of margins, and I just wanted to understand how you're thinking about that going forward. If as long as we have real growth, margins should continue to go up, or... And how are you seeing this in the long term? How high can margins go? Or if we see some sort of deceleration in growth, if you would be able to maintain margin at current levels. So that would be my questions. Thank you.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
So, let me take the first one, and then we'll pass on the margin one to Andrea. So if you look at prepaid, just recapping what is happening on prepaid. So on prepaid, a lot of stuff happened in the last quarters, and it's still happening. So, you would see that, the operators have been changing a bit their offering. And so, there are many changes happening in the... basically, that happened or are happening in the last quarter, next year, and first quarter this year. And, to some extent, these effects are interlinked and, within our sector, and, because of seasonality, and, they are interlinked with the context of the macro context, in general, that we see in Brazil.
So you've got a positive and positively seasonal last four quarters, and a positively less, let's say, negatively first quarter this year. This is normal, but you got different seasonality with a number of things happening in on our side. So what happened in terms of price hikes? In the last quarter next year, we price hiked prepaid. You know, in prepaid, you got basically a couple of offers. You got the monthly offer, and you got the bi-weekly offer, and then you got the communication, which can be different, which is the R$30 that you just mentioned. But our main offer is a bi-weekly offer, and so we moved the price of this bi-weekly offer from 15 to 17 last quarter.
In some region, we communicate the bi-weekly offer. In some region, we communicate a monthly offer. We are looking at the results in different regions to understand how this impact customers' perception, take-up, and recharges, and all of this. At the same time, so we did this, we did this, in the last quarter of 2023. Now, Vivo did something similar, a few months after us, and so they also changed their offer in a similar way. Whereby Claro, they operate a monthly offer, and where they have two different prices, BRL 25 and BRL 30, primarily. I think they are changing their BRL 25 to BRL 30 in some of the regions.
So you've got a number of things going on in the prepaid market, starting last quarter, 2023. So, and so we see basically when you do a price up or price hike, what you see is that you see the spending going up, and then you see the number of rechargings retracting a bit. And but these effects are generally temporary. Now, since a lot of things is happening, I guess I will be able to give you a more complete answer of what is resulting out of all this in the second quarter. Because there are a lot of movements that makes the reading a bit more difficult. And, that's...
The price hikes happen already, are happening in the case of Claro, and we need to see how the market settle down after this, to be looking at additional price hikes this year.
Andrea Viegas (CFO)
Hi, look-
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Sorry, look, was it clear? Because there was a bit, there's a lot of movements happening in prepaid.
Lucca Brendim (Equity Research Associate)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Very clear. Very clear.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Okay, cool.
Lucca Brendim (Equity Research Associate)
Thank you.
Andrea Viegas (CFO)
Hi, look, referring to the margin, yes, we have a very strong results this quarter with the EBITDA growing higher than the revenues. This is a consequence of our continuous efficiency process. Looking forward, we are now in this quarter, we are returned to the margins that we have previous of the Oi acquisition. As we move forward, we will, we will continue to have some kind of increase. This, this increase will come higher in the EBITDA after lease, where we have more efficiency efficiency effect to appear. But we are in continuous working for improving our productive and growing our margin.
Lucca Brendim (Equity Research Associate)
Okay, very clear. Thank you.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from Carlos Sequeira from BTG Pactual. Please, Mr. Sequeira, your microphone is open.
Carlos Sequeira (Head of BTG Pactual Research)
Hi, thank you. Hey, Alberto, Andrea, Vicente, Luiza, good morning. How are you? So, we were discussing, debating here, among us here at BTG, what happened to mobile service revenues, the dynamics there, really. Because when you look at post-paid revenues, it grew more than 7%, but prepaid was basically flat. And then the total service revenues grew almost 8%, when maybe we would have expected it to grow, you know, between what grew the prepaid and what grew the post-paid, but not more... and most likely some other revenues ended up causing the total revenue to grow more than what would have been the average between the two. So the first question is, what was that?
And the second one is, can we expect the same level of these other revenues that impacted the first quarter in the next quarters, or how we model for that? So that's question number one. Maybe we should go for this one, and then I have another one, simpler one, I guess.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Kadu, let me address this, the first one, and then we move to the second one. So you're right. And so when you look especially of our commercial strategy, you will see that we put a number of improvements in it and to support the position in specific segments. In the case that we are just- I'm going to just mention for the time being, is postpaid. And so we already commented in previous quarters that we were upgrading something that we felt was important for our postpaid customer, which is the roaming services. So this is outgoing roaming services. What does it mean that?
That our postpaid offer for roaming has been boosted since I would say third quarter, if I remember correctly, last year. What happened with that is that basically we generate more roaming revenues and that falls into the outgoing revenues that we are looking at. But since these services tends to be, let's put this way, reciprocal to some extent, we also attract revenues from people roaming to Brazil. So we got the increase of visitor revenues. This is something that we didn't have in the past because our roaming package was not that attractive. We fixed that because we thought it was important for a specific segment. So we got positive effect both on outgoing revenues and visitor revenues.
This is one of the, for example, the numbers that you would see in this quarter. Now, coming this, are we going to expect this going forward? Since our offer has been structurally improved, I would say that we will tend to have a similar dynamics in the coming quarters.
Of course, there is a certain seasonality because people travel in specific parts of the year, but at the end of the day, the offer is structurally better, and therefore you will see two things that are moving upwards with some seasonal impact here and there, and with some relevant real relative delay because of what we generate and what we receive. It's not sync 100%, but we should expect a positive trend in the quarters to come.
Oh, very clear. Thank you. No, no, got it. Yeah, so we should expect it to keep coming, right?
Yeah
Carlos Sequeira (Head of BTG Pactual Research)
... it's a structural change. Okay, it's important.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Yeah.
Carlos Sequeira (Head of BTG Pactual Research)
Okay, and, and the second one, so I'll make a second and a third one, they're connected. Claro in prepaid, you mentioned that you adjusted the price point. You now charge BRL 17. Vivo followed. What about Claro? What is your expectation? Would they follow the same payment?
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Yeah, Claro is doing some. So it's, they got we all have a sort of different approaches. So Kadu, we got a bi-weekly, and so basically a bi-weekly offer, which moved from BRL 15-BRL 17. And Vivo has a sort of a similar offer in general. There are many, many offers. And so we did our movements on our side. It's very regional, but I think that what is happening is that also Claro is updating their monthly offer on a regional basis, on a regional basis. And so I saw, looking at the clippings, that in some regions they are giving more gigabyte, so more for more strategy and moving BRL 25-BRL 30.
So basically they got, when you look at them, they got some region where they got 25 BRL and some region where they got 30 BRL. And, what I'm looking at, I think this is ongoing, is they're moving some of the 25 BRL regions into the 30 BRL region. And so, it's a different approach because it's a monthly offer, and this is happening in April. And so, you should ask them this question, Kadu. But from what I'm looking in terms of competitive dynamics, I've seen some changes in the month of April. We did that in the last quarter, in the fourth quarter. Yeah, I think in October, on our side.
Carlos Sequeira (Head of BTG Pactual Research)
Okay. But in a way, they, they're following. They, they're also increasing the prices, right, in April-
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Yeah
Carlos Sequeira (Head of BTG Pactual Research)
... even as in the monthly plan. Okay, and one final one, and that one might be a little maybe too early. I'll have to keep asking that question in the coming quarters. But on, Brisanet just launched its 5G operations in Fortaleza mainly, which is a big city for TIM, right? You have a big presence there. And my question is, did you notice any change in the relevant impact in the competitive dynamics after they launched it there?
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Well, not, not, not really. Now, the launch, when, when you look at, if you look at their deployment, they're deploying a lot of the network in the smaller cities.
Carlos Sequeira (Head of BTG Pactual Research)
Mm-hmm.
If you look at where they deploy their networks, it's in cities with less than 30,000 inhabitants. And Fortaleza, it's not Fortaleza, the city itself, is more on the outskirts. So far, we didn't see any material impact on the competitive dynamics. When you look at, you know, you need to build out a network, Kadu, in order not to eventually be, you know, because on Fortaleza, they need to run on roaming or on roaming on somebody else. Where they got the most of their deployment, if you look at the end of the day, that you would see that the big chunk of it in the smaller cities. But we don't see any material impact so far.
Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. That's all I have. Thank you, guys.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
To you.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from Gabriel Vaz de Lima from Morgan Stanley. Please, Mr. Vaz de Lima, your microphone's open.
Gabriel Vaz de Lima (Equity Research Associate)
Hey, thank you so much. Most of my questions were already answered. Just wanted to get a sense in terms of second quarter, anything relevant we should keep in mind? I know we're one month in, but any seasonal effects, any highlights you would mention for us to keep in mind? Thank you so much.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
When you look at the second quarter, I think that the most one of the activities that we generally run, it's that we did also in the second quarter last year, is the implementation of more for more strategy on control and postpaid. So this is happening, and this is happening at a lower intensity this year versus last year. But I would say that when you look at our commercial operations, this is probably the main event of the second quarter. So the more for more strategy for control and postpaid, this is currently ongoing. What is generally happening, it's let's say an ARPU increase.
We provide more gigabytes, so generally there is some impact on control recharges, and there is some impact on, let's say, churn impact. So the two things that we're managing now is to implement this in a way that it's more for more, so good for customers, and therefore, if it's good for customers, not having a material impact on a churn or potential churn increase. So I would say that this is the main thing.
Andrea Viegas (CFO)
Maybe some commercial expenses will increase related to our investment in Rock in Rio and some market advertising that we are made.
Gabriel Vaz de Lima (Equity Research Associate)
Crystal clear. Thank you.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from Felipe Cheng, from Santander. Please, Mr. Cheng, you may proceed.
Felipe Cheng (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Good morning, everyone. Alberto, Andrea, Vicente, Luisa, thank you so much for taking my questions. My first question is related to working capital dynamics. This quarter, we saw a deterioration on both the quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year comparison. So just wanted to understand a little bit what we should expect in the coming quarters. Understand there is a negative seasonal impact in this first quarter, but if you could provide a little bit more details here regarding working capital. And my second question is related to price increases in control and postpaid. If you could remind us the schedule and eventually what magnitude of price increases you expect throughout the year. Thank you so much.
Andrea Viegas (CFO)
Hi, Felipe. Related to the working capital, we always have this seasonality, where the first semester of the year we have a negative impact, and the second is a positive. This is occurring mainly to the some agreement with our major suppliers that we have. This particular quarter, we have another impacts. For example, we have higher inventory due to the mix of the handsets, especially with the 5G. That's more expensive. And also have some impacts in the accounts receivable. One relates to the, what Alberto already mentioned about the roaming, international roaming. We have a different behavior in this account receivable, and also because we have a higher vendors, a higher revenue from handsets, and this also have a different dynamic in the accounts receivable.
It's important to highlight that this dynamic in the first quarter of working capital was expected. We are on track, what we expected, and we will improve as we move forward this year. I don't know if I addressed your question related to the price up.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Well, the price up. Sorry, but what is... Can you, Felipe, yeah-
Andrea Viegas (CFO)
The aspects for the price up.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
With the price up, Felipe, we do this for postpaid, and we do this for postpaid and for control, both on what we call the front book and back book in this quarter. So it's basically the annual adjustment that we do. We did it last year, second quarter. We're doing this year. It applied to a portion of our customer base, and I can say that this year is going to be given the inflation dynamics milder versus last year. So it's happening this quarter.
Felipe Cheng (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Perfect. Very clear. Thank you so much.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press the Raise Hand button or you use the Q&A button. Wait while we pull for questions. Ladies and gentlemen, since there are no further questions, I will return the floor back to Mr. Alberto Griselli for his final remarks. Please, Mr. Griselli, you may proceed.
Alberto Griselli (CEO)
Thank you. So thank you to everybody for attending our call today. I think we had a good discussion in terms of where we started this year in good shape, with the first quarter in line with our plan. I want to thank the entire team for keeping delivering such good results across the board. A special thanks to the commitment and the work of the people involved in supporting Rio Grande do Sul and the disruption over there, and keeping our service up and running as much as possible. So guys, thank you, everybody, and we meet in the one-to-one calls following today's call. Thank you.
Andrea Viegas (CFO)
Thank you.
Vicente Ferreira (Head of Investor Relations)
This thus concludes the first quarter of 2024 conference call of TIM S.A. For further information and details of the company, please access our website at tim.com.br/ir. Thank you once again, and you can now disconnect your line. Thank you.