TIM Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 7, 2024

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to China Sea 2024 Q1 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 China's remarks are completed, there will be a Q and A session for participants. At that time, further instructions will be given.

Speaker 1

Hello everyone and welcome to TSA's Earnings Conference for the Q1 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 and A session with our CEO, Alberto Griselli and our CFO, Andrea Villegas. Before we discuss our results, I remind you that management may make forward looking statements and this presentation may contain them.

Speaker 1

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.

Speaker 2

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 formal strategy.

Speaker 2

We are taking advantage of favorable market dynamics to develop our 3Bs 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 the Q1, 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.

Speaker 2

5 gs 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 intensifying the activities related to convincing clients and potential clients of the transformations we are implementing at the company. During the Q1, 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 Sao Paulo, reminding me all that it's now almost a year that TIM is the only company in Brazil to have received such important recognition.

Speaker 2

In BEST network, we expanded our 5 gs 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.

Speaker 2

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 Q1, which reflects improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. At the same time, postpaid net additions totaled 415,000 new lines with a solid sequential improvement quarter by quarter, while migration for prepaid to postpaid increased by 11%. Total ARPU expanded close to 9% year over year, surpassing the BRL30 mark. Maintaining the value strategy with improvements in volume, we were able to post a solid growth in mobile service revenues of 7.4% in the quarter.

Speaker 2

Our B2B endeavors continue to evolve fast. We are now putting all our efforts under the umbrella of a Team IoT solution brand. To start on the right foot, we launched the 1st offer in partnership with CNHI, bundling our connectivity with Kasey's Mark Machinery. We also closed a large partnership with BP Boonja. As for fixed broadband, we are performing well despite a very tough environment.

Speaker 2

Our revenues grew more than 9% year over year, while our base increased by more than 10%. We maintain the focus on the right balance between growth and profitability. And this is how we build the next generation team bit by bit.

Speaker 3

Hello everyone. I'm Andrea Viega, 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 Q1, the top line grew 7.3% year on year, with positive contribution from all revenue lines.

Speaker 3

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 lease grew even faster by 20%, and amounting to R2.2 billion dollars This performance continued to benefit from the decommissioning project, which has reduced recurring lease payments by R100 million since Q1 2023. The EBITDA after leases margin grew by 400 basis points, due to efficiencies in OpEx and leases. Despite the negative impact of financial expenses, our net income grew by 19%, benefiting from the tax shield provided by interest on equity and a consistent performance in D and A. In addition, we recorded a strong increase in operational cash flow of almost 6%.

Speaker 3

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 am pleased with the figures we are delivering, which makes me confident that we will achieve our guidance by the end of the year.

Speaker 2

The Q1 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 32,000,000 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 plus and people over 50. We are the only telco to have such a solid position.

Speaker 2

In our journey, we have achieved ESG targets, value diversity and promoted inclusion. We set off the year at a robust pace. We posted best 3rd 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, seeing the opportunity we uncovered. We will continue to push forward to maintain our network leadership and with the help of 5 gs, improve customer experience.

Speaker 2

AI pilots are confirming the potential to improve care in 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 bundling 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 and A session.

Operator

Thank you. Before starting the Q and A session, I will pass the floor to Mr. Roberto Griselli to the initial remarks. Please, Mr. Griselli, you may proceed.

Speaker 2

Good morning, everyone. I would like to start this call with a few words about the emergency that we are facing here at Rio Grande do Sul and also anticipating possible questions that might arise during the call. Possible questions that might arise during the call. In the face of such a dramatic event with loss of life and family's life disrupted, we organized a crisis group to address 4 main fronts. The first one was to confirm that our employees are 100% unarmed in safe places and without risk to their health, and this has been achieved already.

Speaker 2

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 the 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. And 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 team institute or Instituto team to this objective.

Speaker 2

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 and A session, please.

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Roberto. We will now start the Q and A session. And if you wish to ask a question, please press the raise in button. If your question has already been answered, you can exit the queue by clicking on the same button.

Operator

You can also send written questions throughout the q and a button. Our first question comes from Marcelo Santos from JPMorgan. Please Mr. Santos, your microphone is open.

Speaker 4

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I want to ask 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?

Speaker 4

Or is there something that you think might wait more on the second half or in the rest of the year? So that's the first question. And the second, if you could do a deeper dive on the subscriber versus ARPU dynamics. So when we usually look at Annatel numbers, you tend to have a little bit less ads, especially on the postpaid. I'm talking more on the postpaid, a little bit fewer ads on the postpaid, but the ARPU has been coming pretty strong.

Speaker 4

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.

Speaker 2

Yes. So Marcelo, let me take this question. So, in terms of guidance, so we got a good quarter all in all. And a bit early to comment on potential upside because we're just in the Q1 and there are a number of moving piece ahead of us. I think that we are actually in line to what we pretend to do.

Speaker 2

So increasing revenues above inflation in the range 5% to 7%, we are coming out at 7 point something and increasing EBITDA faster than this and double digit on free cash flow. So I would say that we need to wait another quarter to have to answer you with more profound elements to your questions. When it comes to the 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.

Speaker 2

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 increased our speed across quarters. So in the Q1 of last year, which is the Q1 clean of oil consolidation, we were growing on postpaid at roughly 1.3% versus our own customer base. We have been increasing the speed and we reached 1.8% in Q1 2024. So I think we are in a right track to slightly increase the component coming from postpaid customer based growth. When you look at the ARPU dynamics, basically, there are a number of things that we are doing in order to increase ARPU.

Speaker 2

So there is the more for more strategy that we are implementing in this quarter, so Q2 2024. We've got the migration, so we migrate customers from one plan to a plan with 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, controlled to postpaid. And the 3rd lever that we use is primarily add ons. So when you sum up all this, you got the drivers of the up increase.

Speaker 2

And therefore, when you look at our postpaid revenue growth, it's a balance between customer base growth on postpaid and ARPU growth to the delivers. In the Q1 this year, we don't have any price adjustment besides the migration and the plug in sales.

Speaker 4

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Marco Nargini from XP. Please Mr. Nargini, your microphone is open.

Speaker 5

Hello, Alberto and Dea. Thank you for taking my questions. So regarding CapEx, we observed higher than expected investments in the Q1, particularly due to 5 gs. Are there any adjustments anticipated to meet annual CapEx guidance? Or you like confidence in maintaining your original forecast?

Speaker 5

And regarding 5 gs, 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?

Speaker 2

Okay. So, Marco, on the CapEx side, so it's a bit of seasonal thing here. So we will maintain our guidance. So that's the commitment that we have. And the fact that we anticipated a big 5 gs deployment this year is we wanted to have a head start in the year with something that this comes to your second question.

Speaker 2

So we anticipated a bit of the deployment of 5 gs because 5 gs brings to us some benefits that are important to us. And so we wanted to have more quarters in front of us with these benefits already in place. And the benefits basically are related to the perception and the delivery of a better network experience. So when we deployed 5 gs, 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 5 gs is an important lever to achieve this objective.

Speaker 2

And when you look at the metrics that confirm that the customer quality is improving, you would see that this is happening real. So if you look at the quality of the network across Brazil and the main capitals, we are number 1. And when you look at another award that has been another recognition that we achieved in this quarter, which is another open signal, 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 the our position in terms of network superiority. And what we are doing is working.

Speaker 2

And so that's the reason why we anticipated a big 5 gs. When you come to the how this is going to support the top line, I think that the best answer at this point of deployment of 5 gs 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.

Speaker 2

There is another benefit, which is the network efficiency, but this is already, let's put it this way, captured by our guidance. So this is something that has been designed when we develop our current plan. And so in terms of top line, we'll say better quality to our customers. So these translate in a churn reduction and a more appealing value proposition in general for Brazilian customers and therefore the postpaid and prepaid growth in our strategy.

Speaker 5

Thank you,

Operator

Alberto. Our next question comes from Andres Salis from UBS. Please Mr. Salis, your microphone is open.

Speaker 6

Hi. Hi, guys. Can you hear me?

Speaker 5

Yes. I

Speaker 7

can hear you.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thank you. So good morning, everyone. Thanks for the presentation and for taking my questions here. I have a couple of questions on the tower renegotiation process.

Speaker 6

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 System operation on your end? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Andres, 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've got basically 2 dimension, the existing portfolio that is subject to what?

Speaker 2

This is subject to inflation adjustment that basically happens in the Q1, so last quarter and this quarter. And then you have the network expansion on that portfolio. So when we put 5 gs, we occupy more space and therefore we need to pay a bit more for the rental of the tower. And then there are the initiatives 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.

Speaker 2

And then there is the second thing that is related to new towers. And so the deployment of new towers were basically we want we are looking for better condition for the new towers that we are deploying. So AHS is a partner of ours in 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 would be no impact in terms of challenging the existing portfolio of the new portfolio because we got a number of partners contributing to this effort.

Speaker 2

So with IHS or without IHS, we don't see any impact in the objective that we want to achieve.

Speaker 6

That was pretty clear, Alberto. Thank you. And could you comment on the system 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.

Speaker 2

Yes. And so for the AI system, we don't see any operational impact so far. And so it's we decided to operate with an ultra network approach, we have 2 partners that we are using to reach our commercial objective, I Systems and Vital. They focus on different geographical areas because their coverage is different. And so far, we don't see any impact that if they decide to sell that there will be another guy taking over that.

Speaker 2

And so we will continue to work with a new guy if this happens. So I don't see any change in our strategic positions or so far in our operation activities due to the possible intention of AHS to, let's say, to create value with the assets on a global scale, so in Brazil and elsewhere.

Speaker 6

Got it. Thank you very much, Alberto.

Operator

Our next question comes from Victor Tomita from Goldman Sachs. Please Mr. Tomita, your microphone is open.

Speaker 8

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.

Speaker 8

And a second question, a bit related to the previous question, if you could give us an update on the fiber business, specifically on your strategy of expansion using those neutral networks, I systems and VITEL in some areas and how that has been faring and how that has been benefiting our overall commercial efforts? Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

In the you will basically, if you look at this quarter, this quarter is a bit seasonal. And so you would see that if you convert the 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 that we don't have a favorable comparison because last year, I don't know if you guys remember, we migrated 1,000,000 control customers to prepaid. And so last year, prepaid was pretty good in the Q1 because of this migration.

Speaker 2

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 Q4, for example. When we are going and we are looking this forward, some of these things will remain like the prepaid to control migration. Some of the other things may dissipate.

Speaker 2

So the seasonality that the Q1 could be different in the Q2. 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.

Speaker 2

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, it's 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.

Speaker 2

The fact is that the market remained tough. And therefore, we could keep being selective on the way we expand our coverage. And 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 adopting 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.

Speaker 2

And so we got a good footprint at this point in time with Vital and the system. We are consolidating the 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.

Speaker 8

Very clear, thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Luca Brangin from Bank of America. Please Mr. Brangin, your microphone is open.

Speaker 7

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I also have 2 on my side. The first one is more of a follow-up from the previous question.

Speaker 7

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 highs 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, so the price modifications that did in the past had any impact on the upsell strategy?

Speaker 7

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, margin 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 we do would be able to maintain margin at current levels?

Speaker 7

So that will be my questions. Thank you.

Speaker 2

So let me take the first one and then we'll pass on the margin one to Andreas. 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 happening in the last quarter next year and Q1 this year.

Speaker 2

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 got the positive events, positively seasonal last 4 quarter and a positively less, let's say, negatively Q1 this year. And this is normal, but you've got differences on our 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 tagged a prepaid.

Speaker 2

In prepaid, you got basically a couple of offers. You got the monthly offer and you got the biweekly offer. And then you've got the communication, which can be different, which is the BRL30 that you just mentioned. But our main offer is a biweekly offer. And so we moved the price of this biweekly offer from 15 to 17 last quarter.

Speaker 2

And in some region, we communicate the biweekly offer. In some region, we communicate a monthly offer. And we are looking at the results in different regions to understand how this impact customers' perception, take up and recharges and all of this. And at the same time, so we did this in the last quarter of 2023. Now Vivo did something similar a few months afterwards.

Speaker 2

And so they also changed their offer in a similar way, whereby Claro is they operate a monthly offer and where they have 2 different prices, 2530 primarily. And I think they are changing their 25 to 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 press up or price hike, what you see is that you see the spending going up and then you see the number of recharging retracting a bit. And but these effects are generally temporary.

Speaker 2

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 Q2, because there are a lot of movements that makes the reading a bit more difficult. And that's so the price hikes happen already, are happening in the case of Claro. And we need to see how the market settled down after this to be looking at additional price hikes this year. Hi Luca. Look I wasn't clear because there was a bit there's a lot of movements happening in prepaid.

Speaker 7

Yes. Yes. Very clear. Okay.

Speaker 3

Hi, Luc. Referring to the margin, yes, we have very strong results this quarter with the digital growing higher than the revenues. This is a consequence of our continuous efficient process. Looking forward, we are now in this quarter, we are returning to the margins that we have previous of the OE acquisition. As we move forward, we will continue to have some kind of increase.

Speaker 3

This increase will come higher in the EBITDA after lease where we have more efficiency effect to appear. But we are in continuous working for improving our productivity and growing our margin.

Operator

Our next question comes from Carlos Sequeira from BTG Pactol. Please Mr. Sequeira, your microphone is open.

Speaker 9

Hi, thank you. Alberto Andres, Vincent and Louisa, good morning. How are you? So we were discussing the betting here among us here at BTG what happened to mobile service revenues, the dynamics there really. Because when you look at postpaid revenues, it grew more than 7%, but prepaid was basically flat.

Speaker 9

And then the total service revenues grew almost 8% when maybe we would have expected it to grow between what grew the prepaid and what grew the postpaid, 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 2. 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 Q1 in the next quarters? Or how we model for that?

Speaker 9

So that's question number 1. Maybe we should go for this one and then I have another one, simpler one, I guess.

Speaker 2

So, Kado, let me address this, the first one and then we move to the second one. So you're right. And so when you look at especially of our commercial strategy, you would see that we put a number of improvements in it and to support the positioning specific segments. In the case that we are just I'm going to just mention for the time being, it is postpaid. And so we already commented in previous quarters that we were upgrading something that we felt that was important for our postpaid customer, which is the roaming services.

Speaker 2

So this is outgoing roaming services. What does it mean that, that our postpaid offer for roaming has been boosted since I would say Q3, if I remember correctly, last year. And what happened with that is that basically we generate more roaming revenues 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. And so we got the increase of visitor revenues.

Speaker 2

And this is something that we didn't have in the past because our roaming package was not that attractive. And we fixed that because we thought it was important for a specific segment. And so we got positive effect, both on outgoing revenues and visitor revenues. And this is one of, for example, the numbers that you would see in this quarter. Now coming this, are we going to expect this going forward?

Speaker 2

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 would see 2 things that are moving upwards with some seasonal impact here and there and with some relevant sorry, 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.

Speaker 9

Very clear. Thank you. No, no, got it. Yes, so we should expect it to keep coming, right? It's a structural change.

Speaker 9

Okay. It's important. Yes. Okay. And the second one, so I'll make a second and a third one, if you're connected.

Speaker 9

Cloudwind prepaid, you mentioned that you adjusted the price point, you've now charged BRL17. We will follow. What about Claro? What is your expectation? Would they follow the same?

Speaker 2

Yes. Kalu do it some so it's they got we all have a sort of different approaches. So Kalu, we got it backly and so basically a biweekly offer, which moved from 15 to 17. And the Vivo has a sort of a similar offer in general. There are many, many offers.

Speaker 2

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, more for more strategy and moving 25 to 30. So basically they got when you look at them, they got some region where they got 25 and some region where they got 30.

Speaker 2

And what I'm looking at, I think it is ongoing, is they're moving some of the 25 regions into the 30 reals 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, Akado. But from what I'm looking in terms of competitive dynamics, I've seen some changes in the month of April.

Speaker 2

We did that in the last quarter in the 4th quarter I think in October on our side.

Speaker 9

Okay. But in a way they're falling they're also increasing their prices, right, in April even 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.

Speaker 9

But on, Brizan Air just launched 5 gs operations in Fortaleza mainly, which is a big city for 'fourteen, right? And 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 launch it there?

Speaker 2

Well, not really. But now the launch when you look at if you go if you look at their deployment, they're deploying a lot of the network in the smaller cities. And that's why if you look at where they deploy the network, it's in cities with less than 30 ks inhabitants. And Fortaleza, it's not Fortaleza city itself, it's more on the outskirts. So far we didn't see any material impact on the competitive dynamics.

Speaker 2

And when you look at the you need to build out a network in order not to eventually be because on Fortaleza, they need to run on roaming or roaming on somebody else. Where they got the most of their deployment, if you look at the Annadale data, you would see that the big chunk of it in the smaller cities. And but we don't see any material impact so far.

Speaker 9

Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. That's all I have. Thank you guys.

Speaker 2

To you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Gabriel Vasilima from Morgan Stanley. Please Mr. Vasilima, your microphone is open.

Speaker 5

Hey, thank you so much. Most of my questions were already answered. Just wanted to get a sense in terms of Q2. Anything relevant we should keep in mind? I know we're 1 month in, but any seasonal effects, any highlights you would mention for us to keep in mind?

Speaker 5

Thank you so much.

Speaker 2

When you look at the Q2, I think that the most one of the activities that we generally run, it's that we did also in the Q2 last year, is the more for 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 Q2. So the more for more strategy for control and postpaid.

Speaker 2

This is currently ongoing. What is generally happening, it's, let's say, an ARPU increase. We provide more gigabyte. So generally, there is some impact on control recharges. And there is some impact on, let's say, churn impact.

Speaker 2

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 and not having a material impact on a churn or potential churn increase. So I would say that this is the main thing.

Speaker 3

Maybe some commercial expenses will increase related to our investment in HOKINGHIO and some market advertising that were made.

Operator

Our next question comes from Felipe Chang from Santander. Please Mr. Chang, you may proceed.

Speaker 10

Good morning, everyone. Alberto, Andrea, Vincente, 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.

Speaker 10

I understand there is an active seasonal impact in this Q1. 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.

Speaker 3

Hi, Felipe. Related to the working capital, we always have this algorithmality where the first semester of the year, we have a negative impact and the second is a positive. This is occurring mainly to some agreement with our major suppliers that we have. This particular quarter, we have another impact. For example, we have higher inventory due to the mix of the handsets, especially with the 5 gs that's more expensive.

Speaker 3

And also have some impacts in the accounts receivable. Once released to 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 their account receivable. But it's important to highlight that this dynamic in the Q1 of working capital was expect.

Speaker 3

We are on track what we expected, and we will improve as we move going forward as we move moving forward this year. I don't know if I addressed your question related to the price up.

Speaker 2

What was up? Sorry. What was this? Can you, Felipe?

Speaker 3

Yes. Expect for the price up.

Speaker 2

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. And so it's basically the it's basically the annual adjustment that we do we did it last year, Q2, 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 minor versus last year. And so it's happening this quarter.

Speaker 10

Perfect. Very clear. Thank you so much.

Operator

Wait while we pull for questions. Ladies and gentlemen, since there are no further questions, I will turn the floor back to Mr. Alberto Griselli for his final remarks. Please Mr. Griselli, you may proceed.

Speaker 2

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 Q1 in line with our plan. I want to thank the entire team for keeping delivering such good results across the board. And 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.

Speaker 2

So guys, thank you, everybody, and we meet in the 1 to 1 calls following today's call. Thank you. Thank you.

Operator

This does concludes the Q1 of 2024 conference call of ChineSe. For further information and details of the company, please access our website at team.com.br Thank you once again and you can now disconnect your line. Thank you.

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Key Takeaways

  • TIM Brazil delivered service revenues up 7% year-on-year, double-digit EBITDA growth with a 140 bp margin expansion to 47.4%, and a record Q1 operating free cash flow up ~60% YoY.
  • The company expanded 5G coverage—both in new cities and in-city reach—earning OpenSignal’s best network reliability award and reinforcing its “best network” position.
  • In mobile, postpaid churn fell to 0.8% per month, net postpaid additions reached 415 K, prepaid-to-postpaid migrations rose 11%, and total ARPU climbed nearly 9% YoY above BRL 30.
  • Under the Team IoT brand, B2B partnerships with CNH and BP drove fast IoT growth, while fixed broadband revenues grew >9% YoY and subscribers by >10%, balancing growth with profitability.
  • TIM updated its ESG plan with targets for 25% black leadership by 2025, rural coverage of 32 M hectares by 2026, and >95% solid waste recycling, earning top diversity rankings from Great Place To Work.
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Earnings Conference Call
TIM Q1 2024
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