Earnings Call Transcript - TEO Q4 2023

Operator, Operator

Good morning. On behalf of Telecom Argentina, I would like to thank everybody for participating in this conference call. The participants of today's conference call are Roberto Nobile, Chief Executive Officer; Gabriel Blasi, Chief Financial Officer, and myself, Luis Rial Ubago. The purpose of this call is to share with you the results of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023 ended on December 31st of 2023. If you have not received a press release or presentation, you can call our investor relations office to request the documents or download them from the investor relations section of our website located at inversores.telecom.com.ar. I would like to go over some safe harbor information and other details of the quarter. We would like to clarify that during the conference call and Q&A session, we could mention certain forward-looking statements about Telecom’s future performance, plans, strategies, and objectives. Such statements are subject to uncertainties that could cause Telecom's actual results and operations to differ materially. Such uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the effects of ongoing economic regulations, possible changes in the demand for telecom products and services, the effects of potential changes in general market and economic conditions, and in legislation. Our press release announcing the company's results as of the end of fiscal year 2023 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 Comision Nacional de Valores, or CNV, which establishes that the re-expression will be applied to the annual financial statements for intermediate and special periods ended as of and including December 31, 2018. Accordingly, the reported figures corresponding to the fiscal year 2023 included the effects of the adoption of inflationary accounting in accordance with IAS 29. In this presentation, we will also include figures in historical values, which are easier to understand. Our press release is complemented by our next presentation. Please read the disclaimer contained in Slide 1 and Slide 2 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, CFO, who will start with the presentation.

Gabriel Blasi, CFO

Thank you, Luis. Good morning and welcome to everyone. Moving to Slide 3, it summarizes our highlights as of December 31 of 2023. Our main operational and financial achievements were our EBITDA margin during fiscal year 2023 was 28.1%. We managed to improve the margin on a year-over-year basis due to effective cost management initiatives and an improvement in the pass-through of inflation to revenues. In 2023, our CapEx was approximately $598 million, equivalent to 23% of our revenues. We have successfully executed our CapEx plan despite having faced certain delays due to tighter import restrictions in Argentina. The current focus of our CapEx is on the expansion of our FTTH technology, as well as expanding our mobile network and developing 5G. Our cash flow generation remains strong despite the challenging context. Without considering the 5G spectrum acquisition during 2023, we generated approximately $400 million in free cash flow before dividends and interest payments. In real peso terms, this figure amounts to ARS324 billion and represents an improvement compared with 2022. Our mobile subscriber base continues to grow, increasing almost 4% year-over-year. Mobile data usage, measured in average monthly gigabytes per user, has grown 11%. In broadband, our FTTH accesses keep growing rapidly, and during the last quarter, they contributed to stabilize our customer base, while our HFC network has remained fairly stable. Flow unique customer reached more than 1.4 million, increasing 10% year-over-year. Additionally, our pay TV business continues to grow in Paraguay. Our FinTech, Personal Pay, has already achieved a relevant market position, reaching more than 2 million onboarded clients as of December 2023, while becoming the second player in the market in terms of client's remunerated account balances. The 5G rollout is underway. We acquired 100 megahertz of spectrum in the 3.5 gigahertz band and we currently have more than 100 5G sites working. During the year, we successfully paid down or refinanced all of our debt maturities while improving the composition of our debt. Moving to Slide 4, it shows the company's figure of 2023. Telecom's revenues totaled almost $2.5 billion. Revenues measured in constant pesos decreased 9% year-over-year as we improved our pass-through of inflation to our revenues. We generated $716 million in EBITDA. Our EBITDA margin was 28.1%. It is important to remark that the figures in dollars included in this presentation are obtained by converting figures in constant pesos as of the end of a specific period using the same period of spot exchange rate. If there is any noise, we are having a huge thunderstorm in Buenos Aires. Using the same end of period spot exchange rate, these figures are included merely for the purpose of providing a general reference and are not obtained through any type of dual currency account in US dollars carried out by the company. The figures in US dollars as of the end of fiscal year 2023 had been temporarily affected by the abrupt devaluation of the peso that took place in mid-December. Telecom’s mobile subscribers in Argentina amounted to 21 million, increasing by more than 760,000 compared to 2022. Broadband and pay TV clients totaled 4.1 million and 3.4 million respectively. Fixed voice subscribers considering IP telephony lines amounted to 2.9 million during 2023. During 2023, our total convergent unique customers amounted to 2.3 million, increasing from 2.1 million a year before. Up to date, 46% of our broadband customers have a mobile bundle. 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 2.3 million and 119,000 respectively. Slide 5 shows our price adjustments during 2023. The accumulated inflation in Argentina for the fiscal year 2023 was 211.4% and in January 2023, it was 20.6%. Since May 2023, we have adjusted our pricing policy responding to a rising inflation scenario. Moving to monthly price increases, we have increased both the frequency and magnitude of our price increases to improve our passthrough of inflation to our service revenues in an increasingly complex environment. Thanks to these measures, we have been able to reduce the lag versus inflation during the fiscal year 2023. Slide 6 shows the evolution of our products. In our mobile segment, we have observed a total increase of more than 760,000 subscribers, representing an increase of 3.8% 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 fifth quarter in a row. In general terms, our postpaid customer base has been registering a down selling to prepaid, not affecting the overall mobile customer base. Our postpaid participation over total mobile subscribers continues to be strong, reaching 39% of our total mobile customer base. In our broadband segment, we have observed growth in FTTH accesses, while our HFC accesses have remained relatively steady. Thanks to this, we have been able to revert the trend registered during the last quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, and stabilize our broadband subscriber base in a challenging competitive environment. In turn, we have observed a reduction in xDSL accesses, which we are migrating to FTTH. Moreover, average speeds in our customer base keep growing. 85% of our subscribers have speeds of 100 megabytes or more. In pay TV, our Flow platform continues to perform well, and our pay TV accesses have remained steady quarter-over-quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Flow's unique customers reached 1.4 million, increasing by 133,000 total clients, or 10% when compared to the same period in 2022. Flow Flex, our broadband subscription modality, also delivered good results during fiscal year 2023. The reduction observed in our total pay TV customer base is in line with the decrease observed in the market as a whole for this segment. Thus, our market share has remained constant. 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. Moving to Slide 7, it shows the breakdown of our revenues. Service revenues totaled over ARS1.9 trillion, decreasing 10% in real terms versus fiscal year 2022, showing a 108% nominal rise, reflecting the strong influence of the price increases we performed. Our revenue breakdown as of December 2023 showed an increase in the participation of mobile services and equipment sales when compared to December 2022. Mobile represents 40% of the revenues while broadband and pay TV account for almost another 40%. The rest is composed of fixed telephony data revenues representing almost 12% of our revenues and equipment sales 7.4%. Slide 8 walks us through our core businesses. We have a very good quality of product in mobile and the fastest network in the country. We are the leaders in terms of revenue share as our ARPU was higher than the competition by approximately 20% to 30%. We also have better pricing power in mobile. Our strategy is to continue to uphold the quality of our service, improving our NPS, which has registered an improving trend since 2019. In this sense, 5G is a pillar. The deployment of 5G will be directed to the main high-density centers and large urban centers, seeking to maximize and prioritize investment with high-value mobile and convergent customers in these areas. It will evolve based on the consumption and evolution of 4G to 5G assets. Turning to our broadband segment, our network passes over 65% of the homes of the country, while the average speed of our network is over 100 megabytes per second. Our FTTH deployment strategy consists of deploying fiber, specifically in those areas with xDSL connections, which we are actively offering to migrate to FTTH while also performing overlay of HFC seeking to decompress that network and upgrade its performance. So, in fact, we are leveraging the very good quality of our HFC network while actively migrating our legacy xDSL accesses. In the pay TV businesses, Flow is our IP video platform with the best experience. Our value proposition in pay TV aims to transform the video business into an entertainment platform. We are exploiting our Flow video platform, which we observe has very good usage and NPS metrics in comparison with the legacy HD. In fact, we have seen good results in our pay TV during the fourth quarter of 2023, where we managed to stabilize our customer base while we are still observing encouraging growth in both Flow Full and Flow Flex modalities. Slide 9 shows our regional operations. Our operation in Paraguay is performing very well. We are the second most important player in the mobile market with 2.3 million customers. We also have a fixed broadband and pay TV offering in that country with 274,000 and 106,000 subscribers respectively. We have a fintech business in Paraguay through our digital wallet Personal, which comes with 288,000 clients. This operation has a strong EBITDA margin of almost 50% while maintaining a net debt to EBITDA ratio of only 0.03 times. Our operation in Uruguay is currently focused on pay TV, and we have 119,000 pay TV customers there. We have potential to grow in the local broadband market as the local regulator is beginning to open into competition. We are starting to deploy a fixed broadband network in certain locations. During the last year, we started the cybersecurity business in Chile under the brand name Ubiquo. There, we are expanding our presence in the market and growing our customer base. In Slide 10, we present how we are building our digital business ecosystem. We offer B2B solutions and services to accompany the digital evolution processes of companies. Our main products include connectivity, cybersecurity solutions, cloud solutions, data center services, digital tools to enhance productivity, and Internet of Things services, which include special custom-tailored solutions for connectivity and remote monitoring. We also have a specific set of business initiatives for the agricultural segment, mining industries, and oil and gas companies. During the last week, we presented our first connectivity cluster in rural areas. The project aims to cover an area of more than 500,000 hectares with continuous connectivity where Telecom will enable new mobile sites with 4G technology and IoT networks. We are also present in the FinTech business with our digital wallet, Personal Pay, which currently counts more than 2 million onboarded clients. We launched it a year ago, and in an industry with exponential growth, we have already achieved a relevant position. During this year, it has incorporated a new functionality of remunerated balances for all its users. As of December 2023, we have funds for our clients invested in mutual funds for over ARS110 billion, and our fintech is the second most important in terms of client account balances in the market. Additionally, we count on other initiatives such as personal and smart home, where we provide multi-service solutions and equipment for home monitoring, security, digital interconnection, and automation. Tienda Personal, our retail store where our clients can acquire a wide variety of electronic devices. I will now pass the call to Luis, who will go over our financial performance.

Operator, Operator

Thank you very much, Gabriel. In Slide 11, we provide an overview of our main financial figures. Consolidated revenues grew by 110% in nominal terms during 2023, reaching more than ARS1.1 trillion. When analyzing this figure adjusted for inflation, revenues amounted to more than ARS2 trillion, showing a decrease of 9% in real terms versus the same figure in 2022. This lag versus inflation is explained, among other factors, by the effect of certain discounts and promotions we grant after price increases to retain our customers in a strong competitive environment. As mentioned, this lag has been reducing during this year, thanks to a pricing strategy which delivered a strong pass-through of inflation to revenues. EBITDA increased by 120% year-over-year in nominal terms, generating an EBITDA margin of 29.1% during 2023. In turn, EBITDA margin in real terms was 28.1%. Additionally, our operating costs before D&A have also grown below inflation, decreasing 10% in real terms since the fiscal year of 2022. We have continued to manage our cost structure to reduce the impact of inflation. During the fourth quarter of 2023, we managed to increase our margin for the third quarter in a row when 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 despite the headwinds coming from the macroeconomic situation in Argentina. Slide 12 shows the evolution of the EBITDA year-over-year and the impact of different components of revenues and costs. During fiscal year of 2023, the company was able to contain the pressure coming from inflation in most of its cost lines, as most of them experienced a decrease or remained in line when compared with inflation. We observed good results in labor costs, programming and content costs, interconnection costs, and some other items such as bad debt. The company's efforts have been very successful, as evidenced by most cost lines keeping the same share of our revenues, with almost every cost line decreasing more than our revenues in real terms. This allowed us to increase our EBITDA margin for 2023 on a year-over-year basis. Slide 13 shows the company's net results and EBIT. EBIT registered an improvement in 2023 due to the fact that in 2022, the company recognized an impairment of goodwill amounting to ARS759 billion in cost as currency as of December 2023 that was allocated to depreciation and amortization and impairment of fixed assets. The operating margin during fiscal year 2023 was minus 6.1% of consolidated revenues, while in historical figure, the same margin was 20.3%. The company had a net loss of ARS249 billion in 2023, mainly due to the influence of the strong devaluation that the peso experienced in real terms, which affected our financial debt denominated in foreign currency. Slide 14 displays a summary of the company's CapEx in PP&E and intangible assets during 2023, which amounted to more than ARS483 billion for an equivalent of $598 million at the official FX rate. This figure includes the investment in 5G spectrum for an equivalent of $214 million. This amount is almost 23% higher when compared to the previous year in context basis. Our consolidated amount of CapEx for the fiscal year 2023 represented more than 23% of our revenues when including the 5G spectrum and around 15% of our total revenues without considering said investment. Our investment level was influenced by tighter import restrictions in fiscal year 2023. In overall, and despite this situation, we have fully executed our CapEx plan for this year and the performance of our network is currently very solid. Technical CapEx was mainly composed of investment in our access network and technology. Our investments are mainly geared to enhance our access network. During 2023, 229 new mobile sites were deployed, while 1,418 existing sites were upgraded. We have acquired 5G spectrum, 100 megahertz in a 3.5 gigahertz band that we are already using to provide this new technology. Additionally, up to now, we count on 100 5G sites working on the same band. In our fixed access network, we increased the deployment of new FTTH installations by over 15,000 blocks, including the overlay of our HFC network. We also improved the upstream capacity of our HFC network by almost 17,000 blocks. The balance of our CapEx was allocated to installations and customer premise equipment or CPE, which are installations and equipment in the homes of our clients and to international operations. Slide 15 describes our cash flow generation during 2023 compared with the same period of 2022. Our cash flow generation remained very robust, factoring in the macroeconomic situation in Argentina. It has been affected mostly by a lower EBITDA in real terms and a higher CapEx mainly associated with investment in 5G spectrum. Without considering this one-off investment, our cash flow generation before dividends and interest payments would have been equivalent to more than $400 million. In dollar terms, total free cash flow generation experienced a reduction of approximately $330 million in 2023. In fact, without considering 5G spectrum, the reduction would have been of $115 million, mostly explained by the significant devaluation we already discussed. Slide 16 shows our key figures for 2023. The conversion to US dollars is obtained by converting these 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 $2.6 billion as of December 31, 2023. The company holds cash equivalent to $344 million, resulting in a net debt of about $2.3 billion. EBITDA, as of the end of fiscal year 2023, using the conversion method for figures in pesos to US dollars, was approximately equivalent to $717 million. Slide 17 gives more insight regarding the impact of the macroeconomic situation on our figures and debt. The FX increase of plus 132% in December of 2023 impacted our figures measured in US dollars. The magnitude and timing of this evaluation did not allow us to fully pass it through inflation to our figures by the end of fiscal year 2023. As mentioned, we are converting cost and peso figures using the FX as of the end of this year, and this means that the FX movement impacts fully on our fiscal year 2023 figures. In fact, our EBITDA in fiscal year 2023 converted to US dollars decreased by a fraction of the FX increase, minus 34% versus the last 12 months EBITDA as of September 2023, while our net debt remained almost constant. Also, given the 5G spectrum auction, we had to take an additional loan of $120 million to finance this strategic asset. This was also a factor on our debt. Additionally, during 2023, the past administration imposed restrictions on access to the FX market to pay for imports. Given the options currently provided by the central bank, we are managing the stock of commercial debt that was accumulated due to such restrictions. During the last years, we have been very active in liability management, allowing us to improve the profile of our debt. In 2023, we successfully issued local notes for a total fair value of $480 million equivalent at an average negative yield of minus 6.5% and with an average tenor of three years. With these transactions, we reduce the participation of our cross-border debt with very favorable terms. We continue to obtain cross-border financing even in this challenging context. We have entered into new loan tranches with IDB and CDB and a new export credit line with EDC. Slide 18 shows the breakdown of our financial debt. Total outstanding debt as of December 2023 amounted to more than $2.5 billion. We have successfully paid down or refinanced all of our financial debt commitments during 2023. We have refinanced more than $600 million in a very challenging year, of which more than 50% were cross-border maturities. During 2023, we turned mostly to local capital markets to refinance our maturities, but we maintain a very good relationship with our main creditors, such as multilateral and export credit agencies. As we have been working to concentrate on our maturity profile, the remaining maturities going forward remain manageable. Slide 19 summarizes some important highlights regarding the company's resiliency to FX risk. In our balance sheet, we come with physical assets such as real estate and telecommunications infrastructure that are valued in US dollars and are both sold and leased in that currency. Also, our position is composed mostly of US dollar denominated assets. Additionally, our income statement provides flows that give us a natural hedge. Our operation in Paraguay covers almost 50% of our consolidated interest payments. We are able to pass through most of the inflation to prices, even with accelerating inflation. Additionally, we have the ability to increase our revenues above inflation when it begins to slow down as we manage our discount and promotion policies, leveraging the recovery of our clients' purchasing power as inflation reduces. In a context where FX stays relatively stable, this will allow us to increase our figures in US dollars. We are hedged in terms of our P&L, with more revenues tied to the US dollar than expenses in that currency. Turning to Slide 20, we conclude with some final remarks underlining some favorable highlights about the company. We managed to maintain our EBITDA margin in a challenging context in Argentina. In the fixed segment, we managed to stabilize our customer base in a strong competitive environment. We are investing in new technologies such as 5G and FTTH to improve our connectivity services. We increased the participation of local financing, which has allowed us to take advantage of a lower cost of financing and to offset the increase in the base rate of our floating-rate debt. Finally, we continue to provide long-term value for our investors. We have a solid and stable free cash flow generation before dividends and interest payments, generating between $400 million and $500 million annually during the last three years considering ordinary CapEx for each year. We paid a dividend every year since the merger, and our weighted average dividend yield has been 7.7%. So 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 in 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 very much.

Roberto Nobile, CEO

Okay, this is Roberto. Good morning everyone. Just to go back to the first and second quarter of last year, that we had little impact on the customer base. At that moment, we said that we had a plan to keep our customer base at the end of the year at the same level as in 2022, and that was something we could see in Slide 7. I don't know if that trend was accomplished in a 200% inflation rate economy. So for this quarter, what we are seeing is the same trend. We are increasing prices on a monthly basis very aggressively. We have been able to pass-through around 75% to 80% of the inflation rate to prices, to ARPU, not to prices. Prices are increased by inflation, but ARPU is increased up to 75%. So, we have a mechanism behind the scenes that ensures that all the customers that cannot pay receive the pricing that they can pay. And that's the 25% margin that we are losing on the pass-through. That's the reason why you will see that our price increases in terms of the least prices are a little higher than inflation because we are trying to pass through as much of inflation as possible. So, that has been the trend for the last semester in 2023, and it keeps going in 2024. We are very careful of each customer, trying to give them the best experience at the price that they can pay without losing our trend. So, that’s the whole idea. We are keeping our customer base at the same level. We have new customers getting into FTTH because we have around 5,000 blocks of FTTH already built by the last semester of last year that they are taking into production this quarter. That’s something that keeps us moving forward. In terms of promotions, we have increased our promotional prices, especially for Internet, broadband, fixed access, and the bundle. Successfully, we have been followed by some of our competitors except one that has not moved their promotional price, which is giving away their broadband for $3. But we believe that we can create a better industry if we can increase the promotional prices a little bit. We are the leaders; we move first. Other competitors follow us, and we believe that finally, this aggressive competitor will also move because they have nothing to lose. So we are seeking a better outcome for this semester, as well as looking at the reduction of inflation that will help us recover prices beyond that. So, we are looking at prospective inflation for March and April going below 20%, and that’s a good story to tell despite the recession. So, we believe that we will be handling lower inflation rates, which will increase our capacity to pass along inflation through prices. In terms of CapEx, our budget is around $500 million. That’s the base maintenance CapEx that we need to keep this engine running at full speed. But we have been very cautious and launched only $350 million. That’s something that we will monitor as long as we see the numbers are there, that we have the cash and the inflation is lowering and the exchange rate is stable. This is the forecast we’re seeing, and we are taking care of the use of the proceeds, cash proceeds.

Gabriel Blasi, CFO

Thank you, Marcelo, for the question. I will start with the CapEx details. $350 million is a maintenance CapEx. It’s the minimum that the company can do. That means being able to maintain part of the CapEx which are licenses, agreements, things that are currently paid. So there's no way we can reduce CapEx beyond that. The difference between $350 and $500 million has to do with, for example, 7,000 blocks of FTTH that we have the equipment for but need to invest in labor to put it into production. For example, that’s one thing. The deployment of 5G, we have already 100 sites using the 3.5 gigahertz band, but we are thinking of postponing the implementation of more sites depending on our feasibility of doing so. So the $150 million difference means that it is CapEx that is needed, but we can postpone it. Regarding 5G, we need to remember that only 8% of our customer base has 5G-ready devices. So, this is not something that we need to act on swiftly. If we don’t start, we will never have it when our customers have their devices ready. So we need to start, but we can postpone the timing of starting with this full deployment. We have carefully examined our cost base, particularly regarding licenses and agreements. We have actively renegotiated these contracts, which are in US dollars and affected by currency valuation. In terms of peso contracts, we continually evaluate our structure and have significantly reduced our operating expenses while maintaining our margins. Our primary challenge lies in labor costs, which typically align with inflation rates. We successfully negotiated with one of the toughest unions recently, ensuring that labor growth aligns with inflation but with at least a one-month delay. We aim to manage labor costs at a pace we can sustain, while unions are pushing for faster increases, and we have navigated these negotiations effectively. Hi. Thank you for the question. Well, of course, it will depend on how successful the government is in managing inflation. It seems up to now that inflation is decreasing. I would say it has begun in the medium 20s. Now we are speaking of it in the range of the 15s and going down. That will help a lot significantly, but it will take at least one year, one year and a half to fully outpace that inflation and translate that into prices. Also, you must consider that the ability to price inflation changes according to the size of the inflation. This is theoretical, but forgive me, just to explain it easily, we have some behaviors up to the high 20s or 30s percentage, a different behavior from there to 100%, and then from 100% on, the behavior is pretty different. My conclusion is that if you look at how we have coped with that, the company has been pretty successful in coping with the trend. Of course, there is a gap we need to recover, but as you can see from the graph in the presentation, when inflation begins to come down, it’s easier for us to cope with that. As I said, probably with the current projections, if the government is able to succeed with its program, it will take roughly something more than one year, around 12 months, to fully price that. But up to now, as you can see, the trend has been pretty favorable in terms of keeping up with the very high inflations.

Roberto Nobile, CEO

If you look at our broadband ARPU at December, it was around $6 and $9. $6 dollars, I think it was. For that price, we take the pricing pesos divided by the new foreign exchange rate, totaling $6. If you take a look at the same product in March, in February, I would say, it’s around $15. You take the pesos and divide it by the foreign exchange and the pesos have an inflation rate of 40%, and you divide it by the foreign exchange that was almost fixed because the crawling peg was well behind the inflation rate, creating a situation where you have increased your prices in dollars by almost double, more than double, to $15. So this is the equation we need to look at. We need to ensure that the company is robust in pesos and that we can translate inflation into prices. Because if you consider a longer-term period, you will see that inflation and devaluation go hand in hand. There’s a match at the end of the story that keeps those two variables together. So this is something we will likely see in the first quarter as we gain some momentum. But actually, we need to evaluate our pesos balance sheet because that provides insight into our potential success.

Gabriel Blasi, CFO

I would like to share comments on our governance and financial ratios. As you may know, the part of the company related to multilateral agencies, which is mostly around $1 billion, includes creditors like IFC, IIC, IDB, Finnvera from the Finnish government, EDC from Canada, and CDB from China. As of December 31, that was roughly one-third of our debt. These loans, among other provisions, require compliance with certain financial ratios which are calculated based on contractual definitions. The relevant ones are net debt to EBITDA and EBITDA over interest net. Those are calculated on a quarterly basis along with the presentation of the company financial statements. Considering the complexity of Argentina's economic situation, which prevented the early and accurate estimation of the ratios, the company proactively requested and obtained from its lenders a waiver of the enforceable rights regarding the compliance with the net debt to EBITDA ratio until March 15, 2024. This waiver was conditioned upon certain obligations during a certain period, which have been met to date. Further, the company continued negotiations with the creditors in 2024, obtaining a new waiver effective until March 31, 2025. This waiver allowed for an increase in the maintenance debt to EBITDA ratio above the originally established level, raising it to 3.75% for the calculation period between December 31, 2023, and December 31, 2024, also allowing a maximum consolidated net debt of $2.7 billion on each calculation date, among other matters. As of December 31, 2023, the company has complied with the aforementioned conditions. These waivers, granted due to the current circumstances, reflect the volatility of FX and price adjustments not running simultaneously. The market normalization is ongoing, and with the substantial peso devaluation just 15 days prior to the close of the period, there wasn’t an immediate ability to adjust our pricing, leading to the current situation. To avoid that, this waiver was acquired from our creditors, as I described. Also, although this is an audit detail, just to provide insight, the audited calculation of the ratio of debt as of the end of January is below three. So this is a precautionary move we took with our creditors to navigate the situation smoothly until the market fully regularizes without unforeseen issues. On the other hand, the company is actively working to resolve this situation as soon as possible. As part of these waivers, we were also granted the option to sell our Puerto Madero building, which has been empty since the pandemic. It’s a significant real estate asset, and we will use those proceeds for pre-cancellation.

Operator, Operator

We have no further questions at this moment. Thank you very much for participating in our quarterly conference call. Please do not hesitate to contact our Investor Relations department for any further inquiries you may have. Good morning to all and have a nice day.