Earnings Call Transcript
MILLICOM INTERNATIONAL CELLULAR SA (TIGO)
Earnings Call Transcript - TIGO Q3 2024
Operator, Operator
Hello, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter 2024 results call. This event is being recorded. Our speakers today will be our CEO, Marcelo Benitez; and our CFO, Bart Vanhaeren. The slides for today's presentation are available on our website, along with the earnings release and our financial statements. Now please turn to Slide 2 for the safe harbor disclosure. We will be making forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties and could have a material impact on our results. On Slide 3, we define the non-IFRS metrics that we will reference throughout the presentation, and you can find reconciliation tables in the back of our earnings release and on our website. With those disclaimers out of the way, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Marcelo Benitez.
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
Thanks, Michelle, and hello, everyone. I appreciate you all being here to review the company's performance in the third quarter. This was an excellent quarter for us at Millicom. The actions we've taken over the last 15 months are clearly delivering results. Our restructuring is now almost complete. And even with significant one-off costs this quarter, we were able to generate a record equity free cash flow. We have successfully combined aggressive cost reduction, CapEx optimization and strong customer growth. And just as important, this very strong performance is broad-based with nearly every country producing much improved EBITDA and equity free cash flow. We are also advancing significantly on the organic side, having announced highly strategic transactions in Colombia and Costa Rica and an important tower transaction in Central America. Each of these transactions is expected to close in 2025, and we expect that it will enhance the company's return on capital in 2026 and beyond. I want to thank all our team members for these outstanding achievements. Your commitment to the company and our customers is at the heart of these results. Please turn to Slide 5 for the highlights of the quarter; Q3 was one of our strongest quarters ever. In terms of customer net additions, we had postpaid adds of almost 300,000 and home net adds of almost 70,000. These are the strongest net adds since 2021 when we were just coming out of the pandemic, which speaks to the strength of our performance this quarter. I want to recognize our sales teams who are out on the streets every day delivering record levels of new customer activities in the quarter. We were able to deliver this strong customer growth while also sustaining a very robust cash flow generation, which reached a record of $271 million in this quarter, even better than Q2. As you can see, the efficiency programs we've implemented have made the company leaner and more cash generative and have also strengthened the commercial agility that Tigo has always been known for. Now let's review each of these highlights in more detail, beginning with our mobile business in the next slide. Our mobile business continued to perform very well in Q3 with service revenue growth of about 4%. This is coming mainly from the higher ARPU we are getting from the prepaid price increases we've implemented over the past year. We also get an ARPU uplift when we migrate customers from prepaid to postpaid, which is a key component of our commercial strategy. As you can see in this slide, we continue to grow our postpaid base every quarter, and Q3 was exceptionally strong with net adds of almost 300,000. This solid performance is a direct result of the factors I discussed in our Q2 call 3 months ago. Specifically, we continue to invest in our networks to increase network capacity. I know that this is hard to believe because you see our CapEx is down almost 25% year-to-date. But the reality is that we are really doing more with less, and every dollar of CapEx we spend is return-focused and is having a bigger impact than ever before. We have also simplified our commercial offerings, making it easier for our customers to see value in what we are providing. Our new plan emphasizes convergence, which drives lower churn, higher ARPU, and a better customer lifetime value. This is also driving improved net adds in our home business, as you can see in the next slide. On our Q2 call, we told you that we have been investing in our broadband networks, and that we were upgrading customer speeds. We also mentioned our shift from defensive to offensive strategy. In Q3, we took a step forward; we simplified our commercial offers, focused our efforts on notes with low penetration rates, strengthened our commercial capabilities, and pushed convergence. As a result of all these initiatives, customer satisfaction is up, churn is down, and this is driving the improvement we are seeing in net adds, which is now solidly back in positive territory in 2024 and in Q3 in particular. Our home customer base is almost back to where it was last year, setting us up for a positive return of service revenue growth in our home business sometime next year. Please turn to the next slide for a quick look at our B2B business, which had another solid quarter. B2B service revenue grew 5% organically in the quarter. Over the last 12 months, our B2B business generated $980 million in revenues. A big part of the growth comes from digital solutions, which grew 27% in Q3. As we discussed, the two large Panama projects have contributed meaningfully to our growth over the past year. This is the direct result of investments we've made in our infrastructure, smart connectivity products, data centers, cloud solutions, and digital solutions. We remain very focused on capturing our share of the SME customer segment, which is growing at mid-single digits, and we are uniquely positioned to meet their needs for reliable and convergent solutions that help to grow their businesses. Now let's review our performance in our three largest countries, beginning with Colombia on the next slide. Colombia had another solid quarter in Q3. Customer net additions were very strong, as you can see in this slide. We added 180,000 postpaid customers, 40,000 home customers, and nearly 250,000 prepaid customers in this quarter. This was our strongest quarter since the pandemic in terms of new customer activity. As a result, our mobile service revenue continued to grow at an industry-leading rate of 8% in local terms, and our home business is now starting to recover, setting us up for stronger revenue growth in 2025. We achieved all of this while keeping our EBITDA margins at 39%, six points higher than last year, despite additional restructuring costs this quarter as we work to ensure long-term profitability and sustainability in our most challenging market. Now please turn to the next slide to look at the Q3 performance in Guatemala. The key message here is that service revenue growth continued to accelerate in our largest market with growth of 4% in Q3. The acceleration is largely coming from ARPU in our mobile business. As you recall, we implemented a price increase in all our prepaid offerings over the past year, and these actions were well absorbed by the market. At the same time, we continue to implement our efficiency program, with margins consistently above 50% in recent years. Most of you probably did not expect that there would be room to make Guatemala even more efficient. But as you can see on this slide, we have managed to do exactly that over the past year. EBITDA of $220 million in the quarter was a new record and the margin of 55% was one of our highest ever. Our team in Guatemala is taking our operation to a whole new level of efficiency and profitability. I want to take a moment to congratulate the entire team for their focus on execution over the past year. Now let's look at Panama on the next slide. These charts show you how our service revenues, EBITDA, and OCF have been trending over the last 12 months. We think it is helpful to look at Panama this way, given that some quarters were impacted by our large B2B contracts and by restructuring expenses. When you look at Panama this way, the picture that emerges is that the business is growing very steadily. Our mobile and B2B businesses continued to grow double digits in the third quarter, and a lot of this growth comes from mobile ARPU and growth in postpaid. We see a big opportunity to transform Panama into a more postpaid market over time, and we think we are still in the early innings in terms of pursuing that opportunity. Likewise, we see a lot of opportunity in B2B going forward. The SME segment is expanding along with the economy, while large corporations are adopting digital solutions like smart connectivity, private and public cloud, and cybersecurity services. Our targeted approach and specialized product portfolio are well suited to capture this growth. We anticipate the ongoing digitalization of government services, and our expertise in telemedicine, cybersecurity, and cloud give us a unique advantage to compete for and secure these projects. So our top line is growing, and there are powerful long-term growth opportunities that should help us sustain healthy growth in the future. Meanwhile, we've been busy implementing our efficiency programs, which drove margins to 27% in Q3. That's an increase of more than four percentage points over the past year, which is quite remarkable. Panama, with its stable and dollarized economy, is now generating close to $250 million in EBITDA annually for the group. Now please turn to Slide 12 to look at the punch line for the quarter. On our Q2 call, we told you about all the initiatives we've already implemented to make the company more efficient, and these are paying off. As you can see, our equity free cash flow more than doubled compared to last year, and our leverage continued to decline rapidly, ending Q3 at 2.59 times. We are pleased with these results, but we continue to take steps to ensure that the company can sustain and grow its cash flow well beyond this year. Finally, before I turn the call over to Bart, please turn to the next slide to discuss the Landmark Tower transaction we announced last week. We are incredibly pleased to have reached an agreement with SBA. Like us, SBA already has a significant presence in Central America, and we are very enthusiastic about expanding our partnership with them. This transaction will unlock close to $1 billion in capital and is consistent with our plans to make Millicom a more efficient telecom operator by focusing on our core operations. We also entered into a build-to-suit agreement for up to 2,500 new towers to be built by SBA over the next few years. This BTS partnership will allow us to further optimize our CapEx as we continue to expand our mobile coverage in the region. Now let me turn the call over to Bart to review the financials for this quarter.
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
Thank you, Marcelo. Please turn to Slide 15 for the financial highlights. Service revenue was $1.34 billion in the quarter, which is a year-on-year increase of 1.8% or 2.4% organic. In the first two quarters, we had tailwinds from currency, but now we are facing headwinds, notably in Colombia and Paraguay. As Marcelo already mentioned, our growth is mostly generated on the back of our mobile business, which grew 4.2%. EBITDA was up 9.8% year-on-year to $585 million. Note, however, this included $73 million of restructuring and other one-off charges, which compares to $33 million of one-off charges in Q3 2023. The $73 million is composed mainly of $48 million in severance payments and $21 million in insurance costs related to the Domoplace offer. As we discussed on the Q2 call, we are aiming to complete most of our restructuring this year. Note, however, that we are currently expecting significantly lower one-off charges compared to Q2. Equity free cash flow for the quarter was $271 million, which compares to $100 million in Q3 of last year, another milestone achievement. Now please turn to the next slide. Guatemala's service revenue of $350 million represented year-on-year growth of 4.0%, an acceleration from 3% in Q2 driven by mobile ARPU. I do not want to be overly optimistic about the trend here, though, because we've seen increased competitive pressure in recent weeks. Colombia's service revenue of $331 million grew 1.6% year-on-year, an improvement from flat in Q2 2024, fueled by high single-digit growth in mobile coming from ARPU and mid-single-digit growth in B2B. Our Home business sustained a double-digit decline in service revenue, but as Marcelo already discussed, we saw signs of recovery with 40,000 customers net adds this quarter. Panama's service revenue was $170 million, up 5.3% year-on-year due to strong growth in both our mobile and B2B business. Bolivia's service revenue increased 1.1% with positive growth in mobile and B2B offset by a low single-digit decline in Home. Now that we continue to be very conservative with capital deployment in Bolivia due to the difficult currency situation. Paraguay's service revenue of $133 million increased 1.1% year-on-year, with positive growth in B2B and Home, offset by a low single-digit decline in Mobile. Service revenue in our other markets, comprising El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, was 0.8% in U.S. dollar terms, with growth in Mobile offset by a decline in Home, a consistent story. Now please turn to the next slide for a look at EBITDA by Country. Rather than bringing you our country-by-country EBITDA growth numbers, I'd like to point you to a few key achievements. We have managed to lift the EBITDA margin above 40% in nearly all our markets, with Colombia being very close to it. This is on a reported basis; hence it includes all the one-off costs and restructuring charges mentioned before. As you can see, all country segments contributed to this growth. Looking into the components of EBITDA growth, approximately half the growth came from incremental revenues and half from savings in operational OpEx. This is slightly affected by increased corporate costs coming from severance as well as costs incurred by the Board for advisory related to the Atlas tender offer. Now please turn to Slide 18 for a look at equity free cash flow. As we've already discussed, EBITDA for the quarter was $585 million. That's up $48 million from last year despite the $73 million in restructuring and other one-off charges. Cash CapEx was $125 million. It was down $78 million versus last year, though this includes approximately $13 million of proceeds from the Colombia Tower transaction announced earlier this year, which is included here as negative CapEx. So the underlying year-on-year cash CapEx reduction is $65 million. Changes in working capital and other were a positive $51 million. This is $18 million better than last year, largely due to a portion of the restructuring charges booked in the quarter not being paid yet but being paid in stock. Finance charges were $118 million, which is down $19 million due to the reduction in debt over the past year. Lease payments were $83 million, an increase of $10 million due to the Colombia tower sale as well as annual inflation adjustments to the earnings. Net financing costs were $25 million, up $11 million from last year. As a result, the equity free cash flow was $271 million during the quarter. This represents an increase of $171 million compared to Q3 2023. We continue to use our cash flow generation to reduce net debt, which declined by $245 million this quarter, down to $5.4 billion. This brings our leverage down to 2.59 compared to 2.77 last quarter and 3.29 at the end of last year. Now please turn to Slide 19 to review our financial targets for 2024. In the first nine months of the year, we generated equity free cash flow of $540 million, which includes $49 million of net proceeds from the Colombia tower sale, partially offset by $8 million of taxes related to that deal. This means we generated about $500 million in equity free cash flow, excluding M&A in the first three quarters, compared to our previous guidance of more than $600 million for the full year. Q4 is usually the strongest quarter of the year in terms of equity free cash flow, but several factors will pressure cash flow in Q4 of 2024 compared to Q3. Specifically, we're expecting $50 million more cash CapEx and approximately $50 million less tailwind from working capital as we pay for some restructuring and other one-off costs incurred in Q3, and finally, a bit more spectrum and more taxes. All in all, we feel comfortable to increase our guidance again to around $650 million in equity free cash flow for the full year. I do want to caution everyone that these forward-looking statements contain both risks and uncertainties and are still subject to capital allocation decisions and CapEx execution in the year to go, which can move this both up and down. We are now ready for your questions.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. Our first question will come from Oscar at ABG. Oscar, the line is yours.
Unidentified Analyst, Analyst
Perfect. Thank you. So just the first question I would have on CapEx. Not sure I missed the last couple of words you said about the CapEx. So anything about the 2024 CapEx guidance? I think you earlier alluded to around or below $700 million. And I mean you're tracking, I mean, quite low at the moment. And also as a run rate, if we can say anything about what we should expect going into 2025, please?
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
Yes, I would take the first one. As you can see, we are catching up on CapEx. We started the year defining a new framework on these return-based investments, that framework is already operational now. So we're comfortable to go back and invest in capacity, mainly in the regions and departments where we see a lot of demand for data and also in increasing our capacity in the fixed. So as you can see in Q3, we've increased from roughly 8% of revenues to 12% of revenues in CapEx, excluding spectrum. We believe that this will keep increasing in Q4. So we are very confident that we are going to stay below 700 as per the target of the year.
Unidentified Analyst, Analyst
All right. And I mean, the 12% level, I think, obviously, you are a little bit below that at the moment, and it's increasing in Q4, but 12% of sales, is that sort of sustainable going into 2025, you think? Or do you think that the acceleration in Q4 will sort of continue into '25?
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
Well, I think the levels of 2024 percentage-wise are going to be the same in 2025. Again, it's more about the new framework on return of investment. That is also mixed with a strong renegotiation of new contracts. This has also lowered the base of the CapEx. Additionally, we're not investing that much in very long-term projects in terms of IT transformation; we are focusing more on short-term projects and availability of our systems. Overall, we believe that we will be at the same percentage next year.
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
And maybe Oscar, to add to that as you're asking for 2025, we do believe that the levels that we have today are both recurring and sustainable, right? This is how we prepare for 2025, with the current bit of additional investments that we have right now. We're already looking to invest for next year to prepare for a strong 2025. There could be some ups and downs; we might see a little bit more spectrum charges. On the other side, we may enjoy some working capital upside, so it moves a little bit over the different KPIs. But all in all, the key message is recurring, sustainable, and looking for further upside next year as our full cost savings program starts to run as a business and sees less one-off restructuring costs. That's how we look at 2025.
Unidentified Analyst, Analyst
Understood. Next one, maybe a little bit more detail oriented but the tower transaction that you announced recently. Is there anything to say about expected leasing costs, et cetera? And also, are there any sort of index clauses in the leasing agreements for the coming 15 years?
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
If you decompose these agreements of 17,000 towers we expect until around mid-year next year closing, it is a package. We expect everything to come basically at the same moment. How this typically works is that you lose a little bit of revenues, which is tenancies that we have with other operators on our towers. But then again, we also save on OpEx on maintenance, electricity, etc. So on the EBITDA level, I would say it's more or less a wash, give or take. Below the line, you have the new leases from the leaseback agreement with SBA, and you save on two fronts. One, we wouldn't have ground leases anymore because it's embedded in the new lease rates. And then two, you have a bit of a tax shield from the extra costs in your P&L. To give an indication, I would say, on a net basis, the equity free cash flow impact could be around $40 million on an annual basis. So as we close in mid-year next year, it will be much lower than that.
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
And there's an additional point also, Oscar, that we entered into a BTS agreement which would allow us to avoid approximately $30 million of CapEx per year with that BTS.
Unidentified Analyst, Analyst
So yes, that's very helpful. Just to the $40 million you alluded to, Bart, is that before interest payments? Obviously, you're going to get a lot of gross proceeds, which you could reduce interest costs.
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
That's correct. Yes, absolutely. And that is against the $975 million, minus taxes, not to forget that our Honduras partner owns one third of the business in Honduras, so there's a bit of leakage there as well.
Unidentified Analyst, Analyst
Got it. All right, thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to hear your thoughts about the leverage. I mean, we expect to come around 2.5, or maybe a little bit below 2.5. How do you think about shareholder remuneration after reaching 2.5? Should we expect anything not until you come under 2 points? How should we think?
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
Well, I think, first of all, we've been walking the talk, right? So we didn't do any shareholder remuneration until we get to 2.5. We're almost there. We're very confident for year-end. But I want to see it there before really opening that discussion. We'll have a strategic session with the board at the beginning of the year. Business-wise, this is typically discussed. We do have a lot of equity free cash flow coming in next year, like this year, plus the proceeds potentially from the towers. Let's wait until we have it in the bank and then make a decision. On the other side, we have Colombia's M&A to pay for, but surely, if everything materializes, we will still have a significant amount of excess cash. Up to now, we've been repaying debt. We did more than $0.5 billion this year already, so we could continue that. But it comes in a broader discussion of capital allocation. What do we do? Organic investment is the priority. As Marcelo mentioned, the CapEx portfolio that we have today, we feel comfortable that it is sufficient for recurring services. We have continuous deleveraging and savings on interest payments, which is good for maintaining a strong balance sheet. We could consider more M&A, but nothing is planned right now, so that's part of capital allocation decisions. Lastly, shareholder remuneration either through share buybacks or dividends. The dividend policy would need to be published. If we do that, we would follow either an AGM in May or an EGM to be out of the cycle. That's a bit the options there — more the menu than a clear direction.
Unidentified Analyst, Analyst
Thank you very much.
Operator, Operator
We're going to go now to Andreas Coello at Scotiabank. Andreas?
Andres Coello, Analyst
Yes, guys. Good morning. Can you give us an update on the M&A process in Colombia? How are you doing in terms of the permits? How are the permits at the municipal and federal levels regarding the Coltel acquisition? That's my first question. My second question is just to confirm with you that you already have approved a buyback program for 10% of your market cap. You already said that you are waiting for leverage to come down to 2.5. But I understand that you don't need extra permits to launch a buyback program. So just thinking when could we start to see some of those buybacks? Thank you.
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
Let me start, and then Marcelo can complement where I fall short. So on Colombia, we announced the transaction with Telefonica and are currently negotiating the loan forms. We are also in the process of doing all the regulatory filings. Those filings should come out very shortly. We don't technically need to wait to have everything fully landed, and we will go out with that very soon. The governments on both sides are running a process of privatization of their stakes. There's not a ton that we can do; we can be involved, but it’s an independent process that they need to run, which starts with a fairness opinion on valuation, then they need to offer it to the public, and then it goes to tender. What we are doing is agreeing on how our offer fits into that on both sides, and we should see clarity around that in the probably first quarter of the year. We are still starting the transaction in Q4, and hopefully, we can have something done in H2 next year.
Andres Coello, Analyst
Let me ask a technical question on that. Could you buy the Telefonica stake without the government selling their stake? Can you control it and have the government as your partner?
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
A very fair question. In Q2, we had a similar question. What can't happen is that Millicom owns a portion in both companies and then not be able to synergize between the two. That cannot happen, right? We wouldn't want to be in such a position. What we can do is merge the entities and both governments can stay in or decide to sell it. We are fine with both options. We've been working well with EPM for many years, and they can stay in. With the merchant capacity, we would be willing to make that offer likely the same for the government. We can merge the companies under that structure.
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
Just to complement there, Andres. As you know, Colombia is our most challenging market with many operators and high spectrum prices, which pressures ARPU. So this is very positive for Colombia; the demand for data is there. Colombia needs strong operators to capture and convert that demand into consumption. Everyone is looking at the same thing. We want to fix the same problem, so we are doing everything in our hands to finalize this in the second half of next year. We are also following the process of EPM and the government closely. We are optimistic about the timeline and the possibility of something being completed in H2 next year.
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
Now regarding the share buyback, Andres, yes, we have 10% that can be approved by the Board. There's a portion for shareholder remuneration and another portion for shares we might need to buy for equity grants as part of our employee remuneration. There are two impacts: one, to repurchase shares for salaries or benefits, and when needed we can replenish the treasury shares. When it comes to shareholder remuneration, we want to have a strategic session with the Board to decide on that. When do we start with a repurchase program versus a dividend? We need to have that clearly outlined.
Operator, Operator
Next, we're going to go to Andreas Joelsson at Carnegie.
Andreas Joelsson, Analyst
Hello, good morning, good afternoon to everyone. A follow-up on the tower deal. You have 2,500 remaining towers. Would you say it's likely that those will also be divested? On the proceeds you've received from the 7,000 that you've already announced, what's the tax rate on that amount? I have more follow-ups later.
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
So the 2,500, a big chunk of that is in Bolivia. We have several in Paraguay and others that are still within the transaction perimeter of countries. But those are sites that are within our data center, our NOC, in very difficult places for third parties to come and maintain. Given the currency situation now in Bolivia, I don't see those towers becoming a priority to sell right now. Managing expectations, I wouldn't say that those 2,500 remaining towers will be coming into sale very soon or that they will bring large amounts of proceeds.
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
It's hard to say at this moment regarding taxes. We haven't disclosed any specific numbers around that. To give an indication, we are selling the towers through International Luxembourg in line with previous quarters. This is a subsidiary of Millicom Group, which has a full separate structure for countries. We're selling internationally from Luxembourg, which is a very efficient way of separating the towers from the parent entity.
Andreas Joelsson, Analyst
On Bolivia, with the currency under pressure, how do you reason about potential devaluation? How do you see that impacting you on P&L and on cash flow?
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
In Bolivia, we do have some political instability and social unrest, which is putting pressure on the economy, and therefore, on our ARPUs and customers’ purchasing power. Our approach is cautious; we are proceeding with investments, particularly in mobile capacity. We've implemented our full efficiency program. You will see that in the EBITDA growth of this quarter. Additionally, we've localized almost 85% of all our OpEx and direct costs in local currency, which is crucial for navigating through economic turmoil. We anticipate devaluation next year, though how much is uncertain. Our portfolio aids us in these situations, and we have two operations with stable currencies, Guatemala and Honduras. We are factoring this into our budget for next year, and we don't foresee a significant impact on our ability to deliver equity free cash flow.
Andreas Joelsson, Analyst
Perfect. Finally, on Colombia, as you said, there was very strong subscriber intake during the quarter. Could you explain a bit more why this happened? It looks quite sudden? Is there any risk of churn in the coming quarters? Overall, I sense you are looking for more customer intake. Does that fit within current cost structure?
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
Regarding Colombia, we see this is a very healthy growth. For example, in postpaid, 35% of the new customers are coming through our FMC offers. These customers come with very low churn, below 2%. The other 70% is coming from our base in postpaid and from the portability channel. These customers consume after migrating from prepay to postpaid. We don't foresee any churn impact. Our ability to keep growing our base remains strong. In Home, we are extending our coverage through the deal with ETB in Bogota. We simplified our offers, making them easy to understand, and strengthened our commercial capacity. We're opening new stores, adding salespeople and enhancing our digital channels, and all of that is paying off. Again, all these new customers are arriving with very low early churn. We don't foresee any near-term impact. These are real customers who are consuming and paying.
Stefan Gauffin, Analyst
Yes. Andreas managed to take several of my questions, but I have a couple more. First of all, you mentioned seeing increased competition in Guatemala in recent weeks. Can you elaborate on what you're seeing there?
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
Yes. In Guatemala, we have a large market share, almost 11.5 million customers in Mobile. We started increasing prices in prepaid last year to monetize the increase in consumption that was well received in all markets, including Guatemala. The main challenge we face is that in significant regions, we were previously mostly alone. Claro has invested aggressively in these new areas. When you have all customers in one department and suddenly gain a competitor, there is pressure on ARPUs and on new customer additions. We defend those areas focusing on availability, affordability, and accessibility. We are strengthening our networks, caught up in mobile capacity, and implementing an aggressive plan to do so. We're strengthening our distribution and our point of sales, direct salesforce, and household activation points while reducing price per gigabyte in those areas. This is our strategy; we know how to defend ourselves and are currently doing that in Guatemala. Negative gross adds were about 90,000, which is a small portion of the total base. This reflects dynamics in the prepaid market.
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
It's worth noting we had very strong postpaid net adds in Guatemala. There are some pockets of strength as well.
Stefan Gauffin, Analyst
And just a clarification on the one-off costs; they are fairly high this quarter. Could you provide information on how much of this is related to restructuring charges? What can we expect regarding the overall cost-saving program? You had reached the level of $250 million in run-rate savings; can you update that? And also on restructuring charges for Q4, I believe you said earlier that there would come more restructuring charges in the second half.
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
Out of the restructuring charges today, in the third quarter, I want to call out a little bit more than $20 million that relates to costs incurred by our independent Board defending against the tender offer and costs related to that. This was a significant element in Q3. The biggest chunk of the remaining costs relates to severance payments. Also, we have a separation agreement with our former CEO, fully reflected in our Q3 numbers. In Q4, we plan to finalize most of our restructuring, so there will be a little more than you will see in Q4, but not at the same level as in Q3. Removing the defense charges, I expect Q4 not to match Q3 levels.
Stefan Gauffin, Analyst
Can you update on the run rate of the cost-saving program?
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
Year-to-date, we spent roughly $100 million in severance payments this year. If you look at our operational expenditures, those savings run rate; half of it comes from GRC, and the other half is from other operational OpEx. Your numbers triangulate on the OpEx side quite well. Also, in CapEx, we aim to be closer to $700 million, and we believe that it will be recurring going forward. With those two elements, you kind of match the same numbers that I’m seeing. OpEx savings comprise half from GRC and half from third-party contracts and services.
Marcelo Santos, Analyst
Good morning, Marcelo, Bart. Thank you for taking my question. I have actually two. The first question is about the CapEx for 2025. I think you guys mentioned that as a percentage of revenue, it should be quite similar to what we are seeing this year. I wanted to understand if you're embedding in 2025 some kind of acceleration in the home business, some faster deployment, or should it also be more similar to what we're seeing now? So I just want to know the moving parts in this CapEx. Then deep diving a bit into the Colombian fixed business, the home business in Colombia. It has been a bit weak, so I wondered if you could zoom in and comment on the challenges and opportunities you see there? How qualitatively things should unfold? Thank you.
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
On the first topic, regarding the framework we've established, we prioritize capacity, capacity in our fixed and mobile networks. Capacity is at the core of customer experience. We understand where the demand exists by analyzing specifics at the municipality and the CVE level in mobile and home. We see our CapEx focus going towards areas where we can capture demand and convert that into usage and ARPU. In terms of commercial CapEx, we are not leaving any opportunities on the table. Our new net additions seen do originate from this commercial CapEx. We view 2025 positively as net additions keep increasing, including the necessary CapEx for that. Thirdly, we also have the IT component, where we are focused on more immediate needs rather than long-term huge projects. The industry is transforming rapidly, and we must keep pace by being agile with new digital solutions. We believe we can maintain the same rate this year without compromising opportunities to grow.
Marcelo Santos, Analyst
Colombia home challenges and opportunities?
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
In Colombia, we are growing well in our gross adds due to our extended Home pass in Bogota and our still new commercial approach. Offers have simplified, enabling us to gain. Our new commercial strategy is built around a focus on much stronger FMC offers. Thus, we can keep pace with the current level of new customer sign-ups until next year. However, full revenue growth will be slow as the FMC offers come with lower churn, a longer customer lifecycle, but lower average revenue per user. It will just take a bit more time to see those revenues reflected. Additionally, we are identifying more opportunities to grow our margin on new customers, with better pricing on our broadband installations.
Unidentified Analyst, Analyst
Hi everyone, congrats on the results. I have two questions. The first what you can tell me about B2B performance of the quarter? We've seen some lower sequential growth. If you could comment on project pipeline and what growth avenues you see? Maybe how you see margins for this segment? The second question is just a follow-up on the tower sales. You guys mentioned a $40 million impact for equity free cash flow? Is that for this year? Just to check.
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
In B2B, we see growth from three segments. The first one is SME. We are well equipped to provide solutions there, due to their need for a one-stop service that converges mobile and fixed services. We are industrializing our commercial activities to better serve them with simplified offerings. There are many growth prospects within that segment already showing in places like Paraguay and El Salvador. The second growth avenue is digital solutions; smart connectivity, private and public clouds, and cybersecurity services are seeing fantastic demands, growing about 27%. That's a robust area where churn is significantly low. Overall, our third avenue focuses on large companies; our growth in this space depends on managing to upsell and convert large multi-service clients, yet relying on project-specific opportunities. We do have strong capabilities to replicate successful projects but remain very selective and tactical.
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
Gustavo, concerning the sequential growth you referenced, keep in mind we witnessed significant contributions from Colombia, where we saw a weaker exchange rate. So when looking at numbers in dollars, adjustments should be made for FX.
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
For the $40 million impact, regarding the leasing payments from the tower sale, that amount referenced is an annual run rate. Thus when the sale closes halfway next year, you can conclude approximately $20 million for next year. I should emphasize this proceeds doesn’t materially affect the cash flow from EBITDA but it does appear below the EBITDA line.
Unidentified Analyst, Analyst
Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions.
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
Thank you, Gustavo.
Operator, Operator
Thank you, everyone. That concludes the call for Q3. Thank you very much for participating.
Marcelo Benitez, CEO
Thank you.
Bart Vanhaeren, CFO
Thank you.