GPS. These will be the acronyms that will mark the path that Telefónica will follow in the coming years. Growth, profitability and sustainability (GPS), with which the company seeks at its Investor Day to convince its shareholders that the business will grow in the next three years.
In the financial field, the objectives are clear but prudent, taking into account the competitive market in which it operates: an approximate annual growth of 1% of income, for the gross operating result of the business (ebitda) a growth of 2% of ebitda.
The greatest ambition is set in the objective of achieving 5% of operating cash, which is derived from a decrease in its infrastructure investment policy and a business exploitation that seeks to exceed 10% of cash generation (FCF). . Specifically, investments over sales will tend to reduce by up to 12% in 2026, which represents a drop of more than two percentage points compared to the 2023 objectives.
The new GPS plan (Growth, Profitability and Sustainability) also proposes a favorable evolution of the ratio of net financial debt over EBITDA to reduce it to 2.2-2.5 times in 2026.
The company undertakes to pay, at least, a dividend of 0.30 euros per share in the period 2023-2026, as it has been doing until now.
The company has also presented today the results corresponding to the third quarter of 2023, a period in which it obtained a net profit of 502 million euros, 9.3%. Although in the total for the first nine months of the year, net profit fell by 15%, to 1,262 million euros.
An antagonistic evolution with that of income, which although while the first nine months of the year grew by 2.4%, to 30,499 million euros, in the third quarter they fell by 0.2% and stood at 10,321 million .
Regarding debt, the decreasing trend continues and stands at 26,537 million, 7.4% below that registered in the first nine months of 2021.
“We are at the dawn of the digital age. At Telefónica, we have gotten this far by being faithful to our values and fulfilling our main objectives. The operator has completely reinvented itself because connectivity is the basis of everything related to digital. At Telefónica we have a new vision and renewed ambition to lead the future, because we are not just a telecommunications company, we are something bigger and even better. Now we are a supercomputer,” said the president of Telefónica, José María Álvarez-Pallete.
Álvarez-Pallete has also taken the opportunity, once again, to demand “a regulatory framework adapted to the needs of the new times”, in reference to the need for large digital operators to be responsible for financing network infrastructures.
“The company launches its new roadmap after successfully completing its previous action plan, presented in 2019, and reaches this point by meeting all the financial objectives established for 2023 and with all its strategic units strengthened,” he says. the information presented to the market this Wednesday.
