Dear Stakeholders,
In a year scarred by the war in Europe, the highly inflationary context and instability in supply chains, NOS was able to overcome the challenges posed by this context and strengthen its growth trajectory.
Aligned with the defined strategic ambitions, we were able to continue to create value for customers, shareholders, employees, business partners, and globally, for the Portuguese society and economy.
I highlight the solid NOS' operational and financial performance, leveraged by the 5G leadership and the robust growth of the Telco business, by the recovery of the Audiovisuals & Cinema segment, and by the operation of new avenues of value creation.
The good operating performance enabled us to deliver a very solid financial performance. Our Consolidated Turnover grew by 6.3%, in 2022 to 1,521 million euros, and operating profitability, as measured by EBITDA, increased by 5.4% to 651.1 million euros, slightly below revenue growth. The Net Income of 138.5 million euros represented a 4% drop compared to the 2021 Profit, excluding the gains resulting from the sale of towers to Cellnex. And, in a year marked by huge investment in the expansion and modernization of our technological infrastructure, CAPEX reached an annual maximum of 495.9 million euros, an increase of 17.4% compared to the previous year and representing more than 30% of Consolidated Revenues, a proportion far higher than the average of our national and international peers.
In the Telco business, mobile services continue to be the main driver for the growth of RGUs, making it possible to exceed 10.782 million services provided at the end of 2022, 4.6% more than the previous year. I also highlight the continued growth of convergent services, which already represent more than 67% of our fixed access customer base demonstrating the clear preference of Portuguese families for integrated fixed and mobile last generation communications services.
Our film exhibition and audiovisual distribution business continued its recovery path with cinemas increasing the number of spectators compared to the previous year, but still with values lower than those of the pre-pandemic period, also driven by the return of the great world box office successes.
2022 confirmed our unequivocal leadership in 5G. We have taken our state-of-the-art networks to the entire population, contributing to a more cohesive society, and to a country that is better prepared for the future.
We continued with a strong pace of investment, maintaining our technological leadership, which allows us to have the best 5G network today, which already covers 87% of the population, and is the best mobile network in Portugal. We are the pioneer operator in 5G. We were the first to implement the widest and most advanced network and the first to launch solutions, with new dimensions of innovation and connectivity, which improve the lives of people and families and impact productivity and the development of companies.
We maintained our vision for the future, putting technology at the service of a better world. The use cases in which we were involved in 2022 are moving in that direction, by exploring additional potentialities of 5G technology.
The first autonomous driving trip that took place in Portugal, in a real environment, was carried out with the NOS 5G network, and with it was demonstrated the role that this technology will have in the construction of a connected autonomous mobility, which will certainly contribute to creating a disruptive model for transporting people and goods, aligned with the decarbonization target for Europe and Portugal.
We were also pioneers in creating the most advanced 5G innovation centre in Portugal – the NOS Hub 5G, an epicentre of collaboration between various partners, which will accelerate the conversion of this technology’s potential into concrete solutions and services with value for people’s lives, and for the digital transition the country needs and is making. Since its opening, we have already developed more than 33 solutions.
We increased our investments in startups with business powered by 5G, through the NOS 5G fund, having invested in 2 more companies, which will make Portugal a more technologically advanced and digital country.
We continued to deliver a better experience and services to Customers, driven by the ambition to do what no one has yet done.
We have improved our value proposition, supported by continued investment in network infrastructure and the integration of communications, media, and content services. We continued to optimize value creation through innovation, maintaining a diversified and relevant TV offer, and offering new businesses complementary to the telco offer.
We have improved the user experience of our services, responding to the needs of Portuguese families. We offer a better Wi-Fi experience, which combines the offer of state-of-the-art equipment with a comprehensive diagnostic and advisory service for customers, we continued to renovate our customers' routers and set-top-boxes with new generation equipment. We were also pioneers in providing our customers with Disney+ on the UMA TV platform, thus complementing the already vast range of linear and streaming content in our television ecosystem.
We launched a new Alarms business line, with a disruptive value proposition, taking advantage of synergies with the Telco business. We also follow a path of diversification and capture of value in non-Telco business, in Cloud and Managed Services, in larger and higher revenues corporate customer segments.
Our portfolio of services for the sustainable transformation of companies continued to grow, with new solutions in the areas of cybersecurity, or remote assistance, with services that apply augmented reality technology, contributing to the dematerialization of the economy. We continued the smart cities projects, with emphasis on the cities of Barreiro and Pombal, projects that contribute to low-carbon urban environments, and safer and healthier communities.
We sought to strengthen our digital emancipation, to accelerate the weight of digital in our business processes and operations. We expanded the features and increased the degree of use of our digital ecosystem, and implemented advanced analytics solutions in our operating model, with the aim of serving the customer better and more efficiently.
We will continue to create opportunities to put the new generation of mobile communications at the service of more sustainable development, contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals prescribed by the United Nations 2030 Agenda, and to the materialization of the United Nation’s Global Compact Principles to which we subscribe.
We improved our performance in all dimensions of sustainability. Based on the 2022 performance, NOS rose in Moody's ESG Solutions ranking, becoming the fourth best ranked European company in the telecommunications sector and, particularly as a result of our environmental management policies, in 2022 we reached the reputed List A of the CDP, the highest assessment score of this independent entity, being recognized as one of the four best companies in Portugal in the fight against climate change.
In 2022, we reduced our own operation's greenhouse gas emissions by 59% compared to the previous year, and by 68% compared to the base year 2019, a performance that is aligned with the trajectory of meeting the intermediate target we set for 2025 of less 80%, and the Science Based Target (SBT) set for 2030, of less 90%. Total scope 3 emissions decreased by 4% compared to 2021, standing 6% below the 2019 figure, the base year of SBT, mainly due to the improvement in the energy efficiency of the equipment placed on the market, which made it possible to reduce emissions resulting from the use of our products and services. We also improved the circularity of the operation, with the collection, refurbishment, and reuse of fixed service residential customers' equipment (TV boxes, routers, and hubs), ensuring the collection of 86% and the reuse of 48% of disconnected equipment. In our own operation, we reached a global rate of 98% of recovery of waste generated.
We innovated by providing solutions with environmental benefits, such as eSIM, Eco sim and joining the consortium to adopt Eco-rating identification for mobile phones sold by NOS. And we continued to contribute to the reduction of emissions in the economy, expanding our portfolio of products and services that reduce customer emissions, with new communications and collaboration, cloud and data centre, Internet-of-Things and Analytics solutions.
More for our people
For the second consecutive year, NOS SGPS is part of the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, the global reference index that assesses gender equality in companies worldwide. In this second year of participation, we substantially increased the score obtained, and reached an assessment above the global average of the index, the average of the Communications sector and the participating Portuguese companies.
This recognition reflects the value that our people have for NOS, in a year in which, after the launch of the NOS values in 2021, we strongly committed to a process of cultural transformation through leadership, with the launch of the Leadershift program. Investment in our people was also expressed in the renewal and alignment of the NOS Campus offer, a clear strategic bet on the development of our people's potential and training. In this academy, with an 80% renewed training offer, and a 50% increase in the number of hours of training provided, we are promoting the acquisition of the necessary skills for the future. We created a training program in Advanced Data Analytics (AA) for our employees, developed in partnership with Nova SBE Executive Education and LTPlabs, with the aim of making its potential known to the organization as a whole. We also launched the NOS Vita program, a program focused on improving the physical and psychological well-being of our employees.
We continued to work so that the digital transformation of society can be synonymous with universal and enlightened access to technology
Our digital agenda continued to be inclusive, reflected in the different pricing ranges in which we provide our services, in the digital literacy programs we develop, so that everyone can benefit more and better from our services.
I would like to highlight the launch of the “Projeto ZER01 Entra na lógica da Computação”, with the aim of taking computing education to schools in the country and which will cover more than 400 students from the 1st and 2nd cycles (1st to 6th grade) during the 22/23 school year, the first step towards the commitment we assumed to impact 10,000 people through programs that promote digital literacy by 2025.
We have worked and will always work with transformative energy, as we believe that no society can develop from a social, environmental, and economic point of view without succeeding in the digital transition.
Technology contains extraordinary opportunities, which NOS will continue to leverage in the future, connecting people and expanding connectivity to new dimensions, with the aim of continuing to create value for everyone.
Miguel Almeida