How do you evaluate the results obtained in these nine months?
I believe that these are nine months of positive evolution in a complex context because we find ourselves in contexts of great uncertainty and that always affects businesses and companies. Sometimes not directly in your business, but indirectly because we have exchange rate movements, uncertain situations that affect customers, etc.
So, I would tell you that these nine months or this last quarter that we have just presented It continues to show the evolutions that we had already seen throughout the year, which is why in some way I would classify it as business as usual but of positive evolution and now, if you want, we will delve into each of the chapters and the most relevant topics of these last months.
The company has experienced significant growth in billings and EBITDA, what factors do you think have driven this particular performance?
I believe that the evolution of the EBITDA operating margin and, together with the growth in billing, are two of the key elements of these results. To start with billing, we have to look, we always look at organic growth but it is especially relevant this year because we have carried out many divestitures in 2024. We have to compare pears with pears, same perimeter, and if we look at organic growth we have grown in billing by 9%. That is a very important growth that practically doubles the objectives we have. In the strategic plan we talked about growing at 5%. So we have grown organically at 9%.
This also translates to the growth of EBITDA, which is also growing significantly and, as you say, We have been maintaining above 13% of EBITDA for a couple of quarters now. which is something historically high and. besides. It is what we expected and what we hope for in the future that it deigns to have these improvements. Because? Because we really have a large part of our businesses, especially here it is businesses that are more recurring and that for our recurrences is a very important element, which grow in a very sustained and strong way. I talk mainly about what would be the world of services and the world of the environment, what we call GDE.. So I would say that this growth in EBITDA billing is above all supported by those recurring areas of the company that are actually doing very well during the year.
The situation of geopolitical uncertainty has led to a drop in project billing in the quarter. Does this situation influence the project portfolio?
Indeed, as I said, those most recurrent areas, services at Global Dominion Environment are very strong and, however, as you say, the projects area would be the one that shows certain weakness or lower billing than we could expect. And this lower billing is derived from uncertainty on the one hand.
This is causing there to be less execution and this is important, as I mentioned in the portfolio, that there is less execution and, therefore, less billing during this quarter and, perhaps, the next quarter does not mean that there are cancellations.
The portfolio remains strong, in fact the portfolio has grown compared to what we saw in the semester. We are in 426 million portfolios That gives us visibility for what we are going to execute in the project area in coming quarters, but what we are seeing is that execution slows down temporarily.
Billings that we are not having now we will have in quarters on the one hand due to that issue of uncertainty that we mentioned that, in the end, affects. And, on the other hand, because in this transformation plan, one of the elements that you know well and that we have carried out, is change our strategy a little in the world of renewables to have greater financial discipline and this implies that at this time, although we have renewable projects in the portfolio that we could execute, we are not going to execute them until we have the financial partner to accompany us in those investments.
So, we still have that business but maybe we’ll do it in slightly later quarters. So, indeed, a somewhat lower billing in projects fully compensated by the billing of services and the environment but it does not affect the portfolio. In the portfolio we continue to have healthy numbers that we will execute in the coming quarters.
Net profit is strongly affected by the depreciation of the dollar after the divestment in the Dominican Republic. Can you give us more details about this?
In this year 2025, at the level of net profit, what we are seeing and what we have been seeing in past quarters is that there are certain dynamics that benefit us. One is the evolution of the interest rate. We are seeing how the financial expense for the year 2025 is lower than the financial expense for 2024 and that should be reflected in a better or greater net profit.
What do we have as an extraordinary element or one off ? That the depreciation of the dollar affects us all. We are seeing it in the income statements of all the companies and, in our case, since the divestment of the Dominican Republic that was in dollars has occurred, it affects us in a special way. We have recorded in the income statement a valuation correction of those assets in the Dominican Republic of 16 million euros in the nine months and those 16 million go directly to lower net profit.
What we have to do is see, hey, what would our net profit have been without that one off, without that extraordinary one that is limited only to this year 2025 when we have made the divestment? Instead of having 6 million net profits we would have had 22 million, and that is 40% more than what we made last year. So, I believe that we must make that reading of what the recurring net benefit is, which is what will be maintained in the future.
What role are the recent “bolt-on” acquisitions in Spain and Germany playing within the growth strategy of the environmental area?
This is one of the things we have done during this third quarter of the year, we have carried out three acquisitions as you said, two in Spain, one in Germany. All of them are within that environmental area on which we are betting so much and, where what we see is that there is a clear opportunity to position ourselves as a reference for services or for industrial clients, both for the circular economy, the two Spanish acquisitions are in the field of waste management and circular economy, and in the field of decarbonization, which is the case of the German company that we have acquired was our main competitor in Germany. With which, We consolidate the sector, clear commercial synergies and clear operational synergies, because we already have this activity in Germany, we acquire volume and there we will have many synergies.
In the end, the meaning they have is that development that we want to give to the environmental area, is to position ourselves in important industrial poles, have additional infrastructure for waste management, and configure this project a little in the environmental field that for us is so relevant, and that, they are “bolt-on”, they are small acquisitions in the sense of volume, but strategically, in terms of capabilities, geographical positioning, they are relevant. And the truth is that we are satisfied and we continue exploring new opportunities that may come in the coming months.
What are the next steps that will mark Dominion’s roadmap in the coming months?
If we look at it in the short-medium term, I think we are reaching the end. We have a 2023-2026 strategic plan, time passes very quickly, we are practically at the end of 2025, already reaching 2026, and the reality is that we have done many of the duties that that plan set for us. We are completing that transformation, because it is a transformative plan and I consider that 2025 is a very transformative year. Perhaps to complete this transformation or simplification of activities We have one milestone left, which is the sale of the Cerritos Wind Farm in Mexicoit is something that we foresee for the coming months, I think that would be a milestone.
And another milestone or another element of that plan was to return to a lighter balance sheet with lower net financial debt and that, in the short term, let’s say what would be 2025, we are going to aim for a net financial debt at once Ebitdathat this is already an important advance, and that on the side of transformations or modifications.
And the last one is what we have already talked about is that impulse, that strategic procedure in the environmental world that we are already carrying out, and that we will continue to grow organically and inorganically in that area, as well as in others, in the coming months. I believe that what we have to do is meet those milestones and that’s it, starting to think about the next strategic plan that I believe we should launch during 2026.