This business segment represents around 18% of our revenue as of the third quarter of 2024. We expect to continue increasing this figure substantially in the future. We presented the first connectivity cluster in rural areas. The project aims to cover an area of more than 500,000 hectares with continued connectivity, where Telecom will enable the new mobile sites with 4G technology and IoT networks. Our B2B segment has been gaining participation in our revenues due to the fact that contracts are set following the FX evolution. This is a market where the growth potential is very high, and we expect to increase the participation of our B2B segment in coming years. We are also presenting the FinTech business with our digital wallet, Personal Pay, which currently accounts with more than 25 million onboarded clients.
We launched a year ago, and in an industry with exponential growth, we already have a relevant position. During this year, it has incorporated new functionality of remunerated balances for all of its users. As of March 2024, we have funds from our client invested in mutual funds for our ARS170 million and our FinTech is the second most important in terms of clients’ account balances in the market. I will now pass the call to Luis, who will go over our financial performance.
Luis Rial Ubago: Thank you very much Roberto. In Slide 10, we provide an overview of our main financial figures. Consolidated revenues grew by 207% on nominal terms during 2024, reaching more than ARS615 million. When analyzing said figure adjusted by inflation, revenues amounted to almost ARS684 million, showing a decrease of 18% in real terms versus the same period in 2023. We increased our prices, but we also focused on maintaining our subscriber base. And in this sense, the lack of inflation in our revenues is explained among others by the effect of certain discounts and promotions we granted price increases to retain our customers in a strong competitive environment. EBITDA increased by 228% year-over-year in nominal terms, generating a nominal EBITDA margin of 32.8% and ’24.
In turn, EBITDA margin in real terms was 30.3%. Additionally, our operating costs before D&A have also grown below inflation, decreasing 18% in real terms versus the 1Q of 2023. We have continued to manage our cost structure to reduce the impact of inflation. OpEx in U.S. dollars represented 13.5% of our total operating expenses as of the first quarter of 2024. In March 2024, we reached the fourth quarter in a row, maintaining or increasing our quarterly margin compared to the same period of the year before. This is a good indicator that our pricing and cost management strategies are guiding us in the right direction, taking into account the difficult macroeconomic situation in Argentina. Slide 11 shows the evolution of EBITDA year-over-year and the impact of different components of revenues and costs.
During the first quarter of 2024, 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. Particularly, we had good results in labor costs. During this quarter, we observed that in average, salaries have increased below inflation. Salaries have started to decouple versus inflation since December of 2023, and this has contributed positively to our EBITDA margin. We registered good performance additionally in programming and content costs, commission and advertising 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 maintain our EBITDA margin in the first quarter of 2024 in a year-over-year basis despite the decrease in revenues. Slide 12 shows the company’s net results and EBIT. EBIT decreased in the first quarter of 2024 due to higher D&A expenses. The operating margin during the first quarter of ’24 was minus 3.8% of consolidated revenues and in historical figures, the same margin was 26%. Due to the result of high inflation and stable FX, during the first quarter of 2024, the company had a net income of ARS675 million. These results are financial in nature. The strong appreciation experienced by the peso in real terms during the quarter generated positive results, mainly in connection with our financial debt denominated in foreign currency.
This led to positive exchange differences in real terms, which amounted to ARS951 million during the first quarter of 2024. Slide 13 displays a summary of the company’s CapEx, PP&E and intangible assets during 2024, which amounted to almost ARS105 million or an equivalent of $122 million at the official FX rate. This amount is more than 6% higher when compared to the previous year in constant pesos. Our consolidated amount of CapEx for the 1Q of ’24 represented more than 15% of our revenues. Technical CapEx was mainly composed by investments in our access network and technology. During the first quarter 2024, 26 new mobile sites were deployed while other 149, 16 sites were upgraded. We partnered with over 100 5G sites working in the 3.5 gigahertz band and we expect to count with 200 sites as of the end of 2024.
In our fixed access network, we increased the deployment of new FTTH over 1,200 new blocks, including the overlay of our HFC network. We also improved the upstream capacity of our HFC network by 3,000 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 our international operations. Slide 14 describes our cash flow generation during 2024 compared with the same period of 2023. 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. Our cash flow generation before dividends and interest payments was equivalent to US$116 million.
Slide 15 shows our key figures for 2024. The conversion to U.S. dollars is obtained dividing the figures in constant pesos as of the end of each period and using the end of period spot effects for each year. Our gross debt amounted to $2.8 million as of March 31, 2024. The company holds cash and equivalents for $533 million having a net debt of about $2.3 billion. We have built a liquidity reserve in U.S. dollar denominated sovereign bonds, which have significantly increased market value. EBITDA for the last 12 months as of the end of first quarter of 2024 using the aforementioned conversion method for figures invested to U.S. dollars was approximately equivalent to $971 million. Last 12 months’ EBITDA as of March 2024 in U.S. dollars increased by 35% versus the same figure as of December 2023.
