Unifique Telecomunicações S.A.

What it is

Unifique began in November 1997 as TPA – Timbó Provedor de Acesso, serving a single town in Santa Catarina with dial-up internet; the operation’s sole employee was Fabiano Busnardo, who remains CEO today. The company now reaches more than 1.7 million homes and operates over 23,000 km of fiber-optic network across southern Brazil.

The core product is fiber-to-the-home broadband, bundled with fixed telephony and high-definition pay-TV; on the business side, Unifique offers dedicated internet access, data-center hosting, and, more recently, mobile phone service as a virtual network operator. At the end of Q1 2026 it had passed approximately 3.8 million homes and connected nearly 880,000 subscribers.

Who owns it

The founder’s holding company, Unitá Participações S.A., controls 65.04% of shares; Fabiano Busnardo personally holds a further 4.27%, bringing the combined controlling stake to just over 69%. The free float — shares available to ordinary investors on the market — stands at about 25%.

Public filings indicate that a growing free float is available to institutional and retail investors in Brazil, even as the founding group retains dominant control. Institutional investors hold roughly 7% of shares (EODHD), leaving the stock modestly liquid by regional-operator standards.

Who runs it

Fabiano Busnardo has been founder and CEO since 1997; he holds a degree in Business Administration from the Regional University of Blumenau and a post-graduate degree in Marketing from Univille. The company he built from one room now employs 2,864 people.

The CFO and Investor Relations Officer is Luiz Bogo Junior, appointed in May 2025, who combines the finance, IR, and corporate-governance roles in a single post. The board is chaired by Luciana Tarsila Badelucci Carvalho, an independent member who holds an MBA in Finance from USP and IBGC board-member certification.

The money, in plain words

Revenue has grown by roughly 16% each year for three straight years — R$883m (US$171 mn) in 2023 to R$1.19bn (~US$230m) in 2025 (our calculation) — without the margin erosion that typically follows fast growth. Unifique keeps about 18 cents of profit from every real of sales — a net profit margin of 17.6% (our calculation), unusually high for a telecom operator of this size.

For every real that owners have put in, the business earns about 19 back each year — a return on equity of 18.8% (our calculation), strong in any sector. The company does carry more debt than cash: R$743m (US$144 mn) borrowed against R$213m (US$41 mn) on hand, a net debt of R$530m (~US$103m, our calculation), though management describes its leverage as 0.58× adjusted annual operating profit, which it calls a “very solid” capital structure with room to invest further.

At a price-to-earnings ratio of 9.2×, the market is paying just over nine years’ worth of current earnings for the business — cheap relative to its growth rate. In February 2026, S&P Global Ratings upgraded Unifique’s Brazilian credit rating from brAA− to brAA with a stable outlook, citing expectations for continued customer-base expansion and healthy leverage.

What it is doing now

In March 2026, Unifique acquired iSUPER Telecom for R$37.9m (US$7 mn), adding 24,000 customers across nine cities, including Maringá — its first meaningful move into the state of Paraná. Days earlier it had signed a deal to acquire an 80 MHz mobile spectrum licence in the 3.5 GHz band in Paraná for R$20m (US$4 mn), seeding its mobile network there.

Brazil’s regulator Anatel has also formally confirmed Unifique as a winner in the 700 MHz spectrum auction, giving it additional radio frequencies to deepen 4G coverage and lay groundwork for 5G in its southern home markets. Q1 2026 revenue came in at R$329m (US$64 mn), 17.2% ahead of a year earlier, with net profit up 40.8% year-on-year.

What to watch

• Mobile traction. Unifique closed Q1 2026 with just over 288,000 mobile subscribers, adding more than 40,000 in the quarter alone. Whether it can reach the stated target of R$300m (US$58 mn) in mobile revenue by 2027 will determine whether the mobile bet justifies its spectrum and tower costs.
• Paraná push. Expanding into a new, more competitive state lifts the total addressable market but also tests a company that has thrived by knowing its local customers intimately.
• Acquisition pipeline. CEO Busnardo flagged in May 2026 that the company has “a few businesses we have our eyes on,” including AppKey, and expects “some M&As over the year,” though no large transformational deal in the near term.
• Debt service. Unifique issued R$500m (US$97 mn) in seven-year debentures in March 2026 to fund its growth. With Brazilian interest rates elevated, watching the cost of that debt matters.

This is news, not investment advice.