Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ulrich Lehner. In my capacity as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom AG, I hereby open this year's shareholder meeting and will chair this meeting in line with the articles of incorporation. On behalf of the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management, may I extend a warm welcome to you, the shareholders, shareholder representatives, and all other interested members of the audience who are following today's shareholders meeting online. Unfortunately, I'm once again unable to welcome you personally here in Bonn to our shareholders meeting this year. I'm sorry, but last year, we also experienced this type of shareholders meeting. It's totally different than our usual type of meeting we have. As a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a meeting with personal attendance is still out of the question. Since we wish to hold today's ordinary shareholders meeting safely, we have decided to make use of the legislation that lawmakers have instituted for 2021 as well and convene this meeting in a virtual space without the physical presence of shareholders and their proxies. Given that we still need to observe social distancing, the number of participants here at Deutsche Telekom AG's headquarters has also been reduced again. Present here today are the Chairman of the Board of Management, Tim Höttges, and the CFO, Dr. Christian Illek. Welcome, gentlemen. The remaining members of the Board of Management are not physically present. They are all taking part in the meeting via a separate audio-video link. Similarly, apart from me, all members of the Supervisory Board, with the exception of myself, are following the meeting via a separate audio-video link. If necessary, the members of the Board of Management and Supervisory Board who are not attending in person can communicate at any time with me, the attending members of the Board of Management, or with the notary public. I also would like to welcome Dr. Christoph Neuhaus, who is sitting beside me and as the notary public, has been retained to keep the minutes of the shareholders meeting. Finally, I would also like to welcome the proxy holders appointed by the company who are present here in Bonn. On behalf of all the members of the governing institution, I would like to also welcome everybody who is present at headquarters in Bonn and thank them for being here to make this possible like they have been doing for many years now. For the first time at the shareholders meeting, I would like to welcome Ms. Leroy, who is in charge of the Board of Management's Europe department. As a new member of the Board of Management, I will discuss additional changes in the composition of the Board of Management and Supervisory Board later in my explanatory notes and information on the Supervisory Board report. Let's turn to the formalities for today's shareholders meeting. I hereby establish that the shareholders meeting has been convened according to law and the articles of incorporation in due form and in due time through announcement in the Federal Gazette, dated February 26, 2021, and all other communications and publications required in connection with the shareholders meeting have also been made available in due form and time. The invitation to the shareholders meeting and all other documents to be made available to shareholders in connection with the shareholders meeting can be found on the company's website. The special shareholders meeting website has the address www.telekom.com/hv. This is the site which you also use to access this internet transmission. I hope things will be smooth later. I come to an amendment to the agenda. Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertpapierbesitz, e.V., in short DSW, acting on behalf of and by proxy for BayernInvest Kapitalverwaltungsgesellschaft mbH proposes an addition to the agenda. The addition of item 11 to the agenda, together with the motion for resolution proposed by the applicant in this connection, as well as a motion for resolution and a statement by the Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom AG, were published in the Federal Gazette from March 3, 2021. All other notifications and publications required in this regard have also been made in due form and time. These documents can also be found on the company's website. Countermotions filed by shareholders have been published together with all required information on our company website, where they can still be examined and perused. Countermotions are deemed to be submitted and to be at the shareholders' meeting when the shareholder who submits the countermotion has been properly designated and registered for the shareholders' meeting. Countermotions accordingly deemed to have been submitted are accessible via the website for the shareholders' meeting at the internet address www.telekom.com/hv and are marked accordingly there. Insofar as these do not amount to rejection of a proposal by the management, they will be put to vote today if they are not resolved by proposals by the management previously put to vote being adopted with the necessary majority. Nominations have not been submitted today. For the sake of proper order, countermotions are available here on site, as are all other documents to be displayed at the shareholders' meeting as required by law. I would also establish that the convocation of today's ordinary shareholders meeting as a virtual meeting, with the shareholders' rights as communicated in the convocation, is based on the decisions taken by the Board of Management with the approval of the Supervisory Board in accordance with Section one, Paragraphs one, two and six of the applicable Act on the measures in company cooperative association, foundation, and condominium law to combat the mitigation of the effects of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The act also provides for the possibility for Supervisory Board members to participate in this meeting via audio-video link. Today's shareholders' meeting is being broadcast in full on the internet via audio-video link for the public based on a corresponding resolution adopted by the Board of Management. These opening remarks, as well as the speech of the CEO, Mr. Höttges, and other statements, will also be available online later on. In addition, we are recording the opening remarks and the report by the Board of Management and will make these available to interested media subsequently. Please note that audio or video recordings of the meeting are prohibited. Today, the shareholders who are duly registered for the shareholders' meeting or their proxies can use the password-protected internet dialogue to perform postal or online voting, have the voting rights exercised by the company-appointed proxies in line with the voting instructions issued, grant proxy authorization or sub-authorization to a third party, or raise an objection to a resolution of the shareholders' meeting. Any postal or online votes, as well as proxy authorizations or voting instructions for proxy holders as appointed by the company, may be cast or issued or amended or withdrawn via the password-protected internet dialogue until voting commences. Objections to a resolution taken by the shareholders' meeting may be submitted via the password-protected internet dialogue before the meeting ends. The declarations will be handed over to the notary public and will have a certain amount of time allotted towards the end of the event. The other options described in the notice of convocation published in the Federal Gazette remain unaffected. This applies in particular to the possibility of changing or revoking postal or online votes or proxy authorizations and instructions to the proxy holders appointed by the company outside the password-protected internet dialogue. Given that the proxy holders appointed by the company are also here in person today, this shareholders' meeting has a formal attendance area. Today, this is the meeting we are in, namely H0.20 at Deutsche Telekom's headquarters in Bonn. The list of participants, ladies and gentlemen, which means the register of shareholders who are present or are represented and of shareholder representatives, is being compiled as we speak. Once the register has been completed, it will be made available here, and I will then inform you of the official attendance figure and of the number of postal or online votes that have been received so far. Any changes to the attendance figures that may be occasioned by issuing or withdrawing proxies to the company-appointed proxy holders will be reflected in regular amendments to the list of participants, which will also be made available here. I shall also respectively inform you about the updated attendance figures from a legal perspective, as well as the current number of postal or online votes received by such time. Shareholders who have duly registered for the shareholders' meeting or their proxy holders [Foreign Language] Can access information from the list of participants and on attendance during the shareholders meeting via our password-protected Internet dialogue. Before we commence the meeting proper, let me briefly outline the next few steps. After the report by the Board of Management and the verbal explanation of the report by the Supervisory Board, the Board of Management will answer the questions submitted via the password-protected Internet dialogue by midnight, March 30th, 2021. To the extent that questions are to be answered by the Supervisory Board, I will answer these questions in agreement with the Board of Management, which will adopt my answers as its own. After answering the questions, I will explain the voting procedure, call out the proposed resolutions, and provide a few more notes and additional information. You'll then have approximately five minutes to cast, change, or revoke postal or online votes or proxy authorizations and instructions to company-appointed proxy holders in respect of the motions for resolution called. You can use the password-protected Internet dialogue for this purpose. The votes will be cast by the proxy holders appointed by the company who are here on-site. When determining the result of the vote, the yes and no votes cast by postal or online means will be included. These were the necessary organizational details. We now commence with the agenda. Item one is as follows: Submissions to the shareholders meeting pursuant to Article 176, Section 1, Sentence one of the German Stock Corporation Act. Under this item, the annual financial statements, the consolidated financial statements, the combined management report, and grouped management report, as well as supervisory board report are presented. All documents to be submitted for this shareholders meeting have been available for perusal on our website since the meeting was convened and will remain so for the duration of the meeting. The same applies to articles of incorporation. The documents provided are also available for perusal here on-site. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, I now give the floor to the Chairman of the Board of Management, Mr. Höttges, for his report. Mr. Höttges, you have the floor. [Foreign language] [Foreign Language] You're seeing me here in the living room, Deutsche Telekom. I welcome you to our second virtual shareholders meeting. Unfortunately, it's not in person. I really miss this direct dialogue with you. I hope that you have made it through these difficult times in good shape so far. We've learned how important digital communications is. We've also learned how important Telekom being involved is, how well our networks have functioned. I must say, in 2020, our colleagues had to do a lot. There was heavy demands placed on them. They kept the network up and going. Our lives have been and still is at home, spending the whole day in home office and video conference, working from home, homeschooling with the kids, and on top of it all kinds of entertainment through television, Netflix, et cetera. Telecommunications conferences via Zoom require 3 Mb ps. If I download a YouTube video or a Netflix video, I need 5 Mb ps. If you add that all up, you'll notice very quickly that 50 Mb per second is what you need, and that's really that way. Nevertheless, it doesn't always go smoothly in every household, and not every connection works smoothly. In most cases, it's because of the home networking. Home networking has to be improved to also make customer experience better. If you get a lag or something like that, it's because what's happening in the building itself. The building itself can slow down the signal by up to 40%. If it's by radio transmission or Wi-Fi, then you can have problems as well. That's why I have a couple of tips for you, practical tips. Use Wi-Fi 6. That's a new standard that you can install. It's kind of like this. It's like going from a two-lane interstate to six-lane interstate. Mesh routers, that's my second tip. That's the latest technology that we're selling right now. What is that mesh? Mesh is a router that works with repeaters that are installed in different rooms in a household. It's like this. Every room has an optimum Wi-Fi supply through these repeaters, because each of them sends out a wireless signal. Not only does it strengthen the signal, you can have good data connection everywhere in the household. You might be saying, "Oh, how am I supposed to install this? I don't understand software. I even have trouble with computers. I need a technician." No. This technology functions and works simply, and that's why I'd like to present our mesh router to you. Here you see the latest model from Deutsche Telekom. This is the main router, and these are devices that you put in the individual rooms of your household. You install it, plug it in, and you push this plus button here, and then you go in the other room and you hit the plus button there, and it works. All devices work in all the different rooms. You have the same great data connection in every room where these are installed. Most of them work with 100 Mbps in a very stable way, and we are offering this to 34 million households already today. Our competitors like to sell this product too, by the way. Usage behavior will change. New applications will be coming online that need more bandwidth than what we have installed in our homes today, and that is what we are getting ready for right now. The future is fiber optics, ladies and gentlemen. This is the famous fiber optics that all of Germany is talking about. A fiber optic cable like this can be used to supply an entire district of a city. Just a couple of these tiny cables can supply a couple of thousand customers with a huge bandwidth. If we're talking about 50 Mb today and 150 or 200 Mb, which we have laid cables for that in a lot of places, we're talking about many times that amount. We can have transmissions of up to 1 Gb ps, and new technology will be able to handle 10 Gbps per second. That's the future we're talking about. All types of data connections into the household will be made possible by this. How can we get this fiber optics in the home? What does Telekom have to do so that everybody can benefit from this huge bandwidth? Just like everything else in life, the most important thing is to be well prepared. Being well prepared starts with the planning, and network planning at Deutsche Telekom has been modernized. You might have seen out on the street the T-Car, which is helping digitize our entire infrastructure with fiber optics. What is this T-Car that you see on the road everywhere now? First of all, it's outfitted with cameras. It's got laser scanners on it. They make recorded images of areas where fiber optics are to be installed in the future. Every five meters, it does a 360-degree sweep of the whole area. Four individual cameras mounted on this device ensure that every detail on the surface structure can be recognized. Two GPS antennas on top of this make sure that these pictures are directly linked to the location and synchronized with it. That gives you a completely digital picture of the whole street. The data is then put in a huge database, with AI, it is then processed and improved. Artificial intelligence. That gives you a complete digital picture of areas that we want to serve. Also, it helps you optimize the grid of fiber optics. Here, if you see Dortmund, for example, on the screen. Dortmund has 2,000 km of roads that have to be scanned. We've done a lot of it already. During these trips, we're making two million photos of this region just here in this city, it's of course anonymous, completely anonymous. Vehicles are turned into pixels, the planning is then made available to the municipal authorities immediately. It's not a lot of red tape, it's not a lot of bureaucracy. It's all taking place digitally. What's important in all this is especially the planning of the so-called distribution cabinets, because you have to route the fiber optic cables out of the ground and then get it to the home. The planning of these cabinets is key in all this. We could save up to 50% of the expenses required and all this time and effort by doing it all digitally, and it cuts the time down to a fraction. Just to give you an idea, here, our chairman of the supervisory board. He's also a technician involved in the laying of the fiber optics infrastructure. Ladies and gentlemen, that's not everything because we've planned this, but now the rollout has to begin. Roadwork is one thing, but how do we go from the road into the household? How do we go from the street into the house? I'll tell you one thing. Front yard is sacred in Germany, and that's why we have to find a new technology. We have to think about this, and I want to give you a little presentation on this. This is like we call it a ground rocket. You have the house in the background, and it starts at the street. When we want to go through the front yard without causing any damage, this is a ground rocket. It weighs about 20 kg. It's got a circumference of 10 centimeters, and we use pressurized air underground to shoot it through from the road to the house. This is the Magenta mole, and it covers about up to 15 meters per hour and finally reaches the house, and then we hook it up and fiber to the home project is completed. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a huge investment. Maybe the biggest investment in the history of Deutsche Telekom. We've said by 2024, 10 million households are planned to get fiber optics, and not just to the street. We're talking into the apartment, into the home. For us, this is a huge technological challenge, but also an administrative challenge. We love it. We love the challenge. The color of the fiber optic cable journey is magenta. We're investing, and we are the network of the future. I would thank all of you in the rain, cold, and snow during the coronavirus pandemic, who've been out there making sure that our network is fantastic today and will become even better in the future. Dear shareholders, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. In a nutshell, 2020 was a record year for Deutsche Telekom despite the coronavirus pandemic. Deutsche Telekom's employees are really going the extra mile right now, for that, I offer my warmest thanks. Our culture has carried us through the guiding principles we follow, that is what I want to talk about today. In this difficult period, we are in a position to provide a sense of security for the people out there. Our hygiene concepts work. The incidence levels at Telekom are much lower than the average population. Last year, the health rate even improved to 95%, we hope that we will also be able to vaccinate in the near future over 70,000 employees within eight weeks. Our company medical service can handle that. Therefore, we see light at the end of the tunnel. We just don't know how long the tunnel is, we are looking forward. Supported by the strong financial position that we created for ourselves in 2020. Ladies and gentlemen, we are strong in the United States, we're strong in Germany, and we're also strong in Europe. Handelsblatt was writing this morning, "Deutsche Telekom way ahead of its competitors." We exceeded our guidance on both sides of the Atlantic, revenue up 25.4% to EUR 101 billion, thereby breaking through the revenue sound barrier of EUR 100 billion. In organic terms, revenue increased by 3%. Means that we grew even without the merger in the United States. Adjusted EBITDA up 41.6% to EUR 35 billion. In organic terms, the growth rate here stood at 7.9%, organically. Net profit up 7.5% to EUR 4.2 billion. Adjusted earnings per share + 15.4%, EUR 1.20. Free cash flow, EUR 6.3 billion, down 10.3%. We had expected this decline. It is just a temporary consequence of the business combination in the U.S., which we closed exactly a year ago today. I can tell you that it has already become a smashing success. We are now serving more than 100 million customers in the U.S., and that already positions us second in the U.S. market, even though we started from a very weak position. The market capitalization of T-Mobile U.S. has actually increased and the synergies are even greater than planned. We had anticipated $6 billion per year, and now we expect $7.5 billion. What are we doing with all that money? First, we are reducing debt in the U.S. We will benefit directly from the success of the U.S. business. In the period from 2023 to 2025, T-Mobile U.S. will give up to $60 billion back to shareholders. As you know, we currently hold a stake of around 43%. Up to around $26 billion will go to Deutsche Telekom. This gives us a lot of scope and opens up completely new possibilities for us as entrepreneurs. First of all, we can increase our shareholding in T-Mobile U.S. to more than 50%. We already secured the option to do that, and at a much lower price than the current share price. Secondly, we can invest further in Europe. Without the U.S., the fiber optic build-out in Germany that I was just talking about would be much more difficult. Thirdly, we can further develop our dividend policy and we can reduce the group's net debt. At present, it stands at around 120 billion EUR. That is 2.78 times our adjusted EBITDA. However, we are aiming for 2.25-2.75. We will be back inside this range in the medium term. Ladies and gentlemen, people make numbers. A corporate culture without a strategy is aimless. But a strategy without culture is weak. The former national handball coach Dagur Sigurðsson once told me the following formula for success. He said, "Success equals talent plus hard work times attitude." The right attitude is a key factor here if we want to be successful in our business. It's a multiplier for what we want to achieve. For us, this is expressed in six guiding principles. First of all, delight our customers. Always putting customers first. All our products and internal processes are aligned accordingly. In our Ideas Forge, we work together with customers on new products. Among the places I went to visit last year were Nuremberg and Bamberg, where I met my colleague Tanja Kroschek. In the first coronavirus wave, she packed up her computer, put it in her car, and since then, she's been working from home. If just one customer is disconnected from the internet, she swings into action. Just like her 30,000 service colleagues in Germany, they do the same day in, day out. We fulfilled 43 million customer requests in 2020. Another case in point that shows from the attitude come the results. Fewer complaints, down 35% since 2019. Less lateness. Actually, not anymore. Our technicians are on time for 95% of all agreed appointments. Less ping pong. We resolve more than half the problem on the first call. The first contact resolution rate has increased significantly to now 54%. We only finish the call when the problem has been solved. Our customer service sets us apart from all our competitors who used to say in the past that they were better than us, and that hasn't always been the case. Today, however, we are leading the field. No matter which indicator you look at, brand image, ratings from our customers, ratings from trade journals, Deutsche Telekom is almost always in first place. Today is no different. It was today, after all, that we achieved another accolade from Connect Magazine. Most of all, I am delighted with the direct feedback that we've had from customers. We've undertaken to turn our customers into fans. During the crisis, there really was fan mail. We received hundreds of letters saying, "Thank you." A thanks to me, a thanks to our organization as a whole. You can see just a couple of examples behind me on the wall here. Thank you, dear customers. It does us good and it certainly motivates us to become even better. Yes, I also deal with customer complaints personally. When looking into it with my colleagues, we swing into action, and we try to solve any problem that is out there, even though we may not even have created it. That takes us to our second guiding principle, which is: get things done. We want things to be as simple as possible for our customers. We are simplifying all our products. Sometimes we start out small and then we make it big. The best example of this is the MeinMagenta app, which we developed in the European market. Of course, it's also available in Germany, and we continue to add more features. This app lets customers manage everything themselves from home. Setting up Wi-Fi, reporting faults, questions relating to their contract. Everything is possible with this app. 60% of all our customers are using it as we speak. That's what I call successful digitization. The fact that this works comes down to one thing. We have migrated our entire network to the Internet Protocol. You could say there's no more need for interpreters in our network. In other words, the interfaces between the individual components. Instead, everything now speaks one language. Everything understands the language. All devices and all applications are now IP-based. We invested more than EUR 1 billion in this migration over the past few years, and I can tell you it is now paying off. We are seeing more digitization. There are clearly fewer outages. Our customer service is perceived as being more efficient. Easy setup of devices. That's what IP stands for. By the way, we've been pioneers of this field in the telecoms sector. At the same time, we have had another positive effect, which is we reduced Telekom Deutschland's indirect costs, which were down EUR 200 million last year alone. The second aspect of this guideline is, the guideline once again is get things done. Despite COVID-19, we built out more. Deutsche Telekom is the leading 5G provider, far and away. We cover 80% of the population in Germany, 36% in the U.S., and 100% in the Netherlands. I'm guessing they appreciate it. Deutsche Telekom has always been leading in mobile communications. We have the best network in 12 out of 13 markets. We are the best provider in Europe. Our network in the Netherlands is the best network ever tested in the world, at least according to the external provider, umlaut, which just encourages us to continue along these lines. In the fixed network, we are being accused of having missed the boat. We have to be honest here. We aren't the ones to stand around waiting at the pier. We set sail long ago, and we've completed many stages along the way. We started by laying optical fiber to the gray street cabinets, vectoring and super vectoring. Our competitors who complained about that, big time. That didn't mean that they were laying out optical fiber themselves. Instead, they used our lines. I mean, anyone who says FTTC needs to do FTTH. That's why we are now building optical fiber directly into the homes, as I was able to demonstrate to you before my speech. Having said that, Deutsche Telekom will not create a new monopoly network. We are no longer a state-run company. We are basically a customers operation, and that's why we are working with hundreds of partners. We also know, however, that our media competitors will not build as much FTTH as we will. We've concluded lease agreements for our network with Vodafone, Telefónica, and United Internet. Volume, EUR 17 billion over 10 years. This will enable us to increase the utilization of our network. It reduces our costs. At the same time, it increases the profitability of our own build-out, and we can continue to invest. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a devout network investor and always have been. In the past seven years, we invested EUR 36 billion in Germany alone, which is 30% more than in the seven years before that. Now we will raise this figure again. 18.4 billion will be invested worldwide in this year alone and Germany over EUR 5.5 billion. Of course, we also need to acquire the relevant mobile spectrum for that. I can assure you, we won't be satisfied until everyone can take part. #dabei. No risk, no gain. Infrastructure pays off over a long period. For fiber, it is 15 years. What really matters is that you have a high-capacity utilization of the infrastructure together with fair prices and of course, low internal production costs. That's why the digital planning that we've rolled out and upgraded is so important. Last year, we achieved a return on capital employed of 4.6% in the group. That is more than our cost of capital. This goes to show that our long-term investments are paying off. In Germany, our broadband revenues are up 7.8% compared to 2018. We are no longer losers. With FTTH, this figure will grow even more. The third guiding principle is think together, team apart. Deutsche Telekom has developed a strong culture of debate, which is what this Bobbler stands for. We don't want to be Bobblers. For us, it's not about the power of individual departments. Rather, it is about the power of the point made. We did away with the smoking corner. We work together to implement what we've decided together. One good example is climate protection. The build-out of the networks, the operation of data centers, the cars that our technicians use to get out and about, all these things generate more CO2. The young generation, in particular, is demanding that we do something about it. With every ton of carbon, CO2 saved ensures a bit more future. We discussed it between the cost on the one side and the necessary climate protection on the other. There is no compromise here. That's why we said we want both things. We want the build-out, and we want it to be climate neutral. To this end, we've invested tens of millions of EUR. We've invested in solar parks and wind farms, and we only buy electricity from renewable sources of energy. Deutsche Telekom's network is 100% green. Last year alone, we saved 300,000 metric tons of CO2 in Germany. Deutsche Telekom aims to be leading in this field as well. That's why we've adjusted our targets once again. For 2030, we had committed to 90% less CO2. Now, we've determined that we will reach 100%, and we will do this by 2025. We want more. The products that we buy and sell, that we are using should also be net zero. We will achieve this by 2040. The fourth guiding principle is act with respect and integrity. Deutsche Telekom advocates for a society in which diversity and inclusion are a given. There is no room for racism, sexism, or discrimination in our company. Our T stands for taking part. Diversity brings people together. 27% of our managers are women. That number keeps rising. In 2020, we filled 24% of all management vacancies internationally. One example being our board of management. Dominique Leroy has been responsible for the Europe segment since November. Welcome, Dominique. Ladies and gentlemen, we also stand for respect and integrity beyond that, because unfortunately, we see that hate and incendiary speech are on the rise, and the internet is becoming a crime scene in this context. Deutsche Telekom takes a clear position on this. We are campaigning with 44 partners because we want an internet in which people can move freely without fear of being marginalized or of being discriminated against. Our campaign against hate speech has reached 340 million people. It is shaking things up. Hopefully it will help to improve online discourse. By the way, democracy is also an attitude. Dear shareholders, respect is a social duty. It's also a corporate one, mind you. Especially in this last, far from simple year of the coronavirus, we were able to see that our employees did an even harder and even better job, and that's why we paid out a special bonus to them, EUR 500 across Europe for everyone. Except for managers. We also encourage employees to be a part of Deutsche Telekom. In Germany, any employee can now buy shares for EUR 1,000 per year and we will add half the shares again on top after a retention period of four years. That's how you turn employees into entrepreneurs. The fifth guiding principle is: I am key. Count on me. We keep our promises. That's our claim for everyone who's working in this company in terms of how we are dealing with each other, how we are dealing with our customers, and of course, the same goes for you, our shareholders. What we say is what we do. We are proposing a dividend of EUR 0.60 per share for this year. This puts the return from share price and dividend at 6.8% in 2020, which is much higher than at all of our main competitors. The share has performed very well recently. The price is currently at EUR 17.11, it has developed very well. I strongly believe that we can cross the EUR 20 mark. Most analysts also see room for growth. The average target share price assumed by analysts is EUR 19.82. This means Deutsche Telekom is well defended. It's the only telecommunications company still represented in the Euro STOXX 50. All the other telecom companies got kicked out. Why is that? Well, first of all, we focus on strong economies. We operate our networks exclusively in Europe and the United States, we are somehow the market leader in the western world. Secondly, we focus on doing what we're good at: building networks and selling products that are closely linked to these networks. Thirdly, we offer our customers added value. Six mobile convergence products from a single source. Fourthly, we actively address issues. Albania, Romania, Greece, the Netherlands, and yes, even the United States used to be trouble kids. In all these countries, business did not go to plan in the past. Either we parted ways from it or we whipped that business into shape. How? Just look at what's happening in the United States or Greece or our pearl, which is the Netherlands. Above all, however, our success is down to the fact that from our attitude, real actions follow. In business life, trust is the most important currency, and reliability begets trust. Deutsche Telekom has built new trust in recent years, including on the capital market. Which brings me to my final point and the last guiding principle. Stay curious and grow. We keep our eyes open. We stay on the ball. In our company, everyone enjoys personal growth, and as a result, so does the company as a whole. We grow. Mobile customers in Europe and Germany, up 1.4 million last year. In the United States, up 5.5 million. Broadband customers up 388,000 in Germany. That's a plus. The figure is not shrinking as in the past. The number of broadband customers in Europe was up 281,000 people. Earnings are growing accordingly. In 2020, the bottom line was up 1.5% in Germany, up 2.1% in Europe, up 10.8% in the United States, and in the Group Development segment, it was up 6.6%. We are continuing this growth in Germany by systematically building out FTTH and 5G. This should help us to gain more shares in Europe by focusing business more on convergent offers. mobile communications, fixed network, and TV from a single source. In the United States, with our attack on the duopoly of AT&T and Verizon, we can become the number one there. We always have the best network by some margin. We also see opportunities for growth with business customers. We now support small and medium-sized companies from Telekom Deutschland in a holistic way. That is one reason why revenue has fallen at T-Systems. In 2020, it was down 5.6% to EUR 4.2 billion. We are also shedding business that does not turn a profit. The coronavirus pandemic is also taking its toll at T-Systems. Corporations are holding back on investments for the moment, and the restructuring of T-Systems is hard. We know that. That said, T-Systems also needs to make a positive contribution to the group's results. To this end, we are now aligning it as a straight service provider for information technology, which means business with data centers or the cloud, digital solutions such as the WarnApp, which can soon be used to report rapid antigen tests, by the way. Thirdly, security. Every company needs to protect themselves in the digital space. Dear shareholders, 2020 really was a record year yet again. This year, we want to do even better. We plan to achieve adjusted EBITDA of around EUR 37 billion, free cash flow of around EUR 8 billion, and we also expect revenue to grow even further. We will announce our medium-term planning at the Capital Markets Day in May. Ladies and gentlemen, we are still in the midst of the pandemic. Many people are losing confidence. We are not going to be affected by this. We have shown that we can be successful even during the crisis, and I think there is reason to be optimistic in Germany as well, overall. We can do more than we sometimes think we can. We have all the ingredients for the formula for success: dedication, talent, and now it comes down to our individual attitude. I hope that once the pandemic is over, we will take a good hard look. What did we do well? What did we do badly? Then we need to consistently change what didn't work well. That doesn't only hold true for Telekom, it applies to our society as a whole. The question can't be, what have I got to lose? Rather, it must be, what can we all gain together? Exactly what contribution can I make myself? Digitization at all levels is the key here. It is an obligation for Europe, as a matter of fact, and an opportunity for Deutsche Telekom. We are ready to help because we know ourselves that what it takes is to delight our customers, to be a team together and a team apart, to act with respect and integrity, to be somebody others can count on, stay curious and grow, and above all, get things done. Just like our six guiding principles. In this way, Deutsche Telekom will continue to be successful now and in the future. Our attitude powers our strategy. Does our corporate culture. That from the supposed small details of 2020, the big picture of 2030 can grow. That is a picture of a successful Deutsche Telekom. There can be no future without the past. Thank you. [Foreign Language] We connect everything and everyone, and the purpose of connection is human understanding. Communication has been personal. Now it has become telecommunication. [Foreign Language] Can we help local communities become part of this new digital world? You are going to be the ones which bridge the digital divide.[Foreign Language] This Wild West in the Internet has to get regulated. People will judge companies more on their purposeful, on their ethical behavior because everything is fully transparent. A title like the CTO could actually start standing for chief trust officer or you're going to have a CDE, a chief data ethicist. [Foreign Language] We need a digital identity for each of us. We need it for being authorized. We need it even for buying things on the network. [Foreign language] We're seeing the development of sensors that are essentially in digital fields. On top of that, we will have human machine interfaces. [Foreign Language] We have a huge customer base where the demand for high-speed data and large volumes of data is growing and is growing really, really fast. We have the ability to serve their needs, building a high quality fiber and 5G network. [Foreign Language] What are we building this company for? Fundamentally, we're building it for the next generation and we're building it to be a big part of digitizing Deutschland. Mr. Höttges, thank you very much for your statements. You provided a very clear picture of the situation now and of the future. We all know that future will be built on our past. This is what the Management Board worked on. I would like to thank the Board of Management and all the employees of Deutsche Telekom for their work, which makes the company what it is. I think it is also on behalf of the shareholders that I thank all the employees for their achievements in the past financial year. I would like to ask the Board of Management to convey our thanks to the employees. Dear shareholders, in a physical meeting, there would be applause now, but this cannot happen right now. I would like to just take it to the minutes that we would have had applause if we had a different type of a meeting. I hope this is also in your interest. Let me now cover the Supervisory Board report. The report is included in the annual report and it starts on page seven. I would like to summarize the report as follows. The Supervisory Board intensively monitored and supported the management in the business. We had a total of 47 meetings, 12 Supervisory Board meetings, one off-site meeting and 34 committee meetings. The participation rate overall was 98%. At this occasion, I would also like to mention that the work of the Supervisory Board does not only happen in the meetings of the Supervisory Board, the Supervisory Board is a corporate body and is closely linked to the company treating the many topics. Cooperation with the Board of Management has always been good and based on trust. The high number of meetings ensured a close and regular exchange with the Board of Management. The essential basis for fulfilling the legal supervisory tasks were the verbal and written reports provided by the Board of Management. The Supervisory Board reviewed the development of the company in its regular meetings. The Board of Management fully met its information requirements in a timely manner. The content and scope of the reports complied with all the legal requirements. In between the meetings, the Board of Management replied to individual questions or reported verbally. Additionally, I had a regular exchange with the CEO between the official meetings. On the basis of its reviews and discussions with the auditors, the Supervisory Board came to the conclusion that the internal control system, the risk management system, the compliance system, as well as the internal audit system, are functionable and effective. The business transactions and measures that the Board of Management submitted to the Supervisory Board in the financial year 2020, in accordance with the list of business transactions subject to co-determination, we discussed thoroughly and reviewed in detail. We approved the measures presented. The external auditor audited the financial statements and the consolidated financial statements, as well as the management report and the group management report, and granted an unqualified audit opinion. The Supervisory Board approved the financial statements and the consolidated financial statements after its review during the meeting on the 25th of February 2021. The financial statements are thus adopted. The year 2020 was a year of major challenges and significant achievements for Deutsche Telekom. We are happy and proud to say that it was the best year ever in the corporate history of the company. Let me briefly mention the most significant issues discussed by the Supervisory Board in the past financial year. The financial statements and consolidated financial statements, the business strategy and development in the U.S., finalization of the merger between T-Mobile U.S. and the mobile provider Sprint, integration of Sprint, T-Systems business strategy and development, further development of the group strategy and group transformation, financial and debt situation, market situation and competitive situation, development of a new board compensation system, and I will say more on this topic later. Various portfolio decisions, for example, the sale of the Dutch radio tower business and the fixed line business in Romania. Personnel matters. Reorganization of the board divisions, Mr. Gopalan, now board member for Germany, Mrs. Leroy, now board member for Europe, extension of the board employment contracts of Mrs. Nemat, Ms. Bohle, and Mr. Langheim. What is really important, long-term succession planning for the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board. Budget and annual finance plan 2021 and midterm plan 2021 to 2024. Last year and this year, of special importance, Corona crisis management with the effect of the pandemic on the business, but also the employees of the company. Now let me talk about the situation of the company, your company. The financial year 2020 marked a record high for Deutsche Telekom. Let me repeat this, a record high for Deutsche Telekom in its history, in spite of the Corona crisis. Corona hit us in a double way. It restricted our activities, but it also promoted our business. Due to the Sprint takeover, revenues for the first time increased to more than EUR 100 billion. Earnings also grew significantly. Organically, i.e. without Sprint, the growth rate year-over-year was almost 8%. As absolute figures, this is EUR 2.6 billion. Mr. Höttges just illustrated the records achieved in the last year. The group, and this is of great importance, is on a growth path. The operational business saw a very good development in almost all areas, and I have to say that this is not a given. The business year was characterized by consistent execution of the group strategy just presented by Mr. Höttges and the ongoing transformation of the group in times of digitization and technological change. The financial year 2020 was exceptional in many respects. It was characterized by significant achievements by the Board of Management and by the unforeseen Corona crisis. Deutsche Telekom completed a trailblazing transaction in the United States. Deutsche Telekom improved its market position in Europe and simultaneously made a significant contribution to deal with the Corona consequences by providing stable networks. Deutsche Telekom invested almost EUR 17 billion, which is roughly 30% more than last year. Despite the difficult general environment, the company has laid solid foundations for future success. The excellent results confirm the successful work of the Board of Management. I would like to expressly thank the Board of Management on behalf of the entire Supervisory Board for these extraordinary achievements. The tough competition in the industry and the permanent competitive and regulatory pressure, however, remain challenging for the company. Whereas most of the telecommunications companies in Europe have difficulties coping with these pressures, Deutsche Telekom is very well positioned and by far the leading telecommunications provider in Europe. The Board of Management has a clear strategy to ensure Deutsche Telekom's future. Based on the results achieved in 2020, as Mr. Höttges already mentioned, the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board, in line with the announced dividend policy, propose a dividend payment of EUR 0.60 per share. It is now important to consistently execute and develop the strategy of Deutsche Telekom that Mr. Höttges just described vividly in his speech. I am confident that the Board of Management and the employees will continue to succeed in building on the strengths of Deutsche Telekom. I think it is especially that the new focus on the important topic of corporate culture, just mentioned by Mr. Höttges, will make a huge contribution. Ladies and gentlemen, let me now talk about personnel changes in the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board. Let me first talk about Board of Management. Ms. Birgit Bohle has headed up the expanded Human Resources and Legal Affairs Board of Management department since the first of January 2020. Dr. Thomas Krämer, who led the area Data Privacy, Legal and Compliance, retired from the group as of the 31st of March 2020, and he supported the transition to the new structure before he left the company. As already announced in the last shareholders' meeting, Dr. Dirk Wössner left the Board of Management at the end of last year. He resigned from his function as the head of the department for Germany in the Board of Management as at the first of November 2020. In June 2020, Mr. Srini Gopalan, formerly responsible for Europe, was appointed as the new Board of Management member for Germany effective November 2020. In September 2020, the Supervisory Board appointed Ms. Dominique Leroy to succeed Mr. Gopalan as the Board of Management member for Europe effective first of November 2020. Ms. Leroy is an experienced manager, strengthening the Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom. Ms. Leroy has a track record of more than 30 years of experience in the consumer goods and telecommunications industries and knows the industry very well. The Supervisory Board welcomes the even more international and diverse composition of the Telekom Board of Management. A very warm welcome to you, Ms. Leroy. We are happy to have you on board. Finally, I shall report about three reappointments. In December, we reappointed Ms. Nemat as a board member responsible for technology and innovation effective first of November 2021 for another term of office. In February, we reappointed Ms. Birgit Bohle, board member for HR and Legal Affairs, and Mr. Thorsten Langheim, board member GSA and Group Development, and these reappointments will be effective first of January 2022. Ms. Nemat, Ms. Bohle, and Mr. Langheim, we are happy that you will stay on, and we wish you the best of success. Now let's talk about the changes in the Supervisory Board. There were no changes among the shareholders' representatives in the Supervisory Board in financial year 2020. The term of office of Dr. Helga Jung will end with today's shareholder meeting. We propose to elect Ms. Jung for another term of office to the Supervisory Board. I have to mention that the Supervisory Board decided to shorten the term of office of shareholders' representatives in the Supervisory Board from five to four years in the future, and thus ensure more flexibility in the Supervisory Board, as was repeatedly demanded by investors. We thus propose to elect Ms. Jung until the end of the shareholders' meeting 2025. Ms. Jung is a former board member of Allianz SE and a member of several supervisory boards. In her time at Allianz, she was responsible for the insurance business in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America, as well as for the areas mergers and acquisitions, strategic shareholdings, and as well, legal and compliance. She graduated in business administration, has a long experience in national and international top management positions, and offers excellent expertise to the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom. Ms. Jung has been a valued member of the Supervisory Board in the past five years. Please find Ms. Jung's CV in the invitation to today's shareholders meeting, and we also published her CV before on the website. The search for candidates of the Supervisory Board was based on the agreed competence profile, and here I would like to point your attention to the governance declaration on page six. We thus ensure that the relevant competencies deemed important are covered in the Supervisory Board. Changes among the employee representatives In the financial year 2020, we saw the following changes on the employee representative side. As at first May 2020, Mr. Bednarski's term of office ended when he left Deutsche Telekom. Ms. Kerstin Marx was co-appointed as his successor in the Supervisory Board, effective first of May 2020. In connection with the termination of his activities at RWE, Mr. Lothar Schröder resigned from his mandate as Vice Chairman of the Supervisory Board after 14 years. Mr. Sauerland took over as the new Vice Chairman on the 27th of March 2020. I would like to thank the leaving member, Mr. Bednarski, on behalf of the Supervisory Board. A special thanks again goes to Lothar Schröder. I already thanked him last year, I would like to thank him again for his long tenure as Vice Chairman of the Supervisory Board. I shall also thank the current members on the Supervisory Board for their intensive and successful work last year. Thank you. I will now come to the topic of corporate governance, and here, especially compensation. As you can see from the annual report, Deutsche Telekom complied with the recommendations made by the German Corporate Governance Code in its old version in the year 2020. In the current financial year, we will follow the rules of the new Corporate Governance Code. Compensation. As announced last year, the Supervisory Board developed a new management board compensation system that is submitted for approval during this shareholders' meeting under agenda item nine. The new management board compensation system defines the framework conditions for the granting of compensation components in the management board and thus the total compensation. The Supervisory Board has developed the new compensation system on the basis of the new German Stock Corporation Act, and especially the new act implementing the Shareholders' Rights Directive to the Governance Code. The new elements are mainly based on a stronger share component in the compensation and the use of the so-called ESG criteria as one of the key APIs for variable compensation. The letters ESG stand for the sustainability objectives of the company, E for environment, S for social, and G for governance. The provisions of the new compensation system will be introduced within two months of the shareholders' meeting, taking effect retrospectively on first of January 2021. It is, of course, based on your approval, dear shareholders. We will submit transition provisions to the members of the Board of Management and hope that they will all change into the new system. However, this is what I would like to underline here, existing board contracts enjoy protection of the status quo. When defining the new compensation system, the Supervisory Board followed the following principles. Before I explain these principles, let me point out that the compensation system is not the only way to control the Board of Management and the company, the only way for the Board of Management to control the company. The contrary impression was stated in the pre-discussions, and this is why I would like to mention again that there are various control systems in the company, and these control systems are even of a higher importance than the compensation system. We ensure compliance with the regulatory and legal requirements and the principles of good corporate governance. We support a long-term corporate strategy for sustainable development. We define appropriate compensation levels in line with peer groups, and the levels are independent of the system, but are then, of course, based on the system. What we want to achieve is strong pay for performance, which means that the payment is based on the achievements. We also would like to take into account the shareholders' interests and the stakeholders' interests. The system should be intuitive and transparent, especially for the board members affected. What is also important is a consistency of the compensation system in the company, starting at the level of Board of Management down to the employees. Following these principles, the Supervisory Board developed a compensation system over a period of almost two years. It took us long because we also had a lot of discussions with investors and proxy advisors to take into account the investors' views regarding the requirements and the design of an adequate compensation system. We also waited for the final conclusion of the ARUG II law. We used the discussions with the investors and the proxy advisors in order to compare the approach of the Supervisory Board with their ideas, to explain the motivation of the Supervisory Board and to respond to criticisms raised by investors. Let me point out one aspect of our compensation proposal, and this is the possibility to reward special achievements of a board member in the interests of the company with an extraordinary bonus payment in exceptional cases. There were a number of questions on this point in the run-up of the shareholders' meeting, and I would like to explain the Supervisory Board's motivation to preserve this compensation component. The Supervisory Board would like to keep the possibility to make a special payment in the case of exceptional developments. Of course, the Supervisory Board will ensure the adequacy of such payments. It will only use such a payment if the performance to be rewarded had an exceptionally positive influence on the long-term strategy and development of Deutsche Telekom. Furthermore, such a payment will be based on a really extraordinary performance of the board member. A performance that has to go beyond the normal responsibility of respective board member. It is also important to know that such a special bonus payment is subject to the compensation cap. This means that the special bonus cannot go beyond the maximum cap defined. This cap will still be in place. Finally, I would like to point out that we use the instrument of extraordinary success bonus payments very respectfully and very cautiously in the past. We did it, for example, in the case of the special bonus for Mr. Höttges, for his extraordinary performance regarding the merger between T-Mobile U.S. and Sprint. Dear shareholders, this should suffice on the topic of Management Board compensation for now. During the Q&A session, I will come back to individual questions regarding the compensation system. Dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, let me summarize my report on the year 2020 as follows. The Supervisory Board has closely monitored and supported the Management Board on the basis of a compliant and effective corporate governance. Deutsche Telekom is strategically well-positioned, is on a clear operational growth path, and is financially well-positioned based on a solid balance sheet and a strong free cash flow. The Board of Management has laid strong foundations also to master future challenges. The past is guaranteeing the future. Dear shareholders, I would like to thank you very much for your attention. I am now going to address items 2 to 11 on the agenda. The full wording of the agenda items 2 to 10, as well as the motions for resolution proposed by management, can be found in the invitation published in the Federal Gazette. There is one special circumstance surrounding item 2. As part of the share matching plans, treasury shares were transferred to plan participants in the current financial year. 7,213 of which were transferred after February 16th, 2021. As a result, the number of dividend-bearing shares increased compared to the figure indicated in the invitation in the shareholders meeting. The Board of Management and the Supervisory Board therefore adjusted the motion for resolution for item 2 on the agenda as announced regarding this issue in the invitation to the shareholders meeting. The Board of Management and the Supervisory Board propose the adoption of the following resolution. The income of EUR 5,129,092,899.85 posted in the 2020 financial year shall be used as follows: payment of a dividend of EUR 0.60 per no-par value share carrying dividend rights. That equates to EUR 2,846,580,040.40. We propose to carry forward the remaining balance for unappropriated net income, which equates to EUR 2,283,607,373.45. The adjusted motion on the appropriation of net income is available for inspection on the shareholders meeting website at www.telekom.com/hv. That's what I wanted to say about item 2 to 10. The full wording of item 11, and the associated motion for resolution submitted by the shareholders, can be found in the amended agenda published in the Federal Gazette. Dear shareholders, I am now going to announce the current attendance figure. This is the 1st of April 2021 in Bonn. Here is a list. At the moment, 3,245,250,073 shares are represented. That equates to EUR 8,317,320,916,986.88 or 68.16%. That's 4,761,458,596 no-par value shares. This equates to the following share capital: EUR 12,189,334,005.76. In addition, we have received postal proxies for a large number of no-par value shares. Please refer to the numbers on the wall behind me. This, of course, will be relevant when assessing the votes cast later on. I will give you an updated set of figures later on. At the current time, 68.74% of the share capital is represented here, including the proxy votes. I will hand over these figures to the notary public. The list of participants is available for inspection on-site. As already mentioned, information from the list of participants and on the attendance figure can be accessed via our password-protected internet dialogue during the meeting itself. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, we will now commence the Q&A session. I would now like to ask our CEO, Tim Höttges, to start responding to the questions submitted in advance of the shareholders meeting. Mr. Höttges, I don't know whether you want to comment on how much interest there has been in submitting questions and how things may have changed versus last year, and whether you wish to dare to give us a forecast on how things might develop. We hope that we will be able to welcome shareholders in person next year, we don't know. Over to you, Tim Höttges. Thank you very much, Chairman, also thank you for your great cooperation with the board of management. I would like to comment briefly before I start to answer questions. We received 569 questions from almost 200 shareholder representatives, that's more than last year. Maybe just anecdotally, my speech had 2,000 words, and one shareholder actually submitted questions corresponding to about 10,000 words, so it's not my fault. It can take a lot of time today. Some questions were, of course, very similar, almost identical, and so we will be collating these questions and breaking them down by subject matter. We have 13 thematic areas, and there are 315 questions that we will be responding to. This is the order in which we want to respond to your questions in. We will indicate this ahead of each thematic block. We will also be responding to those questions that didn't fit in with any of these thematic areas. The internet dialogue was, of course, your channel for submitting questions, and there were a number of personal issues and customer issues that were raised via the internet dialogue. Of course, we won't be responding to them here today. Of course, we have passed them on to the responsible departments, customer services, notably. They will resolve any issues you may have. Shareholders registered for the shareholders meetings were able to submit questions until Tuesday midnight using the internet dialogue. The last question came in at 11:45 P.M. on the 30th of March. Questions that came in outside of the internet dialogue can, for legal reasons, not be answered. I hope that you understand why that is. Let's start answering the questions from the shareholders. Ladies and gentlemen, of course, we received a number of questions on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic coming in, amongst other things, from Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Oswald, Miss Gaebler, and Mr. Weidenmüller, and a number of shareholders that were not mentioned by name. On the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Telekom, let me just say one thing. Generally speaking, we are getting through this crisis pretty well. Deutsche Telekom is economically stable. We had more than EUR 100 billion revenues in 2020. That was a record-breaking year for us. Our investments were beyond EUR 17 billion. That's also a record-breaking figure. Of course, our business activities in various parts of the group were impacted by the pandemic. For instance, there were some temporary travel restrictions, meaning that our roaming and visitor revenue went down, and the terminal device business was impacted, as well as our large customer business. I mentioned this in my speech. That said, we had an increased demand for voice telephony, especially in the fixed network area. That was in early 2020. I want to stress that it is not possible to make proper predictions on how long the pandemic will take. That is why our guidance for 2021 includes the impact of further issues here, especially in regard to roaming. We believe that the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic will impact on our bottom line to the tune of about EUR 200 million in 2020. The same is true for 2021. There was no coronavirus pandemic-induced reduction in the workforce across the group. On the Corona-Warn-App, our tracing app, I want to say the following: It has been downloaded more than 26 million times, and so this tracing app is one of the most successful worldwide. It is helping to combat the effects of the pandemic. Almost 300,000 users have registered positive tests so far and were able hence to warn other users. At the moment, 26.5 million downloads have been done. This is a major project and not everything has gone according to plan. We believe that this is a success story that we can certainly be proud of. Anecdotally, I was actually warned three times that I had contacts that tested positive, and I was able to respond accordingly. The app is being developed all the time with new functions, and any ideas to improve it are being tested and trialed on an ongoing basis. We are liaising with the Robert Koch Institute and the Federal Ministry of Health in this area. There will, for instance, be a so-called event function integrated so that infection clusters can be recognized. Yesterday you may have heard reports on the integration of results of rapid tests that can be uploaded to the app. Of course, the functions have to remain voluntary. As always, we do not want to collect more data than necessary. It is an open source app. The program code is openly available. The level of data protection is very high, which has meant great acceptance. Of course, on the other hand, it's also criticized for that. The federal government asked Deutsche Telekom and SAP to create the app. We are fulfilling this mission in an economically efficient manner. The development costs are expected to be about EUR 15 million, and per month, the running costs are about EUR 2.5 million-EUR 3.5 million for the entire infrastructure, including the operation of the helpline. A lot of people are calling in, that of course, costs money. That is included in this amount. We also were asked about travel costs that were not incurred because of the pandemic. We see that helping to boost our bottom line in 2020. I do want to stress that there have also been negative effects. We reported in detail on that. On the question itself, excluding the U.S. business, in 2020, we spent around EUR 100 million less on travel expenses than in 2019. A lot of that, not everything, but a lot of it is due to the pandemic. On the question of whether we have any changes in our loan liabilities because of the crisis, no, there have been no noticeable changes. One shareholder asked us whether we have any closed shops at the moment and whether there are any shop workers on short time. Yes, we have short time work in 159 of our shops. Of course, this is a scheme that is, amongst other things, dependent on incidence rates, and developments are very dynamic. There's lots of changes in the number of closed shops and sites. We were asked whether Deutsche Telekom tops up short time pay. Under the wage agreement, workers of the PVG, this is Deutsche Telekom Privatkunden-Vertrieb GmbH, are paid a grant to make up the shortfall of up to 85% of workers' gross pay. However, not exceeding the full net salary that the workers would have earned without short-time pay. We were also asked whether we are meeting the requirements of the government on letting people working from home. Yes, we are meeting them. We were also asked how many working days have been lost because of quarantine in Deutsche Telekom AG, domestic subsidiaries, and foreign subsidiaries. Overall, we have lost 16,698.66 working days. 2,393 of these days were accounted for by DT AG, and 14,305.66 days were accounted for by the subsidiaries. None of our sites shut down completely. A shareholder asked how we handled working from home before the crisis. At Deutsche Telekom, for years, we have been allowing mobile working. This is in fact part of our wage agreement as well. At the beginning of the pandemic, Deutsche Telekom allowed all staff to work from home, provided their work allowed them to do so, because that was a precautionary measure. A shareholder asked how much we could save in the longer term after the COVID crisis has ended if just 10% of working hours could be worked from home. We are monitoring developments very closely, of course. However, it's not possible to give you an answer in terms of how much we could save. We may need less office space, that is true, but we might need more meeting space and creative space as well. A question was asked about the infection in the group. We don't divide that information across the group. We We break that down. We have 1,687 infected employees in Germany, 1,481 have recovered, and 207 are still infected. Internationally, we had 3,289 infected people, 2,974 people have recovered. In the U.S., 8,874 employees were infected, and here we don't have a breakdown between recovered and actively infected employees. Across the entire group, we regret that four colleagues died in connection with a coronavirus infection. As for voluntary support, the question that was asked, we do not record any numbers on that. As for the possibility to delete data from the Corona Warning App, none of the data are centrally stored anywhere. The data is maintained on users' devices, and the users can delete that data any time. It was also asked why no selection option was integrated into the app allowing users to opt out of the data protection. This is a question that should be addressed to the federal government because they were our client here. We integrated whatever the federal government requested in regards to functions. We were asked about our attitude to the Luca App. Both the apps, Luca App and the Corona-Warn-App, are both helping to combat the pandemic in different ways. Of course, I believe that they complement each other quite well, and Deutsche Telekom will actively support any activity to help combat the pandemic by digital means. I would now like to say on behalf of everyone who's working in the crisis intervention team to thank Ms. Bohle, who is lead responsible here. Mr. Scherzig is leading the staff here. Mr. Scherzig, Ms. Bohle are, if you like, the shining lights that have helped to navigate the group through the crisis. They've done so extremely professionally. There's lots and lots of people in this working to help. Deutsche Telekom is being ranked or rated very highly by its employees for what it's doing during the crisis, and I would like to thank everyone who's been involved. We've received a number of questions on how the Telekom stock has developed in value. Ms. and Mr. Luik, Mr. Kurz, Ms. and Mr. Knoppik, Mr. Bloch, Mr. Oswald, Mr. Kestner, Mr. Seidel, and other unnamed shareholders have asked questions here. I need to ask you to consider that we need to bear in mind that different ways of dispersing dividends need to be taken into account here. We have an overall positive return of the Telekom stock since we went public in 1996. However, compared to the DAX, things have not gone satisfactorily. There's a number of reasons for that. The E.U. has liberalized the market. Telecommunications regulatory issues have been against us here. Lower prices for consumers and the competition on the market have, of course, impacted on prices and market share. That is particularly true for the years 2000 to 2010. We've seen our revenue and profits decline as a result. Over the last 10 years, if people invested in the Telekom share, they would have seen an increase in value of 157% compared to the DAX. The total return was 113%. STOXX Europe went up 103% in this time. If you compare that to the general European television sector, we see a decrease in value of - 18% over the last 10 years. The same figures for the last three years have looked as follows: The value of the Telekom stock has gone up 48%. That's twice as high as the DAX, which went up in value 24%, STOXX Europe 600 went up 25%, and the European telecommunications sector saw a decline in value of 11%. If we look at the last 12 months, Telekom stocks went up 49%, almost performing at the same level of the DAX, which was up 53%. STOXX Europe 600 was up 39%, and the European telecommunications sector generally grew by 16%. The Telekom stock has certainly done well compared to the DAX of the European stock market over the last 10 years. Deutsche Telekom is by far the most valuable European telecoms company. That having been said, we are, of course, not happy with developments over the last 12 months. That is why we are working tirelessly to achieve better development for you all. Over the last 12 months, we've seen a lot of discussions, especially in regard to the continued planning of our U.S. business. We've been talking to our U.S. investors. We are also discussing our plans to invest more in fiber in Germany. Herbert has just said that this has meant that the analysts are heading for a target stock price of about EUR 20. In March, we spoke at length with our American team on the further plans for the U.S. business. We will, of course, be sharing more information with you in May at our Capital Markets Day. We've got a question on the risks to the development of our share price. I would just like to refer you to the chapter Risks and Opportunity Management on pages 118 to 134 of the new report for last year, where we have a detailed explanation of the possible risks to our business. And I at pains to point this out, we also cover the opportunities for our group. We had a question on whether we are considering buying back shares to help maintain our share price. On the 25th of May 2016, the shareholders' meeting authorized us to buy back treasury shares up to a tune of 10% of our share capital. Today, we wish to ask for new authorization to do so. This is point 7 of the agenda of the shareholders' meeting. However, we believe that the dividend is our primary instrument for remunerating and rewarding shareholders. We also were asked whether we are considering a minority IPO in order to increase the value of Deutsche Telekom. T-Mobile U.S. is already listed in its own right. O2, Magyar Telekom, and Hrvatski Telekom are, too. We will be verifying whether this makes sense over the next few months. We are a convergent provider, and so we believe that fragmenting the German business does not make sense. The towers business is the number 1 in Germany. It is well-positioned in order to continue participating in the German growth market. Another question was on what we can learn from Google and Amazon. These companies are pursuing a very different business model as Deutsche Telekom, and so it is only possible to a very limited degree to compare the two or the three in this case. We also got a question in connection with our initial offering of Telekom shares in 1996 and the communication strategy at the time. It is not unusual for a company to publicize complex action involving a retail tranche. We do not believe that this is in any way a negative thing. The IPO price at the time was based on the current state of the market at that time. General market fluctuations are not manageable to any great degree by a company. In 2010, private investors accounted for 14% of our share capital. By the end of 2020, that had gone up to 18%, that share has actually gone up, not down. Mr. Oswald referred to so-called scandals, we do not believe that these are impacting on our share. We don't know how many Telekom shareholders made losses and to what extent. We also don't know how profitable their investments have been because we don't have any information on that. We also don't have any information that would give rise to believing that there have been speculations or manipulations with our share price. Let me talk about the dividend now. We received a number of questions on dividends. Mr. Wirth, Mr. Manal, Mr. Dölbeck, Mr. Zeller, Mr. Ploch, Mr. Maier, Mr. Kutz, Mr. Kesten, Mr. Metzdorf, Mr. Oswald, Mr. Lohmann, Ms. Gaebler, Mr. Beckendorf, DABA Immobilien GmbH, and a number of other shareholders that are not named here. Generally, the dividend, of course, should reflect the adjusted earnings per share. Our minimum dividend is EUR 0.60. Let me say the following on the 2020 dividend. Our adjusted earnings per share 2020 has gone up 15%. This is mainly due to a non-operative, non-cash earnings contribution relating to the valuation of our call options on shares of T-Mobile U.S. About the outlook for 2021, we expect a decline in adjusted EPS. In addition, we need to consider the net debt of the group. The aim, of course, is to keep net debt across the group within a certain range. This range is defined by the ratio of adjusted EBITDA to net debt. Our comfortable range is 2.25 to 2.75. When we concluded the agreement on the merger between T-Mobile U.S. and Sprint, we announced that we're going to be leaving that range temporarily. The idea was to return to that range in the third year after the closing of the deal. At the end of the year 2020, that value was 2.78. We believe that the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board, a dividend of EUR 0.60 for 2020 is appropriate considering the one-time impact on earnings and our current net debt. Of course, we want to return to our debt ratio as soon as we can. The main drivers here are increasing free cash flow of T-Mobile U.S. We expect synergies of around EUR 7.5 billion, thanks to the merger of the two companies. The cash flow in the U.S. business is expected to rise to between $30 billion to $40 billion until 2023. Their cash flow will go up to over $18 billion a year. This is a realistic way to return the debt ratio back to the intended range. What about the outlook on dividends? I would like to refer you to the respective chapter in our new report and what Mr. Höttges just told you. Our dividend policy, adjusted for 2019, foresees a minimum dividend of EUR 60 per dividend-bearing share. It will still continue to reflect the relative growth of our adjusted earnings per share. Mr. Beckendorf asked about our current dividend policy and whether it will continue into the year 2021. Yes, it will. We will be giving you an outlook on our dividend policy for the years after that on the capital market day on the 20th of May. As for the timing of the payout of the dividend, we believe that this day, the day of the shareholders' meeting, is the most appropriate one to pay out the dividend. What about the fiscal deposit account? There's a number of factors that influence how long we can pay out the dividend from our fiscal deposit account without a deduction of capital gains tax. We believe that this will continue to be the case for the next few years. This means that there will be no deduction of capital gains tax on the dividend. Deutsche Telekom does not have any distributable profits as defined by Section 27 of the Income Tax Act because the fiscal deposit account exceeds the carrying amount of equity. This has historical reasons, such as the privatization of Deutsche Telekom in the 1990s and the acquisition of T-Mobile U.S. using Telekom shares. This is a purely fiscal calculation. It conforms to German tax law and has nothing to do with our profit as recognized under German commercial code or IFRS. We had another question on our plans regarding the so-called dividend in kind, the stock dividend, as it's also called. We introduced the stock dividend option in 2013 for the business year 2012. This was an option for our shareholders, we wanted it to give us the flexibility we needed at the time to make investments. There are disadvantages when it comes to stock dividends. The shares, of course, dilute, and you have an increase in the numbers of shares qualifying for the dividend. Administratively, the work is more than a classic cash payout. We discontinued the stock dividend option in 2017 for the 2016 business year, and we are not planning to reintroduce it anytime soon. Finally, the Zahlstelle, the payments office, received EUR 700,500 for its work that it did in paying out the dividend. Back to Tim Höttges. I come to my favorite topic. Just bouncing back to my favorite topic: the build-out of fiber optic cable. Mr. Mattern, Mr. Plath, Mr. Böhning, Mr. Brock, Mrs. Inge, Mr. Dupke, Mr. Hallstein, Mr. Sperandio, Mr. Brongel, Mr. Matthes from Deka Investment. Mr. and Ms. Czech, Mr. Oswald, Mr. Rothacker from Union Investment, Mr. Schmidt from DWS Investment, Mr. Thiemann, Mr. Beckendorf from DWS, Ms. Gaebler, and other shareholders who I won't name, posed a series of questions on the topic of the build-out. Just a basic note, Telekom invests billions in infrastructure every year. This year, we're planning on an investment of EUR 18.4 billion. Alone in Germany, more than EUR 5.5 billion. Most of this investment is channeled into our infrastructure and it's well invested. More than 34 million households in Germany have a fiber optic-based connection from Deutsche Telekom. This allows access to bandwidths of at least 100 Mbps, so-called FTTC connections. 26 million households have what's referred to as super vectoring. Super vectoring makes possible speeds of up to 250 Mbps. One important aspect, however, is that customers also have to order these high bandwidths. We assume that the next step will be that we pick up the pace of the build-out of this fiber optic cable to the household customers. By 2030, every household in Germany is supposed to have a possibility to receive fiber optic connections, either from Telekom or our competitors. That's part of our mission for society. After 25 years of regulation, we're going to do what is necessary to defend our market share. Of course, we will also meet our mission on behalf of society. We will not be able to reach that goal in the current regulatory framework. We do compete with competitors. As part of our fiber optic strategy, we're open for cooperation with competitors, and we've already demonstrated in many territories of Germany that we're reliable partners, and it applies to national carriers as well as regional companies and local municipalities and utilities. We provide our competitors our network, and at the same time, we purchase network services from competitors in order to supply more and more people with our Magenta products. All market players profit from this cooperation on a voluntary basis, especially people in our country. Our next objective is to support 10 million households with the possibility for an FTTH connection by 2024. Beginning at that time, we expand and build out FTTH households by 2.5 million a year. That applies to urban and rural areas. That's how we will live up to our very important task of supplying a significant digital infrastructure for our population. One special aspect of fiber optics is supplying our schools with fast internet. Here, we're really going full steam ahead, and we're supporting continuing education of teachers as best we can. Because of red tape and bureaucratic impediments, there's, of course, delays sometimes. There's turf fighting because there's different regulations from a different lender and areas that the question that we receive, whether 5G mobile telecommunications can be replaced in areas that don't have enough fixed network supplies. The clear answer is no today. We have 20 million in 2020, we want to supply 5 million more in 2024. That's the headline for Deutsche Telekom. We want to supply every household with fiber optics. Mr. Mathes asked several questions about how our customers are accepting fiber optic connections. I can say in response to that, demand is increasing continuously every year. Wherever we offer high bandwidth, more than 50% of our customers are ordering broadband connections of 100 Mb or more. Regarding the question about which products there is a major demand for: our broadband offer of up to 250 Mb, our MagentaTV offer with additional streaming products like Netflix and Disney. They are gaining more customers for Telekom than for the competition right now. Above all this, we offer MagentaEZ. It's a very unique product in the market. Finally, regarding the question of our fiber optic build-out, the objective of supplying every household in Germany with fiber optics can't be achieved by Telekom alone. We're optimistic that our competition will also make their contribution to the build-out in Germany, and we're open to the rest of the market for cooperation under fair conditions. The keyword here is reciprocity. We want to pay the same price for using the others' infrastructure as they pay for us. The federal government has a program to support and subsidize build-out where it's uneconomical for companies. At the same time, important not to flood the market with these subsidies, as it would have an impact on the price and also affect our incentives for the build-out. Another question was: when will fiber optics be available in Heusweiler? Deutsche Telekom is in charge of the build-out in Heusweiler. Because we're cooperating with Deutsche Glasfaser, we're able to soon be able to offer our products there. Mr. Kielmann asked about our own build-out of fiber optics. Investment in the network infrastructure is very complex, and you can only really assess it over a longer period of time. For example, the frequencies for the 5G build-out were already purchased in 2019. In addition, in the course of expansion of the 5G network last year, also the LTE network was expanded. The build-out of fiber optics is similarly complex. We want to invest at present in future technologies, if only just to remain competitive. Mr. Schmidt asked about the obstacles to build-out of fiber optics. Well, one is building regulations, which frequently provide for fiber optics to be laid at a minimum depth. If the cables are laid at a more shallow level through so-called microtrenching, that's not allowed. In addition, also building permits for laying fiber optics is very involved and very complicated, and you often have to have the approval of owners of properties to lay fiber optics from the street into the household. Something like trenching would make it possible to speed things up at more economical prices, for example. One question about Mr. Beckendorf related to the build-out of fiber optics. In order to accelerate the build-out of FTTH, we will be boosting investment from currently EUR 1.2 billion to EUR 2 billion per year. In order to make it as efficient as possible, we'll continue to cooperate with other players, and that will play an important role in the build-out strategy of Telekom. Question by Ms. Gaebler on the topic of network capacity utilization. With voice connections, it's 50% higher, data volumes are 30%-40% higher as a result of the COVID-19 period. There was no directly corresponding breakdowns in networks or fluctuations or problems. This is due of all to the fact that our network, we made it through this whole pandemic without any breakdowns, and that wasn't the case with the competition. One shareholder asked about whether the campaign, More Broadband for Me, was all about. These are fiber optic offers in FTTH areas, the biggest cost item here is burial to bring the fiber optics into the house. It's not possible to really state a general cost or price for this, overall, we're too slow in adapting our technology to modern cabling technologies. The whole bureaucratic procedures have to be quicker, less red tape. Srini Gopalan, our very successful European head of the German business, said he has three priorities: fiber optics, fiber optics, and fiber optics. This brings me to the next chapter. One question on mobile telecommunications sent in by Mr. Zeller, Mr. Matthes from Deka Investment, Mr. Oswald from the Schutzgemeinschaft Kapitalanleger, Mr. Beckendorf from DSW, Ms. Gaebler, and other shareholders whose name I won't mention. Just let me say in just general terms regarding the topic of mobile telecommunications expansion, I would note that Telekom is building more than 1,500 new LTE and 5G locations per year. In addition, we are expanding our performance by increasing sites. This applies to urban areas as well as rural ones. To improve mobile telecommunications, we're cooperating with competitors, too. We've agreed to close these gaps in coverage throughout Germany by using currently existing infrastructure. In the world, if we receive approval, we could build up to 2,000 more sites a year. At the world level, we're investing EUR 18.4 billion this year, more than EUR 5.5 billion alone in Germany, which pays off, too. In Germany, we'll reach a milestone in coverage in mobile communications soon. Recently, we reached it. Now we cover 80% of the population with 5G, and 90% by the end of the year is probably what we'll achieve as the next stage. That's significantly more than our competitors. Our customers perceive us as the 5G market leader and are actively asking about 5G, we're able to offer very attractive tariffs in this area, like a GigaMobil with 5G as part of the package and 5G-capable smartphones as well. Deutsche Telekom is investing on a massive scale in the development of the 5G network, both in terms of network coverage as well as an improvement in network functions. The aim and objective is to leverage new functions that are associated with 5G Standalone, including so-called network slicing. These are ultra-reliable communication with a low latency or reaction period and quality of service offers. That's another significant aspect of 5G. In addition to the generation of more sources of income, also operating costs for our current networks have been reduced, and we're taking out of commission older, costly older systems and replacing these with advanced technologies. That reduces electrical consumption and improves the profitability of the company. Well, the next step is the 5G evolution. We'll do everything we can to optimize 5G to make it better. Mr. Mathes asked about the status of our 5G build-out and the technology we use. The build-out technology was only possible through the innovative use of so-called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing. Existing antennas don't have to be revamped, which costs a lot. It's sufficient to upgrade the antennas to operate 5G. Fewer new sites are necessary to expand the network. That saves time and money. The build-out of 5G throughout the country is therefore taking place on the basis of this Dynamic Spectrum Sharing technology. Another question by Mr. Mathes related to mobile communications. With the help of Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, 4G and 5G can be operated parallel to one another on the 2.1 gigahertz frequency band. For 5G users, speeds of up to 800 Mbps possible. For our LTE customers, available internet speed is also increased by use of additional frequency. With pure 5G build-out on 3.6 gigahertz frequency, speeds of up to 1 Gbps are achievable. We're building out both of them, both 3.6 and 2.1 frequency ranges. That creates capacities and allows us to cover a lot of territory fast. Another question from Mr. Mathes related to the topics of ORAN and Huawei. Regarding the topic of Open RAN: the launch and use of Open RAN, and that stands for the access network, makes possible competitive and dynamic ecosystem by RAN providers. Over the medium term, this Open RAN and the efficiency of RAN implementation, as well as the operating costs for mobile network operators, will improve. The main disadvantage of Open RAN is the increased complexity in the integration of RAN components from different manufacturers. Automation is the key here in order to be able to cope with this. Regarding the topic of Huawei, as has often been stated, we purchase mobile communications technology from a whole host of different manufacturers. At the same time, with a view to the political discussion in Germany that began in 2019, we have decided to phase Chinese suppliers out of the core network where there are critical security issues. Where we are able to use components from competitors, we would like to keep these for us, with a view to the competition, and that's probably in the interest of their shareholders, too. In the antenna active network, only the same manufacturers can be used in moving from 5G components, moving these to 4G components. That's why Telekom uses the 5G build-out in the antenna network suppliers, Ericsson, Nokia, and Huawei. We're evaluating all our manufacturers and suppliers in terms of their ability to supply us, given the current geopolitical situation and the COVID-19 crisis. Another question relates to our statement, Best Network and its origin. The advertising statements are based on external mobile communication tests, such as connect Mobilfunk-Netztest 2021 and the magazine CHIP's mobile communication tests for 2020 and 2021. We want to continue to do our own measurements to evaluate our performance. Another question related to the supply requirements with the mobile communication standard LTE. In Germany, the LTE network of Telekom covered 98.1% of households at the end of 2019. The supply requirements of the Federal Network Agency from the frequency auction in 2015 have been met. Regarding the question of network build-out for 1&1 Drillisch, this hasn't begun yet, and it will take several years until networks from customers outside of urban areas can be used. 1&1 Drillisch announced that only 25% of the population would be supplied by 2025 and 50% by 2030 with its own network. Thus, 1&1 Drillisch, over the long term, will have to make use of the network of Telefónica. That's so-called national roaming, and that's already the case today. Because 1&1 Drillisch also has to earn to pay for the additional cost for network build-out, we do not expect price competition to become more intense there. Another question related to the costs of past frequency auctions. In the auction in 2019 for 5G frequency in the 2.1 gigahertz and 3.6 gigahertz area, Deutsche Telekom invested around EUR 2.17 billion. Regarding a question about the sites for our 5G antennas, these antennas, for the most part, are operated at the sites of the Funkturm Gesellschaft, which is 100% owned by Deutsche Telekom AG. That was the block of questions relating to mobile communications. I'm going to take a little breather here and do a 5G test. Maybe you can see this. We have a 1 gig transmission rate here with a 3.6 gigahertz antenna. We're not just talking about a theoretical exercise here. That's operating. 898 was the download speed. Which brings me to sustainability. We've received several questions on the subject, among others from Mr. Schäfer, Mr. Matthes from Union Investment, Mr. Rothacker, Mr. Beckendorf from DSW, Mr. Abe, as well as other shareholders who I will not mention by name. First of all, on a general note, we look at ourselves as a responsible company, which is also embedded in our group strategy. We are committed to sustainable actions, and in this way, we want to make a contribution to solving the ecological, economic, and social challenges of our time. In Germany, customers have been surfing on the green Telekom network since the beginning of 2020, which is run using 100% of electricity from renewables. Our next goal is to reduce our carbon emissions by 90% compared to 2017 by 2030. We are convinced that long-term growth can only be achieved if we take on responsibility as entrepreneurs and meet the social and ecological challenges. We believe that sustainability will pay off, and all group units from Telekom will benefit from it, including our shareholders. Let me turn to the individual questions. We received one question on the rollout of our charging infrastructure for electric cars. We are continuing to expand it. At the moment, we have more than 150 sites all over Germany, hence making a major contribution to the mobility transition. Last year, we made it possible to save carbon emissions by 3,700 tons. Another question referred to the standard printing paper. It is certified with the Blue Angel and Eco Label, and it accounts for around 90% of all our printing operations. Our paper from central printing operations, including mandatory communications, invoices, et cetera, is fully printed on recycled paper. The invitations to the shareholders' meetings have been sent using FSC-certified paper for years. You can actively support us by receiving your invoices online and by having your shareholders' meetings documents sent to you electronically. Next year, we will send out far fewer documents. Another question was on the energy mix that we are using. Our group is buying green electricity from different sources. In 2020, green electricity accounted for 62%, and it is used from water power and wind power. 40% of our green power comes from so-called power purchase agreements or PPA. These are demand-driven electricity supply contracts, which are concluded directly between power plant operators and large companies such as ours. In this way, we can make sure that we always get green electricity. One PPA was done with a solar park in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. We want to systematically expand that share of PPAs and, at the moment, we are also directly buying 80% of green electricity. Mr. Matthes asked to what extent today's financial forecast from Deutsche Telekom is based on the targets of the Paris Agreement. Deutsche Telekom has fully considered the implementation of ambitious climate protection goals in accordance with the Paris Agreement in its medium-term financial planning. This particularly holds true for investments in more efficient technologies and mobility solutions, as well as the conversion to electricity from renewables and the implementation of our Green Magenta Program. Mr. Matthes also asked whether we are in line with a possible supply chain act and whether we are monitoring our supply chains. Deutsche Telekom is well prepared for a possible new supply chain act. Even today, comprehensive social standards have been established, which make sure that we can comply with human rights and the processes of good governance. As for the monitoring of supply chains, when selecting new suppliers, our sustainability requirements play a major role. As we continue our cooperation, we will rely on dedicated self-assessments from our suppliers and risk assessments. Compliance with our basic principles, including compliance with human rights, is regularly monitored using so-called social audits. Let me turn to a question on the cost-benefit matrix in the sustainability area. Deutsche Telekom regularly monitors the level of ambition of all various parameters, including non-financial KPIs and targets, and we always adapt our parameters in consideration of the associated cost and the expected benefit. Mr. Beckendorf asked about our KPIs for measuring the energy and emission intensities. Pleasantly, these KPIs decreased over the past few years. However, the development of such indicators is subject to various fluctuations, including technological development cycles. As far as energy intensity is concerned, we see an effect from the integration of Sprint in the U.S. in 2020. As a result of the measures that we are working on, we will continue to improve efficiency, and these targets will also be used to determine the level of target achievement of the board members. Mr. Abel asked about climate friendliness and resource efficiency of our fleet and the associated information in the CR report. The essential factor for inclusion in the Telekom portfolio are positive total workforce costs, including sustainable criteria such as a good carbon emissions value and compliance with the latest emissions rules. You also asked about training offered specifically to drivers. Unfortunately, due to Corona, there were no such training sessions together with the automotive providers in the past year. You asked about the tires used by Telekom. At the moment, we are not using revamped tires in our fleet. As for transparency, we are reporting on the most important fleet data in a transparent way. The CR report includes information on our annual systematic materiality analysis. Based on this analysis, we provide an annual report on the number of vehicles and fuel emissions. Mr. Abel asked about the share of so-called cradle-to-cradle products. As part of our activities for resource protection, our way to a circular economy is of particular importance. For instance, we are offering our customers renewed media receivers and routers, which basically come back to us using a leasing model. We also introduced a sustainable smartphone program because customers can give us their old smartphones if they like. However, we cannot come up with a specific figure. Mr. Abel also wanted to know whether we are using sustainable materials for building towers. Deutsche Telekom is pursuing a sustainability strategy. When it comes to building new mobile towers, we need to comply with various regulatory provisions regarding structural stability, and this means that we can only use alternative materials such as timber in a limited way. Mr. Abel asked about solar energy and energy efficiency in our facility management. Procurement and power generation are optimized locally in the group. All major group units are working to continuously increase the share of electricity from solar and wind power. Wherever it makes sense to technically upgrade our buildings, we are doing it. As for the question regarding Deutsche Telekom's entire power consumption in 2020, this amounted to 2,718 gigawatt hours. The energy supplier of Deutsche Telekom AG in Germany is Power & Air Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG. We have received many questions on the investment portfolio, among others from Mr. Brown, Ms. and Mr. Luik, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Klassen, Mr. Flurer, Mr. Matthes from Deka, Mr. Beckedorf from DSW, Mr. Buhlmann from SdK, Mrs. Rothacker, and other shareholders that I will not mention by name. On a general note, whenever we are changing our portfolio, it is designed to sustainably increase the value at Deutsche Telekom. This is consistently being monitored, and it can mean that we decide to sell certain companies or activities, such as in Romania last year, or in the event of the sale of our mobile towers in the Netherlands. It may also lead to acquisitions, such as the acquisition of Tele2 in the Netherlands, or that we are merging companies such as T-Mobile U.S. As for your questions. Mr. Matthes asked how the investment portfolio in Europe is developing. In Europe, we always want to ensure the best convergent customer experience that comprises fixed network and mobile communications. Meaning, in addition to the organic rollout, we always monitor the opportunities for acquisitions. For instance, in Hungary and the Czech Republic in the past. A question on the sale of Telekom Romania. The decision to sell Telekom Romania is subject to regulatory approval that we are expecting for the second quarter this year. It was a strategic decision, and in the meantime, we have shored up the mobile business in such a way that it has become competitive. We've received several questions on Deutsche Funkturm. DFMG is responsible for our business with mobile towers in Germany. It was spun off as a separate company as early as 2002. We also spun off our Austrian and Dutch mobile towers to separate entities. Leasing such towers to third party is always based on market conditions. Around 25% of the disclosed revenues from our mobile towers are generated together with competitors in mobile communications. We regularly examine options on how to improve the value of our portfolio. The next question was on the sale of our tower business in the Netherlands. There were two targets, primarily, in this context. First of all, we got an excellent valuation of the business. We used the proceeds in order to provide initial funding for the infrastructure fund or DIV. There was the question of whether we looked into a possible IPO. Another question was: what is the value of our mobile towers in Germany? The answer, in the Netherlands, around EUR 12 billion. The next question was whether it might make sense to pool all mobile activities as a preparation for a subsequent IPO. We are firmly convinced that the convergent products should remain at the heart of our strategy, and that's why such a measure is not being planned. In this business, convergence has not quite progressed as much. In the U.S., we already did the IPO. The next question referred to a possible spin-off of T-Systems. T-Systems is an integral part of the group. T-Systems supports large corporate customers. It is now focusing on IT services because we spun off the telecommunication services to Telekom Deutschland. T-Systems transformation was kicked off in 2016 and will be continued competitively. The next question is: what will happen with our BT Group investment? It was spun off to pension funds. Over the past few months, the BT share rose by around 30%. Once the situation regarding political climate in the U.S. has clarified, we believe that this positive trend will continue. Let's talk about taxes and tax havens. We received several questions in this context, including on tax havens. Mr. Dubbert and Mr. Oswald, for instance, asked questions. Mr. Dubbert asked about foreign subsidiaries, and he said that it might be a good idea for us to check whether we, as a corporation, may lead to tax evasion. This is not based on where our company is actually located. It depends on where we are generating our business. That would be Germany for the German business and the U.S. for our U.S. business. That's what the taxation is always based upon. According to German tax laws, there is no possibility even to dodge taxes. Another question was whether we are keeping our shares in T-Mobile U.S. via a holding in the Netherlands, and whether this is for tax reasons. This was actually a development over time. There are several reasons. It goes back to the 1990s. So far, we have not benefited from that in terms of taxation. Mr. Ohrswald actually asked several questions which more or less aimed at asking whether Deutsche Telekom is using any tax havens to shift profits from A to B. The answer is no, Mr. Ohrswald. That is not the case. Deutsche Telekom is not using any phantom companies in tax havens or any other artificial entities. Which brings me to Tim Höttges, and he will talk about T-Mobile U.S. That is all happening very fast now. It turns to the questions from Paul Allen McIntyre. Dietrich Eberhard Horz, Hans Kurz, Winfried Mathes, Mr. Oswald, Mr. Buhlmann, Wolfgang Kutzner from DFB Investment Club, Mr. Beckendorf from DSW. Mr. Oswald. It is true that many years ago, Deutsche Telekom was not satisfied with the performance of T-Mobile U.S. It is true that in 2011, Deutsche Telekom entered into negotiations with the competitor AT&T. However, due to a veto from the U.S. American DOJ and FCC, a transaction did not come about at the time. With hindsight, we count ourselves lucky that the sale didn't go through back then. I would like to remind you that AT&T back then paid a so-called breakup fee amounting to $6 billion to us, that we used to make the investment gap at T-Mobile U.S. much smaller, and that actually marked the start of the turnaround. In addition, since 2013, our U.S. business and T-Mobile has continuously developed positively following the reverse merger with MetroPCS as the new management came, led by the then CEO, John Legere. We were able to significantly gain new market share and to clearly improve the financial position of the company. For many years, there have been many reports about that in the press. The T-Mobile 5G network has now become the fastest and biggest network in the U.S. with the best network coverage. I mean, think about it. This is a network that previously was not represented all over Germany, we actually outperformed our major competitor to offer the best network. Why did it take so long until the merger with Sprint went through? Well, it took some time and previous attempts failed because of the demands of the Sprint main shareholder, SoftBank. It was actually an advantage for Telekom and its shareholders to wait in order to get better conditions for the transaction. We created value by waiting. Mr. McIntyre would like to gain an overview of the plannings at T-Mobile U.S. for the next couple of years, the question was whether we are considering a sale of T-Mobile U.S. Mr. McIntyre, ever since we set up T-Mobile U.S. anew, the company has developed more successfully than any other company in our industry. Recently, the company had 102 million mobile customers, the so-called branded postpaid and prepaid customers. With that, T-Mobile U.S. already outperformed its big rival, AT&T, and is now attacking the current incumbent, Verizon. T-Mobile is mainly leveraging the value potential from the continued rollout of the best nationwide 5G network in the U.S. On the basis of the merger with Sprint, we can use the 2.5 gigahertz frequencies. We've got more capacities and therefore higher bandwidth. At the Capital Markets Day in mid-March of this year, the T-Mobile U.S. management presented the plans of the company, which are very ambitious for the next five years. T-Mobile U.S. is aiming at strong growth in several additional market segments, for instance, in rural areas. In the business customer segment, T-Mobile U.S. is planning to boost the market share of 10% to around 20% over the next five years. In early March, the company issued a special offer called WFX Solutions. Working from wherever you are. It is designed to fit the needs of business customers, and it comprises internet solutions and business applications. In the home broadband segment, the company is expecting to gain 500,000 customers by the end of 2021. By 2025, the number of broadband customers at home is set to rise from 7 million to 8 million customers. This will likely come with very positive margins because the current infrastructure can be used for Wi-Fi networks. The ARPU, average revenue per customer, and the churn potential is comparable to that of mobile contract customers, while at the same time, device costs are lower. We have a much better outlook for T-Mobile U.S., and this is based on the strong positioning of T-Mobile U.S. in the market for 5G services. Thanks to the 2.5 gigahertz licenses that we gained in connection with the merger with Sprint, the 5G network of T-Mobile U.S. is the fastest and biggest one in the U.S. In addition, T-Mobile U.S. has acquired additional 5G licenses in the recent C-band frequency auction for urban and suburban regions. By reinforcing the leading 5G network, T-Mobile is safeguarding its strong market and competitive position, which is important because the cable network operators are also penetrating the mobile segment. T-Mobile U.S. also raised the expected cash value that arises from estimated synergies from the Sprint transaction, and they rose the number from $43 billion to more than $60 billion. In the medium term, the company intends to achieve cost and investment synergies of around $7.5 billion. Previously, the budget figure for that was $6 billion. Free cash flow, the money that's left, ultimately, will amount to EUR 13 billion-EUR 14 billion in 2023 and more than EUR 18 billion in 2026. These tremendous cash flows make it possible for the company to consistently bring its net debt down over the period in question, and it also offers the potential to give something back to the shareholders, i.e., including us. Following the statements of T-Mobile U.S. at capital markets today, such payouts to shareholders will only come about if the net-to-EBITDA ratio decreases to around 2.5. First of all, we will leverage the synergies, bring net debt down, and then there's the payback. The paybacks to shareholders do not mean that debt will increase. We would only issue such paybacks once the level of debt has been brought down. Of course, that also means that we are decreasing the level of debt here. For the years 2023 to 2025, T-Mobile U.S. is expecting that this positive financial planning could lead to payouts to the shareholders of EUR 60 billion. The exact amount and the exact timing of such repayments to shareholders has not yet been established, and we don't know how exactly this will take place, whether we will be using share buybacks or other instruments. Deutsche Telekom is the main shareholder of T-Mobile U.S., and therefore we can considerably benefit from such shareholder remuneration. That's important. It wouldn't be possible to invest so much money in optical fiber in Germany if we weren't able to leverage all these synergies in the U.S. We're not in a situation where T-Mobile U.S. needs to do a trade-off between reducing net debt or paying money back to the shareholders. On the contrary, both things will be combined. Let me turn to a question from Mr. Matthes and Mr. Krog. He asked about the option of increasing our investment in T-Mobile U.S. from 44% of shares to 50%. On the 22nd of June 2020, we entered into an agreement with the Japanese corporation, SoftBank, which also includes a purchase option for T-Mobile shares amounting to 101 million. This safeguards access to the majority of capital at T-Mobile U.S. in the long run. At the same time, we enabled the immediate sale of around 198 million in T-Mobile U.S. shares. The share of SoftBank in T-Mobile U.S. was reduced by around 8% as part of that. As a result of this sale, the share of T-Mobile U.S. shares that we were able to exercise using our voting rights increased to around 52.5% as of the fifth of August 2020. We continue to have access to the majority of votes at T-Mobile U.S. The purchase options for the T-Mobile shares held by SoftBank can be exercised until the 22nd of June 2024, and SoftBank is subject to a so-called lock-up until the end of 2024, which means that they cannot sell their T-Mobile U.S. shares before that. Which means that as part of our purchase option, we can decide anytime if and when we want to buy the 18% of T-Mobile shares from SoftBank. 45 million of this purchase option can be exercised at a price of $101.5 per share. The current share price of T-Mobile is $135, so you can see that this is a very strong option. The remaining 57 million of this purchase option can be exercised based on the market price. Let me sum up. T-Mobile U.S is the strongest growing component of our portfolio. Our agreement with SoftBank, following the T-Mobile US and Sprint merger, ensures that we hold the majority of votes and are prepared for the full consolidation of T-Mobile US by mid of 2024. Our goal is to continue participating in the positive trend of T-Mobile US. We regularly monitor our investment in T-Mobile US, considering strategic and financial aspects, including the possible option to increase our share, our stake. Like I said, we also have the option to increase our capital share in T-Mobile US. By mid of 2024, we would still be able to acquire shares from SoftBank as part of a call option. To date, we have not adopted a resolution on that, and nor have we issued a statement as to whether we are planning a capital increase. Please bear with us, we are not going to comment on that today. There is no time pressure, we will regularly examine or check on our decisions under strategic and financial viewpoints. At the same time, we are very focused to returning to our target range with our debt-to-EBITDA ratio. Starting in mid 2024, SoftBank is authorized to sell T-Mobile shares, Deutsche Telekom holds a right of first refusal on such shares. One question referred to the management of T-Mobile US. I understood Mr. Ostwald's question such that he wanted to know whether SoftBank would be able to intervene in the business of T-Mobile US because it is a co-shareholder. The answer is no. SoftBank only holds a stake of just under 9% at the moment, which means that they cannot interfere with the decisions of the board of directors or day-to-day business. Mr. Ostwald, at T-Mobile U.S., unlike at Deutsche Telekom, where we have a board of management and the supervisory board, we only have one committee, which is the board of directors. It has 10 members which were appointed by Deutsche Telekom, and seven of them are employees of Deutsche Telekom AG. These members are Tim Höttges, which is myself, Christian Illek, Thorsten Langheim, and Dominique Leroy. One question was whether this might be the ideal time to actually sell T-Mobile U.S. shares. This would not be an ideal time to sell off the shares of T-Mobile U.S., because we believe that we will see a further increase in the value generated in the U.S., and we will participate in it. The capital markets are looking at the transaction in a 100% positive way. Before the transaction was announced in 2018, the T-Mobile share price stood at around $65. It has now risen to around $135, or almost 90%. The higher share price reflects the excellent development of the company and the excellent prospects for the company, which were presented at the recent Capital Markets Day. This was a very complex transaction and a very successful one. We need to hedge this option, which is below the market price. We owe this to Thorsten Langheim and his team, who did a great job in making this possible. The operating management team has been in place for about a year under the management of Mike Sievert. It's a young team, and they are continuing the success story which was kicked off by the previous management team. We now have a fresh and new team in the U.S., which is responsible for implementing our strategy there. Okay. Now we move into space, ladies and gentlemen. From the rocket, we now go into space. There were a number of questions concerning the topic Internet from space come from Mrs. Friedel, Mr. Pombach, Mr. Schulz, Mr. Schulze, Mr. Zippmüller, Mr. Delin, Mr. Kest, Mr. Rosenau, and other shareholders. Our look at Starlink from a strategic perspective. New technologies always have their special incentive for companies because they open up new possibilities. We are open for cooperations with other market participants if these enable our technologies and our portfolio, add to our portfolio, or also make it possible to have efficiencies, for example, in the field of infrastructure expansion. Starlink of Elon Musk is one of many potential partners in the field of satellite communications. Companies at present enjoying high press coverage, probably also because of the founder. I could also mention Eutelsat or OneWeb. One shareholder is asking in this context whether the space-based satellite network planned by Lockheed Martin Corp. and Omnispace LLC is more disruptive than the Starlink project of SpaceX. No, from our point of view, it's not. The constellations just address different users. Based on the characteristics of these split technologies, we do see opportunities to also ensure good coverage also in remote areas. Starlink is making progress. For the first time recently, 100 Mbps were measured downstream. Deutsche Telekom itself has had positive results when doing tests with a mobile provider from the stratosphere, and we see this as an addition to our terrestrial network. It's only Deutsche Telekom that invests into these technologies and works on these technologies to have these new disruptive technologies, even if it's difficult financially speaking. Whether these technologies actually achieve market maturity is something that we'll see in the future. Our strategy will not be changed by these projects. We want to be leading in technology with integrated hybrid networks. Already today, Deutsche Telekom is using the satellite technology of our partners in order to provide connections for our customers. For example, in the context of the European Aviation Network for broadband internet in aircraft. We also accompany the development of new networks and technologies in the HAPS Alliance. Regarding the question whether we plan our own telecommunications satellites, no, not at present. Just to describe the context, Starlink is neither preferred nor selected by us, and we don't see it as beneficial. The message that I want to convey is that we always have to be open for innovation and new technologies. We have to think about whether this is a substituting or additional technology for what we are offering today. We have to be open at all times, and this is something that I was talking about. It's not about a short-term deal or anything else, or just one partner, but we want to focus on a variety of different technologies. Let's now move on to the topic of the virtual shareholders meeting. Questions were raised by Mr. Fehling, Mr. Kux, Mr. Eckhardt, Mr. Ruoff, Mr. Oswald, Ms. Franke, Mr. and Mrs. Wolff, Mr. Schmidt, Ms. Gäbler, Mr. Weidenmüller, and other shareholders. The first question is the costs of today's shareholders meeting. The cost for today's meeting is between EUR 2.8 million and EUR 3 million. The costs are mainly caused by printing and sending out the documents for the shareholders meeting. In 2020, the costs also were a total of EUR 3 million. Personal meeting would cost us around EUR 5 million, so we are saving EUR 2 million because of the virtual format. Mr. Eckhardt asked what additional costs we have to pay for media service providers and the Internet Dialog. The media service provider costs us EUR 280,000, the Internet Dialog EUR 300,000. Ms. Ubrig asked whether we can have the next shareholders meeting in Nürnberg. For organizational and cost reasons, we will always have it close to our headquarters here in Bonn, so it's not possible. Mr. Zippmüller asks why he cannot send his registration to the shareholders meeting via fax. We offer a number of possibilities to send the reply, but we didn't think that the fax was used very often any longer. Mr. Oswald asks why it's not possible to also ask questions via letter or fax. The law requires electronic communication. We have provided our Internet Dialog for this. For legal reasons, it's not possible to send us questions via fax or via letter. Mr. Eckhardt and Mr. Oswald asked regarding the possible restriction of shareholders' rights in a virtual shareholders meeting and asked us about our considerations, how we want to have the shareholders meetings in the coming years. In the shareholders meetings, the shareholders take essential decisions, and we want to have a good exchange with you, but unfortunately, the pandemic makes it necessary to find new ways of meeting. Nevertheless, we want to have a format that makes it possible for the shareholders to take essential decisions. The legislator made it possible to use virtual shareholders meetings last year, and there drew a balance between practical reasons and the legal certainty, and it was said that it is legally possible to have virtual shareholders meetings. We all hope that the pandemic will be over soon and that we can meet again in physical meetings, that we can have a better exchange with you. Mr. Oswald said that when we are answering questions, we always point to the annual report. Yes, this is true. We do this in order to enable an efficient meeting, and a lot of information, almost everything is visible in the annual report. Mr and Mrs. Oswald asked why the Board of Management suggests to vote against item 11 on the agenda, referring to future legal regulations, and Mr. Weidenmüller asked whether the changes in the articles of incorporation couldn't be valid as long as the pandemic lasts. We think we need a legal agreement that is applicable to all corporations. This leads me to a question by Mr. Vierling. You asked to have the documents for the next shareholders meeting as short and simple as possible. The scope and the content of the invitation, of course, is also based on the topics to be discussed in the meeting. The content of documents is mainly determined by legal requirements, and we always try to keep it as short as possible, but we also have to have it in the proper way from a legal perspective. Miss Frank had a question concerning the dispatch and the sending of documents. We send out documents in due time on the fourth of March. If in some cases the delivery is late, we apologize. Registration has been published in the Federal Gazette on the 26th of February. The internet dialogue has been available since the third of March 2021. Mr. Kurz asked why it's not possible to show all the questions in the shareholders portal. There would be some difficulties with the format. It's not our intention. Also a question why there is no automatic reply or automatic confirmation of the sending normally done in the internet dialogue, and you can also find a copy of all the questions submitted. Mr. Roth asked a question concerning the graphical presentation of the internet dialogue. The websites are developed using the so-called responsive design. This means that they are shown differently in different end devices. One shareholder asked regarding the registrations for shareholders meetings in 2019, 2020, and 2021. In 2019, we had 109,101 shareholders. In 2020, 104,739, and in this year it was 109,832. I would like to thank all the shareholders that they followed us into the virtual world. Mrs. Gaebler asked about the delay in the transmission of the shareholders, and this is taken into account in the schedule. The delay is about 60 seconds, and it was taken into account in the schedule. There was a question whether guests were admitted. No. There was a question which external law firm is supporting us? It's the law firm Elm and Overey. There was a question, how many employees are busy with answering the questions? It's about 20 people in coordinating functions. The next question is, what is the time effort to answer a question? We do not measure this explicitly. This is why I cannot give you a clear answer. There was a question concerning the language used during the shareholders meeting. It's a shareholders meeting based on German law. This means that we have to use German. There was a question concerning technical transmission. The transmission is on the internet with bandwidth between 500 Kb and 5 Mbps. This depends on the broad bandwidth available to the spectators. We also have qualified technicians monitoring and ensuring the technical stability of the platform. We produce and transmit all the signals in line with European standard EBU. This also ensures the synchronicity between image and sound. Now I hand over to Mr. Lehner regarding the board management compensation. Dear shareholders, we received a number of questions on item 9 of today's shareholders' meeting. This is the item dealing with the new compensation system for the Board of Management. The Supervisory Board has developed a new compensation system in line with the requirements of the new Stock Corporation Act and the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code. We also make comparisons with other listed companies in Germany, DAX 30, and other companies in the telecommunications industry. We also take into account the compensation structures within Deutsche Telekom itself. Additionally, the Supervisory Board also had a number of discussions with investors and proxy advisors when developing the compensation system in order to find out their view on a compensation system. I already reported on this. As a result, the Supervisory Board is now suggesting an adequate, transparent, and clearly understandable compensation system that supports Deutsche Telekom in being the leading European telecommunications company and also stay this for the next future. Let me come to the questions. One question by Mr. Pawelita was regarding the scope and the amount of the Board of Management compensation. Mr. Pawelita, please bear with us, but we cannot show the entire compensation system, and we cannot explain all the details here in the shareholders meeting after it was already published. In the invitation to the shareholders meeting under item nine, we have 26 pages between pages 40 and 65 to describe the compensation system for the Board of Management. The current compensation for the business year 2020 can be seen in the compensation report on pages 138 to 148 of the annual report, another 11 pages. The new compensation system is shown using charts, tables, examples, and explanations. The description is transparent. We didn't hide anything, and we don't have anything to hide. Our presentation of the compensation for the Board of Management is based on the relevant requirements and recommendations of the code. Mr. Ostwald, the German Corporate Governance Code requires a presentation of the compensation and how the compensation can develop based on the minimum and maximum parts of the variable compensations. We also need to report the compensation paid in the current business year. In both tables, you can see the ancillary benefits and also the service costs for age provision, and German GAAP also requires a description of the net present value at the time when the share-based components are granted. It is absolutely impossible to show all the necessary information on two pages only, unless we have very, very small print, but then you would be unable to read this. The presentation of our data is not different from the presentation of other DAX 30 companies. The tables regarding flow and granting of compensation to the Management Board based on the German Corporate Governance Code fill two pages. It's not possible to make all the presentations in two pages. We have changed the compensation system for the Board of Management, because this was necessary based on changed requirements. It's about the new requirements of the German Corporate Governance Code and the changes in the Stock Corporation Act based on ARUG II. The Supervisory Board was very happy with the previous compensation system. This is also true for the Board of Management. This is why we tried to keep up as much of the system as possible. If you compare the current system to the new system we are proposing today, you will see that the changes are only minor and many of the components of the compensation have only been slightly adjusted. The Supervisory Board, in view of the new regulatory requirements, has intensively thought about the share-based and non-share-based compensation. The Supervisory Board is quite happy with the share matching plan introduced for the first time in 2010 regarding retention and incentivization. Based on the wishes of the investors, the Supervisory Board also decided to have a share ownership guideline and an LPI based on a share price-based component. Based on all these aspects, the Supervisory Board did not think it was necessary to have additional targets in the context of a share matching plan. We would also welcome a situation where the regulatory requirements would be less complex. We share your view there. Yes, it's true. The systematics, the basis of the compensation requires a number of components, and this is due to the regulation. Nevertheless, and this comes to another question, Mr. Höttges can still calculate his compensation on his own, and he doesn't need a consultant to do this, and I can also easily make the calculations. The department Top Executive Management at Deutsche Telekom is responsible for the payroll of top management and Board of Management, but the payroll as such is in line with the payroll of the other employees. I also have to say that this goes beyond the definition and the compensation itself because it also includes tax aspects. We are still in the position to do the calculations. We have to also show the tax components, and the same is true for the generation of the compensation report, where we also follow the legal requirements and the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code. This comes to another question. Within Deutsche Telekom, there are various departments that are generating the payroll for different groups of employees, taking into account the specifics of all these different groups. We continuously review, thanks for your recommendation, where we can use artificial intelligence in order to create added value for the group. For the board of management compensation, we are not using any artificial intelligence, unless you think that the use of calculators is already using artificial intelligence. There was a question regarding the peer groups of other telecommunications managers in the U.S. and also in Germany. The compensation system in the United States is different compared to the compensation systems in Europe and in Germany. Share-based payment is much more pronounced in the U.S. American compensation systems, and the compensation paid there are much higher than the compensation for the board of management in Germany. Compared to other DAX 30 companies, the members of the board of management of Deutsche Telekom have a rather average pay regarding the usual comparatives, revenues, market capitalization, and number of employees. The management board of Deutsche Telekom should be positioned in the upper quarter of the German DAX 30 companies. The level was much lower than that in the past. The supervisory board also reviews the compensation in relation to the compensation paid to other people in the company. This is the so-called vertical comparison, unlike the horizontal comparison, where the compensation of the boards of management of different companies are compared with each other. Deutsche Telekom has not used a compensation consultant for designing the new compensation system. Deutsche Telekom, however, commissioned by the supervisory board, uses compensation studies by a compensation consultant to review the compensation, and this costs about EUR 10,000 per annum. In the context of the studies used by us, we then aggregate the figures and statistically prepare them. Our compensation consultant was not involved in the generation of the new compensation system and was also not involved in the presentation of the compensation report. Deutsche Telekom follows, as I already said, all legal requirements when generating the compensation report and the invitation to the shareholders' meeting, and also follows the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code. In the question, there was the recommendation to limit the board of management compensation to EUR 500,000 per annum. The supervisory board is legally required to ensure an adequate and good compensation for the board of management. The average payment in the DAX 30 was much higher than EUR 500,000 in 2020. The individual compensation for the board of management members of Deutsche Telekom do not give any reason to think that they were excessive. A limitation to EUR 500,000 total compensation would mean that the supervisory board would not be in a position to find talented and ambitious candidates for the succession of current board members. Next to the questions answered already, we also received a number of questions on individual aspects on the compensation system, which I now would like to answer. There was one question regarding the compensation of men and women or ladies and gentlemen in the board. In the new compensation system, we do not have to make sure that we have equal pay between men and women, because the Supervisory Board, when fixing the compensation, is not led by the gender of the board member, the sexual orientation, nationality, or religion. The Supervisory Board regularly discusses the adequacy of board compensation as required by law. This is a legal requirement. The Supervisory Board is responsible for this. There cannot be any question that the Board of Management increases its compensation itself. The Supervisory Board also does not adjust the compensation every year. Normally, the increase of compensation only happens in case of reappointments or the change of the allocation of business responsibilities. The Board of Management compensation also has variable components, and this is why the payments can fluctuate and can either go up or down. One question was concerning the adequacy of the variable components of the compensation and the link between the compensation and the paid dividend. Dr. Hillebrand already described the dividend policy of Deutsche Telekom, there is no more incentivization necessary. I also would like to come back to what I said earlier on. We've got several possibilities to control the company, not only the compensation system for the Board of Management. Variable compensation reflects the corporate performance in the last financial year. In spite of COVID-19, this was a very excellent development, and this is why the managers also participate. The Board of Management also participated from the dividend development in the past and also participated in the success of the company. In the new compensation system, the long-term variable component is share-based, so that the dividend paid also has an influence on the compensation for the Board of Management. I think a link to the dividend could not be adequate because then the decision on the dividend could be influenced. Mrs. Evans asked about the role of the return on capital employed, ROCE, and the weighted average capital cost, WACC, regarding the compensation of the Board of Management. Regulators require a balanced view, a balanced approach regarding financial and non-financial indicators, and this is something that we try to take into account. ROCE, return on capital employed, is not based on the short-term variable compensation that accounts for 25% of the long-term variable compensation component. The taking into account of ROCE as a KPI and the allocation in the context of the long-term variable pay was welcomed very much by the majority of the investors we interviewed. A direct comparison between ROCE and WACC is integral component of our communicated financial strategy. It is our approach to at least earn the capital costs with the ROCE. The WACC itself is not elementary for the development of the ROCE in a period, but is used for comparison. Several questions were about item 4.1.2 regarding the granting of compensation payment for losses of variable components at the previous employer. If somebody wants to change jobs and come from another employer to our management board, here it is mainly regarding the loss of share-based compensation components. Normally, the Supervisory Board gets help, for example, by actuaries. They try to determine the value of such a compensation component with a previous employer. This is taken into account in the negotiations by the Supervisory Board. When such payments were made in the past, this was always done also asking the managers to invest in shares of Deutsche Telekom and linked to intentional waiting periods. Is such a component necessary for employment contracts if the active services provided for Deutsche Telekom should be compensated for? From the point of view of the Supervisory Board, the answer to this question is clearly yes, because this is paying damages to the people. Many companies are trying to tie their high potentials to the company using long-term share-based components, and recruiting these people is only successful if you also grant partial compensation in part to what they lost. Please rest assured that the Supervisory Board regarding such payments does not only require the managers to invest into Telekom shares, but also agrees provisions say there might be some clawbacks if there is a premature termination of the employment contract with Deutsche Telekom. One question was regarding the restriction of the total compensation if people want to leave the Board of Management and compensation payments. What is described in 10.1, the severance regulations when leaving the Deutsche Telekom Board is not linked to other benefits. We got a question from Mr. Kupfer regarding the effect of the planned compensation system for the Management Board regarding future compensation. More specifically, what would be the change in compensation for the Bard of Management in 2029 if you assume that the new regulation had already been applied when the members of the Board of Management joined the company? This cannot be answered. A forecast for the year 2029 is not possible from today's point of view. In the new compensation system, we also have a variable compensation where you can achieve 150%, now with the new one, 180% of target achievement. There is also a downside risk. Maximum target achievement possibility increases from 150% to a maximum of 200% in the new system. Compared to that, board members in the new system will not receive any company pension payments any longer. If you were to compare year 2019 to the year 2020, and perhaps this was meant with the question, we again cannot give you an answer because due to the changes of the target structure, we don't have any reference values for the past. As of today, we have not come to any new board agreements in the new system. Ladies and gentlemen, the topic of board compensation very much focuses on the position of the CEO in the company. Here I would like to make one very clear statement. Mr. Höttges is a successful CEO who does excellent work together with his team in the Board of Management. As shown today, with a new corporate culture, we improved the achievements, and we have achieved a completely new level. Also with a view to what in the United States, after many, many attempts, we now have achieved a completely new level, and we have brought the company into a completely new position. With the new compensation system that we are proposing today, it's not about increasing Mr. Höttges' compensation. The Supervisory Board has not adjusted any of the components of Mr. Höttges' salary since the extension of his contract in the year 2018. At that time, we mainly increased variable components. Mr. Höttges' fixed payment was only raised very moderately. If there were fluctuations in Mr. Höttges' compensation in the past, then this is due to the fact that his variable components can be a different level, reflecting the success of the company in the relevant period. Let me point out again that the adequacy of the compensation of the Board of Management resulted in our assessment that we are below the average of other DAX companies. It's not about an increase of the compensation, but in item nine on our agenda, it's about a basic change of the compensation system to a new compensation system in line with new regulations in the Corporate Governance Code and in the Stock Corporation Act. The Supervisory Board also intensively dealt with the question whether the Sprint merger justifies an extraordinary bonus payment. This is what Mr. Beckendorf is asking about. Yes. Mr. Höttges described the story. We come from a valley of failures, and then we have very complex steps, and we now achieve a new structure which enables us a new position on the U.S. market. The merger with Sprint is one of the biggest successes of the corporate history of Deutsche Telekom. All the board members made their contribution. This success is, however, mainly due to the extraordinary performance of Mr. Höttges, who made this possible after a long time, where he used a lot of discipline, persistence, and creativity, and where he overcame many difficult challenges. I personally can remember a number of telephone calls, Mr. Höttges, where you sometimes were enthusiastic, and then you were absolutely disappointed about the progress during the negotiations. It's great to see how much stamina, how much commitment, and how much creativity then finally resulted in this big success, so that we are where we are right now in the U.S. I can remember when the discussion started, T-Mobile share price was below $10.16, and now it's $125. This is a huge difference. Mr. Höttges, thank you very much again for this achievement. You also mentioned Mr. Langheim and Mr. Illek. They all supported you a lot. Insofar, the special bonus is definitely justified. In that connection, let me refer to a question from Mr. Schmitz. The prerequisite for setting such a payment is, of course, that it is one-off in nature, meaning that the performance of the board of management member needs to go above and beyond what they would normally be expected to do. In addition, it is necessary that the performance of said board of management member is a contribution to the long-term strategic continued development of the group. Mr. Schmitz, both of these criteria were fulfilled, for instance, in the case of the merger between T-Mobile U.S. and Sprint. Because of Mr. Höttges' special performance, and all shareholders of the group will be benefiting from this transaction in the long term. The payment recognizes Mr. Höttges' several years of activities in this field. He accompanied all of the activities to merge these two companies. It was a very difficult process in the U.S. He brought it to a successful conclusion. In addition to that, EUR 600,000 that were paid out in connection with this case, Tim Höttges did not receive any other increase in his salary. The Schutzgemeinschaft der Kapitalanleger asked whether it had been considered to pay out the special payment after the synergies have come to fruition. We discussed this at length, that is true. We did not feel that there was any reason to postpone this payment for a number of years, because it should be paid out in close temporal correspondence to the work that has been done. It is important to the supervisory board to have, fundamentally, the possibility to allow for such a payment. It is an integral part of the remuneration system as we see it. The supervisory board did not just use an algorithm in order to calculate this payment. We looked at the situation very carefully. We need that room for discretion because it is difficult, of course, to assess the contribution that has been done. It's important to have some room for maneuver there. Excuse me. The item number 9 on the agenda of this shareholders' meeting is about the general transition of the remuneration system for the board of management to ARUG II. That is the reason why we're having this discussion today. There is no other reason. In connection with this, the supervisory board has decided to propose a cap for the CEO of EUR 8.5 million. This is what the law requires, the code of conduct and the code of ethics as well. There needs to be a defined cap on CEOs' salaries. Where the transition to the new system is concerned, the supervisory board has decided to wait for today's shareholders' meeting and your approval, of course, before offering the board of management members ways to transition to the new system. I anticipate that you will vote in favor of this change, and I hope that many, if not all, members of the board of management will accept the new system. That concludes what I have to say about the questions on the compensation system. That takes me to the next point. Auditors. Mr. and Mrs. Luik, Mr. and Mrs. Mai, Mr. Steiner, Mr. Schröder, Mr. Oswald, Mr. Beckendorf, and the Schutzgemeinschaft der Kapitalanleger, Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertpapierbesitz, have asked questions on this. We have questions on the proposed auditors for 2021. The proposal for the shareholders meeting is to appoint the Treuhandprüfungsgesellschaft PwC as auditors of the annual financial statements for 2021. The original plan was to switch auditors to EY. The current proposal was motivated by the fact that the allegations against EY in connection with the Wirecard case are still not resolved. We felt that it would take too much time in order to switch to a new auditing firm. The audit committee of the Supervisory Board is the responsible body here and monitors compliance with the criteria that are important for the proposal to switch to EY. The tender ran until the end of 2019, and the audit committee reported to the Supervisory Board at regular intervals. In the summer of 2020, there was no reason for us to reconsider our decision to switch to EY as auditors. The responsible bodies looked at the allegations against EY that came in after that period. At the audit committee meeting in November 2020, discussed these allegations for the first time, and so the audit committee revised its proposal on the 19th of January 2021. The decision to postpone the switch to another auditor by a year was resolved on the 25th of January 2021. That is when it was decided to propose to postpone this decision to the shareholders meeting. It was not the federal government that actively contacted us in this matter. We actually raised the matter ourselves to the federal government and also discussed it with other institutional investors. The board of management has no power to make decisions in this area. The decision to postpone the switch to another auditing company was communicated by the chair of the competent audit committee, Ms. Kollmann, to the partner at EY that we were in contact with at the time. This was Mr. Stegebusch, and they responded in a very professional manner. EY, at this point, had not been retained when this decision were taken, and no payments had been made to EY either. This decision, and I want to be clear about that, was taken by the competent bodies without any influence from third parties. It was a challenge to find an alternative for EY because an auditor can only ever do a thorough audit of the financial statements after they have been in the job for a while, and the time until the beginning of the retention was very short. You may not know this. This is a group-wide audit covering all of our subsidiaries, including the U.S. business. It is not just an audit of Deutsche Telekom AG. Besides the option to postpone its switch of auditors in 2021, the supervisory board looked at the option of proposing the second-ranked auditor that was in the running for the final audit in 2021. PwC is our current audit company, does not need any transition time because of this, and that is why the competent bodies decided that PwC is the best option in order to go ahead and do a thorough, proper audit of the financial statements for 2021. As our auditors, PwC has the full confidence of DT AG's supervisory board. Over the last few years, our cooperation has been exemplary. PwC accepted our proposal to extend their contract after it had been contacted by the competent bodies. Since our IPO in 1996, PwC has been the audit company for Deutsche Telekom AG. The obligation to rotate will only come into play in terms of the financial accounts after the first of January 2024, and so we had enough flexibility to keep retaining PwC. Thank you very much, Mr. Illek, for giving us that room to maneuver. The proposed decision on item 5C concerns the turn away from EY and the commissioning of PwC as the auditor for additional financial reports during the year, so also for the first quarter of 2021. Obviously, these things are connected, and that's why the decisions are connected as well. It would not make any sense to separate these two decisions because EY, in the meantime, has explicitly rejected our offer to become our new auditors. Mr. Oswald asked why we do not appoint new auditors every year. There are very many reasons for this. I am a former auditor myself, Mr. Oswald, and I can tell you that switching auditors is not a trivial matter. The audit quality would certainly be impacted negatively because of the amount of time it takes to get into the job. That's why it makes absolute sense to retain auditors for a number of years. Of course, the shareholders are perfectly free to approve a new auditor every single year. You also asked when Telekom will be audited by KPMG. It will depend. For that, there would have to be a tender, and KPMG would have to participate in that tender. They would have to be presented to the shareholders' meeting of DT as the preferred candidate, and the shareholders' meeting would have to approve KPMG. These services have to be put out to tender, any auditing company can participate. KPMG may have an opportunity to participate at some point in the future. That's what I wanted to say about the questions on the final auditors. That concludes the questions that we were able to thematically cluster. I have been told that we're now at a point where around 300 questions have been answered. We still have a number of work in front of us. Mr. Höftges, why don't I hand over to you at this point? Right. Lunch is for losers, as they say, we will continue without delay. There's a number of questions on the same theme here, I will be handing over to Mr. Illek every now and again. First of all, Winfried Mathes asked about terminal devices. T-Mobile US revenue with terminal devices reaches around EUR 1 billion for 2021. The projected revenue will be between $3.5 billion-$4 billion. Current development is in line with the forecast of the company, also the switch of the customers is going well. What about the core EBITDA for 2021? This is an indicator which is EBITDA minus revenue from the renting of terminal devices. It tells us whether it makes sense to get out of the rental business. The question is what this means in light of what our competitors are doing. The portfolio is being adjusted to meet current requirements. We are ensuring that digital transformation reduces complexity, cuts down on costs, and facilitates everyday work. Our portfolio is helping our customers to transform their classic infrastructure services and moving towards secure multi-cloud services and modern digital architectures. T-Systems has years of experience and a lot of expertise in this area. At the same time, we have strong partnerships with leading IT manufacturers and hyperscalers: Cisco, VMware, for instance, Microsoft. We have a focus on security, data protection, and cloud sovereignty, especially in Europe. Digicon is offering first-class advisory services for digitalization. In addition, we also have a sustainability program for IT services because, of course, digitalization should also help to protect the climate. The focus is generally on the core business around the customers that we already have in regard to cloud services, security, and software applications. On the next question: How will the cloud business continue? Well, we are cooperating with large partners, hyperscalers, AWS, Microsoft, and Google, notably. At the same time, we have an advisory business as well as a digital solutions lab, helps customers to transform their business and move it to the cloud. We have what is known as public cloud operating services. This is helping us to support our customers as they digitalize their business processes. Mr. Matthes, you also asked about the shop situation in Germany, in other European countries, and in the U.S. First of all, on Germany: 99 of the shops are to be closed down. This is a process that will take us up to the first quarter of 2022. Further closures will happen. In Europe, well, our continuously improved online offerings and the success of the Telekom app have meant that in our European footprint, there's been less footfall in our shops. The coronavirus pandemic has, of course, promoted this. It remains to be seen how customer behavior will change and maybe return to normal once the pandemic is over. Part of our strategy is to keep an eye on this trend and adapt our brick-and-mortar sales to customers' behavior. We will always need our shops. We will never shut them down completely. They are our calling card to us, to our brand, to our services. Also for existing customers that need somewhere to go if they have an issue. We cannot digitalize this part of the business completely. That is a complete fallacy. In the U.S., the coronavirus pandemic has had a positive impact on digitalization of T-Mobile U.S.' customer business. We expect this trend to continue in future. After the merger with Sprint, T-Mobile U.S. will have access to 8,800 shops. That's a very large number. Last year, that number went down to 7,500. T-Mobile US plans to continue optimizing the number of shops and sites. You had a question on doorstep sales. Since 2004, we've been using partners such as Ranger Marketing or PSO to reach out to potential fixed network and broadband customers across the country. This is part of our doorstep business. The challenge when looking at fiber rollout is to ensure that there is sufficient demand, corporate and retail demand for it. Before we start, basically, we need to get a sense of whether the neighborhood is willing and able to buy broadband services from us, and that is why doorstep sales channel is so important. We're able to provide people with personalized advice. That's a really important part of our sales strategy. You were also asked what we're doing in order to improve employee satisfaction in the U.S. Satisfaction is enormously high in the U.S., and it's a very important indicator for us. We see this in the indicators that we have. 92% of people in the U.S. are proud to work for T-Mobile US. 85% of employees would recommend T-Mobile as an attractive employer to their friends and family. T-Mobile US was awarded Best Place to Work multiple times by the independent platform Glassdoor. A lot of work is being done in order to maintain satisfaction at this high level. There's lots of learning and advanced training courses with external experts. We have bestseller authors that come to train our employees and so on and so forth. Also our social engagement is very important. We're doing this in Germany, likewise in the U.S., where we're assisting vulnerable young people and also adults. The employees appreciate this. The Schutzgemeinschaft für Kleinanleger has pointed out the increasing role the U.S. business plays in terms of boosting group revenue and profits. The shareholders are also asking about the board of management's opinions on ways to strengthen the German and European business and consolidate in the EU, maybe. As a rule, the group has in the last few years definitely benefited from the very good development of T-Mobile US. T-Mobile US had its capital market day recently, the announcement was made that $60 billion is going to be returned to the shareholders between 2023 and 2025. In Germany and Europe, we are benefiting from that development. We invested much more or have been investing much more than before, also in Europe. These investments, thanks to synergies from the U.S. merger, can be paid for with our own cash, as it were. Of course, we need to ensure that our business remains balanced in the long term. We're monitoring what's happening in the market in Europe and in the U.S. On this basis, we are evaluating the options available to us. At the moment, we do not assume that there's going to be a cross-country market consolidation of telecoms companies inside the EU very soon. Obviously, activities in some areas of the market may happen. I have to tell you, as CEO, I would be delighted if we could see more consolidation in what has become an extremely fragmented market. It takes two to tango. We were asked to provide examples of smart city solutions. Deutsche Telekom is a cooperation partner of the UN when it comes to the initiative United for Smart Sustainable Cities, U4SSC. This contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals. Many of our products help to achieve these goals. For instance, intelligent charging infrastructures for e-vehicles, intelligent administration, dynamic management of street lamps. We also have solutions in our portfolio that help to achieve digital air quality monitoring. There's also city trees that we have, which help to clean the air in urban environments. Mr. Beckendorf of DSW asked, Projects are happening in cities and local communities. Deutsche Telekom is convinced that cities can only digitalize if scalable solutions and sustainable business models are implemented. Of course, it's important first and foremost to have a good 5G and fiber infrastructure. It is also important that municipalities have an urban data platform allowing intermunicipal cooperation to happen. There should be no standalone solutions for individual cities and municipalities, where people do whatever they want without cooperation. Deutsche Telekom offers a number of solutions in this area. For instance, in the field of open-source programming, we're working with partners so cities and communities can take whatever solutions are good for them. An example is the Data Competence Center for Cities and Regions, DKSR. This offers an opportunity to use a uniform open-source data platform, helping as many municipalities as possible to work together and connect. These are scalable solutions that are helping communities to make good use of the data that they have. This is good for Deutsche Telekom as well because this generates additional revenue for our networks. Now that brings me to Mr. Illek. Mr. Matthes from Deka Investment asked a question about finance payments and the valuation of goodwill and the annual impairment test. The goodwill listed on the balance sheet at the end of 2020 was not EUR 118 billion, but merely EUR 98.8 billion. The estimation of the value, with the exception of T-Mobile US, here value is taken above the market capitalization, is based on future expected payment flows. Mr. Matthes asked about the danger of impairments in goodwill, also the decline of ROCE. We're expecting ROCE to decline in the next year, but by 2022, we expect it to increase again. You asked about the target there. It's always important whether ROCE is above the discounted capital cost. For 2020, this capital cost rate was 4.5%. Mr. Matthes asked about the indebtedness of the company and the impact on investment growth. We have met our own requirement that we want to keep the net debt within a certain corridor. We said that the Sprint integration would require about three years, that the fact that we're at the upper part of the corridor is not surprising. Synergies in the U.S. are expected to have an effect in the coming years, the run rate of $7.5 billion, and also the growth in free cash flow. You heard the figures for 2020. We're expecting, over the long haul, $18 billion a year. The build-out of fiber optic cable in Germany requires considerable investment as well. We've taken this into account, and it's not being impeded by this merger either. A question was asked by FDK regarding the indebtedness. In my view, it's very similar to what I just commented on, however. Yes. It's the same question, basically. Another question is on our business report. We receive awards for our transparent reporting on a regular basis. The launch of the financial parameter EBITDA AL and free cash flow took place in coordination with other competitors and ensures that as a result of accounting standards, that we still have comparability with previous years. In addition, in our view, it is also a common practice that CapEx is looked at and adjusted for spectrum investment, and we have communicated this quite clearly as well. Once again, here is a question about weighted cost of capital. As I said, it was 4.6%. I answered this question whether we would allow follow-up questions. Another question was whether we would achieve a margin of 8%-10% at T-Systems in 2020. EBITDA AL was 7%, and this year we think it will be roughly the same level. In 2022, we're expecting then to achieve a margin above 8%. With that, I give the floor back to Tim. Thank you, Christian. This brings me to the Dachverband der Kritischen Aktionärinnen und Aktionäre with a question about social projects by Deutsche Telekom, especially the Diakonie project. To ensure the adequate employment for excessive civil servants at Deutsche Telekom, we have various internal and external projects. Telekom civil servants are also used at the German Protestant Church, as well as for government authorities. We've made an agreement for the use of civil servants in certain projects with the Diakonie. In the view of Deutsche Telekom, the cooperation with Diakonisches Werk was also a possibility to find employment possibilities for excessive civil servant staff here. The employment project for civil servants with this Diakonisches Werk was then ended at the end of 2016. The main reason for it ending was the declining number of civil servants that were excessive here, and we have not been able to find sufficient number of qualified civil servants that meet the requirements of the project. In business year 2020, the cooperation with Diakonie ended. Donations were no longer made in 2020. In the last five years, from 2016 to 2020, the amount of donation to them totaled EUR 6.7 million. The question was: how much is the total amount of all donation certificates that Deutsche Telekom received from Diakonie during the entire period of the project? As I said, EUR 6.7 million from 2016 to 2020. Cooperation by Deutsche Telekom with the Diakonisches Werk served the purpose of implementing the work and civil servant obligations of Deutsche Telekom. In particular, requirements under the Constitution to find employment for excess civil servant staff were met. In the Diakonie project over the last five years, from 2012 to 2016, an average of 87 civil servants were used per year. In addition to Diakonie, MINT Zukunft e.V. also used the model of issuing donation certificates in the years 2018 to 2020. The scope of this was much lower at approximately EUR 1 million, and these were certificates for donations. Here's another question: How great are the donations that Deutsche Telekom has made to nonprofit organizations and political organizations, and what is the percentage that Telekom paid out in cash of these organizations? Telekom doesn't make any donations to political parties and doesn't make any cash donations either. Only bank remittances are used. well, in 2020, the total amount of donations by Deutsche Telekom AG was EUR 2.2 million. Beyond this, Deutsche Telekom GmbH donated EUR 5 million to the Telekom Foundation. Here's the next question: Why does Telekom not publish in the transparency report how much donations it made? We're actually very transparent, and we do publish this amount in the corporate responsibility report for 2020. Next question's about the Open RAN. It's following the trend of all network software guided equipment receiving a new architecture. The number of manufacturers for the antenna network is supposed to be increased through this, that's a sight that we welcome that will help us avoid, in the future, any major dependencies because of the large number of providers. When we buy components for network equipment, digital sovereignty is an issue, and that's why Open RAN is a very helpful instrument. Miss Gaebler asked about the fluctuation in the number of staff. The natural fluctuation at the end of 2020 was only 2%. The previous year, it was 2.3%. She also asked whether we need subsequent financing or additional financing. We are in constant dialogue with our banking institutions. We have a good standing in the bond market. We are highly appreciated as a bank customer, and we have a good creditworthiness rating from the rating agencies. Ms. Gaebler also asked about Mr. Illek's. She asked about the annual gross income. Based on our reporting system, we were able to come up with the following figures. These are the figures that were received by executive staff if they were not a member of top management. As of the 31st of December 2020, between EUR 110,000-EUR 229,000 target cluster, 4,464 people received this. At the level of EUR 203,000-EUR 320,000 annual salary, that cluster included 124 person. Over EUR 320,000, that cluster had 43 people. A question was asked about the number of respective staff, the number of staff, and change in percentage year-over-year. What measures have been taken by the board of management and the supervisory board having a negative impact. We are moving towards a structure with operative segments. The development of the number of staff in our segments and the change compared to the previous year is contained in the annual business report on page 106. Ms. Gaebler also asked about curious aspects of our litigations. Given the large number of litigations that we have to deal with, there are some odd things and curiosities. They're not really worth commenting, and also there's a general rule of confidentiality. If you are suggesting, though, that we are really having litigation against some spacemen or animals or that they're taking action against us, I have to disappoint you. You wanted to know about how many lobbyists are employed by Telekom. Political interest representation in Germany is ensured in the area of policy and regulation. There are a total of 20 public affairs staff at the different locations and offices of Deutsche Telekom in Germany, and they're in charge of communication at the national level, also and at the regional level. Three of these staff members are in the Berlin office, nine are in the Brussels office, and five are in the office in Washington. Ms. Gaebler also asked about lobby activities. Now, the whole notion of lobbying costs isn't defined, or it's very difficult for us to define at any rate, and that's why we prefer to stick to transparency rules and publish the costs of our work in Washington, Brussels. In Brussels, this amount was about EUR 1 million in 2020. At T-Mobile US, it was $10 million. These figures are not comparable with each other, however, because they relate to respective requirements. As soon as the requirements in Germany have been defined, then of course, we'll publish figures on this. Ms. Gaebler asked what the board of management and supervisory board would do better in 2021 than it did in 2020. For us, 2020 was an absolute record year, and that's why we can definitely say that we and hence the board of management, supervisory board, did a lot of things really well in 2020. Of course, we don't want to just rest on our laurels. We want to continue to pursue ambitious goals. The biggest challenges for Deutsche Telekom in 2021 are realization of the synergies from the U.S. merger, the build-out of 5G and fiber optics, accelerating the build-out of fiber optics in Germany, continuation of the transformation of our business customers area, T-Systems. What we will do maybe differently in 2020 or better is the virtual or hybrid cooperation, both the board of management and the supervisory board. The most important challenges for the company, in my opinion, will be, first of all, digitalization of industry and business, but in particular, schools and public administration. We need beacons that promote digitization among all of us. Digital inclusion and a responsible manner of dealing with it in a digitalized society. We're talking about ethics and free speech, also sustainability, climate protection, and saving natural resources. Europe is involved in a real difficult international terrain between the U.S.A. and China. As I said, digitalization will be the priority. Ms. Gaebler, you're interested in software, too, which we use at supervisory board and board of management meetings. Regarding information, we use secure data room from Brainloop AG with double verification. To transfer information to the board of management, we use SharePoint by Microsoft, for video conferences, we use Webex from Cisco, and it's all in the Telekom network. Ms. Gaebler asked about the development of data traffic in our networks. Data volume per fixed network connection, not including MagentaTV for Telekom Deutschland in December 2019 averaged 146 GB. In December 2020, the average amount was 217 GB. The average data volume per mobile communications agreement contract in December of last year was four gigabytes, and in December 2020, it was six gigabytes. Monthly use is subject to seasonal fluctuations. The figures are turning upwards. Mr. Buhlmann asked about quantum technology, quantum computing. It's not a core business of Telekom, but we're moving in that direction. We're doing a lot of research here. The focus of our activities are identifying and preparing possible use scenarios in our business fields. Spelling that out in more detail, we're involved in research in the area of quantum cryptography, which is a method to safeguard and secure our networks. The economic potential here is no doubt enormous. That's why we're already investing now in training of staff for this new technology. Mr. Buhlmann, you asked about our business model with RTL in comparison to the formal T-Online portal. With online portal t-online.de, it's not comparable really to the cooperation with RTL. With MagentaTV, we want to offer our customers the best partner portfolio, the best user experience, and the best content. With TVNOW Premium, we're expanding these partner and content. In the MagentaTV Smart and MagentaTV Flex tariff, streaming service TVNOW Premium is completely integrated to them. In addition to it, Telekom Deutschland has agreed with the RTL Media Group to penetrate growth markets of streaming and personalized advertising. With us, you can use one platform to access pretty much all the content. If we're talking about paid content, you can look at where the most favorable offers are. Mr. Bachmann, this brings me to your question about the form used for telephone invoices. With digitization, not only are we meeting customers' desires, we're also reducing the amount of paper to protect the environment. Our customers still have the possibility to receive a duplicate of their invoice by surface mail. For this, we recommend using the so-called SEPA automatic debiting system. This ensures that the amount will be paid on time. Please also try out our app. With this app, you have permanent cost control. You can communicate with us directly. You have complete transparency over all the transactions on your invoice, and you protect the environment. You asked about the length of the transition period regarding the electrical grid risks. The priorities depend on the respective technology. Priorities are where there is breakdowns in critical infrastructure. Central areas are network reserve facilities, for example. We have to secure these, they're huge. They're the size of ship diesel engines. Also, we have mobile grid backup facilities, which can be used mobily in Germany. We have redundancy as far as energy supplies goes. Another question is why we are losing market share in the fixed network and building out the network. Why we are losing market shares in fixed network, well, the number of sold fixed net connections continues to grow. That is why we do not understand your question about losing market share. The costs of building out 18 MFGs, these are those cabinets in Schaffhausen you asked about, are approximately EUR 1 million. Mr. Bachmann asked about the quality of our service centers. His observation that he described in our contact or dealing with complaints is hard to understand. I really do not understand his question. He asked about the quality of our service centers, and then he described it as not being transparent. Our staff are required to answer the telephone stating their name and their offices. There are also soft skills like friendliness. We do external tests to confirm their behavior. If there is complaints through customer feedback, we take action to stop this kind of behavior. In the recent test conducted by Connect, the following categories were tested: reachability, waiting time, friendliness, and quality of statements. For customer service, Srini Gopalan is in charge of. Hery Rakotoarimanana is in charge of service in Germany, and we've seen huge increases in customer satisfaction, especially at service centers. Okay. Let's continue with questions on the balance sheet structure from Mr. Bulman, Goodwill, Mr. Breman, amounts to EUR 20 billion, not EUR 120 billion. EUR 120 billion that comprises all intangible assets, which includes spectrum licenses from the U.S. How do we want to address net debt? That is based on what I just said on how we want to tackle net debt in the context of the situation in the U.S. T-Mobile US has raised expectations in terms of the synergies to be raised. The amount expected has increased. We are expecting the guidance to actually improve, if at all, rather than be corrected downwards. The next question was whether we don't expect a share price of EUR 30. I think EUR 20 is more realistic. If you want to achieve 30, first you need to achieve the 20. Mr. Bachmann asked, what is the current share of BlackRock in Deutsche Telekom? As of the 31st of December 2020, BlackRock held a stake of 4.92%. Another question was, do you know that companies such as Ernst & Young, PwC, KPMG, Deloitte, are suspected to have been involved in CumCum and CumEx transactions? We are aware of such reports, but we don't have any further information. The next question was: What was paid to the auditors in 2019? EUR 36.9 million to PwC. Other consulting services, EUR 9 million, mainly to Ernst & Young and PwC. Tax consulting fees, EUR 2.7 million, mainly to Deloitte. Other services, EUR 98.7 million, mainly to Deloitte. In 2019, a total of EUR 17.1 million were paid to KPMG. 2020, financial accounts, EUR 63.2 million to PwC. Other consulting services, EUR 5.5 million, mainly to Ernst & Young and PwC. Tax consulting fees, EUR 7.9 million, mainly to Ernst & Young and PwC. Other services, EUR 48.1 million to Deloitte. In 2020, a total of EUR 16.8 million were paid to KPMG. We did not sub-categorize such payments in terms of KPMG. Okay. Mr. Oswald asked about how we intend to handle revenue and customers, and to what extent customers are important for our revenue. Honesty and transparency provide the basis for a trusting relationship. The increase in customer satisfaction shows that we are on the right track. Mr. Oswald, as for your question, you asked to what extent the traditional telecoms business is still ready to survive. Data traffic over the past few years has increased considerably and will continue to increase. According to Ericsson, mobile data traffic will triple by 2025 per smartphone compared to 2020. Which means that the need for telecommunication services will continue to grow. Nonetheless, as a result of technological innovation, such as software-based networks and the entry of new market participants, for instance, Microsoft as an infrastructure provider over the top players with new services, will continue to change. This is not a new trend, but we've observed it for a couple of years, and we have adjusted our strategy accordingly. We are well prepared and confident that we will continue to be successful. On your comment, digitization as a buzzword and a means to gain a sharper profile. Digitization is an essential trend that massively changes a lot of our work processes and entire value chains in many industries, as well as the way we live together in our societies. We look at ourselves as a trustworthy partner with the necessary technological know-how and years of experience to support our customers in digitization. Now, as for your comment that in the telecommunications industry, there's also black sheep and that a lot needs to be done to improve the reputation. We are very proud to say that we have a very good reputation and that customer satisfaction here is very high. The results are actually measured in the KPI, the TRI*M index. On a scale from -66 to +134 points, Deutsche Telekom came in at 70.2 points in 2020, compared to the base value of 67.9 points. In the U.S., we use the Net Promoter Score, which has improved by 68% since 2016. As for your comment that there are always technical problems and challenges. Yes, that's true. We are operating in a technology-driven environment. In addition to running highly complex technologies, we also need to be able to control physical challenges such as floods or lines that are destroyed underground. There is continuous innovation and the rolling out of new infrastructure such as 5G and optical fiber. Nonetheless, in mobile communications, we stand apart from our competitors due to our excellent network quality, and we regularly win accolades for our network. I think it is undisputed that with all its technological competence, Deutsche Telekom is one of the innovation leaders, and without network, there is no digitization. Mr. Oswald, I am pleased to hear that you liked the speech that I gave at the last shareholders meeting. You said, "Great speech." Well, thank you very much for that praise. I already talked about where Deutsche Telekom stands today and what our goals for the next couple of years are. By the way, we deliberately chose to show the video at the end in order to provide an outlook to 2030 and to give you an idea of how things are likely to develop until then. Mr. Oswald, with regard to my speech at the shareholders meeting, you quoted me as saying, "We need to be self-critical in order to be successful." Yes, we'll stick with that. Our attitude is essential to the company's success. Our company is operating in a highly dynamic and technology-driven ecosystem. Therefore, it is becoming ever more important that we are not resting on our laurels. Instead, we should continuously ask ourselves how we can improve and how we can continuously adapt ourselves to changing market conditions. "Responsibility encourages us." That was a quote. Yes, it does. More than that, we are proud to take responsibility for society, especially now in difficult times. I think in times of Corona, we proved that we are ready to do this. In this context, I would like to point out our activities to become more economical in terms of the use of resources and cutting carbon emissions, our campaigns against hatred online, and our engagement in connection with the Corona-Warn-App. Last year I was saying that, yes, we are the ones driving digitization. We are building and running highly efficient telecommunications networks. We invested EUR 17 billion on that last year, not including spectrum, and this makes us one of the main enablers of digitization in all the markets where we are present. You referred to my term plough horse from last year in this context. The question was, shouldn't Deutsche Telekom set up a customer advisory board? At Deutsche Telekom, we have a so-called Ideas Forge, an established format, where customers and non-customers can actively contribute to what we are doing. We are now working with more than 14,500 participants to develop and further improve our products and services and to provide the best possible user experience. We also and particularly take into account critical yet constructive feedback. Mr. Oswald, you are welcome to join us on this Ideas Forge. You can see how we are working. You asked about how do we help Europe to continue digitization. Deutsche Telekom is making a significant contribution to improving digitization with its networks and services. Over the past few years, we have tripled the rollout of optical fiber in Europe, and we have connected 1 million additional households to the network in 2020. We offer a 98% coverage with LTE. At the same time, we are offering smart pumping, smart lighting, traffic management, et cetera. During the Corona pandemic, for instance, we started supporting digital learning for pupils, offering free of charge data packages and learning products. Now, if you want to turn us into a software company for digitization, then we would no longer have the resources we need to invest in the network. That would turn out to be a strategic trap for us. The most important thing for us is our infrastructure. This is what we are focusing on. Yes, we are also doing software, but it is not at the heart of the product that we are offering. Mr. Oswald then asked, how about your plan to become a European champion? Answer: The strategy of the Deutsche Telekom Group is we want to be Europe's leading telecom company, we'll stick with that goal. Based on our current market capitalization, we are almost twice as big as the next biggest competitor, Vodafone, and almost three times as big as Orange. In an international scale, BT and Orange are still smaller than Deutsche Telekom combined. Yes, we want to become even more relevant, and I'd also like to point out the article in Handelsblatt from this morning, which impressively described what we are doing. If we want to be leading, however, that doesn't necessarily mean leading in size. Size is just the result of good management. We want to be leading in terms of our attitude, in terms of the way we go about things. Mr. Oswald, you asked about digitization and the average age of people on the board of management and the women's quota. The average age on the board of management is 54 years, and on the supervisory board, 55 years. Ms. Elena, I should actually join the supervisory board. All the members are highly skilled in terms of digitization. With 45%, the Deutsche Telekom supervisory board has an above average number of women on the committee. On the board of management, the women's share is 37.5%. Whenever we have to fill vacant posts, the main factor is still whether someone is a suitable candidate for the job description or not. Mr. Ostwald, you asked several questions on compliance at Deutsche Telekom. The board department HR is responsible for the compliance management system. At the same time, we have a dedicated member at every management and board of management level who's responsible for compliance. The chief compliance officer of Deutsche Telekom is responsible for the group-wide designing, enhancement, and implementation of the compliance management system. At the level of our operating segments and networks, compliance officers implement their compliance management systems and achieve the compliance goals. On the website of Deutsche Telekom, you can find all sorts of detailed information on compliance. Deutsche Telekom has set up a whistleblower portal called TellMe, where interested parties can provide anonymized tip-offs. Deutsche Telekom does not have an external special attorney in this context, but our internal lawyers are handling it as part of the case management process. According to the Deutsche Telekom website, under compliance, you will find that in 2020, 46 cases were confirmed as being compliance relevant. In addition to controls performed by internal auditing, the compliance management system is audited by external audit company. The compliance organization of Deutsche Telekom comprises 153 full-time equivalents across the group, of whom 38 FTEs are allocated to group compliance management at group headquarters. Mr. Ostwald, you asked about how many litigations are currently pending. Mr. Ostwald, in 2020, we initiated around 4,900 press charges against 4,900 customers who were not willing to pay. There is over 160 litigations from customers against Telekom Deutschland. In addition, there are around 770 litigations under labor law and civil servant law. There are various 350 trials pending at Deutsche Telekom AG or its domestic subsidiaries under civil law. In Germany, we have another 100 trials with a litigation value of a total of EUR 100,000. There are 90 pending admin related litigations. We regularly provide reporting on that in our quarterly reports. Mr. Ostwald, you also asked about business trips. For journeys to the United States, we are using standard flights, but we travel first class. Mr. Ostwald, you asked how many processes were there over the last 10 years that required an ombudsman to be involved, what amounts were involved, and what was the number of trials? We do not have an ombudsman at Deutsche Telekom. Consumers can contact the Telekom customer service or the arbitration of the Federal Network Agency if necessary. We've had some good experience with that at Telekom. In 2019, there were around 175 Telekom arbitration cases pending with the Federal Network Agency. We always try to find a solution directly with the customers which succeeded in most cases. Now, Mr. Ostwald, you asked about our advertising activities. Yes, advertising spending can be measured and is continuously checked for efficiency. Deutsche Telekom raises the largest brand awareness in advertising compared to any other telecommunications providers in the German market. In February, Deutsche Telekom achieved an unaided awareness or recognition of 50%, followed by Vodafone and 1&1 with 33% respectively. By investing in advertising and by presenting itself as a leading integrated all-in provider, Deutsche Telekom has managed to position itself successfully in terms of internet, fixed network, mobile communications, and TV. Mr. Oswald, you asked how the color magenta was created. The color magenta was introduced in 1991 as part of the development of a new brand image. The idea was to find a unique color for the IT and telecommunications industry, and that worked out well. The color was developed together with a marketing agency called Interbrand Zintzmeyer & Lux based in Zurich. Mr. Oswald had several questions on voice control in customer service. In 2020 alone, we received 45 million calls. A lot of these queries require specific and comprehensive knowledge on technology products and calling plans. Therefore, we select our employees carefully. With our voice-based portal, we are enabling our customers to find the right contact partner. In this way, calls don't have to be forwarded several times, and we can then resolve a large part of the queries in the first go. This is our goal. The voice portal is necessary in order to provide the right quality to our customers. Our service quality has been confirmed by various tests, as I said. Whenever we are getting critical customer feedback, we are taking it seriously. We are enhancing the voice portal accordingly. Actually, we don't even want the customers to notice that they are speaking to a machine. Mr. Oswald wanted to learn more about my talks with representatives of the federal government. The German government, as a co-owner of Deutsche Telekom AG, exercises a controlling function on the supervisory board. The representative of the German government on the supervisory board is Dr. Rolf Bösinger, state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance. I myself, as CEO, regularly provide reports on the supervisory board and answer any questions that the members may have. Mr. Oswald also wanted to know to what extent digitization has progressed in the group. Answer: digitization at Telekom means to tackle three areas in a very focused manner. First of all, customer interface. Every customer interaction has to be digitally enabled. One example of this is the MeinMagenta. In our European netcos, as many as 62% of our customers are using the Magenta. In Germany, it's over 56%. In addition, our technical service is using apps in order to proactively maintain the network and customer hardware so that we can detect potential failures at an early stage. That's referred to as preventive maintenance. As far as the digitization of the customer interface is concerned, T-Mobile US has come a long way. They have a so-called team of experts, and that is an essential pillar to provide the best possible customer experience there. Secondly, we are also digitizing our networks. In the future, like I said, networks will be increasingly controlled by software, including Open RAN. Therefore, the home of software is the cloud, which means that a lot of these functions will be stored in the cloud. The third point is that we are digitizing our internal processes in order to become more efficient and quicker. One case in point being our entire admin system. We also digitized external processes during the Corona pandemic. During the pandemic, within just one weekend, we made it possible for 16,000 service center staff to start working from home in their home office, which was unique. We just dismantled the hardware in the office and made it available to our colleagues at home because we didn't have enough laptops, and that worked out very well. We maintained the level of productivity. You asked about the development of the telecommunications market in Germany. The Federal Network Agency obliged Deutsche Telekom to make its telecommunication services available to competitors in the form of wholesale services. Which means that competitors can then make these services available to their customers. The goal of the regulatory authority is to reinforce the position of the competitors. This is a market which is shaped by fierce competition, and Deutsche Telekom lost a lot of market share. Having said that, for the past few years, we have constantly regained market share, especially in mobile communications. Last year, we were also able to regain a larger share in the fixed network. GigaCoax marketing, for instance, we are market leader in Germany. We have a retail market share of just under 40%, and in broadband, we are the number one in Germany. You asked about our strategy. Sorry, Mr. Höttges, I need to interrupt for a moment. This is just a virtual shareholders' meeting, but if we were at a face-to-face meeting, then I would have asked Mr. Oswald a long time ago how many questions he intends to ask, because you've been answering his questions for much more than 10 minutes, and we actually want to set aside the same amount of time for all shareholders so that everybody has a chance. I know that this is a special convention, a conventional one. May I ask that if we have the same number of questions again, we should consider handling it differently, because it cannot be that one shareholder asks such a long list of questions just because we are holding a virtual meeting, which is completely different from the face-to-face meeting. Let me just remind you, we are here in order to work on the agenda, and the questions raised must be directly related to the agenda and should help us to work on the agenda to coordinate our activities. I think Deutsche Telekom is offering so many different channels to obtain information on the company and its activities that we shouldn't raise all the relevant questions here. This is a shareholders' meeting, and this is about the most important and most pressing questions. Mr. Oswald, we do appreciate the interest that you show in our company. It's great that you care about so many different success of our company, but in the vested interest of all the other shareholders, we might want to think twice about how we want to handle such a long list of questions. Why don't we give Mr. Oswald a break now, and we'll continue in a moment with Mr. Oswald as well. Just to give you a chance, Mr. Herttrich, to save your voice as well. Let's continue with something else now. Let me now take over, and I will also answer questions raised by Mr. Oswald. Mr. Oswald, let me say at this point, I hope you understood me correctly. We really appreciate your interest, but we have to bear in mind the interest of all the shareholders. Mr. Oswald, you asked whether there were any claims against the decisions taken by Deutsche Telekom in the previous shareholders meetings. No, there's not. You asked about a fleet. Yes, we've got a fleet for company cars, and this is managed by T-Mobility Solutions. There were a number of questions regarding the company cars in general. All in all, Deutsche Telekom has 33,000 company cars. I know that they are mainly used for the interest of the company, but also sometimes for private reasons. We've got 6,500 company cars under our car policy, 1,500 for the managers. The rest is distributed among sales and field people. We have a car policy. The things are regulated. You also asked about any privatization. Did we know about privatization efforts? No. You also asked about the shareholders meetings and the tax rules. Deutsche Telekom doesn't have anything to do with the tax regulation. We cannot grant you any tax benefits. You also asked a question concerning debt. I think I already mentioned this several times. Financial debt as of the end of last year is EUR 120.2 billion, or as I already said, the leverage ratio is 2.78. Mr. Oswald, you also asked about liabilities in the balance sheet. They are EUR 122.4 billion and net financial debt EUR 120 billion, as I said before. Questions concerning the valuation and the discretion that you ask here, the valuation of all the assets and debts is based on IFRS. These are explained in detail in the annual report. The discussion we have is also explained in the chapter on assets in our annual report. Mr. Oswald, you also asked about the aggregated representation of all debt since 1996. Our debt position is permanently refinanced. This is why it doesn't make much sense to give you any aggregated figures. Mr. Oswald, on liabilities and debt, you asked about the liabilities of T Share and the interest per T Share, EUR 25.25. This is the financial liabilities per share. The interest burden is EUR 1.25 per share. The question is, when will we get back to the debt corridor that we set ourselves? I think I already answered this question in detail. You asked about the interest that Telekom has paid since the new emissions, EUR 296 billion since 1996. Mr. Oswald, We already have this. Mr. Oswald, some other questions of you were about the share culture and the number of small shareholders. If you see 16%, then it declined to 14%, and in 2019, it was 16% again, and now in 2020, we've got a share of 20%. We will treat all the shareholders the same. This is also true regarding the answers that we provide on questions raised by the shareholders. We don't have the impression that between 1996 and the year 2000, the burdens that we gained there are still on our business regarding a comparison to other stock operations. The question why we are no longer paying for public transport and parking tickets during the shareholders' meeting, this question was raised again. For the next face-to-face meetings, we will pay the fees. Now, KfW has a certain share, you also asked about the dividend pay of the Federal Government or KfW. The dividend proposal is EUR 2.48 billion. This means 31.9% or EUR 908 million. You asked about our strategy, Mr. Oswald. You said that we should also look at the services and prices of smaller companies. We said that we are pursuing a growth strategy. In 2020, we achieved the highest levels in customer satisfaction. In mobile service revenue, we have a market share of 36.6%. In broadband, in terms of net adds, we almost have 56% market share. With our convergence offering, MagentaOne, we also keep on growing. Of course, you are right that we can also learn from other providers. That's why we are constantly monitoring our competitors in the various markets as well. One question from Mr. Oswald on life sharing. That's what Deutsche Telekom is all about. Our customers want to use the options of the digital world and to stay in touch and to share special moments. With our network, our products, and our services, we enable our customers to do just that. Mr. Oswald, some of your questions referred to some negative reports in the media in connection with misconduct by Deutsche Telekom. As a large company, Deutsche Telekom has often been subject to reporting, both positive and negative. We clearly commit ourselves to values such as respect and appreciation, which is also embedded in our code of conduct. However, at Deutsche Telekom, there have also been cases of misconduct. We are looking into all compliance-related cases. Respect and integrity, by the way, are part of our set of values that I mentioned in my introductory speech. Mr. Oswald asked about compliance investigations with one of our subsidiaries in Brazil. Yes, there were some compliance-relevant cases in Brazil, which were reported to Germany. This was about the breach of internal guidelines, which was sanctioned accordingly. It depends on every individual case what the ultimate consequences are. Mr. Oswald asked about the consequences of the doping scandal for Deutsche Telekom's advertising activities. It was a negative development, but it had no negative effect for the shareholders. We included a sports doping clause into our contracts, and we try to hedge the risks in our contracts to the best possible extent. You also asked about Tim Höttges' commitment in the supervisory board of the FC Bayern Munich. Munich does not need my sports advice, although as a former handball player, I have little knowledge about football. They've got excellent people to do this. I am in the supervisory board as a representative of the main sponsor. I give my strategic and economic knowledge. FC Bayern is quite successful. You also asked about the media payments. Well, the highest media spend we have is during the Super Bowl spots of T-Mobile US. The prices are public. Last year, the 30-second spot cost around $5.2 million. Let me move on to the question of the average age and attrition of our people. The age structure is 41.5 years group-wide. The female share is 35%, male share 65%. The attrition rate in Germany is 2%. People usually work with us between one and 24 years. Deutsche Telekom offers young people a start into their career using classic training or dual studies. For the year 2020, we had 40,511 applications, 35,409 of which for classical training and 5,102 for a dual study course. All in all, the share of female applicants in year 2020 was 25%, and the share of male applicants, 75%. We have 2,150 trainees and dual students and 2,094 contracts which we concluded. We have good experience when we use the trained talent to fill positions in our company and the number of people that spent their whole career at Deutsche Telekom, we can't say anything about this, but we also offer company pension. We have a Kapitalkontenplan that is normally paid at old age in a single payment, and it is also possible to start paying into a regular scheme using the Telekom-Pensionsfonds. Both systems are implemented for the major part of the employees across all the groups. Mr. Oswald also asked about career opportunities for our young talent. At the end of the dual studies or the training, people can ask to be taken over by the company. In 2020, we took over 686 trainees and 386 students and gave them a chance to work in the company. We also have various upskilling possibilities for young talent so that we support people in their personal development. For university students, we have the Startup Trainee Program. Startup Trainee positions are advertised. Graduates from university can then apply for the 18-month Startup Program. After the successful application and after going through the program, they have the opportunity to be considered as top experts in the group to drive innovative and strategic future topics. Where somebody comes from is not the main question here, but rather how he or she drives the development and uses and lives the Telekom network. The development of new and existing employees is very important. There are various possibilities for personal development, also using digital learning platforms. Mr. Oswald, you had some more questions concerning the trainees. As of the 31st of December 2020, we have 4,061 trainees. Deutsche Telekom has 12 different job profiles. We offer young people seven technical and five commercial careers. In the technical field, it is in IT, it is in system integration for data and process analysis, digital networking, digital management, IT systems management, and IT systems electronics. We've got the commercial training courses. On the 31st of December 2020, we had 1,379 trainees in the first year of training, 1,341 in the second, and 1,341 trainees in third year. We are not offering any training covering four years. In 2020, across all the training years, 3.2% of trainees terminated their training. As of the 31st of December 2020, Germany, we made it possible for 4,061 trainees to enter into their career here. Two-thirds of the trainees are normally taken over in permanent jobs. As of 31st December 2020, we had 48 different nationalities among the 4,061 trainees. We've got our own training operation, Telekom Ausbildung, active in 35 of our national locations and one of the 35 sites of the Telekom training and in our training. You ask a question concerning trainees. We've got our own training operation, and we offer the best of our trainees some time abroad. This takes between six and 12 months and depends on the trainee course. The time spent abroad is irrespective of the job profile. We mainly focus on Eastern Europe. This is organized by Telekom Ausbildung and is normally happening during the 2nd year of training or studies. Training and dual studies are an important pillar for winning new staff, Mr. Oswald. Now I come to the question concerning further training and upskilling. Deutsche Telekom offers a wide range of upskilling possibilities. There are specific offers for software development on cloud architecture, Agile project management languages, but there are also informal learning offers. We give our employees orientation so that they can select their own learning methods and courses, but there is also a small share of obligatory training, for example, on data protection, security, and compliance that everybody has to go through. I would like to speak again. Mr. Oswald already said that I highly appreciate your high degree of interest in the company, but we would like to complete the meeting in good time, and we also would like to give many shareholders the possibility to ask questions. I'm not sure what we will do in future years, whether we will have follow-up questions. Probably, we will have two-day meetings in the future. Mr. Oswald, I'm not sure whether you are listening. I assume you do. Perhaps it would be a possibility that in the interest of other shareholders, we also want to cover and answer the questions that you withdraw your open questions. If this is the case, then I would like to ask you to tell us, and I would like to skip the rest of your questions for the time being. Let me continue with questions by Ms. Gäbler. We start with the taxes paid by Deutsche Telekom for 2020. We paid sales tax, we paid wage tax, corporate tax and commercial tax, and electricity tax. The next question is on tax and social contributions. This is, of course, based on the individual features of the employees, and this is then handed over to the tax offices, and they are also reviewed. Another question is on the profit and loss transfer agreements. In the existing agreements, all the income is reported. We are, of course, also are in line with all the legal requirements based on commercial code. We also offset losses carried forward as much as possible. Another question by Ms. Gäbler is, what losses of what companies we took over? We use operative segments to control our company with the exception of T-Systems. All are making a positive contribution. Look at individual corporate companies is not very telling in the structure of our company. Ms. Gäbler also asked about special service hotlines. First of all, we don't have any commission payment for hotline numbers. As the network operator in the past two years, we paid EUR 3 million to our customers. In the hotline 137 in 2019, we paid EUR 19 million of sharing and in 2020, EUR 25 million. Ms. Gäbler also asked about our credit lines, with which banks we have these. We've got credit lines with 21 banks amounting to a total of EUR 12.6 billion, these are bilateral credit lines at the usual market conditions. Ms. Gäbler also asked whether and to which amount we paid negative interest rates in 2019 and 2020. Especially in 2020, after the merger between T-Mobile US and Sprint, we had high payment flows from the U.S., unfortunately, this meant that we had to pay negative interest rates in 2020. Ms. Gäbler, you also asked about the operational development in the three largest companies related to revenues. Again, I have to say that we use the operational segments to control our company, not the legal entities. All the segments in 2020 made a positive contribution to the AAL, all with exception of T-Systems, had a positive EBITDA contribution, and we normally do not take a look at the individual entities in the different countries. Mrs. Gäbler, you also asked about the development this year. Please refer to the annual report for this. You also asked about EBIT in the annual report 2020. It was EUR 12.8 billion, and this is something that you can find on page 51 of the annual report. Another question is about the capital that we need for our operations, and in this context, you asked about works of art which are not necessary for our operations. On the asset side in balance sheet, we've got EUR 265 billion, and on Telekom AG, we've got EUR 116.8 billion. In the balance sheet, we've got works of arts amounting to EUR 7 million. Ms. Gäbler also asked about our investment plan for the next five years. For the year 2021, we plan investments amounting to EUR 18.4 billion. About EUR 7.7 billion will flow into the European business. The rest will go to the U.S. By 2024, we will successfully increase capital expenditures to EUR 8.2 billion in Germany. In the U.S., we plan to invest $11.7 billion-$12 billion. This is, of course, excluding spectrum and excluding acquisitions. Ms. Gäbler also asked a number of questions in the context of Wirecard. Telekom does not have any direct investments into Wirecard. In the context of the pension fund management, we had very small positions where Wirecard was involved. This is amounting to 0.07% of the total share portfolio. In the bond portfolio, we've got around EUR 100,000. They were liquidated, but in the share portfolio, it's around EUR 800,000. All in all, we've got a loss of EUR 1 million that we report in this context. Ms. Gäbler also asked about the assets that we use as collateral for credits. I'm talking about collateralized assets. April, it was EUR 19 billion. T-Mobile US, EUR 17.3 billion. October, EUR 4.7 billion. The terms are between 31 to 2060. The interest rate is between 2.25% and 3.6%. For the rest, I refer you to the statements in the annex to the annual report. Mr. Skepper also asked about equity ratio. The equity ratio is based on the interim reports and the annual reports. On 30th March 2019, it was 25.8%. In September, 26%. On the 31st December, 27.1%. In March, 26.3%, and in June, 27.2%. On the 30th September 2020 at 27.1% and at the end of last year at 27.4%. On the question regarding the impairment tests, I think I already gave you plenty of information on this beforehand. What else do we have? Mr. Gaebler, you also asked about insurance. In our group, we got income from insurance companies amounting to EUR 73 million. The biggest individual item was $20 million in damages that we were paid in the U.S., and we've got reimbursements in the context of Hurricane Laura in the United States and some other smaller, minor items. Thank you very much, Christian. Now I would like to answer questions raised by Ms. Silvia Lehner. She asked whether perhaps we should focus on Gaia-X instead of the cooperation with Amazon and Microsoft. As a supporter of Gaia-X, Deutsche Telekom is already working for the guarantee of cloud sovereignty, but we also want to provide our customers the best cloud services by providing access to a broad range of different services. This includes AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Of course, we always comply with the highest data privacy and security standards. We want to have global scalable solutions that are established in the market by the big cloud providers and the developer community. We also want to have a good European cloud solution with high data privacy rules. There is a question concerning small and medium-sized enterprises and how we want to gain contracts here. You mentioned, for example, Cloud PBX. Last year, about 18,000 qualified contracts were automatically generated and passed on. A smaller share of the online contacts is now sent to Outlook mailboxes. They are processed by our staff. We are also working on an automation of these processes. On Cloud PBX, this is an important topic for the future, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. In the service, we improved the quality of advice. Normally, any inquiries coming in will be answered within one week. We invest into contacts with our customers. We've got a new team, the Customer Service Live Video Consulting, where we've got specialists dealing with our customers. There is also the possibility for our customers to get a Cloud PBX which is not binding on the internet and present it directly to the team. Is the cloud-first approach a new dimension? Can this be a European game changer? The progress of the cloud technology is one of the most important technology trends in recent years. Cloud native is setting new standards for ICT solutions. It's no longer about having data centers, but about having intelligent processes in highly automated infrastructure. We are talking about cloud computing. Here, U.S. companies are dominating Microsoft Azure and Google based on their size and technology competence. With cloud-first, T-Systems is gaining a new strategic position and links the approaches of the private and the public cloud and is offering a hybrid cloud. With these multi-cloud processes, which are an alternative or an addition to the U.S. players that offer European solutions, here we are coming back to Gaia-X. Deutsche Telekom is offering new opportunities in these new times. The following question is referring to the initiative Cloud First and is asking what aim we are pursuing. The Cloud First strategy is placing the public cloud first. With a public cloud solution, our customers are supported in the digitalization of their business processes. We use our own Open Telekom Cloud, also the structure of partners such as Azure, Amazon, Google, and others. Mr. Schwarz would like to know regarding data protection risks when American cloud providers are used. Deutsche Telekom is cooperating with the majority of companies in Europe and the large cloud service providers. All the services are subject to an individual risk review. Existing risks are either mitigated or excluded by taking the necessary measures. Privacy and security assessment processes. This includes the assessment of various scenarios, external and internal ones, research and assessment of possible alternatives, and a close exchange with our partners, Microsoft, AWS, and Google. We also offer this option to our customers, and this means that either there is a decision to process and store the data in Germany only, or we use frames too. We are preparing for the recommendation of European Data Protection Board to transfer data to third countries, and we do not see any need to set up special provisions. Paul, Max, Loch, Flaffig, and Michael Warnecke asked about the advantages for new customers compared to our existing customers. We have a clear focus on our loyal existing customers, and we want to give them the opportunity to have access to the best network with the best service and the best products. In December, we gave all our existing mobile customers 100 megabits for free, and we also have special offers for new customers. The loyal customers, for example, get an advantage of EUR 120 if they decide for a new product or a new rate. Our offers are available for new and existing customers in the same way. Of course, we also want to respond to cancellations of contracts that we get, and we try to convince customers to stay with us, for example. It is also usual in the market in the intensive customers to offer new clients special services and incentives. We would like to be even more attractive also for our existing customers. If our customers are unhappy with our services, we would like to help them as much as possible. You asked why the cost for high-speed access of Deutsche Telekom is so expensive compared to other countries. In Germany, the fiber cables have to be underground, and this is much more expensive than in other European countries. The investment, of course, needs to be earned. However, we offer a fair price-benefit ratio with a high quality. If you take into account the purchase price parities in other European countries, some of the cheap offers are no longer that cheap. Switzerland, with the largest provider, Swisscom, the entry into the internet with 50 megabits per second costs CHF 65 a month, EUR 58. In Austria, the A1 tariff costs EUR 50 with 80 megabits. For Deutsche Telekom, the 50 Mb rate in our normal price costs EUR 39.95, and the 100 Mb rate is EUR 44.95, which is lower. Esther Kurz, you ask why we increased the prices for our mobile rates. First of all, no, we don't want to lose any customers, but on the contrary, we want to gain new customers. The moderate price adjustment is only applicable to some few old rates. Our current portfolio has been updated in September 2019 for the last time. We offer more services for our customers. For all the MagentaMobil and family card rates, we more than doubled the data volume. Apart from that, StreamOn is inclusive, even in the smallest rates in MagentaMobil Plus. The streaming offers are not even taken into account. All the rates additionally use the new 5G mobile standard. This better services to all our customers in the best mobile phone network. Customers who still use an old rate can change into the new portfolio at any time. Question by Gordon Schaller regarding the integration of T-Mobile US mobile cards into German contracts. For Telekom Deutschland and T-Mobile US, these are two separate companies and two separate contract partners for the customers. This is why it is not possible to integrate a T-Mobile US contract into a contract of Telekom Deutschland. We try, of course, to make the integration as easy as possible. Your question concerning sports sponsoring, Mr. Pfeiffer. Sports sponsoring has been an important component of the communication mix for a very long time. Sports sponsoring in Telekom Group, inclusive of Sprint, amounted to EUR 130 million in 2020. We mostly focused on football, followed by baseball in the U.S. The rest of the spending was for sports such as basketball, American football, but also name rights in sports arenas. We are not only active in professional sports, but also in general sports. Mr. Pfeiffer and Mr. Oswald, concerning the sports sponsoring for FC Bayern Munich, the volume is in a double-digit million EUR area. Please be assured this is a good ratio. We have a modern sports sponsoring contract focusing on branding on the jerseys, the training clothing, the banners in the stadium and on the facilities, interview back walls and the internet presentation. We also have possibilities for public relations with players, trainers, and the management of FC Bayern Munich. We also have content rights presence on digital and social media channels in the stadiums. We also have tickets available for the home and the non-home games. Mr. Rex said the strategic development was reviewed or readjusted after the pandemic crisis. We continuously observe and analyze the developments, societal trends, technological trends, new regulatory framework conditions. We, of course, adapt our strategy to the new challenges. COVID-19, however, supported us in our strategy. Our networks were performant in spite of the lockdown. In our operational business, we were very successful, and we provided stable networks and had a record high in new contracts. We have continuous fine-tuning of our strategy, but other than that, we did not have a complete new strategy in recent years. It was asked whether in view of home office and homeschooling, we also have improved the performance of our networks. During the pandemic, we improved the services to our customers in many ways. For our mobile phone customers, we offered an additional data volume to our mobile customers of 10 GB, and we also provided free of charge Cisco Webex licenses to schools for homeschooling. We offered an optimized homeschooling. We offered Office 365 and Teams to our corporate customers free of charge as well. At the same time, we, of course, continuously adjusted the capacities in our networks, and this, of course, meant a number of infrastructure investments. Mr. Walter, your new question is about our peering capacities and whether we plan to increase them. Deutsche Telekom has a total capacity of 60 TB, and in our information, this is the largest network capacity for internet connectivity in Germany. 60 TB per second. During the pandemic, DT AG has expanded the capacity by about 13 TB with partners and customers, and this is around 4 TBps more than DE-CIX in Frankfurt has all in all. Deutsche Telekom wants to have direct connectivity with partners and customers because only this will make it possible to have a high-quality control and a safe backup. The discussion concerning a commercial platform such as DE-CIX is not meaningful because the DE-CIX platform is a hub switch that connects many partners with many other partners. What we have established would only be possible to a limited extent there and is thus only available for smaller applications or smaller ISTs or smaller traffic. The positive results of the network tests of recent years are living proof that this is the right procedure, and we offer everybody a non-discriminatory access under the given framework conditions at a reasonable price. Mr. Wiemeyer asked about data protection and the use of most recent technologies and how innovation fits in with all of this. Deutsche Telekom feels it's important to be transparent to its customers and employees. This is of primary importance. Wherever we can, we work with consent by users or people can opt out. When it comes to AI, artificial intelligence, the outcomes that the applications produce are checked for plausibility and corrected where necessary. In certain areas, we have clear statutory rules. For instance, according to the telecommunications act, users have to consent if conversations are to be recorded. All factors play a role here, the benefit to the company, the trust of the users, and the law. All of these are balanced very carefully indeed. There was also a question about the added value of Selfie-Ident of Nect GmbH. This is a possibility to verify the veracity of biometric features such as holograms. However, for the reverse side of the new personal ID, a photograph will be sufficient. It has only verified whether the data corresponds to what's on the front of the ID. According to TÜV Saarland and the accredited conformity office, datenschutz cert GmbH, the data in the passport or the ID are processed in line with the law. Artificial intelligence applications were also verified and certified by TÜV Saarland and datenschutz cert GmbH. The added value is that the customer doesn't have to wait. The procedure is available around the clock. A shareholder asked about our business around payment services in Hungary. European regulation allows us to pursue new business models, and we're trialing one of these in Hungary. The concept foresees the use of our customer app also for payment services in order to make life easier for our customers. You also asked whether we don't have a long-term payment strategy, and you referred to the closure of the online payment service provider ClickandBuy. We are constantly verifying how our portfolio is doing in terms of value contribution. All of the activities and their strategic significance will vary from case to case, but the logic is always the same. We don't have a payment strategy as such. A shareholder told us that the beginning, the start time of the events should be included in the financial calendar. Thank you very much. We will look into that and indicate the starting time. Mr. Aischmann, good afternoon. You asked about the costs that we are paid when our competitors want to use our network. Deutsche Telekom is still regulated quite heavily, and the Federal Network Agency allows for the option to adjust these fees for downstream services according to models for hypothetical networks. The interconnection rates are probably going to be set by the European Commission and no longer from the Federal Network Agency. This will happen in summer 2021. It is anticipated that there will be price caps that are fixed across Europe, and they will be set via a hypothetical cost model. For us, that will obviously mean a new orientation. The bitstream products are going to be products for which we can set the fees in cooperation with our bitstream customers without regulatory intervention. A lot has changed in that regard. Christian, over to you. Thank you very much. I have a question by Yvonne on 4Alpha on the share program for employees. This year, for the first time, we're going to be offering employees the opportunity to buy shares in the company. On a voluntary basis, they can invest up to EUR 1,000 in Deutsche Telekom shares. For every two shares that they buy, they will be given one extra. For this, they will have to hold the shares for four years. As I said, this scheme is going to be launched for Germany in 2021, and we're planning to roll it out to the European footprint in 2022. Another question on the share program is this: Will former employees also be able to benefit from this program? The authorization to use our treasury shares will not allow the inclusion of former employees, so no. A question on item 8 of the agenda: Will Deutsche Telekom be able to trade its own shares in the future? This is not about trading treasury shares. What this is about is to buy back treasury shares. We do not want to trade in our treasury shares. This is just an authorization to buy back treasury shares that are in the market. Question by Lars Kesten and Hans Oswald on Congstar and how that business has developed. Congstar is a very good business. It is still growing, top line and bottom line, and it's also a very well-known provider. It is contributing a lot to the company's profits. It's boosting our German business. It's helping us remain the leader in mobile communications. We're very happy with Congstar's development in recent years. Lars Kesten wanted to know what netcos in the group are not profitable. Well, as I just said, We do not manage by operative segment. All operating segments on the EBITDA AL size are contributing positively. T-Systems is the one exception. This is how we want things to be. If we look at the operating segment Europe, for instance, we can see that all European netcos, in addition, are making a positive contribution to EBITDA AL. Mr. Ruhe was asking about the different currencies in our annual report. It is perfectly admissible to show equity and net profit in local currencies. This is what other companies are doing as well. This means that it is easier to compare the information with the information provided in the local financial statements. Deutsche Telekom's financial statements also include an indication of the numbers in the local currency. We are convinced that the way we portray that information meets the needs of the readers appropriately. Mr. Ruhe asks to explain how the federal government is exercising its influence and what impact this has on our business. The federal government does have notable influence because it has more than 20% of voting rights, directly or indirectly. That is always the case for these kinds of shareholders. This notable influence is exercised by the voting rights in the shareholders meeting and the fact that there is a representative in the supervisory board. Its influence has no impact on the entrepreneurial decisions that Deutsche Telekom takes. There was a question on the annual report regarding the additional other operating expenditures. EUR 877 million is the figure. The majority of that is accounted for by T-Mobile US. Administrative payments, EUR 162 million. Catering and association fees. The same shareholder is asking about the additional other reserves. The figure here at the end of 2020 is EUR 697 million. The main items specifically here are EUR 246 million in connection with the pending transactions. In addition, there's some provisions for warranties in between is EUR 42 million and environmental provisions of EUR 11 million. I just want to point out that Mr. Oswald has told us that he is not withdrawing the questions. Okay, that's fine. We have to assume that some shareholders didn't ask the question that they wanted to ask because Mr. Oswald did it for them. All of the questions posed by Mr. Oswald will be responded to. We'll have to see what we will do if we come across the same situation in future years, how we're going to handle that. Okay. A shareholder is asking why we are currently not implementing any capital measures. We believe that a capital increase at the present time is neither necessary nor sensible. Benedict Kuttlein wants to know what measures we're planning in order to reduce our exposure in case interest rates rise in the next few years. Wolfgang Kutzner asks a similar situation. I think I explained how we are planning to reduce net debt in the group. This is mainly going to happen through the free cash flow contribution of our U.S. business, but also the boost to our business outside of the U.S. That is going to return us to the range that we feel comfortable with. Another question was about whether it makes sense to completely reduce the debt for Deutsche Telekom. No, we don't feel that this is sensible. It was asked what parties or political organizations and associations have received a donation from Deutsche Telekom in 2020. We are not allowed to donate to political parties, so we have nothing to report. In the U.S., party donations are not admissible if they come from foreign companies. The general donations that Deutsche Telekom AG made amounted to EUR 2.2 million. EUR 15.6 million is the equivalent amount for the entire group. A question was asked about the interest rates for existing and possible new bank credits. We are predominantly financed via the bond market. Euro exposures have an average interest rate of 1.8%. In the U.S., that's 5%. We also have a liquidity reserve in the amount of EUR 12.6 billion, which revolve every three years, and the terms and conditions correspond to those available on the market. Hamid Purian is asking about our Bitcoin, our cryptocurrency strategy. Bitcoin is one of the many alternatives of government legitimized currencies. We regularly exchange with banks about this. There's a small Bitcoin relevance at T-Systems. It's early days yet. Ms. Gavins is asking about the ROCE. How it developed specifically. Well, in 2016 it was 5.7%. 2017 was 5.8%. 2018 was 4.7%. 2019 it was 5.1%, and in 2020 it was 4.6%. Our ROCE is above the average for 2018. I think I can skip this. Okay, back to the questions of Mr. Oswald that we skipped. Mr. Oswald is asking about dual. We had 5,102 applicants for our dual study program. 644 were accepted in 2020. All of the students can apply or interested parties can apply. We have an exclusive job exchange for those who are coming out of the course, so we can accept them on our payroll. Training has always been a very important thing for Deutsche Telekom as a company. We want to rise to this social responsibility. We take it very seriously. As at the 31st of December 2020, we had 3,112 trainees and 1,752 students. How does Deutsche Telekom handle cooperation with vocational colleges and non-company training measures? How do we interact? The basis for our cooperation is the Vocational Training Act. Deutsche Telekom, as a company, is a place where they learn on the job. We cooperate with vocational colleagues so that the students can benefit. Mr. Oswald also wants to ask about retraining or upskilling for older employees. As a rule, everyone can learn anything at Deutsche Telekom. It doesn't matter how old they are. Our training profiles are, of course, geared to technology and what the market needs, and so we always need experts in the areas of cloud, AI, data analytics, software engineering, IT security, and agile working. Mr. Oswald, you asked whether Deutsche Telekom still has civil servants and what they're costing the company per year. Deutsche Telekom currently has 22,000 civil servants at the moment. According to the law, we have to contribute to a pension fund: the Bundesanstalt für Post und Telekommunikation. These contributions amount to EUR 405 million. However, the number of civil servants is declining, and so is that figure. The pension payments are funded from the contributions of the postal successors and income from the federal budget. Mr. Oswald, you asked whether Deutsche Telekom still has monopolies anywhere. After the liberalization of the telecoms market 20 years ago, we've been faced with strong competition in the German mobile and fixed network markets. Deutsche Telekom, as a rule, is no longer a monopoly holder. For purposes of regulation, however, the antitrust and regulatory authorities are still quite strict. As to the role of Deutsche Telekom in these sub-markets, please take a look at the publications of the Federal Network Agency. They have an annual report with all of the details. Mr. Oswald, you asked about the role of the Federal Network Agency, which is an independent agency whose employees and civil servants are not paid by Deutsche Telekom. They are not colleagues of Deutsche Telekom workers. They are, of course, obligated to maintain neutrality. Mr. Oswald asked about the comparability of working arrangements between salaried employees and civil servants. If you compare the two groups in terms of the costs that they produce, there are no significant differences between the two groups. If the salaried employees in question are younger and they work for companies with other wage agreements, there may, of course, be some differences in personnel costs, but then you'd be comparing apples with pears. Thank you, Mr. Oswald, for your praise that you voiced towards Deutsche Telekom's publications and events. We enjoy, of course, the fact that the shareholders appreciate what we do and what we like to show, that they enjoy the services that we provide. We will continue down that route. Mr. Oswald asked about the construction sites of Deutsche Telekom. We have plenty of them across the country. We have worked hard to get to where we are today, we believe that construction sites are opportunities. We analyze them, we work on them, we like to speak to our shareholders about the construction sites. Mr. Oswald, you also said that customers are building their own networks, you're wondering whether this is business that is passing Deutsche Telekom by. Our fixed line connections are connecting 34 million households already. They are very fast, of course, we wish to continue growing and making our network even better and faster. The technology of the future for us is fiber. Of course, for that, we need the right circumstances. For instance, we need broad approval for alternative laying, cable laying methods. Hendrik Schmidt from DWS Investment and Mr. Oswald asked about the obstacles to nationwide digitalization. They are asking about the business potential and the possibilities for the dividend and what role Deutsche Telekom wants to play in digitalization. Speaking about internal digitalization, we have overcome a number of obstacles in recent years. Not for nothing is the subject one of the core priorities on my personal CEO agenda for this year, digitalization. The successes and further plans have already been detailed when I answered your other questions. As to our business, digitalization is without a doubt a big opportunity. As Deutsche Telekom, we want to be the preferred partner for digitalization, and we want to grow with our business customers. We're already growing, by the way. Our IT solutions for small and micro companies, SMEs, large groups, and authorities are helping our customers to make the best of the technologies of the future. Focal topics are, for instance, the Internet of Things and cybersecurity. They're becoming more and more relevant. Cloud applications and IP networks as well. We also feel that we are a competent partner for digitalizing administration, politics, and society, and we are very proud that we were chosen to develop the Corona-Warn-App together with SAP. By the way, we also helped implement the virtual federal party conference of the Christian Democrats at the beginning of this year. Digitalization will feature very heavily in the future, and it will influence our top line and, of course, our dividend. Mr. Oswald also pointed out that there's a great deal to do in the future. We have a clear strategy that we want to implement step by step. We are successful, we want to do everything we can in order to remain successful, not just by a certain date, but continuously. Mr. Oswald has praised the work of the back office of this year's shareholders meeting. For sure, I can only agree. Thank you for that. With that, next chapter. Klaas. [Foreign Language] Thank you very much for writing in. Thank you for your interest. Given that you're still a child, we think it's great that you are a shareholder. It's brilliant that you want to meet me in person. I think it would be lovely if we had a video conference at some point. If you can come to Bonn, why don't you drop in? On the picture behind me, you can see when I was interviewed by a bunch of children last summer. That was actually one of the best dates that I had, best events that I had that year. Hopefully, you can come to Bonn to meet me. Why don't you bring along your parents or your grandparents? It would be lovely to welcome you here in Bonn. Smartphones or tablets, cheap enough for young people to buy with their pocket money as well. That's one of those things. Of course, we have services and products for children, we can't give away our services and products either because we want to make money. We're a business. Of course, as I said, we have suitable services and products for children. For instance, children can use a GPS-enabled smartwatch, which basically functions like a mobile phone, or we also have telephony and voice services that children can use in an emergency situation. All that costs is EUR 1 in connection with a rate plan of EUR 9.95 a month, and that will run for 24 months. This smartwatch can hence be paid out of your pocket money, no problem. That monthly amount is cheap enough, of course, or you can ask your parents and grandparents to step in. By the way, we also offer smartphones in connection with a mobile contract. Sometimes they just cost EUR 1 on top. There's also the possibility to have a second SIM card, a family card, and that's offered to children and adolescents between six and 17 years of age, so that your parents don't have to be worried about where you are. There's fragFINN or the child protection app, Surfy, which helps you to use the internet safely. Mr. Eckart, you asked about training. You wanted to know about the number of our trainees and students. We already provided those figures, 5,800 trainees and 2,000. All the numbers have already been provided. The CEO is reading out the figures broken down by individual group. This includes training of those activities for interns and also for refugees and migrants. The group is pointing out the specific signals by doing that. Of the 5,800 trainees, 1,684 were female. The chairman is providing the figures for other years as well. We have dual students across the German group, Germany T-Systems, Europe, and DHS. They're also working in the technology and innovation department. In 2020, we had 1,700 dual students roundabout, of which 1,200 odd were dual bachelors. The remainder were master's students. I have answered this question several times already, and so I would like to refer to the answers that I gave in response to Mr. Oswald. You also asked about the number of trainees and dual students, whether the pandemic has impacted on that number. No, the numbers have not changed. The pandemic had no impact on these numbers. Last week, by the way, I spent 90 minutes with the trainees, but obviously, I asked how they were, and they said that they were feeling absolutely fine. Of course, they really want to return to their offices. All of our dual students and trainees are trained in such a way that they are attractive new employees for us, and a lot of them are also accepted into Deutsche Telekom proper. In 2021, we have 1,777 vacancies across the group. 750 are trainee vacancies and around 150 are for dual students. You also asked about the strategy in regards to training and training places. For years, we have been training much more than we actually need. Both trainees and dual students are very important and valuable to us, but we do train more than we would need ourselves. Last year and this year, we have offered 2,150 places. I think I've mentioned this number several times already. The question also was asked why we don't pay our employees more rather than dispersing a high dividend. Deutsche Telekom pays its employees an attractive salary, a competitive salary. The majority of our employees are paid salaries that are negotiated with the unions. I also want to point out that all of our employees are going to be paid a bonus for the great achievements that they have made during the pandemic. By the way, that's going to be tax-free in Germany. We hope that this is a sign of appreciation for our employees. If we look at our currently employee satisfaction surveys, then I think we can safely say that we are happy. In fact, the satisfaction has been no higher ever than it was last year. We are committed to our dividend policy. The dividend policy foresees that our dividend reflects the adjusted earnings per share. A minimum dividend is always going to be EUR 0.60. Deutsche Telekom has come to deliver on its promises in that regard. Mr. Fuller asked how many employees in 2018, 2019, and 2020 were paid without having to provide any kind of service, and if so, how much they were paid. As a rule, all people whose jobs are cut will be offered a solution that suits both sides. There's a number of instruments that we can use for that. Severance pays, old age, partial retirement, early retirement, and so on and so forth. If employees decide to not take up our offer, they are transferred to a transfer company. Of course, their employment contract will change. We help them to find a permanent or temporary position elsewhere, which means that they are coached, they are assisted in going into job interviews. Sometimes they are used temporarily in certain projects. It is not the case that people are paid for doing absolutely nothing. No money is paid to people for doing nothing. A question on short-time work. The company that operates the shops is on short-time work, or the people employed by that company is on short-time work. The amount that they're paid is 60% of the net salary that they are not receiving. For employees with children, that's 67%. Employees in tax band 5 and a child that is not on their tax card also are paid 60%. The short-time work pay goes up to 70%-77%. From month four onwards, and from the seventh month onwards, 80%-87%, if they stand to lose at least 50% of their income in the months in question. Our employees under wage agreements also receive a grant under the wage agreement. This corresponds to the difference between the monthly salary that they do not get paid because they are on short-time work, and 85% of the monthly fee that the employee had earned if they were not on short-time work. It's quite complex. What I'm saying is they get 85% of their gross salaries. Civil servants are not receiving any short-time pay. If they are furloughed, they will only get their actual salary plus a grant amounting to 92% of what the salaried employees get. Here are the effects in numbers. Around 11 million in 2020, March, April, and May. In 2021, in February, the effect was around EUR 3 million, of which EUR 2 million are liabilities to the Federal Employment Agency. Our shops are reopened in March, the figures will look very different from those in February. There's a question about the use of home offices in the group. For many years now, Deutsche Telekom has offered its staff the possibility for mobile working. Now you can do it almost everywhere in the group. The call center for customer assistance in Germany has, with the aid of our IT, also shifted to home office in order to offer our customers a service during Corona. Already at the beginning of the pandemic, Deutsche Telekom also protected its staff by allowing them to work from their home office. The Corona protection regulation, which applied from the end of January 2021 to the end of 30th April, made working from home obligatory and has been also put in practice by us. I have questions from Ms. Callens. First of all, you suggest we publish certain data in the next people's report, and I won't make a commitment to that now, but we'll try to do that. The second question is whether we can compare ROCE with our most important competitors. Of course, we do that. We just have to look at structural aspects, how it's treated. One competitor does it before tax, another does it after tax, and the approach is slightly different in the U.S. and in Europe. This brings me to T-Systems, the next group of topics. This specifically involves the SAP business. One shareholder wanted to know how much our IT business contributes to our overall EBIT. Roughly EUR 100 million in earnings, or rather in adjusted EBITDA, is contributed by it. That's of secondary importance. Another question was about the SAP business in 2020 and which contribution it made. T-Systems is one of the most important partners of SAP. We have a lot of application business. The SAP Matcos, we work together with them and implement solutions for customers. Another question relates to SAP business at T-Systems in 2020. That was also influenced by Corona. That is why both in terms of sales revenue and EBITDA, we saw a contraction there. With regard to T-Systems and current developments at T-Systems and the impact of Corona, their total revenue of the operative business in 2020 was EUR 4.2 billion, which was 5.6% below the previous year. On the one hand, this was due to Corona because the IT market contracted steeply. There were two areas particularly affected: digital solutions, also the automotive branch. Positive development in growth areas were able to compensate for the decline in the classic areas, not completely. You can see that COVID-19 also provided positive impetus for digitalization, and that's why our expectations are that we'll stabilize our result this year. There might be a slight decline in the classic IT business, we are forecasting that we'll begin to grow again in those areas. A question about savings in T-Systems in 2018. In the capital market, we had a net reduction of EUR 100 million for 2017 to 2020. These net savings, to receive them, we have to achieve gross savings. These gross savings, which we cited in the capital market, were EUR 0.3 billion or EUR 300 million. In T-Systems, though, achieved greater savings. The indirect costs were down net by EUR 0.3 billion between 2020 and 2021. Another question is on a possible IPO for a special purpose acquisition company. We're not planning any ITO for T-Systems or areas of it right now. Let's start with the topic of the DT3 liability for the brochure. We haven't completed this proceeding yet, there has been a test case. It hasn't been completed yet, the Federal Court of Justice has referred it back to Frankfurt Higher Regional Court. We haven't, as far as the costs of the ongoing proceedings go, we have been reimbursed from the KfW for the costs of the ongoing proceedings. Here's the same question regarding DT3, as I said, it's been sent back to Frankfurt Higher Regional Court. Another question involved litigation from Mr. Oswald with T Share. This involves DT3, which hasn't been completed, I already just gave the answer to this question. It's been referred back to the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court. Another question was how much money we have paid for the online brokerage platforms in Germany, like Check24. That contribution last year was in the middle double-digit millions area. Compared to the previous year, 2019, we were able to decrease it slightly. The amount is always related to the respective product value, the respective product or tariff. Paul Rhode asked about who is in charge of the real estate business and managing that for the company. That's me, and we do this together for the segments as well to optimize our real estate portfolio. You said you have the impression that real estate assets are not used economically. We do see clear potential for improvement here and to develop this portfolio. Also, you asked how we assess the vacant space right now. We always have to make sure that planning increments are made for entire buildings that we can either use ourselves or lease out, but we also see potential for improvement here as well. Another question relates to other services. In 2020, for other confirmation services on EY, we paid EUR 3.2 million for tax advice and EUR 5 million for other services. One shareholder said they would like to record the financial statements conference, and that's not allowed. That's prohibited. With that, I give the floor to Mr. Lehner. Yeah. Thank you very much. This brings us to the last block of questions to address here. One shareholder asked about what measures we'd be taking to increase earnings in the coming year. Well, we have a very strong customer basis, and we're banking the future on keeping our loyal customers so that we can continue to grow with them and offering them an even better Telekom experience. Gaming, MagentaOne, network solutions, IoT, enterprise collaboration tools, digitalization of business processes, more bandwidth and mobile and fixed line. This is all what Deutsche Telekom is doing today in its private business as well as the business area. That is exactly where we're going to be leveraging our assets in the future in sales to customers. For business customers, we want to offer one-stop shopping more with a modern integrated portfolio, and we are also able, through our organization under the Germany segment, well-positioned for this in organizational terms. In the new customer area, we want to grow, especially in the business segment in the USA, where we want traction going forward. We have a modern infrastructure. We are powerful, and that is the key to also have loyal business customers over the long term. Cost reduction is another element of our growth, and that applies especially for the U.S.A., where in the next two years, we will be concentrating on leveraging synergies with Sprint and T-Mobile US. One shareholder asked about the medium long-term strategy for expansion in other business fields. Our networks and telecommunication services are at the core of our value creation, both in the medium and long term. Infrastructure is something good, and that is why you have to stick to your strengths. Our focus in investment will be in this area in 2021 as well. More than EUR 80 billion, EUR 80 to figures will be invested in the operation of our networks. That is where our focal point will be, our thrust. We want to also penetrate business fields that are closely related to our networks, we don't want to go too far from our core competence. What we want is to really stay focused on our strengths and offer infrastructural services. MagentaTV, smart home applications, gaming, these are examples of new business fields that we're interested in. One shareholder asked about customer verification with the online eID identification function. There's a PIN that's used too. We use this in many shops of our partners who are planning electronic personal identifications with a PIN identification for online bookings. In Telekom shops in the future, the eID function on these identification cards will be used without a PIN, with a CAN procedure. Verified workers will be able to read personal identity cards. Parallel to this, we're working on an ecosystem for identification, in which users of different ID systems can place these in encrypted form and use these on a platform. This is part of an initiative of the federal government, for electronic identification. Another question relates to long waiting times for our telephone customer service. We find that unacceptable, because of the closure of a lot of Telekom shops since the lockdown, there's been an enormous increase in telephoning volumes. People used to be able to go to the store, but you can't now, so they call. We've done everything to keep the waiting periods as short as possible, and that we can solve any problems in the first contact. To this end, we have launched a whole package of measures and devoted resources to this, time and money, and that also impacts the waiting time. Right now, the current developments are changing rapidly. In rare cases, it may be the case that waiting times are longer. In these cases, we recommend customers use our call back function. Customers can simply wait for us to call back and we'll try to get back to them as soon as possible. The average waiting time is around 120 seconds right now, which we've arrived at. Before that, it was several minutes, so we've really reduced the customer waiting time. This is attested to by regular consumer tests out there. The traffic light system is green right now for us in this regard. Mr. Primar, you asked about the certification of our services based on criteria for the selection of a certifier and the review of distribution and service partners. The service of Telekom Deutschland is reviewed every year by TÜV Rheinland in accordance with international standards, ISO 9001 and management systems, ISO 27001, and verified on that basis. Criteria are reviews in comparison to all the standards. If a certifier is lost or they're reviewed on the basis of different criteria, things like reliability, and certification was done by the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Zertifizierung von Managementsystemen, DQS. Above and beyond this, Deutsche Telekom and within the group, there's other certification parties working to ensure independence of individual partners. Distribution and service partners are verified by TÜV Rheinland, external partners, or by our compliance department on a regular basis. These are all questions that if you write to us, we can also provide more detailed information on. Florian Flora, a shareholder, is interested in MagentaTV and asks how we want to expand our service. We are developing it in tune with customer needs. That includes the pooling and aggregation of a wide variety of services and providers in the streaming area. That means not only direct access to these services, like through the user interface or the search function, it also means product and price functions, where they can communicate directly. We'll continue to expand partnership streaming to meet the demands of customers. By the way, you've perhaps heard of the deal in the area of football, not only for the European Cup in 2024, we also have the rights to the European Cup and the World Cup. Will MagentaSport continue to acquire TV rights for football and show them exclusively for small football matches? What's the business model in this regard? As I was saying, premium football rights for the Bundesliga in the German market and Champions League were awarded for last year for the next period. The question arises. They are not available for purchase right now. Generally speaking, Deutsche Telekom takes part in auctions of sports rights according to certain strategic criteria. Whether we take part in a tender or not, as our business concept is based on several pillars, in addition to whether it complements our services, in particular the MagentaTV platform. Another question is whether marketing of sports generates revenue, along with the media and range of people that you attract through sports. Those are all part of the equation that we consider when we take part in any tender for sports, I mean, sports transmission rights. Another question was whether we would focus more on MagentaTV in the future and also on public with an offer there. We offer connectivity. Our networks and telecommunications services are at the core of our business. On top of this, we offer select connectivity services, smart home, MagentaGaming, and our networks are something that customers experience. These services strengthen our brand by creating an emotional tie and a good customer experience. That's why spin-offs for this certain product line are not being planned. One shareholder asked what importance new fields like MagentaTV, cloud, and online marketplaces have. First of all, MagentaTV is a very important product for us, and it's an important differentiation in our additional business. We want to be the leading TV platform in Germany and serve our customers with simplicity, the best entertainment. All of this should be as smart as possible and as easily as possible usable. That's MagentaTV. It's growing, still growing, and we think we have a lot of market potential. Today, we have 4 million customers, and there's 40 million households in Germany, we have a lot of potential still. In the private customer area, MagentaCLOUD can be used for photos, music, and other digital online services, and content can be processed there too. We can offer this on all devices. MagentaCLOUD adds to our customer business and adds to customer loyalty. We have to do a little bit more. I think we've neglected it a little bit lately, but we're working on it. MagentaGaming allows video gaming. That's a new business model for us. You can almost see any platform and hardware, mobile or in the fixed network, but it's all cloud-based. This is a new product that we put on the market. We're the first ones to do this, we see huge growth potential here, especially through the real efficiency of networks we have now, like 5G or fiber optics. When will the Disney+ be available through the Magenta product? Disney+ has been available since the 24th of March on the media receiver last year and on the Magenta receiver. There's also a monthly subscription possible, beginning on the 7th of April, another variant is available for a 12-month period for only EUR 5 a month. That option applies to mobile, fixed network, and TV. You can see it's really worth being a long-term customer because you get additional services that others don't have access to. That's a real added value for customers. We see a lot of growth potential through this exclusive offer via telephone. Disney was a big topic over the last year. That's the end of my presentation, Elena. Thank you for listening. That was a great overview, Mr. Höttges. I have some questions that relate to the supervisory board now. Mr. Schröder, you asked whether the applicant, Dr. Jung, has enough experience to work on the Supervisory Board. The Supervisory Board has ascertained that Dr. Jung has enough time and is adequately experienced for her job on the Supervisory Board. Mr. Schmidt from DWS. Thank you for pointing out that Dr. Jung is also a suitable candidate for the Audit Committee. That's what you said. We agree. We think it's good to have a system that is based on rotation in the various Committees. Please refer to page nine of the annual report for further details. In six out of eight Committees, there were changes in staff in terms of the composition of the Committees. How do we continue with the Supervisory Board? Please refer to the annual report to learn more about current appointment periods. Whenever a new member is to be appointed, we look into it in depth in order to refill any vacancies in line with the skills required for the Supervisory Board. Mr. Schmidt, you asked why Dr. Breunig, Mr. Bösinger, and Ms. Kollmann are labeled as independent on the committee. This is based on the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code. According to this code, a Supervisory Board member is deemed to be independent if he or she are independent from the Deutsche Telekom Board and from any shareholder. From the point of view of the employers on the Supervisory Board, this is the case, and we are not aware of any conflicts of interest. If you are referring to the interaction with representatives of the German government, this does not apply here. Mr. Schmidt, you also asked what findings we derived from the specific evaluation of the audit committee. The finding was that the audit committee already works in a very efficient and effective way. At the same time, we identified potential on how to improve even further, we derived relevant action to make the audit committee more efficient. It was asked whether Ms. Kollmann is going to step back from more mandates over the next 12 months. The answer is no, there are no such plans. Mr. Matthes from Deka Investment. Your questions in how far the supervisory board prepared itself to look into the latest EU requirements on taxation and how these requirements are met in our committees. The supervisory board, even today, audits the declarations from the non-financial statement in line with EU requirements for taxonomy and sustainability. With Mrs. Suckale, the supervisory board already has a member who is very skilled in this field, and the supervisory board has appointed her as an expert in this field. In addition to the supervisory board, the audit committee also deals with this subject. When it comes to the audit of the non-financial statement, the supervisory board regularly obtains support from an independent auditing company. Mr. Mathes and Mr. Schmidt with further questions, and Mr. Beckendorf from DSW. You wanted to know what is the current status of your search for new members on the supervisory board. The answer for the new chairman of the supervisory board. As you know, I will leave the supervisory board as chairman next year. We have a structured succession process in place. This has been coordinated with the nomination committee. A proposal for my successor will be submitted in time before the next shareholders meeting, where a decision will be made. I can confirm that we are also taking into account external candidates. A further question. Are you going to make sure that we have equal representation on the Deutsche Telekom committees in the future? Mr. Schmidt asked the same question for the audit committee in particular. Let me repeat, the corporate governance code prescribes that most of the members be independent, but no such rules are in place for the actual committees. According to the shareholder representatives, all of our members are independent, including the members on our committees. Another question from Union Invest. The question was about the future criteria applied to members on the supervisory board. When appointing a successor for the post, we are deciding in line with the relevant codes and requirements. The goal, looking to the international setup of the company, is to make sure that we also have sufficient members with an international background and relevant experience. The declaration on corporate governance online can be used to obtain further details. I would like to point out that it is not enough to not have a German passport in order to demonstrate that you are considered to be international. Another question was whether the supervisory board supports statements made by the board of management. Recap, this was about the request to add additional items to the agenda. The supervisory board did not issue a statement on that. As the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom, I fully support the statement made by the board of management in that context. There was a question on the remuneration report. I already said it this morning. We've got nothing to hide. We are publishing the remuneration report for the supervisory board and the board of management with all the relevant details, in line with the rules of the corporate governance code. Mr. Oswald and Mrs. van der Roten from Union Invest asked a question regarding corporate governance. At Deutsche Telekom, we believe that a good corporate governance is a central management task and the basis for our corporate success. The supervisory board and the board of management have familiarized themselves with the recommendations of the new German Corporate Governance Code, and we are going to apply both national rules and comply with international standards as well. I was pointing out this morning that we are constantly in touch with shareholder representatives and others in the run-up to the shareholders meeting. I myself, as the chairman, also regularly meet up with investors to discuss these things. Mr. Oswald, with regards to the election of supervisory board members, you were asking about the election criteria, and you were suggesting that their qualification is not the only relevant factor. Let me state, first of all, I don't really understand what you mean by qualification. Because qualification, to my mind, comprises all sorts of things, not just the way you're trained, but also your cultural background and your behavior as a human being. Well, with this in mind, we always consider the overall qualification of an individual in order to determine whether they are suitable for the supervisory board or not. No other criteria play a major role. There are specific targets for filling positions on the supervisory board, as I said before. Let me give you a couple of examples, but please also refer to the annual report. Strategic competence, financial competence, controlling competence, innovation competence, sustainability, and social competence. These are factors that play a central role. In addition to that, you should have a speak up mentality and be committed to actively join in. Mr. Oswald, you were interested to learn more about what my ordinary working day looks like. I would like to invite you to see for yourself what it looks like, there is no ordinary workday for me anyway. Due to my tasks on the supervisory board, my working days vary a great deal. Today, for instance, we are holding the shareholders meeting. We will have a meeting to discuss the remuneration system with Mr. Höttges and the other board members. When it comes to staff issues, which are particularly tricky, I often speak to all sorts of different people on the phone. In part, I don't have any typical working day, so to speak. Mr. Oswald asked about the total costs of the annual financial statements in 2020. That was EUR 17 million, of which EUR 15 million for the final audit. Other auditing services, EUR 1 million. Tax consulting, EUR 0. Other services, EUR 1 million. The other individual services are prescribed. Mr. Schmidt from DWS, you asked about the increase in share of phantom shares as a result of our dividend policy. The supervisory board is paid a fixed remuneration with phantom shares, and that's why the dividend policy does not have an influence as suggested by you. Meeting fees. This question cropped up several times. The meeting fee amounting to EUR 1,000 for supervisory board members is at the lower range compared to other companies. Some people are assuming that people are only attending meetings because they are paid this fee. I wouldn't have a problem with including such meeting fees in fixed remuneration, but the way we handle it is in line with market standards anyway. I already talked about phantom shares. There was another question here on meeting fees. It said here, if that's the case, then we have to reject item 10 on the agenda. Let me refer you back to what I was just saying. A question from Fabian Kupfer referred to the number of supervisory board mandates of Mr. Höttges with Daimler. The supervisory board activities of Mr. Höttges outside of Deutsche Telekom are in line with the German Corporate Governance Code. They also help him to even improve his expertise as a member of the supervisory boards of two listed companies. FC Bayern is not to be included in this because it is not a listed company, nor can it be compared to a listed company. One question from Mr. Weidenmüller regarding the remuneration systems, as mentioned in today's agenda, and whether it includes employees as well. The answer is no. We are dealing with the remuneration paid to supervisory board members and the board of management here. Individual components also apply to individual employees in a different form. I already pointed out that one constituent element of our system is that we have an end-to-end structure in place, which is why some elements may turn out to be identical. The question on the election of Dr. Helga Jung for another term. The question was whether we were able to find another suitable lady. Mrs. Jung is a business management expert, and she used to work for Allianz, which means that she has years of experience in terms of national and international management. With her expertise, she continues to be an ideal member for us on the supervisory board. I already said previously that we are glad to have Mrs. Jung on the supervisory board as a member. She proved to be a valuable colleague over the past five years. It is possible to serve on the supervisory board for three terms. She hasn't served for three terms yet, which is why what we are doing now is in line with the rules and regulations. I already commented on meeting fees. Andreas Arlt. You asked whether a committee such as CARE makes sense. We are discussing anything to do with sustainability on the supervisory board as a whole. I already pointed out that in Mr. Suckale, we have a true expert from this field on our committee, and other Supervisory Board members have also gained a lot of experience on sustainability in other companies, which is why the Supervisory Board as a whole is dealing with this quite successfully. A question that is relevant to all of us today: How many participants were attending the meeting at the beginning of Mr. Höttges' speech, as opposed to the beginning of the Q&A? At the beginning of today's AGM, we had 1,050 shareholders or their proxies on our internet dialogue. At the same time, we had around 3,700 accesses to the live stream. By the end of Mr. Höttges' speech, we had 1,000 people on the internet dialogue and around 4,500 people using the live stream. Mr. Höttges, apparently that was a very inspiring speech. Right now, we have 400 people on the internet dialogue, shareholders or their proxies, and 2,900 people accessing or using the live stream. I think that's a great number, and it shows that thankfully, you show a keen interest in this company. Mr. Sitzner, I look at you and I can see a thumbs up. Okay. Let me look at Mr. Höttges and Mr. Illek. Ladies and gentlemen, all questions submitted on the agenda items have been answered. Thank you to all those who submitted questions showing an interest in this company, which is your company. The Q&A session is now closed. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, voting will commence shortly. Under Section 17, Paragraph 2 of the Articles of Incorporation, it is my responsibility as Chairman of this meeting to circulate the type and sequence of the vote. As in previous years, the results of the vote will be determined using the addition method. This means that the yes and no votes will be counted separately and added to determine the number of votes cast. Abstentions are not counted accordingly. The official result of the vote will be determined electronically under the supervision of the notary public. As the shareholders are only represented here today by the proxy holders appointed by the company, vote casting will continue with the sign-off of the votes to be cast by said proxy holders in line with the instructions issued to them, which have been uploaded to the system. The voting instructions indicate for each individual item for how many shares the proxy holders were requested to vote yes or no. By signing off, the proxy holders undertake to cast the votes as laid down in the voting instructions. The proxy holders sign off the votes by placing their signature under the instructions as displayed in the system. The postal or online votes received by the company were registered electronically and will be accounted for in the vote count. In other words, the yes and no votes received by post or online will be added to the yes and no votes of the proxy holders. As for the countermotions, I already mentioned that I shall point out that I will first call the vote on the motions submitted by management. If these are accepted with the majorities needed, the countermotions will be redundant and will not have to be voted upon. Otherwise, we will have to proceed accordingly. We can now proceed to the vote on the management motions regarding agenda items two through 10, and the proposed resolution on agenda item 11 submitted by DSW acting on behalf of and by proxy for BayernInvest. On item two of the agenda, you will be asked to vote on the resolution proposed by the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board, which has been adjusted to reflect the number of shares carrying dividend rights of which I informed you ahead of the Q&A session, just after reading out agenda items two through 11. The proposed resolution is available for inspection in this room. For items three through 10, we will vote on the management motions as shown in the invitation to today's shareholders' meeting, which was published in the Federal Gazette on the 26th of February, 2021. As for agenda item 11, we will vote on the proposal submitt-ed by DSW acting on behalf of and by proxy for BayernInvest, as shown in the amended agenda published in the Federal Gazette on the 3rd of March, 2021. With regard to items three and four, I shall make reference to the prohibition of exercising voting rights pursuant to Section 136 of the German Stock Corporation Law. With regard to item five, I shall point out that there will be separate votes on the appointment of PwC suggested in sub-items A to D. The resolutions on items two to six and items nine and 10 require a simple majority of valid votes cast. The resolutions on items seven to eight require a simple majority of votes cast, and a majority of the capital stock represented in the vote on the resolution. The resolution on agenda item 11 requires a simple majority of the valid votes cast and the capital stock represented in the vote on the resolution. The list of participants has been updated. The updated attendance figure is like this. Addendum to the attendance figure for the shareholders' meeting of Deutsche Telekom AG on the 1st of April, 2021 in Bonn. Attendance or the number of shares for postal votes has changed in the meantime. At the moment, at this shareholders' meeting, we have 3,245,285,340 no-par shares, which corresponds to EUR 8,307,930,470.40, or 68.16% of the capital stock, which consists of 4,761,458,566 amounting to EUR 12,189,334,005.76. In addition, postal votes were cast for 27,766,957 no-par value shares, which will be taken into account for the final vote. Let me sum up. Overall, we have 3,273,052,279 no-par value shares represented in this AGM or through postal votes, which corresponds to 68.74% of capital stock. Let me hand this over to the notary public. The updated list of participants is available for perusal here in the room. I shall point out again that information from the list of participants and on the attendance figure can be accessed via the password-protected internet dialog during the shareholders' meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, you have now, 4:48 P.M. Which means you now have 6 minutes. So 48 plus 7. That means 4:55 P.M. This is the time that you have got to issue, amend or withdraw your postal or online votes, proxies or instructions issued to the proxy holders appointed by the company. You can use the password-protected internet dialog for this purpose. After 4:55 P.M., the votes will be cast by the proxy holders appointed by the company here on site. Let us take a quick break. [Foreign language] Mein Name ist Stefan Haugmann. [Foreig Language] [Foreign Language] Ladies and Gentlemen, let me point out that the time to issue, amend or withdraw your postal or online votes, proxies or instructions issued to the proxy holders appointed by the company will end shortly at 4:55 P.M. Thank you. [Foreign language] [Foreign Language] Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Shareholders. The possibility to issue, amend or withdraw your postal votes or online votes, proxies or instructions issued to the proxy holders appointed by the company ends now. The relevant functions in the password protected Internet dialogue will now be closed. I hereby open the voting procedure and ask the proxy holders appointed by the company to sign off the votes in line with the voting instructions on the motion for resolutions by management on items two through 10 and the motion for resolution on item 11 submitted by the SW acting on behalf of and by proxy for Union Invest. This will take a little while. Please bear with us for a few minutes. We will have a short break. [Foreign language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign language] [Foreign language] [Foreign Language] Have the proxy holders appointed by the companies signed off their votes in line with the voting instructions? Thank you for your signal. That is the case and the votes have been signed off in line with the voting instructions and the voting procedure has ended. Ladies and Gentlemen, the notary will be present. [Foreign Language] Mein Name ist Stefan Haugmann.[Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign language] [Foreign language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign language] [Foreign language] [Foreign language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] [Foreign Language] The shareholders' meeting has approved all management motions under items 2 through 10 with the necessary majority. The proposed resolution on agenda item 11, submitted by DSW on behalf and by proxy for BayernInvest, was rejected. The detailed results of the vote will be published online very soon. Allow me to inform you of the results of the votes on items 2 through 11 of the agenda. Votes on the ordinary shareholders meeting of Deutsche Telekom AG on the 1st of April 2021 in Bonn. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now announce the results on the items 2 to 11 on the agenda. 2 to 10 and 11 on the agenda, item 11 submitted by DSW on behalf of and by proxy for BayernInvest. I will adopt the decisions. The presence was 3,245,285,647 votes. Taking into account 27,801,297 votes submitted by postal vote, which is 68.74%, which is 4,761,456,596 stocks of the share capital. On item 2, the result was as will be shortly shown on the screen. [Foreign Language] Item 2 was approved with 99.86%, giving it the necessary simple majority. [Foreign Language] The dividend payment of EUR 0.60 per share was decided. [Foreign Language] As shown in the management proposal on item two on the agenda, as I already explained to you at the beginning of the meeting before we started the Q&A session. On item three of the agenda, the shareholders submitted their votes on the approval of the activities of the members of the Supervisory Board. [Foreign Language] This motion was approved with 99.70% of the votes, reaching the required simple majority for this resolution. Mr. Höttges, a big thank you to you and your team. Congratulations on this result. That really shows the trust of the shareholders you enjoy. You're beaming now. Well, the vote in favor of the dividend was even higher. It's even better now coming to item 4 on the agenda. [Foreign language] Here the result of the vote is that the motion was approved with a majority of 88.61% of the valid votes cast, which is the necessary simple majority. [Foreign Language] I was only asked to read, not to comment. If I were to comment, I would express my hope that this does not include double votes that are both meant for the compensation system and the independence. All in all, I would like to thank you, 88.61% expressed their trust in the work by the Supervisory Board. On item 5 on the agenda, the results are as follows. [Foreign Language] The result for item 5A is 94.23% of the valid votes cast, which is the necessary simple majority. PwC Frankfurt am Main was appointed external auditor for the fiscal year 2021, and you can find the detailed motion in the invitation to this meeting and the agenda. Thank you very much for giving this vote and for settling this matter that we can now appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers for the next year. [Foreign language] Agenda item 5B was approved with 94.22% of the valid votes cast, reaching the necessary simple majority. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main was appointed external auditor for the interim financial statement and the management report on the basis of the law for the business year 2021. You can see the details concerning this motion under item five in the invitation to this meeting. [Foreign language] Item 5C on the agenda was approved with 94.45% of valid votes cast. This means that the appointment of Ernst & Young GmbH, the Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft Stuttgart, as the external auditor for the interim financial reports in line with the Stock Corporation Act for the first quarter of 2021 was rescinded and PwC, the Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main, was appointed as the external auditor for the review of additional financial statements and reports based on the act for the first quarter 2021. The complete wording of the resolution can be found under item 5C in the agenda published with the invitation. Item 5D on the agenda. [Foreign language] Agenda item 5D was approved with a majority of 94.41% of valid votes cast, reaching the required simple majority. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main was appointed for a possible review of additional interim financial reports for the quarters mentioned in the agenda. The complete wording of this resolution can be found under agenda item 5D in the invitation published in the Federal Gazette. On item six on the agenda. [Foreign language] The agenda item six was approved with 97.89% of valid votes cast, reaching the required simple majority of votes. Dr. Helga Jung is elected as member of the supervisory board and the complete wording of this resolution can be found under item six in the invitation published. We are happy about the trust shown to the supervisory board regarding this Proposal, and Mrs. Jung, we are happy that you stay as a member of the supervisory board, and we are looking forward to good cooperation. Congratulations on this election. I'm sorry that you cannot say anything right now, but we can see that you are talking. On item seven on the agenda. [Foreign Language] Agenda item seven was approved with a majority of 93.46% of the valid votes cast, reaching the necessary simple majority of three-quarters of the represented stock capital. [Foreign Language] There was a resolution on the authorization to acquire and use own shares with possible exclusion of subscription rights and any right to tender shares, as well as the option to redeem the own shares. The full wording can be found under item 7 on the agenda as published in the invitation. We would like to thank you for the flexibility that can be used if it was necessary. Thank you very much. This is not needed, of course. On item 8 of the agenda, the results are shown on screen. [Foreign Language] The result of this vote is a majority of 93.85% of valid votes cast, which is the necessary majority of three-quarters of the represented stock capital and a simple majority of votes. This is referring to the authorization to use equity derivatives to acquire own shares with possible exclusion of any right to tender shares. The full wording can be found under item 8 in the agenda published. Thank you very much for this resolution as well. Item 9 on the agenda. [Foreign language] The resolution was adopted with 72.7% of valid votes cast, reaching the necessary simple majority of votes. This is the resolution on the approval of the compensation systems of the board of management members. The full wording can be found under agenda item nine in the invitation. Let me say very clearly that it is not in line with the expectations that we had when we developed the compensation system. What we do about this resolution, that is not fully satisfactory to us, and I think that the component of the extraordinary bonus payments has contributed to this decision, and we will review the matter. I still see this as a very clear message that we now have to assess. Item 10 on the agenda. [Foreign language] The resolution was adopted with 99.15% of valid votes cast, reaching the necessary simple majority of votes. That was the resolution on item 10, and the full wording can be found under item 10 in the agenda made public with the invitation. Here, this is a higher value, and this concludes the votes on the agenda items 2 through 10 of the agenda, they were all adopted. This means that we no longer have to vote on the countermotions. It is not necessary to vote on the countermotions. On item 11 of the agenda, this is the proposed resolution submitted by DSW on behalf of and by proxy for BayernInvest, as published in March in the Federal Gazette. Only 45.51% of the valid votes cast were in favor of the resolution proposed. This means that the proposed resolution by DSW on behalf of and by proxy for BayernInvest has not received the necessary majority, but was rejected by the shareholders' meeting. This change in the articles of incorporation will not be made. This makes it easier for us, but the result is quite tight. Much on the results. Ladies and gentlemen, we have now reached the end of our agenda. I would very much like to thank you also on behalf of the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board for your participation in this year's virtual shareholders' meeting. Again, I deplore that it was a virtual meeting. I really have fond memories of our physical shareholders' meetings, and I really hope that we will soon meet again for the next shareholders' meeting. I would like to thank those employees who helped in the preparation and organization of this shareholders' meeting and have been instrumental in ensuring the smooth running of events. What was missing are our trainees, who normally collect votes. Next year, hopefully, they will be here again, and we'll have a full hall. In conclusion, may I point out that the next ordinary shareholders' meeting of Deutsche Telekom AG is scheduled to take place on April 7th, 2022 in Bonn. Dear shareholders, we hope we will then be able to welcome you again in person. Thank you to all of you, and as pointed out at the beginning, I have to wait for five minutes before I formally close the meeting for legal reasons. I wish you nice holidays. Take care, stay healthy, and thank you very much for the interest you showed in the company. Mr. Höttges said it's as if our customers become our fans. For the shareholders, we know that you are already our fans. I hope you will stay. Thank you.