Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call of freenet AG. At our customers' request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulty hearing the conference, please press star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. May I now hand you over to Mr. Vilanek, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Warm welcome this morning for our first half year results 2021. Warm welcome to everybody. We get started. As always, you have hopefully our presentation in front of you, or you can follow it on the screen. We are happy and proud to present a very strong performance for the first six months of 2021. I think my headline is that the transformation that we have entered into a couple of years ago finally leads into growth again. We see a very positive development on all adjacent and TV and media businesses. The combination with this also strong and kind of rehabilitating mobile business, is driving the performance. Not only that, it also drives the fact that, as you have all seen from the release, we are also comfortable to increase the prognosis for the full-year. Going into some detail, the total subscriber base of full committed contracts is growing by almost 200,000 year-over-year, 190,400 to be precise. The EBITDA is on a level of EUR 222.3 million as of 30th June, 2021, a growth of plus EUR 8.4 million, mainly in absolute terms growing from the TV and media business. As a layer, having a stable mobile business and free cash flow is also going up, and that is kind of cleared from the Sunrise dividend and related interest payments, and Ingo Arnold will give more details on this. What were the main topics that kept us busy over the last six months? Well, retail was suffering from the lockdown, but recovery is visible for the last two months. In June, we were already back up in almost normal terms. Nevertheless, it's great that our retail independent partners have given us a very good award on our performance. We have launched the first sustainable product line with GRAVIS. Networks is our, for many years, our internal brand. We have added green LTE, which is now sustainable product. Sustainability is not only a buzzword, it's something which we will also show in the second half of this year in a broader scale. As already mentioned, in July, we've seen a regular performance in all our retail channels doing really great again after the long lockdown. On the TV and media side, I think the key decisions that were made were, one was on exiting. We have decided to stop the full ownership on our own network. Turned out the technology squeeze over the past five years showed that we will now be able to run our own network on certainly fully leased lines, but even more efficient than to run our own ones, and this will be in place from early 2022. The other thing, what we've seen is that Media Broadcast is gaining more and more of these DAB+ licenses, not only the national one, but also on a federal level of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hamburg, and Saarland. Also their B2B business is doing properly. They also see some first indications of service contracts on 5G campus and like services. On a group level, the share buyback continues. We have so far spent about EUR 75 million, about 5% of the shares held as of end of July were in our own ownership. Once again, Ingo will give some more details. We have done, obviously, the dividend payout. Overall, also on the pandemic side, I think we've done well. Give you a flavor. We have had in total 108 cases from the beginning. We have only had one, a bit more severe case, and even this person's recovered. We have vaccinations at all locations. We have made an offer to all our employees to be vaccinated. If we go back to the day-to-day numbers, as always, we break it down on the next couple of pages. An overview, postpaid growing, the pure app-based tariff plan significantly growing, VoIP growing as well, and on freenet TV. We go, as I said, in more details on the following pages slows down its customer losses, nevertheless makes more EBITDA and profit on the remainder ones. Page number seven, you can see the high margin mobile customer overall development year-over-year growth of 210,000 or 3.3%, even in these rather difficult limited quarters of the pandemic and the uncertainty around it. We were able to grow once again on a quarterly basis. We're very happy about that. The non-retail, retail remains at the typical level. It's about 60% is non-retail, 40% is retail. It has come down year-over-year. Certainly, XP accelerated, and I would expect for Q3 and four a slightly different ratio as we can see here. The positive thing is that captive channels is still growing. Nevertheless, I have to admit that also this number I expect for Q3 and Q4 look a bit different, due to the fact that one driver was certainly Media Saturn being under specific pressure, and it also has dramatically recovered from the reopening. I expect this number, the 27%, to go up again at least a bit. On freenet TV, we keep saying that we run the company based on EBITDA and specifically gross margin. At the end of the day, EBITDA, you can see here, in a comparison, EBITDA from first six months, 2020 to 2021, we had almost 50% growth based on the 2020 numbers. You can also see down there, and we want to be super transparent here, that the quarterly losses, if you want to say so, are going down. In absolute terms, it was EUR 33,000 in Q1, and now it's EUR 23,000. It's not only a percentage point, but also in absolute terms, doing really, really well. On the right-hand side, we have listed three dots around the B2B business. One was the original DAB+ platforms, which I've already mentioned. The second one is, once again, we've won the Bundesliga transportation of the signals to the main channels, which is a quite prestigious thing and creates trust in the market that we are able and capable to run technical quite challenging things. The 5G campus that we have opened close to Berlin has had its first proof of concept running during the European Championship, the 5G connectivity for the headquarter of the national team. Next Page number nine, which is waipu. Once again, you can see here that we've done a good proportion of growth once again. I think Q2 did really well. We know from last year that Q3 is always a bit the challenging period. I think we're going to see the same again this year. Looking at the July and mid-August numbers, it's just a result of summer period, low advertising from our side, but also low interest in motion pictures, entertainment overall. In total, we're really comfortable with the development. We are already here, mentioned before that we go for a good balance on growth and profit. We could certainly be more aggressive in growth, but that would lead into more aggressive offers, and we think it is more appropriate to do straightforward offers, no long free trial periods, et cetera. These numbers are therefore very solid and will remain on that level. If I look personally on the second half of the year, on mobiles, we are about to change the internal organization even more directed to customer lifetime value. We are reorganizing the tasks, even within the executive board. I myself will focus on what we call customer interaction, so it's anything that is directed and directly to the end consumer, being telemarketing, customer care, and sales. Antonius Fromme is doing a new unit, or focusing on a new unit, which we call customer lifetime development. It's not only about the product lifetime, which was in the past kind of the key KPI. We are trying to form an entire basket of products for the customer and market it even more professional to increase share of wallet. We will also most likely, in the next presentation in 3 months' time, also show how we do that on a campaign level. Retail is back up and running, and we foresee a stable development within the lines of our existing guidance. On the right-hand side, TV and media, we see a good development on our radio business and expect more ad sales in the second half of the year. waipu.tv will launch its first own branded waipu.tv Stick. This stick will replace the existing remote control in the household, adapting to what the Germans are used to. You press one and you get the first national program. You press a waipu button, you press a waipu button, you press a Netflix button, and so on and so forth. I think that's going to be very interesting to see how it is taken up by the end consumers. To be honest, the limiting factor not doing the launch right now is the chipset availability, we will launch it by the end of September. Having said all that, going back to the initial statement of transformation delivering also on financial KPIs on Page 11. This is how we do adjust our guidance and our prognosis for the full-year. Postpaid development, I think you've seen where we are. We think it's going to be a moderate growth. We see on the freenet TV, a slowdown of the losses, but it will remain a moderate decrease from the 900,000 of the past year. That still remains the case, showing the EBITDA development, you can see that this is not impacting free cash flow or EBITDA at all. On waipu, we see a solid growth. I would even say a significant growth, seeing now 645 already by the half of the year. My personal ambition would be going to 700 by the end of the year. If we look at the EBITDA, the existing guidance was EUR 415 million-EUR 435 million. We adjusted in two dimensions. One is that we think it is going to be definitely beyond EUR 430 million. Our personal feeling now is it is going to be on the upper end of the new guidance, EUR 430 million-EUR 445 million. I personally think it is going to be closer to EUR 440 million. We have slightly decreased the span, but we have definitely raised it, and it is going to be beyond the existing former EUR 435 million. The same goes for the free cash flow. Still a bit more vague than the EBITDA, depending on a couple of things that might impact it. Overall, also an increase, and an outcome beyond the level that the existing upper end of the guidance was published. Having said that, I am very happy once again about the development. I think it pays back the passion, the readiness to transformation, the positive mood across the entire company, and I am very happy that it now also becomes visible in the numbers. Saying the numbers, I hand over to Ingo for more detail. Yeah. Good morning, everybody. I start with the big picture on Page 12. I am very happy to show such a positive development. If we look into the group revenues, it is a stabilization in comparison of Q2 2021 to Q2 2020. We saw that the losses, what we had to show in the first quarter, are no longer in the books here because retail is back, as Christoph already said. On a group gross profit level, you see that operations are very stable, and I am happy about it. If you put into consideration that last year we still had the gross profit effect from freenet Digital. If you put this out, the gross profit in the second quarter 2020 was EUR 208.3, and now we have a gross profit of EUR 210.3. Gross profit up, revenue stable, and definitely group EBITDA up. We see a quarterly EBITDA here of EUR 113.5 million. If you compare it with the adjusted figure of Q2 2020, it is an increase of nearly 4%. Having said that, I move to Page 13, where you can see the development in the mobile business. Yes, definitely the headline, what you see here is totally correct. It's rock solid, and the generation of free cash flow is still very high out of this business. Revenues are slightly up on a service revenue level again here in the postpaid business. On a gross profit level, we are slightly above the figure from Q2 2020. It is a positive development compared to the first quarter where it was slightly down. Gross profit up and on the EBITDA side, a similar picture where you see that the EBITDA is up and the level on which we are is very stable because there was the EUR 92 million level in the first quarter, and it is the same in the second quarter. Moving to some separate KPIs of the mobile segment here on Page 14. Christoph already talked you through the customer base development, and I think it is very important to put into consideration the growth here in FUNK and FLEX tariff, the app tariff, what we have, because these tariffs are also very profitable, and the profitability definitely is comparable to what we see in the normal postpaid business. On the ARPU side, yes, we see that there is a stabilization after the losses, especially from roaming in the last quarter. We see a normalization here. The pity for us here is that the gain in roaming revenues does not give us any upside in EBITDA. I think we're definitely happy that we see the stabilization in the ARPU here, and this is also something what we guide for the whole year. Digital lifestyle revenues, strongly, significantly up here on a quarterly level, more than 10%, 14.4% up in a quarterly comparison. We are very happy that we have here a lot of options, 24-month contracts also here. This helps, and retail is back, this helps in addition. Moving to the TV and media segment, Page 15. The revenue up to EUR 69 million here in the quarter, which is comparably to what we saw in the first quarter. A gross profit on a level again of EUR 44 million. If you compare it with the last four quarters here, you see that this is something like the new normal. I think this is something what I forecasted already in the last analyst call here. On an EBITDA level, we see a significant increase here because also some of the cost measures and cost savings were working very properly here. Looking into the divisions of the media segment on Page 16. What we see here in freenet TV, all-in, an EBITDA increase of EUR 3.5 million. It doubles the development from the first quarter. In Media Broadcast B2B business, we see not such a strong development. This has to do with the new initiatives, what Christoph was talking about. We started these initiatives, and we had some, let me say, starting costs here to do the businesses and to close the contract. We will see the positive effect in the following quarters then. On waipu.tv, we see a continuously move in the right direction. Now our EBITDA is EUR 5.4 million higher than last year. Still, the development each single month generates a positive EBITDA here. For the whole year, we expect something like an EBITDA of around EUR 5 million, what we already forecasted. Moving to one excursus, how we called it here. This is the impairment of the fiber optics network. This right of use, what we capitalized when we bought EXARING in 2015. I think what we did in 2015 and the balancing was totally incorrect because that time the situation was different and the value of the network was much higher than it is today with the environment which has totally changed. What is possible today? Today for us, it is possible to buy the network capacity out there in the market, and the operating costs all in for us are lower than for the network, what we had before here. I think we already discussed it in the last quarters, so it should not be any surprise to you. I think it is the consequence here. What we did in the balance sheet and what was necessary is to depreciate here the right of use to zero, and this had a negative effect of EUR 30 million. No cash effect, definitely not. I think in the long run, it should be more positive than negative for our results. On Page 18, you see the free cash flow, which is significantly up here. It is corrected by the Sunrise payments. What we received last year, we received a dividend of EUR 46 million in the second quarter of 2020. This is falling away. On the other side, we did not have that many interest payments, which was EUR 5.6 million in the first half of 2020. All in, change in working capital, which is EUR -20.4 million, better than last year. Tax payments on the level of last year. CapEx, slightly higher. Some investment in digital radio here. We are not stopping any investments here. We do our business even on the back of the pandemic. No changes here. On the lease side, something comparable to what we saw last year. Interest payments here, slightly up. The reason is that in the figure of 2020, we do not show the interest payments for Sunrise. If we would correct it, then the interest payment last year would have been EUR 23 million, and then you definitely see, and this is what you would expect, a reduction of interest payments. All in, a very strong development of the free cash flow. Therefore, what we did for the rest of the year and what we did with our guidance is that we increased the guidance here. What we do forecast here on a quarterly basis to date is something like EUR 50 million-EUR 60 million. I think there were some disruptions last year, where the third quarter was very high. This was extraordinary because we got some payments which were not expected earlier. For this year, I do expect a stable development for the last two quarters, and I do expect something between EUR 50 and EUR 60 million a quarter. Moving to the balance sheet figures on Page 19. Since we sold the Sunrise stake, it looks very strong here. A equity ratio, even after the dividend payment of 41.3%. A leverage of 1.9. If you only look into the bank leverage, how we call it here, it is 1.0. At the end, I would like to come back to the share buyback program. Christoph already mentioned that EUR 60 million here are still open in the buyback program. If you see the pace, how we do the buyback, I think, yes, we are totally on track. We do still expect to spend the whole EUR 135 million, what we announced. I think if we do it in the pace how we do it today, this would work during the year. Yes, it is on track and the share buyback is ongoing, and I'm optimistic that we reach the whole volume. Okay, that's from my side. Thanks a lot. Now, I think we are open for your questions. Ladies and gentlemen if you would like to ask a question please press zero one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it is your time to speak you can dial zero two to cancel your question. If you are using the speaker today, please lift your handset before making your selection. One moment please for the first question. The first question is from Joshua Mills, Exane. Your line is now open. Hi, guys. Thanks very much for taking the question. Just two from me. The first is the standard one on mobile competitive environment. I know there's been some more sub-brand activities in Vodafone this quarter, but if you could comment on how you see the pricing environments out there and potentially as well over the last couple of months into the third quarter, that'd be great. The second one was just a bit of a follow-up on the EXARING write-down. I guess my question is, why has the value of this asset dropped at a time when the fiber to the home assets generally are attracting more interest from third parties? I understand that it may be simpler for you to use a wholesale deal going forward to provide services for waipu, but are there any other usages you could look to for the EXARING business? Lastly, could you just confirm your economic ownership of that fiber asset and what it will be used for going forward? Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Well, I think overall, there is not much activity on the competitive landscape side. I think you've seen the numbers in Deutsche Telekom. They just remain to be the premium offering. They don't fool around with pricing, which remains their key weapon. Vodafone has launched their SIMon mobile Which is its own tariff plan. Far, we understand it is that they felt that they don't do Congstar, they don't do klarmobil like we do. They felt that they need a second brand on that level. A personal comment, I think it is a super smart idea that they have implemented the fact that the price for the end consumer is a result of where this individual was before as a network. I think that's a very smart idea, it is rather difficult for the individuals, because from our own research and from the day-to-day life in the shops, we know that people are not fully aware of where they come from. It's difficult for them to understand whether they're going to pay EUR 8.99, EUR 9.99, EUR 11.99 or EUR 14.99. For those of you that have not seen the tariff plan, it's like, well, it's always the same data ratio included, but it depends on whether you have been a Telefónica customer, mobilcom-debitel customer, Telekom customer, Vodafone customer. I think it's rather difficult, we don't see them a lot in the market. We've seen a release, we don't see big campaigns, we do not realize any pressure at any end. Convergence is still the main bet from Vodafone as well as Telekom. We all know that Srini Gopalan from Deutsche Telekom has done that successfully in many other countries. It also shows that it's more difficult in Germany. They did a couple of campaigns. They also were visible with MagentaTV, for example, on new release TV sets. All the numbers that we have heard of behind the curtains were also okay, maximum okay. I would call them rather disappointing. I think that is on that end. The other thing that we've seen is that first time, at least to my knowledge, Ralf Dommermuth from United Internet said that he believes that he's going to be ready with first offering on his own network at the turn of 2022 to 2023, which sounds to me that it will be very locally at the day of his obligations, but it will only change the market, if at all, or has an impact on the market, if at all, in 2023. In that sense, I guess, working under stable conditions and being focused on good customer management is the name of the game for any of the players. To your second questions on the fiber network, we have to go back five years ago when we acquired EXARING and we have thought about how this entire venture would work out. One of the founders or founding partners was the owner of that network, and he had his shares for the usage of the network for 10 years, free of charge, except for maintenance and electricity, et cetera. That was the deal. Back then, fiber network across the country was rather limited. For the quality of service in IP, which we thought is necessary in order to compete with satellite and cable, we felt it's necessary to have that network. That fiber network capacities technology has kind of made a single fiber line being 70 x more competitive than back six years ago. I'm sure you are familiar with the technology that has enabled this. This means that we owned a fiber duct and two micro ducts for ourselves, and we couldn't use the capacity at all, and it was not foreseeable that we would use it the next couple of years, even though we are growing. Still, technology acceleration is much faster. We've certainly looked into other deployments of it. The original contract did not allow us dark fiber and other applications. It would be TV limited and games. We had the option to buy the entire network with these 14,000 km of two micro ducts and then get the freedom to do anything on our own. We had the choice of doing either the one or the other. The investment and even a co-investment with third party in the fiber turned out not to be quite feasible for our type of asset light and more short-term type of business model. We are not an infrastructure player at all. We have ruled out that option. Then it became clear that we need to revalidate the value of the fiber network with its maintenance and running cost versus the capacity that you can lease in the market right now. I think overall, that has just changed. The connectivity fiber to the home has nothing to do with that network. It's a process of the last, to be honest, 18 months, with all validations, including third-party validations of the options to buy, to resell it, to combine forces. It turned out that this one is the absolute best solution because we remain to be focused on what we do best, B2C business and not going into infrastructure. Thanks. That's really clear. Maybe just to clarify then the last question was, the economic state that you have in, firstly, EXARING, and then secondly, waipu.tv at the moment. Could you just confirm what that is after all of this discussion? Yeah. That is now set. Is it 71%? No, it's 65%. 65%. Sorry. 65%. For both assets, effectively. Yeah. It's the same. I mean, waipu is just a product of EXARING. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Great. Thanks very much. The next question is from Polo Tang, UBS. Your line is now open. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. My first question is really just about the guidance. The midpoint of your EBITDA guidance only suggests around about +1.5% EBITDA growth in the second half, after you've done +3.9% in the first half. Can you clarify if there are any headwinds to watch out for in the coming quarters, or are you simply being conservative? The second question is really just on EXARING. Can you clarify what's happening in terms of the CapEx and OpEx impact in terms of moving over to lease lines from 2022? Can you clarify which network you're going to be using going forward? Is it Deutsche Telekom? Is it Versatel, or is it somebody else? My third question is really just a bigger picture question in terms of mobile. How important is ownership of shops and how important is your partnership agreement with MediaMarktSaturn? I'm just asking because, if you look at your mobile business, over Q1 and Q2 of this year, it was very resilient, and you still saw very solid mobile net adds. Can you migrate more of your business online and be less reliant on stores and shops? Are stores still an important element in terms of supporting the online business? If you may just talk about that would be great. Yeah. Thanks for these questions. I got to take the one on retail and maybe on the fiber technology. Ingo will explain the financials again. On the retail, I summarize retail in our own shops, even MediaMarktSaturn. I think what we've learned and established and taken benefit of is that on retail, this is a different target group. That's people that want to talk to somebody. They don't want to do research online. They don't want to compare. They don't want to try to figure out which price comparison is the correct one. These are people that feel more comfortable going into a shop, having an individual in front of them, talking to this individual, and trying to better understand what the right choice for the individual is. This is also our USP, our proposition. If you enter our shop, you have all the networks and not a single one. Would you go to a single-branded shop? Obviously, they will sell you the network that is part of their name. That is our proposition. This proposition remains a profitable one. The major difference is two things. One is the prices are less comparable than online. The second is that based on these non-comparable prices, the margins tend to be better, and online, it's a highly competitive field. If we change a single price or a single offer, we do an extra, we reduce the initial fees, we change, we give something on top, we allow a late payment. All these kind of promotions that are run online, they kind of are copy-pasted by any of our competitors within a second. It's basically a competitive game of robots fighting each other. Against all the claims from who else, want to talks about it, online is not cheaper than retail if you do retail properly. We don't do flagship stores in the high street. We don't do 400 sq m marketing shops in pedestrian zones. We do a very tight and brutal, strict measurement on each and every of the locations on a monthly basis. Whether we cover the cost, whether we including recruiting, training, et cetera. We only run shops who at the end of the day are profitable. The major difference from a customer experience and also from what I call customer lifetime value is that when we have somebody in a shop, they typically take one or two options on top of their tariff plan. If they take a mobile handset they most likely take a scratch protector, they take a cover, et cetera. The margin on those kind of accessory products is way higher than, at the end of the day, we can do much more than we could do online. Having said that, it's a clear combination and a clear strategy of omni-channel. We will remain to be working on retail. We are super convinced that this is a, as we know it from the numbers, that is a profitable channel. You have to do it as consequent, as analytically as you do it in online, then it absolutely makes sense. It's also, as a matter of fact, for our big partner, Media-Saturn. There it's the same. If you do it strict and consequent and with daily measurement and with incentives for the shop reps, et cetera, it's a profitable business. We will not let go. A quick one on the so-called new network of EXARING. That is not a network we go onto Deutsche Telekom or we go onto Versatel. It's we need long distance connections between the big cities, between our data centers and the big cities to the peering points. That may, in one or the other case, be Deutsche Telekom, that may be completely unknown ones. In part, it's even our old partner who still is offering it to us, now on a different contractual level. It's not that we rely on any individual, but we lease long distance, and we do the peering at the local level, still running everything from our data management and from our own data center. In that sense, the only difference is in the past we had one single partner, and now we have about a dozen. That's the difference, but it's still our own network. It's not that we are on the line where thousands of others and suddenly bottlenecks would appear at any end. It's still our own network, but it's kind of a jigsaw puzzle of individual pieces instead of one single ownership and one single partner. Yeah, therefore, because you asked about the CapEx, there will be no change in the CapEx to what we saw before from this. Then you asked about the guidance and how conservative it could be for the second half of the year and what headwinds we may do expect here for the second half. I think on an operational side, from all what I see today, I do not expect any headwinds. Therefore, yes, the guidance or the midpoint of my guidance could look a little bit conservative. On the other hand, and we discussed it in different quarters now, I think on the cost side, we still would like here to be on the safe side. What we saw in the first half of the year were some money what we get from the government for this short-term work. This was not there in the second half of 2020, it will also not be, hopefully, in the second half of 2021. What is still open is the development of bad debt. The situation is still very positive, very good. The payment behavior of the customers is much better than before. Comparable to the second half of 2020, in that time, the behavior already was that good. I do not expect any big headwinds, but I'm still a little bit cautious on the cost side, what will happen in the second half. On the operational side, and I think this is the important message here, I do not see any headwinds which are part of the guidance here. Thanks. The next question is from Ulrich Rathe, Jefferies. Your line is now open. Thank you. I'd like to, first of all, clarify a comment in the results report where you talked about help from lower bad debt allowances for receivables. Is there any release of the provisions you have taken for this, in this, or is it simply that the ongoing sort of natural allowances that you book are simply lower without releases of what you've booked in the past? Second question is, the freenet TV subscriber losses. You talked about the stabilization within a couple of months at the time of the Q1 results. If I look at consensus estimates for this negative number, a decline of this customer base until all eternity in market expectations now. Could you clarify what you think about the longer term there? Do you think that that base will actually stabilize without a negative number in front of the net adds over the foreseeable future? If yes, how do you intend to drive that? Is it simply petering out the price increase, or do you think you will continue to raise prices and will accept the customer loss for the benefits that you described in the raised prices last time? My last question, if I may, is not entirely clear on what you expect for the postpaid net adds in the second half. You sort of referred to guidance. Does it mean that you expect these net adds to accelerate versus the first half, or do you think what you've seen now is more or less representative what you think might happen in the second half? I think in the report you're talking about gearing up for additional campaigns, which would suggest that you expect an acceleration, but I just wanted to confirm that. Thank you. Thank you, Ulrich. I could start with your first question. None of the provisions, what we built in the fourth quarter 2020 are released. We still have these provisions of EUR 5.6 million in the books. To the postpaid net adds, I think what we guide is a moderate growth. I think what we are seeing at the moment, in our eyes, is a moderate growth. I think maybe there are some positive surprises in the first quarter and the Christmas business, what we do not see at the moment. What I would expect from today's point of view is something like a comparable development in the upcoming quarters here. Your question about our expectation. I think we have a guidance out for 2021 now. We just started the budget process for 2022. I do not expect any decreases in EBITDA from today's point of view, but this is a little bit early and it is not as strong as a guidance and you may understand it, Ulrich. I think you will get a new guidance, but, I do not see any signs from today's point of view why it should be lower than what we see this year. That's clear. Can I just follow up the question on the freenet TV customer intake? There seems to be a bit of a disconnect in terms of what you're saying that you expect the customer address to sort of stabilize compared to market expectations that it was negative for until 2025. I was wondering, would you sort of say that. Well, we look at this on a daily basis, obviously, but we report it on quarterly. We see now a slowdown in churn, or let's call it attrition. I would prefer the word attrition. Also in summer now it looks that it slows down. Still, we do believe that midterm, this is going to go down because people are moving, people identify new technology, IPTV, et cetera. We ask all the people that are leaving the service, what is the driving force and so on and so forth. It's technology only. They're very satisfied with the product, but then they realize that they could do it on IP. The majority actually goes to IP. That is a result of better connectivity and bigger speed allowances and offerings. In that sense, I would still believe that over the next three, four years, it will step by step go down, but it will remain on a very high EBITDA contribution level on the one-hand side, and sooner or later we will start to cannibalize ourselves and move these customers into our own IP services. I think in my operational role, I think this more as a total customer development and not so much as a, at the end of the day, is it 20,000 here or an IP and 20,000 less on freenet TV, but are we making more money in total with the customer base. I think it might look a bit contradicting, but midterm certainly this will step by step go down. I think, when we talked to you and your colleagues, we still said that by the end of this year, it could well be another minus 40,000 or so going more to 800. Still EBITDA would be 50% higher than last year. Certainly we also know from the last price increase that the impact on churn was very minor. Once again, not predicting it, but there is a toolbox, being named price increase, which we could deploy anywhere in 2022 again. Save the gross margin, the EBITDA contribution for even longer. Perfect. Thank you very much. The next question is from Martin Hammerschmidt, Citi. Your line is now open. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two on the TV segment, if I may. On the B2B business. You have won the tender to broadcast the Bundesliga and the 2. Bundesliga. Could you give us a sense of what that contract contributes to your EBITDA per year? I remember, you expect a EUR 10 million step-up by 2023 from the DAB+ investment. Is that still valid? I think that was versus 2020. The second question is on waipu. The customer growth in the last two quarters has been below 40,000, and some of that might well be due to less marketing and hence the EBITDA growth. Could you help us understand how you want to steer that business in the future? At what point should we expect customer growth to accelerate? Is that sort of EUR 30K, EUR 40K per quarter a good proxy run rate? Maybe related to that, I think in the couple of quarters ago, you said that roughly 1 million customers would equal a double-digit EBITDA. Do you expect that by 2023, or since you would spend less on marketing, maybe even by 2022? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Let's start with the waipu.tv thing. We're doing about 30-40 this quarter. As I said in my statement, I think we could be more aggressive, but then we would waste money. We are very detailed. We have a very daily detailed monitoring. Majority of customers come online and social media. We try not to overspend and manage customer, in that sense, product life cycle contribution. I think could we go up to 50 a quarter right now? Yes, we could. It would damage the profitability, and this is a balance. This is how we manage it today. Second part of your question was, where is the tipping point where this could go hockey stick or much faster? All of us, we've known each other for many years, and we are not beating around the bushes. That's the question that I have, and that is the question that I ask my team every day. What is the tipping point where suddenly we should open the gateway and blow the money in and grab the customers? I cannot disclose. We have numbers from MagentaTV promotions. We have comparable numbers, what we did with Samsung and what they did. Fact is today struggling with the same thing, a high stickiness of individuals to their old remaining technology, the addicted to the old remote control. I think the good thing is that IPTV and the access through fiber or VDSL or whatever you name it, is becoming more and more present in the market, more and more present with individuals. They do understand that this is a real alternative, but nobody is really taking heavy benefits, and the uptake is still minor. The fact that this Nebenkostenprivileg will drop and all these things contribute to it. I think the, how can I say? The name of the game is to be ready when it is opening and then to boost. I think that is definitely what we do. If we suddenly feel that uptake is going up, people do understand it, the adoption rate is increasing, then we will certainly be there and ready to spend more money. As I said, I think you are going to go close or slightly beyond the 700,000 this year. That would be my target. We will not save money in order to show higher profitability. On the run rate level with 700,000, we would already be double-digit million on a pure run rate with the EBITDA. The second one on the Deutsche Bundesliga, we cannot disclose anything around that because it's a single contract partner. If we would disclose anything about gross margin contribution, we basically disclose contractual details and would even enable our contract opposite party to nail us and to change the numbers with the next round of negotiations. I don't want to do that. Okay. Thanks very much. The next question is from Yemi Falana, Goldman Sachs. The line is now open. You can't really store stuff in the gym, but there's lockers on the seventh floor. No, you have to book a time for the gym. Mr. Falana, your line is now open. You can ask your question. I think you'd have to. Morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just on MSR, your performance in the quarter was really strong, and I was just hoping to get some clarity on your thoughts over whether ARPU could stabilize through the course of the year. I know since lockdown has unwound, you've seen some benefits from increasing data top-ups, do you think that trend is going to persist? Secondly, on shareholder returns, seems like there's some growing balance sheet capacity within the business. Do you see scope for kind of raising the buyback that you've laid out so far? Thank you. Good morning, Yemi. Thanks for your questions. Yes. I think we saw this ARPU stabilization. You are correct. I was commenting it. Yes. I think since the beginning of the year, we expect something like an ARPU stabilization. I do not expect anything more. As you know, ARPU is a n important indicator for our business, but not as important as, for example, for the networks. This is what you can see. I think our profitability is fine, even with a ARPU which is not growing. Yes, I think a stabilization could be possible, but I would also not be expected if it is EUR 0.20, EUR 0.30 below the level of last year. I think we have to see how roaming will develop in the rest of the year. It is still a question how business traveling will develop and so on, if it will really pick up. I think there are some open ends, but all in, I still do expect something like a stable development of the ARPU. In terms of shareholder return, I think there's a clear message out there at the moment. We would like to invest the EUR 135 million in the share buyback program. I think we are good on track to realize the whole volume up to the end of the year. I think then at the end of the year, my expectation is not that it will be possible to buy back 10% of the shares with this volume. There would be a small room to do more, but I do not expect something like this. What I would expect is that we ask the next AGM for another 10%. I think we have to decide during 2022 if we do a follow-up or not. On the dividend, I think the policy is clear. We promised to pay out 80% of the free cash flow. With the increase of the guidance, something like EUR 1.50. Yes. This is something which is, I think, part of the consensus. This is something what I would also expect from today's point of view. It is linked to the free cash flow, and therefore, I think we have to wait how the full-year free cash flow will look like, and then we will publish what the dividend will be. I think we stick to the policy what we have. No surprises expected during the year. Thank you. Very helpful. Perfect. The next question is from Adam Fox-Rumley, HSBC. Your line is now open. Thank you very much. I have one question on TV, which is a bit of a follow-up to some earlier ones. You mentioned in your presentation the stable TV gross margin over the last year or so, but you've seen quite a nice step up in TV EBITDA. If we annualize the Q2 number, we get to about the EUR 100 million of contribution that we were talking about last quarter, and I'm just wondering if there's any reason, kind of not to do that, really. It seems to me like one big area of uncertainty for the company is the extent to which that profitability increase can continue. The second question was just on sustainability. In your prepared remarks, you mentioned there was a bit more to come on it in the second half, and also that you'd launched a tariff there. I wondered if there was anything more you could say about that. Thank you. Adam, thanks for your questions. For the first one, the stable TV development. This is something what I would expect, and your forecast does not look far away. I think the only question is what we do with the marketing expenses, especially in the last quarter, because we were saving some marketing money in the last 12 months. I think we have to decide what we will do. I would not officially forecast the 100, but yes, it looks reachable. The second question. I would confirm that I think that is definitely the case. On the sustainability aspect, we are thinking about launching a device with a partner that is fully refurbishable, fully recyclable, with even a return payment to individuals when they return it within the period of five years. That is an idea, and we will have a meeting later today. Otherwise, I would have confirmed it already that whether all the specific specifications that we need for that will deploy. I think it's not a remarkable financial impact, but it will be important for us as a company that with a dedication to this important matter in the market. Step by step, we work hard on these topics also in order to publicly get the notion of being a company that is looking into sustainability. I think you will also learn that our CO2 footprint on energy is going to change significantly this year because we've changed everything to the green power, even accepting extra cost on this. I think it becomes more and more a topic. This is what I was mentioning. Brilliant. Thank you very much. The next question is from Lynch Graham, Barclays. Your line is now open. Good morning, everyone. Thank you. My questions, just some short ones following up, just some clarifications on the quarter. The first one is can you maybe quantify a little bit, what the actual roaming return, or tailwind was for revenues and for ARPU during the quarter? On the other side, how much in government subsidies have you actually received during Q2 to make a bit more comparable compared to the second quarter 2020? Additionally, a second topic, with new licenses won, maybe could you give us an update on the outlook for your radio segment, operationally, in terms of revenue and EBITDA contribution going forward? I think for the roaming question, roaming revenues are still only something like 50% of the level from 2019. I'm sorry, but may you do the second question again? On the quarter in terms of government help, could you maybe quantify that impact on EBITDA? For the whole year it was something like EUR 11 million in the first half. Last year it was EUR three and a half, so it was much higher now. Perfect. Thank you so much. On the radio outlook, given that you have new licenses won, and what kind of the opportunity there, maybe you could give us a short update on this? Yeah, I think what we do there, these contracts, if you look at Hamburg, this is a six-digit annual revenue. Fact is that we have an existing service team, we have existing facilities, we have existing lease contracts for the antennas, et cetera. We are kind of filling the pipeline there, which is contributing to the outlook. If you think about the page that Ingo showed on TV and media segment, freenet TV, as well as the B2B area of Media Broadcast, they are both going up. We're not talking about huge and significant contracts there. It's small bits and pieces, but it becomes more and more important, and we also have to replace step-by-step, the UKW FM business. I think it's signaling that we're doing really well there. The team is actively working on the transformation from the old analog technology to the digital technology. There is about another six or seven contracts out there to be signed within the next two years. This market is given to the three suppliers in Germany, and we're doing really well. Okay, thanks. That's very clear. Thank you. The next question is from Simon Bentlage, Hauck & Aufhäuser. Your line is now open. Yeah, hi. I am curious about your guidance, just again, these bad debt provisions. Are you expecting the release in the second half of the year? Is this baked into your guidance? Maybe a follow-up from what you just said. If in the first year or first half of the year, there was an EUR 11 million government help, in your numbers, and I thought you expected this to go to zero, basically in the second half. How do you think to make up for this, let's say, loss in the second half? Thanks, Simon, for the questions. I think the EUR 5 million, I do not expect a release in the guidance, what we gave here. I already discussed the topic. It is a little bit difficult how the behavior of the people develops. I think, yes, it is a buffer, an additional buffer, what we have here. I'm not 100% sure if we would not need it if the behavior changes during the year. With the government help, yes, this is correct, that in the second half the EUR 11 million will be missing from today's expectation. In the second half of 2020, I think there were only the two weeks at the end of the year where we get some government help. Also in 2020, there was no government help, the second half will be comparable. This is what I do expect. Okay, thank you. Then maybe just a little clarification on the dividends. I think, if I remember correctly, you were always talking about at least 80% of free cash flow. Now you're saying, 80% of free cash flow. Is this basically now being a strict rule? Is it just nothing that you did consciously? Well, I think the financial policy, which is ours, is very clear. This is 80% of the free cash flow. Definitely there is room for discussion. I think the guidance of financial policy, which is out, this is clear. I think whenever we have the discussion, we will have it internally. We will look into the figures what we have. The interpretation at the end of the year could be that it will be an at least, but it is not the official wording. Okay, understood. Thank you. The next question is from Usman Ghazi, Berenberg. Your line is now open. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking the question. I've got several questions, please, so if you could bear with me. The first question was, just on the mobile kind of competitive landscape. It seems like Vodafone is struggling a little bit. Obviously, they'd like to improve their performance through the second half of the year. I mean, that kind of dynamic typically bodes well for yourselves. Obviously, they might want to spend more money with you. Are you seeing any movement from them, to incentivize you to do more? That was the first question. The second question was, on the spectrum license consultations that are going on. I know there are some suggestions that the 600 MHz spectrum on which Media Broadcast currently relies on could be actually given to mobile operators to increase the low-band spectrum so that there isn't spectrum scarcity in the auction. Any kind of views on that or any other changes that could happen as a result of the new license auctions would be very helpful. The third question was going to waipu. I was just thinking that, I guess with the service now no longer held back by the limitations of having your own fiber network, I mean, why could you not look to expand the service beyond Germany to the other DACH regions, given that there is a good proportion of German-speaking audience outside of Germany in this region? Thank you. Okay. Usman, yeah, thanks for your questions. Well, on Vodafone, I think you pushed the right button. I mean, the fact is that I wouldn't say they are struggling, but I would say that they have to replace the United Internet losses on the wholesale. I think Hannes is not too happy with some of the performances. They were very early on ready to sign a full-year bonus agreement with us. They're giving us a lot of benefits, and they remain, in terms of size and volume, the best and most important partner for the remainder. In that sense, you're definitely right. At the same time, I need to explain that any time any of the partners feels the pressure from competition to do more, they typically do it in parallel on their own activities, the branded activities, as well as on us. I think we take benefit from it. It is very positive. They were also the first ones to give us 5G. Even though it is still a minor business in Germany, it is important for us to signal we are part of the game. This is also giving a signal to Deutsche Telekom that they need to move, otherwise they might lose market share in our customer base. Everything that you have said is right. It is not a driver of EBITDA, but it is a driver of volume and gross margin, but also on the pressure spendings go up. The second question on the DVB-T spectrum. You are right. In principle, there are talks about it. There is an existing license and a license contract that is within steps and hurdle rates going up to 2030. As I said, we start to test what I call internal cannibalization replacement, from DVB-T2 by IP technology. The good thing is it's now 2021. Even in the absolute worst case, which is totally unlikely, but in a worst case, they could come back and reduce the spectrum in 2025. We have minimum four years to go. In reality, nine years to go. We are working on how can we ring-fence our customer base and then transfer it to waipu. Profitability of a waipu customer and a customer of Media Broadcast at this very moment is about the same. I think It's good that we have the balance. It's good that we run a double technology strategy. We have seen from the last time that they have taken away part of the license, that there will be compensation fees to be paid, there will be a transfer period, et cetera. I think it's our obligation and our dedication to do a scenario planning, but it's nothing that is concrete and giving us any headache. I think it's a long way to go. There's also new technologies like DVB-I. There is some others, and there is a strong interest of many lobbies to work on this. With a very long-term vision, I think you're right. You can be assured that we have it on our agenda as well. The third topic was waipu.tv. The expansion into other countries is not so much a technology topic. It's a topic of specific regulations and licenses, and competitive landscape. In Switzerland, the German channels are typically combined in one single license agreement for IP. We could easily go there and say, well, for the German channels and some others, we will easily do the same cost per subscriber in terms of content cost. Nevertheless, in Switzerland you have a competitive landscape which is different. There is two established players, mainly Zattoo. Even Zattoo is not able to grow anymore because the UPC Cablecom with Sunrise are now fighting back. There is the strong product of Swisscom. Furthermore, the German part of Switzerland is only 4 million people. We do not consider this as a proper option more because of the competitive landscape. Different from Austria. We've actually had expansion plans into Austria about 30 months ago. The specifics of Austria was that IPTV offerings just ignored license payments to German-speaking channels. The fun thing is that they have now stopped it, and it becomes now less profitable. Once again, you need a specific partner there. We have done intense talkings to a local partner. We were in contractual mode, but then stepped back again due to the change in the licensing agreements. In Austria, the public channels are even stronger than the German ones. It's definitely not a technology topic. It's a topic of profitability in context of licensing cost and brand awareness. The only way would be a JV, and we have gone through that exercise with Sunrise and a media company in Austria, and they both, at the end of the day, rejected, and we found it not attractive enough to run it by our own. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Usman. We have no further questions. I would like to hand back to Mr. Vilanek for some closing remarks. Yeah, thanks to all of you for giving us the opportunity to talk about our results. Looking at the share price development, sometimes you wonder what you need to do in order to impress the market in a positive manner. I think we are in a very good mood. We're very happy with our Supervisory Board and our Executive Team last night when Ingo could propose an increase of the guidance. I was a bit more explicit today that I think even with the new guidance, I'm more likely to believe that we're going to be on the EUR 440. I think it's definitely an improvement. We wouldn't have done it if we were not positive also for the outlay of 2022. We don't want to have a bumpy road. We want to have a curve and a trajectory into the right direction. I hope that we could convince at least you as the most detailed specialists and analysts in this field, that given our history of promises and delivery, that this is going to be the start of a regrowth of freenet also in terms of EBITDA and value. I would be grateful if you let us know if there is any more questions or any doubts that we can then clean up with the team of Tim and Ingo in order to do so. Thanks again for joining. Thanks again for listening and giving us the opportunity to answer your question. Have a nice day. Goodbye. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This conference has been concluded. You may disconnect.