Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call regarding the preliminary results for the financial year 2021 of freenet AG. At our customer's 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 difficulties 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. Thank you very much for the introduction. Thank you very much to all of you for joining today's conference. As always, by tradition, we're here in Hamburg, our headquarters, Ingo Arnold and myself, and also Tim Oehr, the head of our investor relations department. Today we're gonna talk about our previous year's results, so 2021. We will give an outlook on, like, what's going on in Q1 and what do we expect for the year 2022. Finally, we will give you our guidance on the already running fiscal year 2022. Let me start with the review of last year's guidance and the preliminary outcome. This is on page four. We focus on the financial performance at the beginning, as you can see. As predicted, we have a stable revenue. You're all well aware that the volatility of our revenue results mainly from the hardware sales, either in mobilcom-debitel or in GRAVIS. This is why it floats somewhat up and down. Overall, we have reached a stable level with okay - 8%. These deviations do not reside in the bottom line. As you can see in the next line, we have increased the original guidance within the year in summertime. As you can see, we have even hit the upper end of EUR 445, million, with a total result of EUR 447.3 million. This is a +5% performance compared to the previous year, 2020 and Ingo will give you an overview later on how this fits to our predictions for 2025. There are some exceptional effects. One is that we have received some support payments due to short-term work, but at the same time, we had to pay out a significant amount of severance payments to some people that returned to Deutsche Telekom, Media Broadcast, but also some layoffs and reorganization effects in the core business. I think Ingo will also give you a bit more detail, but we have to bear that in mind. If we would take these effects out, we would be more likely on EUR 42 million-EUR 44 million. As I said, Ingo will give more details. Even better performance compared to the previous year is the performance in free cash flow, with some very positive side effects and also leading to an attractive dividend proposal, which we will outline in a minute. If we look at subscriber base, I think even though the difficult year, I'll go into a bit more detail in a second. We have a positive growth on postpaid contracts. We have a very, very strong performance of +150,000 on mobile subscribers. As predicted, we have lost customers in freenet TV, a bit more, to be honest, than we originally expected. Given the full-year effect of the price increase from the year 2020, bottom line, this did not impact the overall outcome. If we move on to the next page, the difference in the numbers in terms of mobile subscribers is here that we take into consideration the subscribers from the digital lifestyle-based tariff plans. We have a total gain of 130,000 from 7,135,000 to 7,266,000, about 2% increase. What are the highlights or the key things that we've either had to live with or to cope with? Certainly, there was an in and out every now and then with lockdowns and closed shops. Also heavily impacted was MediaMarktSaturn. But from the total and the bottom line, you can identify that we were able to compensate the majority of those lockdowns through other channels. Certainly of help was that we could introduce 5G tariff plans in Vodafone as well. In T-Mobile, not so much in terms of the net adds, but more in terms of the margin. The introduction of smart pricing in all renewals was a successful story during the past year. You can see the results. The brick-and-mortar share came down by 6 percentage points to 39%. In parallel, the captive channels were growing to 75%. That is an implicit logic of the two because we control the online channels even more than we do brick- and- mortar. If we look on next page to waipu, you might remember that in May 2020, we told you that was the first time that we had a positive monthly result. We were the team was working hard on it that to deliver 12 months in a row with a positive contribution, and still invested in growth of the customer base by 26% to 722,000, which is again slightly above the indicated guidance that we have given before. We have also decided to be even more, given the good development and given the size of this business now, we will give even more details than we did in the past. As you can see, revenue increase almost 70%, and the EBITDA is now EUR 6.3 million compared to - EUR 1.8 million of the previous year. There's one indicator which we would like to share with you. We have disclosed that there is some advertising revenues which we do on our so-called new TV channels, we generated ourselves through programmatic planning, and the monthly run rate of these revenues are EUR 600,000 a month, which gives you a flavor that there will be even more revenue this year only from exploiting this additional source of revenues. We will not be in a position to fully disclose the margin on it because there is side contracts with some of the channels, but the margin on this advertising is definitely above the average margin for our overall business. In Media Broadcast, we are also going into more detail than we did in the past. We will from now on always report freenet TV, the B2B, and the digital radio business. The digital radio business has finally established the second national multiplex with 16 channels is up and running now for the first full year in 2022. Six out of those channels are captive, which means that we own them, and we are also in charge of the like editorial, the concept, music selection, et cetera, et cetera. They are now measured in the public audio measurement system in Germany, so that we will also see a strong increase in advertising sales in 2022. Very positive in the B2B. We have Media Broadcast has won a couple of local or regional licenses such as Hamburg or North Rhine-Westphalia. We have some of the bigger carriage contracts were prolonged, and we have won a couple of 5G projects, and there is one bigger one to be signed, hopefully still in Q1, and we will also be in a position to talk about it, most likely in our next meeting, which is gonna happening in early May. On freenet TV, as I said, the EBITDA was positive and growing even though we have a decrease of RGUs. We foresee another price increase during the course of summer this year, so that the minimum aim is to conserve the EBITDA range as we see it right now, and our three-year internal planning shows that this is kind of guaranteed. From September onwards last year, we have done and we are still doing a testimonial campaign with Dieter Bohlen. The Germans among you will certainly know who the guy is. Some others might remember Modern Talking as a band in the '80 s and '90 s. Dieter Bohlen is a famous guy because he was running Supertalent in German TV shows on RTL. We were lucky enough to win him as our testimonial for all our brands. The indicators here is the first measurement in February. Only recently, we've done a survey. October was kind of the pre-Bohlen time, now we have all the campaigns with Dieter Bohlen, and I think it's impressive to see that, brand recognition as well as, advertising recognition, that's a steep curve. The intention or side intention with this testimonial campaign, was, the idea when is it the right time and what could be a good incident, to create synergies in our advertising communication. Some of you might remember, in 2008 and 2009 when we formed, today's business, we have decided for the double name, mobilcom and debitel. I think there was a good reason back then because we were afraid that people might leave the subscription because of the changing names, because of the changing brands. For a long time, we have been thinking about moving into freenet as the key and kind of umbrella brand. This is why we have launched freenet TV or TV Service as freenet, the FUNK as freenet, the FLEX as freenet, or the Energy Product as freenet. Finally, we have early this year, after the success of the TV campaigns, and after a careful assessment of all the effects involved, we have decided that we will delete the mobilcom-debitel brand during the course of this year in public visible items, meaning the shops, the websites, and above the line advertising. There will be leftovers in the customer base, which will still go into 2023. The result is that we will A, write off the old brand and Ingo will give the details. It's a pure balance sheet effect, but still a significant one which ought to be understood. More importantly, we think that we can much optimize our online and offline communication. The freenet, as an umbrella, works for our own captive brands, but also for others. waipu, for example, would be a non-captive, but also our corporations with Samsung, with Xiaomi, and so on and so forth, will take benefit because out of the testing, we have learned that end consumers understand freenet much more, as kind of the digital lifestyle store, than mobilcom-debitel really. The positive effects out of advertising synergies will only be hitting the P&L in Q4. Up until then, we will have to invest into the refurbishing, into the changing all these things. Nevertheless, we hope and we are 100% sure of these positive synergies over time. One thing that we've always been working and committed to, but certainly in reporting but also in public perception becomes even more important are the four elements of ESG. Here on this page number 10, we have listed a couple of things which we think are relevant processes and contributions in the field in the course of 2021. I will not go into all detail, but Media Broadcast is by far the biggest power consumer in the group, and we have changed all their activities to renewable energy, accepting that we have higher cost there. We have started with the first full recyclable phone in Germany, with rephone, which we run exclusively, and we have now also the first demand yesterday from a couple of other stores and brands that want to source it through us. The same goes for the Networx Greenline brand, which is our GRAVIS's internal accessory brand out of fully recycled plastic and so on and so forth. I think this list from 2021 already gives you a strong indication on how committed and how important the topic becomes, and how important it is also to be an attractive company and attractive brand for consumers, but also for employees. Consequently, on the next page, we list a couple of key initiatives also in 2022. I will once again not go through the full list. I think it's worth reading it, but it gives a clear indication that we talk to our internal staff about the topics. Also things like equality, no discrimination, all these things are common sense. We have learned that our people are very committed to these goals. This ESG will also for the first time in 2022 end in the so-called company goal, and any employee in the company is measured against that company goal, and will get, depending on its contract, a special bonus payment. We have that for the last 10 years. We've had it for the last 10 years, but this year, the first time, we will also include an ESG goal. If I may end my contribution here with a statement on how we do after the first six weeks of the year. You are all aware that we have had the changes, the so-called EECC changes, in the regulatory regime, which allows people to cancel a non-renewed contract any month, but also has a strong regulatory impact on how contracts must be signed and documented. We have seen a short-term impact in December when it was introduced. Right now, we have a strong feeling that we can cope with all these changes, and the process and IT team have done a tremendous job to change our processes and customer journeys according to the new rules, but in a way that we might not have a strong impact on any of the major operational KPIs. Customer acquisition obviously was not so strong in January, once again through German lockdowns and the pandemic effect. If we look now, I've reviewed the numbers early this morning for the first three weeks of February. I think in February we will be already back to our budget, and I hope that we will also meet the budget in March. No indicator against it, but we will have a bit of a damage from January, not a tremendous one. I'm quite positive that we will regain during the course of the year. We are launching in Q2 our fixed mobile internet product and our fixed line internet access, or you could call it DSL, will be coming in Q3. We have also indications that not much later we will start the cable DSL. We go back to the broadband offering, which allows us also converged products that are feasible for our consumers. I spoke about the transformation to freenet. On the TV side, the waipu.tv was a strong first quarter with expected growth within our planning and within the trajectory from the past year. On freenet TV, as I said, we expect or we are planning a price increase. Our radio business, Antenne Deutschland, is growing in a nice way this year, but still with all the investments in programming, in moderators, et cetera. We expect a negative result for this year, but then a positive one for 2023. As I already mentioned, we're working on a couple of nice projects in B2B, which are supposed to be disclosed within the next session. Having said that, Ingo will now go into even more detail on the financial results. Yeah. Thank you, Christoph. Good morning, everybody. I start as usual with a group overview on page 13. What we do see is that, and Christoph already commented, that we reached all our goals, what we had for the year 2021. What we saw were stable revenues, and on the other hand, slightly increasing gross profit, which is based on a very stable and resilient mobile business and on a growing waipu.tv business. In the EBITDA, we do even see a better result and then higher increase than in the gross profit because what we have to add here is a sustainable cost management, what we saw in 2021. All in, I would say a very successful year. Moving to the segments, I start with the mobile business. On a revenue view, from my point of view, again, it is stable, but I think it makes a lot of sense to mention here that we have to split the revenues in more valuable revenues and low valuable revenues as we do with the chart on the left-hand side. I think what is the most important one for us is the service revenue in the post-paid business. What you can see in this chart here is that since Q2 2021, in each single quarter, it was possible to increase the service revenue compared to the last quarter. I think this is from my point of view, this is something like the benchmark to see how successful the business itself is. This is much more important for me than the overall revenue in this business here. Switching to the gross profit. Here again, we see a stable gross profit. I think we saw a headwind in Q4. It was not a headwind from Q4 2021, but it was more or less a headwind from Q4 2020, because in Q4 2020, there was a special agreement with one of the MNOs who was interested in generating more gross adds in Q4 2020. We focused our business on this MNO in Q4 2020, and therefore we received a extraordinary special payment from one of the MNOs, and this improved our gross profit in 2020. As this was not repeated in Q4 2021, you see this dip in the gross profit. Compared to the other quarters, I think the gross profit in the fourth quarter is fine, and it is slightly lower than in the other quarters because it was a Christmas quarter, and we had to invest into the business. On an EBITDA side, we could increase the EBITDA in 2021 from EUR 355 million to EUR 370 million. An increase of 4.3% from the bad debt. I think several times we discussed the bad debt provision what we built in Q4 2020 of EUR 5.5 million. This is still not released. We have not released it. It is still in our books. It was not necessary to reach the EBITDA to release any bad debt provisions here. On the other side, yes, definitely we have the short-time work effect. Christoph already explained something around it to make it clear here in figures, and I think it is not new to you that we received something like EUR 11 million of short-time work money from the government in the first half of the year. On the other hand, we had some restructuring measures from which we will profit in the following years. We invested something like EUR 6 million in restructuring. The net effect on the personnel side is something like EUR 5 million, which was positive in 2021. Moving to the KPIs of the mobile business, I think customer base, we already commented. It's a good development. The ARPU is stable, and in the digital lifestyle business, it was again possible to increase the revenues by something like 7% to more than EUR 200 million in 2021. Especially if with the background of the pandemic and closed stores at the beginning of the year, I think it's a very good result that it was possible to increase it in such a difficult year here. Moving to TV and Media on page 16. All in a very positive picture. The revenues could be increased based on the increase of customers in the waipu.tv area. Gross profit, 9.3% increase in 2021 to EUR 185 million or EUR 84.5 million, also driven by the waipu.tv business. On an EBITDA base, an increase of 15.2% to EUR 92 million. I think it is. I read it in some of your comments. Yes, it is a little bit disappointing, the EBITDA in the fourth quarter of the TV and Media segment. I think important to say on a gross profit base, it's not, definitely not disappointing because it was a very strong quarter in gross profit, and definitely more than 10% higher than in Q4 2020. The business is fine. It is all working fine, no problems. On the cost side, what we did, we built a very conservative provision here for the analog radio business of something like EUR 4.5 million in the fourth quarter. I think we are still hopeful to release it again. We do not exactly know today, but I think it was no obligation to do so, but we decided that it was necessary to do so. Therefore, we are here maybe a little bit cautious, but from our point of view, it made sense to do so, but it's definitely a one-time effect. It will not be repeated in the future if it really happens. I think there are good chances that the provision at the end of the day was not necessary. This was only a one-time effect. On page 17, the free cash flow. I think from my point of view, no big surprises in the cash flow bridge. You see the higher EBITDA, which is the high cash conversion is something what you see here from the higher EBITDA. On the other side, the working capital is slightly better than in 2020. Therefore, all in, you have this free cash flow of EUR 234 million, which is even higher than the corrected guidance or the upper end of the corrected guidance. A very positive result, and the increase compares to 2020 is very relevant. This is what we see here. The dividend proposal, I think, should also not be a surprise. During the whole year, we promised to pay 80% of our free cash flow. Normally, what we promise, we do also hold, and therefore, I think it should not be a surprise. It is more or less a calculation what you see on this page here. If you take the total distribution out of the 80%, and divide it by the number of shares, then you get a figure of EUR 1.57, what we will propose to the AGM. Maybe just for you to remember what we presented in November last year, we presented our 2025 ambition. I think we showed all the separate segments of the business then, and I think now, yeah, we have to prove what we showed then. I think the guidance, what I will present later is a confirmation of what we promised in November. Because if you compare the EBITDA of 2020 and the guidance of 2022, you see that the CAGR, what we promised of something around or slightly higher than 4%, this is something what we promised to deliver in 2022. I think what is also very important is that the ambition what we published in November will not be a back-end loaded ambition. It will not be a hockey stick what we see so often. We try to deliver it from the first year onwards, and I think this is also a position of strength here what we see. Moving now to the guidance 2022. We again guide a stable revenue and I saw some comments here that people are disappointed by it. I would like you to remember what I said before to the mobile figures. For us the revenue is important, e need the top line. Yes, everything is correct, but we have so different revenues and what we are focusing on is the valuable revenue. Therefore, what is behind the stable, definitely behind the stable is an increasing postpaid and waipu service revenue, and behind the stable is a stable freenet TV service revenue. I think these are the most valuable parts of our business. Therefore, I think this stable, what we guide here in the revenue is a very strong one. EBITDA EUR 450 million-EUR 470 million. We again choose a range here, and mid of the range is EUR 460 million. Free cash flow EUR 230 million-EUR 250 million. Maybe a little bit disappointing compared to the EBITDA, but what we will see on the next page is the CapEx, which is linked to the renovation of our building in Büdelsdorf, and therefore there will be a payment of EUR 10 million. The CapEx will be higher in 2022 and therefore the free cash flow is a little bit lower than what you maybe would expect from the EBITDA. Subscriber guidances. We expect further on a moderate growth of the postpaid contracts, a solid growth of the waipu.tv subscribers. I think Christoph already commented that the first quarter here in waipu.tv is running fine. We see further on growing subscribers here, and the freenet TV RGUs. I think we were a little bit. Maybe last year we were not that conservative here, but we have the experience from 2021 in freenet TV RGUs. Again, in summer we have these vouchers, which are due and every time it's a little bit uncertain what happens when these RGU vouchers have to be renewed. The customer have to move in a shop or have to actively do something. Therefore there is a risk. Therefore, we guide here a noticeable decrease, but with a price increase during the year, again, we expect a stable EBITDA even from this business. Free cash flow bridge on page 20. I think starting with the EBITDA, what I already showed, change in working capital, EUR 30 million. Tax, CapEx here, the increase of EUR 10 million, what I already mentioned. I think all-in lower interest payments, all-in, no surprises. Therefore, we expect something like EUR 230-EUR 250 million. On the last page here, 21, I come back to the brand decision, what we took at the beginning of January. We decided to move from the mobilcom-debitel brand to the freenet brand, what Christoph already explained. We have an intangible asset on our balance sheet, and the size is EUR 293 million. There will be a linear meltdown over the next 18 months. In 2022, there will be a depreciation of EUR 195 million and another depreciation of something like EUR 100 million in the first half of 2023. No cash effects, no EBITDA effects, but definitely an effect in the net profit and in the EPS and therefore we will introduce an adjusted figure here during the year, because I think otherwise. It would not be transparent that the overall business or the underlying business is totally healthy. What I even expect after the depreciation is a more healthy balance sheet with less intangible assets. But I think everything is fine here, but there will be an effect during the year. Therefore, I close my comments to the year 2021 and hand over to the operator again and ask you to give us your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question- and- answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero and 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 turn to speak, you can dial zero and two to cancel your question. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for the first question. The first question is from Ulrich Rathe, Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead, sir. Yeah, thank you. I have three questions to start with, if that's okay, please. The first one is on this special agreement that you had in the fourth quarter of last year, of 2020. That's interesting, not just from a point of view of this year effect that you're pointing out quite validly, but also it sort of highlights that, you know, in what ways you can be useful to your suppliers, the MNOs. So I'm wondering how often do such situations arise that the MNOs really draw on the flexibility that freenet offers to them as a distribution partner? Is this something that happens once in 10 years, or is it something really that happens from time to time, maybe on a smaller scale occasionally? I'm just really interested whether that's a running feature or really just a complete one-off. The second question is, Mr. Vilanek, you talked about the in the media, I think, about the end to DTT by 2030. Is that essentially the business plan or was that more a lobby pitch about spectrum or other issues there? You know, is there a migration plan? Are you building up a customer base and then you're essentially just melting it down, you know, when the business might at some point end or do you have plans what to do with this customer base that you're building there? My third question is just a clarification. You're saying the mobilcom-debitel write down wouldn't have any impact. Now, can I just confirm there would not be a tax impact either? The fact that you have lower profits on these amortizations, you know, is outside of the tax accounts. Could you please confirm? Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Ulrich, for your questions. I think I can in this case handle all three. No, there is no tax impact. That was your third question of the write down. The first one, I think you put it and you interpret it perfectly well. I mean, there are every now and then special effects where we short-term do get special agreements with any of the MNOs. I think the exceptional thing was end of 2020 that the size of it was exceptionally high. This is why we see it. At the end of the day, I would call it more a seasonal effect, that it was exceptional and was a very special situation on the other side, with our partner, that they were incentivizing us, in an outrageous manner. Other than that, it's the standard things going back and forth, which you would typically not observe or you would not realize because of the sizes. I think that was exceptional and saying that, we could not name a rhythm, be it 5-year, 10-year. It was just a one-off exceptional item accumulating in one quarter. I think that is more the specialty. Then finally, thanks for raising the topic of DVB-T2. Once again, you've done the right conclusion. I was asked on how the business would go. This was a lobbying pitch in the sense of we need to make also the channels be aware, so the public channels be aware of the. At this very moment, the auction or the frequency are auctioned to DVB-T2 up until 2030. It's a long time up until then, but sure, for sure, we have a common sense, and we would like to start right now talking to the authorities and making them aware. It was a lobbying pitch. Other than that, you can be assured that we have a number of scenarios depending on the outcome. We think that the prolongation would not only happen by the end of 2030, but it would be probably much earlier. The fact that we are testing 5G Broadcast with two German public channels, the fact that you might see under the freenet umbrella advertising for both TV products at the time, and also the fact that we do a lot of research on those people that cancel freenet TV in order to understand what potential migration effects we have, and where do they move. All these things are under a constant review, driving our thoughts on whether we migrate, cannibalize ourselves, how long will the whole thing work, are there potentially other technologies? I mean, this is kind of a closed shop discussion. I hope that you would not quote this. We have also spoken to a number of potential partners for DVB-T2 frequencies for a completely different usage of them, even other than 5G. There is a bigger group of different parties looking at this. A nice thing would be that in such a case, we might even be able to split and dual use part of the spectrum and create other businesses. I have to admit, it's early stage. These things are long-lasting. Also, new technologies might hit the ground up until then. Thank you very much. The next question is from Yemi Falana, Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I had two, please. Your competitors have cited the German telecom law as having driven a pull forward in churn. Are you noticing this same churn pull forward? Is this a tailwind for your volumes in the mobile business in the first half of 2022? Secondly, German telecom law or otherwise, is it fair to say that your negotiating position with other MNOs has strengthened now versus, say, a year ago, given kind of how vital your sales channel has proved as a distribution channel? Thank you. Yeah. On the first one, maybe this is not super well known to everybody. The new regulation has two major impacts on our business. The one is part of our customer base are people that have not actively renewed the contract. We have made them aware that they could renew it, but for whatever reason, they neglected, forgot, or something else. We call those people sleepers. According to the old rules, they dropped from a 24- months contract into a 12- months commitment. Then when they finally woke up and said, "Oh, I've forgotten," then either we gave them a 24- month contract again, or we had to inform them that they might only run out in whatever, maximum 12 months. The rules are now different for those people that have not actively renewed, though, the terminology sleepers that we use. They can now call in, and basically drop out of the contract within a month. What you need to understand from the customers is that a lot of customers call us and say, "How long is my contract still lasting?" In the past we said, "Well, there's another nine months, so it's smart. We might give you a new device or something," because typically that's the reason why people are calling. Right now, this is the effect that I think everybody was experiencing right at the beginning. From 1st of December, people were calling in, and suddenly our agent said, "Well, you can drop out within a month." Yeah. We saw kind of a flood of people coming in, and then we have seen a higher churn in January this year because the effect was then obviously a month delayed. We saw a higher intake, the first one. The second one, we also see a higher rotational churn because people that go into a dealership and ask the dealer, then the dealer says, "Okay, you can drop out basically overnight, but I can give you a new contract," because it's attractive for the dealers to do so. We have seen those two effects. Monitoring them, I think it's slowing down already. It was. As I said, it was kind of a flood at the beginning. It's slowing down, and we think that we can cope with it, and it will be a wash over 12 months. People understand that they still, if they want a device and so on and so forth, that they we do a commitment. Even in our today's SIM-only base, the majority is already on a monthly contract, and they are still very loyal and stay with us. Yes, there is an impact, but it's not as big as we thought, or it was at the beginning, but it will be a wash over the year. The other topic that happened is that, when we do close a deal on the phone, in the past, it was necessary to record this closing and to repeat the relevant conditions. Then we have recorded that on the tape, and then there was proof enough that the contract was created on the phone. We had to change that as well What we do now is that basically during the phone call, we said, "We are sending you in parallel all the terms and conditions, and if you want to review them, please review them, and with your click, you do agree." That is a new procedure that basically all of the operators as well as ours deploy. Once again, a bit of a starting pain in December, a new process, difficult for about 900 agents that had to be trained. Some technology had to be implemented on the telemarketing and on the customer care, and it works perfectly well. We're struggling a bit with the situation on the point of sale because new regulations demand from us that we do a full printout of all the documents, which on average is 35 pages. We are trying to now switch also the point of sale to the same customer journey that we do on the phone. Once again, yes, we have seen some impact, but it levels out now, and we think we will not see a tremendous change. If we look back after 12 months, I think it will be a wash. Thank you, guys. The next question is from Joshua Mills, BNP Paribas Exane. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks so much for the questions. A couple from me. The first is that at the 3Q results and Capital Markets Day, you highlighted the potential to partner with 1&1 and resell their fixed mobile products. I'd just like to get an update on how those discussions are developing and whether you factored any new sales from 1&1 into your guidance for this year already. The second is just regarding the EBITDA guidance in particular. How would you break down the swing factors? It's obviously quite a wide range, which you provided as usual. Is it more to do with how much investment you'll be making in TV or not? Or are there any other kind of events or developments that could move the needle towards the higher or lower end of that guidance? It'd be great to know. Finally, to the extent you're able to comment, it'd be great to get any insight into how you see customer demand for certain brands, yourself, Telefónica, DT, and Vodafone developing over the past few months. I think there's a sense that DT and Telefónica are doing a bit better at the expense of Vodafone, and I'm very keen to hear your perspective on that. Thank you. Yeah. On the first one, well, we are in a constant exchange with 1&1. They have indicated that by the end of the year they will start running some of their networks, but they are also... There was, I think there was even a comment in one of your analyst reports that they have certain limitations to give us full access. We have spoken to the guys, and we have identified the potential hurdles, but also the legalities around it. We have a common sense that the limitations that we see right now are not appropriate to competition law. Together with United Internet, we will find a way to remove these rules. I cannot go obviously into full details, but the fact that we have joined forces to do so and go into the same legal claims, I think, is a strong indicator for both sides wishing to cooperate. It will certainly not happen this year because there is no own business in a typical sense from 1&1 yet this year. Once again, I think it still looks very positive that we're gonna do so. Your second question was about the swing or the spread in the EBITDA, maybe a split answer, one from Ingo and a part of me. From the operational side, there is no explicit topic that we have that drives the spread. Still there are some unknown items. I think it's a long list of topics. It's like, what is price changes, inflation doing? How much do we have to give to our employees in order for them to survive in those difficult circumstances? There is a certain impact on some of our service providers out of the new minimum wage in Germany. There are, I think it's more like 20 or 30 items that we said it's more feasible for us to give once again a spread. As Ingo made clear by stating the middle of it is EUR 460, I think this should indicate to you that the range on where we are measured and we plan to measure the company is EUR 460 and not EUR 450. I would answer it from the other way around. I would say there are no concrete topics where I would say that the swing is based on. I would just say it's a timing issue. Now we are at the beginning of the year and a 5% uncertainty. I think this is normal what you have in a business. From my point of view, I would answer it's more a timing issue that we have the swing now, but I would not. You can also say yes, in every topic, something can happen. Therefore, Christoph's answer is also correct to say 20 topics. You can also say there is no concrete topic what we have in mind at the moment. Okay. I think the third question was about. I hope I got the right tonality. It was about is there any changes in customer perception, customer demand? Over the last let's say three to four months. What do we perceive? We saw Telefónica showing good performance. Honestly, maybe it was not a surprise, but we can't see them so much. I think visibility is not. I thought it was higher in previous years with more advertising, with more presence, et cetera. I perceive them as focused and doing a very nice job, but they are barely visible on high street in the market. No changes in a sense. Magenta, Deutsche Telekom showed more actionism than they did in the past. The last two years, they were very much dedicated to premium prices, no special offers, no moves. We have seen them in the second half of 2021, that they did more short-term tactical moves, across their entire dealership, including the T-Punkte, more special offers. I think what Srini Gopalan has very successfully done in many other countries, pushing hard for convergence penetration, is what he intended right at the beginning. I think he saw from the data that it is a bit different in the German market, and therefore he became more tactical. We see that their TV product is not working too well. They spend a lot of money, but all the numbers that we see are not satisfying. I'm not even happy about it because it would strengthen the entire IP arena, which would also help us. I think that is how we perceive them. I also have to say that the relationship on a daily basis with Deutsche Telekom has improved much since the new team on top is working. There is a fine and intense relationship aspect that we have 5G and so on. All indicators that they consider our position more important than their predecessors did. Finally, Vodafone is an interesting piece to me, because on the one hand, we in the business field see them aggressive, and aggressiveness is always an indicator for well coping with challenges, the fact that 1&1 is not doing with them anymore. A couple of their products are under pressure. Deutsche Telekom is winning internet DSL sales, even though and even fiber, even though the Vodafone penetration is so high. I think they struggle with self-cannibalization questions on their cable business, whether they should go into IP or even cooperating with others. When we do research and ask end consumers, it's fabulous to see that Vodafone has a very positive notion. People say that they are hip, they're cool, they're modern, they are dedicated to CSR. Interesting. I mean, we've done it on big surveys, so no matter where people take it from, but they have done a nice job there. Whereas Deutsche Telekom is in the research stated as still state-owned type of slow-moving, and Telefónica or O2 is non-existent in the survey. It's amazing. They're doing a great job in actual performance, but when we do surveys, it feels like they are not there. 1&1 is still doing well. People do not have a full perception that they're gonna build up their own network yet. Once again, I mean, they have not done advertising on it, anyway. I mean, there's very qualitative statements, but I hope that it still gives you a flavor of what's going on, Josh. Yeah, very helpful. Thank you very much. The next question is from Martin Hammerschmidt, Citigroup. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you for taking my questions. I have three, please. The first one is on the EBITDA target in 2025. You mentioned in your presentation that it will not be back-end loaded. If I think back on the CMD, the contribution from fixed Internet is, I think, reflected as the biggest growth element, and that will only start to sort of contribute, I think, in 2023, maybe 2024. Could you help us understand which EBITDA items are growing over the next two years and then will start sort of to tail off once the fixed Internet product is fully up and running? Put differently, I want to see a hockey stick development that you alluded to earlier. The second question is on your shop strategy in light of a decrease in the bricks and mortar share of growth rate. Could you give us updates on your thoughts there, and especially on how you view your partnership with MediaMarktSaturn. Do you still see, like a net positive EBITDA impact, as I think the EUR 25 million really. Payments still look quite hefty when bricks and mortar share goes down. The third one is on shareholder remuneration. Could you share with us sort of your latest thinking on the remaining 20% or the usage of the remaining 20% of free cash flow? What do you intend to do with that? Thank you. I think I gonna give an answer on the first one and then the second. I think Ingo will also talk about the first one and then about the shareholder or the 20% free cash flow. Let me start with Media-Saturn. We have had a tough year because they were heavily hit by all the limitations because of their square meter size. They have had the longest lockdowns. I think Karsten Wildberger with the recent AGM made very clear that this was a heavy duty job. They are coping with it. They are improving on many levels. Thanks to the fact that they have many countries, they by themselves are in an okay shape given the circumstances. The way we are working together is still on our multiyear contract and on a trustful relationship. Actually, we are having each week, we're having a call between even himself and myself in order to discuss how we can improve the business and how we can do better. They have done a test in accordance with us on what we call the original tariff plans in August, September last year. We have seen the results that there is some incremental business, but it's not majorly changing it. I'm expecting that this, even though the contract is now in the period where both parties could basically renew or stop it with a 12 months notice period every half a year, I have no doubt that we will continue this tight and fruitful cooperation way beyond 2023. It's valuable 2023 because this is when the contract would end, so we still have 18 months to go to review and to renew. Overall, I think you've also were asking the question whether we make money on these customers. Yes, we do. They are a demanding partner in terms of terms. Also including the EUR 25 million exclusivity premium, which they get. Still we have a margin on those customers. The margin is certainly a smaller one than on the ones that we do on our own shops, but we need the broad and wide range of their big store presence all over the country. Then my comment on the 520, I mean, it's a CAGR of 4%, which means in absolute terms, we have to step up in growing. I think what Ingo showed on the first three years that we are very well on track. If you continue the curve that we had and that we are indicating with our guidance for 2022, I mean, the minimum you will see proven is that 520 is within the range. There are upsides, as you said, like the freenet Internet. There's also upsides with the radio business, which is still having negative results and will change sooner or later. There is new products and new projects. But there's also some things on a five-year plan which you include the uncertainties about the market conditions, potential regulatory impact, the open question on what the price is gonna be. I think on a five-year scale, it's fair not to add all the positives and not mention the risks. This is why I think it's not worth having a discussion whether there's a hockey stick or something. The proof is that the first three years within the range, we are fully in line, and this is what's meant with we are not backloaded. Okay. It's difficult for me to add something to this answer. I think I totally agree. What is normal in a five-year period, it is normal to have headwinds, and you need the positives, but there will also be headwinds. To have freenet Internet and radio starting later on in the period is just to compensate whatever happens there. It makes the 520 even more stronger. On your question about the free cash flow and the remuneration of the cash flow what we generate, yes, you are correct. There's 80% we will pay out or what we plan to pay out, also part of our financial policy still. There is another 20%, and I think the first idea is to invest the money into the business. This is the first idea what we have. Whenever there are opportunities, then we'll use the money to o ptimize our business. The second thing is, I would say, Christoph, that on an M&A list, we still do not have any hot topics at the moment, from my point of view. Therefore, I do not have a good idea for the next month, where the 20% could be invested on an M&A side. Then at the end of the day, it is still a question which I cannot answer today. Would we like to do another buyback? Would we like to reduce our net debt further, which from a balance sheet point of view would not be possible. I think I do not have any concrete ideas to use the 20%, but at the end of the day, from my point of view, the best idea would be to invest it into the business wherever we see opportunities. Thank you. If I could just add a real quick fourth one. You have 5G tariffs on agreements with Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone. Could there be an update on the process of those two? Are there discussions going on and can we expect something in 2022? Thank you. All right. Question is a double yes. Perfect. Thank you. Yes, they're in talk. Yes, it's gonna be coming soon. Perfect. Thanks. The next question is from Adam Fox-Rumley from HSBC. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Thank you very much for the presentation and the answers so far. I just had a couple of short ones, I think. Firstly, in your guidance, for freenet TV customers today, you talked about a noticeable decrease. Without being too pedantic, you talk about a moderate decrease that you just kind of experienced through 2021. If you could just give us a little bit more color around that trajectory, that would be helpful. Secondly, I'd be really interested to hear any comments that you feel you can make around customer lifetime value. You've made some very interesting reflections on that in the past, and how that's progressed, that would be very helpful too. Thirdly, I'd love to know about the initial uptake of the waipu.tv Stick, how your kind of stock levels are going, how that product has been initially received? Thank you. Good morning, Adam. I would like to start with your first question. Yes, there obviously is a change in the wording here in the guidance. At the end of the day, I would not expect a difference in figures. I think what we said last year were a moderate decrease, and then we lost something like 100,000 customers. I do not expect to lose more than 100,000 this year. If you ask me what is wrong of both, I would say maybe last year it was a little bit too positive to use the moderate wording because it is more than 10% and so forth. We just changed the wording here. In absolute figures, I do not expect a higher churn this year than last year. Okay. The second was CLTV. Well, we are implementing that. The team was formed in September that is in charge of this. As I said last year, we have implemented it in all dimensions in our renewal business, and now we are stepwise also doing it in the gross adds and new customer acquisition business. Technically, we also needed to implement a full solution of separate contracts from SIM cards to hardware. That's almost finished. I think it's fair to say that maybe with the first quarter results, we will give you and I will take a note on it. We will do two or three slides to explain what exactly it is and how it works and what impact it is. I think that's better than now to just give you it orally. There was a third question. waipu.tv Stick. waipu.tv Stick. Right. Sorry. waipu.tv Stick, well, very happy with it. What we can see is that the people that buy it, usage is really cord-cutting type of usage. If we look at the daily consumption, that is really fully in line with what the German average is of 200 minutes. People do fully understand it as an, as the alternative to cable or satellite or DVB-T. We have been shipped a second, bigger shipment early January and about to be sold out by the end of February. You can imagine that also this product is impacted by semiconductor shortage. We have, I think, bought or been shipped so far 27,000, and they should be all out of the house by the end of February. Thank you very much. Very interesting. The next question is from Usman Ghazi, Berenberg. Your line is now open. Please go ahead, sir. Hi. Thank you very much. I just had one clarification please, from an earlier question and then a few questions. The first question, the clarification, was just on the impairment. Just to make sure that this impairment is tax deductible, so you know, the loss will, you know, increase your kind of tax loss. Is that the right way to interpret it? That was the first question. The second question was just on the momentum that you're seeing on the cost reduction, you know, the cost below gross profit, particularly in mobile. I'm sorry if this has been clarified before, but yeah, just wanted to understand what is driving that. I know that you mentioned that you took some restructuring costs in the first half of the year. So is it that you know you were just seeing the benefit of the FP restructuring now coming through and then that should continue for at least the first half of next year? And then my final question was just back to Ingo on the use of the remaining 20% of the free cash flow for investment. I'm just wondering, you know, are there particular vectors that you think freenet can further expand into beyond the core that is now, you know, your mobile and TV business? I mean, do you have any specific ideas around that? Or would it be just strengthening positions within the areas that you're in? Just related to that, obviously, even if you use the 20% of free cash flow, your leverage is still quite low, well below your target levels. In this environment, obviously, of uncertainty after the Ukraine issue, I mean, you know, companies that can do buybacks are obviously in favor with shareholders. Would you consider that you know if that you would put in buybacks on an as-needs basis going forward? Thank you. Yeah, good morning, Usman. The impairment definitely is not tax relevant because it is only an IFRS topic, and therefore it's not relevant for the tax. On the cost in the mobile business, which were or which are relatively low, yes, definitely in the fourth quarter. I think we again saw very low bad debt levels. This helps. The effect from the restructuring what I talked about before, this effect is relatively small. This we will see in 2022, but only with a low effect in the fourth quarter. It was an all-in low travel cost. Everything was low administration cost. It was relatively with the home office in the business and so on. The whole package on the cost side was low, and there were no extraordinary payments or whatever, and therefore the whole level was that low in the fourth quarter. On the free cash flow question, I do not know if I got you correct. I think what could be an idea to use the free cash flow for the business, if the management of waipu.tv would say that it would be possible for them to generate 200,000, 300,000 additional customers, but they would need a special amount of money, definitely we would say, yes, it makes sense to grow further here, and therefore it would make sense to invest the money into the business. Definitely not only to do serious things and reasonable things. Up to now, we have not seen these reasonable ideas. Whenever we would see, then it could be possible to invest it into the business. Therefore, I think at the end of the day, it's also the best decision for the shareholders, because at the end of the day, the profit, sooner or later, it will end in the pockets of the shareholders. Buyback, yes, it's a good possibility, and it was fine as long as we did it. It is only second best if we would have to forgo the chance to invest reasonably into the business. Thank you. Thanks, Usman. We have a follow-up from Ulrich Rathe, Jefferies. Your line is now open again. Yeah. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify one thing. Mr. Vilanek, when you talked about the impact of the telecoms law, you talked about this flood of churn from the, what you called sleepers. I'm not entirely sure what the dynamics there is. The sleepers are sleepers, right? They're sort of inert and not much is happening. Occasionally, as you say, they call up because they want a new device and yeah, in the past they got told nine months, now get told one month. That by itself doesn't explain necessarily why there would be a flood. Is it the case that the sleepers all woke up? If yes, why? Was there sort of a particular reason why you're seeing a flood? You know, in this context also, if this is a flood, why exactly is it then slowing down so quickly again? I'm not entirely sure about the dynamics of this impact. The issue being, of course, that we had some MNOs sort of talking about it, but others really said it's not an issue. It's a bit unclear from our point, I mean, where we sit, you know, whether this is all a bit of a fluke and maybe some companies use it to sort of explain competitive issues away or whether it's actually happening on the ground in a sort of visible way. If you could just expand that a bit better, that would be great. Thank you. Yeah. I apologize for the word flood because flood means like overwhelmingly much water. That's not what's happening. I can easily explain and clarify. If you imagine just 1,000 sleepers in a normal month prior to the change would have called us, said, "I need a new device," then we would have told them, "Yes, certainly you can have it." If they were not satisfied, they would then terminate the contract. Just on a normal distribution of cases, those, let's say, 100 users would split over the next 12 months, basically. Yeah? Because some of them call, there's a month left, some others two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. In theory, they call the first day after they have been renewed, and then it's 12 months. If the same people call in and get now the information that they can cancel within 12 months, then just by definition you have a flood because in the normal case, you have a split of 10 or nine, or what is it, 8.5 per month. Now suddenly you have 100 for the upcoming months. This is what I call a flood. This is why it's a one-time effect because it flattens out right after it. In the first place it creates a special, yeah, a high, a peak. That is the one reason. The second reason is that people that are reading those papers and they're the most on bill side and so on and so forth, where people said suddenly, "Yeah, now you can change all this," not only in telcos, but also in some other cases. Some people woke up and said, "Okay, now it's time for me to trade or to ask for a special offer." I think this is why we saw a one-time effect. It's still a bit higher than it was, but I remember the first three weeks we were talking about it more or less every second day, and now I haven't heard about it for the last three weeks. This is. It was a strong or a visible one-time impact than we. Some people in the company that are more the skeptic part. They said, "Okay, if we now extrapolate that then the full year, oh my god, what's gonna be the impact?" Six weeks later we see that this is. It has an impact, but we learn to handle it. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question is from Sahir Rajaram, Redburn. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, everyone. Good mrning. Thanks for taking the questions. Two from me, mainly on Waipu. Just doing some rough calculations. FY 2021 saw about 150,000 more subscribers. If you assume six-year ARPU, that's about EUR 11 million revenues. Just taking the EUR 8 million increase in EBITDA year-on-year face value, that's a 75% margin. We clearly have to really think about the programmatic ad revenues. Could you give any color on how much revenue the advertising produced in FY 2021 and what sort of EBITDA margin that runs at? The second one was just to do with the market share. You said that you still maintain roughly 40% of the German over-the-top market at 720 subs. That means that sort of it seems quite low at the total market of 1.8 million for a country of 40 million households. Could you just give a bit of color on how that 40% is calculated and does that imply quite slow growth for the market overall? Thanks. Yeah. Well, thanks. I think. On the first question, well, if you have +150 and you do ×6 ×12, that's obviously wrong because the 150 is a result end of the period. So if you average it out, the maximum would be 75 ×12. I mean, then it's not EUR 11 million, but only EUR 6 million. Now you would say, "Well, suddenly we have 120% margin." No, I think this is like apples and pears. It's just the EBITDA is a result of gross margin minus acquisition cost minus SG&A. I think the equation that you made is a bit too simple. On the other one, I mean, we have said that December MRR on advertising was EUR 600,000. So if you say if the minimum we take is we take that at 12x, and I said we cannot, we are not in a position to fully disclose it. But the margin, because it is a margin split between us and the owner of the channel. Only if we own the channel ourselves, then we take a full benefit of it. We have some third-party costs. We have some partnering costs, et cetera. The margin on this is more like definitely more than double than our normal average EBITDA ratio. You can do a little bit of math there. Okay. Yeah, the other one on the 40%, I think, I mean, like any percentage or market share, it's a matter of definition. The way we look at it is the pure OTT market, it's not our numbers. It's numbers that third-party calculators. They look at what is the OTT players in Germany, the Zattoo, the waipu and MagentaTV. They exclude Giga as long as it's with their basic set-top box. They also do not count Sky as long as it is typical set-top box business. It's the pure OTT and also the pure OTT in terms of the way we source rights. That makes a huge difference, whether you have distribution rights on a closed network. You could also argue that offerings from M-net, or NetCologne or DNS:NET are OTT. In a legal sense of distribution of content, they are not. They are considered closed network, and by doing so they're not OTT, but cable. This is we compare subscribers on pure IP basis, and where the content is sourced on an OTT distribution contract. Okay. Thanks, Christoph. There are currently no further questions. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero and one on your telephone keypad. We have a follow-up from Usman Ghazi. Berenberg, your line is now open again. Hi, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity again. Two questions just going back to waipu. I just wanted to understand, is there an overlap of customers that are, you know, mobile customers and who've taken the waipu product, or are these two distinct set of customer groups that you have? And then a follow-up, was also on, I mean, we've got HBO Max that is beginning to launch across Europe. You know, are you in discussions with them to for access to the platform, like you did with Netflix, or is it just too early? Thank you. Well, there is an overlap between waipu.tv customers and MD customers, but it's a rather small one right now. We will review the number, but I think it's below 5% right now. I mean, we are obviously in discussion with any of the platforms, be it Netflix, be it DAZN, be it some others from other countries. Since rights typically are nationally bound, any of those discussions are never on a European scale, but always on a national scale. Once again, we see that, I mean, we do a combined offer with Netflix that is doing okay, but it's no big gain for either of the two. Because those people that wanted to have Netflix, they are already in. When people have consumption on Netflix, they not automatically consider IPTV as the right solution because many of them have either satellite dish or something on top. I think the replacement or what we would call cord-cutting is a slower process, I think, than anybody thought, look, when looking at the German market. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We do have one more follow-up from Ulrich Rathe. Your line is now open again. Yeah, thanks for letting me on. I just wanted to follow up, sorry for taking so long on this, but on this whole churn issue, how do you explain that ultimately there is a net negative effect? Because the way you're describing it, everyone should be seeing the same effect, right? Which means the overall churn pool is up, which should mean that you lose churn. But obviously the pool is up, so you should be fishing in that pool as well and getting the growth adds. Is it your channel mix that puts you at a disadvantage to some other players, or why would this all be a net negative for freenet? I think an earlier question, I think from my colleague at Goldman Sachs sort of was aiming in this direction. Thank you. Okay. I mean, thanks for the question because I have never said that the churn is up. I just said the impact of this is that we had a flood of people calling and telling us that they might leave, and then we had to do things. I think overall the pool is not increasing because the pool was just short-term increasing with any of the operators, no matter what they told you. I mean, we had the numbers, we had the chats with all the others. We have all seen the same. Everybody was immediately up and running and said, "Okay, if your customers call and they tell me, oh, yeah, I can leave within a month." Well, then certainly we immediately told these people, "You can either have a prolongation or you can out of our full portfolio, you can have a new contract." It was not creating millions of additional customers out there to be fished. It was just the one effect over a period of maybe six to eight weeks, where we had what I explained before, the accumulative effect that normally would go in. If things like that happen to any of the operators, we all see it within the first 24 hours because we see that the call reasons are changing, that the impact is different, that our agents are more selling, doing more upselling or cross-selling or renewing. The team is immediately changing the offers in order to fix it. I honestly I wouldn't have mentioned it unless somebody was asking what the special effect was, because for us, it's already passed. It's gone. It's day-to-day business. Perfect. Thank you so much for the explanation. Appreciate it. There are no further questions. I hand back to the speakers for closing remarks. Yeah. Thanks, guys, for that intense discussion and for your patience more than 90 minutes, but I think it was worth talking. Thanks for all the questions and the chance to clarify misunderstanding that I have created, maybe with one or the other answer. Thanks a lot and hope to speak to you soon and stay healthy. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.