Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the freenet conference call regarding the Q1 2023 results. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. Let me now hand the floor over to Christoph Vilanek. Hello, everybody. Good morning. Thanks for joining this session. Format and everything very much the same, very much as you all know it. We're very happy to present the first quarter results, which came in strong. Very happy about the overall development of the company in financial as well as operational KPIs. I would like to start, as always, with the development of the customer base. You can see that year-over-year, we have a real nice development in mobile net adds of +166,000 and TV +182. I think it underlines our ambition to equalize these two businesses. There is still in absolute terms of subscribers a big gap to be closed. You can see that on the net add side, we're doing really well on both ends. I think it is a result of a strong quarter as such, a good ambition with the team. Couple of changes that we have done on the sales side, also in retail. There is not a single event that was changing the picture. I think it's a lot of little improvements that pay back these days. If we take one step deeper into the mobile business, you can see that we have a total plus of 60,000 during the quarter and + 51 with the PYÜR postpaids. There is a strong development in unlimited, a strong demand on unlimited contracts, and also fixed mobile substitution Internet access. They are incorporated here, and they are doing really well. I think there's gonna be a little bit of a pushback in the second quarter, because we need to limit the ultra-high usage. We will clean out a little bit, but that we're talking about 2,000-3,000 customers. That is the basic driver is SIM-only and unlimited. Second topic, which is more on the qualitative side, you know that we are constantly trying to improve our customer service. There's three elements to it. One is to push more and more of these contacts away from manual to digital. The current ratio of digital contacts is 38%, and we're trying to improve on a constant basis. Second, key topic is to make the people not even call. We have seen a reduction of contacts during the first quarter compared to previous year, by about 6%-7%, which is a result of improvement on processes such as mobile number portability, and the like. Overall, we were quite excited that connect has tested the hotline services, and we've done pretty well there, which is also good in terms of communication to the outside world. On retail, the major changes during the 1st quarter was that by the 1st of January, we have limited the way of paying bills in GRAVIS stores. We have excluded any cash payments there from 1st of January. We have done the same 1st of February with the freenet shops. To be honest, this was it was a big panic on the side of our sales reps and shop managers. It turned out that it did not hit the bottom line at all. People fully accept that we are asking for ORO card, Mastercard, or any non-cash payment method, which is pretty well. There is more to come. That's what we just say. We are working on a new concept to fully align on and offline to delete any differences between the existing channels. We want our shops to be very focused on real demand-driven sales and going away from still supply driven sales that we are doing right now. I guess that in the next call in August, we will elaborate a bit more, and we will also share with you what the impact will be on the business side. freenet Internet, we have kind of like added to the portfolio, as you know, by the end of January. We have then beta tested the sales and activation in February. Real sales only started now in April. On some of the other pages, but I, we also mentioned that we will increase the price from EUR 29 to EUR 35. This basically it's driven by the market, overall the market conditions, and the commission demand that third-party sales partners want from us. We will increase prices to have more money to spend as commissions to third-party dealers, which we did not include in sales so far. Next page number six is a bit closer look at on the TV side. I think the outstanding number is that waipu.tv has a net add number of 83,000 during this first quarter. I expect a similar, or slightly, even slightly better, net add number for Q2. What is the drivers? I think it's a great product on the one hand side, but on the other hand side, it's the partnerships. In the Q1, we did not include any numbers from Deutsche Glasfaser so far, this comes in right now. First analysis on the April looks that these people that adapt or change, migrate to Waipu, have a super high engagement of over 90%. We're doing really well there. These numbers will mainly come in in Q2 and Q3. This is why we're expecting anywhere between 80,000 and 100,000 net adds. For the second quarter, there's a continuous range of new partnerships which I will not elaborate, but I think it's just showing that the product is also improving. We're currently holding 248 channels, 185 are HD. I think it's the widest and most attractive portfolio in the market. It's even bigger than the one from Cable and MagentaTV. I think this is not really an attractor, but more a hygiene and communication factor that we have a super competitive product. On freenet TV, vice versa, we still see a decline, which is expected. We keep the revenues on a stable level due to the price increases that we have very silently implemented in end of last year and this year. Still, we do a lot of interviews with people that are leaving, and I even personally spoke to a couple of customers, and they basically tell us that they switch technology typically to IP, either when they are upgraded with glass fiber connectivity or an improved internet service. This drives us to test now hybrid offers, meaning that freenet TV customers will get a waipu either on top or in a hybrid stick version, in order to make them kind of like seamlessly migrate to the new technology and not stepping away then from freenet as a total company. On Media Broadcast, B2B is doing really well. We have also... I think we have mentioned it last year that there is a couple of risks on carriage fees. We have signed or extended long-term contracts with public television also in Q1, which will give us stability way beyond 2027. Radio is doing really well. I think overall you can see I'm very positive. I'm happy that we have done. I think the financially is a bit better than we even thought. Our not one-time effect, but a combination of a deep effect that Ingo will give you more detail. What is the outlook for the full year? We remain bullish and positive on the overall result. We will focus on implementation of AI and ChatGPT functionalities. We have an internal group working on this. Specifically, we expect midterm, very positive impact on the customer service side. As I mentioned, assisted personalized shopping is a big project which we have kicked off these days within the company, and I will give more details in August when we talk about Q2. freenet Internet is up and running, and we will increase price to EUR 35 on the TV side. Now, fully integration and implementation on Deutsche Glasfaser side. We have also seen demand from other B2B, potential B2B partners to talk to us, none of those conversations at this stage are ready to be either disclosed or concrete enough to be mentioned. We see that the IPTV market has really kicked off and anybody in Germany who is in the TV access business has a waipu on the radar and gives us the strong impression that we will find more partners such as Deutsche Glasfaser still this year. The hybrid stick I've mentioned as well. I have a meeting tomorrow where we will start talking about the implementation and the volume, and I'm very, very positive that in Q4 we will see first results, which we will again share with you at that stage. Having said that, I'd like to hand over to Ingo for the EBITDA details. Thank you. Good morning, everybody from my side. I start on page 8 with the group view. I think Christoph already summarized a little bit. I think it's very promising what we saw here or what we see. Yeah, I think Christoph is right. In all dimensions, no extraordinary effects, but in all dimensions, slightly more positive than expected. It's not a big effect, but a lot of very small effects. These positive effects lead to the EBITDA growth of 8.5% here. What is also very positive, I think, is that the performance is not based on cost savings, but it is based on better quality of the business. I think this is shown in the profit growth of EUR 10 million, and this is very equal to the EUR 10 million of growth in the EBITDA. What is also positive is that in both segments, in the TV and media segment and in the mobile segment, there is a strong development. I think all in a very positive picture, also driven by an increased revenue, which is not so usual for us, but it was also in terms of revenue, a very good first quarter. Moving to page 9, to the mobile view here. Here we speak of a steady growth of EBITDA, which is totally correct if you compare it with the last quarters. In this quarter, it's even bigger, the positive effect, on the one hand. This is also very positive. It is driven by the higher service revenues, which is the most profitable part of our business. The share of the service revenue is again near to 75%. The quality of the revenues is quite fine. We see the positive gross profit effect. On the EBITDA side, the effect is relatively comparable to the gross profit because we have a strong cost control which keeps the cost on the level where they were last year, even with all the inflationary effects and so on. Moving to some KPIs of the mobile business on page 10. Yeah, we are happy that DLS revenues are still on track. We saw some increase in the third and fourth quarter last year. As usual, the first quarter of the year is slightly lower, but it's definitely much, much higher than the first quarter of 2022. I would say, yeah, we are back on track since Q3 and this is something which shows it here again. ARPU stable, and the subscriber base growing, as Christoph already described. Moving to the TV and media business, I think a comparable picture to mobile. We see the increasing revenue based on the growing customer base at waipu.tv. I would ask you not to forget that in Q4 2022, where the revenue was even higher than in the first quarter now, we had some extraordinary revenues from barter deals and from some sticks, what we sold separately. I think this was definitely extraordinary. The EUR 80.8 million revenue in the first quarter are very strong. Moving to the gross profit, it is an increasing gross profit, mainly driven by waipu.tv, again, because of the growing number of customers and the service revenues what we generate here. On the other hand, freenet TV, it is stable, and this is the target to keep it stable because we see the decreasing number of customers in freenet TV. On the other side, we increased prices during 2022, this is what we promised, that we try to keep it on a similar level. I think here, we deliver what we promised. On the B2B side, Media Broadcast, maybe a little bit surprisingly strong, but this is driven especially by the digital radio business. I think, we invested a lot in CapEx also last year, into the infrastructure of digital radio. Therefore now we generate the gross profit out of the network, what we built there. On EBITDA terms, freenet TV still on the same level as gross profit. On the B2B side, also a very good cost control. In waipu.tv, I think this is not surprising that the EBITDA growth in waipu.tv is lower than the gross profit growth because if you wanna grow the business, then you have to invest into marketing, and this is what we did in the first quarter. This leads to a lower EBITDA effect on the short term time, but on the long term, this will pay in also on an EBITDA level. Moving to the free cash flow. I think what is important to do if you compare it with last year's free cash flow, last year we received an extraordinary dividend. If you normalize the free cash flow of last year, it was only EUR 57.2 million. even outperforms the EBITDA growth. If we look into the buckets here, a change in networking capital, this is influenced by a further decrease of factoring from something like EUR 26 million at the end of the year to EUR 13 million-EUR 14 million, something around this at the end of the first quarter 2023. Therefore, this is something why the change in networking capital is bigger, the negative effect here than last year because factoring reduction last year was much lower. Tax payments, comparable level than last year. CapEx higher than last year Here again, some investment in digital radio, what we did in the first quarter. I think we could see from the Media Broadcast B2B figures that this makes a lot of sense because we get the money back afterwards. In the other, I think interest payments slightly lower, nothing surprising in the other buckets here. Moving to the KPIs on page 13. Yeah, I think here in the, in the headline, I think the balance sheet is under control. It is still very healthy. I think we will have a usual effect because in May we will pay out the dividends. Afterwards, the leverage will be higher again, but definitely still on a very low level, and it will, the balance sheet will stay on a very healthy level with a equity ratio above 40%. My last page, 14, is the guidance. We reiterate it. I read in some of your comments that maybe the guidance is too low and maybe it's too conservative. I think today, definitely it is much too early to discuss the guidance here. I think we are early in the year. We have to see what happens and therefore we reiterate the guidance today, and then during the year, we have to see what happens and what will be possible. Therefore, I hand over to Christoph again. Yeah, thank you, Ingo. Before we go into Q&A, I'd like to make a comment on as well on the topic of guidance and target. I think there's a couple of things which I'd like to mention. We see that you have all read that Apple has problems with CPE revenues. Significantly, we also see that in April with GRAVIS. Both, please don't be surprised that revenues in Q2 might take a dip from pure hardware sales. Actually, it's not nonprofit revenues, but I think that is one thing I'd like to mention and you should be aware of. No damage, but we would like to avoid a negative surprise. The second thing is that we have decided to do increases in salaries more significant than we've done in the past. The question was whether we will already implement it in Q1. It will come late Q2, early Q3. That is part that will make the trajectory a bit flatter than one might expect now in the typical extension of Q1. The third topic is that we have tested a lot of new advertising, social media, et cetera, et cetera, with waipu.tv. The team has told us that they feel now more comfortable now to spend a bit more money than they did in the past. I think there are three effects. This is why I was intervening here. I think the three effects that we will see over the year, and they also cause the fact that we are not yet in a position to really extrapolate Q1 results and see whether this will have an impact or a need to increase the EBITDA guidance. Having said that, I think that is setting the scene for a Q&A, and happy to answer your questions. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to withdraw your question, please press nine and star again. Please press nine and star to register for a question. First up is Polo Tang from UBS. Over to you. Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. Congratulations on a strong set of results. I just have a few different questions. The first one is can you talk through what you're seeing in terms of competitive dynamics in the German mobile market? Also ARPUs have been broadly stable for you guys. Given price rises in the market, do you think that your mobile ARPU can grow going forward? Second question is really just about M&A and use of cash. Just looking at the annual report indicated that the board had considered M&A, given the quantum of the one-off charges that you recognize for due diligence. It sounded like you were considering a large-scale acquisition. Can you talk about how you see your priorities for use of cash? If you are considering M&A, what type of M&A are you thinking about? My final question is, what's your view on whether there will be a fourth mobile network build in Germany? Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Polo. On the first one, I think no big changes in the picture on the market. I think at Deutsche Telekom, we see that they are putting a lot of effort on cross-selling their what they call next tariff plans. Within families, to try to get whatever SIM-onlys from children, wives, husbands, neighbors, and et cetera as long as they have a lead tariff plan with Magenta. Actually, we're doing the same on the Magenta tariff plans, but that's what we see as an activity. The other one is that Deutsche Telekom seems to do, unfortunately, they do a great job in penetrating fiber open access providers and doing a great job there to Internet access and accompanied by MagentaTV. I think they finally found the right approach and doing really well. Other than that, they in the core business on mobile, they keep prices on their high premium level, and it's appreciated by the end consumer. Vodafone, we still see them in I guess in less turbulences than we have seen in six months. It feels that new management is getting grip on the company. Still a lot of open questions on whether they, what their investment in quality is, what they are, how they're gonna treat. Topic of DOCSIS versus fiber overbuild. I think there is still a lot of uncertainty. We have seen them taking out money from the commissions in the Q4 2022 and Q1. We see them now coming back to do it, still with some caution, but in general, return to what we would say, we would call the normal status. We have also done a couple of commission versus revenue share switches in the first quarter, in accordance with their internal planning. Overall, I think they are for sure in the weakest position, and the perception, end consumer perception is rather weak. At least if we compare it to period three or four years ago. For us, they remain an important partner, but I think the difference is that for a long period, they were the strongest and most important partner. Right now, the other two are more important for us. I expect them to have a comeback over the year. Telefónica, I think Markus and his team did an excellent job in brand perception, in quality perception. They're doing really well. We are still struggling with them because they don't give us full access or access to their 5G network. We have escalated these discussions. There is a general will to cooperate, but there is still a couple of open questions, which hopefully we can sort out in the next couple of months. I don't see ARPUs going up. These famous price increases happened actually on prepaid and prepaid, old prepaid tariffs with Telefónica. I think that the message was oversized. It did not really move the needle, but don't expect ARPUs to go up. I would say flat on that level. I think they're more impacted by the channel and acquisition mix of SIM-only versus subsidized handsets than from any other. Let me also go to the situation with 1&1. I'm not in a position to disclose more than what's publicly available anyway. We were told or public knowledge is that they are still below a two-digit number on active antennas. I think they have built anywhere between 10 and 15, but active are not even 10. I was surprised to read last week that he starts now to offer internet through 5G. I think that is a very brave statement if you run this with six active antennas. We have also read the same quotes from Tim Höttges that he is not, he does not believe that 1&1 is honestly working on building a real network. That's what I read, that's what you read. My interpretation is still that he is struggling with that infrastructure. From what we know from other projects, even if you sign a deal, to put an antenna on top of a building, it typically takes six to eight months. I cannot see a realistic chance, that they will go anywhere near 1,000 antennas, by the end of the year. This would then mean that from 1st January of 2024, 1&1 would not be in a position to seriously state that they have a 5G access or 5G network for their consumers. I personally think that Ralf Dommermuth really need to have to take his own decision on the future, whether he is trying to co-ally once again with either of the networks or find a different solution. As a pure standalone solution for 2024 might be damaging for the reputation of his brand, and I think he will not let this happen. You need to ask him what he thinks the way out of the troubled situation is. On the cost of M&A, yeah, you were. You're right. We have spent money on a big project which we finally turned down. By definition, cannot disclose what actually was the project or the target. I think in... If we look at M&A, let me exclude a couple of things. I mean, obviously within the mobile and service provider market, there is no option in Germany. There is also not real optionality to acquire a big chain of shops or something there because there is nothing available. I think a natural organic expansion is there, but not an inorganic move. We have over the years, every time when we looked into products, be it accessories, be it IoT, be it specific app services, We've always looked at it, but at the end of the day, we always step back and said, "We are not a product company. We're not good at that. We are a good company in packaging and selling. That leads to the area of M&A where I'm busy with is to understand how could we accelerate the growth of IPTV. I mean, you know that we are working with Deutsche Glasfaser in a sales cooperation. If there would be, and I'm trying to avoid any real name, if there was a local network, a city network, or somebody who says, "We would be ready for an exclusive partnership, you are our provider for TV services," I think then we could... If this was an M&A, I don't know. That could be in combined with an initial down payment, exclusivity fee, a CapEx subsidy for the network. You're all aware of those dimensions. If I look at, take the example DNS:NET Brandenburg Berlin, they have a couple of 100,000 subscribers on IP and fiber. They're doing their own TV services. Would it be attractive for us to cooperate with them? First choice would be a cooperation with the revenue share. They might say, "Hey, guys, if you give us so and so much money, we would be ready to migrate our customers straight into waipu.tv and then extend it, and maybe they have some cash need." That is the type of deal that I am constantly looking at. I think there is. On an international platform, there's a good example. That was the Euskaltel deal in Spain, where MásMóvil bought them, and then they handed over the TV business to a third party IPTV provider. I think that is a model which I like. That is the type of thing, we have had a couple of talks over the past 18 months. Every now and then, there is options out there, at this stage today, there is no concrete project, but that's the type of thing. Other than that, cash deployment and capital deployment, I think, Ingo, you wanna say, give a statement there? Yeah. I think nothing new on this side. I think it is the first idea to invest the free cash flow which is not spent as a dividend to invest it into the business. I think this is still our idea. Christoph was already talking about IPTV earlier. If there would be a chance to invest parts of this free cash flow into the business to grow faster, especially in front of the end of the Nebenkostenprivileg for example, in 2024, we would be open to do so. I think we would only invest it reasonable. I think this is what we do all the time, as you know us, if there would be a chance to grow faster, yeah, definitely we would invest it. I think it's still the same priority than in other calls here. What we told you, we want to invest it into the business. If there is a good chance to do it in a cooperation with a third party, as Christoph discussed earlier, yes, definitely yes. If it is called at the end of the day M&A, let's wait and see, maybe it's something in between. If nothing of this would be possible, definitely earlier or later, and this is also something what I read in all of your comments, earlier or later, we have to discuss if a share buyback would make sense. I think already in March, we told you that we do not expect it before the second half of the year to discuss it, and this is still the situation. Nothing new on this side, we see opportunities and hopefully we could realize some of them. Next up is Yemi Falana from Goldman Sachs. Morning, Christoph and Ingo. Congratulations on another strong quarter. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, I'll start on just volumes across the core business. On the mobile side, your commercial traction remains strong. How are you thinking about the progression through the year? It feels ambitious at this stage to extrapolate such a strong quarter. Given your traction today, I'd be interested to know what your kind of expectations are as we go through the year. Secondly, I think you've touched on this on the course of this call. On the TV side, partnerships will continue to be a tailwind, whether that's with Deutsche Glasfaser or elsewhere on the TV side. Do you think there's still scope for consensus to move upwards towards the kind of 1.4 million-1.5 million expectation that you have on the waipu.tv volume side for the full year? The second question is just on your new initiatives. Firstly, on freenet Internet, could you comment on the pace of ramp-up and the scale of opportunity there as you see it now? Are things progressing in line with your expectations when you initially set them out at launch? Secondly, your hybrid stick strategy on the TV side does look well reasoned, but there are clearly some risks and opportunities around that. Some of us were around in late 2018 when we saw large step downs in the TV base. How are you thinking about managing that commercial deployment? Maybe if I have one final question, just on factoring. I guess ex-factoring, the free cash flow performance would have been even stronger. Do you plan to fully unwind this factoring in 2023? If not, what timeline should we be thinking about? Thank you. Thanks for the questions. First one, postpaid. As you said, I think first quarter was stronger than one would expect. I would not take that times four for the year. I think anywhere between 100 and 130 net adds over the full year is a fair assumption. We see April was okay. As I said, on the unlimited, we will have to take volume down a little bit because of the extra cost that they cause. I would say +100 to 130 would be my guesstimate for the full year. On waipu.tv, my personal guesstimate would be, well, anywhere between 1.4 and 1.5. We have had, by yesterday, beyond 1.1 million, so already, more than 55,000 net adds in the first five weeks of the second quarter. I think second quarter, well, I guess, yeah, my dream is a three-digit number, so + 100 would be great. If this is doable, I'm not sure yet, but we will get close. Then we will. If I take that fact that fourth quarter is typically stronger, then I think an assumption beyond the 1.4 million is a fair one, and this is independent from new partnerships. That is what I would call organic development under given circumstances of as of today. On freenet Internet, I said we did some beta testing. It turned out that still, implementation, service delivery, remains a challenge. This is why we were testing intensely. In April, we have really launched it in our own shops. After the first 5 weeks, we have now said that we will take away the other commission-based DSL services, internet access services that we were still selling and replace them by our own one. Ramp-up so far was reasonable within the plans, with effect of 2 or 3 months delay. In fact, really implementation is starting now. I think the volume that we will create, it's maybe EUR 2,000-EUR 3,000 a month. I think that is when we do now say from June. That is the kind of volume. We do not put money on marketing side. We just take cross-selling opportunities and migrate the volume that we have sold so far on commission-based. The TV stick, the hybrid version. Yes, I understand your question. Simply said, my current hypothesis is we send a hybrid stick to an existing freenet TV customer and tell him to replace his existing set-top box or PCMCIA card, connect his private antenna to the stick, and then take the opportunity of experiencing the full HD with the channels that he has subscribed with freenet TV, and on top, use the waipu.tv. With CRM, make these people aware that the technology they have in-house is already the latest hottest stuff that is available in the market. To make them, whenever they want to move away from their current antenna, to make them aware that there is no need to switch, but to stay with us. That would also mean that the subscriber would still be a DVB-T subscriber, but would have an additional IPTV service on top. That would by the way end to the fact that we would not see a net add on Waipu side. We would just see a, hopefully, a more stable number on the freenet TV side. No additional revenues for them, but lucky enough, they're on the same pricing level anyway. Our investment would basically be the hardware and the shipment to make the people understand that we do not cannibalize self-cannibalize the product, but they deliver an add-on which saves them a later migration to anybody else. That is, let's call it the philosophical idea around it. We have shipped 150 sticks with that kind of ambition last week. We do is we start our questionnaires with these customers next week. Once again, I guess till Q2 results in August, I will be in a good position to explain how it should work and what the concrete impact was. We definitely saw high engagement and high response on the offer. I sent the people a personal letter saying, I'm the CEO of both these companies, and I'd like to invite them to experience both. Now we see what the outcome's gonna be. There's the question of factoring, I think Ingo will. How will we go on with factoring? Yeah. I think we reduced it further. I think at the moment, we do not add any receivables to the program, if we would not do so during the year, it will reduce further in the next month and the next quarters. I think it is a little bit a possibility to influence the level of free cash flow. I think, yeah, basically the idea is to reduce it further to zero. The program is still there. It is available, so if you would need it, we could use it. From today's forecasts and based on the guidance what we give in free cash flow, the idea was to reduce it to zero and to. At the moment we are on this track. Thanks, guys. Very clear and reassuring, definitely on the hybrid stick side of things. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you. The next questioner is Martin Hammerschmidt from Citi. Yeah, thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first one is on the waipu.tv, the DA, and sort of the growth run rate in 2023. I think this quarter you managed to do 0.6 million on that. If I think about throughout the year, you have customer growth coming from Deutsche Glasfaser and obviously your organic customer growth. On the slides, you also highlighted high investment in anticipation of the elimination of the Nebenkostenprivileg. How should I think about that 0.6 going forward? Is that something that you think you can maintain, improve, or because of the investment coming in the second half, that might actually turn negative? The second question is, I mean, your comments on the guidance at the end of your remarks were quite helpful. If I think about sort of the mobile business, I think on the previous call, the indication was that you can manage or you should be able to manage over EUR 100 million of EBITDA per quarter. Now with the salary increase coming in, is that still sort of the case that you see, or has something changed? Thank you very much. Yeah. I think I start with the waipu question. I think first of all, maybe to clarify here, the EUR 0.6 million is the increase of EBITDA compared to last year, so it is not the size of the EBITDA in the quarter. There was this increase of EUR 0.6 million in the first quarter. But on an all-in EBITDA level, I think what we promised in the last call was that it could be possible to have an EBITDA of something between EUR 10 million and EUR 15 million in 2023. If we would invest additionally, I think it could be possible that we put the EBITDA something like down to EUR 0. This could be possible if there are growth opportunities. I think it is all based... If there is no chance to gain additional customers, there will be no cash out. There will be only a cash out if there is really the availability to grow the base. I think we are talking about investments of EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million, I would say something like this additionally. I think we have to see if there is really a realization. The EBITDA in the first quarter was definitely higher than EUR 0.6 million, because for the whole year, to repeat it, there was a guidance, what we give, that the EBITDA will be between EUR 10 million and more EUR 15 million in 2023. Your question about the guidance and about the mobile EBITDA. Yeah, I think we have to think about the sales increases, and I think we do not exactly know the dimension, but I still would say that EUR 100 million a quarter, EUR 400 million a year in the mobile EBITDA would be possible. Here again, I think what I also said, discussing the guidance, I think we are early in the year, but from today's point of view, yeah, this still looks possible. Understood. Hopefully that helps. Yeah. Yeah. Can I clarify the first one on the waipu.tv? As things stand right now, would you sort of stick to that EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million and say you don't necessarily see a big investment coming of this EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million? Would you sort of walk back on that and say EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million might not necessarily be something that we can achieve? I think the 10-15 is fine. I think the 10-15 is fine because it gives already a span of five. We're talking about that kind of level of investment. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from Ulrich Rathe from Societe Generale. Thank you very much. I wanted to ask on the DLS revenues, which you're highlighting, could you give us a sense of what the contribution margin from this is? Ingo, you sort of said on the call that obviously the mobile service revenues have the highest contribution margin. You know, these sort of other revenues we all carry in our models are a bit difficult to sort of model in terms of what they actually do to the EBITDA. I think the DLS revenues are probably relatively high margin as well, if you could give us some help there. Second question is on TV. If you are considering inorganic growth opportunities, whether it's M&A or these sort of partnerships that require capital contributions, could you talk a little bit about what the end game there is? Because YPO ultimately is sort of centered, as I understand it, around a linear TV service, which may or may not have a long-term future. I'm talking about the very long term here, obviously. How do you think about that? Do you want to essentially own the German market, you know, with your, with this very strong starting point you have share-wise, and then migrate that into a real sort of streaming world, sort of on-demand streaming world? Where are you actually aiming with these sorts of expansionary strategies in the end game? The last question I had would be. Sorry. The last question I had would be on the refinancing. Could you give us an indication at what terms you're currently refinancing? Thank you. Okay. I maybe I do the TV thing, and then Ingo goes for the other two. I think we're talking about, thanks for stating very long term. What do I see? I see that fiber penetration over the next, it will take up to 10 years to have it on a reasonable level in Germany. When you see the announcements and reality, then, you know, it's gonna take longer than expected, than it sounds. Let's put it that way. There will be a replacement or a strong decrease on cable for technology reason and for this famous Nebenkostenprivileg. We do research on that, and we, people tell us that about a third of the population are currently aware. At the same time, we get the first mailings from Vodafone and the house landlords that people should be switching. I think there's a lot of activity coming, going on. Satellite will remain an existing technology, very long-term contract with the. With the program owners, public and private. The strategy on waipu is to grow it as fast as possible beyond the 3 million subscriber line. Why do I believe 3 million? That is close to 10% of the households. It's 5% of all TV sets. If we had the 3 million, then it would be approximately 10% of the TV sets as well. With that size, you're suddenly in a different game because rights owners are approaching you and offering their content versus now we are still hanging on their door, knocking on their doors and asking them for content. It's a different ballgame from a certain size. I think the opportunity is out there. If I look at the market, there is Vodafone. They need to switch into IPTV. whatever the plot platform they're gonna deploy, it's gonna take them a long time, they will be difficult because they cannibalize their super high margin cable business. They will be in a delay. Telefónica is doing slowly but surely more than they did in the past. They are growing with ourselves at a similar level. 1&1, United Internet, as far as what we hear, they have also a couple of 100,000 subscribers, which they currently run on a B2B service contract with Satell. rumors say that they are also reflecting or reviewing their current partnerships. There is Tele Columbus, same position as Vodafone. What is the right timing to replace the existing TV business? If I add all this together, then I think there is, within the next five years, there's a potential for us, an entity to grow into the 3 million range. If we get any of the others that need to switch technology as well, it should be possible to add another 30%, 40%, 50% to that volume. If we are on, in that range, five years, let's say in three years, I want to 3 million. in five years, i want to have 5 million. If we are on that range, then I have now first talks to National Football League. They say, "Well, what are you planning to do? What is your vision? Netflix was the first one to partner with us. We have been approached from DAZN, and we are now cooperating with DAZN. Sooner or later, I think Sky Germany will also open up for third party and not on guarantees. I think the dramatic change with IP is that the film industry will move away from set guarantees for rights to a more license per subscriber business model. I think that is what we are seeing in the U.S., that what we see in a couple of other countries. This is how I see midterm the development. We have tested a couple of real pure video on demand on single series and single programs. Still doesn't work in Germany. Big packages like 35 Turkish channel work, but not single VOD. We've also tested a couple of things now with the Zone on single games. Single ticketing doesn't work either. The CRM is still too expensive there, and the attractiveness and the likelihood is still not there. Finally, I think there will be also a clean out of these services. We have seen Disney+ not really approaching Germany with a single subscription, but also only with a deal with Deutsche Telekom. Paramount+ more or less stopping their own start after a couple of weeks. I could talk a long list of tries. Joyn is still struggling. I think a big platform like Waipu and Magenta, they are the survivors. It must be our ambition and key goal to be number 2 after Magenta because they are just in better position because of their 30 million fixed line households. Is that an answer which you can not live with, but work with? It's very helpful. Thank you for taking the time to lay that out for us. With your question about digital lifestyle revenues, I think basically you are definitely correct. The margin of the digital lifestyle business is higher than the average margin of our business, definitely. If we look into the increase of EUR 10 million revenues in the first quarter, I would split it a little bit because half of it really was an increase from businesses with these high margins. We also have small parts in the digital lifestyle portfolio where we sell hardware, where the margin is lower. Especially in the first quarter, the share of hardware sales. In the increase of EUR 10 million was slightly higher than normal because we had relatively high inventories, which we had to reduce during the first quarter. This is something what we did. Generally, you are totally correct. For the increase in the first quarter, I would say 50/50. 50% high margin, 50% lower margin. Your question about refinancing. I think what is important to know is that we still have an unused revolving line in the back of EUR 300 million. Therefore, we are not in a hurry to do the refinancing, and we are not getting nervous with the margins which are out in the market at the moment. To give you, I think an important additional information, in the revolver, we do only have a margin of 18 basis points, so a very, very low margin compared to all what we have in other instruments. Therefore it could make sense to use the revolving line first. Definitely it is not the idea to use the revolving line for longer terms, but in the short term makes a lot of sense. Therefore we already announced that we will try to do another promissory note in autumn this year, and this is still the plan to do so. What we do see at the moment is that the margins should be something like 170 basis points, something like this. In the existing promissory note, we have margins of something like 130 basis points. There is a difference of 30-40 basis points at the moment. I think we will try. We will see how the market will look like in autumn. Its interest markets are moving, you know better than me. If the margins would be too bad in autumn, we will try in winter. If it is still the situation, we would also have the time to do it in the first month of 2024. We are not in the hurry. We will check the market. It is still the idea to do it in autumn, hopefully with lower margins than what we see today. Thank you very much. Okay. There was a audio dropout. The revolver margin is what? Only 80 basis points. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay, perfect. We're coming to the next questioner. It is Usman Ghazi from Berenberg. Hi, gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity. I wanted to ask you on the wage increase that you indicated at Q4. I mean, you've indicated roughly EUR 10 million from inflationary effects. EUR 3 million was from energy. EUR 7 million was from wages. I mean, are you saying that, you know, because of the strong performance that you had, you're thinking of maybe putting wages up by more than what you planned for the wage headwind would be more than EUR 7 million on an EBITDA basis? Just a clarification there, please. Second question was just on the again, on your on these talks that you've been having with the city carriers, and you mentioned that, you know, you were looking at the deal in Q4, but I believe that, you know, over the last two years, you know, you have been considering this model where you subsidize the CapEx for the city carriers in return for exclusivity. In all cases, I guess you have, you know, you've decided not to go ahead. Can I perhaps ask, you know, what is the key stumbling block? Is it kind of, you know, the quality of the end partner? Is it governance issues? Is it... I mean, it'd be just helpful to see, you know, what is making you back off because in concept, obviously, given your gearing, given the opportunity that exists with the city carriers, you know, it would appear that this is a no-brainer. Yeah, just your experience there would be helpful. My final question was just going back to factoring. I mean, you know, I guess I think the main purpose of the factoring, you know, in any factoring is to neutralize the impact of cash flows from, you know, from the hardware sales, right? You know, in reducing the factoring facility, are you as a company, saying that, look, you know, in order to improve the quality of the balance sheet, we are willing to take the negative hit from selling hardware, or take the negative timing hit from selling hardware, in our cash flow just to improve the balance sheet? Or is something else happening? Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Usman, thanks for the question. First one, I think the EUR 7 million-EUR 10 million inflationary effects on wages are still valid. The fact is that we could not see any impact in the first quarter. Okay. Yeah. I was just making sure that nobody says, "Okay, it's so well, it's not gonna drop again." The impact will only happen later. Thanks for, I think it's a good clarification for everybody. On these carrier things, I mean. To be honest, it's a strange experience, yeah. You're going to a city carrier, you talk to them and say, "Hey, guys, we'd love to do internet access through your network. We'd love to do, kind of, become your ServCo on TV." They are really excited, really positive. You start to ask questions like, "How many households are really active customers? How many do you really know, and how many are using your TV service?" It turns out, for example, in Munich with M-net, that you start with a couple of 100,000. In the second meeting, you learn that the access is only 200,000, and then you learn that not even 10% of their connected, theoretically connected households are really customers and are really getting TV. You're starting super optimistic and with deep pockets, ready to spend money, and then you learn step by step that they are nowhere near a real customer relationship. That is a matter of fact. The second thing is, same picture on cable. Local cable networks, wilhelm.tel, or PYÜR/Tele Columbus. You talk to them, and then you learn that 70% of their business currently is not a direct to consumer, but a direct to the landlord or the real estate commissioner. Then you ask them, like, "How can we migrate the customers?" They say, "Well, you could send somebody there and knock the doors because we don't even know the names of the users." I'm a bit disillusioned from... They're super happy to talk to us. They're always excited when you offer money, and then we start to tell them that we are happy to work with subscriptions with individuals, that we at least know the name, and their bank account. It turns out that they are, this is a level of detail which they have never heard of. I'm slightly exaggerating, but that is really what I'm experiencing. I give you a different example. We have a channel on waipu.tv with, for the 1. FC Nürnberg, which is the Nürnberg football club. A very, very traditional club. They are super happy. They said, "We want to have our club TV on YPO." We said, "Okay, implementation, no issue. You have that. But hey, guys, what you should do is tell all your members that they should now go to YPO and have their football and your club TV on their big screen at home." It turns out that out of this famous club, they not even have 20,000 addresses, but they have only 5,000. And out of those 5,000, 3,000, they have no allowance to address them. Reality of CRM direct marketing customer ownership is very different, the deeper you go, and that is, has been so far the disappointing experience and, what you called it, the stumbling factor, of these, non-M&A activities. Thanks. Your question about factoring. I think, is it possible to give a clear answer? I would say no. I think I remember the situation two years ago when we already said, "Okay, after the sale of Sunrise stake, we have a healthy balance sheet." We talked to some investors and they said, "Okay, yes, your balance sheet looks healthy, but you have a factoring volume of EUR 120 million." They. And also rating agencies are doing it. They say, "Okay, this is part of your debt and you have to add it." You could say, "Okay, I do factoring, and then I do have a healthier balance sheet." I would say, and this is where we changed our position already some years ago, at the end of the day, the factoring is, even if it is off balance, for us, it is part of the balance sheet, how we interpret it. Therefore we said, we want to give a clear picture to everybody, and therefore we re-reduce the factoring to zero. We have the ability to finance the hardware business, what we do, with the strength of our balance sheet. Therefore we... I would not say that we could change the position in the future, because there are still enough receivables to sell, and there are still enough programs where we could sell the receivables. At the moment, it's not planned. I think we want to give a transparent and clear picture with the balance sheet, and this was behind the decision to reduce the volume. Right. Just sorry on, I mean, could you indicate, how, you know, what the interest cost savings are that you're making by reducing the factoring, balance? Or what the rate is about that? Yeah. I think you have a margin of something like 1.5% here, what you do have to pay. This is, at the end of the day, something what you save. Thank you very much. Next up is Adam Fox-Rumley from HSBC. Thank you very much, and for all the answers you've given so far. We've spoken previously, about the efficacy of advertising. I was interested to hear your comments on the feedback from the YPO team that it sounds like something has changed or a new approach has changed. If there's anything that you can say a little bit more about the improvement you've seen that justifies a great approach, that would be very interesting to hear. Just on a second question around potential partnerships. I think we've probably mentioned this before, but just like a reminder, if there's any kind of meaningful work to be done on your side ahead of taking on, another, you know, becoming a white label for someone or becoming a direct partner for someone, or is that mostly all done and it's pretty plug and play from your side? Thank you. own and apply the rules step-by-step. Original transcript: "Uh, let me start with the latter question. Um, to connect any local fiber carrier or so, there is an api it's done within four weeks. Um, it is a different thing if we would do white label. But the answer is we have not done any white label yet, and we are not planning to do white label. We are always talking about we call it a sales partnership and we are in a position to give the partner a couple of entrance screen, uh and a presentation on-- in the app on the website, et cetera, that is then branded for them. A typical white-- a real white label would be something like, they want a couple of features different. They want, I don't know, a vertically instead of a horizontal EPG and something. We are not ready to do that, and whenever we talk to a third party, we always make a strict statement right at the beginning that we are not a B2B partner, but we are a finished product with slight adaptations. I think that should all be possible within anything, well, 4 - 12 weeks. Typically, we see that, at least from Deutsche Glasfaser, we have seen that their internal implementation was way more costly and time-consuming than ours. Rather plug and play. On the first one, if I got that right, on, I think the question was on the advertising or subscriber acquisition performance. I mean, the team there, they are super accurate, very technocratic when they do analysis. I think over the past two or three years, they continuously tested many different versions of advertising, many different approaches, prices, offers, et cetera, et cetera. They kept telling us that increasing the subscriber acquisition cost by whatever, 10, by 20%, would destroy margin instead of driving volume at a similar level of profit per customer or life cycle, we said. Well, now they tell us that obviously the awareness for IPTV, the awareness for the product, the awareness of the brand has increased good enough so that these marginal expenses immediately pay back. I think that is ultimately the message. Every time they have spent more, they said, "Well, we have spent more per customer, but we have not really added volume." Now they have found the trick. I guess it's not the single, "Oh, now we have a new headline." It's as I said, prompted awareness is now on 43%, which is way higher than it was 18 months ago, where we still were in the low 20s. I think awareness of IPTV as a category as such has grown significantly in awareness across the board. We have been able to present the product in the press, in the media, in the marketing way more. I think it just, it's just, yeah, becoming easier, and that enables us to do so. Brilliant. Thanks very much. As far as the- Exactly. Yeah. No further questions. About to say the same thing. No further questions. Thanks for your patience. Thanks for your good questions. Thanks for the interesting discussion that we had. As always, Tim and his team are available for further questions next couple of days. We will have a investors roadshow tomorrow. We're happy to talk to any of you in the near future. Goodbye. Bye.