Hello everyone, thank you for joining us today for the Tele Columbus AG Q1 Preliminary Results Call. My name is Sammy, and I'll be coordinating your call today. I'll now hand over to your host, Carmen Becker, Investor Relations and Investment Manager to begin. Please go ahead, Carmen. Thank you, Sammy, for the introduction. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Carmen Becker speaking, and it's my pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Tele Columbus management team to today's conference call following the release of our preliminary results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, which ends on 31st of March. This call is limited to 90 minutes. In case of any follow-up questions, please let me know. I am here today with Christoph Lüthe, Chief Executive Officer, and Tim Rhönisch, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to remind you that if any lenders or rating agencies are on the call right now, that this is a public conference call in which only publicly available information will be discussed. I would therefore ask you to refrain from questions containing information not belonging to the public domain. This conference call is intended for capital market participants only and not for press representatives. If any journalists are on the line right now, we will highly appreciate if you are leaving the conference call now. Press representatives are welcome to call my colleague, Sebastian Artymiak, to discuss any outstanding questions. Please note that we have already uploaded the presentation 30 minutes before the call. We will upload the toolkit with the final numbers and financial reports in mid-June. Having said this, it's my pleasure to hand over to you, Christoph. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, Carmen, and very warm welcome to everybody on the line. I would like to start actually with the summary page in the commonly used format. In terms of our upgraded two-way own network footprint, we expanded slightly during the first quarter. We had around 20,500 homes, bringing our total network reach up to 2.4 million households on our network. On the fiber deployment front, our fiberization rate increased by 2%, now reaching a total volume of 26% of our footprint covered by FTTH and FTTP build-out architecture. This acceleration was executed via a smart managed deployment strategy, which successfully reduced our total CapEx spend in Q1 down to EUR 18 million. We are also continuing our strategy of reducing non-strategic and non-profitable assets, and the implementation of the assets sold to Vodafone last year, as mentioned the last call, is running as planned. We are also firmly targeting the closing of the MDCC network sale in the second quarter of 2026. Furthermore, we have finalized a wholesale agreement with 1&1 which is strategically important to us. The commercial and operational impacts of this partnership are on track to materialize in Q1 2027, meeting our rollout schedule and our business case. Looking at the commercial performance, our gross momentum in the core IP segment is confirmed. We achieved a strong 5.3% year-on-year increase in customers, where the rest of the market participants remains flat or even announcing declining numbers on a yearly term. In terms of volume, quarterly net additions reached 4,000 in the first quarter. We have also successfully implemented a price increase. While this, of course, triggered some customer churn, the volume was a one-off effect matching our business case. Very important, we continue to successfully drive our high-value sales. Nearly 50% of our gross adds say that premium products with benefits of larger than 500 Mbits. Moving to the financials. Just a brief introduction. Our financial results grew by 0.6% to EUR 105 million, mainly supported by the internet and telephony segment, but also alongside with a solid B2B growth. Profitability showed strength. Our normalized EBITDA increased by 30% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Capital efficiency remains tight. Our total Q1 CapEx decreased significantly by nearly 50% to EUR 80 million, as mentioned earlier. This is mainly driven via a selective approach to network infrastructure investments. Finally, our cash position stands at a solid EUR 61.6 million. With that, moving to the market landscape. We confirm our position as Germany's fastest-growing internet provider, maintaining a 5.3% on subscriber growth rate in the first quarter. This growth was delivered despite a strict cost focus and less aggressive promotion during the quarter. As mentioned earlier, the overall conditions in the telecommunications market remain highly challenging, characterized by a general decline in the customer base of our main competitors, with the exception of O2. Moving to the next slide, focusing on the subscriber base. Our total internet base successfully reached 746,000 RGUs. This represents a solid expansion of 5.3% compared to 708,000 RGUs reported in the first quarter of 2025. As mentioned earlier, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, we added 4,000 net subscribers in the first quarter, and the main growth came out of our fiber network architecture. The continuous expansion of our high-tier internet subscriber base and the Q1 price increase and some net effects which came in the first quarter of 2025, were the main drivers of our top-line results. Internet and telephony revenues grew to EUR 600.2 million in the first quarter, this represents a 6.5% growth rate. A few words to the product mix. Very important to us that more than 80% of all new customers have chosen high-tier speeds larger than 250 Mbit bandwidth. Nearly 50% choose products larger 500 Mbits, which clearly describes where the trend is going. The share of our triple-play products has decreased to 29%, bringing it to similar levels which we had before DTV bulk migration. To address this trend, we have implemented targeted measures to re-accelerate the 3P growth rate. A few words to our TV base. Our total TV access subscriber base stood at 1,014,000 RGUs, marking a year-on-year decline of 6.3% in comparison to the first quarter in 2025. This Q1 development was structurally impacted by the disposal of non-strategic foreign signal footprint, which affected around 6,400 TV subscribers. Excluding these effects, these portfolio effects, overall RGU development would remain broadly in line with the current market trend. In terms of premium TV, our RGU base decreased by 6.1% on a year-on-year basis, moving from 499,000 in Q1 2025 to 469,000 RGUs in the first quarter. The customer churn was slightly higher than in previous quarters, driven primarily by one-off operational effects, such as the 3-bundle price increases expected and implemented during the first quarter. With that said, I would like to hand it over to my colleague, Tim Rhönisch, our CFO. Thank you, Christoph, good morning, everyone. Good to speak to you again. Admittedly, a bit sooner than usual as our Q4 call was only last week. Let me start with one piece of homework from that call and briefly clarify our 2026 guidance. Please bear in mind that this guidance is in light of the cash-preserving case that we are currently steering the company against. With that being said, for full year 2026, we expect normalized EBITDA to improve by a high single-digit to low double-digit EUR million amount, and our reported EBITDA is expected to grow by a low to mid-double-digit EUR million amount. As said, this is in light of the current cash-preserving case and obviously close alignment also with our different stakeholders and our supervisory board. For the time being, given the current refinancing process, we are not in a situation to further guide on CapEx and funding requirements. With that clarified, let me turn to our Q1 financial performance, starting with our revenues. For the usual overview, Q1 2025 development until Q1 2026. We see a resilient revenue development while downsides in TV, in line with the usual market headwinds, giving the TV market, but customer growth in TV and in internet and telephony by 38,000 RGUs and a positive ARPU effect of EUR 0.23. B2B, so the smaller revenue items, B2B and other revenue, are basically developing along the usual seasonality. On the next slide, the EBITDA bridge. We saw a very strong Q1 development versus Q1 2025. Our EBITDA normalized is up by 13%, especially driven by our disciplined cost execution. I would skip the revenue part, as outlined before already. On other operating income, basically in line with Q1 2025. The biggest impact you can see is the minus EUR 5.5 million on own work capitalized. Let me give you some more guidance on that number. Basically, we saw in Q1 2025 an overstated own work capitalized, which we cleaned up in Q4, as outlined last week. If we are looking at linear distribution of 2025, that negative impact here would decrease by around EUR 4 million, split by own work capitalized and IT CapEx. Our EBITDA development in 2026, adjusted by that, would even be higher, since 2025 EBITDA would be around EUR 35 million. Just to be clear, that is an internal exercise that we carried out, obviously, to have a comparison basis 2026 with 2025. That distribution is not audited, since it's not practical for us to really align the Q4 effect and spread it out to Q1 to Q3. Direct costs improved by EUR 2.6 million, especially due to reduced logistics costs and energy savings. In personnel costs, here we see the impact of our voluntary leave program and restructuring efforts from last week. Personnel costs down by EUR 5.4 million. We expect that difference to decrease, so that is not at the basis for the run rate, which I provided last week, which we see at EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million on a yearly basis. Here, obviously a quite high impact in Q1. Marketing costs down by EUR 2 million, which especially in light of our resilient revenues and our internet and telephony development, obviously a very strong execution. Other OpEx, as stated here also, an upside of half a million EUR. That upside would even be higher on a IT CapEx like-for-like basis by another EUR 1 million. EUR 3 million, more or less, in own work capitalized and EUR 1 million in IT CapEx. With that, coming to our CapEx spendings, excluding leases. Here you see the opposite effect in Q1 2026, where our CapEx spending is down to EUR 18 million, coming from EUR 36 million in Q1 2025. However, as stated, around EUR 4 million are related to own work capitalized and IT CapEx. A very strong execution, especially on the CPE side, so end customer related CapEx, where we are down to EUR 9 million, coming from around EUR 15 million in Q4 and EUR 12 million in Q1. That is especially in relation to our CPE recovery project and our refurbishment efforts, as I stated already in last week's call. Here we see the first benefits. Other CapEx and network infrastructure, as Christoph outlined already here, we are currently executing a more selective approach, therefore, we saw a reduced network infrastructure as stated. Also in last week's call, we still expect network infrastructure CapEx spending in line with 2025, that the Q1 is even lower right now and is not reflecting the yearly run rate. It's driven by seasonality, that especially in Q1, we were very cautious on network infrastructure CapEx spending. The last point, the EUR 1.4 million asset held for sale, is in context with our MDCC sale process, where in alignment with our auditors, we reflected those assets already in Q1 2026, under IFRS 5. Our overview slide. Here I would skip revenue and CapEx excluding leases, but you see an even higher improvement on reported EBITDA. 33% Q1 2025 versus Q1 2026. That is mainly driven by our non-recurring expenses in Q1, in light of our transformation project, and with that consulting fees, the NetCo ServCo split, and on top of that, the voluntary leave program which started in Q1 2025. Operating cash flow, driven by our EBITDA growth and improved working capital management. Here, especially the lower negative change in accounts receivables in Q1 2026. With that, we can move over to our Q&A. Thank you very much. Our first question comes from Polo Tang from UBS. Polo, your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. In terms of my question, you touched on this briefly on your Q4 call last week. Can I dig a bit deeper into changes to the Telecommunications Act that will make it easier to deploy fiber into MDUs? Specifically, do you see this new legislation as a risk or opportunity for Tele Columbus? Separately, Deutsche Telekom has passed 8.5 million MDU homes with fiber, but it's mainly fiber to the basement rather than fiber to the home. Do you have a rough sense of what percentage of the Tele Columbus footprint is passed by fiber from DT, either fiber to the basement or fiber to the home? Can you remind us in terms of what the cost is to upgrade a home from HFC to FTTH? Finally, just in terms of open access, once a fiber network has been built inside an MDU, where is your view on the wholesale rate that could be charged for other operators to have access? Thanks. Okay. A lot of questions. Let's try to work one by one through. Number one, overbuild by Deutsche Telekom. I believe that reported in Tele Columbus's Q3 numbers, that the overbuild were around 10% on our current footprint. Second, costs to upgrade building to FTTH is somewhere in the range of EUR 800 to EUR 850 in average. This is what we are doing our calculations against. The question regarding the changing legal environment with the updated TKG. Is it chance or risk to Tele Columbus? I believe it could be both, to be very honest. The effect we're going to really might see is that until the law has been ratified and implemented, we will see a phase where all the providers might rethink their Level four rollout strategy to secure the investment. This is what we also do. The case where the EUR 499 for using one of our fiber lines has been initiated. This is not a precedent. This was disputed, or it was just calculated in a one-time event. However the regulation is going to come up, we don't know yet. Did we cover the questions or did we miss something? No, that's great. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonathan Waite from Ares. Jonathan, your line is open. Please go ahead. Jonathan, your line is open. Please go ahead with your question. Hi there. Sorry about that. Thanks for clarifying the guidance earlier. I had a follow-up question. Does the guidance reflect at all the disposal or as before, should we subtract from that guidance the EUR 14 million of EBITDA you expect to lose following the disposal in Q2? Jonathan, thanks for the question. As the transaction is not closed yet, and the asset is also not deconsolidated, the guidance that we provided is without the deconsolidation. That still includes the around EUR 14 million of MDCC. Okay, thanks. I just wondered if I could just dig a bit deeper into the guidance. You said normalized EBITDA expected to grow high single-digit to low double-digit EUR millions. If I look at your Q1 and adjust the own work capitalized, the underlying increase for Q1 was around EUR 9 million. That would imply for the rest of the year, you are not really expecting much more growth in EBITDA, despite the fact that your broadband base is growing, and I think you have some personnel cost savings that will start to come through in Q2. I wonder if you could just elaborate a bit more on how you arrived at that guidance. In general, as you know, we are not guiding on cost line items. Overall, the EBITDA guidance, as stated, remains firm. However, please keep in mind that the own work capitalized saw a huge impact in Q4. The like-for-like comparison that I tried to provide is purely just to compare the two quarters, Q1 2025 and Q1 2026. As you know, we saw the main hit in Q4 last week of around EUR 18 million, and we expect own work capitalized on a yearly basis, 2026 to be in line with 2025. The same accounts for our IT CapEx. Therefore, the run rate that you compare should exclude the EUR four million saving in, or let's say, a like-for-like basis on own work capitalized. Besides that, last year, we already saw in Q4 first impact on our voluntary leave program. Therefore the Q1 comparison in terms of personal costs, obviously comes from a higher basis in Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, as that now reflects more or less our run rate that we expect, that positive impact gets smaller over the year. Right. Okay. Thanks. I think, on the last call, you mentioned there was a redundancy program with EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million of savings in 2026. I recall, I think from previous calls, that was supposed to kick in really from Q2 of this year. Is that still correct, or will those savings take longer to realize? No, we saw the first impact now already in Q1 as our FTE bases, by the end of 2025, is basically our target FTE basis. The EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million remains our guidance in terms of our operation excellence efforts. Okay, thanks. Just one other question on a different topic. You mentioned there was a price increase in Q1. Are you able to just confirm exactly when that was communicated to customers, and then when it was implemented, and roughly what the level of the price increase was that you've put through? Our price increases are on a selective basis. We do not carry out our price increases on our whole base. We can provide the details afterwards since that is quite a detailed exercise. We will try to provide you some more color on that. Right. Mix price and volume. Just on the ARPU, because I think you said it increased. Was it EUR 0.23? Does that reflect the full impact, or was the price increase implemented towards the end of the quarter and therefore you should see more of the impact in Q2? That's hard to assess real quick. Let us come back to you with the details of if the 0.23 are basically the first impact of a price increase, and if that already started in Q3, and Q4 as had. We are basically reviewing our base price and our price increases on a quarter by quarter basis. We're not carrying out, let's say, a price increase of 1%, 2% on the whole base. That's based on a selective approach. Let us come back with that phasing, so you get some more details. Okay. Thank you. I'll leave it there. Thanks a lot. Our next question comes from James Ratzer from New Street Research. James, your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. I'd two, please, and then, if possible, two follow-ons from other comments you've made during Q&A. The two questions I had was, you've just reported 4,000 Internet net adds in Q1, and you're suggesting that's being affected obviously by churn because of the price rise you were just discussing there. Therefore, can you help to give us some guidance on phasing for how you see net add developing through the rest of the year? Do you think therefore the run rate now picks up as we go into Q2? What are you seeing in April and May so far? That would be interesting to hear. Second question I had was, you've talked a few times about the guidance being the kind of cash preservation case. I was wondering if you could just talk through what would be the non-cash preservation case. Because I think on the Q4 call, you had talked about still maintaining fiber, homes being built at a similar rate compared to last year. You talked about CapEx savings coming from efficiencies on CPE. If you could get refinancing completed, where would you see the opportunities to actually be able to increase investment in the near term? Those were the two questions I had. If possible, just two more detailed points of follow-up on Polo's questions. You mentioned Deutsche Telekom 10% overbuild on your footprint. Could you be a bit more precise on that? Is that fiber that's been passed going down the road? Is that fiber to the basement? Is that actually fiber you've seen being deployed actually to the actual apartment for customers to sign up? You mentioned an FTTH upgrade cost of EUR 800-EUR 850. I might have missed something, is that new guidance? I think at the capital markets day a couple of years ago, you'd always been talking about the cost to pass of EUR 650 for FTTH to pass and connect. I was just wanting to check if we were comparing like with like with that new number you mentioned of EUR 800-EUR 850. Thank you. Thank you very much for the question, James. Just focusing on Deutsche Telekom. I guess the majority of what Deutsche Telekom built were just fiber as where homes passed rather than really the FTTH built out into all the condominiums going forward. You know the rollout procedure of Deutsche and, again, the FTTH schedule is very limited at this point of view. Upgrade cost of EUR 850-ish around includes Level three and Level four in an average pricing. This might differ in terms of different type of buildings, but this is what we have right now in our average cost structure included. Is that an increase? Because I'm pretty sure the previous guidance from the past management team was the Level three plus Level four would be €650. I can't answer this at this point, but I will follow up and get back with. Thank you. detailed answer on that. No idea. On the second question, James. As said, right now I cannot give you precise figures as we are currently in that refinancing process. Also what then could be our funding and therefore capital opportunities going forward. Let's assume that that will be successful. Obviously, we see a more speed-up network infrastructure investment starting in 2027. On the first question. We expect our RGU base on a yearly basis for internet retail and wholesale to increase by 26,000 RGUs. That's over the whole year, is it? That would essentially imply a current run rate in Q1 was four, you'd then move up to seven per quarter for the rest of the year. Exactly. Yeah. That is what we plan for 2026. Yeah. Historically, the strongest quarter is Q4, obviously. That means we have a slightly lower run rate than Q1 until Q3. That's great. Thank you very much indeed. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Peter Djerek from Tresidor. Peter, your line's open. Please go ahead. Hey, thanks for taking the question. I'm just going to unfortunately follow up on the same question that Polo and James asked on the DT overbuild. There is a difference between fiber to the basement and just having the overbuild going on the road in front of the MDU and not connected. Is the 10% FTTB? The last meter between the cabinets and the MDU building was connected? Is it just literally I've passed a fiber line on the road, but I might be 10 meters away, but that's a lot of hassle with the MDU to actually get that passed. I think there's a big difference between those two things. Could you please clarify? Majority is definitely just, we call it homes passed. This is just having the fiber in the street passing the MDU. A lot less is FTTB, where the fiber has been distributed to the building, and even less than the FTTH buildout of Deutsche Telekom. I do not have the exact quotes, but again, definitely the majority is just homes passed. That means we have an average of five to 10 meters from the street connecting the buildings. Yeah, that makes sense. In terms of the dynamic, I think your predecessors and your competitors have talked about this, where I might have home pass, so there's the fiber on the street. Of course, passing within the building, you're not going to want to do it twice because passing fiber specifically in the building, you're not going to want to do it twice, because that's going to bother the residents, so the housing association won't do it. How much of a hassle would the housing association have with the, it's going to be 10 meters or 50 meters or 100 meters of dig to go from the road to the basement. In your assessment, what are you seeing in the market? I would be frankly surprised if a housing association would be willing to have both DT and Tele Columbus pass to the basement. Is that actually a precedent? If it is, how do the housing associations think about that? I guess first of all, it's also an economic question because we should ask also the question, when does it make sense to connect the building, like FTTP with fiber? Again, housing associations per se, would like to have a safe planning process, and they do not like any surprises normally. Which means, by legislation, Deutsche Telekom could physically connect to the building, going forward. That procedure, they would not really get the support of the housing associations to address then the end customers. I guess the process should be first getting an agreement with the housing associations and then entering the building and potentially also doing the FTTH build-out for all the flats. There might be variances in between. Great. Thank you. Just as a housekeeping follow-up, the disposal, the EUR 14 million that was referenced before, that's going to close sometime in Q2. Could you just remind us the revenue associated with that, the homes passed, the lines, and the RGUs associated with that? Hi, sorry, the line's gone mute. Oh, there you are. Okay. We put it on mute. Sorry for that. We're just trying to find the right numbers, to be very honest. The disposal to Vodafone last year were around 170,000 households, which are in process of being taken over by Vodafone. We will deliver the revenues and the EBITDA impacts separately. Okay. I guess at a high level, what are the financial metrics or business metrics by which you measure the choice to make a selective disposal versus not to? Is it just this is on a foreign network, so I might as well not have it because that's not my strategy? Are the IRRs not sufficient? Is it simply I got an offer that I can't refuse because I think it's worth more in somebody else's hands than mine? It's all three of those things you just mentioned. First of all, where we've just had some customers not connected to our network, doesn't make strategic sense going forward because we will not own the Internet customers. As long as you don't have a wholesale solution with those guys ready is number one. Number two, it's really economics. If the operational costs are higher than the revenues, it does not make sense to us. It's not profitable. We're obviously going on disposal. We're also managing our CapEx space as we are using our CapEx, where we get the best returns on. If you have to select project A versus project B, we take obviously the project with the better returns. Very clear. The majority is non-strategic, which is just not really on our network. It's not truly upgraded or upgradable. It doesn't make any sense. Base too small. Better get rid of it. Yeah. Very clear. The last question I'll ask is, during the duration of this call, at one point you talked about refinancing prospects. I know that's been talked about in the past, this sort of creating a separate financing package for part of the network or NetCo, ServiceCo, so on and so forth. There's a, I think, basket that you have for additional debt. Could you just give us a brief update to the extent you can on where you are there? Are you simply referencing a refinancing as in more equity coming from the shareholder? I cannot make a definite statement on the refinancing structure, since we are currently within that process, as I stated before. Sorry, but as at right now, how a refinancing structure could look like, also which baskets might be used if shareholder, lenders, et cetera. All of that for us right now is in process and being discussed. I cannot give you more details on that. Okay. Maybe the only follow-up I would ask there is, have you hired advisors to explore that, or is that just at board level for the time being? No, I think that was also stated in one of the press releases, that we hired Lazard and Freshfields to advise the company on the refinancing efforts. Right. Clear. Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions. Right to hand back to Christoph for some closing remarks. Thank you very much for your time and also asking all the questions. Hope we could answer. What we have not answered, we will deliver separately going forward. Just to close, we, that means the management team, all the people working here and also our supervisory board, we are fully committed to profitable growth. This means that we are really looking on returns, on focusing on high-value customers on our first number on strategy. Said that, we also having and managing our spendings to a minimum, and we will have a strict eye on our cost discipline to make sure that we are running within our boundaries and achieving our goals. Saying that, thank you very much for your time, and if there are further questions, please feel free in getting back to us. Thank you very much and have a nice day. This concludes today's call. We thank everyone for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.