Hello everyone. Good morning and welcome to our analyst call following our full-year results announcement. Just before we jump into questions, and I am sure you have many, let me quickly share a quick summary of what we think are the key takeaways from our disclosure. First of all, we delivered on our guidance for fiscal 2021. We delivered about 600 build-to-suit, which is really demonstrating our ability to scale up our operations and also underpins the value of our industrial approach of building our towers and scaling up our production capability. Our tenancy ratio is at 1.4x, which means we exceeded our tenancy ratio guidance of 1.38x. We added about 1,800 new tenancies across our footprint, of which about 1,300 are non-Vodafone and about 660 are non-committed, which is the category that we described as those that were beyond the BTS and network consolidation programs and those that we had to acquire over and above the committed constructions and tenancies that we had. That's of course, of strategic importance to us because it underpins the logic of an independent tower company going out to market the strength of our grid. Our revenue, EBITDA, and recurring free cash flow are in line with guidance. Indeed, we have seen sustained commercial momentum with framework agreements that we continue to sign in several markets in our footprint to build an adequate commercial framework, which supports our ongoing activity of doing business with many operators, both MNOs and non-MNOs. I would say our operational efficiency initiatives are showing very promising results. We're working on them hard. We're putting a lot of energy and effort into them to make sure that they deliver the operating efficiencies that we've guided towards over time. We're proposing a meaningful dividend payout, as we'd said in the previous phases of our interactions, of EUR 280 million to our shareholders. Our revenue excluding pass-through for fiscal 2022 is targeted in the range of EUR 995 million-EUR 1,010 million, so EUR 1,010 million for fiscal 2022. We're guiding an EBITDA margin, which will be broadly stable. That's what we've said at the Capital Markets Day Q3 results, that indeed our cost savings initiatives would have limited impact in fiscal 2022 as we ramp them up, and that's very much what we're seeing for fiscal 2022. In terms of recurring free cash flow, we're guiding a range of EUR 390 million-EUR 400 million. This is in line indeed with our medium-term targets that we feel very comfortable with. Just to remind you of those, we said we'd move towards a tenancy ratio of above 1.5x, that our revenue excluding pass-through would be on a mid-single-digit CAGR, that our EBITDA margin would ramp up towards the high-50s percentage margin, that recurring free cash flow would have a mid to high single-digit CAGR. We've guided a payout ratio of 60% of recurring free cash flow, and finally, an initial leverage of 4x with flexibility to exceed for growth investments as required, and of course, the opportunity to issue equity if there were an opportunity of a scale that would be worth pursuing in that case. That's really what I wanted to say. With that said, I'd like now to open the floor for your questions. Thank you very much. I'm joined by Thomas Reisten, whom you know well, and we'll be sharing the questions together. Thank you very much, Vivek. Our first question comes from Simon Coles from Barclays. Simon, please go ahead. Your line is now open. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. On the non-committed tenancy, it looks like things are going very well in 2021. You highlighted that you've done about 660, that's a third of the medium-term guidance on my numbers. Things are progressing quite well. Just wondering how you're seeing the setup on the medium-term guidance given the success you've had, how you might think about the potential upside to that guidance, and when you might be able to update us on that. Thank you. At this point, we're really working customer by customer. What we are living through is a shift from they ask and we see if we can deliver, which was the, I would say, the model in an operator setup for towers, to we bring out the catalog. What we're seeing is the initial benefit of that. That's what we modeled. That's what we set out to do anyway, which was to shift from reactive to proactive. We are seeing this progression. It's going to depend a lot on their rollout plans as well. At this point, this is the guidance that we're stating, but it's true that it's working. That indeed, as you highlighted, we're getting good commercial benefits. That said, we've also got a build-to-suit program, which in all cases will not be multi-tenancies. There's a bit of the two sides of it that in fact that number, which is the division of the number of tenancies by the number of sites. We're holding the guidance as it is, but feeling good about it. Of course, we won't stop at 1.5x, we'll keep going afterwards, but we're staying there. We're staying the course. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you, Simon. Our next question comes from Georgios from Citi. Georgios, please go ahead. Good morning, guys, and thank you for taking my question. I was wondering if you can give us a bit of clarity around expansion CapEx for this year. Is there any indications you can provide also around the mix between build-to-suit and acquisition of ground leases or other kind of investments that you are planning during 2022? Thank you. Maybe, Thomas, could I point you to those two points in terms of what we are giving in terms of the constitution of our CapEx for the year maybe? What I can tell you in that context is basically that there's obviously the build-to-suit program as our largest investment program, 7,100 sites that we IT rolling out over the medium term. Important to note in that context that for the first two years, this program is ramping up towards a run rate CapEx investment. Then you will have, obviously, the other run rate investment until fiscal year 2027, when this will actually be over, where we then will have achieved the EBITDA contribution on ongoing basis of EUR 130 million. There's a ramp-up that you need to expect over the first three years from this one. That's the first thing probably that will help you actually in getting some more understanding of how CapEx, gross CapEx in particular, actually ramps up. Secondly, a similar pattern of ramp-up is to be expected for the EUR 200 million over the medium term of investment into ground lease buyout. First two years ramping up, then actually you are a bit more at a run rate thereafter as well. Then there's about EUR 40 million-EUR 60 million on an annual basis of other CapEx investment, other growth investment, in fact, which is related to upgrading towers, some IT systems that give actually benefits as well, and some other growth-related CapEx too. Lastly, there's about EUR 100 million over the first three years, or evenly spread, of non-recurring CapEx, which then is actually these IT system investments, some more of the processes, tools design, actually, that we can actually expect over the first three years to be there as well. That is the overall envelope of our CapEx investment, other than maintenance CapEx, which we expect to be in the 3% range of revenue over time as well, pretty stable over time. Okay. Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs. Andrew, your line is now open. If you could unmute yourself, please. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to follow up on Simon's questions on the new tenancies. This is probably nitpicking at this stage, because you've done a great job through the year so far, and we don't have full disclosure, but firstly, it looks a bit like the German new tenancies were a little light. That might not be the case. I just wondered if we'd get a bit of color from you on the demand from the uncommitted new tenancy side in Germany. Just in terms of your waiting and seeing on the new tenancy outlook, there was a slight slowdown in terms of run rate of uncommitted new tenancies in the fourth quarter versus the average of the year as a whole. Is this a case of you delivered well on the low-hanging fruit at the start of the year, or should we expect commercial momentum to build? Just how can we think about that given your reaffirmed rather than raised midterm guidance? Thank you. Yeah, Andrew, thanks for the question. I'd say, first of all, this is, if anything, not a quarterly type of industry, to be very honest, in terms of tenancies. When you look at the cycle, the sales cycle, or let's say commercial cycle, in a way, it's very tied in also to the investment plans of operators. Many of them have a tradition of running annual budgets. They've got a rollout plan. They decide it when they decide their budget. They put it out there. They look for sites. Of course, over time, it evens out a bit. It's not that it's that lumpy that it's a March to December race. There is a bit of that. The final fine-tuning of a CapEx budget of an operator about what the proportion of new coverage versus capacity versus other investments does tend to get fine-tuned around it. Many of our customers are first quarter kind of, or January to December companies. There is always a bit of a rhythm that gets in terms of feeding into new tenancies that happens. That's probably what you would see a part in this. I wouldn't overread quarter-over-quarter type of numbers because the rollout is driven by delivery times. That's the main point. It's not a low-hanging fruit versus demand. In terms of spread, I'm not sure we give much more breakdown of the new tenancies by countries, but Thomas, help me out if I'm speaking wrong. It's fairly homogeneous across the business is what I've seen. There's no shift in trend that we've got as a team in terms of the split between countries that's worth flagging at, I would say, this level. I don't know, Thomas, if you want to. Obviously, in terms of tenancy ratios, we provide you with some detail there on our segmented basis. Yes, we have improved in Germany to 1.21x. Spain has had a pretty significant increase to 1.7x. Obviously, there's a lot of this active sharing element included in that as well. Then we have Greece with a healthy growth up to 1.65x from the 1.61x. Then in the other territories, 0.01x of the growth there as well. It's indeed, as Vivek has been saying, across the board, we have been continuing to grow, and there's not a particular area where there's some slowness or some acceleration in there. Obviously, with the exception of the active sharing point in Spain that you have seen in our numbers there as well. As Vivek has been pointing out, very well on track to achieve our medium-term guidance to pass actually 1.5x, and we're very confident, and that's why we reiterate that guidance that we will achieve this target. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from Akhil Dattani from JP Morgan. Akhil, please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I just have a couple, please. The first one is just on inflation escalators. Inflation expectations across the market are starting to go up, which I'm sure you've seen. Just keen to get a reminder of how regularly your escalators are indexed, how they work, and just remind us of the parameters around that. That's the first one. The second one is if we look at your difference between your EBITDA AL and your IFRS 16 EBITDA. In Q4, that stepped up. It's been about EUR 76 million a quarter, the first three quarters of the year. This quarter is EUR 80 million. Just any sort of explanation of what's going on. Is that a ground shift or impact or something like that? Any sort of color there. The third one, we're just going back to a question from before, just around the equity free cash flow bridge down. The recurring lever free cash flow bridge down to a total cash flow. I guess, Thomas, you kindly ran us through the CapEx elements that we're likely to see, but I just wondered if there's any other particular elements around working capital or other that we should be thinking about are relevant when we think about the total cash flow below the guidance basis? I think I might just pass the buck to my friend Thomas on that. On inflation, I need a reminder and then the cash flow item. Exactly. In terms of inflation escalator, I think the ranges are clear. The ceiling and the floor. Basically, the MSA had obviously general 2% cap and a 0% floor built in Germany with being one of the exceptions. Where you have to mirror this, the +2 mirrors into -2 there for legal reasons. There's a few other exceptions where it's +3 and then 0. Overall, I think if you step back from this and you think about the hopefully short-term inflation spike that people are fearing, I think the industry overall really characterizes as an inflation hedge, and so do we. We have built in inflation linkage into all of our contracts, you've seen us just not like the Eir contract and the Hutch contract in Ireland, just to mention two examples in that context of really building in more of that inflation linkage over time. That's a very healthy component of our growth that actually hedges us from inflation risks from that perspective. Look on the cost side then as well. There, it's very well within our capability to manage inflation. Maintenance, we can obviously, whilst we are expecting in the short term some cost increases at renewals. Overall, it's in our control to renegotiate contracts in the way that we need them to be. Energy is actually a pass-through, so inflation linkage for us is not a risk. Last but not least, lease costs. We have a number of programs out there, like the ground lease buyout program, that help us to manage any cost increases going forward. Likewise, we are renegotiating leases anyway, even outside of the GLBO program. Looking at the past, that has enabled us already to manage inflation better from a lease cost point of view, and we are very confident that we can actually do that going forward as well. Looking at us as a company as a whole. Well, we have a great grid with investment grade customers on them. We do have ourselves actually an investment grade rating. Nonetheless, we have seen actually us being able to issue at very competitive rates, bonds, most recently, which now gives us a weighted average yield of 0.414%. I think a really successful issuance of bonds, which will help us going forward there as well. Overall, in summary, I believe actually that from an inflation point of view, we're actually well-positioned to deal with it. In terms of EBITDA AL, well, for the last quarter, I think what is to be recognized there is that we've achieved our guidance in that context, bang in the middle of the guidance for fiscal year 2021. Really healthy revenue growth, by the way, and very good cash flow growth as well at the top end of the range. Just mentioning that as well, once again, underpinning actually the successful realization of what we actually set out to do. From that perspective, I think in EBITDA point of view, there's no real surprises actually incorporated in there. The one thing, Akhil Dattani, that you mentioned in terms of cash flow, to put a bit more color onto that as well, is probably that we've had a benefit on net debt of about EUR 100 million overall, that came from working capital changes, actually in the context of us stabilizing our balance sheet in the last quarter. All of the work that we have actually undertaken there to normalize this, and in fact, I think it's fair to say that we've outperformed against some of our expectations in that context. Namely, that means this EUR 100 million benefit, EUR 70 million of this came from operating working capital, and we expect to retain this. That's very good news that actually this is something that we retain as a benefit. Then EUR 30 million came from non-operating working capital, i.e. debit creditors, i.e. the gross CapEx spend. That might reverse, but then I take you back to what I've just said a moment ago in terms of the ramp-up of CapEx. Just keep that in mind, obviously, as well with ramping up CapEx, that has an impact actually on the working capital situation there as well. Overall, we are very happy that we can now say that we expect to retain this operating working capital benefit, that we maintain a net operating working capital balance of between 6%- 8%, and that we can reconfirm that from a guidance point of view, the operating working capital outflow will be somewhere in the single-digit EUR millions outflow. That's actually reconfirming what we've said before, but with that benefit that actually I'm pointing out. If that makes sense. Great. Thanks so much. Thank you, Akhil. Our next question comes from David Wright from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. David, your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you very much for taking the call today. A couple of questions from me. If I could maybe just push a little more, and I suspect this is for Thomas, on the cost inflation. Inflation, as I'm sure you remember during the IPO, has become a huge debate in the market, and we can very, I think, accurately forecast your top line, but it is the cost line where we're struggling a little more. Is there any granularity you can give on what percentage of the ground leases are inflation-linked or have some kind of ladder, inflation ladder, just so that we can run sensitivities in response to the inflation debate? Then just also on the margin side, you did, I think, at the Q3 results guide towards a more stable margin outlook. I seem to remember reading at the time, and I'm not sure if this is something you confirmed, that Vantage was looking to replace fairly wide-ranging Huawei maintenance contract across the towers, I believe in Germany. I was just wondering, is that the kind of near-term cost, maybe a little bit of cost inflation moving away from Huawei as you start to look to maintain the towers elsewhere? Is that maybe the slight little stumbling block to the margin growth this year, and then we can expect a cleaner progression? Those are two questions from me. Thank you. Thomas will, I think, yeah, he will actually take this. Yeah. In terms of cost inflation linkage of our ground leases, I think, I mean, whilst there's some linkage, I mean, let me go as far as that. I mean, obviously some of them are linked indeed to inflation, but I wouldn't actually go too much in that direction because obviously we are in the process of quite a few negotiations with landlords and us having actually or facing a situation in which over 85% of our landlords are single-site landlords. That leaves us with a pretty good negotiation position of such contracts. That obviously then it means as well, if you have a wide range of contracts, but if you have 85% of your landlords with single sites, there's really a broad range of them. That shows as well in the past, if you look at our inflation linkage and the growth actually of costs from a lease point of view there, this hasn't actually increased that significantly. Combine that with really pushing renegotiations because of the ground lease buyout, which by the way, just gives us as well more certainty of having empty sites that we don't have to renegotiate every time for renewal purposes. It gives more security back to our customers. It opens up other criteria in the contract as well, like sharing might in those few cases where it's actually not possible today, actually be enabled by that as well. There's financial benefits and strategic benefits. Inflation linkage of lease contracts is something that we actually have very much within our capability of managing and negotiating leases even outside of the GLBO program. In terms of the stable margin, that's indeed what we have been talking about already at the third quarter. We're expecting the margin to be broadly stable year-on-year. Some of the maintenance contracts is indeed one of the reasons why this is the case. Let me complete that picture. So it's maintenance costs on the one hand, where we have a few renewals coming up, and we have assumed that those renewals are actually leading to some cost pressure. One of the vendors is obviously that we actually have Huawei as a vendor, but we will see obviously how we replace that. That's far too early to say at this point in time. Other cost pressures that we are expecting in this context are, as well, obviously there's a volume impact simply from leases as well, with new tenancies and more towers actually to be built. There's as well some more ramp-up in terms of the organization and being prepared to ramp up our initiatives even further. If you think about this, we are expecting some professional support as well to ramp up the GLBO program, as an example. That leads then to some cost pressure in the first year with the initiatives that we've been talking about, whether that's maintenance cost initiatives, remote monitoring of sites, or actually for the ground lease buyout program and renegotiation of leases. This is not coming in in a linear fashion. This is actually obviously growing over time. As a consequence, this is actually balancing out for the first year. That's what is behind the guidance that we have been basically reconfirming to say that we are, for fiscal year 2022, expecting it to be a broadly stable margin. Maybe just to add a little bit of color to Thomas' question. I think we've got to realize this is the first full year post-IPO of the company, and we have a number of operating programs that require some resourcing, some work. They're all there to help us improve the, let's say, the operating leverage of the company, and take us towards the high 50s medium-term guidance for EBITDA. We're driving them very fast. It's fair to say that many of these actions, by the time you do a maintenance contract renegotiation and land the numbers, by the time you do a ground lease buyout, which that's where you stop paying the rent only once you have the deed for the land in hand, those will not drive a full year impact, which they do take some time to land into the numbers. This year we're guiding broadly flat for the EBITDA margin. These are the actions that we're taking that ensure that we put in place all those programs. They're quite large-scale programs, right? Because it's a lot of towers, it's big contracts that we need to negotiate that we're putting in place. We're not slowing down on that. Yeah. I guess it's more that, given there's so much change within this year and obviously in the past year with the IPO, I'm just trying to get a sense of whether, again, like the full year 2023 might only be sort of some margin progression, and then we start to see the kind of acceleration over time. Could we imagine a little bit more of a curved sort of margin outlook rather than any kind of straight line from 2023 onwards? Well, it will obviously accelerate throughout the period. We have said, and we confirm that we are expecting the margin to obviously grow to the high 50s over time, and that in fact, that this is a nonlinear expansion of the program. If you think again about the BTS program phasing, about the ground lease buyout program phasing, we are accelerating this over the first two years. However, the first two years are ramp-up phases, and then there is the run rate impact over time. Nevertheless, margins will obviously improve from here onwards. Very quick, gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you very much, David. Our next question comes from Emmet Kelly at Morgan Stanley. Emmet, your line is open. Please go ahead. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for taking my question. My question please is on the build-to-suit program, specifically in Germany. If I look at your build-to-suit program for the group, it's 7,100 sites. 5,500 of those are in Germany. The tenancy ratio on the white spot sites is obviously set in stone. It's going to be three tenants per site. Can you maybe just say a little bit about the outlook for the tenancy ratio in the other 3,500 sites and how we should think about that over time? What do you think the key drivers are for the tenancy ratio going up over time? Is that driven by the price you will offer new tenants? Is it driven by the location, the availability of adjacent services? Just how we should think about modeling those 3,500 sites, we'd say in a five or 10-year view. Thank you. I don't think we're not at the point where we break down tenancy ratios excluding white spots and so on. I won't give you a numerical answer, but certainly your question's the right one. Location-wise, I think the first argument is location. There, indeed, what we've started to do is to, as soon as we've decided on a location where we're going to do a build-to-suit, we offer it to the other operators. Very different scenario to what was done in the past. These sites happen to be sites that typically were under cover, right? If in 2021, Vodafone Germany needs a site somewhere, it means, well, there was a network need out there, right? There's been ample time to roll out. We are in 5G period. The 5G rollout is also coming up, and that requires more capacity. They're obviously in the right places for network rollout, both of, let's say, established and new entrants. Making them available as a first step indeed is a good pointer. Let me tell you, if there's a search ring where we say we're going to build a tower, operators who have not spent money there yet are definitely going to take it out of their list because it's much quicker, simpler, and more efficient to go to a site built by a tower company. That's a dynamic that is, I've not seen an exception to that. I've never seen a case in the last year and a bit that I'm working in this business where someone has said, "Yeah, no, we build it ourselves, even though you're going there." That doesn't happen. I'd say that's a good pointer. Those locations are indeed attractive, and they answer a specific network coverage, or it could be just that there's too much equipment in an area, and you do need to help dedensify networks and so on, or densify networks and dedensify infrastructure, from an equipment point of view, and you have that attraction. Pricing-wise, we are on framework agreements. They tend to be pretty standardized, which is one of the beauties of this industry, is that it's not a site-by-site negotiation or seldom is, because it's an ongoing process, and there's a large value to what we offer. Keeping it simple, leaving it for the technical teams to say, "I'd like a spot here," and not having to worry about the commercials at each and every step is, I think, an attractive one. It's worth mentioning, 57% of our sites are in urban areas which have no direct alternatives. The tenancies that come in also come in through the fact that there are additional rollout requirements. Beyond the BTS, there's also the densification of each operator's range requirements. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you, Emmet. Our next question comes from Nick Delfas from Redburn. Nick, your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks very much indeed. Just two questions from me, please. First of all, are there any benefits in your view, merging with a company that extends your geographical footprint? What are you thinking about scale overall? The second question is, within Germany, obviously, there's a lot of interest in the potential for the fourth player. Do you think that kind of contract will be piecemeal or will be all with one tower company? Thanks very much. Thanks, Nick, for the two questions. On the first one, scale. There is some benefit of scale. Look, there is, and we see it every day because that's what we do when we're not in front of you guys. We work with the teams, and we see across the board the improvements that we can bring from best practice sharing, from standardizing. If I look at our procurement for towers, the scale of 82,000 towers does get you something, and we see it. The ability to commit volumes for rollout partners for simple things, EMF measurements. That's just a core skill. You need to apply it in every location when you're putting in tenancies, if that's a requirement of that market. Well, so is it huge in terms of being a platform? I'd be presumptuous in saying that it weighs that much on the economics of what is, after all, first and foremost, a capital-heavy type of business model, right? It's there. It's there in terms of speed. It's there in terms of methods. It's there in terms of IT, and I think that's important as well. The fact that we've been pretty stubborn in having one single IT stack teams, across our footprint is already driving benefits. We're standardizing processes. When one country says, "Actually, by running this software, calculating the space this way, you save one day on your site visit." Well, that one day on production over 10 countries, that's something. That's something that when you're a standalone tower company with a few hundred towers in one single country, you don't necessarily capture all those innovations. There is some level of economy of scale from procurement, economy of expertise from the fact that you share practices, and there's an economy of, I would say, scope, which comes from the common IT that you do once and use in multiple countries. I think there's definitely some benefit there, which is why we're interested in looking at other geographies at the right price. Consistent with our business model. We've got number one or number two positions with strong anchor tenants, which means that we add to, let's say, the resilient revenue and profitability coming from one tenant, the opportunity to grow. The opportunity to grow comes from having a broad grid, not a narrow grid. We're quite focused on keeping. If we expand, we'd like to expand with operations that are consistent with the ones we already have. That's where we see the scale argument. You launch an OpMo, you do a deal with Sigfox in Germany. Obviously, now we know how to work with Sigfox. If we have other activities of the same nature, we're going to be smarter, quicker and more efficient at both costing and then delivering them, which is, I think, something valuable as well. Germany and the new entrant, they've made recent disclosures of their quarter. They did not provide more color on their exact calendar. They said they'd come back in the coming period. We're obviously engaging with them. We feel our grid is very attractive to them. We have a lot of sites that are relevant to 1&1, of course, if you take Germany. We're in discussion with the new entrants across Europe in general, because when you have the grid that's been built over 15 to 25 years, it's got those locations. Our urban sites in particular, 57% urban, no direct competition within 150 m. That's obviously very interesting for the initial phases of rollouts when you're starting to reach the high population areas. That said, on your question, it's better for them to answer. They are still, I know, working through the various dimensions of their ambitious network program in terms of technology, in terms of towers, in terms of providers. We'll leave it to them. Certainly, I don't think Mr. Dommermuth would be amused if I were to comment on his behalf. Okay, thanks very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nick. Our next question comes from Luigi Minerva from HSBC. Luigi, please go ahead. Your line is now open. Yes, Luigi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. It's about your M&A strategy, please. I was wondering first if you can remind us what is your M&A framework? When you assess opportunities, what are your targets in terms of IRR, recurring free cash flow accretion? You already mentioned about new geographies, perhaps if there is a preference between increasing scale in your current markets or new geographies. Related to this is, I was wondering, what is, in your view, in the next 12 months, the likelihood of a transformational deal combining tower portfolios with the likes of Deutsche Telekom or Orange? Thank you. Okay. Let me try to give you a bit of color on the framework for our M&A. First of all, of course, we've in our balance sheet two dimensions to that point. One of them is the potential leverage capacity that remaining investment grade we could bring to bear for meaningful transactions. The other part is, of course, equity opportunities that could be brought to bear for larger or, let's say, more complex types of setups. In terms of M&A, on footprint, it's pretty straightforward, right? You have a grid. You look at if there are opportunities on footprint, and we continue to scout, and our MDs in the various countries keep looking at opportunities that could arise. We do already have a grid. What we look at is sites that can either help us to optimize our grid or that could bring us additional tenancies with a good partnership with a strong operator. We look at those items, of course, on an ongoing basis. In a way, that's an easy one. We don't disclose our hurdle rates, apologies for that. I think Thomas would tear me down if I tried. No, he's just smiling. He's got a lot of tolerance for me on this. No, we don't disclose our hurdle rates, and you'll understand that when you're buying, you don't really want to say what your walkaway price is, right? That's not the best way to go out there in the market. Suffice it to say, we're of course very focused on delivering the right level of shareholder value for our customers. Looking off footprint. In a broad sense, there's 190,000 towers still, or 170 probably, in the hands of operators across Europe. Okay. That said, there are indeed two cases which are Deutsche Telekom on one hand, and Orange, which are evolving as we speak, I guess their strategy on towers. Deutsche Telekom, I think, is scheduled to have a Capital Markets Day this week, and Orange already is beginning, I would say, to set up Totem, with a very strong leader, Nicolas Roy, who will be taking care. They're bringing together France and Spain in the first phase, I think, or in the current phase, at least. That's what they've disclosed so far. I think they're ramping up. For there to be discussions, I think the journey needs to unfold. I'm not at liberty to make any comments on any specific discussions, and there's no deal on the table, but we've heard them being open. There is a bit of scale benefit, as we discussed in the previous question, and we certainly feel our expertise is well-placed to do more in more geographies now that we've set up in 10 countries, eight directly and then within Cornerstone, and we have that wealth of expertise, I think we're relevant to look at expansion. Now I'm not a betting man, so within one year, hard to tell. It takes two to tango, right? It's a fact that there's been lots of transactions in the past couple of years. I guess there is a pace that's going on. There are a number of operators across Europe who are having those conversations about what do we do with our towers and what's the structure that we'd like to evolve into, what monetization, partnering, et cetera. I think there will be action in the coming months. All the way up to deal conclusion is a bit more than what I can forecast. Okay. Thank you, Vivek. Appreciate it. Thank you very much, Luigi. Our next question comes from Usman Ghazi from Berenberg. Usman, your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you for the opportunity. I've got two and maybe three questions. Let's see how we get on. In the press release, it's interesting that the press release specifically highlights Portugal and the Czech Republic as potentially relevant opportunities for growth coming forward, rather than, I guess, Germany and Spain. I just wanted to understand, Portugal and Czech Republic are probably off the radar for us as analysts. What is the relevance of highlighting those two markets specifically in the press release today as future growth opportunities? The second question was just regarding the Telecommunications Act that has supposedly been finalized in Germany. Do you see anything there that could mean that growth in Germany proves to be better than what you had expected at the time of the IPO? The third question was a bit more kind of, I guess, strategic. There is some talk in the tower sector on whether tower companies should buy the RAN equipment and lease that out to MNOs, particularly as we move to Open RAN. In Germany, Deutsche has said that they will be moving to an Open RAN architecture. Could that be an opportunity for you to maybe extend the value chain broader than just providing co-locations? Thank you. Okay. Very good questions. I think, and not to be cute, we talk so much about Germany and Spain that we also wanted to say that our footprint is attractive throughout. If I recall, well, that was the reason we said, "Hey, we're seeing some good opportunities in Portugal." Portugal, new entrant coming in, that's positive. Czech Republic, which I think initially was seen as a bit flattish from a revenue point of view, tenancy point of view. We're seeing some good traction, and we're optimistic on it. I think the whole intent was to mention these. Also the frequency auction happening there. They were a bit in a frozen zone for some time, and they're coming out of the frozen zone. Now that the market is opening to new rollout, that there's clarity in the market, there's things happening. Even if it's below your radar, just to let you know, the footprint is attractive. There's stuff to do in every country. That's I think what in terms of commercial. Of course, Portugal still ongoing, but it will end one day, and at that point we'll see the market structure falling in place, I guess, and there'll be opportunities. That's on Portugal, Czech Republic, and the link to the auctions. On telecom law in Germany, I'd say the German legal setup is also very regional. We're working at every level in Germany to make sure that we make it easier to roll out sites. That's the main thing. If I were to give a mood music on this, two directions. One of them, the government is indeed very vocal on the need for more digital 4G and 5G rollout across Germany, and I think that's good wind in the sails. On the other hand, very positive dialogue with regional authorities. We all meet quite closely with them to make sure that we're able to make it easier to roll out, faster to roll out, because the speed of rollout in Germany is something that we constantly obsess about, and I think that's important because that's the biggest market for us, and being effective there is relevant. I'd say all rather pointing favorably, but also that's still long lead time items. You're talking about sites that require to be built, to be powered, and the MNOs to come on them. I'd say, not to the point of updating any of the trends, but certainly I would say good supportive situation for the ambitions that we put out there. Last thing, Open RAN. You would have noted in the release as well that we did join O-RAN and TIP ourselves. I would parse the answer into two parts. One, why is it relevant for us? Two, in which way could we play? Why is it relevant? Because indeed, with Open RAN you have different types of architectures, fiber front haul with antennas only, the RRUs pushback, which means that in essence, O-RAN will impact the way sites are built. That's why we said, "Hey, we need to understand this." We need to understand because it might mean that even from a. We're part of that chain, right? We build sites that host equipment. If equipment are going to morph in terms of space, wind load, where you need to put the equipment, whether you can put it outside or whether you move it inside, whether you should put more transmission, we need to understand that stuff. That's the way we'd be relevant in our business. Indeed, try to make it easier for operators to roll out Open RAN across footprints. On the other hand, on the investment into active, I'd say it could seem logical, but there are nuances versus the typical model. The CapEx cycle is very much not the same, right? We keep thinking when we launch a new technology like 4G or 3G or 5G, that it's there forever. The reality is the next one it's already in the labs, right? Understanding the CapEx profile, the profitability of that, also slightly different maintenance model. I think it's worth walking into these steps with eyes wide open, which is what we want to do by studying it better, by being part of these consortia and understanding where the technology is evolving. We feel we have a role to play supporting operators and making ourselves more relevant. In terms of how to deploy capital, what we need to own, what we need to rent out is an economics question or modeling question that's probably a bit deeper. I'd say overall, I think in terms of the business, there's how the operators business is evolving, but there's also all the other areas that are developing, the OpMo activities and so on, the other than mobile operator. Very good dynamic. Once again, just to reflect on the is there a downside on Spain that we're hiding by talking about Czech and Portugal? The answer is no. We see a lot of new applications, public safety networks, other, let's say, IoT solutions and so on that are promising in Spain. We're seeing very good commercial activity there as well. We're reassured on the commercial activity. It's broad-based, it's not just on the side. Thank you. Thank you, Usman. Our next question comes from James Ratzer at New Street. James, your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, Vivek, good morning, Thomas. Thank you very much for the call. Two questions, please. First one was just on the U.K. market. Would you be, A, interested in buying out the other 50% stake in CTIL if that came up for sale? Can you give us a progress update, please, on how the legislation is going for ground lease reductions with the ECC? Because I believe that's kind of been bogged down in a few legal challenges. The other question I had was just a modeling one, but at the bridge between EBITDA and recurring free cash flow, it looks like your tax payments came in lower than expected. Do you think the cash tax guidance can now run at lower than the 26% that I think you previously indicated? Thank you. Yeah. I'll take CTIL maybe for the first part and then pass it on to Thomas for the other two. I'm not sure if my video got cut off because I see that on the backup, but if that's the case, I don't know if the team needs me to do something. Okay. Hello, Vivek. At the moment, we are covering your image. Please go ahead. Okay, thanks. In terms of CTIL, we said this earlier. I would be disingenuous if I were to say we were not naturally interested by the other 50% of CTIL. If that were to occur, we'd be part of that conversation. Obviously, it takes two to tango once again on this one. You'd have to have our partners being interested in that approach. We're of course open. Pretending not to be interested would not sound very truthful. Maybe a word on the code, Thomas, since you've been very close to it and the progress on that. Would you like to elaborate? The tax rate, yeah. The code was actually a topic that we have seen coming there gradually in any case. Yes, there are some legal challenges, but obviously the company is optimistic to work through these challenges and then for the benefits of the code actually to come through with further lease cost optimization, to be expected to come in over time there as well. That's something that will lead to benefits, and we are confident that those legal challenges will hopefully be dealt with relatively soon. In terms of EBITDA and free cash flow, you're right, we've actually seen some opportunity there in cash taxes to come through, in fact, that we have reflected now in our guidance overall. If you think about the medium-term guidance and what we have said there in terms of cash ratio, the 26%, we would still guide towards that 26%, but we would continue to see, obviously, working on cash efficiencies as we have actively been talking about it. Quarter results, nevertheless, it's a little bit too early to move away from the 26%. We remain at that point, at the 26% guidance in terms of taxes. Thank you. Could you please confirm, do you have a right of first refusal on the other 50% in Cornerstone? No, nothing explicit from what we've communicated on those agreements, so I cannot confirm that. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. Thank you, James. Our next question comes from Jakob Bluestone at Credit Suisse. Jakob, please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I just have one question, please. I was wondering, can you give us a little bit of an update on what are you seeing in terms of concrete plans starting to materialize in terms of the EU recovery fund that might impact your business? I think the deadline's passed for submitting proposals. If there's anything you're starting to see from your side that you can share, that would be helpful. Thank you. It is a rushed process, right? Governments are writing up their papers, taking them to Brussels, having the discussion on the plans. We're engaging in each and every country where we operate. We've got that as a structured plan. Too early to model. Some of the countries have indeed put some digital in there, some more than others. The themes of the recovery fund are green and digital, right? There's some countries where it's more on other sectors, and some of them have put money on infrastructure. In most of those cases, the conversations are around two dimensions, accelerating coverage across transport lines or rural. On rural, we've got very strong engagement. When countries will put in place subsidy programs to accelerate the rollout of rural sites, we stand ready to build out for them and help operators to come on board our infrastructure. There are a number of countries where we are indeed already, let's say, in the conversation with governments, but they've still not launched those. Each one of them will be a subsidy program with local laws or local, let's say, regulations or protocols to disperse the funds. We'd be standing on the other side of that to make sure we capture that for rollouts. We've been front-footed on this, saying we can do more. We can put capital to work if you'd like to help us to reach areas with lower thresholds than those where operators already go, and to help you take operators to other places. It needs to work for all three parties, right? For government, for operators, and for ourselves. I'd say it's playing out in the coming months. Each one of these programs will then require, I guess, organizing on the ground with the government. I think it's not quite, let's say, easy to model at this stage yet in terms of the numbers. The numbers could be big, but they're not firmed up yet. I guess that's the way to put it for now. Thank you. If I could just ask a follow-up as well. Last week, INWIT talked about how there's some scope for easing of EMF limits in Italy. Do you see that in any of your other markets, or is that quite specific to Italy? Well, Italy was an outlier, I think. A bit of Greece in some areas was a bit closer to Italy. Italy was certainly the outlier in Europe, I would say it's more of a coming closer to the rest of the pack type of situation. Thank you. It's like Darwin's. Yeah. That's certainly favorable for INWIT because that would make their infrastructure more shareable than it currently is, I guess. That's a welcome development in the market, very specific to Italy. Thank you. Thank you, Jakob. That concludes the Q&A session, and I would now like to hand it back to Vivek for any closing remarks. Yes, thank you very much. I'm sorry that the video link got lost. It looks like it's the interworking of all these platforms that connect to each other that seems to have taken me off grid. I think I might be back. A few words simply to say we are delivering on what we set out to do. We've interacted with you extensively over the IPO period, and we talked to you about the operational areas we wanted to focus on. Commercial, landlord management, and the standardization that leads to our industrial process of building towers. On all these three areas, we're making progress according to plan, and we're indeed putting in place the resources, the people, the expertise to make sure that we step these up. That's what will enable us to drive the operational efficiencies that will take our margin up over the medium term to the high 50s, and that's what the management team is focused on for this year. We've shared with you our guidance for 2022. We reconfirm our medium-term guidance. Of course, we are very proud of having hit our fiscal 2021 numbers. Feeling that the momentum coming out of the IPO period, there's been no slack. People are working flat out on getting all these programs ready. I'd say there's a good momentum in the business. Really happy to be with you this morning and to share with you this set both of results and perspective.