Hello, and welcome to the Iliad half year 2023 results call. My name is Laura, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Thomas Reynaud, Group Chief Executive Officer, and Nicolas Jaeger, Deputy CEO, Executive Finance, to begin today's conference. Thank you. Hello, everybody. This is Thomas Reynaud from Paris. I do hope that you had a good summer break. I'm here in Paris with Nicolas Jaeger, our CFO, and we have also our country manager, Jean-Marc Harion in Warsaw, Benedetto Levi in Milano, and Nicolas Thomas in Paris. So I'm very happy to present today the first half results. A good set of results. In a nutshell, there is an acceleration across all of our activities. We continue to outperform the European market in terms of growth. Commercial momentum is strong in the three countries, and at the same time, we stick to our financial discipline. If I may, I'd like to come back on the specificities of our model, which explain the good set of results in a tough macroeconomic environment. So what is it about the Iliad way? The Iliad way is mainly the creation of a proudly European group with a strong cooperation between our three countries, and we strongly believe that there are some cross-border synergies. Two, strong focus on investment, and clearly, the exit from the stock market give us more freedom to invest and to have the right rhythm in terms of investment. Three, the choice to be a convergent player in our three market, which explained the acquisition of UPC Polska last year in Poland, and also the willingness to address the B2B market. We strongly believe, and I will come back to it, when I will address the French topics. We strongly believe that we have a huge opportunity, to capitalize on the strength of our brand and on our asset in order to take market share on the B2B market. Finally, the Iliad way is also commitment to innovation, to preserve our, maverick mindset, and clearly, once again, the exit from the stock market and the chance to have Xavier Niel as a long-term, committed shareholder, give us a lot of flexibility and a lot of, freedom. So, if you look at the figures on Slide four, clearly, we outperform the market. We are the number one in terms of growth rate among the top 15 European telcos. This is not random, this is the result of our strong focus on growth and commercial performance. Clearly, probably one of the most important diagnosis of this H1, page eight, we are number one in terms of recruitment in our three markets. Slide nine on France. Our sales momentum was really solid. We are strengthening our local presence in terms of distribution, in terms of customer care. We still have a big push on fiber, and we managed to move 70% of our DSL customer to fiber, and we just reached the 5 million subscriber, FTTH subscriber, and this is clearly better than what we anticipated. On top of that, the satisfaction rate of our mobile and fixed subscribers have never been so high, which is a key KPI. And on top of that, we continue to push on the B2B segment. This is just the beginning of the journey. And clearly, the strategic acquisition of iTrust, a cybersecurity specialist, is a great door opener for large corporation, and it explained that we managed to grow our B2B activity by 55% during H1. In Poland, mobile postpaid performance was strong in Q2 with almost 100,000 net addition. While on prepaid, we start to see a normalization of the trend. Clearly, the Q2 ARPU bill to subscriber is up by 3% on a pro forma basis, which shows that we have the right approach in terms of more for more strategy in Poland. The key focus of the company in Poland is the integration of UPC into Play. The cross-sell strategy works quite well, specifically in terms of selling mobile subscription to our UPC broadband customer. Clearly, we consider that we will manage to sell UPC subscription to our mobile subscribers with a better integration of UPC within Play in the coming quarters, and specifically with the merger of our IT system. Finally, Play is doing well in the context of hyperinflation in the country, with an inflation over 15%, we managed to keep on growing the revenue base, and we have strong profitability. Nicolas will give you all the details in a moment. Moving to Italy, page 13. The performance this quarter was again a good one, considering the Iliad focus, win back from competition. We are the number one in terms of recruitment for 21 consecutive quarters, and we have now more than 10 million customers on mobile. You can see, at the same time, a ramp up of our broadband activity, thanks to the big push, even if today our offers are available on a very limited footprint. Clearly, the opening of the FiberCop and the Fastweb footprint will boost the net adds in the coming quarters, in my mind. The key highlight from a financial perspective in Italy was the fact that for the first time since the launch of our operation, we managed to break even in terms of operating cash flow. This commercial performance is also reflected in the continued reduction in group debt. As you can see, Nicolas, once again, will give you all the details, but I strongly believe that our financial strength is a major asset in terms of strategic flexibility. At the same time, we are free to invest wisely, but also, if it makes sense to seize external growth opportunities. Business is not only about financials. We go beyond and are continuously strengthening our CSR policy. We have done a tremendous amount of work in order to improve further our climate roadmap, and we have chosen the binding and challenging science-based framework of SBTi in order to submit our trajectory in terms of the reduction of our carbon emission, both the direct emission, Scope 1 and 2, but also indirect emission, Scope 3, for the medium term, 2030, and for the long term, 2050. This is, for us, in our mind, a very important step in terms of the transparency in the communication of our environmental data. And on the social side, our annual employee survey for our French activities showed excellent results with an overall 82% satisfaction rate. So, Iliad today is ready to face the future, always ready to reinvent itself, and we strongly believe that the best is yet to come. Nicolas? Thank you, Thomas. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's move now to the financial part. Slide 18. Yes. As indicated by Thomas, the group continues to be the European leader in terms of organic revenue growth, with 7.5% growth over the first semester. We insist on this first performance since this is materializing what we've been pushing and indicating to the market for the last four years, since Odyssey Capital Market Day. We invest in our distribution channel, in our mobile network, in the fiber network, in customer care, B2B, and that declines into top line growth, and we will see further into a profitable growth. Looking into the number in a more precise way, Italy grew by 12%, so it's a double digit. Almost 12% again in Q2, and the contribution is all at almost EUR 500 million over the semester. France growth is very solid, even re-accelerating in Q2. It's almost 8% contribution and passing the EUR 2.9 billion a year over H1. Poland contribution is above EUR 1 billion, also in a significant organic pro forma growth over the period, almost boasting 5.5% growth. Let's move on now to the profitability part. It's just before, sorry. It's on the right side of the slide, yes. EBITDA crossed EUR 1.6 billion at EUR 1.642 billion a year over the semester. It grew by 4% year-on-year, and organically 1.3%. If we drill down also per area, France EBITDA grew by 2% in H1, despite energy, and this is a very important point. The total cost bill for the group has doubled over the semester year-over-year. So mechanically, the profitability of the group is increasing, but it has to face significant price increase on energy. Poland, a contribution of over EUR 400 million to the group EBITDA, growing by 4%. A very important point to note, Q2 and since the closing of Światłowód end of March, Play started to be a client of a fiberco, which is Światłowód. We have mechanically the positive effect in terms of cash, because we sold the shares. We have also the positive effect because we don't support the cost of upgrade and deployment, but now we will have the cost of rental per line, which will mechanically impact negatively on EBITDA. You have a full impact starting Q2 2023. Italy, of course, almost reaching EUR 120 million over the period, growing by almost 35%. It's the direct consequence of the rollout of a network moving all traffic on our fixed cost base. If we go now to the investment part and the operating free cash flow slide 20. The group CapEx was basically flat at just above EUR 1 billion. CapEx in France is up 10%, mainly on a success-driven CapEx. As we build new Freebox, we connect more customer, and we also rebuilt a bit our Freebox inventory that we are at a low point in 2022 due to the Asia supplying issue. If you look on Italy, you have a CapEx that are down almost 40%. This impact is mostly linked to a several basis of comparison because we had significant stock at the end of the year of equipment. But does not reflect at all a slowdown in terms of mobile rollout. On the right side of the slide, you can see the main moving parts of the operating free cash flow. Operating free cash flow, even with a significant investment, is up by 8%. Improvement coming from Italy, which reduce strongly its negative contribution, remains around breakeven. We achieved only -5% over the semester. It's clearly a milestone that has been reached. This swing represent a positive impact of the group operating free cash flow of EUR 100 million over 12 months. Let's move to slide 21. We already touch based on the operating free cash flow, above EUR 600 million. So let's focus on the other items. Working capital outflow, EUR 124 million, EUR 154 million, roughly the same level than last year, if you exclude the one-off of Bouygues Telecom that we show there, under letter B. What is behind the working cap? It's mainly driven by push of B2B, smartphone distribution, and also on an accounting impact on the build-to-suit program that we have. Financial interest increase over the period, EUR 263 million. It reflects two things, the higher leverage post-UPC acquisition, and of course, the higher interest rates. Cash tax, EUR 355 million. Of course, the Bouygues Telecom payment of EUR 310 million, and the 788 other, that is a mix of different things. It takes into account, of course, the sale of the 30% stake in OTP, and the sale of 50% of Pro, which represent close to EUR 900 million of cash proceeds. On the negative side, we have the payment of the JV in Wind Tre, and some small M&A acquisition, regional ISP in Poland, and iTrust, the cybersecurity company in France. Spectrum was limited over the period, EUR 46 million invested, most of it was in Italy, and the ordinary dividend of almost EUR 300 million, which allow EUR 525 million of free cash flow, pre-financing activities. If we move to slide 22 and 23 after. During the first half, Iliad Group leverage declined by 0.1 turn to 3.1, with a net debt declining plus asset disposal on fiber and tower co. Clearly, we are moving in closer to our target of below 3x, and we'll see same thing for Iliad holding below 4x. Interest cover ratio is at 8.1% at Iliad Group level. Iliad Holding leverage declined to 4.1, end of June. There is now one turn difference between Iliad Group and the Iliad Holding, which is an important milestone for some of the bondholders. As you can see, we are now far from, we are not far from the leverage targets we committed with you to have three to be below 3 x and below 4 x at the Iliad Holding. In H1, as indicated earlier, we received exceptional proceeds from the sales of the 30% stake in OTP and 50% stake in Pro. Exceptional proceeds are naturally dedicated in their vast majority to deleveraging, both Iliad Group and Iliad Holding, and the remaining part could be distributed to the shareholders. On a consolidated basis, at Iliad holding level, the average maturity of the debt is close to four years, slightly below, and the gross debt is 75% fixed rate and hedged. If we move on the next slide, the liquidity. You can see here the liquidity profile of the group. On a consolidated basis, the group's debt is very diversified, bonds, bank loans, EIB financings, securitization, Schuldschein. In July, we renegotiated about EUR 2.5 billion of bank lines, extending the maturities. And as you can see, we have a very strong and solid position of over EUR 4 billion liquidity, which is a mix of undrawn and cash, at the balance sheet. We have sufficient liquidity to cover, all our maturity, 2025, 2026, and of course, our investment plan in the years to come. We will, of course, remain opportunistic, regarding market condition, issuing new bonds or new debt to roll our position in the future. This conclude my presentation, and operator, you can now open the floor to questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll take our first question from Georgios at Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one is around the pricing environment in France. And I was interested to hear your views in terms of whether there's been a step change in competition since the end of last quarter. We've seen some promotions coming back in the market, including from the market leader. If you can perhaps comment on whether there is a shift, from where you see it, and also any impact that may have on your ongoing more for more and net growth you have, particularly mobile. And then the second question is on the fixed line, which again confirms that you are doing very well, but the market is not, and overall growth has stalled. If there's any indications from your perspective as to when growth may reaccelerate, or whether we could see even further slowdown in the second half of the year? And then my final question is around Italy and wholesale core network that is being established there by one of the mobile players. Just curious to hear from your side, obviously, there's close cooperation with that network. Whether you also see risks from a wholesale perspective towards other MVNOs, just how you see that impacting the market. Thank you. Okay, thank you for your question. Regarding the pricing environment in France, on the one side, you get some price increase from some of our competitors on the existing subscriber base. And at the same time, you still have a lot of commercial activity, a lot of discount, a lot of discounted offer for new customers. So the French market is still very competitive for new net adds. On our side, we have not increased our price. We have a strong commercial momentum, and at the same time, we have an improvement of our business case, thanks to the switch from DSL to fiber, and thanks to a leverage on our fixed cost base on mobile. Regarding a potential slowdown of the broadband market in France, it's true that we had a big boost at the time of the lockdown. Yes, we have a quite high penetration rate in France in terms of broadband. This is the reason why we decided to move to the B2B market, and we consider that the B2B market, where we leverage our brand, where we leverage our fiber network, our data center, also our cloud services subsidiary, Scaleway. We do believe that the B2B market creates just a huge opportunity in terms of a new growth prospect. Regarding Italy, your question was on broadband or on mobile? On mobile, and the sale of the mobile network from Wind Tre to EQT, and whether that changes you believe the market dynamics or your relationship with regards to some of the- Oh, I think it's too soon to tell. We need to get more details on the project, on the contemplated project, at the level of Wind Tre. Thank you. If I could ask, just a clarification on mobile, can I take it from your response that as far as the entire market growth is concerned, you don't expect to get back to the pre-COVID levels anytime soon, that this slowdown is probably gonna last for some time? No, no, I think that, look at our growth rate. The growth rate is quite high in France, and we managed to extract more than 7% organic growth rate without any price increase. And at the same time, we managed to boost our PU. So we do consider that the fundamental of the market are good. After the question mark is the penetration rate. Clear. Thank you. Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Nicola at HSBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Oh, hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. I think I've got a follow-up question on the French market and the pricing. Is it fair to say that, I mean, despite the fact that your prices have remained stable when competitors' prices are up, your net adds are solid, but they are not really accelerating versus competition? So given you're cheaper and you are investing in client service, I wonder why we can't see an acceleration in the net adds relative to your competitors. So I'm just wondering what I'm missing here, and if it is essentially the first-year discount your competitors are offering, that is the issue. Thanks. No, thank you, Nicola, for your question. A couple of comments. You saw an acceleration of our net adds starting summer of 2021 with the launch of our Free Flex offer. And since then, we maintain a very high level of net adds at a time when there is a slowdown of the overall market. So clearly we keep on over-indexing the growth of the French market and outperforming our competitors. And at the same time, we benefit from the switch from the EUR 2 to the EUR 20 offer. Keep in mind that we still have more than 3 million EUR 2 customers. And Q2, overall, was the best quarter over the last five years in mobile net adds for, It was the best Q2 quarter over the last five years, this Q2 2023. So I don't have the same diagnosis than yours. Okay. No, no, don't get me wrong. Definitely your net adds are strong, but it's more on the over-indexation. No, but no, no, no, it's not. It's a fair question to see. It's really a fair question to say, but are you performing well, having in mind that you decided not to increase your price? It's a fair question, and I can tell you that this is a question that we ask ourselves every day. I can imagine. If I may, just to follow up, a quick one on Italy. Can you just come back on what I understand is a quarter-on-quarter decline in Italy EBITDA? Nicola? Ah, Q1 versus Q2? Well, and actually Q2 as well. I mean, Uh, Q2- Is it, it's just had the feeling that you have reinvested quite a lot. Is it a investment in growth for the year B2B- No, no, no. It's, we put it on the slide. So if you look Q2 versus. The main differentiator is the BTS. So it has two impact. The BTS, we have less BTS, so we sell less sites, one to sell next. That's the first point. And the second one is a change on the accounting method. We cross the minimum threshold, and with the cross of that threshold, the auditors review the policy of accounting. So we don't account for 100% of the BTS in our margin. We only account for part of it. So mechanically, that's this year-over-year, as a negative impact. Okay. So it's gonna be a headwind in the H2 again? Exactly. It's exactly that. But so it has two impacts on the EBITDA, but also on the working cap. It has no impact on the free cash flow. Okay. It's just a matter of accounting recognition. Okay. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Mathieu at Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon, and thank you for the presentation. I had a question on Italy first. As you flag in the presentation, the net adds are still quite slow because you've just signed the deal with FibreCop and Fastweb. When should we expect to see an acceleration there? And more generically, could you speak a bit about the pricing environment on broadband and if others have become more aggressive since your entry or not? So that's the first question. The second question was about Infravia. I don't know, maybe I missed it in the releases, but if you could share a little bit of financials about that asset, that is quite important, and also some KPIs in terms of how many lines it has co-finance in France so far. Thank you. Okay. Regarding Italy and the rhythm of broadband Net Adds, keep in mind that we took important decisions in the launch of our broadband activity. First, we decided, due to the strong image of innovation, to sell only fiber and on a limited footprint at this stage, due to the limited rollout of fiber, and the fact that we concentrated, as step one on Open Fiber. And clearly, we're gonna expand our addressable market with the rollout of fiber and the push that we're gonna do on the Fastweb and the FibreCop footprint. And so far, we consider our broadband activity more as a cross-sell activity, as a retention tool also for our mobile customers. And- Yes, we believe that we will see an acceleration with the extension of the footprint. But I think that we were number one, for sure. We were number one in Q2, in terms of broadband net ads on the Italian market. Of course. Do you think it could happen in next quarters, or is, does it take a bit more time to, No, no, no. Clearly our ambition is to be number one, Q3, Q4, and this is the direction given to the Italian team. Great. Let's see if we can maintain 21 quarters, like on the wireless. On your question, Matthew, on IFT, which is the JV we have on the fiber in France with Infravia. So just for the others that are not in the full details, the group has own all its fiber assets in the dense area, which is roughly 7 million plus homes passed. So it's our own infrastructure, horizontal, vertical, et cetera, et cetera. Outside of the zone, France has been divided in various local area. Each local area was given to an operator, not necessarily a telecom operator, to be deployed. And there was two scheme, either co-financing scheme or a rental scheme. And the co-financing scheme is based on buying tranches of usage of 5%. It's very long-term IRU. We have chosen to go significantly on the co-financing mode. In order to optimize our capabilities, we set up that in a vehicle that is co-financing heavily in all the rural/semi-dense area, which represent over 25 million homes. The JV is working very well, and it has been growing significantly. We have a co-finance on average three tranches or more. It's almost EUR 2 billion that has been invested in the fiber in France, in the rural area. So we are strong with our partner investor in fiber in France. It is a very, very nice asset that it is contributing to, the push that we had had over the last four years, and that enable us to be at 70% fiber among our customer base today. Great. Just a small technical precision. When you do wholesale, as in no, no, not co-financing, on the infrastructure of others, does it still go through the JV or is it directly to? We source- Iliad? Iliad source it, on the footprint of the JV. We source ourself only through the JV. Okay. After the JV, they have their own business plan. We are not necessarily the only client, and they choose depending of their financial arbitrage, either to buy a new tranche or not. If they don't buy a new tranche, and if there is demand, they go for the rental part. So for us, it's totally neutral. It's the financial model of the JV that aggregate all demand, and for third party demand. Very clear. Thank you. We have no further questions in queue currently. As a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Confirming there are no further questions in queue, I will now hand you back to your host for closing remarks. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much for your time, and see you, see you in a quarter. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. Continue to stay safe. You may now disconnect.