Sunrise Communications - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 1

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Sunrise Q2 2025 financial results conference call and live webcast. I am Mathilde, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing STAR and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press STAR and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. Page two of the presentation details the company's safe harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements. This presentation may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including Sunrise's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical fact.

These forward-looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. These risks include those detailed in Sunrise's filings with the SEC, including its most recently filed 20F. Sunrise disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect any change in its expectations or in the conditions on which any such statement is based. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Alex Herrmann, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thank you, operator, and good morning, ladies.

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. I would like to welcome you to our second quarter 2025 results call.

Speaker 2

With me today are André Krause, our.

Speaker 0

CEO as well as Jany Fruytier, our CFO.

Speaker 2

As per usual, we'll start the call.

Speaker 0

With a presentation that you also find online from the web, which will then be followed by a Q and A session.

Speaker 2

Let me now hand over to André.

Speaker 0

Please go ahead. Thanks, Alex, and good morning, everyone. I'll kick off the presentation with a quick overview of the key takeaways of today's presentation. Firstly, operationally we have switched off our 3G network and have become the first mobile operator that has switched off 2G and 3G and is moving to the most modern 4G and 5G SA technology on our entire network. We also have launched a number of new product offerings, we have refreshed and expanded our Yallo portfolio, and we have completed the UPC customer base migration. Given the fact that we did a price increase in the second quarter, we have also reduced our commercial activity a bit, and hence we have seen some softer net adds in the second quarter while at the same time the ARPU trends have been improving.

Secondly, financially we are seeing the Q2 revenue trend sequentially improving, and of course that is driven also by the price increase, continued momentum and growth on the B2B side, and I would say temporary recovery on hardware sales given the fact also that through the 3G switch off some customers needed to switch devices and that gave a bit of an uptick on the hardware demand. EBITDA improved to 1.9% year-on-year growth, also helped by further cost optimizations that we could land. On the back of the financial trajectory, we are confirming our guidance today, also including a DPS growth of 2.7% for the year. Thirdly, we have been able to refinance an existing term loan and have brought in a new $550 million senior secured note, which is further optimizing our average cost of debt.

Also, according to our plan, we have switched off our ADS listing on the 15th on the NASDAQ on the 15th of August, and we are continuing to follow our path to stop the sponsored ADS program by mid-November this year. With that, let me move to a bit more detail on the commercial performance, and let me give one sentence before I jump onto that slide because the slide is talking about the mobile market as such. On the fixed side, we are seeing on the competitive environment pretty stable evolution, so no real movements on promotional activities or on price points. The established, I would say, market is carrying on as we have seen it in the previous quarters. On mobile, we wanted to show because it is always an important question that you raise, what is the competitive environment and where are we going.

We wanted to share what's our perspective on how we look at the mobile market at this moment in time. Generally, we see a three-tier market structure that has established itself. We see a premium segment that is the largest segment in the market, covering 50% or slightly above of the customers, has fully integrated high-quality offerings and individualized services. It has a very broad range of products and services that customers are receiving on those offers. In this market, the price points are somewhat higher, usually starting above CHF 40. What we are seeing is an increasingly rational behavior if it comes to promotion activities. Main brands active in this are of course our main brand Sunrise, and we also see mainly Swisscom operating in here.

We see liquidity in this segment slightly reducing, mainly on the back of the fact that customers have already benefited in the past years from substantial price improvements, and hence their personal motivation to go to a further improvement is limited. They are more valuing the benefit of having the broad range of services and the quality of services instead of necessarily just a lower-priced simple offer. On the smart shopper segment, where we are operating with our brand Yallo and we see also our competitors, mainly Salt and Wingo, price range is probably in the range of CHF 20 to CHF 40. We are continuing to see a very promotional-driven market, but in that pricing range. We are not seeing the offerings in this range going lower than the CHF 20 at this moment in time.

We see liquidity slightly moderating because we are also seeing a budget segment underneath this smart shopper segment, which has a size of roughly 40% of the market from our expectation. We see a budget segment underneath that has established and is around a 10% today. Here we see price points that are ranging between CHF 10 and CHF 20 for typical, I would say, Swiss flat rates, but also very reduced offerings in range. Also, compared to the smart shopper segment where we do see a broader range of offers, also fixed and mobile offerings. Whereas we do see in the budget segment simple tariffs that are only focused on mobile only, usually also only with online presence and without any physical assistance to customers. Now, why is this important? Number one, because we overall are seeing that the market is having less liquidity.

As I said, we think this is driven by the fact that customers have enjoyed substantial price improvements over time. Let's not forget the average household income in Switzerland is double the size of Germany at around CHF 9,000. Hence, the reality for Swiss households is that a price that is in the premium segment, like CHF 40 or above, is already a pretty decent offering. If customers are happy, the necessity to improve has substantially reduced over the last couple of years. We are seeing in this segment liquidity reducing. We do see that the smart shopper segment is increasingly attacked because the smart shopper segment, of course, has more price-sensitive customers. Hence, customers are rather moving from the smart shopper segment to the budget segment, while the smart shopper segment is a bit fueled by the premium segment. That's kind of the evolution that we're seeing overall.

As I said, liquidity reducing. Most liquidity in the market is probably sitting in the budget segment, where we also see a lot of activities going on. At Sunrise, we feel that we are very well positioned with our multi-brand strategy, and that allows us really to compete and tap into the liquidity that does exist across the segments. Hence, we think in this market structure and in the competitive environment that we are seeing, we will be able to compete well and also drive our top line going forward. Now that.

Speaker 2

Let me talk about some of the.

Speaker 0

Commercial launches that we had in the second quarter, we already talked about our new Swiss Connect portfolio that we launched at the beginning of Q2 in our Q1 results. That of course is an important launch that we did, which gave more roaming inclusions to all of the mobile tariffs. On the Sunrise side, we have added now in the quarter also our first insurance product and cyber insurance. This is at this moment exclusively sold to our existing customers. We are a bit, if you want, in soft launch mode still. We are not providing those insurances ourselves, but we have collaborations with expert insurance providers, which are on the back end providing those services at this moment.

We had a good start, but I would say also the volumes, given the fact that it was kind of a soft launch to our own customers, have been limited at this moment in time. On the other side, we have not only refreshed but also expanded our portfolio, our product portfolio. We have now more roaming plans that allow us to cover the segment needs of the smart shoppers quite a bit more. We have also increased our top speeds on the fixed side to 2 gig. Also on the 5G side, customers have access to the 5G network. We also added a smartwatch option. With that, we feel that we are well positioned to cover all of the segments' need on the smart shopper side.

Also on B2B, as you know, an important segment if it comes to growth for us, we have improved our SME portfolio with a number of packages that allow customers to have not only connectivity but also having access to ICT services like cyber security. We have brought in most modern technologies also like cloud calling. With that, I think we have a well-rounded offering now for the SME side, and that will allow us also to drive further growth in the B2B segment in the quarters to come. I would also place a light on the already yesterday announced prolongation of our hockey rights, and I would say that was kind of the final step, if you want, on the strategic intent that we had when we launched MySports back in 2016 and 2017.

At that moment in time, the sports rights were largely exclusively held by Swisscom, and hence because of the exclusivity that Swisscom pursued, gave them the opportunity to drive their broadband growth on the back of the exclusive sports rights. The launch at that point in time was intended to break that exclusivity, which ultimately has now come full circle because in the meantime we have seen also verdicts from the Swiss courts that prevent exclusivity on the sports side. Number one. Number two, with the sliver of sports rights that we have, the hockey, which is the second most important sport in Switzerland, allows us to actually well balance the situation that we have.

Hence, we now are selling all of the sports rights through our channels, not only hockey but also the blue packages that include all of the football rights, while we at the same time also are selling MySports to Swisscom customers as well as to Salt customers. With that, I think the situation is now that the sports rights are not preventing customers from choosing a Sunrise broadband connection, and that was the strategic intent. The prolongation in this context is important because it's allowed us to improve also the financial situation as the rights went somewhat cheaper, and from the season 2027-2028 where this will become effective, this will allow us to make the MySports business a prospectively profitable business, which I think hence this is not only a strategic exercise anymore, but it's a real business that makes sense for us.

Hence, we are happy that we can secure the rights up until 2035. Now, let me talk also about another very important strategic achievement on our mobile infrastructure. I said it at the beginning already with the 3G switch, of which ultimately two days ago where we switched on the last region, we have an exclusively 4G and 5G Standalone Network enabled network. With that, we are able to also move frequency and spectrum to the 4G and 5G sites that we have. As we told you already in Q1, we have since Q1 already a fully 5G Standalone enabled network in Switzerland, which is now, I would say, the broadest coverage in any given country in Europe if it comes to 5G Standalone. It's the most modern network as it's not customers holding back on any 2G or 3G experience.

The project was pretty brave because at the beginning of the year we had around 120,000 to 130,000 customers still using 3G devices. There was a lot of activity necessary to enable the switch off, which has worked out very well. I'm happy that we really conducted the exercise because we are now in a very strong position. We already have 350,000 customers that have the devices and the right product enablement to give them access to 5G Standalone. We have seen real time data on how the performance improvements are looking. What we are really seeing is 15% to 20% performance improvement on the customers that are using the network. I have to say I'm really proud and I'm really happy for our network teams under the leadership of our CTO, Elmar Grasser.

This was a milestone achievement and I think as one expert that looked at the evolution told us, we are probably five to 10 years ahead of many other operators in Europe with the state of mobile network that we have achieved right now. Of course, this is now an important enabler and we will fully commercialize the abilities of this network and also incremental innovative services in the quarters to come. With that, let me also summarize what are the commercial results. On the net add side, as I said already, we have seen some softer evolution as the prior year.

However, we have seen a sequential improvement quarter on quarter to 18,000 net adds on the mobile side, 0 net adds on the Internet side, which was largely driven by lower market liquidity but also price increase related incremental churn and some of the final phase out of the UPC customer migration that, as I said, we have concluded at the second quarter of this year. Given the fact that the market is giving lower liquidity at this moment in time, we expect also that the net adds in the final quarters of this year will probably be moderate. Following the lower liquidity, our fixed mobile convergence has further increased by 1.4% to 58.5% and we expect that to further improve.

If we look at ARPUs, then on the mobile ARPU side we have seen a year over year decline of 1.6% but a sequential improvement on the back of the subscription revenues benefiting from the price rises. However, this trend is also continuing to be partially offset by revenue decline that is driven by reduced roaming usage as we are providing more of the roaming services included in the tariffs. On the fixed ARPU side, we see also an upward trend as the full impact of the price increases is kicking in and also we see a sequentially declining impact from the right pricing effect of the UPC customer base migration. We, however, also see a continuous growth in the mix. Hand over to Jany for the detailed financials.

Speaker 2

Thank you André and also welcome. From my side everyone, let me start with a quick overview. As always I will focus mostly on Q2 and make some comments around our H1 performance before then going in deeper into the individual elements of the P&L. We'll give you an update on our guidance that André referred to and I'll talk a little bit about the ADS progress and the next steps. Before we go there, an overview. With revenue down 0.8% yet significantly stabilizing versus what we saw in Q1, that is on the back of the residential fixed and mobile P&Ls which are sequentially improving on the back of the price increase, the temporary recovery of the hardware sales—André spoke about it in relation to the 3G—and also continued growth on the B2B service revenue.

The overall revenue decline is largely and continues to be largely driven by the residential fixed, which is still impacted by the right pricing effect and the brand mix, which we expect to temper as we get to the end of this year. Gross profit at 0.4% again significantly improving versus what we posted in Q1 as the revenue decline is partially compensated by a different phasing of our network-related expenses that sit in our direct cost. Adjusted EBITDA up 1.9% for the quarter as a result of OPEX efficiencies together with declining lease costs. We'll talk a little bit later about the moving parts on OPEX because it is in part the continuation of our savings programs but also helped by a number of incidentals. CAPEX reduction for the quarter 12% down. Oh sorry, 8% down. Apologies.

You can see in H1 we are more or less flat, pointing to the different phasing between Q1 and Q2, and we're on track for the full year. CapEx guidance that we have given, that reduced CapEx gets us to a 12% growth on adjusted EBITDA for the quarter and turning down to free cash flow of around CHF 150 million in the quarter, which was slightly lower than prior year, which mostly has to do with net working capital. I'll talk you through that in a second. If we then zoom into revenue, the picture that you can see is the CHF 13 million decline in subscription residential fixed that is significantly tempered from what we saw in Q1, again on the back of the price increases and better, less impact of the right pricing. As André said, the brand mix does impact this.

The other revenue growth that you see in residential is in part the switch off of the 3G and the higher devices that we did plus a number of adjustments on fees that we made. B2B you see growth on both fixed and mobile, yet slightly lower than what we saw in Q1 because mainly of two reasons. On the one hand, the large customer deal that we spoke about in 2024 has been lapped or still some growth, but the majority has been lapped, and also although we're making great progress in SME, we have a slightly slower ramp up of the rollout of the portfolio as such.

If we go to EBITDA, again you can see the GP on residential as part of the residential revenue of fixed revenue also going down to EBITDA but offset by again B2B growth plus the inference support which is growing and that is mostly phasing of cost as I spoke about before, and again it's not something to be expected for the full year. OPEX down $4 million in part because of the switch off of the mobile core. As part of all of the migrations, we are now also starting to switch off the IT systems and the mobile systems that were supported. That is driving cost upside together with lower maintenance cost across as we continue to focus on that part of our cost base, as well as a temporary impact from the employee share program that André will speak about later.

Leasing slightly down on a year over year basis in part because in phasing and in part because of optimization of those costs. When we get to adjusted EBITDA, less D&E additions and adjusted FCF. As I said, you see the growth on adjusted EBITDA coming through with a different phasing of CAPEX. I think nothing really to call out in terms of year over year reductions, purely phasing on the one hand because of CPE. It has all to do with delivery and baseline. What you're seeing here is the phasing out of our cost to capture or our integration spend if you will, together with a slightly different baseline spend on the network rollouts, but for H1 more or less flat.

When you get to FCF, you can see a decline versus prior year and the majority of that is in the working capital and other, which is predominantly driven by a different customer collection cycle and different phasing of our standalone cost. All in all, in line with expectations and purely phasing between quarters because of working capital. If we then go to the guidance page, in general we're reconfirming all metrics, albeit we're expecting revenue to be at the lower end of the range in part for two reasons. André mentioned them both, but the first one being a lower and longer replacement cycles for hardware. Q2 was slightly better, but that was temporary because of 3G. I think in general we're seeing a lower replacement trend, and that is weighing on that lower end. The other part is the softer liquidity that we're seeing in the market.

When we get to adjusted EBITDA, we're fully able to offset that and confirming our guidance together with CapEx and adjusted free cash flow, which should then drive a 2.7% increase for the dividend over in payment 2026 for the full year 2025. Lastly, the ADS topic. We did switch off the NASDAQ line last week, Friday was the last day of trading. There is now an OTC market still in the U.S. that has proven liquid. So far, we have 87% of the Class A share ADS that have been converted and 98% of Class B. Of course, the underlying Sunrise Class A shares continue to be listed on the SIX, and we're seeing good developments on that line. Now for next steps. As communicated previously, we are still holding to our planned switch off on the 13th of November of the sponsorships.

The Class A and B ADS holders will be accordingly informed by the depository bank, and we're continuing to monitor the progress of conversions, if you will. As such, there is at the moment an OTC market which remains liquid. I think positive to see is that there is no discrepancy in both lines from a pricing perspective. Of course, on the back of us switching off then also the sponsorship of the ADS program, we are then, as soon as the SEC allows, intending to reduce our SEC reporting. One should expect that only to happen end of 2026, early 2027. With that, let me hand back to you, André, for the final remarks.

Speaker 0

Yeah, thanks Jany. Before I come to the final remarks, I want to do a bit of a call out on our employee share program. We have as part of the listing had the intention to make more of our employees shareholders of our business as we believe that a common interest in the evolution of the business is helpful. Hence, we stood up a program that is depicted on the left hand side of this chart. We allow our employees, and pretty much everybody is eligible except all of the management layers which are participating in other shareholding programs. This is mainly all of the employees that could invest. We allow them to invest up to 20% of their base salary over a period of three or six months. They will get a 33% discount on the share price that will be determined at the end of that period.

There is going to be a one year blocking period. We believe that is a very attractive program. I have to say I'm positively surprised about the outcome because we have a participation rate of 50% of our roughly 2,400 eligible employees and 2/3 of those have chosen to go all in, so exactly six months and 20%. That implies overall our employees are investing roughly CHF 10 million into Sunrise. I think this is a significant improvement on the shareholding base that we have now across our employees and a very strong commitment of our employees into our business and I'm very happy about that outcome. Now, let me come to the conclusion of the presentation. What have you heard? The standout messages from our perspective are the 3G switch off that is now marking the next step in our 5G Standalone Network journey.

We do strongly believe this is really a unique feature that Sunrise has implemented and is now able to provide to our customers. Secondly, we have seen a step up of our commercial activities since the end of the second quarter, coming out of the price rise period. However, we are dealing with a lower market liquidity and hence we are expecting trading to remain moderate. Thirdly, the revenue trend in Q2 is sequentially improving and our financial guidance on the back of that evolution is a full reconfirmation of our guidance. Now with that I hand over back.

Speaker 2

For the Q and A. Thank you André and Jany for walking.

Speaker 0

Us through the presentation.

Speaker 2

Operator.

Speaker 0

Now over to you. Please proceed with the Q&A.

Speaker 1

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press *1 on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press *2. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press *1 at this time. The first question comes from the line of Molly Whitcomb from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple, please. Firstly, you've mentioned the impact of the Flanker brand. I'm just wondering, have you seen a step up or acceleration in take up for Yallo? Just wondering what the division of net adds might look like.

If you could just give us a little bit more color on that, that would be great. The second thing, I'm just looking at the cost savings on EBITDA and the UPC migration. Clearly that's had a benefit over the last couple of quarters. I'm just wondering how should we think about cost savings going into Q3 and Q4 and into the next year and their potential tailwinds from the UPC migration. Should they be less? Just how we should think about those more generally. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you for the question. Firstly, we have also seen a price rise and implemented a price rise on our Flanker brand, in particular in the second quarter. Hence, we have been a bit calmer in the marketplace, and on the back of that, we have seen a rather stable evolution of the trading, but coming out of the quarter, we are stepping up there, and as we have done in the past, we are not communicating the individual splits of the different brands on the total net performance of the quarter. On your second question regarding OPEX and the impact of the UPC migration going forward, as Jany said, there's a number of OPEX improvements that are of temporary nature, but there are also a number of them which are of continuing nature.

Hence, we are expecting to maintain a rather flattish or slightly declining OPEX evolution as we go into the second half of the year and then potentially also in the same sort of direction into the next year. Beyond that, on the UPC moderation, we are expecting a tempering of the ARPU impact towards the second half of the year, and I think that's pretty much what you can say about it. Jany, anything you want to add?

Speaker 2

Yeah, on the UPC switch off of the mobile system, those costs, I think what we're seeing, that was a big chunk and we needed the time to do that. As we are also now finalizing the fixed customer switch off, there are still some billing and some system-related costs that will phase out. Don't expect that for this year, but that's probably early next year and the year after. As André said, and I think that also looking back to our capital markets guidance, we have a flat, slightly down OPEX which is supported by those. As such, not a difference of what we have previously guided for.

Speaker 1

Very clear, thank you very much. Next question comes from the line of Polo Tang from UBS Investment Bank. Please go ahead.

Morning everybody. Thanks for taking the questions. I have three. The first one is just on promotional activity. You outlined that the bulk of the market is stable to improving when you look at the premium segment or the smart shopper segment. You did highlight that the budget segment is getting more aggressive. Could you clarify which players are being the most aggressive in this segment? Can you also comment on what you're seeing in terms of behavior from Swisscom and Salt? Second question is, given that you've reiterated guidance for the full year, this does suggest improving trends on the top line. From here, can you comment in terms of how we should be thinking about the trajectory of quarterly revenue and quarterly EBITDA growth from here? Can you maybe talk about or remind us about the tailwinds and headwinds you see?

For example, will hardware get worse in Q3 after a temporary boost in Q2? You've previously talked about the lapping of the UPC repricing, but I'm just trying to get a sense if there are any other moving parts. My final question is just about the share based compensation. This stepped up to CHF 16 million in Q2 compared to a quarterly run rate of CHF 5 to 7 million a quarter previously. How should we think about the run rate for share based compensation going forward? If employees are swapping salary for stock and your share based compensation payments are not included in adjusted EBITDA, should we be thinking about upside risk to adjusted EBITDA but with a higher share count? Any clarification is much appreciated.

Speaker 0

Thanks. Yeah, thanks Polo. Thanks for your questions. Let me tackle the first one and then Jany takes the two, the two ones after. The promotional activity that we're seeing in the budget segment, I would say at this moment you can think about the three tiers like swimming lanes of price ranges. While we see within the Smart Shopper segment where Yallo is playing, we see the price ranges between CHF 20 and CHF 40 depending on, of course, what tariff you look at and what promotion you see. We have hardly seen any of the players operating in there, which I would, next to Yallo, I would see mainly Salt and Wingo, and hence the segment has quite some size. If you look at that, then nobody has really left that swimming lane below that CHF 20 at this moment in time.

The reason for that is that those players all have material existing customer bases and hence repricing risk is limiting the ability and the interest of potentially going below that range. On the budget segment, the price range is really CHF 10 to CHF 20, so we usually see at the low end offerings that are starting with CHF 9.95. I would say that is quite volatile. Who is the one that has something out there that is taking that price point? I checked this morning, I saw an offer from Spusu at CHF 9.95 for Swiss. I saw an offer from Gomo, which belongs to Salt, which was at CHF 12.95. There is some volatility in these offerings. You also see offerings that are then rather in the range of CHF 15 or CHF 19, like what you see at Swiss Post or what you see at TalkTalk.

That's kind of a bit the evolution that we see there. What is important to me, and I think as part of the clarification how we think about the marketplace, is not each and every customer is just attracted by price, right? We think that those swimming lanes are important and that this budget segment is having lots of, if you want, news, new entrants. If you think about the last quarters, like Spusu was a new entrant, Gomo was a new entrant two years ago. The Post was relaunched just last year. There is a bit of activity out there, but many of those players are struggling to really get a decent amount of volume over a longer period onto their customer base.

Hence, we see this volatility in the promotional activities, which are intended to, of course, capture some of the interest, but not necessarily can be held in for a long period of time. That's, I think, what characterizes the situation of this budget segment at the best at this moment.

Speaker 2

All right, Polo, let me try to walk you through both questions. I'll bring in a bit more detail, but I'll try to balance detail versus not becoming too technical. Let's start with the revenue. Year to date we are down 2.1% or approximately CHF 31 million. What you can see in there is that Q1 we were CHF 25 million down approximately, and Q2 only CHF 6 million. Now to your point around reiterating guidance, I think we are reiterating. Yet on the lower side, broadly stable, of course, is a range in itself, but I think as you said, 2.1% for the full year, for year to date, is definitely not what we would interpret even at the lower end of that range, that is, improvements are necessary. Let me try to help you with sort of what one should expect from that.

Q1, that CHF 25 million had a number of impacts. On the one hand, the right pricing at its full peak, secondly, a soft hardware quarter, and thirdly, no price increases yet, sort of as special effects that I'll zoom in also for Q2 and then the outer quarters. What you're seeing in Q2 is that the price increase is coming through. Some of it was from March, some of it from April, so not fully. Furthermore, the typical optimization effects you see in that first quarter, that is, the price increases are through but is still partially impacted by the optimization impact of implementing that. That means from a subscription revenue you can expect a slight improvement, if you will, going forward. What is important to note still, and I think again we're in Q3, we're not giving here guidance on Q3 or in general about specific quarters.

Q3 is typical, the roaming quarter. I think what we have communicated is that in our new bundles roaming is more included, that is, the revenue becomes more stable. In the peaks one might assume to lose a bit. That is there. Lastly, I think you asked about the temporary nature of those handsets. Q1 was particularly soft. Q2 was a bit better on handset. Important to note that Q3 when we did the actual switch off, because we talked about the switch off being in July and August, one should expect probably the highest benefit, if you will, from those 3G device switches, which then normalizes in Q4. Those are all of the elements that I think help you to get to that lower of the range, broadly stable revenue. Lastly, on the share-based compensation, again we're getting technical, but let me explain how to read that.

First of all, there are two lines that we report in our financial statements. One is the adjustment to OPEX that we're doing, and secondly is then as part of the labor cost giving you the total share based compensation. Now, there is a significant difference between those two because only part, and I talk about in a second which those are, only part of those share based compensation is through labor cost or short term compensation. By selecting share based programs, you move it from short term to long term, and as such you can take.

Speaker 0

Them out of OpEx.

Speaker 2

For the quarter, if I'm not mistaken, the adjustment that we're doing to OpEx is approximately $4 million. As you say, the total share-based compensation is $16 million. André spoke about the $10 million share-based compensation for the employee share price program, which effectively all comes out of OpEx. The other balancing effect is the normal long-term incentivization that management and other selected employees have. That $16 million, therefore, on a quarterly basis is elevated and is elevated because of the ESPP that we just talked about. Secondly, I think you're comparing the $6 million to $7 million versus prior years. That was because in the past, when we were still part of Liberty Global, some of that share-based compensation was then recharged back to us through a charging fee.

Therefore, it's not like-for-like to say that the $16 million per quarter that we're seeing now is elevated because of the share-based employee share program. I think in the past we have given you around a $30 million total year share-based compensation number. I think again this year is probably a bit elevated because of that one-off employee share-based compensation program. That's how it all ties.

Speaker 0

Let me just add one thing which is important. I mean the employees are investing, essentially have started to invest in Q2 and they will continue in Q3 and Q4. That's a bit spread. The other thing which is important also as a company, together with our Board, we are of course reviewing our share-based compensation programs on a continuous basis and we haven't taken final decisions for next year, for example. I think you have to be a bit careful of drawing conclusions on what it necessarily implies for the years to come.

Speaker 2

One more point to add. I think when we give guidance on the dividend growth, it's on a diluted basis, of course. So that $2.7 is after dilution. I don't know what the exact dilution is that you're expecting. This doesn't meaningfully impact that. This shouldn't impact the run rate that you have assumed.

Great, thank you.

Speaker 1

We now have a question from the line of Robert James Grindle from Deutsche Bank AG. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Good morning and thank you. Three questions from me too. I was interested in the 15 to 20% improvement seen by 5G SA customers. Is that versus regular 5G, and what's.

Speaker 0

The metric of improvement you're talking about, is that a latency thing or a throughput thing or whatever?

Speaker 2

Secondly, did you consider paying an interim dividend? Are you fixed now that you'll be.

Speaker 0

Paying a bullet only from here on in?

Speaker 2

Thirdly, the whole U.S. delisting and deregistration thing, will it save you any money? It sounds like it's more of a.

Speaker 0

Full year 2027 saving, is that right? All right. Good morning, Robert. Thanks for your questions. Let me take the first one. On the 15 to 20% performance improvement, that is actually on three parameters. One is latency, the other two are uplink and downlink. We do see substantial improvement, and this is compared to 5G. If you are a normal 5G customer and you move to 5G Standalone Network, then you actually see that performance improvement. Of course, that is based on the fact that 5G Standalone Network is truly based on a 5G base layer and hence you don't have that flip flopping between 4G and 5G. That improves the latency and helps to step up also the performance on uplink and downlink. I think that sheds a light on the ability. We're really happy with what we have seen so far.

I think that's a great step next to the fact that 5G Standalone Network then also allows to utilize a number of technical innovations like quality steering and so on, which allows to think about more innovative product features for B2B and for consumer customers.

Speaker 2

All right, André, thanks. Let me take the next two questions. First, on the sort of intermediate dividend or bullet payment, I think a couple of things. First of all, we are at the moment evaluating debt and we'll still look at it. There are a number of technicalities under the Swiss sort of legal environment that we need to consider. The ability to just pay dividend is preceded by a number of legal steps that need to happen. As such, there is a burden on it, if you will. I think we're wanting to go through 2025 as we currently have it and then we'll sort of evaluate that for 2026 after some of the switch off of the ADS are done and we have a stable shareholder base. Something that is not completely off the table does pose a number of technicalities that we have to work through.

I think first, important to make sure that we have a stable investor base which we'll then engage with to get their feedback on. On the second question of the lower cost, you are correct. One should expect that really to materialize in 2027. There might be some savings in 2026 already. Again, there's a number of technicalities that we have to adhere to before we can retract our SEC reporting, which effectively means that we have to wait 12 months after the switching off of the OTC program before it could become effective, that is November. That means then potentially for 2026 the requirements fall away. We only know that very late into the year and therefore a number of calls will have already been incurred. Thank you.

Speaker 1

The next question comes from the line of Max Finlay from Rothschild. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions this morning. A couple of questions from me. Firstly, your rebased EBITDA growth for the first half was just over 1% with growth accelerating in Q2 at 2%. I am just wondering if you think you can maintain this momentum going into the second half. It looks like you've got a good setup with revenues expected to strengthen from here and OPEX to slightly decline perhaps. Secondly, you mentioned that mobile is still experiencing headwinds from reduced roaming revenues. How much longer should we expect this to be a headwind? From memory, I think your tariffs changed around Q3 last year. Is this something we should expect to tail off from Q4?

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 0

All right, Max, thanks. Thanks for your question on the roaming question. If I take that first and then Jany, I can answer your first question. The way how to look at this is, I think that will take a long time until that variable roaming consumption is fully tailing off because the fact that we have introduced tariffs that have the inclusion feature, that means that over time customers are migrating into those tariffs and are benefiting from that.

We also, of course, have customers in other products like Yallo, for example, where roaming inclusion is not yet fully given on the tariffs, and as such there's more exposure to variable consumption, and hence we also are still seeing a decent use of roaming options that we expect not only in one year to come down, but probably that is a smaller and smaller headwind over the next couple of years.

Speaker 2

All right, so then coming to your question on EBITDA, so broadly stable to low single digit growth, I think I would argue the year to date 1.1% is probably spot on. In the middle of that guidance, you are correct in saying that there was an acceleration in Q2. Having said that, it was not predominantly driven by a reduction of OpEx as GP was down about 5%. Yes, revenue is expected to improve a bit from here. I think on the back of that, with, as we say, the GP also being impacted with phasing of cost, one can take an assumption on what GP does. All to say that the continued growth though comes from OpEx, and as we said, there is a number of one-off and phasings between the quarters.

I'm not going to give you further guidance on where one should expect the full year EBITDA to land, but it's those dynamics that make up the year to date, if you will, and how you should be thinking about the full year.

Speaker 0

Brilliant. Thank you.

Speaker 1

As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star N1 on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Alex Herrmann for any closing remarks.

Speaker 2

To conclude, thank you all very much for attending.

Speaker 0

That actually concludes our second quarter 2025 results compared to.

Speaker 2

always, if there are any further questions, please feel free to reach out.

Speaker 0

Questions, please do not hesitate to reach.

Speaker 2

Out to our team.

Speaker 0

With that, we wish you a lovely day and good rest of the week and speak soon to everyone.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Have a nice day.

Speaker 1

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Sunrise Communications AG and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.