Sunrise Communications - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sunrise Q4 and QE 2024 Financial Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Valentina De Coro, 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 one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. 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. Today's presentation may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including Sunrise expectations with respect to their respective outlooks 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 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed Form 20-Fs. 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.

Alex Herrmann (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to welcome you to our full year 2024 financial results call, our first results presentation as a standalone company. With me in the room are André Krause, our CEO, as well as Jany Fruytier, our CFO. In terms of agenda for the call today, as you can see on page 3 of the presentation, André will kick off with a summary of the 2024 highlights. This will then be followed by diving deeper into the commercial performance of our consumer and B2B businesses, as well as a summary of our positioning on the mobile and fixed infrastructure and an update on the progress on the sustainability front.

Jany will then take over to walk you through our financial performance for the full year, as well as the final quarter of last year, and also share our outlook for 2025. Before we then move to the Q&A session, André will conclude the presentation with some final remarks. I'd now like to hand over to André. Please go ahead.

André Krause (CEO)

Thanks, Alex, and a warm welcome and good afternoon to our first results presentation as a standalone company. 2024 was a very packed year with a number of highlights and successes for our business. I would like to flesh out a few before we jump into the details of the presentation. Now, throughout the year, we had a number of new commercial product launches and new partnerships that we could form and bring to market successfully. On the back of that, we have been able to sustain good customer growth momentum throughout the quarters. We have launched also successfully our upgraded two and a half gig on our HFC network and also have achieved a strong result in the network test on the mobile side. We spun off a company in the fourth quarter and listed successfully on the SIX exchange.

We are also talking today about us achieving all of our guidance and providing a dividend of CHF 3.33 for the Class A Shares for 2024. Also, we are fully confirming our outlook that we have already given on the capital markets day back in September. And on the basis of that, we are also expecting a dividend of CHF 3.42, i.e., a dividend growth of 2.7% upon delivery of those results. Now, with that overview, let me jump into the commercial performance that we have seen throughout the year and particularly in Q4. As I said, we were always focused on delivering new innovations to the market that give us an edge over our competitors and give customers a reason why to join us.

Now, in the fourth quarter, a few examples that I would like to flesh out is number one, on the left-hand side, for now more than two years, we are successfully introducing and further developing our device as a service offering. We launched our Flex Upgrade Program, which gives customers the opportunity to buy handsets on a monthly pay basis and provides a lot of flexibility around that, which has proven to be a very attractive offering in the market. The results have been that while the market for handsets in the fourth quarter, year on year, was slightly down, we have been able, against those industry trends, to grow by 7%, and it was on the back of really the Flex Upgrade Program and Smart Upgrade Program, having an attach rate of more than 65% with all of the new customers that have joined Sunrise.

We also got very good feedback from the large handset manufacturers telling us that we are a clear exception and an example of how to do device as a service on a global scale, which is something that we are, of course, very happy about and would like to take forward. The second thing that we also did in the fourth quarter was strengthening our content proposition. We have launched a Sunrise TV Shop, which gives our customers the opportunity to flexibly manage all of their OTT streaming services. And that gives us also the opportunity to double down on our partnerships that we have with the Netflixes, Disneys, and also Canal+ in our market. On the back of that, we have also increased our market presence around content offerings and have launched larger marketing campaigns with Disney and also Netflix.

We are also pushing forward on the Canal+ proposition that since February now includes also Paramount+ for the Swiss market. Q4 is always a quarter with a lot of liquidity in the market, and that is mainly driven by the fact that November carries Black Friday, which in our market is extensively used by all operators, not only as a few days, but throughout the course of November. What we have seen this year in Black Friday is we have been very successful in terms of executing our Black Friday offerings, even though we have not seen a further degradation, if you want, of the promotional aggressiveness. In fact, all of our promotions of last November were exactly in line with the promotional prices that we had a year ago during Black Friday. No further increase of aggressiveness from our end.

However, execution was very well planned and executed, and as such, we have been able to drive significant inflow volume, and with that, we're very happy to see what amount of liquidity we could actually capture. However, we also, after the exercise, were looking at all of the moving parts, not only just the inflow element. We have to clearly say that if we are looking at the amount of churners that we are giving to market and the amount of retention discounts that we have to grant to keep customers that are appealed by lower price offerings of the competition have in total driven a negative impact of the Black Friday period. Now, that for us is a turning point and means that we have to rethink our use of Black Friday and other promotional periods going forward.

As a result of that, we have also started to reduce our aggressiveness in Q1, and we will further do so and also review our activities to the high intensity promotional periods, like for example, in Black Friday. Now, not only consumer, but also if we are looking at our B2B momentum, then we have been able to thrive along three dimensions to drive meaningful progress in 2024. So we have been able to again win a number of new logos, new companies that have joined us throughout the year. For example, in Q4, we joined Ringier. Earlier in the year, we joined Migros. And as I said, these are only examples. The list is a lot longer. So we are continuing to win new relationships in the marketplace.

Secondly, it's important for us not only to win new customers, but also to renew existing relationships, which we also have successfully done throughout the year. You see a number of examples here. In Q4, we were able to prolong our relationship and partnership with SBB, Swiss Railways, and also the contract that we have with Swiss Post we have successfully prolonged in the third quarter already. Thirdly, very important dimension of future growth is also selling new services. And here are three examples given. EOC is the largest hospital in the Ticino area, and we have been selling an MPN solution on 5G for the entire hospital, which is a very big project, but it also testifies our ability to drive MPN solutions to the market.

The second example is smaller, but it's also testifying our ability to drive innovative IoT solutions to B2B customers, as we are doing with antibiotics, and the third one is also important as cybersecurity from our perspective yields a lot of future potential, and the business that we are doing with Lyreco is actually helping us not only to sell an MPN campus, but also to ensure secure connectivity on top of that. In summary, I would say we had a very strong commercial momentum in Q4, and this is also resulting in the numbers on the customer side, so you see that for the fourth quarter, we had 59,000 net additions on mobile postpaid and 10,000 net additions on the fixed internet side. For the full year, this was summing up to 159,000 customers on mobile and 31,000 customers on internet.

This is a strong inflow momentum across all of our growth engines, how we call them, meaning our consumer main brand Sunrise, our flanker brand , and also B2B. Important to note is that the fixed internet growth has been stable above zero for the entire year. So we have been really turning around towards a robust internet growth, while the year of 2023 had only just one quarter of positive net additions. We have now been every quarter in positive numbers. Also important for us is the fixed mobile convergence that has increased throughout the year, now standing at 57.1%, which is 1.4 percentage points up compared to the Q4 in last year. And this has also helped to drive our churn reduction throughout the year, which was around 10% of our churn that we were able to reduce during the course of this year.

This, of course, has also helped to sustain the good net addition level as less gross adds are required to drive the same outcome with a lower churn number. Now, challenging, of course, is the ARPU development. If you look at the ARPU on mobile and fixed side, both have been declining by 5.9%. And the composition of that decline is quite different. One thing I would like to flesh out before I go into the individual dynamics is that we are not perceiving that the market pricing is deteriorating. In fact, what we are seeing is, while there are promotional activities, the net prices resulting out of those promotional activities have been remarkably stable on mobile as well as on fixed. Nevertheless, the two categories of mobile and fixed do show a significant ARPU decline.

If we start off with mobile, then this is to a certain extent, to the largest extent, driven by mix changes. Those mix changes are driven by the mix that comes in through our different growth engines. The ARPU of Sunrise is different than the ARPU of Yallo, is different than the ARPU of B2B. And as this is changing the total composition of the business, there's an impact that is coming from that mix change. There's a second mix change which is related to products. Like for example, additional incremental SIM services that we are selling are not necessarily carrying the same ARPU than the first SIM. So think about watches, think about family propositions, think about connected tablets. All of those are, of course, also driving volume, but not necessarily carrying the same amount of revenue per month in those products.

Now, mobile, of course, the opportunity is, while we see significant growth, we are able to stabilize and see a stable-ish ARPU, sorry, revenue development on the mobile business. And this is something that we are also expecting to see in 2025 and to continue on a positive trend. The fixed business ARPU has a very different ARPU composition. And here, the main challenge is really sitting in the fact that we have been migrating our historic UPC customer base onto the Sunrise product portfolio, which is on average sitting on lower price points. Now, as you know, we have hinted to that development during the capital markets day back in September. At that point in time, we mentioned that we had 200,000 customers remaining on old UPC tariffs. By the year end, this number had reduced to 60,000.

And while we are speaking today, the number has further come down to 20,000. We were expecting also to reduce the number to around zero by mid of this year. The last 20,000, we are not becoming lazy, but the reality is that the complexity of migrations is increasing as we are now tackling the long tail of our customers, which partially have historically complex setups and therefore need more individual caretaking than the previous bulk of migrations that has happened. Now, with that, let me also touch on our infrastructure and sustainability developments that we have seen throughout the year. As I alluded to, we are very happy with the results that we have been able to achieve throughout the year. And I'm starting off on the mobile side. We, for the ninth time in a row, were able to achieve an outstanding mark.

Additionally, we have been also able to reduce the distance to Swisscom and to increase the distance to Salt. From that perspective, we really have seen a strong performance of our mobile network, and we have been able to win two categories in the test, which are the voice category and the data category, hence the most important categories in the test. Lastly, what I would also like to mention, because the connect test is carried out by a company that is running tests in the same range, 120 countries, and is testing more than 200 operators. Sunrise has been certified as being in the top five of the global networks, in particular also if we're looking at 5G networks. From that perspective, we are feeling very strong about our mobile infrastructure, but we will not rest on this.

We will also continue to drive new innovations, drive quality improvements, and also new services to our customers in the future. Now, the other half of our infrastructure is, of course, also what we are doing on the fixed side, and in particular what we are doing on our own cable network that covers 65% of the population in Switzerland. As you know, we have talked about that in the past. We have done a technology-driven speed upgrade that allows us now to cover almost the entire footprint. 97% of the total footprint that we have is now capable of delivering two and a half gig of downstream speed, which is actually used by more than 200,000 customers while we are speaking.

And not only the ones that are using the two and a half gig speed are benefiting from that speed increase, but also all other customers are benefiting from the fact that we have more capacity in the network. Hence, the congestions or degradations of service have come down to a minimum, and hence the service quality has significantly improved. On the back of this strength, as we are selling our fixed connectivity on a technology-agnostic basis, meaning that customers actually are buying a speed, then the technology comes with second priorities. We continue to see a very strong inflow share of our own networks, which is HFC predominantly, but also fixed wireless access. We have seen an increase in areas where we are not offering HFC and not offering FTTH.

So in total, there are currently, in December 2024, we have seen an inflow of 58% of new joiners. Sorry, of 58% of our total subscribers being on our HFC and our fixed wireless access network. You see the number is remarkably stable despite the fact that, of course, more FTTH is coming to the market and also customers are choosing the FTTH networks. We feel in total very strong about our network infrastructures, but I would also not only like to talk about the performance of our infrastructures, but also our drive towards delivering that in a sustainable way. This leads me to our sustainability and ESG overview. We have made substantial progress in 2024 across our agenda of people, planet, progress.

If I flesh out a few of the topics that are worthwhile mentioning here, then we have achieved in our employee engagement survey a top result, bringing us into the first quartile versus our peers. We have pushed all of our personal car fleet to electric. This was a big achievement during the year. We have achieved a number of ISO certifications that give testament to our abilities in the regard of process quality and sustainability. On the back of that, we have been able to win an EcoVadis Platinum medal, which certifies only the very best sustainable companies in the Swiss environment. Lastly, important to note that the entire management team is incentivized not only to deliver the targets of last year, but also to drive forward our targets in the future.

We are very much committed to further continue to drive ahead. Now, with that, I hand over to Jany to talk about the financial results.

Jany Fruytier (CFO)

Thank you, André. Before we dive into the actual results, let me quickly recap what has happened since we last spoke. André mentioned it already, the listing on SIX. We now have one share class trading on SIX and a second share class that's not traded on SIX. We have introduced our new board of directors with a strong mix of Swiss nationals and a number of international leaders from the telco and media industry. I think since the trading, we have been very pleased with the development of the stock. I think you see on the right top a graph that explains the share movement.

Given that this was a spin-off, where I think if you look at legacy spin-offs, volatility can in certain instances be very big. What we have observed so far is actually the trading happening within a very narrow range of the share price around that eight% dividend yield. I think furthermore, as we see some of the initial exchange of shareholders tapering down, we see a constructive development of the share price. By now, and that was as of last Friday, 75% of the class A ADSs have been converted and approximately 98% of the class B. I think lastly, important to note that we see volumes on the Swiss exchange growing on a relative basis, which again is encouraging to see as that was part of the initial hypothesis around having a local Swiss listing.

Then one side remark to make is that we still intend to delist the class A ADSs from the Nasdaq nine months after spin, which is effectively somewhere around Q3, with exact timing still to be confirmed. So with that, if we go to the next page, I think André mentioned it already, but something that I'm proud of as well is that we were able to manage to deliver all of the guidance metrics that we set out with a broadly stable revenue, a stable to low single digit EBITDA growth, translating into approximately CHF 363 million of free cash flow that gives us now the ability to propose a dividend of CHF 3.33 for class A shares and CHF 0.33 for class B shares, which then in total equates to approximately CHF 240 million.

Lastly, as part of the net deleveraging that we did in the pre-IPO injection from Liberty Global, we ended at a net leverage ratio of around 4.4 times, which is inside of our 4.5, guidance range that we have given. Now, let's zoom into some of the details that contributed to these results. I'll start with focusing on the full year results and then elaborating a bit more onto the Q4 specificities. All in all, revenue broadly stable slightly down, which was driven by the residential decline as you see on the right. The majority of that decline comes from the fixed side of the business and is in relation to the customer repricings and harmonizations that André spoke about earlier.

Good to note as we did that the actual commercial activities are tailing off, which means that also then as we get into 2025, that effect is about to temper. For mobile, you can see for both full year and Q4 a decline as well. Again, as André said, we saw good volume growth, but that volume growth was tempered by the mixed changes of the brands, the mixed changes in products that we're selling. And thirdly, and I think also an important element, especially in Q4, was the fact that we are more and more including roaming and other usages into our bundles. B2B for both the quarter and the full year grew nicely, and we expect it to continue as such.

The revenue growth that you're seeing in other is in relation to the build-to-suit activity that we are doing to build new mobile sites, which we then sell off to the Swiss Towers owner. And as such, we're then recognizing those revenues in our P&L. So with that, the revenue trickled down for both the full year and Q4 into margin, but was partly offset by the fact that we had lower hardware costs. Again, in residential, you can see both Q4 and full year mostly driven by the fixed decline that we have seen, offset by B2B and the build-to-suit.

Lastly, and that drove the full-year EBITDA growth, the CHF 23 million of OpEx saving, which is a nice mix of on the one hand, lower labor costs, which was in relation to the optimized FTE structure that we implemented at the beginning of 2024, lower external costs on the back of the save of an efficiency program that we're continuously running, and thirdly, on the back of lower integration or cost-to-capture costs as we classify them. These things were slightly higher on the back of the growing excess costs that we have as part of the fiber offerings that we have. So then going to CapEx, rather than speaking just about the full year 2024, we thought it was helpful to show a multi-year perspective. I think what you can clearly see is that we are going down on our way to meet the mid-term target of 15%.

Furthermore, what you can see in the red annotated bars is that the baseline CapEx has fluctuated, but is effectively flattish throughout that period, and that the actual reduction, the majority of the reduction of CapEx is coming as a result of the cost-to-capture falling away. I think a couple of important elements that make us confident to go from the 16.9% to the 15% is the fact that on the one hand, we are now tailing off the 5G rollout CapEx that we have done on the one hand. On the second point, the IT transformation that we also spoke about during the Capital Markets Day is now largely behind us, and thirdly, as we are finalizing all of the customer harmonizations and migrations, CPE CapEx is also going down.

I think lastly, important to note as part of our guidance, we are expecting growing revenue, and that growing revenue further helps them to reduce the percentage of CapEx to revenue, even though, as you can see, the absolute CapEx remaining still slightly improving, but then remaining stable through the period. So after having spoken about the EBITDA and the CapEx, let us go back to free cash flow. So on the right side, full year free cash flow of CHF 363 million, which was driven by the operational result, largely CapEx, and then partly offset, if you will, by on the one hand, tax. Then if you look at it from an absolute perspective, we still paid effectively zero Swiss of tax. We had a tax goodie in 2023. We did, however, have a tax settlement in relation to legacy years that I'll speak to about later.

Lastly, what you can see is that the operational OFCO growth was partially offset by a net negative year-over-year in terms of working capital. Important to note though that the absolute net working capital that we benefited from in 2024 was positive, however, so before we then go to the dividend, let me quickly update you first on what we achieved in 2024, and later I'll speak about what happened further to our debt structure in 2025, so a couple of things to note here. First of all, the net deleveraging you can see going down from gross debt before the spin of CHF 6.1 billion approximately to approximately CHF 4.6 billion afterwards. That is a net decrease of CHF 1.5 billion, which as Liberty had communicated was always the intention.

I think how we get from, and furthermore, I think important to note that we actually did a hard delivering of approximately CHF 1.2 billion, which we expect to continue in the coming years. I think last thing to note, and it is important that the cash and cash equivalents of CHF 352 million that you see here includes a CHF 50 million further contribution of Liberty Global. So, i.e., in the total at the end when the spin-off was done, we actually got CHF 1.55 billion cash instead of CHF 1.5 billion, which again is in relation to a tax settlement that I'll explain to you in more detail as we talk about the guidance.

Lastly, and I think that is important to note as well, that as we get into 2025, that 4.4 net leverage ratio will fluctuate a bit over the quarters, and therefore we are only guiding for that 3.5-4.5 at the end of the year. It has to do with some of the cost ramping up in relation to becoming a standalone company and further rebasings that we still have to do as we change accounting standards. So therefore it's important to note that again, 4.4 is guided on a full year basis. Also has to do, by the way, with the cash generation and the seasonality of what that happens throughout the year.

So then the dividend, as we have achieved our financial guidance, we have proposed to the board to pay approximately CHF 240 million of dividend, which then equates to a CHF 3.33 dividend, Swiss franc dividend per Class A share, and as I said, 0.33 for Class B. I think that important to note as we have communicated before, those dividends will be reappropriated from the foreign capital reserves that we have, and as such, our Swiss withholding tax exempt. I think furthermore to note what you see on the right side is the actual planning of when we're going to be paying dividends. So the invitation for the annual general meeting will shortly be going out. The most important dates are on the one hand, 15th of May for the Sunrise shares to be as its dividend date and the 16th for the Sunrise ADSs.

We will then be paying the actual dividend to the Sunrise shares on the 19th, and because of the translation, ADS holders will only receive it on the 27th. Lastly, before we go further, that CHF 240 million of dividend equates to approximately 66% of our adjusted free cash flow, which is fully in line with the below 70% that we had guided for. So then let's go to the outlook for 2025, and before I talk about guidance, let me update you on, I think, a very positive outcome that we were able to achieve in the quarter so far. So we were able to reissue a CHF 1.3 billion sustainability-linked loan.

By doing so, we were able to term out approximately 30% of our debt from 2029-2032, and furthermore, we're able to reduce our weighted average cost of debt from 3% to 2.8%, which I think speaks to the testament of how debt investors look, the outlook of the business, and then secondly, of course, the deleveraging that we have done, and also the positive trajectory that the rating agencies are putting up on us at the moment. I think what lastly to note is that we, as the markets are currently constructive, will continue to observe how these markets are evolving and will access those markets to further term out our debt and optimize pricing whenever we see feasible and fit. So then let me finalize by giving you the guidance for 2025, which is a reconfirmation of the guidance that we gave during the Capital Markets Day.

So first of all, revenue broadly stable. I think important to note that we will still be impacted from the right pricing efforts and the customer harmonizations that we have now nearly finalized as that result annualizes. Secondly, important to note that in this guidance, there is the price increase that we have recently announced. And then thirdly, of course, commercial performance that we have seen so far. That will translate into a stable to low single-digit EBITDA growth where we expect further small cost optimizations to help deliver that result, with then 15%-16% CapEx to revenue, as again, the effects that I spoke about earlier are coming through, which will translate then into a free cash flow of 372-390.

What we are furthermore proposing today is that upon delivery of those financial targets, we will suggest to the board to pay a CHF 3.42 dividend for Class A shares and CHF 0.34 for Class B, which is a 2.7% growth year-over-year. Then let me highlight a couple of items that I think are important for clarity. One is the tax settlement that we have reached with the tax authorities, which impacted the cash injection from Liberty Global. There was a tax settlement in relation to the years of 2019-2024, and the total settlement is expected to be approximately CHF 60 million.

We don't know the exact amount yet as we are going through the refilings of our cash statements, but I think important to note that again, the vast majority of that settlement was funded by Liberty Global, and as such, doesn't impact either the cash generation of the business or our ability to pay dividend. How one should be thinking about the timing of those cash outflows is approximately CHF 40 million in 2025 and CHF 20 million in 2026. Given that those tax elements are extraordinary, we are excluding them from our adjusted free cash flow definition, and more importantly, this cash settlement doesn't in any way contradict the previous statements that we have made around us growing into becoming a full taxpayer by 2028. So yes, there is a cash out, if you will, in relation to tax in 2025 and 2026.

That is just in relation to that legacy settlement. Underlying cash tax of the business is not changing. I think then lastly, what is important to note, and there is further detail on page 36 of this deck, is the further rebasing that one has to do to 2024 to get to the stable to low single-digit growth for 2025. So the 2030 EBITDA number for the rebased 2024 had two elements in there. On the one hand, one of costs in relation to the spin that we are rebasing out, and then secondly, a set of costs that we on the one hand were in relation to ramping up our internal organization, and secondly, the transitional service agreement with Liberty Global.

The best way to think about it is that the 1,030 is excluding those one-off costs, but including half of a quarter of those standalone costs, to which you have to add approximately another CHF 30 million incremental, like we guided for during the Capital Markets Day, to have a clean 2024 basis to then compare 2025 again. I think lastly, important to note is that we expect Q1 2025 to be slightly softer in relation to the guidance, and that is for a number of reasons. On the one hand, the price increases that we have announced will only kick in as of April 1st, and secondly, some of the ramp-up costs in relation to the standalone company are kicking in now as well, whereas then that normalizes out over the rest of the year, so with that, André, back over to you.

André Krause (CEO)

Yes, thank you very much, Jany, and we are approaching the end of our presentation. I would quickly like to summarize what you have heard. I think 2024 really has been an intense, but at the end, very successful year for Sunrise. We are very pleased that we have been able to deliver all of our guidance expectations, and we are also very well set to deliver in 2025, which would then result in a progressive dividend, and I think there is a core element of our equity story at this moment. On the right-hand side of the slide, you see the success that the Swiss ski team was celebrating in Saalbach during the Alpine World Championships just in February this year. Not sure we're going to be as successful as them.

We for sure will take them as an example that we are following, and I think we are very much excited about the opportunities that are in front of us. We have very interesting new launches, technologies that we want to bring to market, products that we want to bring to market. We want to continue to be the challenger that drives the market evolution in Switzerland, and on the back of that, delivering a great shareholder return. With that, thank you very much, and I hand over back to Alex.

Alex Herrmann (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, André and Jany, for guiding us through this presentation. And with that, Operator, over back to you, we can proceed with the Q&A, please.

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one 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 star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Polo Tang from UBS. Please go ahead.

Polo Tang (Managing Director)

Hi, thanks for taking the question. So I've got two questions. The first one is, you mentioned at the start of the call that you're easing off on promotional activity post a difficult Black Friday period. So what reaction have you seen by your competitors to this in Q1? Second question is just on price rises.

What has been the reaction from customers to your price rises? So are you seeing any changes in terms of churn in Q1? Also, when you laid out your CMD guidance in September 2024, did you already budget for price rises in 2025? Thanks.

André Krause (CEO)

Yeah, thanks, Polo, for your questions. Yeah, so what we have seen is that not only us, but also our key competitors have been following, partially also leading that way. And I think everybody probably has seen the same results out of the Q4 trading, and as such, I think everybody is really making a learning step forward, which doesn't mean that we don't have promotions, but we see that the net prices that are resulting with the discounts that are offered on a variety of products actually stepping up.

I think that is a very positive movement, and we see, and of course, we are monitoring the markets very closely because we don't want to lose momentum and we don't want to give it away, but we also would like to further influence the market in the right direction. So I think that's a positive indication. Same is true on the price rise. I think firstly, important to say that we were first with a price rise announcement at the very beginning of January. Salt followed very quickly, even in the first half of January. And as such, I think there is an indication that the market is willing to move, and we are happy to be in the leadership role on this again. And I think, yeah, this probably goes in the right direction.

In terms of impact, the price rise this time was significantly lower than last time, 1.8% compared to the above 4%, 4.8% back in 2023. As such, I would say the reactions have been pretty, yeah, normal as far as we can tell today. However, as always, a price rise goes through multiple phases. We have seen phase one, which is the announcement that we have done, and then customers do have, of course, a certain reaction period. Then the first invoices move out, that is now yet to come. Then we, of course, have reactions that are on the invoices, but compared with what we have seen in the previous price rise and compared what our expectations have been, we are not seeing a deterioration. We are seeing this going rather smoother than expected. To your last question, was it included in guidance?

When we were giving guidance at that point in time, I think it's fair to say that we were looking at a variety of scenarios where we also were looking at price rise scenarios, which were always part of the equation. But we, at this point in time, were not ready to communicate any of those, and we have taken that decision only just ahead of the close of 2024. But I would say it was always part of the guidance scenarios that we have been using underneath.

Polo Tang (Managing Director)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Maurice Patrick from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Maurice Patrick (Managing Director)

Thanks for taking the question on the presentation, guys. From my side, just a couple of questions. The first one, if I look at the ARPUs inside the Consumer Fixed and Mobile side, if I'm not wrong, the ARPU is down 6% in fixed line.

It was down 4.5%, I think, in Q3, down 6% in mobile. I think it was down 7% in Q3. Could you help us understand how much of those ARPU declines is the UPC migration that you talked about at the CMD and your prep for March, and how much maybe is due to any other factors like promotional pricing? And just linked to it, it'd be very helpful. You gave some great clarity at the CMD around the split of the main brand and Flanker brand, and you've shown your churn is still falling. Very curious to understand about your inflows, the extent to which your customer inflows were the main brand and the Flanker brands. Thank you.

André Krause (CEO)

All right, thanks, Maurice, for the question. So I'm talking about the ARPU dynamics. So on fixed, the vast majority of the trend is really driven by the migration.

There is a chunk that is driven by the fact that new customers joining versus old customers leaving. There is a delta, which is, of course, driven also by price levels within the market, but the larger chunk is really coming from the migrations, which should then tail off as we are going forward. On the mobile side, as I said, it's rather the mixes between the different brands and also the different products that we are offering, and I guess that is triggering your second question in regards to, well, what is the mix that we have between the main brand, the Flanker brand, and the B2B? I mean, we have, as you know, chosen not to provide granular data on a quarterly basis, and we're going to stick to that.

So I'm probably going to just simply reiterate, because it was also true for that quarter, that the Yallo inflow is below 50% of the total inflow, and the rest of the inflow is then split between B2B and the consumer main brand, with the consumer main brand usually having a larger chunk of that proportion compared to B2B.

Maurice Patrick (Managing Director)

Thank you. So I guess just thank you for that. I mean, given your point around it being mostly UPC, should we expect therefore, once we get past the annualization of the UPC rebranding, the ARPU and both fixed and mobile should be broadly flattish by the second half of 2025?

André Krause (CEO)

Yeah, so we would expect that there should be a moderating impact. That is what we would intend to see.

Maurice Patrick (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Max Findlay from Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead.

Max Findlay (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi guys, thanks for taking my question. Jany, you talked about your debt refinancing and that you were open to further refinancing. Given you'll get a cash benefit this year on top of any further refinancing benefit, just wondering why free cash flow guidance wasn't increased. Thank you.

Jany Fruytier (CFO)

Sure. Thank you for the question, Max. Look, I think what you see of the refinancing taking place at the beginning of this year, on the one hand, of course, we have the benefits, but there is, of course, also issuance cost and bank fees related to that. So therefore, we are not expecting the full lowering of the interest cost to come through this year, but you can expect that for next year. I think lastly, of course, there's always many puts and takes into the total free cash flow guidance.

So as soon as we start to pick up when something like this happens, I would potentially then also have to go down if something other small happens. So therefore, I think we are comfortable, and I think it's the right direction of travel to give this free cash flow guidance. And of course, in case a number of these other positive elements will occur, we might then indeed potentially decide to further increase our free cash flow.

Max Findlay (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Robert Grindle from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Robert Grindle (Managing Director)

Yeah, hi there. Congratulations on the first results. 75% of the ADS is converted and growing Swiss volumes. That's very encouraging. Do you happen to know what percentage of the investor base is Swiss this time? And secondly, nice to get visibility on the year plus one dividend. That was a surprise.

Will that also be a bullet, Divi, or is that to be decided? Thank you.

André Krause (CEO)

All right. Yeah, so thank you very much, Robert, for your question. So firstly, on the investor base, I mean, we are heading towards our first AGM in May. So we haven't seen all of the shareholders registering yet, so very difficult to say how the base has moved. What we can clearly see is that the flowback volume from U.S. investors that didn't want to hold the stock as a standalone business has been well captured by the European side of the market and also the Swiss side of the market. So we only have a few indications, but not a full picture at this moment. Hopefully, after the AGM, we have a bit more visibility on that. And then to your, what was the second question?

Robert Grindle (Managing Director)

Dividend next year.

André Krause (CEO)

The bullet payment next year, yes. Yeah, so the Swiss market is pretty much, I would say, usually paying dividends only in one go. As we said, we are reviewing what we're going to do going forward. So as we haven't paid out a dividend yet, we will only do so in May. We will capture feedback thereafter until we have a better insight and understand potential necessity for change better. I would assume that our incoming hypothesis is we do one bullet payment.

Robert Grindle (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from Joshua Mills from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Joshua Mills (Executive Director)

Hi guys. A couple of questions from my side.

Firstly, if I just go back to, I think it's slide number seven, and the guidance you're giving about the disruption or the value, the fact that Black Friday wasn't value created, should we expect that to spill over into Q1 2025, either in terms of net adds, churn, or ARPU? That would be great to get some color on. And then secondly, when you talk about customer inflow on the HFC and FWA network being around 50%, I understand that's broadly in line with your current technology split, but in the last quarter, you referenced 55%. So Q on Q, it looks like there has been a shift in customers moving onto the fiber side. So the question is, is that something you're seeing? Are more and more people moving to fiber rather than cable?

Is it right to compare the 50% or around 50% in the presentation this time around to 55% in the Q3 presentation? Thank you.

André Krause (CEO)

All right, yeah, thank you very much, Joshua, for your questions. So firstly, just a reminder, we are not giving quarterly guidance. However, usually, there is some sort of spillover of Q4 effects in terms of customer activations and deactivations taking place in the first quarter. If you look at normal seasonality from future, sorry, from recent periods, then you probably get an idea of what we're talking. But yes, there is some sort of spillover to be expected. And then on the fiber side, not sure I'm fully following which numbers you are comparing, but what I can tell you is from an inflow perspective, we have seen a continued strong inflow of HFC.

We have seen a slight increase of inflow of fixed wireless access. We have seen a rather stable inflow share of FTTH, but we haven't seen that FTTH was gaining significantly throughout the quarters. There always is some sort of volatility between the quarters, but if you normalize that out, then it's relatively stable,

Jany Fruytier (CFO)

And I think, André, if I may add one thing, the fact that the absolute percentage on the base hasn't moved. Actually, we reclassified the FWA, but actually excluding that 58% is still stable to what we communicated in the Capital Markets Day, which actually means that on a quarterly basis, the movement hasn't really changed. So that's why I think we are communicating it the way we do, to not have these questions where we have to communicate and comment on a 1% up or down in terms of inflow on a quarterly basis.

Joshua Mills (Executive Director)

Got it. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. 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.

Alex Herrmann (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, and thank you all very much for dialing in. I think with that, we conclude the call for today. If there are any further questions, as usual, please reach out to the Investor Relations team, and with that, thank you and have a good rest of the day. Thanks, everybody. We'll speak soon. Goodbye.

Operator (participant)

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