Earnings call transcript: United Internet Q4 2024 misses revenue forecast

United Internet AG’s latest earnings call revealed the company’s financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2024. The company reported a revenue of €1.66 billion, falling short of the forecasted €1.71 billion. Despite this miss, the stock price increased by 4.02% to €20.18, reflecting investor optimism on the company’s strategic initiatives and future outlook. According to InvestingPro analysis, United Internet currently appears undervalued, with a "GOOD" overall financial health score of 2.58 out of 5.

Key Takeaways

• United Internet’s revenue missed the forecast by €50 million.
• Stock price rose by 4.02%, indicating positive investor sentiment.
• Company projects a 6% EBITDA growth for 2025.
• Dividend proposal includes a €0.40 regular dividend and a €1.50 catch-up dividend.

Company Performance

United Internet AG reported a marginal revenue growth of 1.9% in 2024. The company continues to expand its digital solutions and network infrastructure, despite facing price pressures in the telecommunications market. The expansion includes 66,000 kilometers of fiber networks and a robust 5G mobile network presence.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: €1.66 billion (Q4 2024)
• Operating EPS: €0.98
• Net EPS: -€0.28
• EBITDA: €1.350 billion for 2025 (projected)

Earnings vs. Forecast

The actual revenue of €1.66 billion was below the forecasted €1.71 billion, marking a shortfall of approximately 2.9%. This miss contrasts with the company’s historical trend of meeting or exceeding revenue expectations.

Market Reaction

Despite the revenue miss, United Internet’s stock price increased by 4.02%, closing at €20.18. This movement suggests that investors are optimistic about the company’s future prospects and strategic direction, especially in digital solutions and network expansion. The stock has shown strong momentum, with a price momentum score of 3.26 out of 5 according to InvestingPro metrics.

Outlook & Guidance

United Internet has set an ambitious target with a projected 6% growth in EBITDA for 2025. The company plans to invest approximately €800 million in capital expenditures for continued network expansion. Additionally, there is potential for higher dividends following these investments.

Executive Commentary

"We are happy to have Ionos on board," stated Don Mamout, Corporate Development, highlighting the strategic importance of their digital solutions arm. Mamout also noted, "We could actually show more growth at the detriment of the financial result," indicating a focus on sustainable growth over short-term gains.

Risks and Challenges

• Price pressure in the telecommunications market could impact profitability.
• Ongoing legal mediation with Telekolumbus may pose financial risks.
• The competitive landscape with aggressive pricing strategies from competitors like Telefonica.
• Execution risks related to network expansion and IT system modernization.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about potential plans to sell Ionos shares, to which the executives confirmed there are no such plans. The company also expressed comfort with maintaining a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 2-3x and hinted at future share buybacks.

Full transcript - United Internet AG NA (UTDI) Q4 2024:

Don Mamout, Corporate Development, United Internet: Right.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, dear guests. Welcome to the Analyst and Investor Conference of United Internet. I’m very happy to be able to welcome you here in person. And I obviously also welcome those guests who are here by webcast. Now let’s quickly look at today’s agenda.

I mean, firstly, Mr. Domenmut is going to be taking the floor and presenting the company development in 2024 and also take a look at what we’re expecting for 2025. And then Karsten Teurer is going to share the financial year 2024 results with you. And then obviously, at the end, there will be ample time for a proper Q and A session. Mr.

Don Mamout, the floor is yours. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I think many of you I have already seen and personally welcomed. Many of you were already in the meeting for Ernst and Ernst. I hope you won’t be bored.

I am in charge of corporate development and will also give you the outlook for 2025. My colleague, Karsten Teurer, is going to go into the nitty gritty details of the financials in 2024. You know, we’re reporting in four segments: Applications, Internet access for consumers, private consumers and business customers. We have 11,000 employees and we have a good infrastructure transportation network, 66,000 kilometers of fiber networks, five gs mobile networks and over 100,000 servers who are running into computing centers in the whole of Europe and The U. S.

We are offering our products via different brands and investments predominantly by the brand Eins und Eins, our most important brand. But in addition to that, we have brands such as Europhone or Smart Mobile or WinZim. In the customer business, customer business, we have Einsundeinsdalsartell. For consumers, GMX, web. Denmail dot com and United Internet Media.

Business customers, We have Ionos predominantly and their subsidiaries where all of we also have grown organically by buying companies, particularly in Spain, in Britain, Poland and other countries. And then we’ve got certain minority shareholdings as well. Let us just start with Consumer Access. 3,950,000 broadband connections, 12,440,000 mobile contracts and the first open run-in Europe fully virtualized. And we’re doing the migration of existing customers from wholesale contracts since January 2024.

We are actually moving 50,000 migrating 50,000 customers per day and hope to be done with this by the end of the year. We have Internet with 190,000, a very slight decline in the broadband applications. Our sales dropped by 0.8%, but other revenue certainly comes from making smartphones available to our customers. We have had a marked slowdown minus 10.8% to SEK 761,200,000.0, but this is a low margin business and doesn’t really affect the result. We have minus 9.6% EBITDA at CHF 590,800,000.0, including minus CHF 265,300,000.0 costs for the rollout of the Eins and Eins mobile network.

Prior year, it was minus CHF 132,400,000.0, where we had CHF 133,000,000, I mean, I just said CHF 132,400,000.0 of additional cost. Well, how do I explain those SEK 70,000,000 difference? They come from our operational business that is the area of Axis where we had a plus of 8.9% EBITDA increase to GBP 856,100,000.0, an EBITDA margin of 21.1%. That too, I think, very satisfying for a wholesale business because here we are asset lights, basically. In the Eins and Eins mobile network, we’re building our own mobile network.

And I have told you, markedly higher costs for infrastructure here than the year before. Business access, Eins and Eins Versatile, 66,376 kilometers of fiber optic networks available in over three fifty German cities, including the 25 largest ones. And when we say business locations have been linked by plug and play solutions for businesses. So this runs via Eins and Eins and Eins and Eins Wausartell. At an increase to 574,900,000.

This is a bit miserly, that plus 1.9%, you’re going to say. And I also would have hoped for more. But we have to say we are do we are, in fact, losing sales in the voice area. I mean, in the past, we could basically bill for any moment used, and that is no longer feasible today. All people do want a flat rate for what they do, particularly business customers.

So voice usage is actually reduced and reducing. At the same time, monthly subscriptions for the fiber optics links are increasing so that below the line, we can still show a plus of 1.9% of added revenue. The EBITDA DA has risen by 1.4% to CHF 165,100,000.0 and there are minus CHF 21,600,000.0 start up costs for the new business areas five gs and expansion of the commercial areas. And obviously, this also includes data centers. And we also have start up costs for business areas where we’re basically linking business areas at the same at the start, we have one or two customers, and then we have two, and then we have 10.

So this is an ongoing process. Let’s talk about applications. Let’s start with consumer applications. You possibly know GMX, web. De and mail.com.

You know all of those. This is a broad product portfolio for private customers. We have email. We have tasks, appointments, calendar, online office, and cloud storage. We also have a differentiation through data protection and security.

So we basically the consumer application accounts, we’ve actually seen a minus of 760,000.00. We have invested quite a lot to ban spam. So the attractiveness of the system has increased. So we haven’t lost accounts that were key accounts for us. So 3,040,000 pay accounts, that’s 240,000 more than the previous year.

So we basically have plus 7.7 revenue increased to 298,300,000.0 plus CHF 6,600,000.0 EBITDA to CHF 113,200,000.0 and thirty seven point nine percent EBITDA margin. Previous year, it was at 38.3% and all of this was just very little CapEx because for running the data centers requires a lot less CapEx than building a mobile network. So I think we can say that the EBIT is also at about 100,000,000, but you’ve got it in your handout. These are business applications via Ionos as Europe’s leading digitization partner for freelancer, small, medium sized enterprise and reliable cloud enablers active in 15 European countries as well as in The U. S, Canada and Mexico.

We basically have that plus 220,000 new customers, particularly abroad, plus 4,960,000 plus 160,000 abroad, 4,960,000 and plus 60,000 domestic, EUR 4,630,000.00, plus 9.6% increase in the revenue to EUR 1,560,000,000.00. Customer growth and we have moderate revenue growth in the Ad Tech segment as a result of temporary phase in effects in connection with the new product launch, plus 2.4%. The Ad Tech segment is a small segment. So if we exclude that and hone in on the core segment, then we see a revenue growth of plus 11.6% in the core business, digital solutions and cloud. I think this is quite healthy.

EBITDA did even better, plus 15.1% last year to CHF 430,200,000.0. I’ll show you the non adjusted results because Ionos itself shows adjusted results and they also do adjusted. So the billing carve out, you know, they used to have a joint system, but after the IPO, they now have their own one. They need to and they have it. And therefore, you can see the numbers without the adjustment EUR 430,200,000.0.

And that is despite the fact that we’re in a Hubtech segment. The EBITDA side, we did slightly worse. We had minus 16.5% less EBITDA in the AdTech segment. But then in the core business, if we were to exclude that, we’d have 20% EBITDA growth in our core business. So we’ve now summed up the numbers, plus 590,000 customer contacts in the group, that’s plus 1.9% of revenue.

EBIT is in decline minus 15.3%, EBITDA plus 0.1. But if you look at the EPS, if you look at the operational EPS, then you basically have to process the EBIT first, which was negative. And that is why the operating EPS was only EUR 0.98. That positive was plus EUR 0.03 as a financial result, minus 0.99 impairment on Cublai and Telecolumbos investment. You know, we are in mediation proceedings with them.

And I think the last capital increase has strongly diluted that effect. And we have one off tax effects through a regrouping that we need to show is minus 0.3. So we show a negative EPS of minus $0.28 The dividend proposal to the AGM twenty twenty five, we suggest to pay $0.4 per share regular dividend plus $1.5 per share, one off catch up dividend to compensate for the reduced dividend payments for the financial years 2018 to 2023. You can see the red columns. Those are the dividends we paid in Euro since 2016, zero point ’8 zero dollars ’17, zero point ’8 ’5 dollars You see 2018, the legal minimum of $0.05 and then a regular $0.5 for the years nineteen to twenty three.

So the National Grid Agency has decided that the auction of new frequencies is going to be postponed by a few years. And that actually makes us confident that Eins and Eins will be able to do and shoulder the burden of this auctioning process on its own without any external financial assistance. And we’ve said we’ll actually pay an extraordinary dividend of €1.1.5 euros to compensate for these weak financial years beforehand. So that will take us to roughly 35% of adjusted consolidated net income after the minority interests. And that is what we want to pay out with these 35%.

I think we’d then be happy and healthy. I mean, it obviously still needs the consent of the AGM, but I would assume that it will come like that. So in 2025, this new year, we’ve seen revenues of approximately SEK 6,400,000,000.0. EBITDA is roughly at SEK 1,350,000,000.00. In 2024, it was at SEK 1,295,000,000.000.

So it’s basically a minus EUR 20,000,000 deductible due to the change of national roaming structures, the provider at Eins and Eins, but no impact of the EBIT. So it costs us EBITDA but in the EBIT, it stays the same. The CapEx is approximately SEK 800,000,000 and it was SEK 774,600,000.0 in SEK 24,000,000. If you add that up, so there’s SEK 20,000,000 on this SEK 1,350,000,000.00, then we talk about a 6% growth for EBITDA that we’re planning to reach this year. Cash CapEx, I already said SEK 800,000,000, slightly more than last year, particularly driven by the expansion of the Eins und Eins mobile network and Eins und Eins VersaTel with the fiber optics networks and basically linking up more and more business centers and basically affording to run the base business.

So, so much from me. And I turn the floor to my colleague, Christian Torra, who is going to go into the nitty gritty details of the financials with you.

Christian Torra, CFO, United Internet: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. And I’d like to give you a summary and to give you an overview. Let’s have a look at the results and the trends. First of all, the customer contracts, you’ve already seen them with a growth of SEK 590,000.00 coming from consumer access, Eins und Eins, 130,000 customers, new customers, consumer application portal, 3,000,000, two hundred and 40 thousand paying customers on top and business applications, 220,000 plus.

So 29,020,000 paying contracts. Free accounts and financed a slight decrease and a shift from free to paid accounts due to the security issues with the free accounts. Revenue, 1.9% plus. Here we can say that for Eins und Eins, EUR 32,000,000 minus in revenue, but in service revenues a plus of about EUR 60,000,000 and low margin decreasing from EUR 93,000,000. So from the Eins and Eins segment, a slight decrease compensated by Consumer Applications with EUR 20,000,000 in growth and Business Applications with EUR 136,000,000 in revenue.

The EBITDA plus 0.1, same as the previous year, even though we had higher expenses for the five gs network expansion with EUR 132,900,000.0 in expenses. And we also see the improvement of the Access segment for Eins and Eins, seventy million more in EBITDA, which can somehow compensate for the expansion expenses. And then we have 45,000,000 more in Business Applications EBITDA compared to the previous year. Let’s go to the EBIT. Here you can see our expansion of the network, 117,200,000.0 higher depreciations compared with the previous year, minus 15.3% EBIT and more assets and the depreciations effects that come with it, so minus SEK 117,200,000.0.

Cash flow. Let’s have a look. We can see an increase here despite lower consolidated net income. We can see here the effects of the SEK117.2 million of depreciation. And we also have the Cuplay depreciation of Tilo Columbay.

And the third factor here is taxes. Versatile was included tax wise to United Internet to be able to make use of the losses. And so we have a slight tax impact here and had to take latent taxes out of the balance sheet with 80,000,000 of an impact. And then the net cash inflows from operating activities here, we can see a slight increase despite the lower consolidated net income. Here, we have the contract assets that have seen a slight decrease with a lower hardware sales volume in 2024.

Let’s go to the cash inflow from investing activities, a slight decrease of CapEx that led to a decrease in investments. The net cash flow from financing activities, here we see an increase due to higher interest expenses about the same as what you can see here. Now here you can see the cash flow bridge from the EBITDA to free cash flow, twelve ninety four of EBITDA 2024 net CapEx in minus SEK $7.70 roundabout and then the contingent payment to Deutsche Telekom over the past four years. This is the last year. In 2025, we will not have the same amount.

Then taxes, then the change in working capital that leads to the free cash flow of SEK 184,500,000.0 Deducting leasing, we get to free cash flow after leasing of EUR 47,400,000.0. Let’s have a look at the balance sheet. Here, you can see the trends that I have already mentioned. We have tangible assets increasing about EUR 600,000,000 due to investments primarily into the five gs network coming from Eins and Eins and Versatile. The goodwill, mainly unchanged in financial assets.

You see a decline in the Koopla share with 170,500,000.0. Accounts receivable, mainly unchanged. Contract assets, I have already mentioned. Here you can see the effect of the decline of the volume, the hardware Einsatz Einsatz volume that has an impact, a negative impact in the contract assets. Inventories and deferred expenses, here we see the leases, rental and pre service providers, payments, telecom contingent contract, which leads to this increase in assets.

Income tax claims and other assets, cash and cash equivalents, we see a slight increase in the claims due to upfront payments because we included Versatile and now we can make use of the positive effects. And that leads to the increase in the income tax claims, then cash and cash equivalents at reporting date, slight increase as well. And as Mr. Davies said, we are in an investment phase and so the phasing effects play a role. And this is what you can see here for cash and cash equivalents, this could be optimized.

Some so we are talking about three percentage points to 46.5. Liabilities to banks, we see an increase here due to the financing over the past few years. And you can see the different factors here. Telecom contingent payment, 262,900,000.0 and CapEx that was linked to that. Trade accounts payable, Eynes and Eynes business, mainly an increase of about SEK 100,000,000.

For contract liabilities. It’s about the same as the previous year. And accrued taxes and deferred liabilities, the passive latent taxes, that is has a slight increase. That is one factor. And then we have the positive effect that the tax we have to pay goes down due to the positive effect mentioned before.

The accrued liabilities and other liabilities at reporting date. Now and the total here, you can see the effect of the investment phase and the assets, the tangible assets that have gone up. And this is what you can see here in the total. And with that, we end this presentation, and we are happy to hear your questions. Thank you very much.

Now we’ll start our Q and A session. Please wait for the microphone. We’ll start with Purodogan, UBS.

Analyst, UBS: From UBS, I’ve got two questions. The first question is really just about use of cash because you’ve announced a special dividend, but would you consider special dividends or buybacks in the near to medium term? Can you maybe talk about what your priorities for use of cash are going forward? And then in terms of leverage, you’re running right about two times leverage at the moment, but in your view, what is a comfortable leverage range? Is there a floor?

Is there a ceiling? Second question is really just about the perimeter or shape of the group, specifically in terms of Ionos. You’ve previously talked about spinning it off. So what are the latest thoughts on this topic? And are there any tax implications?

Thanks.

Christian Torra, CFO, United Internet: No. I first didn’t understand what you meant by Aiono’s split, but it was just explained to me. No, this is not something we have planned. We are happy to have Ionos on board. And as you could just see, we are quite happy with the results.

And in regards to cash, now we have this catch up dividend that we have paid due to the lower dividend over the past few years. And so the National Grid Agency has postponed the auction, and we will have a larger frequency volume. Ions and Ions will by then have a larger network. And so we suggest to our shareholders that we should now pay the adequate dividend for 2018 to 2023 by 35% to increase it by 35%. We’re not planning on changing the overall dividend policy, and there is no reason to do that now that we have that one time dividend to catch up.

And so we don’t want to change our overall dividend policy with special dividends or the like. And we don’t plan on a buyback either. You never know what’s going to happen, of course. So who knows what’s coming next and what we will decide then. But for now, this is not something that we are planning to do.

You also asked about leverage and our bank net about two times our EBITDA. And we feel comfortable with that and we have low financing costs. If you look at our margins, what we pay between 81.4%. For Eurebor, I think it’s 3.5%. So see, I know what I’m talking about.

So 3.5% interest rate. So compared to that, we have a very cost efficient financing. And especially in this investment phase, interest rates are very important. And so our debt needs to stay in adequate limits.

Don Mamout, Corporate Development, United Internet: Yeah. There is still the obligation of making networks available, and they will be linking them. And that is going to come to an end in the next few years. That is why in this area, it’s going to go down. The CapEx is going to go down.

On the trading parks, it’s possibly going to stay the same or similar, but we are not going to be accelerating this development because we don’t just have to build it and put the infrastructure into place, but we also have to market it and sell it so that we always make sure that whatever we build in terms of infrastructure then gets put to use as well and that we’re slightly behind our plans rather than running ahead. And that means we’re not going to push this building rate into the umpteen level, but to just continue doing what we’re doing and then market it well and sell it. So one net and the others, we are going to have those structures in future. Base business is going to be slightly declining because we have invested a lot into modernization. And then we basically have a little bit less of that.

So possibly that was my input on Versatile. Then you had asked, are there plans of doing something with our own shares? Well, we’re actually using our own shares for staff participation programs, for example. We’ve got a share program where people can actually settle payments with cash or with shares, but we actually don’t need as many of our own shares as we have here. So we’re only holding about 10% of our shares ourselves.

So, I mean, those shareholders don’t get a dividend. They don’t vote, so they don’t damage anybody or disadvantage anybody, but they basically help us that if we wanted to do our own incentive program for our own staff, we didn’t have to create those. But we couldn’t we could take them in. At the top, we had $252,000,000 shares and now we’re at 192,000,000. And of those, 173,000,000 are free floating and the remainder is held by the company.

So we’ve already gone down from $2.52 to 173,000,000 through buying some back. After the IPO, we’re at 176,000,000, but there are no special plans as to what we want to do with these shares we’re holding ourselves possibly. And a purpose is going to arise, but there is also not a disadvantage for us having them. On the deductible, we have the problem or I shouldn’t say problem, but that’s the situation that many holdings have, that you have different business models and the shareholders are actually reacting to that by putting a deductible on that. We basically don’t have any plans to reuse that deductible.

We could only do that by selling off parts of this, and that is not something we’re planning to do. But I also don’t feel bad at all because the shareholder actually came in with a deductible at the time. I mean, sometimes it’s higher, sometimes it’s lower, but that’s something decided by the capital markets. But as a general principle, I mean, we’ve always been a holding, so we have never changed our business model. We always had these different concurrent business models, and that is basically the essence of this company.

Volker Claussen, please. Volker Glasser MPPM. In the field of consumer applications, you’ve increased your EBITDA slightly to 113,000,000. So what are your further plans there and also your financial expectations also when it comes to the general perspective. Now on the topic of Ionos from investor to investor, you have given an outlook today with an EBITDA of $5.10 that looked quite good indeed.

Cloud and solutions with 8% growth. Is that something that makes you happy? Is that enough? And then last year in August, you had very clearly said you are not going to sell a single share to Ionis. Are you continuing to say that because the perspectives are what they are with Ionos?

I’d like to have your gut feel. Well, let me start at the end again. There are no plans to sell any Ionos shares. As I said, the company is developing well. It doesn’t give us any headaches really.

So I think the financing is working well. Financial efforts are financed easily. So $510,000,000 EBITDA after $450,000,000 adjusted is healthy. I think that’s a good value. I think it’s something we like, obviously.

You said 8% growth with digital solutions and cloud. That is more than our competition, they can say for themselves. But is it from shareholder to shareholder? I I could imagine more. I mean, I can always imagine more.

I would love ten and twelve. Obviously, that goes without saying. But, you also have to keep an eye on how much money you want to invest into winning over new companies. And it’s difficult to do both things to strongly increase profitability and to outgrow the market, to buy additional market share that normally goes at the expense of your profitability. And at the end of the day, I mean, the management puts together a business plan.

And, I have to say, I their priorities are right. And, of course, we could actually show more growth at the detriment of the financial result. But, I mean, these are our priorities, and I think they’re they’re all right. And I think the other, supervisory board has agreed with that as well. That’s why we adopted this proposal.

You then just said the other portal went to 6.6% EBITDA. That’s a better result than before. Well, what’s the perspective? How do we see this? Yes, we will see more growth in the years to come at this portal.

But I don’t know whether we are fully capitalizing on all of our potential here, whether we are getting all of our horsepower on the road. I think that is something we we we’d like to see more here. Yeah. I can certainly say that. But we’ll obviously have to see how what the next few years will bring.

I mean, there are some points that speak in favor of room for maneuver in this area, but there are always points that you have to bear in mind, changes within the market or other things that affect you negatively. But as I said, in the next few years, I’m I’m sure we’re going to see, growth rates, but we’re not going to be flying to the moon, unfortunately, just to curb excessive expectations. Right. I think certainly in the cloud area, I think there is a lot of potential upside that I can see. There’s also sort of data security, mobile telephony security, data security on mobile phones, where we have to say we have a huge potential where lots of customers are not saving their mobile phone data in any cloud so far.

And therefore, we see great opportunities in that area. It’s not there. And using our data pool, obviously, which is also a data treasure, obviously, but there is continued that there will be growth, but I do not see a skyrocketing of it for the next few years. Another question, I think, here in the first row. I’m Klaus Dotter.

I’m coming from Solventis. Let me be a bit of a nag. I mean, the dividend you’re paying out for these years where you have paying under proportionally badly. You’ve just explained why you’re doing it and how you’re doing it is now being paid to the shareholders. And there’s obviously one anchor shareholder who gets a lot of the money.

But, I mean, what are you planning to do with this? I mean, you said you were going to be a little nerve wracking. And, well, I could say that is none of your business. It’s mine. But let me possibly begin at the start.

You correctly said I’m a major shareholder of United Internet. And therefore, it is true if you say that I dominate the AGM. But if you look at how I’ve looked at the proposals of the shareholders and also of the supervisory board and the shareholders representatives. I could have voted for other things, but I haven’t done that. And I’ve basically forced the other shareholders to accept that lower dividend because I want you to be prudent.

And we could possibly say that prudence is no longer required. And that is why I think it goes without saying to say, okay, this is now safe and we can now pay out the money. I mean, that was a demand we heard from these small scale investors every year because why do you keep that dividend? Why are you not paying? And therefore, I think, this is appropriate and right to now compensate for it and pay.

And you want to know what I do with my dividend? Well, I’m not I’m not going on holiday with it. You will not believe it. I have enough cash. I could actually go on holiday for the rest of my life.

So I don’t think I’ll I’ll take it and go on holiday. No. Certainly not. We have somebody in the second row.

Analyst, Citigroup: CA again from Citigroup. I have two questions, please. And the first one is really the market consolidation has been a key topic, especially with the change of the EC. Maybe a broader question is that how you think about in market consolidation and specifically for United Internet? Do you see there could be a scope for you to have further strategic cooperations with your competitors either through consolidation or through network JV?

That’s my first question. And the second question is more about numbers. I was wondering if you can help us to understand some moving parts of your free cash flow for 2025, maybe also give an indication about how should we think about free cash flow profile for the years to come? Thank you.

Don Mamout, Corporate Development, United Internet: Right. On market consolidation, I don’t think I have any thoughts. I mean, I have to be a bit crude. I can’t tell you anything else on market consolidation. It’s not something we talk about.

And regarding the free cash flow 2025, we are going to be moving to a very similar level as in 2024. And the subsequent years, we will hopefully generate a bit more cash flow. I see a positive trend. When we will see an increase, I cannot tell you because, you know, we have our investments coming and we don’t know when and what they are, but the trend is definitely going to be a positive one. The gentleman from HSBC, please.

Analyst, HSBC: I’ve got three questions, please. The first one, in your presentation, I think you made some comments about Ionos carving out some systems from within from United Internet to be a bit more independent. I was wondering, is that process if I’ve understood that correctly, is that process fully finished now or is there still more they could do? Or maybe there are advantages you want to talk about for them having still some links to the group? The second question builds on a couple of others on capital allocation.

And I suppose the old chestnut of the value that you see in the Einstein’s listing, I appreciate the comments that you’ve made around the dividend and or the special dividend. Did you consider any alternatives such as the Einstein’s minorities? Is that just a separate conversation from your perspective? Is there have your thoughts at all changed there? And then a question for Mr.

Thura. Could you talk a little bit about your plans and focus for the next twelve months? Have you I wondered if you wanted to comment on anything you’ve seen initially in your new role or anything that you want to work on in particular? Thank you.

Don Mamout, Corporate Development, United Internet: I’ll start with the one, Eins and Eins minorities. In the past few years, we have actually, sure bought the odd share package for Ernst and Ernst when they were offered to us. When the price is good or was good in the past, when we felt that the price is appropriate, we’d also buy packages. But there is not so much free float in Eins and Eins. I mean, there are not that many shareholders who hold major packages.

Independence of Jonas, I on the independence of Ionos, Ionos, they used to use commercial systems of the corporation. They continue to do that with SAP applications, etcetera, etcetera. It does make sense to administer that from one spot. But there are systems where they have special needs, and that was, for example, in the field of billing. And that is why Ionos decided to acquire a new billing system.

And it’s actually undergoing a test phase in Spain as the first market for rollout. And we will basically offer test phase if it goes well. We’ll roll it out for the remainder of Spain. And then subsequently, there’s also going to be a rollout for other nations to follow. I think in two years’ time, that should be completed and without actually saying things that the management haven’t officially said yet.

But that is a major part also of the adjustment of the EBITDA within Ionos because this is basically a legacy burden, that they’re still dragging along with themselves and that they’d ideally like to shed ASAP. Well, regarding my plan, there are parts that I can choose three d, parts that I’ve just taken over. So an S4 SAP migration where the project is just starting. I think that is something that is going to keep me pleasantly occupied for the next two years to come. Now on the one hand, we obviously have a high level view there.

So we’re talking about synergetic effects across the group and also intra group cooperation. And there is the topic of independence on the one hand and optimized cost structures on the other. And those, I think, are going to be the main topics that are going to be my focus for the year to come.

Christian Torra, CFO, United Internet: Another question, Mark Heinberg, fourth row. Yes. Thank you very much. In regards to Ernst and Ernst, you have already said something. Now can you add anything on Telekolumbus and the procedure?

What’s the current state? Well, as far as I know, the mediation procedure is undergoing and I think they have now found mediators the arbitration procedure and its BS is well, the DES procedure is undergoing. The arbitrators have been appointed and they are in the beginning of the procedure, and it’ll take some time. As another question in the second row, Hans Dieter Klein, A long term question. In the next two years, you will then have built up your network, licenses, frequencies, you said maybe 2028.

And then you have concluded your investments. Could you then think of a new dividend policy afterwards? So you’re still growing. You have state of the art technology. You have high free cash flows.

Would you then consider changing your dividend policy and going over to a much higher dividend? Well, yes, that would be fantastic. That’s our goal. I mean, we will not conclude the network expansion within two years. This is going to take some more years and still cost money.

But it’s correct after the next frequency auction. And if that doesn’t cost us too much cash and if we don’t have to pay too much for financing, if we can continue to have low cost financing and fewer expenses and, of course, other disclaimers what could happen, then yes, it would be appropriate to pay out a higher dividend. And we’ve seen that in other companies that don’t have strong growth because in total, we don’t have a strong growth. And we can then, of course, pay an adequate appropriate in telecommunications as irons and irons. Why shouldn’t they pay a higher dividend and United as well linked to that?

Yes, that would be the perspective. That’s the desire here. Another question, Volker Glasser. Volker Glasser. Mr.

Douma Moud, I would also like to ask this. With the federal government planning on more digitalization, IT and so on, do you see any opportunities there? Any possibilities for Aionos, for example, how Aionos could benefit from this federal program. Aionos is also building a cloud for the federal administration. What’s the status quo and what’s your outlook?

Yes, I could see that. And that’s a topic we are looking into for Ionos. As far as we know, the topic of cloud, digital sphere, that plays a role in the coalition agreement. We will have to see what the outcome will be. But I think that here in Germany, we are at a top location to do more in this area.

And And if we get support for better growth or even better public orders, as it has been the case in other countries as well, that would be great. And that could also lead to growth impulses or should actually lead to impulses. And so for Arianos, yes, it should be a very positive development to see that politicians are now seeing that we need to catch up in this field. And so if there are opportunities, we’ll make sure together with the management to seize those opportunities. And the status quo of the project for the federal administration.

As far as I know, we are going approximately according to plan. That’s what I’ve heard. There are different projects. It’s the National Grid Agency. It’s the job agency.

It’s 200 administrations that we are modernizing. And my last question. Pincus has already sold a large part of the shares. So I think you have a colleague in the supervisory committee. Well, I’ve always I’m always telling them to get it done to sell the remaining 3% or what to then have more free flow that would be good for the share.

And then we don’t have questions like that referring to the overhang. So but, you know, my colleague isn’t telling me anything about it, which is, of course, the right thing to do. I don’t know if he can make that decision or if that decision is being made in New York or wherever. But, yes, I would love to see that as well to see this getting to an end. And we would like to see a 36.2% free flow.

That would be quite comfortable. I don’t know what that would be in euros, maybe a billion, so that we could get in and out. So I mean, there is a certain free flow today as well, but yes, it would be better to have more. Another question on the left, Karsten Doblinger. Yes.

Hello. In regards to your corporate structure, you said that you’re not planning on introducing any changes. And I was a bit surprised to hear that because February ago, I don’t know if that was just an idea of the capital market, but there were rumors that the telco business would be merged and Ionis would be paid out. And now it doesn’t sound like that anymore. What can you tell us about that?

Well, no. We had not thought about that. And, you know, paying out Ionos, we would have to do that before the IPO together with Pukpinkos. Before the IPO, we could have saved taxes then. But if now we have 63.8% of shares of Aionos and then we’d have to pay the taxes accordingly and that would be on top.

So if we wanted to do that, we should have done that before the IPO, but it was never our goal to do it and neither is it our goal today. Now, of course, you never know what the future will bring, but for the moment, there are no such plans of a split or selling it or anything like that. Now I’m asking you because the deductible over the past two, three years was not like that before. And so before the share price was evaluated very differently. Well, you know, we didn’t have the 100% of the sum of the parts before.

And so, of course, the deductible was different. And but we are not in charge of the share price. Then I don’t understand why you’re not doing a share buyback program now. Well, as I said, there’s a certain debt, but it’s at low cost. And so with the higher dividend, you know, 190 per the number of shares, it’s a total of $240,000,000.

So that basically would be the implication of the buyback. And who knows, maybe there will be a buyback program at some point once we have more clarity and stable financing and so on. We have done that in the past, so we could do it again in the future. But for now, we said we will catch up on the dividend and then we can check that point. And maybe, you know, they’ll then be a good moment for a buyback program.

And so we want to make sure that the share holders that are staying can then benefit from that.

Don Mamout, Corporate Development, United Internet: Right. Another question from Warburg, I think. Thank you. I’ve got one more question regarding the free cash flow. Mr.

Torre, you just said it’s going to be at the level of $20.24. When I look at that, then I see those $260,000,000 that you’ve paid to Deutsche Telekom and 25,000,000 more CapEx. EBITDA was supposed to be growing slightly. So quo Vadis, the rest of that I would like to know because I think that would be quite interesting to hear. And then one question to mister Donnermood.

In which of the three shares would you invest if you had to make the choice? Oh, well. That’s a good question. I think United Internet is low and, Ains and Nines is low and Iona’s as well. I find them all underrated and undervalued, but I remember in 02/2021, we actually split the share 40 times.

And I think in February, we actually had split it 10 times or something, and the share was at, I don’t know, possibly €50 or something. I can’t remember. And it then went down to €20, and then we said to our supervisory board, and they said, that’s way too cheap. You know, we technically wanted to to do a capital increase, and so it’s completely undervalued. And then after the Internet bubbled burst, the share was at 40¢ or something.

I mean, I do believe it’s underrated, undervalued. I think it affects all three, but I obviously can’t forecast as to whether, it is going to be even more underrate tomorrow or whether it will go up. So it’s difficult to tell that I would prefer the one or not the other. I do think in in Eynes and Eynes, we have a lot of leeway to make up. And if it works, then we will see a strongly increased profitability that speaks in favor of investment in Ains and Ains.

On the other hand, we have to say that there is a lot of pressure from the market. The price pressure is huge. Telefonica hyper aggressively pushes prices across the whole of the market. I mean, you need to look at that. With Ionos, I’d have to say, they still have a strong business model.

Small and medium sized companies have to invest more and more. They just have to be present on the web. And with the cloud computing, we are getting more and more traction in this business. I mean, even the government has now said more has to happen in that field. I mean, those are growth opportunities directly benefiting Ionos.

But I mean, you could also talk it down and do do it the other way around and say, oh, possibly small companies will no longer need a web presence because there won’t be websites because people will just use artificial intelligence and to get their information, you know. I’ll just talk into my mobile phone, sir, give me the seven best offers or the three best so and so’s because I want to buy x, y, zed. I mean, and people no longer need all these websites. I mean, there are always scenarios how you could inflate it or deflate it, and the same holds true for United Internet. We have a deductible for being a conglomerate, but is that going to increase or decrease?

Only the lord knows. I think I’d invest in all three. I mean, I am very strongly invested in all three. I always say to my people, let’s walk our talk, you know. But I mean, I have been walking and talking for a long time.

Right. On that cash flow question, you’re absolutely right. The, contingency payment goes down, but we have these 240,000,000, that also will find its reflection in the book so that they mutually compensate for one another. All right. I don’t see any raised hands right now.

Yes, there is one in the first row.

Analyst, Unknown: Thank you. Maybe a question for the new CFO, Carson. So Mr. Damermut laid out a few options that you have, potentially more share buyback if you cancel shares, potentially acquiring more of the minorities in one on one. What is the financial leverage flexibility that you deem to have as a CFO in the company while keeping the cost of debt attractive?

Is 2.5 to three times net debt to EBITDA a fair range for you? On the side, kind of touch on top of that, sorry.

Don Mamout, Corporate Development, United Internet: From my point of view, up to 2.5%, I’d be comfortable. I think up to 3%, no problem. Jaime, we shouldn’t go above that. I mean, if you ask for a ceiling level, then I’d say 3%. Right.

Anybody else requesting the floor before we come to the end? Well, I don’t see any more hands, but I use the opportunity of thanking you for your attendance and attention. And may I invite you to have a coffee with us at the end? And I look forward to seeing you next time around. Thanks indeed.

Bye bye.

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