Proximus PLC

Hello and welcome to the Proximus Q3 2025 results conference call. My name is Sergei and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call your lines will be on a listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your questions at any time. If at any point you require assistance, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Nancy Goossens, Investor Relations Lead, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Proxibus Third Quarter Results webcast. We will begin with our presentation, and it is my pleasure to introduce our new CEO, Stan Penance, who will walk you through today's highlights. Our CFO, Mark Reed, will then present the financial results. The Q&A session will follow with Jim Castere, the consumer market lead, also participating. Handing over now to Stijn for the highlights. Please go ahead.

Also, welcome from my side. I'm honored to present my first round of Proximus results to you today. As you have seen in our published report this morning, Proximus continued its robust domestic performance despite the intense competitive environment. This is reflected in both another strong financial and operational quarter. Network leadership remains at the core of the success, with 5G coverage now over 85% and fiber in the street covering more than 47%. of the Belgian homes and businesses. We're pleased that the Belgian Competition Authority announced the launch of the market test and our proposed gigabit network collaboration in Flanders, while the negotiations in Wallonia are ongoing. The Proximus Global segment continues to experience challenges related to SMS CPAS and integration issues. prompting a reassessment of ambitions, which will be addressed later in this presentation. And finally, we concluded the sale of B-Mobile, keeping us well on track to realize the 600 million euro asset sales program. Based on the results and current projections, we've updated our outlook, which I'll discuss shortly. Moving to our key financial results now. For the domestic segment, we closed the third quarter with stable services revenues. Thanks to a favorable revenue mix, driving higher margins, and costs turning stable year on year, we closed Q3 with the domestic EBITDA growing 1.8%. For the global segment, the direct margin was down by 12.2% at constant currency, caused by the headwinds previously mentioned. This resulted in an EBITDA decline of 22.3%, despite cost synergy realizations. This brings our group EBITDA to €475 million for the third quarter, a decline by 1%. Our CAPEX for the first nine months was €826 million. And the free cash flow, we ended the first nine months with €428 million in total. Excluding the proceeds from asset sales, our organic free cash flow was €159 million, a strong improvement year on year. Let's have a look now at the operational results. Despite the intense competition, the operational performance was very strong, with mobile postpaid adding 45,000 cards and our internet subscriber base growing by 12,000 lines. Our convergent base continued its steady growth, adding 12,000 residential customers in the third quarter. The solid commercial performance was supported by the portfolio changes of the Proximus brands, attractive mobile joint offers, and the ongoing convergence strategy. We also continued focusing on innovation and optimizing the customer journey as we launched our new features to help customers onboard via eSIM. Regarding the B2B unit, which closely aligns with my professional background, Proximus holds a robust position in the market today, and we are developing strategies to capture growth opportunities. I'm committed to shape Proximus' B2B future and to drive growth, leveraging the strong network assets of Proximus while exploring new layers of innovation. Our focus is on sovereignty and next generation AI opportunities. To make this happen, we will be collaborating with leading technology partners to validate impactful use cases. We will elaborate on this during the Capital Markets Day in February. As previously mentioned, the high-quality network is an essential contributor to the success of Proximus. Across Belgium, we have now a total of almost 2.5 million fiber homes, meaning a population coverage of over 41%, and including fiber in the street, we are at 47% coverage. The fiber network filling rate progressed to 33%, up from 30%, one year back. At the end of September, the base of active fiber customers totaled 684,000, including 39,000 added over the third quarter. We are pleased with the announcement of the Belgian regulators on the start of a market test assessing our proposed gigabit network collaboration between wire. Telenet and Proximus in Flanders. The market test will conclude on Friday, November 21st. At the same time, fiber negotiations in the South are ongoing. As a last point on the domestic side, I would like to highlight the progress made on the disposal program of non-core assets. As was announced at closing, the sale of B-Mobile was completed early October and leaves us very much on track for the 600 million euro ambition that we have set for the end of 27. Turning to the full year guidance. For domestic, we reiterate our outlook given end of July, with domestic EBITDA expected to grow up to 2%. This despite the impact of the B-Mobile divestment and not having renewed the football broadcasting contract with the zone. Taking into account the ongoing headwinds regarding the Proximus Global segment, we expect the EBITDA of Global to be lower year-on-year by around minus 10%. We have lowered this year's guidance for accrued CAPEX to approximately €1,250,000,000. This is because the integration of FiberClar is leading to more effective and efficient fiber rollout, some lower project-related CAPEX and less investment needs for global. This, combined with not having renewed the Belgian football contract, leads to organic free cash flow expected to land to around 100 million. And finally, the projected 2025 net debt EBITDA ratio improved to around 2.8. We also confirm our intention to return an interim dividend of 30 cents per share, payable on December 5th, post-final approval of the board scheduled later this month. For global specifically, we have reassessed our growth projections for the coming year. While new growth initiatives have been launched and cost synergy delivery is progressing, high exposure to the legacy P2P voice and messaging and as well as SMS CPaaS is expected to continue having a significant impact. Therefore, the 26th Global Ambition is being adjusted. The preliminary review for 2026 indicates Proximus Global EBITDA will be in the range of 100 to 130 million euros. In collaboration with Sechkin Arikan, the new global CEO, a strategic plan is being developed with the objective of resuming growth from 2027 onward. An update on the plan for Proximus Global will be provided at the Capital Markets Day. I hand over to Mark now for the detailed financial results.