Hellenic Telecommuns Org

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am your course call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the first quarter 2023 financial results. All participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Michael Tamas, Chairman and CEO, Mr. Babis Mazarakis, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Panayiotis Gavrilidis, Chief Marketing Officer, Consumer Segment, and Mr. Vrikos Chassendis, Head of IR and M&A. Mr. Tamas, you may proceed.

Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon to all of you. The first quarter we reported earlier today enforced our confidence that we are implementing the right strategy in the face of developments. As you know, all along we have wagered our bank's proposition on the quality of networks we built and the services we offer, rather than competing on price alone. Even if vigilance will certainly be required more than ever, in 2023, the group's performance this quarter shows that we are on the right track and our execution is paying off. At group level, the slight drop in revenues we experienced this quarter was mainly due to the low-margin international wholesale traffic, as well as the comparable base in Romania. And I'll get back to what we're doing to address that in a minute. In Greece, on the other hand, international wholesale was the main headwind. But excluding what is largely a low-margin business, revenues were up, and we delivered solid performances through mobile and ICT. In retail fixed services, we successfully defended our market share and captured the bulk of broadband editions during the quarter. Our focus is squarely on upgrading our subscriber base to high-speed solutions, and this translated in further growth of fiber subscriber numbers in the quarter. On the cost side, we maintained and intensified our discipline across the board, Benefiting from last year's voluntary retirement schemes as well as from arrangements sheltering us from the most extreme variations in energy costs. As a result, EBITDA in our home market was up nearly 2% and very satisfying performance. The EBITDA margin reached 43.3% ahead of the levels recorded in the previous five quarters. Now let's look ahead to the rest of the year and how we can leverage our first quarter as we go forward. In Greece, we will continue to focus our top-line strategy on fiber mobile, coupled with most vigilance across the board. Together with the expansion of our fiber footprint, we will pursue intensive marketing efforts to continue raising our fiber-to-home utilization rate, which has been growing steadily and reached 18% as of the end of March, up 12% a year earlier. Mobile will leverage our 5G infrastructure and continue to push to convert users from pre- to post-paid services. Our focus is to retain our market share, focusing especially on the more value-generated segments of the market. In addition, Cosmotech's new businesses will continue to reinforce the aura and influence of the brand, like the box delivery service and the PAYC payment system, which has now reached over 100,000 users in a few months since it was launched. We will also carry on pushing ICT projects, which are valuable by themselves, but also contribute to the digitalization of our economy and create better conditions for growth. We have a strong pipeline of projects of valuable assignments, which should support this line of business going forward. The world of Romania, where our mobile subsidiary was impacted following This continuation of the MVNO service is provided after separation from its fixed arm. As you have seen, we announced last Tuesday that following the resignation of the previous CEO, Babis, in addition to his responsibilities of Group CEO, will take on duties of the CEO of Telecom Romania. Babis will intensify the focus to stabilize and improve the performance as well as to explore any strategic options. So in a year that we don't expect to be particularly easy, we are reassured by these solid first quarter results and are committed to great customer service, continuing to build a top-class infrastructure, controlling our costs. That's why we're confirming our outlook for the year. Our capex, which was down in the first quarter for seasonal reasons, should be stable in the full year as we accelerate fiber-to-home deployment. We also confirmed our shareholder remuneration level. On this note, I'll now ask Babis to review our performance in the quarter.

Thank you very much, Michael, and greetings to all of you from me as well. I'm proud and excited to take over the added duty of the CEO in Romania, and I look forward to getting this operation faster on a stabilization path. Let's now jump into our first quarter performance. This year, first quarter group revenues were down 2%, from the first quarter of 2022. In Greece, revenue was down less than 1%, primarily from international wholesale and, to a lesser extent, retail fixed services. In Romania, the 2% drop reflects the MVNO discontinuation following the sale of our fixed business the year before, and as well as lower mobile termination rates. Group-adjusted EBITDA after leases was just down 1%. The drop was entirely due to Romania, which had benefited from a sizable one of positive factors in the first quarter last year and experienced certain headwinds this year. In Greece, we achieved a strong operating profitability with EBDA margin at the high end of our historical record. This is due to our ability to control our cost base. All told, the group EBDA margin was 40.1%, up 40 basis points from the same quarter in 2022, despite the Romanian shortfall. Now turning to Greece, the resilience in revenues reflects the strong performance of mobile and ICT, while wholesale and fixed weighed on the total. Revenues from Greek retail fixed services were down 3.5% in the quarter, including data services, which it makes absolute sense to incorporate. Most of the decrease comes from voice and TV, while broadband was roughly unchanged. Overall, this reflects certain pricing adjustments, as well as lower demand for some legacy services. In TV, the growth in subscriber numbers continues. Now we are approaching 650,000 customers. It is mainly driven by our over-the-top service, which commands lower output. With excellent content, we are successfully preserving our share of the market, as well as our penetration of total households. As mentioned before, broadband revenues were stable, which represents an achievement if you consider that we are comparing to the last quarter before we started implementing a round of significant speed upgrades at no additional cost for the customer. This has frozen revenues that would normally have benefited from customers upgrading voluntarily, But most importantly, it also has the desired effect that of stabilizing our base. We added 15,000 customers in the quarter, pursuing the increase in penetration on total base, which now exceeds 86%, two points higher than a year ago. As you're aware of, we are totally focused on moving our customers to fiber, and the quarter marked another series of successful moves in this direction. Compared to the past two quarters, we more than doubled the number of fiber additions during the first three months of this year to 41,000. More than two-thirds of these additions, or 29,000, came from FTTH, bringing the total FTTH base to 166,000, way more than twice the number a year ago. Similarly, despite the ongoing expansion of our fiber to the home footprint, And despite the current lack of any government subsidy encouraging take-up, Fibre to the Home penetration reached 18% of homes passed, up from 12% a year ago. With Fibre playing an even larger role in our offers, speeds in excess of 100 Mbps represented now 45% of total retail subscriptions, at the end of the first quarter of this year, up from 28% a year earlier. As you see, we are holding our ground in a changing competitive landscape by leveraging our advanced infrastructure and top customer service offer. ICT had another strong quarter boosted by system solutions for private and public entities, including EU-sponsored projects. As a result, Other fixed revenues were up more than 12%. For the most part, the decline in wholesale revenues comes from international transit, but there's also some slight drop related to lower tariffs in domestic wholesale. Moving to mobile service revenues in Greece, this achieved another quarter of a very healthy growth, up nearly 3% this quarter, driven by increases in both postpaid and prepaid. In prepaid, we had a very solid quarter, validating our more-for-more strategy, notably higher top-up value bundles. Postpaid continued to benefit from the expansion of the base and very encouraging data monetization. Data KPIs are all pointing in the right direction, notably monthly data usage per subscriber up 67% year-on-year. We are actively pursuing the expansion of our 5G network reach, which should stretch to 90% of the population by the end of this year, and is already above that level in most of the country's major cities. Now let's turn to the other side of this quarter story in Greece, which is good cost control. Total operating expenses, including depreciation and amortization and one-offs, were down nearly 4%, in the first quarter, a sharp reversal from the trends last year, when our cost control initiatives ended up being neutralized by inflation and higher energy costs. This quarter, energy costs came down significantly, about 5 million euros, thanks to hedging and long-term sharply contracts. Energy, of course, remains a volatile element in our P&L, and our efforts are focusing now on stabilizing price for the future years even if this implies somewhat higher prices going forward. But debt provisions were also down as the higher rates of the pandemic period are proven overly conservative. Personal expenses declined more than 3% in the quarter, reflecting the benefits of last year's early retirement plans as we had anticipated. A new voluntary exit scheme is underway which should improve further our cost structure in 2023 and onwards. We have also finalized a new labor agreement with the Union, which provides visibility to our costs while eliminating a number of legacy bureaucratic salary structures. Important to say, employees at the lower salary echelons will benefit the most from the new agreement. All told, first quarter adjusted EBITDA after the least increase was up 1.6%, to nearly 319 million euros, resulting in a margin of 43.3%, which is up 110 basis points from the same quarter last year. Total revenues were down 12% in Romania, which is a very challenging market, of course, where we are facing competitors who are offering unlimited services for a couple of euros a month. In last year's first quarter, the Telecom Romania was still providing MVNO services to Orans following its acquisition of the fixed business. This service has been gradually discontinued. As a result, revenues were down sharply. Revenues were also affected by the mobile termination rate cuts imposed by the regulator. Now, starting this quarter, that is due to 2023, the comparison should become more favorable as the MVNO agreement subsides and there's only 2 million euros in Q2 last year, and very little after that. Total operating expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization, were down nearly 2% in the quarter, primarily due to lower interconnection costs, while device costs were up, as Telecom Romania was forced to align this strategy with those of its competitors. Energy costs were also higher as the government terminated the subsidized cap benefiting larger enterprises, leading to significantly higher tariffs throughout 2023. The impact in this first quarter alone is in the area of €2 million from this energy cost. As a result, Telecom Romania Mobile's adjusted EBITDA after leases was nearly €4 million in the quarter, compared to nearly 12 million in the same quarter last year. Important to note is that if we exclude the MVNO impact we discussed before, EBITDA would be down less than 3 million euros from last year level, reflecting just the aforementioned higher energy costs. There is not much to point out in the rest of the P&L. Since the interest expansion, income taxes were down by 4%, and net income was up nearly 5%. Turning to cash flow, adjusted capex was down 14% to €80 million versus last year. But as you know very well, the first quarter capex is often not representative of the full year outlays because of the seasonality. As we step up the pace of hybrid home deployment, the run rate should normalize starting this quarter. In line with the €640 million full year capex guidance, which we are fully confirming, Free cash flow after lease was up 2% to 226 million euros. We maintain our guidance of approximately 500 million euros for the full year. Finally, our shareholder remuneration guidance of 425 million euros is unchanged, with 250 million in dividend, payable in early July, and 175 million euros in share buyback, which is currently under execution. So, to recap, we are pleased with our healthy first quarter in Greece, underscoring the competitiveness that comes from offering great service on a state-of-the-art infrastructure. While we expect to face new challenges, we remain optimistic for the coming quarters. In Romania, the situation is definitely tougher, and we are awaiting all of our options there. On this note, Michael, Panagiotis and myself and our colleagues around the table are ready to take your questions. So, operator...

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Raziotis Tamatis with Europe Bank Equities.

Please go ahead. Yes, hello there and thank you very much for taking my questions. Just to complicate maybe firstly, on Romania, with the performance there, as you said, going south again, I expect the business will be cash flow negative again in 2023. Could you tell us what you think in terms of your strategic options and how these thoughts relate to Babis taking over as CEO of Telecom Romania Mobile. And secondly, I mean, I guess the pressure in Greek fixed was well telegraphed in previous quarters. It's clear you intend to protect your subscriber base. Just wondering what you've been seeing from a competitive dynamic perspective. Has your main competitor or leading price initiatives been able to gain subscribers? And when do you think the top line dynamic in fixed will improve, please? Thank you.

Thank you for the questions. First of all, Romania. The appointment of Babis doesn't really change much. I mean, the direction is there. The first one is to continue and intensify the efforts of stabilization. Yes, EBITDA-wise, we are in the first phase down versus a year ago, but I think we explained that the comparison doesn't help. So this drop versus the previous year will... get normalized as we move on to quarters, where last year we didn't have the MVNO, and this will be more evident in Q2. So the effort now is to intensify the stabilization, meaning that the recharging environment to continue driving the customer base, as we saw also in the results, continues to grow, and take advantage of any type of synergies and efficiencies we can do. in order to improve the customer experience and the profitability. So, consistent with what we have discussed in previous calls, this hasn't changed. It's intensifying, of course, because we need to make sure that the pace that we are running there towards the stabilization will not be impacted. Regarding the strategic options, This is something that, as we said in previous calls, we continue to explore and assess. Inevitably, we don't have anything concrete now to discuss, because these strategic options will be materialized whenever there is a real case. And rest assured, when we have something, we will inform the market. The message here is that while we're stabilizing the business, we are also exploring any strategic option which makes sense. On the fixed side, I think, looking to what we had discussed in the previous course in the past two quarters, so the picture here is on the fixed side is consistent with what we had discussed, meaning that we see a top-line decline. Also, the comparison versus the... Last year, we compared with last year that before we upgraded our customer base to the next speed at no cost. Just to say that the feeling is that if we hadn't done that one, then your question would have reverted mostly, why do we lose customers? So now we have achieved the first part, which is to maintain our customer base, thanks to this move that we did last year. and also thanks to the continuous drive of the fiber to the home superior service we have in the market. And as we move on in the next quarters where we'll be comparing with quarters where we have these two effects evident, the expectation is that this top line negative point will start getting a little bit towards stabilization. We cannot put an exact quarter. when this will happen, because we are not alone in the market, and we have to continuously getting our customer offers updated. But the competition remains intense, and we think that our strategy so far works, and it's consistent with what we had discussed in previous quarters.

That's very clear. Thank you so much. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Patrick Morris with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi there. It's Morris here from Barclays. Just a couple of questions for me, please. The first one is, you show the chart of fiber penetration, which shows, if I understand correctly, now sitting at 18% of your homes connected to the fiber network with 940,000 homes passed. That's a pretty impressive increase in the utilization rate. was 12% a year ago, now 18%. How high, that's obviously an average. I'm just curious as to how high the penetration is on some of the more mature cohorts. Like, are we sitting at sort of 30% on some cohorts now, or what's it like in terms of the cohort penetration? And then the second question, if I may, you saw United Group sell a bunch of towers, or rather announce towers, sales at 20 times EBITDA, I'm just curious, given those elevated multiples, if you're tempted at all or you're still taking the view of wanting to own and control your towers. Thanks.

Let me take the second one on the towers. On the towers, yes, that was an announced market by United, so we cannot comment anymore on that one. This doesn't change our strategy, which has been that this is an asset that, for the time being, we have selected to keep. If anything else, aside from the strategic choices, there's also different drivers between a decision to go that path from company to company, depending on the structure. On the penetration part, if I understood the question correctly, please follow up if this is something that will not be responded. is that this 18% is currently what we have at the end of Q1. Now, the way this will grow is a little bit depending, or it's mostly dependent, on how fast we roll out also the base, the Home Pass, because currently we are in the peak, I would say, of our activity there, and this will be this year and next year, So inevitably we will roll out a big proportion of the total project in the coming, I would say, 18 months or so, till the end of 2024. So the penetration will continue to grow, but we have to wait up until we reach the first maturity level, which is around in the area of close to 2 million homes, before we see the getting to what might have been your thoughts when we asked the question, in the levels of above 25 or above 30, once the base has been stabilised. So if I got the question, please follow up if this is not what you were looking for.

Yes, sorry, maybe I ask it in a different way. So 18%, I guess, is the average penetration on your entire base. And, of course, the ones you rolled out in very recent quarters probably are less than 18%, so probably have some more mature cohorts that are currently more than 18%. And I was just wondering what penetration are you getting on some of the more mature cohorts?

Okay. Okay, may I add to this? If we go to the base that we have rolled out and is now mature, and let's say it was two or three years ago, I would take the three years ago rollout, penetration of fiber on our own base, of fiber to the home, is one out of two customers. Meaning one out of two of our customers, our broadband base in the area that we have rolled out three years ago, On that wave of rollout is one out of two customers have already moved to fiber. And if we go even back to four or five years, it's more than 65% of our own base that have migrated to fiber. I don't know if that was the question. I hope I have helped on that.

That is exactly the question. Thank you very much indeed. Very impressive, by the way.

The next question is from the line of NG Clara with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for taking the question. I had one clarification question just on the MBNO revenues in Romania. Could you just share how much the MBNO revenues were in the last, like the comparable quarter last year, so in Q1? Just so we can kind of compare what it would be in compared to Q1 and Q2. And then just the second question is on energy costs. So just following up on what you said about trying to stabilize the cost going forward. Is this kind of through a PPA and would this mean maybe 2024 and going forward the prices may increase versus now, or would this be like versus, I don't know, 2021 prices?

Thank you for the question. So on the numbers of Airbnb, we had about 6 million euros in Q1. which in Q1 of 2022, and the Q2 of 2022, we have 2 million. So that's a total of eight. And then in the Q3, Q4 of 2022, it was nearly zero. So on the energy cost, there was some noise in the line, If you hear me, so the energy cost, we have the following. In 2023, the cost of energy for a big part of our consumption was lower than the market because we had this long-term agreement we had signed a couple of years ago. So this is what gives us this nice savings that we are discussing. In 2024, of course, if we look just at the forward rates or if we look at the best guess in the market, we expect that there might be an increase because the boot rates we had in 2023, as we said, they were locked in the previous year and they were lower. So in 2024, they will be higher. However, we are doing various exercises with... for example, to sign PPA agreements and things like that, in order to contain those costs. So, if we want to put a number in 2024 versus 2023, I think it's a little bit early. We need to see how we're progressing in the next couple of quarters of this year to lock this type of deals, the PPA deals, that will change again the picture in 2024. But definitely we are expecting an increase in some of our consumption, which will not be a part of the PPA, the magnitude of which we don't expect to be huge, maybe in the low double digits or something like that. But putting a number there will have to be weighed a little bit in order to give you a more credible answer in the coming quarters.

Okay, thank you.

The next question is from the line of George with Padelakis Securities. Please go ahead.

Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my questions, too, if I may. The first one is up until the fourth quarter of 2022, You were kind enough to give us some data on how the market and your competitors are doing in broadband and fixed access lines. I was hoping you could give us some numbers as well for the first quarter. And my second one is related to what the previous questions were about the energy costs. If you could tell us about your thoughts about how you plan to attack your cost base even further this year. Thank you.

Thank you for the questions. Starting from the second part, which is the energy, let me try to put – it's not – our construction is not just energy. It's broader than that one. And the drivers that we tried to explain in the speech before, which has gotten us in this nice point, continue to be our strategy, i.e., we continue to optimize through voluntary retirement schemes. We said that there will be another one coming in this year with a nice carryover also in 2024. And also we are optimizing in other areas, the non-payroll areas, in order to find more savings or more optimization that will help us on our profitability. Also, again, taking the comment from the speech, The fact that we concluded our collective labor agreement, which secures this framework for the coming couple of years, it's something that we are considering a valuable asset, because now we have a nice visibility about this period, which also helps us to support especially the low income by reshuffling some of the that we were giving towards this category. On the energy, since you mentioned specifically, also coming to the point that I covered before in the previous question, we are actually doing three things. One is continue to drive energy consumption projects in order to reduce the consumption, especially on the high high-consumed areas like data centers, network, etc. And that's one. Secondly, we are pursuing various PPA agreements. We are still in the discussions, but we hope we'll have some that will be kicking in in 2024 and will help us to lower the costs. And for the part that will be out in the market, I mean floating part, we are doing agreements with the energy providers in the market, so as to have BPC built in our cost. So the direction on the cost side is a continuous effort to reduce, in line with what we have been seeing also in this year. To your second question, for competition landscape, quarter one and also the coming quarter two is a repetition of the high competitive and high challenging situation in the market, which I think we have been quite lively described our defending strategy in Fitch and Mobile, which so far secures the stabilization of our customer base in the fixed line. And again, that was also supported by our proactive actions last year to upgrade a significant part of our customer base, which was competing the most in Q2 and Q3 of last year, towards the higher speeds. So that's the comment on the second question.

Okay, thank you.

My next question is from the line of . Please go ahead.

Hello. Many thanks for your time and the presentation. A few on my side, if I may, please. First, on the fixed revenues part, what's the latest on the timing and, if possible, relative size of the fiber coupons from government coming into play? Um, and also, uh, within the fixed revenues, but you mentioned, uh, earlier in the, in your speech, domestic wholesale tariffs came down a bit. If you could share what the impact was, uh, was it all covered in Q1 or is there, is there a partiality? So we see a Delta in Q2, uh, that's on fixed revenues. Um, and then, uh, maybe a more strategic, uh, question, um, What are the latest thoughts on the capital structure of the company, especially given that Greece is quite close to becoming investment-grade? Should we expect any change on the capital structure, either because of that event or anything else in the near future? Thank you.

The coupon is expected after the elections, definitely, and towards the last quarter of the year.

On the rest, the domestic wholesale, that is the natural right path of the prices. The area is a little bit below 3 million euros, but it's been expected. On the capital structure, we don't have any... I mean, we have been quite consistent with the policy in the previous years. So the company is already rated as an investment grade. So we are already... The OTE is already on an investment grade. So the accession of the country to the... The investment grade, obviously, will attract more interest from portfolios that currently don't invest in lower than investment grade, and that would be a benefit for the whole country, actually, not just for OTE. So the capital structure remains as it is, and we're looking forward to the accession of the country in the investment grade because of the attraction of more investors in the country.

Understood. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of George with Citi. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I have one question and a couple of clarifications. My question is around pricing going forward. We've seen in a number of countries companies introducing some inflation links to their pricing, not necessarily for this year, but maybe thinking about next year as well. So I'm curious if it's something you are looking into. I know Vodafone has already been active on that front. in many markets, but whether it's something that you are looking perhaps into introducing at some point, given the pressures from inflation we're seeing in some markets. And then the two clarifications I have is, firstly, you mentioned earlier something about the larger program. I just wanted to understand whether there are any pending decisions from the governments or whether there could be any delays. If it takes a bit of time to form, let's say, a government after the elections, whether that could affect the timing or whether now it's just a matter of certain things happening. just going through the government processes before it's finally operational. And then the second clarification is around the FTTH penetration you mentioned earlier in some of the early areas where you rolled out fiber, which is around 50%. Do you connect to FTTH only if the customers upgrade speeds to FTTH levels, or do you tend to connect any new customer to FTTH regardless of whether they are paying up for speeds?

Thank you. Regarding inflationary price increases, currently we're going through a say, fierce competitive period, which means that market dynamics do not allow for any price increases. And regarding the voucher,

The voucher, as we said, is in the plans of the digitalization initiative and processes of the government. Yet we need to see the final documents and the final decision to push it through, which, as we said, we expect, given the current situation, to be enacted towards the end of the year. So, that's our view, but it is in the plans and in the digitalization bill. George, the question about the fiber to the home, for the earlier, for the, let's say, the old areas, as Panagiotis said, that's 50 percent in some cases. If I understood correctly, your question is how far or how fast we can grow the current penetration towards this percentage, right?

It's also 50% is relatively high. So I'm just wondering whether even if the customer is not opting for speeds that require FTTH, whether you connect all the new customers to FTTH anyway, so that it's easier to then upgrade them during that contract. I'm just curious whether to connect to FTTH, whether I need to pay extra or not.

No, this is natural demand. We do not force upgrade or forcefully connect the new customers to the fiber, but we surely do intensive campaigning throughout all our channels, shops, telesales, to all these new areas that we are rolling out the fiber. And if we remember very well, the first areas that we rolled out the fiber are the areas near the central offices, meaning that we didn't have fiber to the cabinet either. So the maximum speed the customers would get there was 24 megabits or even less, because it was the old copper infrastructure. So this is why the take-up in these areas is very impressive after three or four years, and customers are getting the best of the experience we can give them through fiber.

Thank you. Thank you.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone. Once again, to register for a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone. We have a follow-up question from the line of with Ambrosia Capital. Please go ahead.

Hi, just quickly, if you don't mind, given the tourism pickup, are you seeing any material changes in your roaming performance, particularly, I guess, Q2? I would imagine Q1 was probably immaterial. That's the first one. And then any update on the performance of Paisley? Should we expect any contribution on EBITDA level this year? Thanks.

Regarding the roaming, it's expected to be an equal good year as last year. So also there are some situations in the glide path of the correction rates. So we expect at least to have stable roaming revenues versus last year. And that will be evident mostly in Q2 and Q3, because the number in Q1 was just around 3 million euros. So, on the basis, I think it's still on the growing phase, of course, because it's just a few months after the launch. And the first target, which was to reach the landmark of 100,000 customers, has been achieved. And now we are heading forward to further increase towards the next milestone and also to enrich our service with new offerings. And we have to be patient. Maybe a couple of years before the numbers are starting to have an impact in the whole P&L structure. But it's going according to plan. A little bit better, I would say, in terms of customers. forward to the new stream of services.

Thank you. Thank you.

As a final reminder, to register for a question, please press Char and 1 on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you all for your attention, questions, and interest. Our resilience in the first quarter and our plans for the rest of the year give us confidence that we will deliver another healthy performance in the full year, despite the economic, geopolitical, and competitive pressure we are expecting to face. I'm looking forward to our next discussion in early August for our half-year results. Have a nice day and a nice weekend. Operator, thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling and have a pleasant evening.