Sunrise Communications A

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sunrise Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Matilde, the course call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on a 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's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical facts. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ maturely from those expressed or implied by these statements. These risks include those detailed in Sunrise's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed 20F. Sunrise disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect any change in 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.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our second quarter 2026 financial results call. Thank you for joining us today. With me in the room to lead you through the presentation are André Krause, our CEO, and for the last time, as we've announced at the beginning of June, Jany Fruytier, who will be stepping down as CFO of Sunrise at the end of the month. More on that to follow in the presentation. As always, we'll start the call with the presentation, which will be followed by a Q&A session. With that, I'd like to hand it over to André. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Alex, and good morning, everybody, also from my side. Let me start with a quick summary of our Q2 results. And I would start with, as expected, we have seen some softer revenue dynamics in the second quarter, but we are seeing also an improvement on our commercial trends. In fact, revenue declined by 2.6%, which is a reflection of the lapping of the 2025 price increase. Also, somewhat lower customer dynamics over the last quarter, particularly on the fixed side, and also some tougher hardware comparisons that we had in the second quarter compared to the second quarter last year, where we had the 3G switch and some hardware device impacts following those. Commercial performance has improved in the second quarter and this is establishing also the foundation for a improving second half year. Across our brands, we have stepped up our commercial execution. We have launched our Sunrise Rewards program and we are seeing some encouraging first results and we will talk a bit more about that in a minute. We are also working to expanding our yellow retail footprint and we have also run a brand refresh campaign to revitalize the brand. We are also, across all of our B2B segments, establishing new products and innovations in order to accelerate growth. And that all has driven an improving NetEd performance in the second quarter with 3,000 postpaid editions and 21,000, sorry, 21,000 postpaid editions and 3,000 internet editions.

With all of that, we see ourselves well positioned for the second half year.

We are expecting the revenue evolution to be further supported by the price increase that we have implemented as of the 1st of August. We are on that basis fully reiterating our guidance, including also the DPS growth of 2% through a dividend per share of 3.49%. and we will also update today a bit on some of the team changes that have happened in between on the commercial side but also as Alex talked about on the change of the CFO side. Now let's jump into a bit more details and I'd like to like usually start off with our commercial performance and let me give you a bit of a deep dive into the DNA of the revenue evolution that we are seeing in the second quarter. This is a complicated chart. Let's take it piece by piece. So essentially, we are seeing three layers of impacts that have driven the revenue evolution of the second quarter. Firstly, looking about the pricing actions, then we have implemented a price increase last year at the beginning of April, which was lapping in April this year, i.e. the second quarter was running dry of any positive contribution from a price increase and the new price increase that we have announced at the beginning of May is going to be implemented or has been implemented on the 1st of August. As such, it didn't have any impact on the second quarter and therefore that was clearly having an impact on our revenue evolution. Secondly, also the subscriber dynamics following The UPC 6 customer base migration, which we ended at the mid of last year, remember that. Following that, we have seen softer dynamics on the customer base from Q2, I would even argue to Q1 this year, where we run almost flattish and then turn negative on the back of some accelerated churn on the back of that switch off. which obviously has also changed the customer base dynamics which are not supporting to offset the ARPU pressure that is coming from the competitive market environment. Now overall, we are seeing that trend to turn around. We have talked about the 3,000 net additions and that we were adding on the internet side and also the acceleration of the mobile side. So I think the momentum here is turning and I think that will be supportive also of some revenue improvements that we are expecting for the second half of the year. Lastly, also a bit of a technicality because the introduction of the new mobile portfolio that we've talked about over the last couple of quarters is giving some technical new reallocations of revenue components for converged customers. that is exaggerating the revenue impact at ARPU impact on the fixed side and it's benefiting the mobile side. So that gives you a bit of an explanation. There's also more data on the detailed impact of that in the back of our presentation that we are sharing. So with all of that, I think we are expecting a gradual improvement now for Q3 and Q4 as we are coming out of those, I would say, culmination of headwinds. that has led to the revenue evolution that we are reporting today. Now, with that explanation, let me also dig a bit deeper on the most important commercial actions of the quarter. And by far, I would argue the most important one and the largest one that we have been working on for quite a while is the introduction of Sunrise Rewards. The program was soft launched in April, fully rolled out to all of our customers during the course of May. and we are seeing encouraging first results. Now, before I get into that, let me quickly summarize what is the intention of this program because this is more than just a normal, I would argue, loyalty program. At the end, what we are creating is a currency for Sunrise customers to buy incremental products with us. As such, it's a simulation for cross and upsell to drive more RGU's. which in return will also drive more stickiness and i.e. less churn into our customer base. And that is the intent of that program. It not only provides customers access to attractive incremental products, but it also drives other benefits. You see some examples on the slide. Like at the moment we have a campaign out where customers can get vouchers for coffees. We have, of course, tickets not only to music concerts, but also to cinemas. We have our partnership with the Zurich Film Festival, which allows us to give Money Can't Buy events on top of the product attractions that we want to drive to our customers. Now, first results are, as I said, encouraging. We do see that customer awareness is pretty good. 60% of the customers are already after three months well aware of the program. We have seen already 60,000 redemptions across the usage of that program. We do see an NTS uplift, lower churn, and also incremental sales. Now, needless to say, a program that is three months old yet has not delivered any tangible financial contribution to the results that we are talking about today. But I think it's a A start of a significant change towards driving more loyalty, also giving customers something in return for the loyalty that they give with us, and turning around a bit the paradigm that customers were challenging us on, which was that new customers would always get the better deals. There is no history with the program and that I think is an important commercial trend change that we are convinced we will be able to monetize well in the future. Now, not only on the consumer side, but also on the B2B side, we are pushing ahead. We have seen a number of additions that we did in the second quarter. As part of that, for the small and medium businesses, we have launched our SME ready bundle offers with some latest additions around insurance bundle. We have also stepped up our partner ecosystem. You remember that was a shortcoming on our distribution side. We have, I would say, closed the gap on the partner portal, which is, of course, an important interaction channel for all of our partners. But we have also stepped up our engagement with partners and we are seeing now the numbers rising in terms of partners working with us. And secondly, also on the back of that, of course, the broader go to market in particularly on the medium sized businesses. Also, I would like to reiterate the coming product launch with our exclusive partnerships with Phoenix. Phoenix, you remember, is a unique sovereign AI solution in Switzerland. On the back of that partnership, we will be able to provide attractive LLM offerings, chat offerings and GPU as a service offerings that we will launch during the course of the second half year. And we are pretty excited about that to come because we think this is a very unique offering at attractive terms. So stay tuned for that launch in the coming months. Now, let me summarize the commercial results of the quarter as usual. So firstly, on the net ads, you are seeing the 21,000 postpaid net additions. That's a remarkable setup from Q1. Important to say it is not only driven by inflow, but also by churn improvement. So the net result is also helped by gradually improving churn. And we're not only seeing that on mobile, We have in particular also seen that on the fixed side so the performance improvement is of course due to the commercial activities for us only new customers but also help by improving churn trends that we are seeing throughout the segments. Also on the internet side and we talked about the importance of that given the APU pressure that is sitting in this business segment and I think important to know that this APU pressure is not coming from and decreasing price points on the front book, but it's more the narrowing between the front book and the back book that is driving these APU pressures. Now, therefore, the 3,000 positive net additions, I think, is a significant turn towards growth, which will help us to offset some of that APU pressure going forward and will help us to mitigate the trends as we go forward. FMC continues to be stepping up quarter by quarter, more or less like a Swiss clockwork. Again, another 0.6 percentage points gain up now to 61.1%. And rest assured, also on the FMC side, we will use our rewards program to push these numbers ahead further. Then talking about the APUs, again, as I talked about, both numbers, mobile and fixed, are impacted by the FMC discount allocation that has changed with the mobile portfolio. The details of that you find at the back. We do see that the mobile ARPU year-on-year is a bit under pressure. The key driver that is always out there is the mix change. That's the mix change between first and secondary SIMs, which are driven by family offers or also other devices that are coming in like watches, but also the mix between the different brands that are operating on different price points. On top of that, we have also seen and some pressure which is coming from a tougher base in last year on roaming and prepaid, but that is expected to be a more temporary impact and probably will phase out over the coming quarters. Then talking about fixed, clearly that's the most important trend impacting our revenue evolution. We see a 54.5 Swiss franc APU that is A significant evolution from where we have been staying last year. Again, important to say, we do see that our inflow values are essentially not only stable but even slightly improving. However, the back book, if you want, versus front book delta is narrowing and that is the key pressure point here. We are expecting nevertheless that the trends in the second half year are going to improve as we are speaking. largely and most importantly through the price rise that is now landing in the first of August. And let me add some color here because I think you're all curious to understand how that is going. Now, as I said, it's the first of August. We are speaking now at the end of August, so we haven't seen it fully, but so far the trends are very encouraging. We have seen better than expected dynamics in terms of Net lending of that price increase, also churn is more moderate than what we have expected, and also the NPS impact is quite less than what we have been seeing previously. So from that perspective, it looks very promising. However, I want to stay cautious on that comment because, you know, we launched at the beginning of August, that is vacation time in Switzerland, and hence we don't know whether there is still some reaction to come in September. And hence, we will also wait to see that full lending, but the first indications are quite positive from our perspective.

With that, I hand over to Jany. Thanks, André. Also welcome everyone from my side. On the slide, you see on the left the Q2 results and then H1 on the right side. I'll mostly focus on Q2, but we'll make a couple comments around H1 as well. André already addressed it in his opening remarks, revenue down 2.6%, very much driven by the continued pressure on residential fixed, with some mobile subscription pressure as well, especially in residential on the back of the usage that we spoke about. Also, of course, both have impacted, as André said, by the price increases. On the non-subscription side, we saw some positives also in B2B, especially on GP. We saw some positives, but I'll speak in a bit more detail about that in a second. This time, EBITDA down at 3.8%, as we did see some OBEX improvements, however, not enough to offset the gross profit pressure that we were faced with. On the positive side, we saw capex going down to 102 million, which is around 14.3% capex to revenue, which sort of then made us increase our adjusted EBITDA LSP in the additions on the back of that reduced capex. And furthermore, you see a meaningful step up in adjusted free cash flow, both for Q2 as well as for H1. as we were helped by, on the one hand, some phasing elements, secondly, active management of the various organic networking capital cycles that we manage, and interest was approximately flat versus prior year, as Q2 typically doesn't have a lot of interest payments, but I'll speak about that in more detail later in the presentation. Last thing, and I think the absolute number is important to note, 204 million generated in Q2 of the 380 to 400 million that we have tried for for full year. So I think that in itself is a strong indication that we're well underway to hit our full year results. Then when we focus on revenue, you see on the left, like always, residential, then B2B, and then in France support, which is mostly in relation to the rollout of our mobile sites. If you focus on residential subscription, the 21 million is a step up from what we have seen in prior quarters, and as André said, is in relation to Thank you very much. The price increase were helping and this quarter very much we saw the usage that partially fell away and so therefore net reduction. On the non-subscription side for both residential actually and B2B we see increases. Part of that is in relation to higher hardware and handset sales as well as various fee changes that we have implemented from the beginning of the year which are sort of yielding the expected benefits On B2B, subscription revenue slightly softer than what we have seen in prior quarters with both approximately flat. That is in part, again, also driven by price increases, but it's also because especially Q2 or actually from end of 24 till Q2 25, we had a significant ramp up in relation to the MIGO deal that we have spoken about in the past. And so therefore, this actually was the last André Reinhard Krause André Reinhard Krause residential subscription revenue falling through to GP with around 22 million. At the same time, you see B2B and wholesale growing. So this is where you, on the one hand, see the fees and non-subscription falling through as well as some cost optimizations that we have done. Inference support, again, is that same different phasing of tower sales that we saw in the quarter versus prior year. in line with full year expectations of slight growth on that line specifically. OPEX down 8 million, this time very much focused on the external cost, mostly in IT and other external expenses like marketing and in general sort of external support cost. The labor in itself was broadly stable, even though we implemented the reorganization earlier in the year. from which the majority was starting to impact from April. Having said that, I think we've also been transparent about last year especially we had a very successful employee shareholding program where we gave meaningful discount for employees to participate and become an owner of Sunrise. That we did do this year again, but in a lower discount and smaller program. Therefore, the net benefit that we saw from the reduction was offset in large by the lower benefits that we got from this year's ESVP program. Also, in April, we typically do an indexation on salaries for the inflation. And even though inflation in Switzerland was low, There was a partial increase on the salary base from that. So that sort of rounds out OPEX leases. Slight reduction in this quarter as we were, especially in Q1, had a very good leasing trajectory. But as we also then highlighted there, there was some phasing in that. So therefore, again, I think if you look at the H1 performance of leases gives you a better sense of the full year outlook. And again, I'll speak about that in a second. Then when we go to adjusted EBITDA or SP&E additions and adjusted free cash flow, EBITDA we spoke about, so then focusing a little bit on capex, you see in general most capex categories going down. Some of it is phasing. I think you saw this year, especially Q1, we were front-loading our capex, and so therefore, again, the rest of the year, one should see some tailwind. Having said that, there is also net reductions in our capex spend, I think most notably on the one hand, lower mobile capacity, benefiting from last year's roadmap. There we switched off 3G and we installed 5G standalone. In order to implement both those changes, we had to ramp up our capex investments in Q1 and Q2 last year, which we're now benefiting from in not having to spend the same amount. On the coverage side, again, referring back to that same Migros or big B2B customer, last year we were finalizing the rollout of that project, and so therefore the coverage capex in B2B specifically was on an above average run rate in terms of spending. On free cash flow, what you can see here, adjusted EBITDA coming through, interest, as I said, approximately flat, tax slightly better. I think we have guidance for that as well, that this year we still expect a very low tax rate as we're finalizing the benefits on the one hand from our NOLs, on the other hand, from some of the tax attributes that were generated as part of the merger, which we are expecting to run out by the end of this year, so that André Reinhard Krause Then let's go to the next slide. And what I want to do here before I round up the guidance for this year and quickly talk about the capital structure. Yes, André referred to it and I sort of highlighted some of the revenue tension that we have seen in H1 and especially in Q2 because of the dynamics described. What we can show as a standalone company and a public company since beginning of 24, which you see here. So this is not quarters, this is half years. But what we have tried to show you is that even though revenue has been under pressure this year, we have a good track record of managing our costs down in a sustainable way across all different cost dimensions and expect that to continue in the coming period. So when we start with OPEX, you can see between two to three percent on average of OPEX reductions in each of the half years. That is done through continuous focus on organizational simplification, automation and process streamlining. I think here the magic word going forward is AI. We're hard working on that sort of to ensure that we can unlock the benefits that one could expect from that in the coming period. as well as very stringent and cost-conscious attitude and sort of perspective in the business. And of course, as you simplify the operating model, also the cost generated by the operating model should linearly or not linearly, but at least follow that same direction. On leases, what we see is a number of things. So on the one hand, we continue to focus on our network footprint and our leasing portfolio. We continue to actively manage the different type of contracts that we have with both Swisscom and SFN for the whole buying of fiber that we do. And of course, yes, the whole buy share increases as a percentage of our total customers, yet through the management of these different contracts, the average cost per customer from a whole buy perspective actually has been reducing like we showed, I think, last quarter. And lastly, P&E additions. We have state-of-the-art mobile networks and fixed networks, both through fiber and HFC. We are able to provide two and a half gig and provide fantastic customer experiences, I think also as shown by the Umlaut perspective then. Of course, over the last five years, as we have integrated the both companies, we had a big focus also on the IT infrastructure and the product setup. As we are behind that and have sort of done a big effort on digitization, we're now starting to see sort of the more André Reinhard Krause We're fully reconfirming our guidance with broadly stable revenue, around a billion of EBITDA, below 15% of CapEx2 revenue, resulting into 380 to 400 million of free cash flow. And as we achieve that, we expect to pay 349 per Class A share or 35 cents per Class B share, which implies a 2% year over year. Now, I think to get to this, and I think that's why I also laid out the cost elements and we spent some time explaining the commercial trajectory, H2 does need to sequentially improve versus what we have seen in Q2. H1 versus H2 perhaps is already less of a step up, but we're comfortable that with the commercial focus that we have, the price increases that we have done, and the continued cost focus, we're going to deliver those results. And then before I hand back over to André, one last slide. During Q2, or actually in July, so you'll see it in Q3, but given that we are behind it, I wanted to raise it. We issued a 500 million senior secured euro note, maturing in 2023. will use all of those proceeds to pay the, not the full, but 90 plus percent of the 29 maturities that were the last short term dated maturities back. The remaining of that 29 maturities will be paid from organic free cash flow in this year. By having done that, we effectively have no maturities before 31 and the majority actually after 32. Our total weighted... Cost therefore now is 2.8%. And also we have effectively moved once we repaid the last bit to a fully all secured senior capital structure, which again is a sign that the guidance that we have given of three and a half to four and a half times of leverage to our EBITDA is the right trajectory and we don't need unsecured in itself to support that capital structure. Lastly, before I hand back, All of our instruments, even though some of them are floating, are then hedged both from an interest in the currency perspective so that there is, until maturity, no actual risk to any fluctuations in both currency or interest market environments. With that, André, back to you.

Thanks a lot, Jany. And before I move on, I guess that's the moment to give a big thank you to you for the last five years and your solid running as a CFO within Sunrise. You're up for the next role, becoming the CFO of Bono von Sigel. Wish you all the best and probably some luck as well as I know that you don't need it because you're going to make that. All right. Let me take that moment also to update you a bit on the composition of our management team and the recent changes. As you see, Andreas Tolpeit will become our new CFO from the beginning of September. Andreas has already joined the company this week and is currently working alongside Jany. And I'm pretty sure that we're going to have a smooth transition onto Andreas. We've also had Wolfgang Elsasser who is running our main brand business who joined Sunrise at the beginning of July. and Veit Kment who is running our Flanker Brands who already joined in June. So you'll see we have on some very important roles of the business new people heading, but I'm very positive and confident that this will only drive us from strength to strength going forward. Now with that, let me conclude today's presentations with the key takeaways of today. So firstly, Commercial momentum has been gaining traction, and that is reflected in the stronger net ads that we are reporting. We've seen lower churn, and we have also seen successful execution of our campaigns and also our activities around strengthening our commercial engines. We have seen, secondly, a strong adjusted free cash flow growth despite the peak revenue headwinds that we have been talking alongside today's presentation. and we are expecting a gradual improvement now in the second half year and on the back of that we are fully reiterating our guidance for 2026 underpinned by the pricing initiatives that we are implementing, improving subscriber momentum and the continued execution of our strategic priorities. With that we conclude our today's presentation and opening up for Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their 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 a webcast while asking a question. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions. Anyone who has a question, I press Start N1 at this time. The first question comes from the line of Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I had two questions basically both on the same thing, trying to understand the materiality of the improvements that you've highlighted throughout your call in terms of commercial momentum, churn reduction efforts, and the effective price rise implementation. The first question is a short-term question. Could you just talk us through the phasing of how those efforts will impact your revenue Nibida growth through the second half of the year? My understanding is that it's back-end weighted. Should we expect to see any improvement or any kind of material improvement in revenue Nibida growth in Q3? or do you anticipate most of that coming through in Q4? And then second question, has anything changed structurally in terms of the improvement in your growth outlook? So should we see whatever the Q4 growth rates are in revenue and EBITDA growth as a good guide to your structural revenue and EBITDA growth going forwards? Or to put it maybe more explicitly, what do you think that everything we've seen over the past few quarters and months translates to in terms of a growth outlook? You obviously have a medium-term growth outlook of flat to low single digits, depending on if we look at revenue and EBITDA. Is that something we should be seeing coming through in 2027? Thank you. All right.

All right, let me try to answer both of your questions, first starting with the short-term outlook and then trying to address some of the long-term, even though acknowledging that we're not giving next year's guidance in the middle of the year, but we'll do that with Q4. But anyway, that's a caveat. I'll still give you some sense. So I think a couple of things to highlight on sort of Q3 and Q4. On the one hand, the first quarter where you do the price increases, and again from August, so that's right in the middle of the quarter, you typically have some adjustment. André spoke about it, that on the one hand, churn is good, but of course, When it happens, people call and there are some adjustments, you have to give some retention. And so therefore, typically, on the one hand, you don't see the full run rate because it was not from July 1st. Secondly, you have some adjustments. And so Q3, even though it's starting to benefit from it, it is not seeing the full run rate because of those adjustments. Then secondly, Q3 is also the quarter when people typically travel. That's when a lot of usage around roaming also gets done. We spoke about it for Q2. That is in part because of the portfolio changes that we have decided on which work in general, but of course then in the quarters where you have most roaming revenues are also biggest impacted on a year-over-year perspective. And then thirdly, I think, especially on B2B, some of the things that we're talking about are more September, October. And so all to say that indeed Q3, on the back of those reasons, even though the underlying recurrent revenue is probably already improving, it's not seeing the same step up that one could expect for Q4. So that's your answer in short on sort of how to think about Q3 and Q4. for the outlook of the year. Then when we get to sort of 27 and onwards, you are right that 27 probably was in the range of midterm versus the capital markets guidance that we gave. Again, big caveat, first of all, I'm stepping away after this. So again, I don't want to be promising here as something that I'm not there for first. Secondly, it's the middle of the year, we don't give guidance for the next year. But I think if you model out in general the Q4 trends, of course price increases is something that is not that recurrent in its nature. But the commercial trends that we're seeing that are improving, the fact that André spoke about the reduction of the reduced tension between front book and back book prices, especially on fixed, which where the majority of the issue sits, I think you can get a sense of all things equal, how things should trend in terms of revenue. And I think I would leave it there for now. So you see an improving trend. What that exactly means, this is not the time to talk about that, and that is not

Well, I think you made all the important points. I think the summary of it is gradual improvement to be expected in Q3 and Q4. We want to see the lending of the price rise and want to understand how the commercial momentum is evolving through the rest of the year. Thank you. It sounds like it's a gradual improvement but far more pronounced improvement in Q4 and Q3. Is that fair? Correct. That's fair.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Drusa Shah from UBS.

Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking the questions and all the best, Jany, in your new role. So just a couple of questions for you. The first is if we could just get an update on competitive dynamics in the market in both mobile and fixed and whether you've seen a meaningful change now that yourselves, Swisscom and Salt, all have put through your price rises. And just link to that because you've been mentioning how the ARPA, especially on the fixed side, is closing in now on the front book. Could you maybe give us an indication of when you may expect to see both mobile and fixed ARPUs stabilizing or even growing going forward? The second question is just a bit more of a bigger picture question really on how you see potential satellite impact in Switzerland. So given Switzerland's topography with very rural areas that are hard to service and relatively high pricing, do you see satellites as a significant threat or Given the high levels of convergence and the extremely high quality network, both on the fixed and mobile side, do you still think that satellites will be more complementary? So just curious to get your thoughts there as well.

All right, thank you. Let me take on that. So firstly, on the competitive dynamics, I mean, we have seen the usual, I would say, summer promotion time ahead of the vacations, price points, net price points, post discounts, have been very similar to prior years, so we are not seeing deterioration. What we have been seeing post the price rises of our competitors, and that's also our own intention, I think it doesn't make sense to just raise the prices in the back book and then continue at a lower price level on the front book. So we intend to also stabilize the front book inflow prices by also having the price rise on the front book. Now, that seems to work out quite well. So from that perspective, what we are seeing is a bit of a continuation, but I would say some upward trend on the pricing. And also, similarly, liquidity is at the same time not necessarily growing. So liquidity will remain under pressure, i.e. the amount of customers redistributed in the market, we believe, will not grow, but rather decline. which ultimately also means that there will be continued competition around that liquidity. But I think that competition gets more rational. That doesn't mean that prices are now massively increasing. We are not seeing a deterioration and we have some indications of some increases here and there. And I think that's a positive indication. Whether that yet is a trend change, I think hard to say, but at least the indication I would argue is positive on the competitive dynamics. On the ARPU dynamics, yes, you're right. I mean, as our front book and back book ARPUs are narrowing, the dynamics will soften over time. Now, we have been not necessarily great in expecting how quickly what change is going to be expected. So I want to stay away from at this moment in time gives you an indication how we will continue. But definitely, if you look for us and also for our main competitors, I think we have a pretty decent evolution and we are probably more towards stabilization than others. I think that's a positive indication. Nevertheless, not yet also full stabilization there. And to your question, are we expecting a turnaround towards a growing APU on fixed? I would be very cautious on that because the reality is that the front book price is not necessarily where the lowest price points are in the market. Hence, I'm not sure that there is a lot of room for ultimate price increases on the front book side, on the fixed net side. But nevertheless, the stabilization, I think, is definitely what we are expecting as a trend moving forward. To your satellite question, I would say thank you for the question because there was a lot of speculation after the announcement of SpaceX and Starlink in particular. For Switzerland definitely we have extremely strong networks with a lot of not only population coverage but also area coverage. That means the uncovered opportunity that satellite can fill in Switzerland is quite limited. Secondly, I think the physics in Switzerland are more challenging, particularly for indoor coverage. The way how houses are built makes it more complicated for satellite frequencies to get into indoors. And a lot of mobile usage is, of course, with customers that are expecting a seamless handover between different situations, being moving on the ground outdoor, getting into indoor, and to continue to see a seamless coverage. I think that is going to be extremely challenging for Satellite to provide a better customer experience. And hence, we are not seeing that as a mobile replacement, but as a potential additional technology that can help us to achieve better coverage. Slightly different on the fixed side, because while we do have very strong infrastructures and also great coverage, Our Fixed Wireless Access product is actually a good one and Satellite is probably competing with that for the remaining market where gigabit speeds are not necessarily available because of the availability of technologies. But that is how we look at it. So we would not expect Satellite for Switzerland to be revolutionary to any of our products, but to be rather complimentary and that's how we are expecting that to shape up.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

We now have a question from the line of Patrick Morris from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi guys, it's actually Maurice Patrick, but I'm sure you've got that. So a couple of questions from me, and again, Jany, all the best. I'm sure we'll see you at the Zego group when you're there, so good luck. But the first question relates to customer inflow on different brands. Apologies if you did call it out in the presentation, but just be helpful to understand a bit around the extent to which your customer inflow is coming on the discount brands such as Yellow, CH Mobile, as opposed to the main brands. And if you can do that by fixed and mobile, that would be super helpful. Second question, if I'm not wrong, you've announced a new BTS deal with Cellnext of 300 new sites. Curious to understand the reason for that. Is it coverage? Is it capacity? You seem to have signaled capacity is totally fine. Also, why using Celnex for BTS rather than using co-location elsewhere? That would be helpful. Thank you.

All right. Maybe can you give us some more color on your second question, because I'm not sure we understand that, Maurice.

Yeah, just your view on further identification of mobile networks New towers needed for coverage and capacity would be helpful.

Let me start with the customer inflow. As you know, generally, we are not providing all of the details for competitive commercial reasons. Some of our competitors are not providing any numbers, so we don't want to give too much indication of how successful in what segment we are. In general, I think the inflow is driven by all of our brands. Also, if you look at the net ads, The contribution from CH Mobile was not, I would say, massive on the NetEd figures. But yes, the Flanker brands are contributing to our NetEd growth. The B2B business is adding to our NetEd growth, and also our consumer business is adding to that. On the extent split in detail, we don't want to provide the granularity for the mentioned competitive reasons. On network further evolution, I think At this moment, I would say our grid is pretty strong. And we are looking always at opportunities to improve it going forward. But I think there's no urgency for infill for capacity or for coverage reasons at that moment. So it's not something that we are spending a lot of time on. But we are, of course, observing the opportunities that may arise if 5G networks are filling up. But at this moment, the grid that is a bit denser than in other countries because of the emission norms is not giving us a great necessity to think about law of intel.

That's super helpful. Thank you, André. Thanks.

The next question comes from the line of Max Findlay from Rothschild & Co. Redburn. Please go ahead.

Morning both. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us this morning. So net of the FMC accounting impact B2C mobile subscription declines accelerated, I think, to nearly above three and a half percent. Are you able to give some more color on the relative pressures coming from the temporary factors you mentioned? And I guess the more structural dilution from second SIMS? And then following on from that, I'd be interested to know how you see the Swiss pricing environment going forwards. I know this has been alluded to in your answers already. So Swisscom on its earnings call remarked that it believes the opportunity for future price increases on the main brand was more limited given the down trading to Flanker. Do you echo these sentiments? If so, the outlook for ARPU growth in consumer particularly looks quite bleak given the down trading to Flanker, which is ongoing. Do you think you can manage this with the rewards program alone? And then finally, if I may, B2B RGU growth remains quite strong at 5%. How sustainable is this growth and André Reinhard Krause

A very important one. So our perspective on pricing is, firstly, we do see market segmentation, and we will be talking about the ABC segment and the different brands that are positioned there. The price points are not just different price points, but also different product ranges and offerings. Hence, the customer is getting a different product, a different service, a different range of offerings on those different brands. And hence, there is a reason why the price points are different. Now, the dynamics of the trading compared to Swisscom may be slightly different because we are not having as much market share as they do. Hence, cannibalization is a smaller problem for us, and we do see that the inflow that we have on our BNC brand is easily compensating for the impact that we have for downspinning. So that is not a material problem for us. If we talk about mixed changes, then of course, yes, the relative weight of those segments is increasing, and as such, the ARPU is impacted, but it also comes with volume growth. and therefore we don't see that downspin trend as a material problem in our case. In regards to price increases, I think the Swiss market has now seen a number of price rises and I think the reality is also that not just inflation is relevant to us, but in particularly what are the factor costs that we have in our business that are impacting our cost base. And the reality is at this moment, From site rentals to salaries to CPEs, many components that are important elements, energy, we do see increasing prices, hence our cost structure is under pressure. We try to compensate for that as much as we can, but I think we can also not rule out future price rises on the back of that evolution. And if we look also into other industry sectors in Switzerland, and then the norm is that people are increasing prices on a regular basis. Now, when that means that we're going to get to a regular price increase in this market, we always need to make sure that we can stay competitive. But I think we also want to make sure that we are maintaining our profitability on the back of those price increases. Just one last factor, because you all know about it anyhow. I mean, the shift shortages are driving up prices in many aspects of our business. and also into the consumer-facing areas. I think it will be unavoidable on some of that to flow through some of those price increases to consumers because otherwise it's just not manageable on our business alone. So I think that's my perspective on how I think the pricing environment is going to change, but the segment dynamics are the segment dynamics that we have been talking about and that we are expecting. B2B. On B2B, I mean, our relative market share is still relatively low. We have been growing it over the past couple of years. We strongly believe that there is still potential in winning more customers, but we also want to cross-sell more products, hence our drive to ICT. So we continue to believe that this is a two-dimension, if you want, growth opportunity. First dimension is winning customer relations. Second dimension is expanding with more product categories onto the customers that we have relationships with. So from that perspective, we do think that there is quite some runway on the B2B side to continue growth.

Good. All right. Let me try to break down, give you a sense of how to think about mobile art pool without going into too much detail that we don't disclose because I don't think that that helps you in particular. But I think as you said, mobile revenue of mobile art pools down this quarter are negative again. And of course that is in part of the price increase. There's a number of things and I think you highlight them all well. So let me try to explain a little bit what we're seeing. So if you break the mobile revenue down between usage then and on the one hand usage and on the other hand recurrent revenue from the different brands but in the different brands as you say you then have first and secondary SINs which of course the secondary SINs have lower pricing as well. I think the simple argument to make is that approximately, and this is after, as you correctly do, you take out the FMC discount allocation because that is indeed a revenue... Reallocation from fixed to mobile. So I'm not commenting on the number that you highlighted as the mobile output decline excluding FMC, but I think if you've done the math right, which is the FMC discount over the average customer base gets you there. So again, I think that you're more or less there. I'm now starting to refer to that movement that we're seeing excluding that FMC discount. In simple terms, I might argue that the majority of that decline when we have price increases in quarters is because of the usage decline that we're seeing. So effectively, what we're saying is that the mixed effect on the one hand, both from primary to secondary and flanker brand, as well as the underlying movements of the pricing portfolios that we have in the brands can offset, together with the price increases, offset the decline from that shift. I think André raised it before already as well. that the cannibalization or the moves from the premium to the more secondary brand is not so much of an issue. And I think this, what I'm trying to hint at, is exactly proving that on an ARPU level basis, yes, we do need the price increases, but that's smaller in mobile than in fixed anyway. But in the aggregate, the mix, plus the price increases plus the underlying movements in the pricing portfolios of the brands gets us approximately to flat in where then the variable usage is more or less driving the underlying decline. And of course, as we include more and more services into our standard offerings, that reduction on the back of usage should temper over time.

Bryn, apologies for the length of questions, but I appreciate the answers.

Good, thank you.

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

Yep, good morning and congratulations from me too, Jany, and of course Andreas. Sounds like good early progress on Sunrise Rewards. and getting the Phoenix collaboration going. Are both programs something that pays for themselves on a run rate basis from day one or are there some early costs which are dragging? Obviously you're hoping for a positive net impact from both over time but is it a drag this year before next? And then good to see your broadband net ads picking up. Is there anything to call out there with regard to changing mix of gross ads between cable and fiber? And then finally, very easy one. Did you give a net impact for the different ESPP programs in Q3 this year versus last? Sorry if I missed.

Thanks. All right. Thanks for the questions, Robert. Let me start with the first two ones, and then Jany will take on the ESPP question afterwards. So firstly, on rewards and feelings, is there any upfront cost for the launch of that? Like always, I mean, we have some go-to-market costs. Are we expecting for that to have a material impact on our numbers? I mean, you have seen the launch of rewards in our numbers yet, so that wasn't really a material step up. But yes, we are, of course, reallocating also resources to make sure that the programs are effective and have a good go-to-market. Same is true also on the B2B side. That is the most meaningful launch that we have for the medium and large enterprises this year. And hence, we will also, of course, do some investment and go to market. But I think that's fully baked into the guidance that you have been hearing. Hence, no material impact to be expected from that. Then on the cable and fiber dynamics, Slightly changing towards fiber, but not particularly. So overall, I would say the dynamics are still very solid. What we do see is that the decline of DSL is continuing, and that, of course, is on the fact that the fiber footprint is expanding and DSL customers and fiber footprints are moving out. That is also a driving factor of the average, if you want, wholesale price that Jany was talking about because, in fact, All right, then back to share-based compensation.

ESPP, but it all rolls up into share-based compensation, which we didn't exclude from our, from our just-a-debit-all metric. So for last year, I think what I shared verbally was that the net benefit from an OPEX perspective was around 10 million euros, slightly more, sorry, Swiss francs. And what we also said is that this year is meaningfully lower. In the last year, and I think we spoke about it during the various quarters, the phasing was starting in Q2, then the highest phasing in Q3, and then sort of the remainder in Q4. This year, the program is a bit more back-ended with the benefits coming in Q3 and Q4 mostly. Therefore, if you think about 10, and around 10 million euro. With that phasing, I think one could calculate two to three million of net benefit or net reduction of benefit on the back of debt that should grow a bit in Q3 and Q4 then in a light for light comparison.

Thanks both.

Thanks Robert.

As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Charles de Saint-Péry from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Yes, hello. Thanks for taking the question. I guess it's a pitfall because being last in the question queue, your question has already been answered. But if I may come back to one of them that I think the analyst at Barclays asked regarding The inflow from flanker brands. I was more because you also mentioned at the start that you were expanding your yellow brand. And so I was just thinking if A, what do you think is going to be the consequence on internal churn or churn going from your main Sunrise brand towards the lower brands? And second, if you could give us more color on how you see yellow Thank you. All right, Charles, thanks for the question.

So overall, as I said earlier, we are not really seeing a massive impact from downspinning because we also see that our ability of those flanker brands to attract customers from the market is bigger than the cannibalization. That is definitely different than compared to our incumbent competitor. So from that perspective, there's always a positive contribution on our flanker brands. We are monitoring those trends very carefully because it is, of course, an important element. What we are seeing, interestingly, we talked about that also in the past, that this is not just a one-way street. We also do see customers that are moving back from flanker brands into the main brand because they are potentially missing the product range or the service offering And as such, I think over time, this is probably going to be a pretty stable picture. At least that's what we are seeing trending. Now, what's the future perspective of yellow? I want to go back to what we talked when we talked about our segment expectation A, B, and C, where we were saying where A is probably slightly declining, the B segment where our flanker brand yellow is operating is probably continue to growing, but less than before. And the C segment is probably seeing the most dynamic growth, not unlimited, i.e. in terms of size, but because it has been starting from a lower basis, that's probably where some different dynamics are. So we would expect that our flanker business in total in B and C will capture the opportunity that sits in this segment reallocation if you want. and given our total market share, we think that that will be an overall value created exercise for us.

All right, thanks a lot. Thank you.

We now have a question from the line of Shaykan Ali from Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thank you for the question. More of a big picture question on Spectrum. As a licensed window approaches, how are you guys thinking about the process and potential costs? and how might that factor into your broader capital allocation policy? Thank you.

All right, let me start off with the spectrum auction outcome or expectations. So firstly, for us, it's most important in this auction to ensure that we can continue to hold onto the spectrum that we have as of today. We have no indication to rock the boat. We said that a couple of times. As an industry, we wanted to rather have prolongations than an auction. The regulator indicates that it's more likely to be an auction. The auction rules are not yet finally set, so it's hard to comment on the dynamics that could be within that auction. and at this moment I think given the fact that we are missing all of that information it's quite difficult to talk about the quantum that has to be expected. What is true is that the regulator has indicated that the reserve prices may be somewhat higher so that will mean that there are somewhat higher costs but essentially in the last auction we paid 482 million but that was a pretty skewed auction because we wanted a lot of incremental spectrum that made it very expensive to us So we expect that to be significantly below that number. And what it's going to look like, more likely we can talk about once we have seen the rules and understand how the auction would probably go about. And we would not expect to know that before the end of this year.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Alex Herrmann for any concrete remarks.

I think that concludes the call for today. If there are any further questions, as always, please reach out to the Investor Relations team. With that, thank you very much for joining our call and have a good rest of the week. Thank you.

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