Telekom Austria Ag

Thank you very much and a wonderful good morning from a sunny Vienna. We look back to, I think, the second quarter, but the details will now be presented by Thomas Arnoldner, our CEO, Siegfried Mayhofer, our CFO, and Alexander Platter, our Chief Operating Officer. I hand over to start with Thomas, who will go through the highlights of the second quarter. Thomas, please.

Thank you, Hans, and hello. Hello. everyone on the call, whether you're in an office or on a beach. As you have seen, we have again posted solid results for the second quarter. We were again able to grow our revenues. They increased by 7% to approximately 1.3 billion euros. This increase was mainly driven by value-protecting pricing measures, or read them also as inflation, linked price increases, and the continuation of our upselling activities. Based on The better than expected first half of this year, we also decided to raise our revenue guidance from around 4% to now around 5% growth for the full year 2023. This positive revenue development led to an EBITDA increase of 6% to 486 million euros, despite higher operating expenses. However, these operating gains were fully offset by the lower financial result. Higher interest rates compared to the second quarter of last year resulted in higher interest expenses. In addition, the financial result was negatively impacted by exchange rate effects, mainly by the Belarusian ruble devaluation against the euro. Our capital expenditures increased by 148 million euros to 359 million euros. Of this amount, however, approximately 110 million euros was invested to secure our spectrum in Croatia for another 15 years. In addition, investments in the broadband roller, particularly in Austria, were higher than in the prior year. As a result of the higher capex and changes in working capital, the free cash flow amounted to 30 million euros. The AGM on the 7th of June approved a dividend of 32 euro cents per share. And in mid-June, we paid this dividend totaling 230 million euros to our shareholders. In June, the international credit rating agency Fitch published its first rating for Avon Group. The long-term E-share rating of A-minus with a positive outlook is the best Fitch rating for a European tech group. today and we are now rated by all three major international rating agencies. At the end of June, we invite for an extraordinary general meeting regarding the spin-off of the tower business. This meeting is scheduled to take place on August 1st, 2023. Now, if we take a look at our subscriber numbers, You can see on the next slide that in the second quarter, we continue to grow our mobile subscriber base, which increased by 5% year-to-year to now 24.5 million subscribers. This growth was largely driven by the, again, strong growth in the machine-to-machine business, excluding machine-to-machine customers, the subscriber base remains more or less stable. In the fixed-land business, the number of revenue-generating units increased by 1.9% year-to-year, while, again, the number of voice RGU's decreased, the number of both RGU's and TV at home RGU's increased, and the RGU growth in the international operations, especially in Belarus and Bulgaria, more than offset to decline in Austria. If you look at ARPU, the group ARPU was year on year, and ARPU increased in the second quarter by 2.6%. Now, taking a closer look into the markets, Austria first on the next page, then identified competitive environment, which we saw in the second half last year, has increasingly eased in the course of 2023 and has reached kind of a normal competitive intensity. As also discussed in the last call, in more or less April, we have implemented value-protecting pricing measures, so price increases according to inflation, which had a positive impact, particularly on the service revenues. We have also continued our upselling efforts. Our focus for some time now has been the expansion of the broadband network both on 5G where we have the 5000 5G site installed in spring as well as on the fiber side where the expansion of our fiber optic network is also progressing a bit some what higher slower than a plant because of some bottlenecks in the construction capacity and the entire market is experiencing Our solution connectivity business continued to grow, although at a bit slower pace in Q2 than in Q1 due to a larger project, which we had in the second quarter of the last year. On the cost side, again, the main driver was electricity cost, which rose sharply both in Q2 as well as in the entire first half of the year. Sieger will provide a little bit more details on this later on. The equipment margin improved in Q2. However, this could not compensate for the subsidy-driven lower equipment margin, which we had in Q1. The restructuring expenses were lower as a result of lower long-term restructuring provisions due to interest rate movements. Looking into the international segments, these also performed well, with the exception of Belarus, where the environment is particularly challenging. The first international market, Bulgaria, where service revenues performed very well, driven by the continuing upselling and the value-protecting pricing measures implemented in March. But as well, Stemo, which we acquired in summer last year, which contributed 14 million euros of revenues in the second quarter. In Croatia, the mobile business developed well, as did the equipment sales. In Belarus, as just mentioned, the business challenges, there has been a strong upward trend in cost, while on the revenue side, restrictive price regulations limit our ability to adjust the prices accordingly. In addition to that, the Belarusian ruble depreciated against the euro, negatively impacting our revenues by around 14 million euros, and EBITDA by around 7 million euros in the second quarter. In Serbia, mobile service revenues developed well, and the equipment market also improved. In Slovenia, service revenues also went up. However, here inflation is impacting decreases, especially higher electricity costs. And in North Macedonia, upselling, as well as higher mobile subscriber base and more ICOs compared to the last year, helps to increase our revenues on the cost side here. We see an easing of the electricity cost, while the workforce cost has increased. Now, talking about the workforce, you get to take a bit closer look onto the financials.

Thank you, Thomas. on slide number seven, we would like to show you the drivers of group revenues. Q2 total revenues grew by 7.5% in the year. Service revenues were up by 5.5%, benefiting from the already mentioned upselling and value-protected pricing measures. Equipment revenues grew by 20%. STEMO in Bulgaria was not consolidated in the first half of 2022 and had a positive impact on total revenues revenues of about 14 million euro. This amount was offset by the depreciation of the Belarusian ruble, which reduced revenues by about 14 million euros. In terms of revenues, Austria continued to be by far the largest market in terms of revenue, ahead of Bulgaria and Russia. In the second quarter, Bulgaria was the fastest growing market, even when excluding SEMO. On the next page, The cost and loss statement, since we have already discussed revenues, I will start with OPEX. Electricity costs were up 34% year-over-year. This is mainly due to Austria, where in 22 we still benefited from electricity supply terms prior to the Ukraine crisis. However, these contracts have expired, resulting in higher prices for electricity to be paid in 2023. In addition to the electricity costs, in particular workforce costs and product-related costs, such as content costs, as well as licenses and software for resale, increased. The weakening of the Belarusian ruble had a negative impact of €7 billion on Vita of Q2. Restructuring expenses were slightly lower than last year. The solid operating performance was fully offset by the deteriorated financial result. Higher interest rates compared to the second quarter of last year resulted in higher interest expenses. And in addition, the financial result was negatively impacted by exchange rate effects. Predominantly, the better Russian movement against Europe. Bottom line, the net result was slightly below last year's second quarter. On free cash flow, the free cash flow is significantly lower than last year. This is due to higher CapEx and changes in working capital. CapEx includes an investment of 110 million euro in spectrum in Croatia, as Thomas already mentioned, and higher investments in broadband. This mainly affects Austria, but also other markets such as Croatia. Working capital effects include higher inventories and increases in installment sales. Free cash flow excluding spectrum was 140 million compared to 171 in the second quarter of last year. With this, I hand over back to Thomas.