Tele2 AB (publ)

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tele2 Key2 Interim Report 2024 webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Cheryl Johnson, President and Group CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, Sharon, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to this Tele2 report call for the second quarter of 24. With me here in Kista, I have the usual suspects, Charlotte Hansson, our Group CFO, Henrik de Kroot, our Chief Commercial Officer, and Stefan Trampus, who runs B2B. So let's then turn to slide two for the highlights. I would say I'm pleased that our good performance in the beginning of the year has continued in the second quarter. We grew end-user service revenue by 4% in the quarter, marking 13 consecutive quarters of organic top-line growth. And underlying EBITDA grew by 3%, supported by earlier price adjustments in Sweden B2C. We also continued to deliver a solid cash flow that kept our financial leverage below our target range at 2.44 times. Our strategy execution reached an important milestone in the quarter as we finally migrated Comvict into our modern mass market IT environment. By that, we have transformed our previously fragmented environment into only two IT stacks in Sweden. And I'm moving full speed ahead on our digitalization journey towards superior customer experience. Last but not least, we were again recognized for our hard sustainability work as Time Magazine named Tele2 Sweden's most sustainable company and 37th globally, while Financial Times named Tele2 Sweden's climate leader and the second in Europe of all industries. So please move to page three. End-user service revenue grew by 4% organically, driven by continued solid performance in Sweden B2C by the Baltics. Organic underlying EBITDA grew by 3%, driven by end-user service revenue growth, as EBITDA growth improved sequentially in Sweden. Q2 was another solid quarter in terms of equity-free cash flow, and during the first half year, we fully covered the first dividend tranche. In Sweden B2C, end-user service revenue grew by a healthy 4%, with continued strong growth in both fixed broadband and mobile postbates. However, as we executed price adjustments earlier this year than the previous, we will meet some tougher outcomes in the second half. Sweden B2B grew end-user service revenue by 2%, hence slower than previously, yet fine given the slow overall economy with record number of bankruptcies. However, we look forward to improving performance, hopefully within a few quarters. The Baltics grew end-user service revenue by 6%, and underlying EBITDA by 4%. While the second quarter was largely driven by Lithuania, we estimated more broad-based performance in the second half due to ongoing pricing activities. And then let's move to Swedish B2C on slide five. Mobile postpaid ASPU increased by 4%, mainly driven by pricing. We added 6,000 postpaid RGUs in the quarter with positive numbers from both Tele2 and Combi. In fixed broadband, Aspio grew by a strong 9%, mostly due to price adjustments. The number of RGUs declined by 3,000 in the quarter driven by single-play, while the FMC base continued to grow. Digital TV, cable, and fiber saw some RGU net ads in the quarter. The Aspio growth came from a combination of pricing and the cleanup of RGUs that we did in Q1. Move slide six. Mobile end-user service revenue grew by 5%, driven by 7% in post-paid, partly offset by continued decline in prepaid, albeit less than previous quarters, as the SIM registration requirement has now fully annualized. Fixed broadband once again grew end-user service revenue by an impressive 9%, thanks to the strong Aspen. End-user service revenue for digital TV declined by a marginal 1% due to continued decline in the legacy DTT business, whereas cable and fiber grew slightly. And then let's move to B2B. Economic headwinds have continued to impact Swedish companies, which in turn also has affected us as customers scale down or delay some purchases. On this basis, we consider our performance with 2% end-user service revenue growth to be good. Mobile continues to be the growth driver with 6% end-user service growth. This time, mainly driven by our fast-growing IoT business. Mobile PostBait saw solid RGU NetApp, partly due to a new public sector customer, alongside continued Asda growth. Our solutions business was stable, while FIX continues to stabilize as we have now finalized the closure of the copper business. Then let's move to the overview of Sweden. End-user service revenue growth for the total Swedish operation remained at 5% driven by B2C. Underlying EBITDA growth increased to 3% driven by the end-user service revenue growth. The cash conversion of 57% is reflecting 15% CapEx sales in Sweden during the last 12 months. And then let's move to Baltics. The number of Baltic mobile postage customers continued to increase in all markets during the quarter. Blended organic ASPU grew by 3%, driven by Lithuania's 7% due to the more-for-more strategy, price adjustments, and prepaid to postal migration. And then let's look at Baltic's financials. ASPU growth continued with some volume growth in mobile postpaid, led to 6% organic end-user service revenue growth for the Baltics as a whole. Whereas underlying EBITDA growth grew by 4%, driven by Lithuania. As indicated in my CEO letter, we see Latvia getting back to growth following introduction of price adjustments during second quarter, after having been in between pricing cycles in the first half of the year. Cash conversion remains strong at 74% during the last 12 months, reflecting a 10% capex to sales ratio due to ongoing 5G rollouts. With that, I hand over to Charlotte, who will go through the financial overview.

Thank you, Cheryl, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to page 13. So first, a few comments on the group P&L. In Q2, total revenue grew by 1% organically, whereas end-user service revenue grew by 4% organically. The deviation is mainly explained by lower equipment revenue. Underlying EBITDA grew by 3%, both in SEC terms and organically. And underlying EBITDA grew by 3% organically, driven mainly by the solid end-user service revenue growth, exceeding significant cost inflation and continued margin pressure from product exchanges. In Q2, we had an 8 million headwind from energy year-on-year, mainly explained by the 10 million of electricity support received last year. And as a reminder, we also received 25 million of electricity support in Q3 last year. As you can see on the slide, DNA declined by around 85 million year-on-year, most of which because the surplus value of the TDC acquisition has been fully amortized. Then our net financial items increased by around 115 million year-on-year, mainly due to a financial gain related to bond repurchase last year, and partly due to high financing costs for outstanding debt. By Q2, we had a debt mix of 59% fixed rates and 41% floating rates. And with that follows that for every one percentage point rate change in underlying market rates, our annualized financial expenses on loans with floating rates moved by around 110 million. Following successful refinancing through bonds and a loan from the European Investment Bank during the first half of the year, Our next maturity is in June 2025. And now let's move to the cash flows on slide 14. CapEx remained high also in Q2 due to continued intense network investments. And changes in working capital were positive in Q2, mainly impacted by a temporary increase in liabilities. However, despite the positive development in Q2, our ambition to keep working capital cash flow neutral in 2024 remains unchanged. Taxes paid declined year on year, as last year included some 125 million of withholding tax payments in Latvia, while the corresponding payment this year is expected in Q3. All in all, our equity-free cash flow for Q2 ended at 1.2 billion, and in line with last year's level. Over the last 12 months, we have generated 4.9 billion of equity-free cash flow, corresponding to 7.1 krona per share, and consequently, slightly above our current dividend level. So let's move to slide 15 for our capital structure. By Q2, economic net debt amounted to 25.7 billion, largely in line with year end, as the first charge of our dividend was fully covered by our strong cash flow. Our leverage ended at 2.4 times, which is below our target range of 2.5 to 3 times, and reflects our strong balance sheet. And with that, I hand over to Shell for an update on our strategy execution.

Thank you very much, Charlotte. Strong numbers. And then we can move to slide 16, which, of course, you will recognize. You've seen it before. It's a reminder of where we are in our journey from 20 to 26. And the strategy execution program, which is going to take us to a new level in terms of our go-to-market. And we are now basically at the intersection that we see on this graph. We have done the consolidation of the B2C stacks. And as everyone who does this, there are always some early issues with it. But we're basically finished with putting them together into one platform. And we're going to shut down the legacy this year. And that frees up gradually resources for a more dynamic go-to-market, a better customer experience. And of course, an ability to focus even more on value and not just only on volume. That is a fundamental building block of the strategy execution plan, which is going to save us 600 million over the next three years. But of course, also help us to be more precise in our go-to market so that we can build revenues that filter through to our cash flow. We are quite happy that we have reached this milestone, and we look forward to the next stage of that work. On the next slide, you see in real life how this works, the stacks that we talked about. So consumer stacks merged. We did the cutover end of April, and now we've done the hypercare period throughout the summer to make sure that everything is working the way they should. And then, of course, we're going to help Stefan with his issues and his stacks in B2B throughout this year and next, so that he can also have an up-to-speed, modern and efficient go-to-market model for the B2B area. It takes quite a bit of work, but I think we are pretty much at the forefront of the telecom industry in terms of putting everything together. the way we're doing now, also eliminating a lot of risk, cybersecurity risks. And of course, everything is documented by 2024 standards. So that's kind of the reminder that I wanted to go through. And then we can, of course, head to slide 18 on the SEP. And this will be the second update on the progress of the strategy execution program, which aims to deliver radical improvements in customer experience and value and operational efficiency. On the B2C side, we have launched the Tel2 chatbot, which seems to perform very well relative to benchmarks, although it's, of course, early days. We have also introduced a new 360 customer service agent toolbox, which is designed to minimize the time it takes to retrieve information from our systems. On the B2B side, we have finalized the Copper Decommission Project, as well as a multi-year business intelligence transformation program, the latter of which has delivered upgraded analytical capabilities across operations. On the network side, we have significantly improved call setup times through the completion of our mobile core swap project. And finally, our brand new 5G network continues to grow rapidly. It's currently covering close to 80% of the Swedish population, despite no low band spectrum in use. And then let's move to the financials. As you know, we're targeting 600 million of run rate cost savings by the end of 26. By the end of Q2, we have executed all organizational changes and network optimizations worth 200 million in annual run rate savings, of which 40 million contributed to our underlying EBITDA in Q2 year over year. Although we're only halfway through this year, we do not expect the run rate to increase much more by the end of the year, as we have now completed the planned resource reductions. And then let's turn to slide 20 for the guidance and outlook. And we reiterate both our 24 guidance and the midterm outlook. As said in Q4, our EBITDA guidance for 24 includes an estimated energy cost headwind of around 90 million year over year, of which 35 million relates to the energy support received in 23. Given the outcome in the first half year and the current benign price levels, we now estimate the headwind at around 50 million instead of 90. As a reminder of our CapEx profile, in 2025, we expect 13% to 14% CapEx to sales, driven by the final stage of the major 5G expansion in Sweden, ahead of the 3G network closure at the end of the year. And from 26, CapEx to sales is expected to come down to historical levels at 10% to 12%, as our network expansion will return to being demand-driven. So with that, I'll hand it over to the operator for Q&A.

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. We will now take your first question. One moment, please. And your first question comes from the line of Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning, everyone. I had two questions, one on Swedish growth and then just on your EBITDA growth guidance for the full year. On the Swedish growth, I guess there's a little bit of surprise that you didn't see an acceleration in the second quarter versus the first, given you had the price rises in March. I wonder if you could just talk us through why that might have been. So if you look through the consumer numbers, it looks like there was a slight improvement in growth in the second quarter versus the first, but maybe not as much as might have been expected. And then if we look at corporate, that looked like it was a bit weaker. So why do you think the price rise that you delivered hasn't really contributed to an improvement in Swedish service revenue growth? And how should we think about the trajectory of that in the second half of the year? And then the second question is just on EBITDA. growth guidance of 1% to 3%, two factors that may come into your thinking. One is you've delivered 2.5% EBITDA growth in the first half of the year, so your guidance range looks quite wide now. And especially given you're now saying that you're seeing 50 million of energy headwinds rather than 90, why have you left your EBITDA growth guidance so wide still? Thank you.

I can start and maybe people will chip in around me. Andrew, okay. On the service revenue trends, we do see that pricing has kicked in in B2C. And then, of course, we have a slightly lower growth rate in B2B, given the state of the Swedish economy now. We see customers who are optimizing their relationships to us and others in B2B, as indeed we are doing ourselves, also looking through our costs. But I don't think that's a long-term trend. I think the B2B market has a pent-up demand, especially in terms of handsets. And I think that we will see that picking up again. I will be careful not to be exact on the timing of it, but I do think there is a level of pent-up demand. Service revenue growth trends in B2C are pretty good. and when it comes to the EBITDA we had a good start to the year absolutely and I think that if I look at where we were in December last year compared to now I think we are slightly better now than we thought at that time where I know that we are so we are very comfortable about the guidance that we have on the EBITDA level but I think I'd leave it at there. We haven't lifted the guidance, but we have good trends that we are quite comfortable with. You want to say something on the service revenue?

Sure, Shell. Just on the consumer side, Andrew, I think just two things to highlight. We do see in the second quarter the pricing coming through in a very nice way, in particular on the core connectivity, as you can see in the ASCO. And of course, that is an improvement versus the first quarter. There is also another element, of course, of the growth number, which is the volume, particularly on postpaid, that we've taken versus last year in the first and the second quarter. So I think you need to look at the price rises and the volume on the comparison in the quarters versus last year. And then maybe the other element just as a balancing factor to highlight is that our prepaid business If you compare Q1 and Q2, you have a different comp versus last year. It's now stabilizing, but in a comparison way, that sort of is a balancing factor out on the top line numbers.

Yeah, Stefan here, Andrew. On the B2B side, I would say, I mean, Shell alluded to this. We had a tough economic sentiment in the market and had so since Q3 last year. We've seen that our customers have been really focused on cost-cutting. We've also seen that they are doing reductions in employees, in consultancy, that they're buying, et cetera. And of course, all of this is impacting our business. We see that customers are pushing purchases into the future. So this is affecting, and I think it's visible in our numbers. We've had a couple of quarters with lower RGU growth due to these facts. This quarter was again a little bit better than the previous four quarters. We also see that this affects both the solutions part and the fixed part. And in the fixed, of course, we have the copper decommissioning that has affected us, but that will turn in regards to the trends going forward when we're now done with the company commission.

I'd like to add, Andrew, that when I'm thinking back to where we were a couple of years ago, now we've had a bit of a downturn in the Swedish economy and still the delivering 2% growth at the B2B. That was not the case three, four years ago, for sure. So I'm quite confident that B2B will have good trends as soon as we start getting just a little bit more optimism here. And now the balance of the group is much better. Sweden is carrying much more of the burden. We saw Lithuania doing well. We see Latvia coming back in the second half. But the group is more balanced now, which is a good thing.

Thank you very much. That's very helpful.

Thank you. We will now go to our next question. One moment, please. And your next question comes from Andreas Jolson from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Two questions from my side. Looking ahead, can you explain a little bit what you have learned from the inflationary environment that we have been through when it comes to how you can increase ASPU further and how you can use those learnings ahead in basically any environment. And has there been any learnings or input from the new main owners, new board members with regards to this? And secondly, you mentioned after Q1 that there was less need for being prudent on the balance sheet. And now you have another quarter under your belt and you're still below your leverage targets. Do you see a need to take any action on this short term or would you rather wait to see the full year and be more comfortable on the 2025 outlook? Thanks.

Well, I think one of the most important learnings from the inflationary environment for the entire telecom industry is that it is actually possible to increase prices. And like everyone else does, the share of wallet is not prohibitive in any kind of way in this market. In some markets, maybe the picture may not be exactly the same. So I think that's an important learning to take, even though we now, of course, expect significantly lower inflation. And then, of course, being able to move people to extract the value from moving to a 5G price plan, where you now go into our unlimited price plans at 429 SEK. That is a price point that wouldn't have been tenable three years ago. And we see that there is popularity around it. Half of the Swedish population have a 5G-enabled phone. That means that many of those who don't have it today they would have it over the next couple of years. And we want to bring them over to these price plans, which represent good value. So I think those are important learnings that we take with us. When it comes to the new shareholders, it's a little bit early after one board meeting, basically, to take too much of that. But like I said in an interview this morning, I had a team that participated in a hackathon in France last week. And I think these opportunities to solve problems together, to address issues together, are very good because it happens quicker when you do it at level three in the organization than if you do it through lots of PowerPoints. We do see that the new shareholder is totally dedicated to telecoms, which means that they have a keen interest and they can ask good questions and share experiences. That in itself is a positive for the business and for us. And on the balance sheet, yeah, it's clear that we have a very strong balance sheet and we are starting to see in the not too distant future, of course, the end of the main 5G push, which will be finished by the end of 25. And we will have lower CapEx, the sales levels in 26. So we will have the opportunity to either make bolt-on acquisitions or to have a discussion with the board, it's of course the board that decides, it's not me or the management, what we do if the balance sheet enters a level over time that is different from what we have said in our capital allocation policy. So it clearly opens possibilities for us.

Okay, thanks. Thank you. We'll now take the next question, and your question comes from the line of Oskar Ronkvist from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, all, and thanks for taking my questions. So just first, while ASPU is very strong, obviously, in broadband, the customer growth in broadband is decelerating for, I think, the third quarter in a row now. So I just wanted to hear your thoughts if you're sort of losing momentum due to the price increases or what you can say about the net intake. And then I just had a follow-up from the previous speaker just on the potential Bolton acquisitions due to the strong balance sheet. Any sort of main targets that you are looking for in sort of what segment are you looking for? Thank you.

Henrik, do you want to do the first one? Yes, sure.

Oscar, on the ASPO and the broadband and the net intake relationship. As you can see, we of course have an overall very strong performance on our broadband business for a number of quarters, and we've been building that. One of the elements, of course, is also a further inclusion into an FMC setup, as we highlighted in the presentation. When it comes to net intake, there are a couple of factors here. One, as you know, in Q1, we had a cleanup that I think has all been noted. As we've gone through the pricing cycle, obviously there are customers that are looking elsewhere. So, of course, this level of pricing, although we've seen a very good take-up of the pricing levels, has also led to some customers leaving. So that has an effect on the net intake, certainly in the first quarter and to an extent also in the second quarter. And then secondly, we have also looked at, you know, what customers at what levels we want to save from a margin point of view. We see in particular in Oland that, you know, transmission costs have gone up quite substantially in the market. And we are managing, you know, this business also for value and for marginality. So there's a bit of a trade-off on, you know, the net intake that we want to take in and want to save on the So it's a combination of those two factors. And if I look forward, we see, of course, that we're out of the pricing cycle now. So there should be an improved trending going forward.

I would respect your second question. Now, of course, I've been saying this for very many quarters, that we would be open for looking at assets that would help us to build convergence, whether it be in Sweden or Baltics. And without going into any more detail, of course, we have looked at a couple of assets over time, a few assets. And we're quite prudent about the pricing we are willing to pay in the markets. But I've kept repeating it because I don't want you to be totally surprised if one day we decide that we want to buy a good asset for a price that we think makes sense. But of course, on the flip side of that, If that continues to be the pattern, then of course the board will at some point have the opportunity to choose differently and then look at how much shareholder remuneration we should be paying in whatever mix of ordinary, extraordinary, at some point future point of time, given that the balance sheet is strong and the cash flow is strong.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Eric Lindholm-Rostal from SEB. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you, and good morning, everyone. Yes, so one question from me, really. You had quite encouraging service revenue growth here, around 4% in the quarter, and you also made some solid progress on the cost program. But I guess despite that, underlying EBITDA only grew 3%. Can you sort of break down what is driving cost here in the quarter, and how should we think about operating leverage in the second half as well, please? Thank you.

Yeah, I think we have pretty much said this, given that we are still with our guidance. I gave you a bit more information by saying that the outlook now is better than it was When we looked at this at the end of last year, it will still remain within the span that we have talked about. And some of these effects, of course, of the SEP program are coming in gradually, and we have pointed it out in the presentation how much that is. And then Stefan, of course, mentioned things like shutting down of business lines like copper, and we have the prepaid annualization that have played out. So there are a couple of things that also we have to compensate for as we grow our revenues. Pretty much there we are. Charlotte?

Yes, I think that we can also add maybe that we also wrote in the report that we had some provisioning for bad debt as well, because we've been saying in a few quarters now that we haven't really seen an impact of the more challenging economic situation. But I think it's now been catching up on us. And so we do have some impact on that. And that's also something that we highlighted. So we have an extra provision there of 19 million.

All right, perfect. That's very clear. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of, AJ Sonny from JP Morgan, please go ahead.

Hi there. Thank you for taking my question. Firstly, on the Swedish KPIs, I mean, the answers came in pretty strong. I just wanted to know what the general customer reaction has been since you've put these through. And did you guys have to do many retention ops to kind of hold on to your customer base? And then kind of just looking forward, you've obviously had a good acceleration in your ARPUs. Assuming tougher comps coming through, these should kind of tail off towards the end of the year. Or is there something which is going to keep them elevated at these levels? And then on the balance sheet side, you mentioned around sort of acquiring assets. I just wanted to know, would you be comfortable with your leverage going above your target range in order to acquire some of these assets? And yeah, that would be it. Thank you.

I can hit the last one and maybe Henrik takes the first one. So what we have said around that is that we have the leverage band 2.5 to 3 and after we sold the Netherlands we will not have a dividend flow from the Netherlands obviously so we would be reluctant to go much beyond 2.8. We could do it if it's an asset that generates its own EBITDA so that it plays into the multiples but we would have to have a very clear path to getting back to the leverage area that we are comfortable with in the longer term. So that would be my approach on that.

Yeah, and on the Swedish KPIs, AJ, I think as Shell already highlighted, the reaction to the levels of pricing in general terms has been pretty solid, actually. And of course, it's also always a relationship between the overall price levels and inflationary levels in the market, as well as where the value in the proposition sits. As I shall highlight, we've really moved unlimited to a point that it's way more attractive to a large part of the market. That said, when we did the pricing, and in particular on broadband this year, we also did some corrective pricing on part of the base that has been you know, on very low campaign pricing for a very long time. So there has been a level of cost passing included in the pricing. And that has also led to, you know, a bit higher churn as a result of that. And that's what you sort of can see filtering through the numbers. But all in all, you know, we're through that. And the market is, you know, is sort of in a recovering state, right? We see inflation, you know, declining. We see customer growth. confidence index increasing, we see that the handset market is still a little bit lower. So in May, it was minus 2%, but it is recovering from the minus 6% in the year to date. So I would say the outlook for the market on the consumer side is it is strengthening again, certainly post-summer, we believe. And also that will be reflected in our net intake position, which you can already see coming through on the post dates.

Okay, and if I could just have one quick follow-up on that. You know, obviously, given the pricing you've done and where we are with you doing it in Q1, do you kind of see this ARPA grid as the peak of your year-on-year comparisons and do you expect it to tail off?

Well, I think what we said was, you know, and what we've been guiding on is that the comp, of course, will be sort of changing, given that we last year had a tail-end at you know um pricing so the the totality of the pricing value came in in the second half of the year where now you know we've netted off the uh the total value of the pricing in the first half of the year so the comp of course you know will be reflective of that okay thank you that's helpful thank you your next question comes from the line of ce from city please go ahead

Hello, hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. And the first question is really one of the comments that you made in your report. You're saying that you have seen increased competition in the Swedish market through steeper discounted offers. And on top of that, I think you just mentioned that inflation has come down. My question is, if you're looking towards the opportunities of price increases for next year, do you think that the market still has the BNI dynamics that allows you to repeat similar price increases next year and going forward? And my second question is really on your strategy execution program. I think at Q1, you suggested that for the full year, you expect the run rate to be a little bit above 200 million, but you have already achieved 200 million by end of Q2. I guess my question is, do you actually see acceleration in your cost-cutting program, and how should we think about the savings for the second half of this year? Thank you.

I guess we can spread it around a little bit here. So, yeah, the discounted offers, And Henrik can speak more to this. For me, that's a big issue in the bottom part of the market, so to speak, in the transactional market where you've seen quite a lot of that. We had one of the operators that for a while discounted the unlimited position in premium, also ATL. That has since stopped. I think there is a reasonable level of pricing discipline in the premium part of the market. And of course, with inflation coming down, it becomes important to not directly link, like I think operators some places have done, the price adjustments to inflation, but rather have a methodology that is consistent over time. So we will be executing price adjustments also next year. And then it will be for Henrik and the team to exactly lay out how much that should be. Should we maybe expand a little bit on that and get to SAP afterwards?

Yeah, that's fine, Michel. Just to add a couple of more soundbites to how we look at this going forward. Clearly, there is a relationship between the consumer confidence, the overall state of the economy, and the overall state of inflation and how you relate that to a price levels. And we will constantly look at that in light also with the value proposition that we're providing. There's definitely a willingness to pay in the market. We've seen that, but it's a combination of those factors and it's a balancing act as Sher was highlighting. And we'll take it forward in that sense. So, and of course there's the, then there's the dimension of competition and there's always a level of competition in the market. And it's a, you know, and I think we have a, you know, a healthy, a healthy market here in Sweden. There is of course, you know, periods that there's a stronger push in some areas. And we've of course seen that also in particular in the, in the low, the low end of the market, there's a, you know, hunt for for volume in a way but we you know I think we tackle that in our in a good you know in a good way we can of course see and track that on in particular on convict where we still see good volume growth coming in even though we're sort of battling with these sort of situations so all in all I think you know the market the most important thing in the market is how the macro is developing and the continuous willingness to pay of consumers of very good connectivity products and propositions that we offer in general. And against that backdrop, we will set our plans for next year.

And on your second question, I will choose to take a little bit broader view on that instead of limiting it to the SEP as such. Because the strategy execution program has specific deliverables over the years that that we are monitoring and reporting to you on a quarterly basis. And we have executed on those things that were planned in this early part of the year. One of them was an organizational change that was relatively big. But that doesn't mean that we don't have other initiatives outside of that that we are working on to optimize the cost base. Some of that can be related to how we work with certain vendors. And Stefan is working on interesting things there. And of course, how we optimize the commissions that we pay in pursuit of growth and volume. That is an area that we can also optimize outside of the SEP. So the SEP may not necessarily deliver so much more in a year, but we can have cost optimization effects that help us in the second half of the year. And that never ends. That work never ends.

Okay, that's very clear. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now take the next question. And your next question comes from the line of Nick Lyle from Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Morning, everybody. Could I ask a couple, please, Shell? On the business side first, you've mentioned this a lot in the last couple of quarters. Could you expand a little bit on where you are in terms of outlook into the second half? Have you weathered most of the storm or is there more to come and is it just major corporates so far maybe higher margin SME business to come could could you expand a bit on what you see as the outlook into second half And then secondly, on the new IT stacks and consumer, please, what is the consumer going to see over the next year? Are they going to see more of a focus on customer service, or is it about new products like convergence, or is it a change in timing and frequency of pricing issues? Could you just say what that means in sort of practical terms for the consumer, please? Thank you.

Well I think I'll probably hand that over to you.

I can take the first question. Hello Nick, thanks for a question on the business perspective. I think I alluded to it a little bit earlier. When we went into recession in Sweden in Q3 last year basically, we didn't see that coming that hard. We thought it was something that was just a quarterly effect in Q3 and hope that it will turn around quite quickly. But what we've seen during the last past four quarters is that it has prevailed throughout these quarters and it has affected, I would say, all segments. So in the micro segment, the mass market segment, I mean, we see that they have a big cost focus, reviewing the subscriptions to avoid the cost possibility if they can. In the larger segments, we haven't seen the natural growth that we've seen with our customers employing more personnel, et cetera. So you have that natural growth. We also see that they have reduced and having cost programs, looking at all kinds of costs. And of course, they also look through what they're buying, do they need everything they have acquired in what they're buying from a services perspective. So in the larger segments, we also see this, and that has affected the RGU development, which you have seen. And also in the public segment, I mean, they have also been quite affected by the inflationary pressures that they had to look at the cost base that they're dealing with. We see several public domains and organizations that have been cut back on the funding from the government, et cetera, but has also made an impact on us. How fast we will get out of this, I mean, it's Hard to tell. I would say that there's not a common view on how fast this will be. But I mean, we see the positive signs on the consumer side. I think that is something that goes before we will see the turnaround on the B2B side. We had really high bankruptcies in the first half of the year. There was a slight improvement in June. If that is just a one-month effect, if that's something that is turning or pointing in the direction that it will turn around, let's see. But of course, an improved business climate will help us and support our revenue growth going forward. It's hard to tell. We think we will prevail a couple of more quarters before we see the turnaround. I hope that gives some color on the situation, Nick.

Okay. And Nick, then on the new IT stack, what it does for us and for our consumers, basically three things. So first of all, it allows us to increasingly focus on our own channels. And in particular, of course, digital and online, but also our own channels, customer operations and our stores, which, you know, supporting SAP will, of course, help us to drive down our overall CPO costs. And in particular, in combination with, you know, the introduction of devices and handsets to tell it to, I think this will be a very strong sort of, you know, focus and area and benefit basically for consumers going forward. The second area is that the new IT stack really allows us to refocus IT development resources to drive our digital customer journeys at a much higher speed. So we still have a lot to gain there and I really look forward that we're really getting an accelerated traction on the digitalization of these customer journeys. And then the third point of the new IT stack is basically that it will allow custom operations to be way more efficient. We already talked about, you know, the first step on the chatbot and, you know, the new 360 toolbox. So those are all things related to the IT stack and they will help us to, you know, to drive down the core volumes and, you know, improve the average handling time. So also that translates into cost savings and will support the SAP program.

I think the timing is good. You talk about introducing a chatbot, and there's nothing unique about that. People did it years ago, but I think the technology has matured to a point where the user experience becomes much better. We all know that three years ago, some of these products were nice to have, but they didn't really deliver that much. They have matured, so I think it's a good time to start implementing customer-facing technology.

And as you say, Shell, in particular, Now that we can connect it up with the rest of the IT environment, you really get the personalization. And that's the key thing that drives the customer experience.

That's great. Thanks very much.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. And your next question comes from the line of Stefan Galfin from DMB. Please go ahead.

Yes, so I'll focus a little bit on the Baltics. So first of all, you mentioned you are positive to a better second half in Estonia, where you see a turnaround. What makes you confident on this, except solid customer intake this quarter? And then you also talk about price increase in Latvia. Could you just give some indication on the magnitude of the price increase there?

Okay, let me take it. In Latvia, yeah, we talked about it before. They did two price increases in 22, and they had a phenomenal growth in 23. They were at some point up at 20%, which is quite unique. And then they did not do price increases at the beginning of this year, so they started executing on this in June. And then we are starting to see that effect coming in the third quarter. So I'm very confident about the positive delivery from Latvia. And in Estonia, as you said, we've been through quite a bit of change there in terms of people and the approach. there's also been an impact from one specific contract that has dried it down. When I'm a bit positive to Estonia, it is also for a couple of reasons. The team is coming into place, it's becoming more clear, and it's good to see that in particular Latvia is supporting the team there quite a lot. And we also do see some signs that the market is a bit more rational. There are price adjustments happening in the Estonian market that we didn't necessarily see one or two years ago. So that's kind of the basis for my optimism. Now, of course, Latvia is a quite small business. So it's very important that Lithuania continues its good development and that we get Latvia back up to where it used to be with a good upline and EBITDA growth. And I see that happening.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. And your next question comes from the line of Osman Ghazi from Barenburg. Please go ahead.

Hello. Thank you for the opportunity. I just have three questions, please. The first one, We're just following up on the comment of this catch-up in bad debt provisioning that's happening in Sweden. And you said you've made a $19 million provision in Q2. Was there any provision made in Q1? And how much lower are bad debts as a percentage of sales now than what you would consider as a normal level? That was the first question. The second question was just on wondering if you could give any color on how net promoter scores have been trending through Q2. Obviously, Q1 would have been impacted because you communicated the price increase, then you put through the price increase in March. I guess you've got a double whammy, but I was just interested to see how how things have trended since. And then finally, just on the Baltics, one of your peers, I mean, there's been a report about one of your peers potentially exploring an IPO of one of their Baltic segments. And I was just wondering if Teletubbies would be open to considering any kind of value unlock in that direction. Thank you.

Okay, so if I start them on the on the bad debt. I think this is more on the comments that we previously said that we haven't seen any impact at all from the more challenging economic environment. But now that we see that we just want to make sure that we more prudent about that. So we haven't had any extra provisions anything in in q2 or it's just a normal business i would say it's just in q2 that we had made an adjustment on that so it's really related to the macroeconomic environment that we're just facing now and also on the back of more bankruptcies and so on that we're seeing But as Stefan was saying that we see a trend of that easing also in Q1. So let's hope that that is actually a trend, starting of a trend that we see there.

NPS, yeah, the customer experience and how we, you know, how we see that happening. Of course, pricing is one of the key drivers of customer experience. And, you know, we see after each event, price adjustment we do, whether it's, you know, a smaller or a larger one, actually, that's quite, in that sense, immaterial that customers react to a price move. It's always a temporary, you know, sort of dip that we see, but of course we see a little bit of a dip, but we've already seen the recovery as well in the second quarter. And, you know, we measure that by through Teletubbies and through Convict. At the same time, we also see, you know, with, for example, the IT stack move, where, you know, where it, of course, also, you know, addresses the customer, that there's also like a temporary reaction to which we've, you know, we're also fully recovering again. So there are sort of, you know, these reactions from customers, but if you look at the overall trending, you know, our customer experience is at the levels where, you know, it's It sort of actually is on a, you know, if you take it over a longer period. So we have a strong customer experience in particular on Convict. It's a love brand in the market. And we see that on Tele2 where we in particular have these combination customers, these FMC customers. We have very strong loyalty, you know, going forward.

Just on that, has the NPS now recovered back to levels before the price increase, or are you still in that process of recovery?

No, yes. It has returned.

Okay.

Thank you. And on the Baltics and potential IPO from my peer, of course, not for me to comment on that, except for saying that... We have had great performance overall from the Baltics over the last years, all the time since I came here. We think they're doing a very good job and in general very happy to hold those assets. So we don't have any specific new thoughts around that.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. And the question comes from the line of Andre Kabadgesek from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, and thank you for the presentation. I've got three questions as well, please, and I'll take them one by one just for clarity. So the first question that I had, you mentioned, you know, the copper shutdown being completed, and you maybe described those three aspects, because obviously, I guess, this on the one hand has a positive cost effect, as we see with tears, but at the same time, you've seen Maybe over the past couple of sports, there's a pretty accelerated, you know, negative trend in terms of some of the legacy revenues. So maybe can you tell us or describe the effects and then you still have some, I guess, fixed plus any MDSL in the system. So what are the trends there going forward?

Henri, you are breaking up a little bit. I think we heard your question asking what is the impact on revenues and profitability of the copper shutdown and then you asked more generally about impact from legacy businesses that are impacting us. That's what I heard.

Yes, exactly. The copper shutdown but on both the cost side as well as the revenue side.

Maybe we take that one first. Andre here, Stefan, answering this on the copper decommissioning. When we have done the copper decommissioning through the years, the starting point was a lot higher than it was to the end of the program. But from a margin perspective, what we've done is that we've moved the customers to more modern solutions. Some fixed solutions, like going from DSL to our on-net broadband, and of course that comes with a better possibility, of course. But we also moved some customers to mobile solutions, IT, new IT solutions in in regards to our PBXs, etc. So there are several different kind of copper solutions that we've moved. And we moved them to better marginality products, I would say. Of course, there's some churn relating to this, of course, when we're doing it. But from a margin perspective, it has improved. And now, I mean, we've come to the end of this quarter, Q2. We have decommissioned the all these copper services. And of course, you will see an improved trend year on year or quarter on quarter versus last year, starting more significantly, I would say, in the second half of this year, if we look at the revenue development in the fixed domain. Also to add, some color on. I mean, we have some fixed voice revenues still, but that we don't regard as legacy as such. But of course, there's a natural move from fixed voice to mobile voice, and that's still around. But it's really low digit number of the total revenues of the B2B and user service revenues. Hope that gives some color on the copper decommissioning on red.

Is that okay? Yes, thank you very much, and I hope my line is clear now. Apologies. Second question that I had just related to some of the commercial trends in terms of cost-cutting and third-party sales, which you and your peers have commented on, especially towards the end of last year, that there's a big pullback away from third-party sales channels. The in-house migration is a big part of your cost-cutting, and we've seen over the past couple of years until recently, churn levels coming down, portability numbers coming down, but that seems to be picking up again this year. So just your comment in terms of what's going on there and how that potentially impacts your cost-savings target.

I didn't really get the last part of your question, André. Did you mention porting or something?

I think most of it was about commissions and that others have also spoken to the need for reducing commissions. If I should start and then Henrik can formulate his answer. If we are brutally honest about this, of course, it's a key element of the strategy execution program to reduce the commissions we pay to third party companies that are a part of our distribution and we will deliver on that gradually over time. Having said that to some extent in parts of the cycle we see players who are increasing commissions for a short-term volume operation so to speak and that's sometimes something that we have to follow and then and that of course is something we need to compensate for when we are building our profitability. It has worked okay for us now, but the trajectory is, of course, to reduce commissions. That's going to be an important part of 2025 and 2026 as we improve our systems.

Just to add on to that, André, this is, in a way, also a natural transition if you look at how we're evolving the business going forward. In particular, for Teletool, where we've added now the handsets back to the portfolio, the fact that we are increasingly putting the development onto our online channels and digitalization, and the fact that we move increasingly into multiplayer service provision means that also for the customer, it's way easier to get served through our own channels. So that's sort of a, you know, a helping background to, you know, one that we are aiming to make this transition to help, you know, to help CPO overall, but also that it is a natural transition in where we are taking the customer in our portfolio.

We are on overtime, but of course, we would like everyone to have the chance to finish their questions. So, Andrej, were we okay now or we have Keval waiting?

No, that's fine. Maybe if I had just one very quick question, a third one, just on taxes, because we've had some volatility both intra-year and intra-quarter in terms of cash tax especially. So just any, and you don't usually do this, but in terms of guidance for cash taxes for this and maybe next year, is there a number that you are targeting or have in mind, please? That would be the last one.

No, like I said, we don't really guide on the taxes.

I guess it's the Latvia thing.

Yeah, it could be the one that we talked about earlier maybe, the Latvian one. But that's the timing issue of 125 million that will be paid in Q3 instead of Q2 as we did last year.

Understood. Thank you very much and apologies from online. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take our final question for today. And your final question comes from the line of Kaval Kioria from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking the questions and I've got two both related to B2B. So you mentioned the macro impacts in B2B, but do you think you maintain the market shares during the quarter? Just trying to work out if the issues are fully macro, whether you feel there have been increased competitive issues at all. And secondly, you've also been quite clear on the consumer price rise timing. But can you remind us of the size and phasing of the B2B price rises you may have done last year and also this? Thank you.

Thank you, Keval. On the market share development, I would say I think it has been a stable situation. We haven't lost any big customers during Q2. I think the big thing is not really the, I mean, there's always market competition. And Henrik was alluding to that from a consumer perspective. The competition is always challenging. I think nothing has changed from a competitive perspective. But market share wise, I would say it has been stable. On the pricing, we're doing continuously a lot of different pricing just to our portfolio. But as you know, the larger part of our revenues is related to segments which have bespoke agreements and a lot of different agreements with the overlapping contract periods for different kinds of services, which we need to oblige to. So the micro segments, which we have more of a mass market perspective, there we do back book pricing. We've done that in the beginning of the year on both broadband and on mobile. But in the large scheme of things, I mean, this has a limited effect on the overall revenues as we have so much bespoke agreements with customers. But we have inflation-linked clauses in the contracts. And when contracts expire, we can do price ups. We can do it yearly as well for certain products. So it's a bit of a mix. picture in regards to how we drive the pricing on the B2B side.

Okay, that's clear.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. I will now hand the call back to Shell for closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much and thank you to all of you for taking the time to share this morning with us and for your questions. I think what you see is first half from Tele2 that has delivered strong results. We have a very strong balance sheet and we have visibility towards the end now of the 5G swap. So clearly the board will have significant maneuvering space in making decisions as we progress towards the closure of the main 5G rollout. We have a good commercial momentum. Very happy to see the good momentum in Sweden, especially in B2C now. And of course, we are bringing that momentum with us to the second half of the year. In the second half of the year, we will have a one-off with the energy benefit we had last year of around 25 million. That translates to almost half a percentage point at EBITDA level. But that's a one-off that we will not carry with us for the next years. We're also meeting some of the price increases from last year. But definitely the momentum we built with the price increases earlier this year will be with us. And I expect to see a continued strong business. And I expect improvements, especially in Latvia, compared to the first half, which will be helpful. So I think we're in a good spot. There's always a lot of work to do, but in general, we feel good about the direction we're on. So again, thank you for taking the time and wish you guys a very nice summer.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.