Tele2 AB (publ)

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tele2 Q1 Interim Report 2026 Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will 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 speaker today, Jean-Marc Herion, President and Group CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning and welcome to Teletubbies' report call for the first quarter of 2026. With me here in Stockholm, I have Peter Landren, our Group CFO, Nicolas Högberg. our Chief B2C Officer and Deputy CEO, and Stefan Prampus, our Chief B2B. Please turn to slide two for some highlights from the first quarter. In Q1, group end-user service revenue grew by 3%, whereas underlying EBITDA grew by 11%, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. We also continue to generate strong equity free cash flow with 2.2 billion crowns in Q1, plus 7% versus last year. Our basic dollar transaction was completed by the end of February, generating cash proceeds of 4.7 billion to 32. And we also opened five new stores in Sweden in Q1 and upgraded our fixed network to 2.5 gigabit per second, a record internet speed. which are already available across many of the largest cities, including in Stockholm. With our 5G already recognized as the fastest in Sweden, we now operate the fastest networks in the country. Please move to page 3 for more details on our results. Our 3% growth in end-user service revenue was driven across all our operations and core services. Our 11% growth in underlying EBITDA was driven by both transformation and revenue growth. Our strong equity cash flow, free cash flow, which grew by 7% year-on-year, was largely driven by the increase in our operating cash flow. Peter will go through the details. CapEx2 sales declined seasonally, partly due to lower 5G rollout speed in Q1. Leverage fell to 1.5 times. due to the Baltic current transaction and organic cash generation. In Sweden consumer, end-user service revenue grew by 1%, with contributions from all main services. In Sweden business, end-user service revenue grew by 5%, driven by mobile and IoT. Baltic operations grew end-user service revenue by 7%, and underlying EBITDA by 15%. Let's move to slide five for more details on Swedish consumers. As commented in the CEO letter this quarter, we combine store expansion with rapid progress in AI and automation, improving customer experience, operational efficiency, and our ability to anticipate customer needs. Mobile postpaid end-user service revenue grew by 3%. Total mobile revenue grew by 2%, partly upset by continued decline in prepaid, and some temporary issues due to the move to our new logistic platform. Fixed broadband grew end-user service revenue by 1% due to ASPU growth. Digital TV once again improved sequentially. reasoned by healthy high single-digit growth in Tele2 TV and user service revenue, more than offsetting the latest impact of Boxer TV switch-off. Let's look at consumer KPI on slide 6. Mobile Prosperity reviews remain unchanged in Q1, despite temporary negative impacts related to 2G, 3G shutdowns. Mobile ASPU increased by 1% year-on-year, driven by price adjustments, while still negatively impacted by IFRS 15 fair value adjustments, which will gradually aidate during the year. Think World Finance EU declined slightly in Q1, while ASPU grew by 1% due to price adjustments. As in previous quarter, we have remained selective in part of the market due to continued aggressive competition. which hamper volume growth. TVFUs increased by 4,000 in Q1, as the good growth momentum in Tele2 TV has continued, as two grew by 5% year-on-year, driven by pricing and wholesaling of sport content, improving the success of our flexible offer. Please move to slide 7 for Sweden Business. Sweden's business continues to deliver a strong end-user service for new growth, reaching 5% in Q1, despite strong competition. Mobile grew by 8%, largely driven by our IoT business, which is expanding in new industries, such as the automotive sector and geographies, for example, in Latin America. Mobile RGU has increased by 3,000 in Q1, as we continue to be impacted by change in customer mix, B2B positions grew by 3% in Q1, reflecting our decision to focus on a more targeted portfolio of services. Please move to slide 8 for Sweden Financial. In total, Sweden end-user service revenue grew by 2% in Q1, driven by both business and consumer. And the Align and DeepDAO grew by a solid 9%, driven by the end-user service revenue workforce reduction, sector prioritization, and cost control. The cash conversion has improved to 73% over the last 12 months. Let's move to the Baltics financials on slide 10. Baltics once again maintained strong top and bottom line growth in Q1. Total end-user service revenue grew by 7%, partly supported by previous price adjustments. Q1 was the fifth consecutive quarter in which all Baltic markets delivered double-digit organic growth in underlying EBITDA, delivering a total growth of 15% pro forma the Baltic Toro transaction. It is worth commenting that our Baltic operations started accounting the costs of Baltic Toro's company in March 2026. Cash conversion based on the last 12 months stands at 80%. despite the impact of the thorough transactions. As you know, a spectrum auction has already been announced and will take place in Lithuania in 2026. Let's move to slide 11 for Baltic operating KPIs. The total post-paid bays in the Baltics increased by 17,000 RGU in Q1, driven by all markets. Pre-paid decline was due to regulation in migration to post-paid. Blended organic S2 grew by a strong 10%, driven by price adjustments and continued pre-paid to post-paid migration. With that, I hand over to Peter, who will go through the financial overview.

Thank you, Jean-Marc, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to page 13 on the group income statement for the quarter. Total revenue grew thanks to organic service revenue growth of 3%, with contribution from all operations. Underlying EBITDA grew by 10% organically, or 11% after lease, thanks to the sharp cost control across the group and the contribution from service revenue. Items affecting comparability were mainly impacted by redundancy costs related to workforce reductions. Last year, the corresponding redundancy provisions were more significant, as you might recall. The gain from sale of operations of 5.1 billion SEK refers to the capital gain from the Baltic Tower transaction completed at the end of February. Net financial items decreased year-on-year, mainly thanks to higher interest income and positive currency effects. In Q1, our average interest rate was 2.7%, with a debt mix of 73% fixed rates and 27% floating rates. Income tax increased year on year due to higher taxable profits. Let's move to the cash flow on slide 14. CapEx paid excluding Spectrum decreased compared to last year, mainly due to lower intensity in the Swedish 5G rollout and reduced workforce. The decline was also impacted by delayed hardware supply with an expected cash up later in the year. Spectrum CapEx paid increased. due to the first out of two payments for the Swedish spectrum secured in 2025. Changes in working capital contributed to the cash flow with around 450 million SEK, largely driven by seasonal decrease in equipment receivables. Taxes paid increased since last year included a tax refund of around 280 million, while the corresponding tax refund this year was around 50 million. In summary, Q1 equity-free cash flow reached 2.2 billion SEK, which implies a 7% growth compared to last year. And this translates to around 9 SEK per share over the last 12 months. Please turn to slide 15 for our capital structure. End of Q1, economic net debt was 17.4 billion SEK, a reduction of 6.9 billion compared to end of 2025. This was proven by two things. The cash proceeds of 4.7 billion from the Baltic Tower transaction, as well as the 2.2 billion generated in the business. And this brings down leverage to 1.5 times underlying EBITDA after lease ahead of the proposed dividend distribution. And with that, I hand over to Jean-Marc for some comments on our 2026 guidance.

Thank you, Peter. Please turn to slide 16 for 2026 guidance. As highlighted last quarter, we concluded 2025 by setting a high standard and establishing a new reference point for 72 profitability. Building on that momentum, we remain focused on consolidating the company's transformation, further strengthening profitability and safeguarding revenue growth in the face of continued geopolitical uncertainty. We therefore maintain our full year guidance for 2026. with low single-digit organic growth of end-user service revenue, low to mid-single-digit organic growth of underlying EBITDAO, capex to sales in the range of 10% to 11%. Note that the organic growth rates include the impact of the Balsic-Toros transaction on a pro forma basis. And I hand back to Peter for some additional comments regarding 2026 before we open up for Q&A.

Thank you. First, a reminder about the Baltic Tower transaction. As previously stated, the transaction is expected to have a negative impact on underlying EBITDA of around 35 million euro on a 12-month basis. And in Q1, this only impacted March, while we will see the full impact onwards. And then a few reminders on the cash flow for the full year 2026. On Spectrum, we noticed a that an auction has been announced in Lithuania, expected to take place during 2026. On financial items excluding leasing, we still estimate full-year net payments of around 650 million, with a similar quarterly facing to last year. And finally, on taxes, we still estimate full-year payments of around 1.4 billion SEK. And with that, I hand 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. One moment for our first question. And our first question comes from the line of Andre Kavacek from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thank you for the presentation. I had two questions on speed and specifically mobile, I guess. So I'm looking at the mobile trend specifically in post-aid. And if you could please talk about, you know, I guess, you know, you mentioned previously that you put through price rises this year about a month earlier than last year, that the market has been kind of improving. So I think we would have maybe expected a bit more of an acceleration. You mentioned also that there have been some kind of legacy negative impacts on mobiles, if you can talk about the growth rates for post-stage Sweden specifically and how you see those throughout 2026. And second question, if I may, also related to this, but maybe from a different angle, you've obviously put through the new portfolio on mobile. You seem to have a very stable base in the quarter on post-aid. Again, some price rises specifically on like family funds, which I think are very important. So how is the reception then? And again, tied to how we should think about the service revenue kind of profile for the rest of the year. Thank you.

Quite technical issue, but we continue the Q&A session. Just to answer your first question first, and then I will hand over to Nicolas to develop on the portfolio and the new pricing. But, of course, the price adjustment that we implemented a little bit earlier this year, of course, has a progressive impact, and it's, as always, mitigated by the BTL discount, the different segments where these price adjustments are adjusted for. I believe that the second question is more relevant to be answered by Nicolas about the portfolio now and the positioning and how we see the competition. Not only, I would say, with the with the other operators, but with the sales distributors as well.

So thank you, Jean-Marc. This is Nicolas. Yes, the new portfolio has been very well received. We have simplified the portfolio radically, which is good, and we have also continued to build Frank. And, of course, as you know, we have started somewhat a repositioning of Convict with Jättebra, very good, and it's actually working very good so far. So what we can see is that it's still a fierce competition and a challenging market. We have been restricted to engage in the price war, especially when it comes to the no-frills brands. They are pushing the market really hard. But we see that our new portfolio is working well and that our position in the market becomes clearer and clearer. Then when it comes to our distribution, we have launched five new stores during the quarter and they are working very well and we think that that's the way forward for us. And we also see that we are less dependent on third-party distribution.

Thank you. Can we maybe follow up on the last point? So, is it a case of maybe you are, as you kind of reposition the distribution channels, is it a case of maybe there will be slightly weaker volumes this year, but profitability will benefit as a result?

Yeah, let me jump off here again to complete what Nicolas was commenting. Of course, we are operating in a very competitive environment in Sweden on the consumer market. We like this kind of competition. We have two strong brands to compete with the others. One of the specifics, and this is a comment that I already made several times, One of the specifics of the Swedish market is that the competition is distorted by the behaviors of some sales channels, which are too important, overwhelming on the volumes. For instance, telemarketing, so that's probably what you were referring to. We made a very clear statement last week supporting sector rules for telemarketing operators, but we believe that this sector rules should apply as well to other channels, third-party retailers, where we have as well received a lot of complaints from our customers. So this, in my view, is one of the focus, one of the priorities for the industry in Sweden and, of course, for Tele2 in the coming few months. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question for today comes from the line of Fredrik Litho from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions as well. I would like to come back to your cost profile and the good cost control you're driving the company with. A little bit more on the sort of the software stacks. You alluded to that in your report that you're working your way through with automating the software stacks and all that stuff. How much of that upgrade, modernizing, automating your software environments will sort of trickle through and improve cost profile over time as well, or is this that you get into a modern with your software and the cost will be pretty much the same to drive it. It would be interesting to hear a little bit more color on that. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for your question. It's a very complicated exercise to answer your question in a few minutes in this Q&A session because, of course, for one simple reason, because it's an ongoing transformation process. We have a huge potential ahead. I believe that Tele2 is leading the pack in the AI and automation initiatives. We received recently an international award for the automation of our processes. We have built, you know, in parallel, we were optimizing the organization in the company. We have created a dedicated data and AI team Of course, one of the purposes is to help us better understand the customer behavior, anticipate their issues, and make the support of these customers smoother and faster and more transparent. But we have engaged into a huge transformation of all our processes. So we have a series of initiatives, internal initiatives that empower the managers and the employees to automate their own processes. So we have created a kind of library of tools and a small internal academy to support automation and AI initiatives. And furthermore, and I believe that that is more relevant with the content of your question, we started applying agent coding in our development. And this, of course, is a huge opportunity because it accelerates the delivery and lower the cost of the development. We haven't seen all the potential of this initiative yet, but I'm personally very impressed by the first results that we are delivering. So far, we don't have any numbers to share with you. We are just trying to unleash the potential of agent coding internally to accelerate our transformation.

Hmm. Very clear. Can I have a follow-up on that, Jean-Marc? Do you expect that you will see the biggest effect or maybe the earliest effect within your production, or will you see it within your support systems or support functions, I should say? Where do you see the early signs?

No, I believe that we already see it in the customer interaction because that's where, of course, we put our priorities first. We want to improve our knowledge in order to better understand the needs and the issues faced by every single customer segment. But the automation and the development is evolving fast as well, including in the support for B2B customers. And that's because, of course, I should have mentioned that the automation of our processes started in the B2B area last year when we started trying to automate the processes that we have in place in order to support our large accounts. And this is from there that we have developed this automation academy and so on and so on.

Very interesting. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andreas Johalsson from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Two questions from my side. First of all, Sean Mark, your comment about the macro situation currently how does that impact your growth plans and growth ambitions for the year has there been any changes to that given what you see around you and and does it also make you more eager to look further to the cost side and capex side and secondly Just curious, given a quite strong start to the year with 11% EBTA growth, how did you reason when you decided to keep the EBTA outlook unchanged? Thanks.

Okay. Thank you, Andreas. I believe that the two questions are linked. First, so far, the telecom industry has not been the one most impacted by the international situation. So that's good news. But in the meantime, we see a sharp increase in the price of the component of IT equipment, So this may impact our costs, CAPEX and OPEX, in the coming months. But so far, we can deal with the situation, but this price increase in the component is a concern for our industry, not only for the telecom industry. But, of course, the major focus we have is about the consumer behavior. So far, the Swedish economy was recovering but still lagging behind in terms of consumer consumption. The international situation will probably create some tension as well in the customer behavior and appetite to spend, we will see. We are just careful, and so far so good. But, you know, if the situation lasts, then we will need to adjust. And this is why we are very happy to have transformed the company last year, so that we are agile and reactive again, so we can react very fast. We have a much linear cost structure that help us adjust if necessary. And that explains as well why, for the time being, we are careful with our guidance.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question. just one moment, comes from the line of Derek Laliberte from ABG Sandal Collier. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. Just a follow-up there on the guidance and given the strong Q1, what would you say needs to happen or not happen for you to reach the upper end of this EBITDA guidance or even beat it? Thank you.

Okay, Peter? yeah yeah morning thanks for the question i think it will be a little bit of a repetition of what somebody is saying because i think we we we have elaborated on it we we have the geopolitical uncertainty which uh which is uh both on the conference side but also on things like uh energy costs and effects and things like that but most of all the customer sentiment and to add to the customer sentiment it's also about the competitive situation, which is, of course, we know where we stand now in April, but it's a long year and it's early days, and how that evolves is, of course, critical for our top-line involvement. So that's something to add that can bring things to upper or lower end, I would say. So that's what I would add.

Okay, got it. And on the competition there, has anything changed in terms of the Swedish competitive intensity in the consumer segment?

Niklas? Yes, we can see that it's a bit of an increased competition and it has to do with all the product segments. So we can see it both on voice but also on broadband and entertainment TV. So We see that there is clearly higher competition in the market during Q1.

Got it. Thank you. And finally, on TV in Sweden, how do you see the growth prospects from here on?

We have a positive view on the growth prospects for TV, and we feel that we have a strong offer, and we see a continuous growth in TV.

And the Swedish football team is qualified for the World Cup, so that's good for the business.

Definitely. Okay. Thank you, those were my questions.

Thank you. Our next question for today comes from the line of Philip Erickson from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two both relating to capital allocation. Just want to hear your thoughts about why not distribute some proceeds from the Baltic Tower transaction given that your balance sheet is in an extremely healthy state at the moment and secondly in the report you mentioned this this proposal to regulate the villa fiber market by pts so just wanted to pick her grain if that has changed your mind in either way about making uh m a in fiber assets in the future in sweden thanks peter will answer the first question and we'll try to answer this again yes morning felix uh on the the capital allocation then uh

I would put it this way that there was a proposal then from the board, as you know, along with the Q4 release of a quite appealing shareholder return of 10.5 CX per share, which we assume will be approved by the AGM now in May. So it's sizable and it fits well into our updated financial policy stating that we want secure appealing shareholder return while retaining our flexibility. On the voltage power construction, that's, of course, the sizable cash perceived we receive now, 4.7 billion sec, but as I said before, that's not really turning the needle in terms of given capacity because it also affects which leverage we can allow based on our rating. But we, of course, fully agree we have a strong balance sheet. We see that as something very positive and something that enables appealing shareholders also in the future, and on top of that, financial flexibility and, of course, good interest rates. So we see that we are in a quite good spot, and then, of course, it's up to the board to conclude how to play it going forward.

And as a reminder, the proposal from the board to the General Assembly consists in distributing 118% of 2025 equity-free cash flow, which is partly an answer to your question. And regarding your question about M&A and fiber infrastructure, I would say the comment we make is about the progress is made by PTS, the Swedish regulator, in the regulation of the DSDUs. So this is, of course, good news for the Swedish consumers. Let's remember that. In Sweden, one out of two households is a villa, meaning that one of two villa owners today doesn't have access to competitive offer for the fixed internet. So this will be a big opening and a big opportunity, and of course, we expect to play a key role in this, in the opening of the market. We are waiting for the regulation to materialize, but at least the first publication by the PCS are a good sign, and we expect the regulation to materialize in the coming few months. Of course, the sooner the better. Regarding the M&A, we will see. I already commented that We don't exclude anything, but of course, the assets have to be available at a reasonable price. So far, we haven't any opportunity on the table. We are looking, we are observing and scrutinizing the market, but nothing tangible, nothing concrete at this stage. Maybe it's interesting to... to remind ourselves that the Swedish market is very fragmented at this stage. Maybe some consolidation will happen in the coming few years. It's not the time yet, so let's wait and see. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question for today. comes from the line of Keval Kiroya from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Two questions, please. So last, you made strong progress on renegotiating the supply contracts and on the workforce reduction savings. Can you elaborate a bit more on how you think about the source and scope of additional OPEX cuts in 2026? Appreciate you did speak a bit about automation. And then secondly, in B2B, you've again shown strong revenue growth. Lastly, you also talked about wanting to focus a bit more on profitability of some B2B contracts or segments. Are you now happy with the B2B profitability? And how do we think about the B2B revenue to eat the dark waste translation? Thank you.

Peter, we'll answer on the contract side. Yes. Thanks for the question, Kevin. On the workforce and also the contracts, Starting with the workforce, we had this big transformation last year, as you obviously recall, with the reduction of 650 positions or 15% across the group. And that was completed, as you know, last year. This year, we're moving rather from this transformation phase to more of an optimization phase. uh where we will continue to stay disciplined in uh in the the workforce number and of course use the opportunities created by by automation and ai but but it's a different phase than the last year and on the supplier contracts the work continues of course we had a a strong start last year when a lot of contracts were reopened with a lot of potential. There is still a lot of potential, but it's not as obvious as last year. But the ambition is the same. The intensity in the supply and the renegotiation is the same. And we reap benefits from it, but at the same time, we should, of course, also remind the the inflationary pressure that we see in some pockets, especially around hardware, which Mark has called out. So we keep on working on this just right before the discipline continues.

Maybe a short comment about the constant optimization of the organization. So once again, it's a never-ending exercise if we want to keep the company at the best of its efficiencies. So we are moving pieces of the organization because of the, we are close from the end of the in Sweden. We some team in the network organization. In the meantime, we are reinforcing our skills and capacities in AI and data analytics, but it's an investment in order to create more synergy thanks to the automation, so that's why it's a permanent exercise. To answer your question about B2B, I will hand over to Stéphane. But in a nutshell, yes, no, we are happy with the profitability for B2B activities.

Thank you, Keval, for the question, and also Jean-Marc. Well, the efforts that we've taken in the B2B during last year, but also coming into this year, is really broad-based. In order to create a better profitability, which trickles down to the bottom line, but we're not revealing in the numbers, but we see a significant improvement during last year, but also in this quarter. We have addressed vendor-partner negotiations. We addressed the organization where we changed the structure. We have the down-ground sizing of the organization, and it also continued into Q1. We've done some nearshoring of some resources as well during this quarter. We have outsource some of our production of some of our platforms. We are working on IT modernization automation, which John Mark was alluding to earlier, which we kickstarted earlier last year. We're creating a center of excellence. And we are, as you know, working on the channel optimization in order to drive versus our internal channelings. with one of the highlights during the autumn where we closed 60% of our external resellers. So it's really a broad-based approach on improving efficiency, of course. One part of this is also addressing individual customers and customer possibilities. That is something that we're scrutinizing and have a program in place to drive, and it has also yielded results. Hope that gives you some color, Kevan, to what we're doing. And it's paying off. That's perfect. It does. Thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. That is star 1 and 1 to ask a question. Our next question is... comes from the line of Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I had just a couple of questions around some temporary drags on your customer numbers at the moment in Sweden. Just if you could give us a better sense of scale of those drags and what your service revenue growth might be anticipated to be, excluding those. So first off, in Sweden, I think you had a drag on post-paid customer numbers from the 2G, 3G switch off this quarter. What scale of drag is that? When should we anticipate that drag disappearing or dissipating? And where do you think your service revenue growth could be without that? And then similarly, you talked a lot on the fixed broadband side about the drag from not competing in open networks areas at the moment. Your broadband net ad number is negative at the moment. If you were competing in the open networks area with a viable wholesale price, as you should achieve or at least hope to achieve post-regulation, where would you expect your broadband net ad number to be? Should it be still negative or would it be flat? And what kind of drag do you think that's placing on your Swedish service revenue growth? Those are the two questions. I mean, overarching is if you didn't have those temporary drags, where do you think your Swedish service revenue growth would be? this quarter as an insight for how we should think about things going forward, given that even with those drags, your service revenue growth is 2.4%. Thank you.

Thank you, Andrew. I will try to answer the question together with Nicolas, but to make it clear, the 2G, 3G switch-off took place in December. It impacted some prepaid and low ASPU customers in January, so it was a temporary hiccup. We came with a number of solutions and proposals to support the customers who had the, who were using non-compatible phone for VoLTE, 4G, and so on. Unfortunately, we couldn't reach all the customers for obvious reasons, but it was a temporary hiccup, so it's behind us now. Maybe Nicolas wants to complete and elaborate on FBB and competition in the open networks.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. So what we see is that some of our competitors is actually quite aggressive now in the broadband space and in the open networks. We even see competitors selling right now at below cost, which we are not participating in. So when the regulations come in place, we of course see an opportunity expand more and hopefully take market shares. But we are waiting for the regulations to come in place and then we can get back more on that matter.

Okay, thank you. Can you give us a sense of how many customers you ended up losing from that 2G, 3G switch off? And I get your point on broadband that there's also intensified competition in in the space that's also dragging on customers. But is there any sense of giving us – is there any scope for you to give us a sense of the scale of drag from not being able to compete in the – or not feeling able to compete in the open networks there at the moment?

No, but allow us not to answer the first question about the 2G, 3G drag because, of course, it's – It's an information that we keep for ourselves. But once again, it's a temporary hiccup. It's behind us now. And regarding the FBB, we don't have any, I would say, forecast or estimation to share either.

Fair enough. Thank you very much anyway. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nikolai from Barenburg. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. I hope you can hear me. It was coming back to the cost question, please, for 2026. I mean, you mentioned about staff costs and procurement, I think, in Kevin's question there, but could you give us an idea of the scale of savings available to you? You've got roughly three-quarters of your staff savings done before the end of the first half in 2025, so it feels like the pull-through effect for 2026 is going to be minor. But also, how far are you through the procurement process itself? Could you help us on that, please? Because some of the comments about inflation from maybe the geopolitical effects and others suggest there's not a lot to go. So could you help us with the absolute amount of savings you might see in 26 versus 25, please, so we can start to sort out the forecast? Thank you.

Peter, can you take this one? Yes, Monique. We are not calling out specific numbers, but the favor around 2025 and 2026, of course, as we have said, the main impact or larger impact was seen in 2025 when we kick-started this exercise and had some quick wins as well. So we had a sizable savings last year. We will see benefits from it this year as well. So it is a contributor, of course, partly of flow-through effects, some of it from last year and additional efforts that are doing this year. But the magnitude is lower simply because it's getting tougher and tougher and because we have some cost avoidance to take care of as well. But we're not calling out specific numbers, but it's a high priority also in 2026.

And what's the timing of any AI contributions? It sounds like maybe it's a benefit possibly to service revenue, predictability of consumers and things like that. There's nothing we need to think about the AI contribution immediately, is there?

I think we have benefits from this in different places, obviously, on how we meet our customers and how we approach them. On the cost side, we have, of course, efficiencies to reap the benefits from on how we're working, and we will get savings from that, but it's gradual. We've seen some of it, and we keep working on extracting more savings there.

That's great.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of AJ Thorny from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi guys, thanks for taking my question. I've got two. The first is around business growth, which is very strong, and you mentioned IoT. So I'm just wondering, can this growth continue around this mid-single-digit level? Because obviously B2 revenues can be somewhat lumpy. And if it is going to continue at that level, what is driving that growth? And then my second question is just back to the cost. So you still had pretty sizable redundancy costs in Q1. So could you tell us what your FT reductions were in Q1? And maybe you don't want to give a number, but do you have a target for your FT reductions for 2026? Thank you.

Okay. So let's start with IoT. Stefan, do you want to answer?

Yeah. AJ, thank you for the question. I think I'm going to answer it in the general perspective. I mean, you're correct, and we talked about this before. We, time to time, have quarters with some swings due to larger wins, a couple of wins, or larger rollout projects, so that can happen. Overall, I'm really happy that we have a well-diversified portfolio and that, over time, takes turns in driving the growth. We have a focused portfolio with some decisions that we did last year, but it's still a well-diversified portfolio, which gives us this ability to have growth from different sources. And this quarter, we basically have growth on product lines and then the stabilization on fixed part of the fixed connectivity that we saw some quarters ago have continued, driven by deals that we're doing in that domain. And also that we see that there's a need of modernization of networks, indoor networks, et cetera, for the customers. There's modernization in regards to cloud. more capacity that customer needs to bring to their businesses. So this is driving continuous, I would say, need of all modernization for our customers. And that helps our growth overall. This quarter, IoT stands out. It's the highest growth driver, which we're happy to see. And it's driven by increased usage, which is a very positive sign. So, not directly RGU. We have good RGU development, as we've had before, but very much the usage part, which is good to see. And as I communicated before, I think we expect IT to continue to grow on the basis of more deployments of IoT-enabled devices throughout the world. So that's overall what we see at the moment. Looking forward, I think I commented the profile for the year. I would say that you should take into account Q4 or Q1 as the level of growth for B2B. You should rather look at the full profile for 2024 when you look at the profile for the full year. You know that we had a really good ending of last year. It's going to be hard, and the comps in the end of this year will be high, so it's going to be hard to see the same growth rate that we've seen in the last couple of quarters. full perspective of 2025, I would say, going forward for this year. Hope that gives you some color, AJ.

That's great.

Thanks. Maybe I should, I can, Peter, I can continue with the second question around redundancies. Yeah, you probably notice it in our notes that we have redundancy costs of around 40 million seconds. In Q1, it corresponds to roughly 45 people. We don't have any specific targets on downsizing this year. As I said last year, we had a big transformation with the 650-people reduction. This year, it's more about optimizations. It will be more of a gradual optimization, never-ending, that will continue. And that's how you should approach it.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Victor Holberg from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning. continuation on the tower commitments and the raising agencies. Could you say anything if you've got something new on the kind of leverage cap you're looking at following the tower deal? It's still 2.6, 2.7. And then another question on the cash flow. Is working capital, do you expect it to be neutral this year? And the capex, how much was the delayed hardware capex now in Q1 that is going to be caught up during the rest of the year?

Thanks. Okay, Peter. Thanks for the questions, my favorite questions. Let's start with the leverage or the rating view on this. As you point out, or as I said before, we believe that the cap for our BBB rating is, as you said, around 2.6, 2.7, something like that, based on the present context. On working capital, It's clear that we have a clear seasonal effect. I've seen it before. We are, of course, in the holiday season in Q4 with Black Friday and Christmas, and also sometimes at the launch, we're selling a lot of equipment, and then it's a bit of time lag before we can get it financed by our financing partner, and that's a very big piece of the working capital upside we see in Q1 and that one, all L-SQL will of course normalize or bounce back for the remainder of the year. And yeah, we see some delays on the CapEx side. You can debate exactly with somebody, let's call it around 50 million,

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Siyi He from Citi. Please go ahead.

Hello. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two questions relating to your fixed business. The first question is really a follow-up on your answers to Andrew's question earlier that you mentioned the pricing competition is particularly intense in the SGU market. Could you just let us have a visibility, who are the operators that you see being aggressive on pricing? Are there MNOs or they are more like the ISPs? And the second question, is that I wonder if you can tell us if you have seen any changes on the cable trends after you have done the speed upgrades. I saw that landlord revenue are still declining by 4%. Just wondering why you're still seeing all this kind of rental revenues from empty landlords are still coming down. Thank you.

Okay, thank you for the question. Nicolas is going to answer those. I'm not sure that we want to share information about competition, but Nicolas.

Exactly. Well, we can see an overall competition in the market from all the players, so I won't comment that more. When it comes to our upgrade of the network, we see very positive. reaction from our customers and we see also that we have a strong offer in the market with the highest speed in Sweden in our network and with a very good footprint so we of course are very optimistic about that going forward so that's about it that I can comment right now Thank you Thank you

We will now take our final question. Just one moment. And this question comes from the line of Avilesh Mohabbatar from BNP Paribas.

Yeah, hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe just one on the Baltics. We've seen you continue to deliver very strong organic end-user service revenue growth in these markets. I think there's a perception that maybe the sort of price increases let revenue growth might slow in the future. So maybe just be helpful to hear your latest thoughts on the potential to use, you know, continue using pricing as a source for growth in these markets. And then secondly, any color there on your sort of thoughts heading into this spectrum option that you mentioned in Lithuania, you know, just any thoughts around the potential size or any context that you can give us there would be very helpful. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for your question. I would say that No, the way price adjustments are applied in each Baltic country takes, of course, into account the positioning of 32 in this country, meaning that we are not doing anything crazy. We are just adjusting when we see an opportunity. We remain very well positioning in terms of price points, and, of course, in these markets, The largest part of the sales are done in our own stores. So based on the conversation and discussion with the customers. So I would say it's a kind of very smooth and more and more sophisticated price adjustment that we apply in the Baltic countries. So no risk that Teletubbies loses clear position as the best value for money in these countries. Regarding the spectrum auction in Lithuania, I believe that the message that we wanted to convey here is that please don't forget about this auction in your computations, but so far we don't have any indication of the price, and we cannot, of course, comment on the details of the option.

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. That was our final question for today. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.