Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to KPN's 2nd quarter earnings webcast and conference call. Please note that this event is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question-and-answer session towards the end of today's prepared remarks. If you'd like to ask a question, you might do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the call over to your host for today, Matthijs Van Leijenhorst, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin, sir.
Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to KPN's Q2 and half-year 2025 results webcast. With me today are Joost Farwerck, our CEO, and Chris Figee, our CFO. As usual, before we begin our presentation, I would like to remind you of the safe harbor on page two of the slides, which applies to any statements made during this presentation. In particular, today's presentation may include forward-looking statements, including KPN's expectations regarding its outlook and ambitions, which were also included in the press release published this morning. All such statements are subject to the safe harbor. Now, let me hand over to our CEO, Joost Farwerck.
Yes, thank you, Matthijs, and welcome, everyone. Let's start with the highlights of the second quarter. We delivered a strong quarter. Our group service revenues increased by 3.7%, with growth visible across all segments. Within the mix, consumers saw a quarter of good commercial momentum, both in fixed and mobile. Business continued to perform strongly, driven by all business decisions, and wholesale further accelerated. As a result, we delivered strong EBITDA growth. Alongside our operational performance, our EBITDA benefited from a favorable legal settlement related to intellectual property rights. KPN has a large portfolio of IPRs with over 300 patents, which demonstrates our commitment to innovation. Our extensive portfolio and successful defense of our IPR allows us to license our technologies to major telecom vendors, providing regular income streams and occasional settlements.
As expected, our free cash flow declined year on year, mainly due to working capital phasing, higher interest, and tax payments, but we will recover in the second half of the year. We further expanded our fiber footprint, and together with our Glaspoort joint venture, we now cover 2/3 of the Netherlands with fiber. We raised our full-year 2025 outlook for EBITDA and free cash flow. And the upgrade reflects the benefits from two IPR cases settled in June and July, combined with the solid business and financial progress we have made so far. We launched our connect, activate, and grow strategy in November 2023 and are now halfway through, almost halfway through the execution of this ambitious plan, with significant progress achieved, so we are well on track. Our strategy is built on three key pillars. One, we continue to invest in the leading networks.
Two, we continue to grow and protect our customer base. Three, we further modernize and simplify our operating model. Together, these strategic priorities support our ambition to grow our service revenues and adjusted EBITDA by approximately 3% and our free cash flow by approximately 7% per annum on average in coming years, or simply put, our 337 CAGR framework. Given that we are now nearly halfway through our strategic period, we look forward to providing you with a strategy update on November the 5th. Let me now walk you through some business details. We continue to lead the Dutch fiber market. In the second quarter, we expanded our fiber footprint by adding 160,000 homes together with transport, now jointly covering 2/3 of Dutch households.
Our efforts in connecting homes and activated customers have paid off, reaching nearly 80% of total homes connected to the fiber footprint, while more than 2/3 of our retail base now enjoys the benefits of fiber. Let's have a look at the consumer segment. Consumer service revenues continue to grow, driven by consistent fiber and mobile service revenue growth. Customer satisfaction remains stable and has our full attention. Let's take a deeper look into our second quarter KPIs. Our focus on loyalty and base management is paying off as we recorded a healthy inflow of 13,000 broadband net adds. Fixed ARPU grew by 1.2%. Our postpaid base increased by 37,000, which is a good improvement compared to the previous quarter. Our postpaid revenue declined, primarily due to increased promotional activity in the no-frills segment. As a result, mobile service revenues grew by 1.3%.
However, we expect this to improve in the coming quarters. Let's now move to the B2B segment. B2B delivered another strong quarter, achieving 5.7% year-on-year growth with good performance across all divisions. Commercial momentum in mobile remains solid, adding 22,000 new customers. In today's complex world, we help Dutch businesses become digitally resilient with security, delivering, encouraging growth across both SME and LCE, underscoring its strategic importance. Net promoter score is stable, which reflects the continued trust from our B2B customers for the stability, reliability, and quality of our networks and services. SME remains strong, driven by cloud and workspace, broadband, and ongoing momentum in mobile. LCE increased by 1.7% year-on-year, driven by ongoing growth in IoT, broadband, and cloud and workspace, partly offset by continued price pressure in mobile. And Tailored Solutions delivered another strong quarter as planned, with growth driven by higher project revenues.
And as you know, this business remains subject to project timing and seasonality. Then wholesale service revenues further improved in Q2, mainly driven by the strong performance in mobile. Broadband service revenues increased as well, despite the declining pace, driven by fiber. Mobile service revenues remained strong, mainly driven by continued growth of our Travel SIM business. Other service revenues saw a slight increase, mainly due to an uptick in physical roaming. Now, turning to ESG, this remains a core element of our strategy with a clear focus on three key areas: responsible, inclusive, and sustainable. The core of our ESG strategy is to make our networks even more reliable and secure by design. Expanding our fiber network is a key enabler for this goal, helping us to connect everyone in the Netherlands to a sustainable future.
At the same time, we continue to build a better internet, one that offers seamless access to a responsible, inclusive, safer, and greener internet powered by fiber and 5G. So our commitment to sustainability is evidenced by several top ratings at important independent ESG benchmarks. Our next slide shows our progress on carbon reduction, circularity, and diversity. We continue to reduce our carbon footprint across the value chain. Earlier this year, we began sourcing solar energy from a solar farm in partnership with Eneco, advancing our green electricity goals. Scope two emissions decreased by 30% year-on-year, while scope three emissions slightly increased due to an expanded scope. Next to this, we made further improvements on our diversity target, reaching 32% of women in our senior management. Now, let me hand it over to Chris to give you more details, not specifically on diversity, but on our financials.
Thank you very much.
Joost, let me take you through our financial performance. Our financial performance benefited from a favorable settlement in June related to two intellectual property rights. While these IPR revenues and related costs are normal courses of business for KPN, due to the specific nature of these settlements this year, we excluded one-off benefits in a few metrics to illustrate our underlying business performance. To that point, let me start by highlighting some key figures for the second quarter and also for the 1st half of the year. First, adjusted revenues grew by 5.8% year-on-year in Q2, driven by continued service revenue growth across all segments and higher non-service revenues, including LTO and the IPR benefits. Second, our adjusted EBITDA grew by 6.4% compared to last year, driven by higher revenues, the IPR settlements, and of course, contributions from newly acquired and set-up LTO.
Note that we saw the same amount of value of IP addresses as we did in Q2 last year. Third, our net profit declined by 8% despite strong EBITDA growth due to one-off costs related to hedge accounting. Finally, as anticipated, our free cash flow declined by 15%, or just over EUR 15 million compared to the first half of last year, mainly due to working capital phasing. I will share more detail on the underlying cash development later in this presentation and obviously in your Q&A. In the second quarter, our underlying revenues, excluding one-off items and LTO, showed healthy growth, increasing 3.4% year-on-year, fully driven by growth in service revenues. Group service revenues grew by 3.7%, supported by all segments.
In the mix, we saw consumer service revenues increase by 1.3% year-on-year, driven by both fixed and mobile, with solid commercial momentum in both postpaid and broadband net adds. Recent service revenue growth continued to perform well, growing by 5.7% year-on-year, with all divisions contributing. Wholesale service revenues grew by more than 8% year-on-year, mainly by the ongoing success of our profitable and good-margin international sponsored roaming business. On a like-for-like basis, the adjusted EBITDA of KPN grew by 4% year-on-year, well above the 3% CMD hurdle. Our underlying EBITDA margin was 30 basis points higher compared to last year at 45.5%. The increase in our direct costs, our cost of goods sold, was mainly driven by service revenue mix in B2B and higher third-party access costs such as transport.
Our indirect cost base was broadly stable, with savings from digitization and less staff, offset by inflationary effects such as wage indexation. In the quarter, we further scaled down our workforce by about 70 FTEs. Over the last 12 months, we reduced our total workforce by almost 300 FTEs. In the first half of the year, our operational free cash flow increased by 18% on an underlying basis, driven by both EBITDA growth and lower CapEx. CapEx was EUR 50 million lower compared to the previous year, but mostly related to timing of fiber payments. For the remainder of the year, CapEx is expected to step up, fully in line, and stay in line with our full-year guidance of EUR 1.25 billion. For the full year 2025 and excluding IPR benefits, we expect high single-digit growth rate in the operational free cash flow.
Now let's focus on the moving parts of our full free cash flow. We generated EUR 309 million in free cash flow so far this year, representing a cash margin of about 11% of revenues. The anticipated year-on-year decline in the first half free cash flow was mainly caused by temporary negative impacts from changes in working capital related to timing, such as the timing of bill runs, the actual cash settlement of the IPR benefits, lower CapEx, which translates into a temporary drag on working capital, timing of inventory build-up, and some other small effects, such as pension contributions. We expect these negative effects to reverse fully in the second half of the year. In addition to working capital, we also face higher interest payments and increased cash taxes as per the plan.
Consistent with our guidance, our free cash flow generation will be stronger in the 2nd half of this year. The improvement is supported by, one, continued operating cash generation, second, the normalization of tax and interest payments throughout the year, and three, the unwinding of the drag on working capital. Finally, we ended the quarter with a cash position of EUR 331 million, absorbing the impact of the final dividend payment of 2024, share buyback payments, and our bond redemption in April. Let's discuss return on capital. KPN remains focused on creating long-term value, which is evidenced by a strong return on capital employed. Our RoCE improved by 20 basis points year-on-year to 14.6% due to operational and efficiency improvements, including LTO as well on a fully consolidated basis. Excluding the IPR effect, our RoCE return on capital is 14.5%.
For the coming years, we should scope to further enhance RoCE, reaching a 2027 financial ambition of 15%, consistent with continuous creation of shareholder and stakeholder value. We continue to have a strong balance sheet. At the end of June, we had a leverage ratio of 2.5x . Our ratio slightly increased during the quarter, mainly driven by dividends and share buyback payments, partly offset by our free cash generation and higher EBITDA. Similar to 2024, we expect the leverage to return to 2.4 x by the end of the year, supported by increased free cash generation in the 2nd half of the year. Our interest compensation remains sequentially stable at 9.6x . And as a result of the bond redemptions in April, we increased the average maturity and lowered the average cost of our outstanding debt, which is now reduced by 11 basis points sequentially to 3.6%.
In addition to the bond redemption, we also benefited from lower interest rates and from a soft restructuring that was executed in Q2. Our exposure to floating rates remains limited at 14%, and our total liquidity of around EUR 1.4 billion remains strong, covering debt maturities until the end of 2028. Now let's turn to our outlook for 2025 and midterm ambitions. Given the reported results in the first half of the year, we feel confident in raising our full year's guidance for EBITDA and cash flow. We now expect an adjusted EBITDA after leases of more than EUR 2.630 billion, and a free cash flow of more than EUR 940 million. The EUR 30 million increase in EBITDA and EUR 20 million increase in free cash flow guidance are primarily due to the two IPR cases that we settled in June and early July.
The total full-year contributions from these two settlements are estimated at around EUR 25 million EBITDA after free tax, with EUR 9 million already recognized in Q2 and the remaining in Q3. In addition to the IPR-related uplift, we also see some upside in the underlying business performance. It is clear that excluding these IPR settlements, we would have confidently reiterated our financial guidance for the year. The difference between the increase in adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow upgrades is mainly due to taxes on settlements and some small working capital tax. Other outlook items have been reiterated. Group service revenue growth set at about 3%, driven by growth across all segments, and CapEx will remain stable at the peak level of around EUR 1.25 billion.
As of the 23rd of July of this year, KPN has bought back 58 million shares for about EUR 233 million and completed 93% of our EUR 250 million share buyback program. Finally, we reiterate our midterm or 337 ambitions as provided at the capital market day. Let me briefly wrap up with the key takeaways. We simply delivered a strong quarter with good business results augmented by one-off IPR benefits. Group service revenues continue to grow across all segments, leading to healthy underlying EBITDA growth, fully consistent with our 337 ambition. In fact, for the second quarter in a row, underlying service revenue and EBITDA growth came in above the 3% hurdle. We continue to lead the decline of markets, now covering 2/3 of the Netherlands, while steadily progressing with connecting homes. Currently, more than 2/3 of our retail base are in fiber, which bodes well for the future.
We see healthy customer inflow across both consumer and business, despite a competitive market. As planned, our free cash flow generation will be back-end loaded, and will come out as planned for the full year. Overall, we are well on track this year and continue to make good progress towards our annual and midterm targets. Obviously, our financial performance this year benefited from the IPR settlements, but also the underlying EBITDA growth supports the update of the guidance, and we feel confident in the cash generation for the remainder of the year. Of course, next year, we will again distribute all of our free cash to shareholders. It is important again to highlight that if we had not achieved the IPR settlements, we would have fully, happily, and cheerfully reiterated our outlook.
Finally, as we approach the halfway point of our strategy, we look forward to providing you with an update of our strategy on November the 5th. Thanks for listening. Let's turn to your questions.
Yeah, thank you, Chris. As always, before we start the Q&A session, I kindly request that you limit your questions to two, please. Operator, please proceed with the Q&A.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen. As you've been told, we will start now the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, you might do so by pressing star one now on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, it's star two. The first question comes from the line of Polo Tang calling from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking the questions. I have two. First one is just on consumer broadband net adds. Can you comment on what has driven the step up in broadband net adds in Q2, and has the broadband market become more promotional in Q3? Second question is, when can we expect an update on the ACM review of the Glaspoort DELTA Fiber deal? Can you comment on how you think about the use of cash and whether you would look to buy fiber assets rather than build fiber?
Well, Polo, thanks for your questions. Consumer broadband net adds in Q2 were much better than in Q1. Promotional activities in the Dutch market are pretty well intensive, I should say. I think that our main competitor moved a bit to a more reasonable environment recently, so that would be good. We especially see us benefiting from our own CombiVoordeel and our fiber footprint supporting this inflow. On the promotional activities for the near future, I do not think much will change. However, I think it is important that we all realize that we want to create value on broadband, and that is the most important thing for us, and I think for our competitors as well. On ACM, yeah, that is a good question. We are waiting in the process. I think after summer, they will give their vision on the situation, and then we can react.
We are in the middle of a process around this deal between Glaspoort and DELTA. Let us see what will come out of it. We think we have a strong position. For us, it is always buy or build. I mean, per area, we can decide to buy or to build an asset if the opportunity is there. In this case, it is for us best to buy, but if it is not doable, then we have to find an alternative.
Thanks.
The next question comes from the line of Maurice Patrick calling from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks, guys, for taking the question. If I could just ask a little bit more about the broadband competition, just keen to understand if you are seeing a change in competitive intensity after VodafoneZiggo has changed its pricing. They obviously have made a material adjustment to their EBITDA guidance for the year, and I think it signaled a desire to stabilize that base. Just linked to that, there's been some noise around fixed wireless access propositions from some of your competition. How that might stimulate their growth. I'm just curious to understand if you've seen any impact from that on the total broadband market and, in fact, your net adds. Thank you.
Yeah, Maurice, Chris, let me take some of those questions. On broadband. On the main competitor price actions, I mean, they've changed their lines pricing a bit. It's still very close to KPN. I think if you look at detailed debate, maybe EUR 1- EUR 2 cheaper on 100 Mb and a few euros more expensive on 1 Gb , so it's very much still very close. What I think what we've seen notably in broadband in the last quarter is improvement in churn and improvement in migrations. If you look at page eight in our deal document, the graph on the top left-hand side, you can infer that actually churn has gone down, both on copper and on fiber. We've seen less migrations from book to back book, so that's actually supportive. We've seen stable growth in gross ads. Fiber continues to do well, but have some notable reduction in churn.
I relate that to our loyalty program that we've installed, a higher portion of clients in contract. That supports a lot. I think the copper to fiber mix is gradually improving in KPN, bbviously. The fourth one is possibly, yeah, there might be some fatigue in the market with regards to these commercial activities, but that's more speculation. Factually, we see the loyalty program, the in-contract base, the copper to fiber mix all supporting churn. I think that's good. Also reasonably into Q3 as well. I mean, obviously, we're only in July, but so far so good in terms of broadband. Commercial intensity as such, I would say it's relatively stable. Has not deteriorated further, put it that way. On fixed wireless. We don't see a lot of outflow to fixed wireless customers. When we check, there are some, but not a whole lot.
I feel that fixed wireless is really addressing a different market segment. Not the real competition of fiber, but other customers that otherwise would have gone for a different solution to build that.
It's a bit of a niche segment, we think, first of all, because all households in the Netherlands are connected to a fixed network or two fixed networks. We also use fixed wireless access, but that's always in combination with a copper line in super rural areas. That's what we do already for a very long time. For us, fixed wireless network is always in convergence with a fixed connection as a total service in super rural areas. So far, not really a change in the market.
Thanks, guys.
The next question comes from the line of Keval Khiroya calling from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you. We've got two questions. Firstly, you saw strong revenue trends in wholesale. Can you comment on how we should think about the revenue growth going forward, and to what degree you expect sponsored roaming revenues to fall off in H2? Secondly, you're now getting close to the endpoint on the fiber rollout and less than EUR 1 billion of CapEx. I appreciate you have the November strategy update, but at this stage, would you be able to share any broad thoughts on whether you think structurally there's room for CapEx to continue to fall beyond 2027? Some of your peers have obviously targeted lower post-fiber CapEx. Thank you.
Yeah, Kevin, on your first question on wholesale, I mean, sponsored roaming is doing really well. They will continue to grow. Whether we keep this pace, I do not know, but I think it is going to be north of 5%. I feel reasonably comfortable. And there is a fair pipeline of new customers waiting to be signed up for these types of solutions. This, I see growth in the second half of the year, possibly spinning over also into next year on this specific point. There is some whisper that there is a concern about margins on this product. We are not concerned on margins on this. I mean, we do not really detail these margins out, but it is not far off from what KPN's EBITDA margins are as a whole.
It actually is a profitable business, certainly on the marginal return on capital. It is a very profitable business. As I said, maybe not full 8% that we saw in the first half of the year, but this is a significantly, it is a growth option for H2 and possibly into next year as well.
Yeah, and on your fiber rollout question, I mean, we've built a bold plan to move up to 80% fiber footprint in the Netherlands, somewhere end of 2026. So often we get the question, do we get to 80% or what after the 80%, are you going to roll out to 100%? I think 80% is a good target since it is a lot. I'm not familiar with many incumbents trying to cover really that much of a country as we do, taking into account that 80% of that is homes connected as well. On that capital market side, I don't want to, of course, spoil the day itself by telling you what we're all working on, but of course, we will give insights on the step down in CapEx and how to get there, the full fiber footprint, and how to move further to 2030.
These are all relevant questions. If it's going to be 75% or 85%, I think for us, it's also important to really, at the end of that building program, make the step down in CapEx and, of course, give you also an idea how we will run the free cash flow after 2027.
That's clear. Thank you both.
The next question comes from the line of Andrew Lee calling from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon. I just had one question, which is around wholesale and I guess follows on from your questions on competition earlier. Your wholesale broadband net adds stepped down more than they have in quite some time, down, I think, 21,000 in the quarter. Could you just talk through what's driving that? It just gives a bit more color around the competitive intensity you're facing and how you see that playing out over the coming quarters. If there's anything you can do to alleviate that pressure. Thank you.
Sure. So wholesale, I mean, first and foremost, wholesale top line continues to grow and EBITDA continues to grow. We expect the wholesale business to be a growth business run to next year. The mix of growth appears to be shifting away from broadband towards alternative mobile type solutions with sufficiently healthy margin. On this particular point, I think what we're seeing is there's growth on fiber. We see a little bit more wholesale competition for growth. There's growth on fiber. And there's some then churn on copper. We think it's churn towards competing networks and overbuilt areas. It is actually churn on lower ARPU copper lines that are one of our main broadband clients. I think it's shifting them to the overbuilt situations in alternative networks, which has accelerated.
I don't think it will stop at the end, but in the end, there is a limit because at some point, there's only so much overbuilt we have. I would expect this to continue into Q3, possibly into Q4, but then at some point, the overbuilt is actually gone on copper. It's copper lines and overbuilt areas where I think they're shifting to other areas. That is a bit of a drag on earnings. At the same time, this is lower margin, this is lower ARPU business, and there's a price increase that we generally put through on fiber or on broadband. And there's still growth on high margin fiber. Revenue-wise, the impact is manageable. Base-wise, you can see it. I think that will continue for some time until the overbuilt situation, until the copper lines and overbuilt situation have been reduced to a smaller amount.
I mean, that's what's happening. But then again, and also we've been fairly agile on a strategy trying to find new revenue sources, which is then mobile related.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Max Findley calling from Rothschild & Co. Redburn, please go ahead.
Hi, it's actually Steve here. Thanks for taking the questions. I'll go for three, but the two are very, very short, hopefully. First of all. Sorry, just on minority dividends, you had a EUR 28 million minority dividend come through in the second quarter. Is that related to the Althio deal? And just remind us how we should think about that kind of going forward and whether we should be including that in free cash flow. Secondly, just coming back to Glaspoort. The associate losses kind of picked up a little bit in the quarter. I mean, they're small numbers, but I would have expected it to be kind of moving into profit at this stage as your network loading improves. Can you just sort of maybe cast a little bit of a light on that and maybe remind us how the kind of PIN call works with ABP?
Because I think it needs to be profitable or free cash flow positive before they can put the stage up. I can't remember. Maybe you could just help us on that. And finally, just on the IPR settlement. What are the costs associated with that? And should we expect any more IPR settlements or things of that ilk going forward to help EBITDA and cash flow? Thanks a lot.
Yes, Steve. On the Althio question on the momentum it's a one-off dividend from Althio. It's a one-off. I wouldn't plan on EUR 28 million of dividends from Althio going forward. I mean, in the end, it is a good deal because if you look through the numbers, you can see the cash payment, the equalization payment that we did, then you also received a dividend as part of the financial restructuring of that business. The net cash out for KPN was actually relatively small, around EUR 70 million, which also explains, I think, it's. Without pumping our chest, it's a better deal than people expected or envisaged. It also explains why return on capital employed for KPN is up, including the consolidation of this business. It's a one-off. There will be dividends to KPN going forward, but not of this magnitude. This was a one-off.
Restructuring of the balance sheet. I mean, the cash out was probably around net net about EUR 70 or so million. It meets on the lines the high return on capital of this transaction. On Glaspoort, Glaspoort is actually EBITDA and EBIT positive at this point in time. There's just interest costs and some financial derivative accounting issues moving from EBIT and full net profit. Also has to do with Glaspoort went to a refinancing as well. I think those two elements feed in. Actually, as I said, Glaspoort is performing above plan financially. It's just the interest charges and hedge accounting that affect the bridge from EBIT to net profit, but EBIT and EBITDA are positive. In terms of consolidation, basically the only two formal conditions are it happens between 2026 and 2030, and the number of HPs, homes passed, delivered to reach a certain threshold.
I think we're nearly at that threshold, so the consolidation trigger is almost at our discretion. Of course, it's important once it's full free cash flow positive, that should be 2028, 2029. I keep hoping for 2028, might be 2029, around that date, and then we'll consolidate. There's no further limitations as part. There's no requirement for it to be free cash flow positive. It just makes sense to do it once a year. My core summary is financially, Glaspoort is performing actually better than planned at EBIT and positive, just the interest costs that they need to make. Joost, on the IPR settlements.
Steve, on the IPR settlements. It's not that we have these settlements every quarter, right? IPR revenues are normal course of business.
We have a large portfolio of IPR with over 300 million patents, and that demonstrates a bit the innovation power of KPN and usually providing financial benefits between EUR 8 million-EUR 10 million per year. Every now and then, we have a discussion with a large worldwide telecom vendor, and sometimes that leads to a real, yeah, lawsuit. But. This time we were able to come to reasonable settlements. Indeed, the costs related to that are relatively high, but that's also because this is a very specific job done by six people in our own organization. For this, we hire international lawyers, and we pay them a fee for the outcome of the settlement.
It could be that we have another settlement perhaps somewhere next year, but usually what I like more is that they just pay for what we ask them and that we have a continuous flow of income. These settlements are not only good for a one-time effect, but also mean that in the future they will pay for the IPR they use.
As you can see, the IPR cash settlement and the cash increase is net of any cost of any lawyer fees associated. This is a net benefit to KPN.
Sure, sure. Once again, the lawyers have done fairly well.
Yes, this is a good business.
Yes. Okay, thanks, guys. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of David Vagman calling from ING. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi, good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. The first on LCE growth, which was very good, actually better than what you had guided for. You got back to growth faster than expected. Could you comment on what has been driving this and what you would expect going forward? I think you mentioned IoT, broadband, also CPaaS. Secondly, on consumer, you delivered quite nice performance on the TAS, indeed, especially in fixed. The sales growth was a bit lower and a little bit lower than what you guided for mobile. Could you comment on what we should expect for the coming quarters, especially in the brand mix, let's say, and also your strategy? I've read recently that you thought you would stop essentially for instance. Is this correct or not? Thank you.
Yeah, to start on your LCE question, I mean, B2B is doing great. It's growing about 5%, which is compared to what itself was, I think, an outstanding job. Having said that, LCE is our focus item to get it up above the current growth rate. It goes a bit up and down, and that is because there's a large enterprise segment. We were finalizing the movement from old to new portfolio, so still, we have to migrate some legacy portfolio to the new environment. Having said that, I'm okay with the current results. We always focused on real inflection to happen in the second quarter. In reality, we report growth now for a couple of quarters in a row, but it's the parts of B2B that we are really focused on to get it faster growing.
On mobile, we see a strong inflow of net adds, but there's pressure on pricing, of course. That's a competitive market. On connectivity, we are doing better and better. We're also rolling out fiber in business areas. When we report homes passed, that's not about the business areas in the Netherlands, but we also have a program to roll out fiber there, and that's really speeding up and improving. Yes, all in all, that's one of our intention points to get LCE to the average of B2B growth in our domain. Consumer, yeah, mobile service revenue is a bit weak, you could say, in total. I'm positive on the KPN development. I mean, we report blended service revenues and ARPUs, but the KPN brand is really doing good with high ARPUs on unlimited.
Of course, we added Youfone in the game, and that's big based, so it's difficult to compare KPN and Youfone compared to two years ago, for instance. In the no-frills segment, that's where the competition is heating up, I would say, so there we have to be careful. I mean, we show strong growth of net adds, but for us, it's all about the balance between net add growth and value creation. On the quarter-by-quarter development, I would say usually we expect a better quarter in Q3 because of development seasonality. We're going to increase the prices. Looking at the current situation, I would say that we logically improved Q3 and Q4 compared to Q2. Chris?
Yeah, if we're talking, David, arguably, you look back at Q1, and they say it's a bit lagging that we did increase service revenue market share in the Netherlands.
We're gaining a bit of share across all the group. As Joost said, activity is most pronounced in the no-frills segment, but not spilling over into premium segments. I think at KPN level, we're gaining net adds, especially in unlimited. We're introducing a bunch of new unlimited propositions as well over the summer, including growing roaming bundles. I think it's doing well, and that competitive intensity is, at this point, quite contained, but contained to the no-frills areas. As Joost said, for the second half of the year, I expect gradual bottoming out with a higher number in Q4 when the price increase is being pushed through. I would say, without looking too much on a quarter-to-quarter-to-quarter basis, because this is a long-term business, I would expect, over the second half of the year, H2 as a whole, consumer to be around 2% service revenue growth.
On an average basis, that should be feasible, but more till towards the end. Let's not fall into the trap of managing this thing on a quarterly basis. We're in the long-term path, and I think the second half will look better than the first half.
Okay, thank you very much, Chris.
The next question comes from the line of Joshua Mills calling from BNP P Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi guys, thanks for the questions. I have two, please. The first one is just around the comments you made there about the no-frills mix versus KPN. Could you give us a bit more color, both on where the sub-brand penetration is today on your postpaid mobile, on your broadband base? And then maybe just an example in the last quarter of the 37,000 postpaid net adds you added, what was the split there between KPN and Youfone? Because it looks like there is some ARPU dilution from the mix shift as well. It's good to get a steer there. The second question was around the recent deal signed between VodafoneZiggo and DELTA Fiber, where VodafoneZiggo is going to be wholesaling from Delta in about 600,000 new homes from next year. How do you think that will impact your retail broadband net adds, your wholesale broadband net adds?
And perhaps if you could give us an idea of what your market share, your retail market share in those 600,000 homes is today? That would be very helpful. Thanks.
Yeah, Joshua, on your second, to start on your second question. We do not believe that the VodafoneZiggo wholesale deal on Delta is a structural change in the strategy, more an, yeah, opportunistic move. They clearly have a, at least that's what we read, because, yeah, it's not really clear, but they stick to a network strategy, of course. That's their business model. I think they can do a DOCSIS upgrade in many parts of the Netherlands. This deal is really centered around the areas where they do not have a network in the first place, because that's a DELTA network, and that's in limited households, and our market share is lower than compared to the average of the Netherlands. Not that really impactful on KPN developments, I would say. We follow our strategy, and we do not think this is a big paradigm shift in the VodafoneZiggo strategy.
Your question on no-frills, yeah, I think the main part of the base is KPN, right? That's roughly 75%. The rest of that is Simyo and Youfone. That's why it's so important for us to really focus on the KPN strategy, the unlimited part, and keep it separated from that no-frill game.
I mean, on the first, on the DELTA deal, you mean that's 600,000 HP. I don't know how much who's connected here, but as Joost said, confirm the market share of KPN in broadband is less than average. A chunk of that is in fiber, so I would not be too worried about that because it's already on fiber. There is some copper base, but these are copper clients that have been already exposed to competing fiber for some time. I don't expect an immediate shift also because if, obviously, we're not privy to the details of the transaction. Our understanding of the typical DELTA wholesale agreement is very much in line with our ACM commitment. I don't think there's needed to a price fight or so.
If you look at all that, what we impact is probably going to be manageable and not really affecting the total result of KPN. As on the question on no-frills and frills, and KPN, we're on three quarters of the mobile basis, KPN, and one quarter is on the other two bands. That affects the reported ARPU a bit.
Yeah, and on the fixed type, almost everything's KPN, right? There's only a limited part, probably around 5% is no-frills.
Thanks. Maybe just one follow-up on that commentary around your market share in the areas where there's no cable being lower nationally. It seems quite surprising given VodafoneZiggo's national market share is around 40%. In those areas today, is it the case that DELTA Fiber already has quite a lot of market share on the retail side, or that your ISP partners over-index to those rural areas rather than KPN? It just seems like usually you would expect in a non-cable area you'd be higher.
I would think in those areas, it was DELTA who was working at the high market share already. I mean, let's see what the outcome is, but I wouldn't rule out that some of the real gains would come at the expense of DELTA and Yetz, because I think that's where they have a relatively large share. I mean, we give you averages of market shares. You mentioned 40% is lower nowadays. Us is a bit stronger then, but all in all, it's different per region, right? The original DELTA region is where DELTA is super strong, but it's limited to a million households or less. The larger cities, as before, signal is strong. Us, we are strong in more or less the rest of the country. It depends a bit on the area, what our market position is, and that's how we also took the decisions on fiber rollout.
Thanks very much.
The next question comes from the line of Siyi He calling from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hello, hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. The first question is really on the consumer service revenue growth. Chris, I think you mentioned at Q1 result call, you're talking about you don't expect consumer to be the main contributor to your service revenue this year. Now you're looking, now you're having accelerated fiber penetration in the consumer broadband base, and you expect mobile service revenue to improve as well. Just looking out for the next coming quarters, maybe one or two years, do you see there could be a possibility that consumer service revenue growth could be more in line with the group service revenue trend, which is around 3% going forward? My second question is on the indirect cost.
I think also you talk about some potential reductions in your indirect cost, but still, by this quarter, we haven't seen too much move going forward. Just wondering if you can help us to understand how to think about those lines going forward. Thank you.
Yeah, I think consumer service revenue growth in all fairness, I don't think we'll meet the 3% level for this year, probably also not for next. Obviously, in the long run, I see definite opportunity with fiber coming in and copper churn becoming less simply because we have fewer copper customers. It's going to take some time to get there. I think also because we have a CombiVoordeel product, which Joost explained, an entertainment discount product, where some of the charges of that are added and booked in the fixed ARPU. There's a reporting element to this as well. I would say the growth of KPN in the coming years will be driven by business and wholesale, and consumer needs some top-line legging somewhat. I mean, bottom line could be better. This is high-margin business, but top-line growth in consumer will probably be not the leading part.
Business and wholesale will continue to drive this going forward. That means a fair forward look. On indirect cost, I think the cost base at KPN, we stayed effectively flat over the quarter and in the first half year. If you strip out all one-offs, incidentals, I think also underlying it. We effectively had a flat cost base, with, I would say, about 300 FTEs in clients, so that's actually going quite well. That supports EBITDA going forward. In this business, you have positive service revenue growth, positive profit growth with a flat cost base that could be trickled down to your bottom line. On the cost side, I would say flatness for the year. FTE declined by 300 in the last 12 months.
We aim to certainly continue at this pace of reducing FTEs and reducing labor costs going forward, so that should help us in the mid to long term. Hopefully, it gives you some color how we look at the business in the mid to long term, I see.
That's very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Ajay Soni calling from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi guys, thanks for taking my question. My first is actually just on the FTE reductions that you referenced there. It feels like you're reducing around 70 FTEs per quarter. I just want to know where these reductions are coming from. You're expecting these for the rest of 2025 and into 2026? My second question is just around the EBITDA growth. I think previously you highlighted Q3 would be slightly softer on an underlying basis, and then stepping up again in Q4. If I could just confirm that, please. Thank you.
Yeah, on the FTE reduction. We have a workforce of around 10,000. 1/3 , roughly, is working in the customer interface. There are technical people, and there are a lot of people working in support. We have programs in place to make the company more digital and to make these end-to-end processes far more first-time right, especially focused on customer quality, but also related to simplification and, yeah, at the end, FTE reduction. It is not an FTE reduction program, but it is leading to FTE reduction. I think in the future, we will benefit from this more than we do today, but still we see a step down in FTE already in the run rate, and that is good because the benefits really kick in next year. For us, this will be an important focus point, and I think there are lots of opportunities here.
I mean, KPN has done a lot in optimizing the operating model, but since there are a lot of opportunities on these big transformation programs supported by AI platforms, we think we can go further. That is for us an important focus point, and like Chris described, the first steps down in FTE are in the run rate.
Yeah, and my 2nd question on Q3, look, obviously, I'm most to blame because I tend to guide feeling for how the quarterly distribution looks like, but in the end, it's all about the long-term view, right? This is about getting us towards 2027 and the anticipated and promised CapEx step down, and we should try to look through quarterly fluctuations. As you're asking, Q3 will be a bit softer, but obviously, I'd like to tell you basically what roughly the pattern is so that you can place and position and know the context in which these things happen. Q3 will be a bit softer. I think actually mostly due to accounting for holiday provisions. Now, let's not dwell on this too long. Feeling is Q3 will indeed be a bit softer than Q2, although I felt that the initial hint that we gave is probably the floor.
It could be a bit better than what we initially guided for in terms of Q3. Without going overboard on quarterly guidance, there is a pattern in the year which is affected by these holiday provision schemes. I think Q3 will look a bit better than what we initially guided for if I look at the also including, but also excluding, the IPR benefits that will land in Q3. I would like to see if the EBITDA-wise will be fine. With that in mind, in the end, we'll pursue EUR 20.63 million this year, EUR 2,650 million for the year. That's the plan for the year, and there will be some distribution, but I think in light of that, I would say financially, trading-wise, Q3 looks, it could be less than Q2, obviously, but it's going to be a bit better than we initially pointed out.
Then again, that's only one quarter. It's about the long-term story.
Okay, thank you.
The final question is for Paul Sidney from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you very much. I also had two questions, please. Firstly, a question for Chris. You've upgraded free cash flow guidance twice this year already. Most of that's mechanical, but there's some organic upgrades in there. You're clearly guiding for falling CapEx in 2027. I'm not wanting to preempt any message at the strategic update in November, but what are your thoughts around capital allocation changing? Will excess free cash flow continue to be used for shareholder remuneration? Are there any caps on the level of buybacks you can do? Fiber rollout more than 80%, potentially any acquisitions that you could do that perhaps weren't possible a few years ago? Secondly, you've clearly articulated the 7% free cash flow CAGR out to 2027. How do you expect return on capital to evolve over the next few years? Could this get close to 20% over time, in your opinion?
Thank you.
First of all, thanks for noting that we increase our free cash flow twice in a year. I would expect the flowers and cheers in this call, but I'll get them from Joost's list.
For sure. For sure.
Look, I think we're on track to meet our free cash flow guidance, right? The increase, number one, was due to the acquisitions. We want to be fair that what we buy, we add to our free cash flow guidance, and the second increase was. It's an IPR benefit. It's a one-off, but we want to make sure that we do not use the one-offs to meet the underlying business. The one-offs are really on top of, and as we share our free cash with shareholders, basically they're yours. That's the result of this. We distribute them to shareholders. Plan A is still to distribute all our free cash flow to shareholders. I mean, that's what we typically do.
We can do that with investing EUR 1.2 billion-EUR 1.25 billion in CapEx, and if you make a step down to EUR 1 billion, we'll still be investing about 70% of revenue. We'll then stay fully invested and investing fully and able to distribute all our free cash to shareholders. That is the plan that we stick to. I would say over time, you'll see the proportion of dividends going up. I think in the long run, it would be fair to run with like an 80% payout ratio of your free cash flow and the remainder in buybacks. I mean, that's not cast in stone, but I think that's probably a good long-term anchor point for your dividends.
Basically, it means that whilst our free cash flow is ratcheting up, our dividends will be going in line with, and I think in the end, something like order of magnitude 80% of our free cash flow in dividends and the remainder in buybacks. The specific distribution, we'll decide on that when we get to 2027. Perhaps we can say a little bit more in the capital markets update in the 2nd half of the year, but I think that's the end game for us. The question on return on capital employed, we're moving towards 15%. Could we go to 20%? I'd love to have that problem. First, I think 15% is a good level, meaning that's consistent with a significant amount of value creation. I think if we run this business at 15%, we'll be doing very well. I mean, that's the point.
If you run your business at 15%, I think the marginal investment is probably better to allocate towards growth than more return, if you're running at 15%, right? I'd love to get to 20%. We'll do everything we can to get up, of course, our return on capital employed to a higher level. I think at this point, it's fair to assume that 15% is what we're going to, and it's fully consistent with shareholder value creation and a fairly decent spread across the capital. I think with that, we probably also stand out in Europe. We won't hesitate to do more, but at some point. Investing in growth at this level of profitability might create more value for you guys. Obviously, in line with staying disciplined to make sure we generate sufficient cash in anything that we do.
Appreciate it, Chris. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you all for your attention and questions. That is a wrap up of the webcast. In case you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to the IR team. If you go on holiday, please enjoy your holidays. Goodbye.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for attending and have a nice day.