Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gaily, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, thank you for joining the OTE conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the Q1 2023 financial results. All participants will be in listen only mode. The conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session.
Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Michael Tsamaz, Chairman and CEO, Mr. Babis Mazarakis, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Panayiotis Gabrielides, Chief Marketing Officer, Consumer Segment, and Mr. Evrikos Sarsentis, Head of IR and M&A. Mr. Tsamaz, you may proceed.
Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon to all of you. The Q1 we reported earlier today enforced our confidence that we are implementing the right strategy in the face of new developments. As you know, all along have waged our bank's proposition on the quality of networks we built and the services we offer, rather than competing on price alone.
Even if vigilance will certainly be required more than ever in 2023, the group's performance this quarter shows that we are on the right track and our execution is paying off. At group level, the slight drop in revenues we experienced this quarter was mainly due to the low margin international wholesale traffic, as well as the comparable base in Romania. I'll get back to what we're doing to address that in a minute.
In Greece, on the other hand, international wholesale was the main headwind, excluding what is largely a low margin business, revenues were up, and we delivered solid performances for mobile and ICT. In retail fixed services, we successfully defended our market share and captured the bulk of broadband additions during the quarter.
Our focus is squarely on upgrading our subscriber base to higher speed solutions, this translated into further growth of fiber subscriber numbers in the quarter. On the cost side, we maintained and intensified our discipline across the board, benefiting from last year's voluntary retirement schemes, as well as from arrangements sheltering us from the most extreme variations in energy costs. As a result, EBITDA in our home market was up nearly 2%, a very satisfying performance.
The EBITDA margin reached 43.2% ahead of the levels recorded in the previous 5 quarters. Now, let's look ahead to the rest of the year and how we can leverage our Q1 as we go forward. In Greece, we will continue to focus our top line strategy on fiber mobile, coupled by, with most vigilance across the board.
Together with the expansion of our fiber footprint, we will pursue intensive marketing efforts to continue raising our fiber to the home utilization rate, which has been growing steadily and reached 18% as of the end of March, up 12 points, 12% a year earlier. Mobile, we are leveraging our 5G infrastructure and continuing to push to convert users from pre to post-paid services.
Our focus is on maintaining our market share, focusing especially on the more value generated segments of the market. In addition, COSMOTE's new businesses will continue to reinforce the aura and influence of the brand, like the BOX delivery service and the payzy payment system, which has now reached over 100,000 users in a few months since it was launched.
We will also carry on pushing ICT projects which are valuable by themselves, but also contribute to the digitalization of our economy and create better conditions for growth. We have a strong pipeline of projects of valuable assignments, which should support this line of business going forward. A word on Romania, where our mobile subsidiary was impacted following discontinuation of the MVNO service it provided after separation from its fixed star.
As you have seen, we announced last Tuesday that following the resignation of the previous CEO, Babis, in addition to his responsibilities of Group CEO, will take on duties of the CEO of Telekom Romania. Babis will intensify the focus to stabilize and improve the performance, as well as to explore any strategic options.
In a year that we don't expect to be particularly easy, we are reassured by this solid Q1 results and are committed to great customer service, continuing to build a top-class infrastructure, controlling our costs. That's why we are confirming our outlook for the year. Our CapEx, which was down in the Q1 for seasonal reasons, should be stable in the full year as we accelerate fiber to the home deployment. We also confirmed our shareholder remuneration level. On this note, I'll now ask Babis to review our performance in the quarter.
Thank you very much, Michael, and greetings to all of you from me as well. I am proud and excited to take over the added duty of the CEO in Romania, and I look forward to getting this operation faster on stabilization path. Let's now jump into our Q1 performance. This year, Q1 group revenues were down 2% from the Q1 of 2022.
Increase revenue was down less than 1%, primarily from international for sale and to a lesser extent, retail fixed services. In Romania, the 2% drop reflects the MVNO discontinuation following the sale of our fixed business the year before, and as well as lower mobile termination rates. Group adjusted EBITDA after leases were just down 1%.
The drop was entirely due to Romania, which had benefited from a sizable one-off positive factors in the Q1 last year and experienced certain headwinds this year. In Greece, we achieved a strong operating profitability with EBITDA margin at the high end of our historical records. This is due to our ability to control our cost base. All told, the group EBITDA margin was 40.1%, up 40 basis points from the same quarter in 2022 despite the Romanian shortfall.
Turning to Greece, the resilience in revenues reflects the strong performance of mobile and ICT, while wholesale and fixed weigh on the total. Revenue from Greek retail fixed services were down 3.5% in the quarter, including data services, which makes absolute sense to incorporate. Most of the decrease comes from voice and TV, while broadband was roughly unchanged.
Overall, this reflects certain pricing adjustments as well as lower demand for some legacy services. In TV, the growth in subscriber numbers continues. Now we are approaching 650,000 customers. It is mainly driven by our over-the-top service, which commands lower ARPU. With excellent content, we are successfully preserving our share of the market, as well as our penetration of total households.
As mentioned before, broadband revenues were stable, which represents an achievement if you consider that we are comparing to the last quarter before we started implementing a round of significant speed upgrades at no additional cost for the customer. This has frozen revenues that would normally have benefited from customers upgrading voluntarily, most importantly, it also has a desired effect, that of stabilizing our base.
We added 15,000 customers in the quarter, pursuing the increase in penetration on total base, which now exceeds 86%, two points higher than a year ago. As you're aware of, we are totally focused on moving our customers to fiber, and the quarter marked another series of successful moves in this direction.
Compared to the past two quarters, we more than doubled the number of fiber additions during the first three months of this year to 41,000. More than 2/3 of these additions, or 29,000, came from FTTH, bringing the total FTTH base to 166,000, way more than twice the number a year ago.
Similarly, despite the ongoing expansion of our FTTH footprint, and despite the current lack of any government subsidy encouraging take up, FTTH penetration reached 18%, 18, of homes passed, up from 12% a year ago. With fiber playing an even larger role in our offers, speeds in excess of 100 Mbps represented now 45% of total retail subscriptions at the end of the Q1 of this year, up from 28% a year earlier.
As you see, we are holding our ground in a changing competitive landscape by leveraging our advanced infrastructure and top customer service offer. ICT had another strong quarter boosted by system solutions for private and public entities, including EU-sponsored projects. As a result, other fixed revenues were up more than 12%.
For the most part, the decline in wholesale revenues comes from international transit, but there's also some slight drop related to lower tariffs in domestic wholesale. Moving to mobile service revenues in Greece, these achieved another quarter of a very healthy growth, up nearly 3% this quarter, driven by increases in both postpaid and prepaid.
In prepaid, we had a very solid quarter validating our more for more strategy, notably higher top-up value bundles. Postpaid continued to benefit from the expansion of the base and very encouraging data monetization. Data KPIs are all pointing in the right direction, notably monthly data users per subscriber up 67% year-on-year.
We are actively pursuing the expansion of our 5G network reach, which should stretch to 90% of the population by the end of this year and is already above that level in most of the country's major cities. Let's turn to the other side of this quarter story in Greece with good cost control. Total operating expenses, including depreciation, amortization, and one-offs, were down nearly 4% in the Q1, a sharp reversal from the trends last year, when our cost control initiatives ended up being neutralized by inflation and higher energy costs.
This quarter, energy costs came down significantly, about EUR 5 million, thanks to hedging and long-term supply contracts. Energy, of course, remains a volatile element in our P&L. Our efforts are focusing now on stabilizing price for the future years, even if this implies somewhat higher prices going forward.
Bad debt provisions were also down as the high rates of the pandemic period are proven overly conservative. Personal expenses declined more than 3% in the quarter, reflecting the benefits of last year's early retirement plans, as we had anticipated.
A new voluntary exit scheme is underway, which should improve further our cost structure in 2023 and onwards. We have also finalized a new labor agreement with the union, which provides visibility to our costs while eliminating a number of legacy bureaucratic salary structures. Important to say, employees at the lower salary echelons will benefit the most from the new agreement.
All told, Q1 adjusted EBITDA after leasing Greece was up 1.6% to nearly EUR 319 million, resulting in a margin of 43.3%, which is up 110 basis points from the same quarter last year. Total revenues were down 12% in Romania, which is a very challenging market of course, where we are facing competitors who are offering unlimited services for a couple of EUR a month.
In last year's Q1, Telekom Romania was still providing MVNO services to Orange, following its acquisition of the fixed business. This service has been gradually discontinued. As a result, revenues were down sharply. Revenues are also affected by the mobile termination rates cuts imposed by the regulator.
Starting this quarter, that is Q2 of 2023, the comparison should become more favorable as the MVNO agreement subsides and there's only 2 million EUR in Q2 last year and very little after that. Total operating expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization, were down nearly 2% in the quarter, primarily due to lower interconnection costs, while device costs were up as Telekom Romania was forced to align its strategy with those of its competitors.
Energy costs were also higher as the government terminated the subsidized cap benefiting larger enterprises, leading to significantly higher tariffs throughout 2023. The impact in this 1st quarter alone is in the area of 2 million EUR from this energy cost.
As a result, Telekom Romania Mobile's adjusted EBITDA after leases was nearly EUR 4 million in the quarter compared to nearly EUR 12 million in the same quarter last year. Important to note is that if we exclude the MVNO impact we discussed before, EBITDA would be down less than EUR 3 million from last year level, reflecting just the aforementioned higher energy costs.
There is not much to point out in the rest of the P&L since interest expense and income taxes were down by 4% and net income was up nearly 5%. Turning to cash flow, adjusted CapEx was down 14% to EUR 80 million versus last year. As you know very well, the Q1 CapEx is often not representative of the full year outlays because of the seasonality.
As we step up the pace of fiber to the home deployment, the R8 should normalize starting this quarter. In line with the EUR 640 million full year CapEx guidance, which we are fully confirming. Free cash flow after lease was up 2% to EUR 226 million. We maintain our guidance of approximately EUR 500 million for the full year.
Our shareholder remuneration guidance of EUR 425 million is unchanged, with EUR 250 million in dividend payable in early July and EUR 175 million in share buyback, which currently under execution. To recap, we are pleased with our healthy Q1 in Greece, underscoring the competitiveness that comes from offering great service on a state-of-the-art infrastructure. While we expect to face new challenges, we remain optimistic for the coming quarters.
In Romania, the situation is definitely tougher and we are weighing all of our options there. On this note, Michael, Panagiotis and myself and our colleagues around the table are ready to take your questions. Operator?
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by 1 on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Stamatios Draziotis with Eurobank Equities. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello there, thank you very much for taking my questions. Just a couple if I may please. Firstly, on Romania, with the performance there, as you said, going south again, I expect the business will be cash flow negative again in 2023.
Could you tell us, you know, what you think in terms of your strategic options and how these, you know, these thoughts relate to Babis taking over as CEO of Telekom Romania Mobile? Secondly, I mean, I guess the pressure in Greek fixed was well telegraphed in previous quarters. It's clear, you intend to protect your subscriber base. Just wondering what you've been seeing from a competitive dynamic perspective. Has your main competitor leading price initiatives been able to gain subscribers? When do you think the top line dynamic in fixed will improve, please? Thank you.
Okay, thank you. Thank you for the questions. First of all, Romania, the appointment of Babis doesn't really change much. I mean, the direction is there. The first one is to continue and intensify the efforts of stabilization. Yes, EBITDA-wise, we are in the first phase down versus a year ago. I think we explained that the combination doesn't help. This drop versus the previous year will get normalized as we move on to quarters where last year we didn't have the MVNO, and this will be more evident in Q2.
The effort now is to intensify the stabilization, meaning that in this challenging environment to continue driving the customer base, as we saw also in the results, continues to grow. And take advantage of any type of synergies and efficiencies we can do in order to improve the customer experience and the profitability.
Consistent with what we have discussed in previous calls, this hasn't changed. It's intensified of course, because we need to make sure that the pace that we are running there towards the stabilization will not be impacted. Regarding the strategic options, this is something that as we said in previous calls, we continue to explore and assess.
Inevitably, we don't have anything concrete now to discuss because this strategic options will be materialized whenever there is a real case. Rest assured that when we have something, we will inform the market.
The message here is that while we're stabilizing the business, we are also exploring any strategic option which makes sense. On the fixed side, I think looking to what we have discussed in the previous calls in the past two quarters. The picture here is on the fixed side is consistent with what we have discussed. Meaning that we see a top line decline.
The comparison versus the last year, we compare with last year that before we upgraded our customers base to the next speed at no cost. To say that the feeling is that if we, if we hadn't done that one, then your question would have reverted mostly why do we lose customers.
Now we are, we have achieved the first part, which is to maintain our customer base, thanks to this move that we did last year. Thanks to the continuous drive of the fiber to the home superior service we have in the market. As we move on in the next quarters, where we'll be comparing with quarters where we had this two effects evident.
The expectation is that this top line negative point will start getting a little bit towards some stabilization. We cannot put exact quarter when this will happen because we are not alone in the market, and we have to continuously getting in our our our customer offers updated. The competition remains intense. We think that our strategy so far works. It's consistent with what we had discussed in previous quarters.
That's very clear. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Maurice Patrick with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi there, it's Maurice here from Barclays. Just a couple of questions from me, please. First one is, you show the chart of fiber penetration, which shows, if I, if I understand correctly now, sitting at 18% of your homes connected to the fiber network with 940,000 homes passed.
That's pretty impressive, increase in the utilization rate, was 12% a year ago, now 18%. How high, that's obviously an average. I'm just curious as to how high the penetration is on some of the more mature cohorts. Like, are we sitting at sort of 30% on some cohorts now or where, how, you know, basically, yeah. What's, what's it, what's it like in terms of the cohort penetration? The second question, if I may.
You saw United Group sell a bunch of towers or rather than sell, announce towers sales at 20x the EBITDA. I'm just curious, given those elevated multiples, if you're tempted at all or you're still taking the view of wanting to own and control your towers. Thanks.
Let me take the second one on the towers. On the towers, we, yeah, that was an announce to market by United, so we don't, we cannot comment any more on that one. This doesn't change our strategy, which has been that this is an asset that for the time being we have selected to keep.
If anything else, aside from the strategic choices, there's also different drivers between a decision to go that path from company to company, depending on their structure. On the penetration part, if I understood the question correctly, please follow up if this is something that will not be responded.
Is that, this 18% is currently what we have in the, in the, at the end of Q1. The way this will grow is a little bit depending, or it is mostly dependent on how fast we roll out also the, the base, the home part because currently we are in the peak I would say of our activity there, and this will be this year and next year. Inevitably we will roll out a big proportion of the total project in the coming, I would say 18 months or so, till the end of 2024.
The presentation will continue to grow, but we have to wait up until we reach the first maturity level, which is around in the area of close to 2 million homes before we see the digitization getting to what might have been your thoughts when you asked the question in the levels of above 25 or above 30, once the base has been stabilized. Is that? If I got the question, please follow up if this is not what you were looking for.
Sorry, maybe if I ask it in a different way. 18% I guess is the average penetration on your entire base. Of course, the ones you rolled out in very recent quarters probably are less than 18%. Probably have some more mature cohorts that are currently more than 18%. I was just wondering how, you know, what penetration are you getting on some of the more mature cohorts?
Okay.
Okay. May I add to this? If we go to the base that we have rolled out and is now mature, and let's say it was 2 or 3 years ago, I would take the 3 years ago rollout. Penetration or fiber on our own base or FTTH is 1 out of 2 customers, meaning 1 out of 2 of our customers or our broadband base in the areas that we have rolled out 3 years ago, on that wave of rollout is 1 out of 2 customers have already moved to fiber. If we go even back to 4 or 5 years, it's more than 65% of our own base that have migrated to fiber. I don't know if that was the question. I hope I have helped on that.
That is exactly the question. Thank you very much indeed. Very impressive, by the way.
The next question is from the line of Akhil Dattani with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking the question. I had one clarification question just on the MVNO revenues in Romania. Could you just share how much the MVNO revenues were in the last, like, comparable quarter last year, so in Q1? Just so we can kind of compare what it would be, in compare the Q1 and Q2. Just a second question is on energy costs. Just following up on what you said about trying to stabilize the cost going forward. Is this kind of through a PPA? Would this mean maybe 2024 and going forward, the prices may increase versus now? Would this be like versus, I don't know, you know, 2021 prices?
Thank you for the question. On the numbers of MVNO, we had about EUR 6 million in Q1, which in Q1 of 2022, and the Q2 of 2022, we had EUR 2 million. That's total of EUR 8 million. In the Q3, Q4 of 2023, it was nearly zero.
Thank you.
On the energy cost. Okay, there was some noise in the line, but if you hear me, on the energy cost, we have the following. In 2023, the cost of energy for a big part of our consumption was lower than the market because we had this long-term agreement we had signed a couple of years ago. This is what gives us these nice savings that we are discussing.
In 2024, of course, if we look just the forward rates or if we look the best case in the market, we expect that there might be an increase versus because the good rate we had in 2023, as we said, they were locked in the previous year, and they were lower. So in 2024, they will be higher. However, we are doing various exercises with, for example, to sign PPA agreements and things like that in order to contain those costs. If you want to put a number in 2024 versus 2023, I think it's a little bit early.
We need to see how we were progressing in the next couple of quarters of this year to lock this type of deals, the PPA deals, that will change again the picture in 2024. Definitely we are expecting an increase in some of our consumption, which will not be a part of the PPA, the magnitude of which is not we don't expect to be huge. Maybe in the early in the low double digits or something like that. Putting a number there will have to be wait a little bit in order to give you a more credible answer in the coming quarters.
Okay, thank you.
Okay.
The next question is from the line of Vasilis Kollias with Pantelakis Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my questions. Two if I may. The first one is up until the Q4 of 2022, you were kind enough to give us some data on how the market and your competitors are doing on broadband and fixed access lines. I was hoping you could give us some numbers as well for the Q1. My second one is relating to what the previous questions were about the energy costs. If you could tell us about your thoughts about how you plan to attack your cost base even further in this year. Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. Starting from the second part, which is the energy. Let me try to put. Our cost structure is not just energy. It's broader than that one. The drivers that we tried to explain in the speech before, which has gotten us in this nice point, continue to be our strategy. I.e., we continue to optimize through voluntary retirement schemes. We said that there will be another one coming in this year in order to with a nice carryover also in 2024. Also we are optimizing in other areas, the non-payroll areas, in order to find more savings or more optimization that will help us on our profitability.
Again, taking the comment from the speech, the fact that we concluded our collective labor agreement, which secures this framework for the coming 2 years. It's something that we are considering a valuable asset because now, we have a nice visibility about this period, which also help us to support especially the low income with by accepting some of the perks that we were giving towards this category. On the energy situation specifically, also coming to the point that I covered before in the previous question, we are actually doing 3 things.
One is continue to drive post energy consumption projects in order to reduce the consumption, especially on the high consumed areas like data centers, network, et cetera. That's one. Secondly, we are pursuing various PPA agreements. We are still in the discussions, but we hope we will have some that will be kicking in in 2024, and will benefit, will help us to lower the costs. For the part that will be out in the market, I mean, closing part, we are doing agreements with the energy providers in the market, so as to have visibility in our costs.
The direction on the cost side is a continuous effort to reduce in line with what we have been seeing also in this year. To your second question, for competition landscape, Quarter 1 and also the current Quarter 2 is a repetition of the high competitive, high challenging situation in the market, which I think we have been quite lively described our defending strategy in fixed mobile, which so far secures the stabilization of our customer base in the fixed line.
Again, that was also supported by our proactive actions last year to upgrade a significant part of our customer base, which was completed mostly in Q2 and Q3 of last year, towards the higher speeds. That's the comment on the second question.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Osman Memisoglu with Ambrosia Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello, many thanks for your time and the presentation. A few on my side, if I may please. First on the fixed revenues part, what is the latest on the timing and if possible, relative size of the fiber coupons from government coming in to play? Also, within the fixed revenues that you mentioned earlier in your speech, domestic wholesale tariffs came down a bit. If you could share what the impact was.
Was it all covered in Q1, or is there a partiality, so we see a delta in Q2? That's on fixed revenues. Then, maybe a more strategic question. What are the latest thoughts on the capital structure of the company, especially given that Greece is quite close to becoming investment grade? Should we expect any change on the capital structure, either because of that event or anything else, in the near future? Thank you.
After the elections.
Well, yeah, let me-.
After the election, the coupon is expected after the elections. Definitely in towards the last quarter of the year.
On the rest of the domestic wholesale, that is the natural glide path of all the prices. The area is a little bit below EUR 3 million, it's been expected. On the capital structure, we have been quite consistent with the policy in the previous years. The end of the year the company is already rated as investment grade. OTE is already on investment grade. The accession of the country into the development grade obviously will attract more interest from portfolios of countries don't invest in from the statutory.
They don't invest in lower than investment grade. That will be a benefit for the whole country actually, not just for tech. The capital structure remains as it is. We are looking forward to the accession of the country in the investment grade because of the attraction of more investors in the country.
Understood. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Ierodiaconou, Georgios with Citi. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. One question, a couple of clarifications. My question is around pricing going forward. We've seen a number of countries, companies introducing some inflation links to their pricing. Not necessarily for this year, but maybe thinking about next year as well. I'm curious if it's something you are looking into.
I know Vodafone has already been active on that front in many markets, but whether it's something that you are looking perhaps into introducing at some point, given the pressures from inflation we're seeing in some markets. The two clarifications I have is, firstly, as you mentioned earlier, something about the voucher program.
I just wanted to understand whether there are any pending decisions from the government or whether there could be any delays if there is, if it takes a bit of time to form, let's say, a government after the elections. Whether that could affect the timing or whether or not it's just a matter of, you know, certain things just going through the government processes before it's finally operational.
The clarification, the second clarification is around the FTTH penetration you mentioned earlier in some of the early areas where you rolled out fiber, which is around 50%. Is that, do you connect to FTTH only if the customers upgrade speeds to FTTH levels? Or, do you tend to connect any new customer to FTTH regardless of whether they are paying up for speeds? Thank you.
Okay. Regarding inflationary price increases, currently we're going through a fierce competitive I would say, period, which means that market dynamics do not allow for any price increases. Regarding the voucher, as we said, it is in the plans of the digitalization initiative and processes of the government. Yet we need to see the final documents and the final decision to push it through. Which, as we said, we expect given the current situation to be enacted towards the end of the year. That's our view, but it is in the plans and in the digitalization bill.
George, the question about the fiber to the home, let's say the old a-areas, as Panayiotis said, that's 50% in some cases. If I understood correctly, your question is how far or how fast we can grow the current penetration towards this percentage, right?
It's also 50% is relatively high, so I'm just wondering whether even if the customer is not opting for speeds that require FTTH, whether you connect all the new customers to FTTH anyway so that it's easier to then upgrade them during that contract. I'm just curious whether to connect to FTTH, whether I need to pay extra or not.
No, this is natural demand. We do not forcefully connect the new customers to the fiber. We surely do intensive campaigning throughout all our channels, shops, telesales, to all these new areas that we are rolling out the fiber. If we remember very well, the first areas that we rolled out the fiber are the areas near the central offices, meaning that we didn't have fiber to the cabinet either.
The maximum speed the customers could get there was 24 Mbps or even less. Because it was the old copper infrastructure. This is why the take up in these areas is very impressive after three or 4 years. The customers are getting the best of the best of the experience we can give them through fiber.
Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Once again, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. We have a follow-up question from the line of Osman Memisoglu with Ambrosia Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, just quickly, if you don't mind, given the tourism pickup, are you seeing any material changes in your roaming performance, particularly, I guess Q2? I would imagine Q1 was probably material. That's the first one. Any update on the performance of payzy? Should we expect any contribution on EBITDA level this year from it? Thanks.
Regarding the roaming, it's expected to be an equal good year as last year. Also there are some situation in the right path of the connection rates. We expect at least to have a stable roaming revenues versus last year. And that will be evident mostly in Q-two, in Q-three, because the number in Q-one, it was just around EUR 3 million. On the payzy, I think it's still on the growing phase of course, because it's just a few months after the launch. And the first target which was to reach the landmark of 100,000 customers ASAP has been achieved.
Now we are heading forward to further increase towards the next milestone and also to enrich our service with new offerings. We have to be patient, maybe 2 years before the numbers are starting to have an impact in the whole P&L structure. It's going according to plan. A little bit better, I would say, in terms of customers, and looking forward to the new stream of services.
Thank you.
Thank you.
As a final reminder, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone.
Questions, questions and interest noted. Our resilience in the Q1 and our plans for the rest of the year give us confidence that we will deliver another health performance in the full year despite the economic, geopolitical and competitive pressure we are expecting to face. I'm looking forward to our next discussion in early August for our half year results. Have a nice day and a nice weekend. Operator, thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling and have a pleasant evening.