Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Orange H1 2022 results conference call. For the first part of this call, let me remind you that all participants will be on a listen-only mode, and afterwards there will be a question and answer session. I would like now to hand over the call to Koen Van Mol, Head of IR. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Koen Van Mol, Head of Investor Relations at Orange Belgium. I would like to welcome you to our earnings call for the first half year of 2022. Here with me are Xavier Pichon, our CEO, and Antoine Chouc, our CFO. As usual, you should have received our financial communication this morning. In any case, you can also find all the relevant information on our corporate website. A Q&A session will follow right after Xavier's and Antoine's introductory statement. I will now leave the floor to Xavier.
Thanks, Koen. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Hope you're well, or this call finds you well. Thanks for participating in this earnings call for the results of the first year, first half of the year 2022. During this first part of this year, we've been able to provide positive commercial results, consolidating our position in mobile and improving our market share in broadband. We were able to do so this despite the macroeconomic environment that included an unprecedented inflation, and we still are confronted with rising energy costs. We also observed a slowdown of the market with fewer net adds overall. Within these turbulent times, we've been able to prove our resilience. We go to the slide five of the presentation of the deck. By the end of the semester, we had the auction of the spectrum organized by the BIPT.
We've been able to obtain the maximum amount of the new 5G spectrum bands available for auction, which is 20 MHz in the 700 MHz band and 100 MHz in the 3.6 GHz band. In total, Orange Belgium acquired more than 200 MHz of spectrum at a unique license fee of EUR 322 million. For the 1400 MHz, the auction ended July 20, and we obtained 30 MHz, which means that's 1/3 of the auction spectrum at a price of EUR 2.33 million per megahertz. The unique license fee for a 20-year license period for this spectrum is EUR 69.65 million. The additional spectrum will allow us to ensure high-quality coverage coupled with high capacity for advanced mobile network for both residential and business customers.
The obtained spectrum will allow us to realize our 5G ambition, while at the same time to continue to provide optimal 4G services. To further optimize the efficiency of the spectrum use, we will also start the phasing out of the 3G technology on our network as from mid-2023 for a definitive switch off of 3G in 2025. The 2G technology will remain until end of 2028. Switching off legacy technologies such as 3G and 2G is a real opportunity for Orange Belgium to provide more efficient, sustainable and value-added experiences towards its customers. Slide number six. After reaching the major milestone of 400,000 connected customers, we have launched a new generation of TV decoders based on Android TV and introducing several new features with the integration of native apps of content providers such as Amazon Prime Video and Streamz.
We also included Chromecast capabilities and the new cloud-based multi-screen TV recording services which are accessible at, on any device. This is a major revamp of the way we provide content to our customers, give them the control over the consumption and making new innovative experiences possible. Slide number seven. To better fit the customer needs, we have evolved our GO portfolio following a more for more logic as we are offering our customers an increasingly large scope of services and content while building our multi-gigabit network. We have adapted our tariff plan. While the data cap of the complete GO portfolio has been increased with additional data, as you can see on the slide. We increased the advantage for our multi-SIM and Love customers from EUR 9 to EUR 10 on a permanent basis.
We haven't changed our price for our Hey portfolio, but we reward loyalty and additional discounts to certain customers. This is in line with our segmented approach to be able to address the different kind of customers. Slide number eight. To help reducing the digital divide, we have opened an Orange Digital Center in the heart of Brussels. The Orange Digital Center will serve as a support and development center, allowing everyone to acquire and improve their digital and entrepreneurial skills with activities ranging from digital training to coaching for small businesses and startups, offering a genuine trajectory for personal and business growth. Consistent with the group's purpose and its commitment to a Sustainable Development Goals, Orange committed to opening an Orange Digital Center in all of our 20 countries by 2025.
The center consists of a digital academy and educational space based on strong partnership and Solidarity FabLab, which is a digital production workshop. These initiatives will create bridges with other key Orange programs such as Orange Fab and Orange Ventures initiatives to accelerate and to invest in startups. Slide number nine. On the regulatory side, we expect that in the third quarter of this year, we'll have more details on the outcome of the procedure of the competition authority regarding the RAN-sharing with Proximus. During the month of June, we had the spectrum auction, which we already mentioned earlier in the presentation. As said, we are able to acquire the main spectrum for the deployment of 5G, both coverage and capacity. The spectrum auctions also permitted other mobile players to enter the market.
The 1400 spectrum auction started on July 12 and ended on the 26th. Slide number 10. Let's take a look at the key achievement for the first half of 2022. The commercial performance remained positive, especially in postpaid, despite the limited growth of the market compared with last year and the competitive environment nationwide. We had 22,000 convergent net adds, achieving our customer base of 417,000 customers, an increase of roughly 14% year-on-year. On the mobile side, we had 33,000 net adds, reaching 2.8 million customers, an increase of 3%-5% in comparison with last year. Antoine will detail more the financial results, but from another perspective, we can put forward positive results.
Our revenue has increased by 3.3% to EUR 373.3 million, following mainly the increase in commercial and services revenue with the detailed service revenues. Because of the increased service revenues and continuous cost control, we are able to increase our EBITDA by 3.3% to EUR 167 million roughly, despite the difficult macroeconomic context with high inflation and skyrocketing energy costs. Our eCapEx has increased by 5.8% to EUR 86 million, due to the acceleration of the deployment of the RAN-sharing agreement and the implementation of 5G. With this, I would like to hand over to Antoine to go into more detail into the commercial and financial results. Please, Antoine.
Thank you, Xavier. Hi, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you today. Let's continue on slide 12. In the first half year, we've been able to have positive commercial performance, especially in mobile postpaid, despite the limited growth of the market compared with last year in combination with a competitive environment nationwide. We have been able to have 33,000 new mobile postpaid customers, mainly thanks to success of our GO portfolio and the effectiveness of the GO Extreme Special Edition, which is a lifetime promotion on the GO Extreme offer. Also, our Hey! offer contributed to the results of this half year. For cable, we were able to have 22,000 new customers within the context of the end of the COVID boost. Slide 13.
Our convergent ARPU has decreased slightly by 0.6% to EUR 773.3. The decrease is mainly a consequence of the discounts we are providing in our GO offers in combination with convergence, the increase of our low dual customer base. Our mobile-only ARPU has increased by 1.5% to almost EUR 20 , mainly thanks to the increase of customer roaming traffic. On slide 14, our total revenues have been increasing in comparison to last year's, despite the loss of Mobile Vikings, which has disappeared from our networks in the second quarter of this year. The increase of the service revenues is the main driver for the increase in the total revenues. As a consequence, our total revenues increased by 3.3%.
Our rate of service revenue continues to grow, even with a higher pace in comparison to the former periods. We had an increase of 6.4% in comparison to last year. Our mobile-only service increased by 2.5%, also thanks to the increase of the mobile-only ARPU. Also, the convergent services revenues had increased by 13%, as well as the fixed-only service revenues by 14%, mainly because of the inclusion of the [Smart Home]. I'm on slide 17. In comparison to last year, our retail service revenues increased with EUR 29.7 million. Convergent service revenues increased the most with EUR 16 million, while mobile-only services revenues also increased with EUR 7 million.
The wholesale revenue decreased by EUR 6 million, mainly explained by the decrease in MVNO revenues by almost EUR 4 million, which is, as I said, mainly the loss of Mobile Vikings. Incoming voice and SMS decreased by EUR 10.6 million, and while visitor roaming revenues increased by EUR 7 million. Equipment sales and other revenues decreased by EUR 2 million. This resulted in EUR 677.3 million, an increase of 3.3% in comparison to last year. Our EBITDA increased by 3.5% in comparison to last year, mainly thanks to the increase of our revenues and a tight management of our costs. Our indirect cost base increased less than the inflation of this period.
For the first half of the year of 2022, we had an EBITDA of EUR 166.8 million. When it comes to CapEx, I'm on slide 19, we had an increase mainly explained by an acceleration of the deployment of our RAN-sharing program with Proximus and the implementation of 5G. As a consequence, the CapEx was at EUR 86 million for the first half year, which is 5.8% more than last year. Our net debt decreased to EUR 65 million with a gearing of 0.2x. Slide 21. It will be the last one. With these results we are cautiously optimistic for the year 2022, and we confirm that we will reach our guidance as we initially outlined.
We'll have low single digit growth versus 2021, an EBITDA between EUR 350 million and EUR 370 million, and an eCapEx between EUR 210 million and EUR 230 million. With this, I conclude the presentation, and we are ready for your questions. Operator, may I ask you to now open the call for the Q&A session.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. First question from Nicolas Cote-Colisson from HSBC. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, everyone. Two questions, please. To start with, can we have an update on the VOO transaction? You filed with the European Commission at the end of June. Do you think it could be a phase I process? Eventually the deadline is next week, so you must know by now if the European Commission wants more from your side. My second, and I think related question is about your fiber strategy if you were to acquire control of VOO. On the last call, you mentioned a balanced investment between upgrading cable and moving to fiber. Since we have seen Telenet splitting the NetCo and announcing a EUR 2 billion cost attached to it, how do you see CapEx evolving and what type of co-investment strategy all these deals may trigger eventually? Thank you.
Hello, Nicolas. Thanks for your interesting both questions. On the first one, I guess you know that we can't make any comments. We are of course fully aware that there is a deadline at the end of the month, I guess the 28th or 29th. Then we will know more, you know, that this is it. We'll see whether what will be the decision-making at the end of the month, but we can't say much more at this stage. On point number two, on your question number two, you're right to say that we've, I would say, already booked the fact that we'll have maybe a balanced strategy to get some multi-gigabit network in the future.
There are some fresh projects around. I guess announcement first we'll see whether it will be a real project at the end or not, but there are some fresh announcements that have been made by either Proximus and Telenet. First there are this is maybe much more capabilities and possibilities we might have just to reach our ambition on that multi-gigabit fixed broadband approach. But I guess, we're not so I would say ready for saying much more on that side as well. First we need to get the clearance from the competition authorities on the VOO file, and then of course, we will be more precise just in next year on how we might fill our ambition on that side.
I would say no major improvement and announcement at this stage so far. Sorry for that, Nicolas.
No, no, I completely accept that. At least can you say that you are still, well, you're not opposed to a co-investment, I would say, with your partners or opening your future platforms to co-investors as well, as a form of a principle?
I guess we're not opposed to, I would say, anything, okay? We are in an open mind view on that side. Of course, as we said to the BIPT as well, that we need to get some symmetric regulation on that side and affordable price. We'll see whether the situation could be, I would say, fixed in every region. I said that there are fresh announcements, including Brussels. The broadband infra market is moving a lot in Belgium, and that's of course a very good thing. We'll see in the coming months, honestly. We can't say much more at this stage.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Joshua Mills from BNP Paribas Exane. Sir, please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the questions. I've got two as well, please. The first is just, it'd be great to hear your thoughts on the new entrant risk in Belgium, how you perceive that, whether you think you'll have to take any steps on pricing. Then related to that, your current thoughts on offering a national roaming deal. I know that.
Digi and Citymesh will be guaranteed one by the regulator once they get to 20% coverage. How do you broadly think about the opportunity and the risk of doing deals there? Secondly, if I could just follow up on Nick's question. I guess, rather than talk about your CapEx envelope or upgrade plans, if I just take what Telenet said, and I think the implied cost per home upgraded is something like EUR 650. They also said that it would be between EUR 100 and EUR 300 to connect homes once upgraded to fiber.
Is there any reason why the broad economics of that kind of upgrade, you know, your cable footprint should be any different or is that kind of the per home cost we should be thinking about when we do our modeling? Thanks very much.
No, you're welcome. On your question number one. In a way, what we've said in the last week or month on that side, and particularly after the announcement of the Digi launch, future launch, is that we were having some, I would say, strategic analysis when we arrived in Antwerp a couple of years ago, that could lead to a kind of newcomers coming in Belgium. Of course, you know that. It has been always part of our decision-making since we came here, and it has been prepared also for years, in a way, just to make sure that on the convergent market and then on the cable first and then on the convergent offers, we were able just to start from zero to 400,000.
Knowing that or having some thoughts on that's why the decision-making since two years was, in a way, directly linked to the potential arrival of both entrants. This is why we decided to follow up the purchase of VOO and the signing of VOO that has been fruitful and achieved last December. That's why, of course, we know, and this is another thing, we know the game in a way. We've already seen the movie, you know, the English familiar topic, okay. Been there, bought the T-shirt, et cetera. We know that. We've been living in other countries, okay. We've been part of other Orange affiliates within the group, particularly in France and Spain, et cetera.
We've already had to experience some newcomers in those markets. That's why I guess first we decided to try to buy VOO. This is it. Now, I said, we are having this in this space. That's why we changed marketing policy. We moved from a single mono-brand strategy, marketing strategy to a multi-brand, segmented approach on the marketing on B2C. This is it, actually. We don't know when these guys will come in. We don't know what kind of strategy they will follow precisely, but what we know that we started to prepare it for a number of years, and of course, we will implement this as a strategy either on the get and the keep. That's it.
On your question number two, we've seen the figures on the Telenet press release and announcement, so we don't have to, I would say, comment. That's why in a way, I would maybe just say again that I said to Nicolas, we are for years seeking to get the most appropriate and smart and, I would say, valuable solution in every region on the multi-gigabit fixed broadband network. Somewhere, we will have directly a network, and the question would be to get the most interesting balance between cable and fiber and some in others. We need to find the best way to achieve our ambition and to make our, I would say, market share growing. That's it. So we can't say more. We know the figures, okay.
We've seen the figures. We know the figures. We've seen the announcements in every region, and then we'll have the work to do and the homework to do just to find the better balance in every region. What is sure that we do have a nationwide ambition and nationwide approach. This is it.
Just maybe if I may add something regarding the unitary cost you just mentioned. If I'm not mistaken, the EUR 650 you mentioned is not an average cost for all the footprint of Telenet and previous NetCo. It's only on 50% of this footprint. You also have to keep in mind that Flanders is significantly more dense than Wallonia. Which obviously has also an impact on the average cost per home passed as density is a strong driver of the unitary cost in FTTH. That's what I wanted to share.
Yeah. That's a great point. Yeah. You know, the EUR 650 is really the cheapest it would be. You're obviously in less dense areas, and then you've got the EUR 200 or EUR 300 cost on top. That's great. I mean, I think, sorry, just to come back on the other question I had around the MVNO or national roaming deal. You talked a lot about your retail response, but is the premise that you're greatly open to discussing wholesale partnerships with mobile as you have been in the past?
Sorry, I forgot to point out what's said on the side. I said we're open, but we'll see. This is something that we will have to maybe work on. Honestly, this is not the first item on our list, on our roster, so which we are much more focused on the retail side, of course. We'll see if there are some appetites to deal with us. We'll see. It's not a closed door, I would say, but it's not totally open as well. We'll see.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Ulrich Rathe, from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Okay. If these two big strategic questions have been addressed, maybe some more on the details on what happened in the quarter. On the indirect cost, that's quite an extraordinary achievement there. Could you talk about what measures you took to keep that under control and whether that sort of was really slamming the foot on the brakes in the quarter and you know, with that wouldn't be sustainable or whether these sorts of measures that helped you on the indirect costs would be sustainable? That would be my first question. The second one is the postpaid only ARPU growth. Could you talk a little bit about the relative support you're getting from the price increase compared to the roaming recovery?
The last one, the postpaid only subs were actually in growth in the second half of last year. They were sort of in decline before, because of the migration through to FMC. How does that look, at this point in time? Thank you very much.
Okay. I'll take the first questions regarding the indirect costs first. First, thanks for your comments. Indeed, controlling our indirect costs in a time of inflation is a huge challenge. As you may have seen, there is clearly a big impact on some tough renegotiations we had with some of our main IT suppliers and network suppliers, so that there are year-on-year significant savings. I would say recurrent savings when it comes to this contract.
That's part of the explanation, and it was a way for us to offset parts of the labor cost increase due to indexation, et cetera. That's, I would say, one of the main impact for the semester. The second point is that we try to offset as much as we could the impact of the indexation of our labor costs through a tight control of our recruitments. It's a measure also, there are some fruits, and you can see the results today.
Last but not least, we have a thrust of the program of cost savings within the company. It's a lot of, I would say, small steps. At the end, it starts also to bear some fruits, even if it's only some minor individual actions. Regarding the second question, the impact of the price increase on the postpaid-only ARPU growth.
Well, clearly the impact in the H1 ARPU of the price increase, say, launched in June is rather limited because it's only started at the end of the semester. As we said, and as I said, the main impacts come from roaming and the customer roaming revenues. People are traveling, our clients are traveling more and more, especially in the B2B segment. What I can tell you is that we are not far from having roaming customer roaming revenues in line with what we had in what I would say the pre-COVID era, if we look at the figures between 2020...
This first semester and the first semester in 2019. You had a third question on the evolution of the postpaid only subscribers, if I'm not mistaken. We still managed to have a very slow growth of our mobile-only customer base. We are helped by Hey!, which is also a way to gain some clients in this segment.
That's of course the cornerstone of our strategy and all the more after the full acquisition remains convergence and that is the best way to attract new clients and to keep them on the long run.
That's very helpful. I won't be greedy, but can I maybe ask one follow-up? Koen , please stop me if it's too much. That is, do you actually see any change in payment behavior already? I think AT&T was commenting on that yesterday, and the whole sector today here in Europe is trading a little bit on that. It's a bit of a topical question, whether sort of the macro situation already leads to visible effects in the accounts on your end. Thank you.
Thanks for this question, and don't worry, you can be greedy. That's something we monitor very carefully. In fact, we had a special plan to monitor the bad debts since the beginning of the COVID crisis, and it has been extended program, and this monitoring has been extended because of the very special macroeconomic situation. What I can tell you is that, for the moment, so far, so good. We don't see a significant increase in our bad debts. It's still the beginning. I would say, when you see the forecast of inflation and the macroeconomic environment, it's still the beginning of this macroeconomic changes.
We'll keep on monitoring that very carefully. Once again, so far so good.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Oh, great. Thank you for the questions. Afternoon, everyone. Just two, I guess, follow-ups from me, please, based on the previous question. I see in your outlook you've included the word cautiously optimistic now. Is that more on the pricing side? Because clearly the second half of the year will benefit from these price increases from, I think started a couple of weeks ago. Or is that to do with controlling your energy costs, or is it in fact a bit of both? Secondly, going back to an earlier question around the roaming agreement, and clearly we wait to see how any discussions develop there. Can you walk us through the mechanics of how that would work, given your tower JV? Would you need the buy-in of Proximus there?
Are you able to host, I guess what is in essence a third party? How does that work with potential emissions limits as well? Anything you could talk on that would be useful. Thank you.
I can answer the first question. Though cautiously optimistic, it's more because of the macroeconomic environment, not because of energy costs, because we are fully hedged for 2022. It's more about, yeah, as you said, we will be helped by the price increase and the review of our tax plans in June. We just talk about the situation, the risk of regarding the bad debt, because we at the end of the day, with 10% inflation, there may be an impact on our clients.
Well, I think the macroeconomic environment invites us to remain cautious. We are cautiously optimistic. There is also optimism. That's what I can tell you. Regarding the energy cost, there is no impact. It's well forecast for 2022. Regarding the labor cost, it's also well forecast because, as you may know, there is a yearly indexation in Belgium, but it's only at the beginning of the year, so there will be an impact in 2023. As far as we are concerned, it's also the case for all the companies in Belgium, but it's only a yearly one.
If we stay cautious, it's more because of the macroeconomic environment and not because we have a risk on some cost lines.
Thank you, Roshan. On the point number two, sorry, but I can't get into more details technically and also because we actually don't know. We don't know what could be the willingness, the needs and the commission, of course, in terms of traffic, et cetera also. But we could do it, and we can do it technically speaking, but the question would be at the end, what if they 10%, okay, what commission, of course, and what could be our strategy at the end and decision-making we make on this. Sorry, there is no actually precise item on that.
It's a bit fresh now because of course the auction has just ended. I guess that we'll have maybe much more detail, and you will have more details in a couple of months. It's a bit fresh just to evoke that topic as well. We know it, of course, we know we read it on the papers, on the documents, but this is something that will help make you assess in the coming weeks and months.
If I may, I'd say, is this something which you would have to assess in conjunction with Proximus? Or can you make an independent decision on that?
No, no. We can make an independent decision on that plan. The question would be what condition and when. The question is. The topic is fresh, really fresh, but we'll see. We are independent of that.
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from David Vagman from ING. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. Most of my questions have been asked already, so just a few follow-up, maybe to come back on the previous Telenet-
You will have to go first, maybe, David.
Yes. No, exactly. To come back on the previous Telenet deal from the Orange Belgium point of view. I estimate and I think you will agree that implicitly the wholesale rates that Telenet is paying to get 10 Gb speed seems really quite advantageous compared to the Proximus fiber rates. So yeah. Would you agree with this? Any chance that you might still, you know, want to do something with Proximus maybe in some more remote part of Flanders, or is it now really excluded?
Then on the Walloon side, I know maybe you don't want to answer too fast, but is there any chance that you would also consider an acceleration of a fiber rollout when you look at what Telenet is doing? Or do you feel really like this was under the pressure of Proximus and there is no real point of doing this in Wallonia? Thank you.
Thank you. I guess all these questions are related to what we invoked a couple of minutes ago. Just a clear speed up in the infra fixed broadband network, multi-gigabit broadband network projects. This is good. Honestly, this is good. Every single project that comes in is good opportunity for Orange just to be assessed and to see whether we might go and enter into it or not. The question would be just to see if those projects first will be interesting for Orange and then at last, of course, our decision. Proximus is now having clear ambition nationwide. We do have a clear ambition nationwide. Telenet is having large projects either in Flanders in Brussels. There is a clear project from the Brussels government as well.
Of course we do have the own fiber and easy fiber cloud as well. This is really interesting to see how we could, I would say, rely on part of them and to make sure to get our nationwide ambition as a group. This is it. The question would be now just to assess every single project, including the fresh one. There is a but, we need just to be cleared by the competition authority first to make sure that we'll have the possibility to assess the project in the south and Brussels, and then of course, to go from Brussels to the north to get the nationwide panorama. This is it.
Also on this topic, I'm so sorry, but you'll have to wait a little bit time for us to be clear and to process the closing of the deal in the south. You know, this is very important. This is of course the first platform or of our multi-gigabit strategy. Then we'll have the other region just to get to be a nationwide, a kind of multi-gigabit network players as well, like the others.
Mm-hmm.
This is it.
Thank you very much. Maybe a very quick follow-up. You're now insisting on the multi-gigabit. I understood that reading you know in press interviews you know of the CEO of VOO basically that they were still aiming to achieve 100% coverage of Wallonia, I think with 1 gig speed by 2028. Yeah. When I hear you talking about this multi-gigabit, I understand that you would be more ambitious.
Actually, we don't know yet the precise plan evoked by Christophe, the one you mentioned, the article you're sending. We don't know what they do have in the file. We don't know exactly what they have in terms of what plans they have, they might have in the CapEx association in their plan. We'll see at the end. We do have a clear multi-gigabit ambition nationwide. This is-
Okay.
— why we're talking about having a mix between cable and fiber and then to get some, of course, multi-gigabit agreement across the country in every single region. This is it. We do have a clear nationwide ambition, and this is not, of course, something we won't, I would say, let down with VOO. VOO is of course very important platform to get it, but our ambition is to move from the south to the whole country nationwide to get this multi-gigabit network.
Mm-hmm. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have no more question by phone. Just a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. A new question from Nicolas Cote-Colisson. Sir, go ahead.
Nicolas
Mr. Cote-Colisson?
Oh, yes, sorry, I was on mute. It must be the privilege of age. Look, on the cable wholesale pricing, it's under review now, and you are expecting a new decision mid-2023, sorry. I was wondering two things. First, isn't it too ambitious to expect something given all the moving parts in the fixed market? Secondly, given the big hike in wholesale pricing that will hit you next year, and combine that with the attitude of the Belgian government, do you think you still have the capacity to increase prices and match or offset this price increase?
Referring to your first question, Nicolas, it's true to say that the end of the regulation or the current regulation of the cable is I would say close, and it could be in 2023 or early 2024. We'll see, there is a fresh market analysis that will be proceeded by the BIPT team. There are some questions around the fiber as well in terms of not only bitstream, but I would say P2P tariffing as well. The question would be to see how the regulation would be, the first one would be I would say determined in the future. We don't know, of course, how what will be the results on that side.
It's interesting to see and to say that from cable so far the question would be how to spread pricing depending on the speed and this is your question number two. We do have now clear segmentation in terms of our brand that the high-value customers and the interesting content and I would say and services would be dedicated to Orange and I would say the value for money services would be dedicated to Hey!. The question would be at the end to do the more for more so it's not related to the wholesale price only it's also related to what we will put on our customer value proposition. This is more for more approach we started this year and maybe the year before.
We said that the more for more segment approach and policy has been interesting and fruitful for 2022. Of course, surely we will follow it in the coming years. This is it, not only the way we will increase price, it's the way we will increase our value proposition.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
-right.
Makes sense. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, gentlemen. We have no more questions on the phone.
There are some questions more which coming from the chat, they coming from Ben Lyons from Credit Suisse. The first question is there: Is there any risk to your fixed business if a new entrant can also wholesale cable? What are you assuming as your base case scenario? The second question from Ben is: To get to the midpoint of the guidance you need to have a flat EBITDA in H2, could you run us through the moving parts?
I will take the first one. We said, of course, that we don't know when. Even we think that it's gonna be in 2023, but we don't know precisely when and how Digi will enter the market, and what segments, what products, it will tackle. Of course, it could be FMC player or not, or a single mobile-only player, we don't know. We'll see, and we would answer your question when we know that. So far, of course, we don't have any clue. Antoine, maybe the other one. Sorry for that.
Yeah. For the second question. Well, as I said, we will be helped in H2 by the price review of our mobile tariff plans that we launched at the beginning of June. So it will be for the positive. On the [Antoine]. But they will still have some pressure on our direct cost base year-on-year, clearly from the labor cost because we won't be able to offset the impact of the indexation of almost 4% we had at the beginning of January through control of our headcounts.
We'll have also an impact of our energy prices 'cause as I said, we are fully hedged, but part of this hedge, at least part of this hedge, is at a higher price, at what we got in 2021. So that's, I would say, the main drivers that you should have in mind.
We don't have any further questions left, so we would like to thank you for your participation in this session. Would you have any further questions? Please do not hesitate to contact the IR team. Thank you very much, and have a nice day.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thanks.
— all for your participation. You may now disconnect.