Good day, and welcome to today's Proximus Q3 2023 results conference call. This meeting is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Nancy Goossens, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Hello, and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us. We will start the webcast with an introduction by the CEO, Guillaume Boutin. We will be using the presentation that we have published this morning on the website. After this, we will turn to your questions, and for the Q&A, we are joined by the CFO, Mark Reid, the Residential Segment Lead, Jim Casteele, the Business Segment Lead, Anne-Sophie Lotringer, the Corporate Affairs Lead, Ben Appel, and the CEO of BICS, Matteo Gatta. They will take your questions in a moment, but first, Guillaume will take us through the highlights of today. Guillaume, please go ahead.
Thank you, Nancy. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this webcast. Over the next 50 minutes, I will cover these topics, the usual ones, and let me start first with the highlights of this quarter. We'll get into more details, but clearly there are a number of things that I'm very pleased to announce today. To start with, the continued and very good customer growth, with, in particular, mobile postpaid closing another excellent quarter. Secondly, resulting from the growing customer base and our pricing strategy, we achieved strong revenue growth for our domestic segment, up for the quarter by 4.3%. At the same time, our EBITDA trend starts to recover, with a domestic EBITDA decline mitigated to -0.7% and -0.4% for the group EBITDA.
With the results outperforming our own expectations, we have improved the outlook for the year for our domestic operations, while for international segments, we expect the direct margin growth to be somewhat more moderated than we had anticipated. As a last point, the free cash flow for Q3 was good, showing recovery from the decline seen in the H1 of this year. We are now nine months in our Bold2025 strategy and have been taking some major steps forward. For our domestic segment, our results demonstrate our strategy is already delivering. Internationally, Telesign continues its growth trajectory and turning EBITDA positive a bit sooner than we expected. With the announcement of the Route Mobile transaction, we'll be set to accelerate the growth for both CPaaS and digital identity.
As you know, for our domestic segment, a key factor in our strategy is the rollout of Belgium's gigabit network. As you can see on the quarterly update chart, we have been further expanding our fiber works, and our fiber machine is going full speed in no less than 133 Belgium cities and municipalities, bringing Belgium inhabitants the best technology available. In view of making fiber accessible to all citizens and businesses in Belgium, we also welcomed the recent announcement of the regulator. The BIPT stated being ready to evaluate any fiber agreement between operators in Belgium, spanning across all possible geographical areas. By the end of September, we are nearing 1.6 million homes passed with fiber.
On top of this, Fiberklaar and Unifiber have today a funnel of fiber in the street for over 300,000 homes, meaning fiber is in the ground, but homes are basically waiting for the drops to be activated. Our network filling rate is also nicely progressing, reaching 26% by the end of September. In terms of active customers on fiber, we have been growing our base with 31K over the past three months. This brings the total now to 353K. That is 60% higher than one year back. The success of fiber is also reflected in the strong migration rate of 70%. Turning to mobile, I'm proud Proximus was recognized for the quality of its network, especially since we are in the midst of a challenging redeployment of our mobile network.
The RAN swap to Nokia and the mobile network consolidation is now reaching its cruise speeds. Staying in mobile, we are pleased to announce the signing of a mobile wholesale agreement with a new end market entrant. This will, together with the preparation works for our residential segment, ensure the best position for us to compete in a changing market structure. A quick word on the partnership with Google, which we are proud, as we are becoming Google's exclusive partner amongst operators for the distribution of the Google Pixel in Belgium. This Wednesday, we announced also Clarence, the joint venture between Proximus Luxembourg and LuxConnect, in the presence of Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and the Minister of Telecom, Petra De Sutter, which is a key player in the data center sector.
This is to offer unique disconnected sovereign cloud solutions to governments, regulated companies, international organizations, and enterprises with a sensitive data in Europe. The creation of JV Clarence is the first step towards proposing the Google Distributed Cloud to our customers in Belgium and Luxembourg in 2024. Next, the transaction to buy a majority stake in Route Mobile is going as planned. Preparation activities have started, and we can confirm our expectation to realize synergies of at least EUR 90 million on an annual run rate basis. In a three-year timeframe, we estimate that the combination of Telesign and Route Mobile should generate a total revenue of around $2 billion and align the EBITDA margin to best-in-class peers, meaning 13%-15% margin and a cash conversion in the 50%-75% range.
Subject to obtaining all regulatory clearances and MTO completion, we reasonably expect the closing of the transactions to happen by the end of the Q1 of 2024. Eventually, as part of our Bold2025 strategy, we have also made good progress on the ESG front. We have recently published a dedicated webinar on ESG, which I invite you to have a look at. You'll find the link on the slides showed on the screen. Having covered the strategic part, let's move to the financial and operational results of the Q3 . I trust that you have already seen the numbers, so I will go through this part relatively fast. I start with our domestic segment.
So thanks to our network superiority, our multi-branding strategy, and the success of our new mobile portfolio, we achieved another really good quarter in terms of customer growth, and this across all our main product groups. Especially for mobile, we have closed an outstanding quarter, adding 60,000 new mobile postpaid customers during the quarter. Zooming on our residential unit, the sustained strong commercial performance, further supported by price indexations, resulted in another strong revenue quarter, with total revenue up 5.5% and services revenue progressing to a 6.2% growth. The residential customer services revenue benefited from a strong increase in ARPC, up year-on-year by 6.1%, reflecting the effect of price indexations and the ongoing move from customers to convergent offers. The combination of customer growth and pricing greatly supports our value management.
The new pricing landed well and clearly supports the ARPC growth. At the same time, churn levels remain well under control. All in all, this is translating into a revenue uplift by over 6% for the residential services in general and +10% for the revenue from conversion services. Our business unit also closed a very strong quarter, with revenue up +4.1%. We are especially pleased with the business services revenue, which pursued its positive trend in the Q3 , reflecting the strategic progress we have made in this area. Taking a closer look at the business services revenue, you see that, in particular, a strong growth was realized for IT services, up by 10.2%, resulting from growing revenue in cloud, security, smart mobility, and smart network services.
Moreover, we continue to achieve good growth in internet revenue, with ARPU up by 8%, while we managed to keep a stable customer base. This more than offsets the erosion in legacy fixed voice. Finally, our wholesale unit, for which the year-on-year revenue decline is mainly the result of the ongoing decrease in interconnect revenue. However, with no meaningful impact on the margins. This brings me to the total domestic revenue, for which we achieved a sustained strong growth, up by 4.3% for the Q3 . The main driver is services revenue, for which the growth further improved to a 4.6% increase. Turning now to the domestic operating expenses. In line with our expectations, we still face significant inflationary cost effects on wages, electricity, and other exposed cost lines. Moreover, the strong commercial momentum also drives the customer-related OpEx higher.
But thanks to our ongoing cost efficiency program, we could in part offset this, overall resulting in our OpEx being up by 10.3% for the Q3 . Let's take a closer look to the main moving parts, starting with the progress made on the plan to realize cost efficiencies. The execution of this is going as we expected, with also this quarter, some meaningful cost savings across the three axes that we are targeting. This gives us great confidence in our ability to deliver the EUR 220 million of cost reduction over the 2023/2025 periods. In the middle, you see that the exposure to inflation impacts for both wages and electricity is starting to come down. At the same time, the commercial success is also driving higher customer-related costs.
To name just a few examples, think of back-office costs related to fiber activations or higher sales commissions linked to the strong growth of customers. This brings me to the total domestic EBITDA, which was down by -0.7%, with increase in direct margin almost fully offsetting the OpEx increase. Turning to the international segments now. For BICS, the trend shows how they are cycling against an exceptionally strong performance in 2022. This is especially the case of legacy voice, and besides a $ currency headwind, voice is impacted by the erosion of international voice volumes and a change in destination mix, with a notable revenue decrease for one specific country, yet with limited impact on margin. Currency effects aside, Telesign's business performance remains strong, achieving double-digit revenue and direct margin growth.
Revenue and direct margin from communication services was positively impacted by strong performance of Telesign's largest U.S. customers while the growth in the digital identity segment was driven by the expansion of the customer base outside of the U.S. With direct margin growing and OpEx lower year over year, the EBITDA of Telesign turned positive in the Q3 of 2023, totaling EUR 2 million. This brings me to the group results, and this slide sums it up for the group with a strong performance of domestic in the Q3, driving the group revenue and direct margin increases. Overall, the group EBITDA decrease was limited to -0.4%. Turning to the group CapEx, over the first nine months, we invested EUR 904 million, and we remain well on track for a full year projection of around EUR 1.3 billion.
In line with what we announced of own fiber build is coming down from its peak in 2022, while the CapEx to connect and activate our fiber customers is going up. Moreover, the mobile network consolidation led by MWingz is ongoing, with CapEx spendings following the pace of the mobile site consolidation. Brings me to the free cash flow. The adjusted free cash flow over the Q3 was EUR 64 million positive, bringing us to -EUR 35 million over the first nine months of the year. As shown on the graph, the main driver for the lower free cash flow is phasing in the AT and income tax payments, in part offset by positive business working capital. In Q3, we also had equity injections for EUR 330 million.
With increased attention to financing costs, just a quick reminder that almost all existing debt is at a fixed rate, and bonds maturing in 2024 and 2025 are hedged at low rates, in line with the current average funding cost of around 2%. With its well-balanced debt maturity profile, the debt is spread out over a reasonable period of time and not concentrated in a particular year or short time frame. With the good results so far, we are confident of raising our domestic and group guidance. For the full year 2023, we expect our domestic revenue to be up between +3.5% and +4%, while the domestic EBITDA decline will be limited to around -2%. For the group EBITDA, we are also improving the 2023 outlook to a year-on-year decline of around -2%.
For in the international segments, BICS and Telesign, we are mitigating our direct margin expectations for the year 2023 to a growth between 4% and 5% for the two companies combined, excluding current currency effects. As a final point on this slide, I'm pleased to announce that the Proximus Board of Directors has approved the payment of the interim dividend over the result of 2023 for an amount of €0.50 per share, in line with our three-year remuneration policy. To conclude with the topics I covered earlier and summarized on this slide, we believe we are extremely well positioned for the growth ambitions we have set in Bold2025. With this, I've covered my introduction, so we can now turn to your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone. And please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask your question. So our first question comes from Nicolas Cote-Colisson from HSBC. Nicholas, please go ahead. Your line is open. Nicholas, please make sure the mute is unmuted. Your line is unmuted.
Yes, hi, sorry. Can you hear me now?
Yes, we can.
Okay, sorry about that. So hi, everyone. Yes. So you called for a regulatory framework on the fiber co-investment. Now you've got it, or at least you have the go ahead to discuss with your competitors. But now, what is the plan? Because I can see a vested interest for one of your competitors to work with you in Wallonia, but much less so in Flanders, given Telenet has its own plans and a lot of customers, too. So I'm just wondering, where is the opportunity for Proximus with co-investment in Flanders? And more generally, what do you think are the implications from a CapEx point of view? Is it a case of lower CapEx for you or same CapEx for more deployment? Just asking what is your preference? What's the priority ahead with your discussions with peers?
I may have a follow-up on Telesign. Thank you.
Thank you, Nicholas, for the question. So, obviously, you know, I cannot share a lot of details as we speak because the discussion just started. I think, as I said, we are pleased that, you know, the two deals are closed. The first blocking point of not being able to start discussion was the closing of the take private move of Telenet and the closing of the discussion between VOO and Orange. Those two events are now behind us, so we can start discussion. And indeed, BIPT say that he was not opposed, and we are welcoming those discussions as well. So now we have started.
We need some time to conclude, and no, I cannot comment, but there is opportunities, both in Wallonia and both in Flanders, to get to a framework which will be positive for all parties, positive for Proximus, positive for other partners, but also positive for society. I think we can also bring some societal benefit to those discussions, which is quite important also for our regulators. So that's where we are today. I cannot comment too much on it, as you can imagine, but discussions have started. BIPT gave us six months to make significant progress. I hope we'll be able to indeed make significant progress, but I think we are all very motivated to get there.
Do you think it's more a matter of lower CapEx in total, or more faster build up?
Nicholas
you know-
What you would like-
You can imagine that it's a factor, a lot of different elements. But you know, I will give you more clarity on that, when we can present the
the deal.
If I may just follow up on, on TeleSign, and eventually Route Mobile, because, thanks for mentioning, details in the slide. You said 11 countries. Maybe can you, can you precise a bit more, whether it's all about competition authorities approval that you are looking for? Or is there anything else we should be aware of? Also, out of the 11 countries, how many are they in Europe and Africa? Because this is where maybe the regional overlap is greater. I, and then I'll stop. Just a very last one, just on the price paid, I think you're well aware that the market on CPaaS and the peer performance in terms of share price since July has been quite, quite bad. Would you have any capacity to revisit some of the terms of the trade?
Or at least could you reconsider the size of the PTO? Thank you.
On the approval process, Johnny, I think this is only a regulatory approval process. I think it's really going well, and most of the countries have already been secured. I think we're still waiting for two of them now. So I think it's really, you know, going according to plan.
And then of course, there is a CFIUS approval process, which sometimes is the one that takes the longest time. But also there, we are receiving some positive signal that we can go and get cleared quite rapidly. So I think there is no really blocking point for closing date before end of Q1 next year, on the regulatory approval process. On the MTO or PTO, but we call it MTO here. So the tender offer, I think the terms of the contract are for us, you know, the right terms. It reflects the value of both companies, both the value of Telesign, and both the value of Route Mobile.
I don't want to change the terms of the contract. We are very happy with the terms of the contract. And as you know, all the prep works, because, as you know, because, you know, I just said it in the presentation, the prep works are going quite well, and we are, you know, extremely confident to confirm the level of synergy that we envisage for the combined entity. It's really going according to plan. The more we look at the two companies and the business opportunities, the more we are, you know, very pleased about the move we made.
Excellent. Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from David Vagman from ING Belgium. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. First on the and regarding also related to the new fiber framework, potentially, and the BIPT being more open for cooperation between operator. Regarding your the fiber JV, and in particular, Fiberklaar, can you contractually stop or massively shrink the rollout at Fiberklaar? As it seems to me, it's becoming actually less relevant. So and okay, notwithstanding what could be the outcome of your negotiation with the other operator. And then on Digi, can you explain the strategic rationale of the MVNO deal, or the pricing compares to, let's say, what Digi could have obtained from a national roaming agreement with no official price?
And then maybe a few words on the sale of the towers. What kind of price level can we expect for the tower sale? Thank you.
On your first question on the Fiberklaar, I think we cannot comment on that. I think what we know that we are doing, we are full speed. We are continuing to accelerate and the development. We want to continue to invest using our three engines, Proximus, Unifiber, and Fiberklaar. And of course, we are opening discussions with our friends of Fiberklaar also involved with the other parties. But there is, you know, two different discussions here. There is discussions around finding a framework that could be good for everyone.
But at the same time, we are still investing and delivering the products we had foreseen with our partner, Fiberklaar, to be delivered in the months and quarters to come. You know, overall, if you take the products that are not yet activated, but are already in the streets, we have covered more than 30% of Belgium. And that will reach close to 33%-34% by the end of the year. So, you know, the speed of putting fiber in the streets will not decelerate as...
But, you know, at the same time, we will have discussions to make it a better project for everyone. But, you know, that's where we stand at the moment. On Digi, the rationale is always better to have a commercial agreement compared to having a agreement that is forced by regulation. That was the idea of striking a deal with Digi during summertime. I think I was not the only one around the table, you know, all operators were willing to get that deal, but we managed to convince Digi to sign with us, because first, we have the best network.
Second, we have also those assets to be offered to them, you know, and I think referred to the pilots, which was also quite of an important element in the discussion with them. In terms of pricing, those, you know, that agreement is market conformed. Nothing different from what does already exist on the market with other partners of Proximus. So there is no, you know, specific discount to them as it comes to the agreement we strike for the access to our mobile network.
Mm-hmm. And on the price to be obtained from the pilots, can you say anything?
Yeah, David, I mean, look, we're not gonna disclose the value, but it's not meaningful at the Proximus Group level in terms of, you know, a free cash flow number. So I think that's probably the best way to think about it.
Okay. Okay, thank you very much. And a very quick follow-up on the, sorry, on the fiber, the new agreement. Could it also encompass your copper network? Could you, I mean, or even you moving to the HFC network of Telenet? You know, could we see like broader deals than just fiber?
I'm really sorry, but I won't be able to comment, you know, on copper, coax, fiber, you know, everything is being discussed. We'll see where we go and where we land. But, you know, we need some time. So, I have to ask you to be a little bit patient. We want to go fast, but we still need some time before we can come back to you with some deal to be discussed.
Clear. Thank you very much.
Now, our next question comes from Roshan Ranjit, from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Great. Afternoon, everyone. Thanks for the questions. I've got three, please. Firstly, on B2B, the IT services had a material growth improvement this quarter. Anything particular this quarter? I know you sounded that segment out around cloud, but is that something that's sustainable going forward? Are we just at the start of the ramp up? And then you could say that will be useful, please. Secondly, thanks for the extra detail on energy. Can I check in terms of the tailwind for 2024, are we looking at a high single digit energy tailwind for the EBITDA contribution, based on similar volumes in 2024 versus 2023? If you could confirm that or give any details, that would be useful. And just following up on Digi, any discussions around fixed access?
Has that started or are we still waiting to see that? Thank you.
Hello, good afternoon, Roshan. It's Anne-Sophie here. Thank you very much for the question. So on B2B, indeed, we've seen good IT services growth in Q3, and that's driven by actually all of the different customer value propositions we have within IT. So security, smart networking, but also cloud, as you've highlighted. As you probably saw also recently in the press, we unveiled the launch of our JV in Luxembourg with LuxConnect and the Proximus Luxembourg, called Clarence, which stands for clarity and transparency, which enables our customers to benefit from the Google distributed cloud environment in a very safe and compliant manner.
This offer will be available in 2024, but what we see already is revenues in cloud based on the existing offers that we already have today, which, as you know, is a hybrid cloud offering, therefore enabling us to provide, you know, different cloud types depending on what data would be hosted where. In terms of moving forward and expectations, there's just one thing I'd like to highlight. Some of our growth, as you could see from the slide, from an IT perspective, is product. And there I don't foresee the same type of year-over-year growth for Q4, because as you remember, last year, we had a very high comparable base because we were seeing the end, the beginning of the supply chain issues being resolved.
So we had a very high Q4, 2023, 2022, and we might not have such a high comparable growth for Q4, 2023. Now, this being said, it remains less relevant because as you know, our strategy is to develop our recurrent managed services, and products is just one short services. So I hope that answers the question.
I think
So, I just want to follow up. So are you saying that the IT services 10% growth is sustainable into Q4?
I'm saying that part of that growth is product, and for the product, which is one-shot revenue, we will likely not see the same type of growth because of a very high comparable base the quarter of the year previous.
I take the Digi question then. I think there is a lot that Digi needs to do before launching. And so we need the mobile platform to be ready for them by mid next year. So probably the first priority of Digi, they made some announcements also that they wanted to consider also being a convergence operator and look at what could be a fiber strategy for them.
... I think this is, you know, what we have read. I think they also have to learn the specificities of the Belgian market as it comes to rolling out fiber. So I think they also do need to do the homework, and at some point they will, you know, probably engage in discussions with the different partners. But we are not yet at that stage. I think there is a lot to be done for Digi and, you know, Spain, Portugal, Belgium Mobile, that's already a lot to be achieved. But of course, our network is open, and we have the best network around fiber, so, you know, we'll see how it goes.
Roshan, yeah, and I think the last question on, on, power. So yeah, we, we were expecting a, you know, as you saw from our hedge perspective, we're in pretty good shape. So I think in a middle, middle digit, maybe just getting into the high digit, would be, would be a reasonable number to expect.
That's great. Thanks very much, guys.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Joshua Mills from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the questions. A couple from me, please. The first would just be a follow-up on the fiber build. So I'd be interested to know, at the moment, whether you are how much of the fiber lines you're rolling out are actually already within cable networks, or whether there's any way over the next few quarters before we get to an agreement on co-investment, perhaps, that you can focus the build on areas outside cable or where maybe the duct access system is good. Just want to understand whether that's something you're already able to steer now, in advance of any potential deal to make the most of any synergies that could come. Second question is just around the pricing environment. Could you just remind us the phasing you usually do with price increases?
Obviously, we've seen, I think it was 5%-6% in January, 4% in July. What did your competitors do around your July price increase? And has there been any more price increases from them between July and now? And then if I could sneak a final one in, I don't know if you've been talking about this before, but at what point do you expect wholesale revenues from Digi to start coming into your business? And could you give a very broad or rough estimate of how much of an impact that might have on revenue growth, perhaps in percentage terms? Thanks.
Joshua, just on the fiber point, I take that and give a kind of broad answer. I mean, you know, we plan fiber build, you know, well in advance, right? And so, there's obviously the planning and timing of that, but clearly we have a, you know, we have a machine that's mature and been working for three years now. So we're pretty sophisticated in terms of our ability to, you know, select the areas that make more sense for us. So I think that's the way I would think about it, in terms of our ability to, you know, plan and move to the most appropriate areas. Jim, do you want to take the price?
Joshua, on the pricing in the Belgium market, what you typically see is that we approximately do our price increases in January, and Orange is doing the same, also more towards January. Whereas Telenet typically has the July time frame when it comes to price increases, and then we have seen similar behaviors this year. Of course, depending on the level of inflation, we have to adapt a bit that pricing strategy, which is what has happened this year with our July price increase due to the high level of inflation. What we have foreseen for January, if the level of inflation stays at what we think it will be for 2024, should be enough for the rest of the year.
But of course, as we already said, as well, last time, everything depends on how inflation evolves, and we will continue to manage our prices in that way. I think what is also important to understand is that we don't do just a price increase, but we do more, wherever we can, we go for a more-for-more strategy, where we ask our customers to pay a bit more, but we also get more value, typically more mobile data on the mobile side, but now also on fiber. In July, for instance, we have drastically increased the downstream and upstream certifications over fiber offers, combined with the price increase on flex fiber.
We have seen that that lands really well with our customers as well, in terms of churn, as Guillaume also mentioned during his introduction.
On the question on Digi, I think obviously it will come when some customers will be running on a network, so not before the launch of Digi, that's for sure. And hopefully it will be, you know, as minimal as possible. But we're not hoping for a big wholesale value streams or revenue streams coming from Digi. But, you know, in case it happens, it will be not before the launch, and so not before mid-next year.
Great. Can I maybe come back on that pricing question? Because, you know, one of the key points you're making in the presentation is churn's down, you, you've got decent net adds, despite doing, two price increases in one year versus the usual one, and what it sounds like your competitor just done one as well. Do you think going forward, you might consider doing, or the market might consider doing two price increases a year? Or is it more a case of actually you just prefer a bigger price increase in January, given the kind of NPS and lower churn that you're seeing?
Joshua, our pricing strategy is actually you have two elements in the pricing strategy. Yeah, first you have everything we do to manage the inflation and to make sure that our products are aligned with the inflation effect that we have on the market. But we also, from time to time, and that's typically every three to four years-
... we completely revamp our portfolio, and this is what we did in May on the Proximus mobile portfolio, where we moved to a completely new range with different price points that were not even linked with inflation. And that's also like we already had in Q2 this year as well. This new portfolio is really delivering on the market in terms of competitiveness, but also in terms of answering customer needs with the right value at the right price point. So for me, managing pricing is on both elements. It's pure, of course, following the inflation that we have in the market, but also making sure that the portfolio stays healthy, competitive, and answers customer needs.
And also what you have to understand for the Belgium market, there is no contracts. There is not the thing that you can see in other market where you have back book kind of legacy price plans or still running on our systems. So we are not exactly the same dynamics compared to what you could see in or that you can see in other geographies. So why we are such that ability to lend price increases? Because the Belgium market is used to indexation. That's something we were repeating since a few quarters now. But we are used to that in Belgium.
The market is used to that, and the market is also used to the fact that, you know, every 3-4 years, we change the way we approach our portfolio, either mobile or fixed. So far, that strategy is really, really working. I think we will continue to do that in the coming years. As Jim said, it will depend on the evolution of the inflation. We play on both levers, you know, revamping portfolios, but also indexing our offers depending on the level of the inflation. That strategy worked in the past, worked this year, and will continue to be working in the years to come.
Thank you. We will now move to our next question from Siyi He from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi, and good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two, please. The first question is, really are your thoughts about Q4 and maybe into 2024, because in Q3, we have seen that the price increase seems settled down quite well, and, your updated guidance seems to suggest that, you expect, domestic EBITDA to be flat year-on-year. But into the Q4, into 2024, I see that the consensus still expect domestic EBITDA to decline, but yet you have a better pricing power since, and also there's some tailwinds. Just wondering if you could just walk us through, see what could be potentially the headwinds that could, derail the trajectory that we've seen in Q3 and maybe go into Q4 for 2023. And my second question is on the free cash flow.
I understand that you don't guide for the free cash flow, but it seems like year to date, the free cash flow is around -EUR 60 million. Just wondering if you can help us to understand what could potentially be the drivers that to for the free cash flow to improve significantly in Q4, and how should we think about 2024? Thank you very much.
Yeah, let me tell sorry, the line was really bad, but let me try and answer what I think was the question. So the, you know, as you saw, we upgraded our guidance for domestic business. So we're, you know, as Jim said, we're very pleased with the momentum that we've had so far this year. Q4 from a revenue side, will likely be slightly weaker just because of the product revenue that we had very high last year. So that's how you could think of getting to the revenue guidance for full year. On flow through to next year, I think, you know, we'll come back with guidance in February.
But we set out Capital Markets Day guidance back in January of this year. And there's, you know, there's nothing that we've seen through this year that makes us think that we're anywhere but on that trajectory on the Capital Markets Day. So I think that's the way I would look at it at this point. We've, you know, we've had a successful year, and we're, we, you know, we'll come back to you with more exact guidance in February 2024. In terms of free cash flow, you know, we're, you know, we've been negative the first two quarters. We had a positive quarter in Q3. It's exactly where we thought we would be. We don't guide, as you said.
And so, you know, again, I think we talked early in the year around consensus. You know, I think it's broadly in the right direction, and that's what you've, you know, that's what you should think. Is that okay? I'm sorry, I didn't really hear the full question, but hopefully that covered it.
Yes, that's perfect. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Kris Kippers from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
... Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I just have one remaining, but on the cost structure, if you look at domestic, Q3 now, up 10%, of course, you indicated where this stems from, but could you just confirm that you are taking measures to ensure that the EUR 220 million of second wave savings you communicated with the Capital Markets Day, that it's still in sync? Because if you look at the efficiency program, you mean your headcount is down by 30 FTEs, which is about 0.3% of your total, which is not a lot, but of course, I can presume that also the external employees have been cut. So if you can share with us your insights on that line, would be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, no, it's a good question. I think, you know, we're fully on track for the efficiency program. We talked on the Capital Markets Day. I think we had around EUR 9,600 million for the full year. We are 75% of the way through that. And you're right, in terms of your thoughts, in terms of external workforce, is down significantly year-over-year. We continue to focus on various other domain in terms of, you know, external third party, where you know, our self-service, our digital transactions are deploying significant savings. We continue to reap savings on our, you know, our legacy IT systems.
And so there are various domains that are, you know, fully supportive of getting to the numbers. So we're completely on track for the efficiency savings that we committed to in the Capital Markets Day.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Nuno Vaz from Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity. I have three questions remaining. Firstly, on the sort of sustainability of these price rises, because they've been, from my understanding, very much done more on the fixed side than the mobile side. Do you think this is sustainable long term, particularly if DG is planning to launch a fiber offer? Or to launch a fixed offer? And then related to this question, is the second question on them. From my understanding, BIPT is also doing a market review on your reference offers. And looking at the way these reference offers are calculated based on long-term cost, it seems that they've considered a sort of low inflationary environment and low interest rate environment.
Is there any chance for you to push back on this, to sort of explain or to sort of make your case that the interest rates have increased significantly? There's a lot more inflation, so the reference offers for fiber should be higher. Because from my understanding, these reference offers will be valid for more than 5 years. Then final question, just on costs, because we saw you mentioned a significant increase on commercial or customer-related costs. I understand this is a bit to do with momentum on your net adds, but it doesn't seem there's been such a significant improvement from the last quarter to justify this big increase. So I was wondering if you could give us a bit more clarity on that. Thank you.
This is Jim, from consumer. So on your question on, on price rises, so like, like we explained, we work on, on two axes, when it comes to price, price increases or price management, the indexation and then, new portfolios. I think it's also important to understand that of course, we manage prices over the whole range of our portfolio, so we don't necessarily look only at mobile, but we look at our mobile offers, our convergent offers, or fixed-only offers, and then based on that, we look at the market situation, and based on that, we decide, what are the best ways to, to manage our prices. So we're gonna continue to do that, going forward.
And I'm not worried that the way we've been doing this over the last probably 10 years, as Guillaume says, that the next years are gonna be fundamentally different. I think we're gonna be able to continue to do the price management like we've been doing it so far.
On the BIPT question, I think there is a discussion that will obviously happen, but the discussion will probably happen after the six-month period, where we try to find an agreement in the rollout of the network for the resident part of the country. And this is going to be the discussion that will be probably happening once we get to that point. So, nothing to be discussed soon. We still, you know, work with our partners, try to find a solution and then discuss at the same time with the BIPT. That's the way it works for the next month, I think.
On the cost side, you want to take it, Max?
Yeah, the cost side. So I think the way you think about it on the cost side, I think, on the customer side, I think, you know, we, it's not only cost this year, but it's also the phasing cost last year. So I think we've got a slight, you know, year-over-year specificity in Q3, where phasing's been a little different. But there's absolutely... So that's one part of the overall customer costs in Q3. But clearly also the commercial momentum in both residential and enterprise has increased overall, you know, SAC and MAC acquisition costs, and also kind of activation costs. So that's the way I would think about it.
As we start to get into Q4, again, I think you'll see that normalizing as we're getting back to a more kind of normalized run rate there. And clearly also from a cost perspective, overall, we start to normalize against some of the inflationary wage indexation items that are still reasonably high in Q3. So we feel, again, completely in control of that, and it's gonna start to moderate as we get into Q4 and into 2024.
Okay, thank you. That's very clear.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. Our next question comes from Konrad Zomer, from ABN AMRO Auto. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. I have a question about your adjusted free cash flow. And I'm trying to understand the moving parts a bit better. Minus EUR 99 million in the H1 plus EUR 60-odd million in the second, so 9 months, you're about down EUR 35 million. And I seem to remember at the interim stage that you talked about roughly EUR 120 million for the full year, including the EUR 143 million from the sale of your headquarters. I know you don't give guidance on adjusted free cash flow, so just wondering, is that a calculation you're still comfortable with? And what is the likely trend in your equity injections in your fiber JV? Is that trend a bit more or a bit less given what happens in the market? Thank you.
So on the adjusted free cash flow, I think you're completely right. So I think if you do the math you just did, and you add in the Q4 impact of the headquarters sale, you know, again, we don't guide, but you're getting the right math. In terms of... Sorry, the second question was on the equity injections. Yes. So I think in Capital Markets Day, we provided some guidance in terms of the level of equity injections for 2023. So again, that's, you know, right in line with what we expected. And part of that has taken place this year already, so that's already in the free cash flow.
In terms of, again, forward-looking, equity injection, again, we haven't guided on that, but again, you can assume that the, you know, there'll be a, you know, a direction of travel that is, you know, somewhat related to the, to the direction of travel of new build for the joint venture. So that's the way I would give you direction on how to think about it.
Okay, cool. Thank you.
Thank you. As a final reminder to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. We'll pause for just a moment to allow you to signal. And as there are no further questions at this time, I'd like to hand the call back over to Nancy for any additional or closing remarks.
Saying a big thank you for your questions. Should you have any follow-up questions, you can reach out to Adriaan or myself. Thank you. Bye.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.