Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to today's Proximus twenty eighteen Q1 Results Conference Call. For your information, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Nancy Gosens, Director, Group Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for calling in. I take it that everybody has well received the results released this morning as well as the presentation. So we trust you have seen the published numbers by now. So for this call, we will reserve most of the time for the Q and A.
On our side, we have here present Dominique Lourvin, the CEO and Sandrine Dufour, CFO as well as most members of the Executive Committee. They will all be happy to answer your questions in a moment. But before getting to that, let me pass the word to Dominique for her introduction.
Thank you, Nancy. Welcome to our conference call on the Proximus first quarter twenty eighteen results. So this morning, we have announced a set of first quarter results on which I think we can be proud of.
I'm sorry. Hello? Hello? Hello?
I hope I can go on. So in an intensively competitive environment, we managed to further grow our customer base for TV, Internet and mobile postpaid, and we maintain a solid market position. Over the first quarter, the market share for broadband 46.6% and for mobile postpaid at 42.7% were kept stable, while we achieved a slight progress in the total mobile market share to 39.1% and in our TV share for 36.9%. For our consumer segment, the consumer gain was again supported by the success of our Tutimus and BIS all in offers. Over the first quarter, we attracted another 44,000 customers on these all offers, growing the base to 404,000 by March 2018.
An active push to continue growing our 4Pay household base is an important value driver. With more and more customers on 4Pay, we see the average revenue per household increasing to €66.8 The positive impact from upselling services to customers and targeted price increases has more than offset the headwinds such as regulatory pricing and the ongoing erosion in fixed voice usage. At the same time, we continued to address the more price sensitive part of the market with our Scarlett brand. As our two brands target very different market segments and are kept very much separate in their commercial channels, we reap the benefit from Scarlet's solid customer growth while minimizing any cannibalization on the Proximus brands. In the Enterprise segment, we also sustained our solid position and firmly grew our mobile base.
ICT revenue was slightly up compared to a very high 2017 and included a better mix of services versus product. We indeed posted higher revenue from security, advanced workplace and outsourcing services. Furthermore, the smart mobility and convergent business solution again showed some good progress. We achieved these commercial results through the continued effort on our Fit for Growth strategy. Despite the Roam Like at Home impact, we managed to book close to 1% revenue growth for our domestic operations.
For BiCS, the first quarter results showed the solid support of TeleSign with direct margin and EBITDA increasing. The combination with TeleSign has visibly boosted BiCS' strategic ambitions in the growing application to personal markets, while synergies on cost of sales are delivering as expected. As a result of the EBITDA progress in domestic and BIC's, the underlying EBITDA of the Proximus Group for the first quarter ended 1.1% above the comparable period of 2017, keeping us well on track for our guidance to end this year with a slightly growing group EBITDA. To achieve this, we will continue our transformation journey to turn Proximus into a more customer centric and fitter organization, focusing on efficiency and simplification efforts to further structurally reduce our costs and transition towards a digital service provider. As for the CapEx, the level in the first quarter remained stable to last year and we reiterate our expectation to end year with around €1,000,000,000 of CapEx.
This covers the extensive enhancements in our networks, including the ongoing rollout of fiber in several cities now. This bring me to the next topic and about regulation. So the national regulator has notified the European Commission of their review of the broadband Internet and TV market analysis. This newly issued market review brings us reassurance on our fiber deployments and it allow us to continue our fiber project as we had planned. We have always been clear on our intention to offer wholesale on our network as an integral part of our strategy.
We are deploying an open fiber network and are pleased to have welcomed already a growing number of wholesale customers on fiber. Given the success in making commercial agreements, there is in our view no need for a regulation of our fiber network. Finally, I would like to point out that we are pleased there is now a clear framework for reciprocal access between cable and copper or fiber. Meaning that also in the business market, we will have more level playing fields. Remember that Proximus was excluded from the cable network and now it has been confirmed that Proximus is allowed to access cable where there is no own coverage.
At the same time, cable will no longer be able to offer backup lines via the Proximus network. So with these last points, I think I have covered the introduction and I propose we start with your questions. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our Q and A session. The first question from Nicolas Cote Colisson from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. My first question would be about an update on the cost saving plan, if you have seen any positive or negative surprises versus your initial expectations? And back on the to the regulation, two things. You said at the time of the publication of the analysis that you are not expecting a cost model before 2020. My expectations were more mid-twenty nineteen as it is, I think, with the regulators.
So can you explain why you think the cost model could come so late? And last on regulation and the broadband only offers on cable, what do you think could be the size of such market, I mean, the broadband only market, if the prices goes down eventually with the regulation? Do you see a risk there? Thank you.
So it's Jean Pauline speaking. Nicolas, your question on the cost saving plan. So maybe a bit comment on Q1 where we slightly increased domestic OpEx by EUR 3,000,000. We're tracking online with our plan to decrease our global cost and gross savings. We did them on Q1.
As you know, between the gross saving and the net, there are elements such as the natural growth of our OpEx, which is wage indexation. There are new elements linked to volume growth in maintenance and mobile sites. We're also having extra means in our ICT affiliate. But I want to highlight maybe two elements. One is linked to extra commercial means that we had planned to do at the beginning of the year versus last year and other one offs, which were linked to the update of some provisions.
And without these one offs, our net OpEx would have slightly decreased. But as a whole, for the full year, we're still tracking in line with our ambition to deliver our global cost saving plan.
So on the regulation and the expected cost model, it is correct that earlier we said that we expected it not before 2020. If you look at the timing of the regulators today, they are they have done this exercise or they started this exercise in parallel with the market analysis. So indeed, they are somewhat ahead of what we thought they would be. Now the timing here, we are giving our input on the fiber cost at this moment. And so we expect indeed that they will be ready with their exercise by the 2018.
And so we expect an outcome of that exercise somewhere in Q1, Q2 twenty nineteen.
So that was Dirk speaking of Corporate Affairs. I will take as Dominique the third question. So I think it is true that now with the new market review, Roche can have access to an Internet only offer on cable. I mean, so far, the price of that is the same as the price for Internet and TV. So I don't think there is any big risk of disruption.
How big is the size of the market? I think today there are already quite a lot of offer which are Internet only offer. You have some at the low end of the markets even under Scarlet where Scarlet has two offer, one called Internet Poco at €23 per month and one Internet local at €35 per month. We also have Internet only offer on Proximus. So I think that market is already relatively well covered both at the low end of the market and at the high end of the market.
So I don't think there could be a major new disruption coming from a cable Internet only offer even if you think at the low cost because it already exists at the moment under the Scarlet brand.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
Next question from Hoshan Hanshid from Deutsche Bank. Sir, please.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for the questions. Just two quick ones, You announced at the end of last year the acquisition of two content or rather studio productions, Studio one hundred and BE TV. Is it possible to get a sense of how popular they were this quarter? I know it's only the first quarter, but how popular the take up of the kids channels were?
And second, just a quick one on BICS. You mentioned some FX headwinds in the quarter.
I was also to get a
sense of what the split is between the revenue generation domestically versus your overseas exposure. Thanks.
So it's Guillaume, Massoudoutin speaking. On your first question, just to clarify, just distribution deals that we that we had with Studio Hunter and and and BTV. And and and we are not disclosing specific numbers on on the performance or content offerings, but I would say that it's it's it's going quite well according to plan. And we see good traction and good complement to our existing offers to bring to Prokynes customers this very sexy content for the market.
Hello. This is Daniel. So if I've understood the question correctly, I'd like to remind that for BICS, approximately 40% to 50% of our revenue is in dollar. So that has an impact on the revenue, but which is mitigated on the margin level because we've got a natural hedging between our revenue and our cost of goods sold for voice and messaging termination. So that is that does this answer the question on the ForEx?
Yes. No, that's very clear. Thank you.
So next question. Okay. Next question from Michael Bishop from Goldman Sachs. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes, thanks. Good afternoon. Just two questions from me. Firstly, just following up on the regulation. Clearly, you seem fairly confident that this regulatory regime allows you a fair return on fiber to the home.
But I was just I'm wondering if you dig a bit deeper and think about the cost models. Clearly, there's potential for the two cost models for cable and FTDH to differ, creating the potential for arbitrage for resellers. So how confident are you with regards to the overall regulatory approach for the market and driving a fair return for Proximus on FTTH? And then secondly, it'd just be good to get your thoughts on the levels of competition in the first quarter. We've heard from the other operators that it was fairly intense and then perhaps it's quietened down a little bit in the second quarter so far.
So it'd be good to get your view. Thank you very much.
So, Dominique speaking, I think on the on the overall regulation, I mean, our our position, of course, is that fiber should not be regulated because I think from the start, and we had included that also in our in our business case, we intend to open our fiber network and we have already today closed wholesale agreements with 80% of the wholesale operators in Belgium. I think we have closed an agreement with every single one of them with the exception of Orange, who was not interested in signing a wholesale agreement on fiber so far. So normally, regulation comes in when you don't have an efficient market. Think the fact that our fiber is open that we have already agreement with 80 of the wholesale players makes us confident that we should be able to avoid regulation. What is for us very important is that the current market review gives us confidence in the way we deploy fiber, which is a GPON way of deploying fiber, which is, of course, a shared fiber.
And therefore, our wholesale offer is a bitstream and potentially later a ZULAR, but currently a Bitstream offer, which also allow us to have a clearing in the offer. So the and that's for us an important way where we can assure return on investments of our fiber investment is that we, of course, sell our fiber products at different prices in function of the content. If you have an offer at low speeds, it is at a lower price. If you have an offer at much higher speeds, we, of course, ask for a premium for that. And today, this model is a model that we have been able to replicate in our wholesale offer.
So the regulation so far is in line with our business model and allow us to get the returns investments, which was initially foreseen. What we understand from the cost model that is currently being developed by the regulator is that they want to develop it to see if the prices that we have put forward to wholesale are not or treasury above the cost model, but we think we are very confident that the prices, which you can see some of them on the low end in the market review, I think the prices of EUR 23 as entry price on the 110 megabit per second has been made public and 28 on the two fifty megabit per second has been made public. And of course, the prices at higher speeds are higher. I think it gives us confidence that the market is open, is efficient and can safeguard a decent return on investments on our fiber deployments. Perhaps on competition before perhaps I give the words to Guillaume Boutin, It is true that we have seen heavy competition in the first quarter.
I mean a lot of mobile with a lot of joint offer, a lot of aggressiveness. But I think it is normal if you have a market where you have new entrants like Orange is a new entrant on the fixed markets. They are quite aggressive on trying to upsell mobile with fixed. We have seen the same on VUE who traditionally was more a fixed player and are now much more aggressive in building up the mobile. This gives a heated competition.
But I think if you see our results and that's why I said in the comments that I'm proud of the results we have achieved together. In a heated market, you see that Proximus is a very resilient company that we are able with our value strategy on the Proximus brand, with the Quack Play and with the No Frill brand Scarlet together with a lot of service and solutions in the enterprise business, then I think we're positioning and the way we address the market with segmented offers is something that helps us to be resilient versus competition. It's true that there has been a bit more means in the OpEx, but that was foreseen. And in that sense, we anticipate the higher competition that we knew would be coming from those new entrants. So that's globally, I think, the view on competition.
You said that you see the competition diminishing on the second quarter. I have to be honest, I'm not so sure. I think we still see several joint offers on the market. We see some aggressive offer on the fixed sites with free TV both from VU and from ourselves to, of course, because there is the World Cup, and we know that it's an important moment for people to renew their TV. So I am personally not so sure that we see a settle down of competition, but I think Proximus is well placed to face the market competition.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question from Emmanuel Carlier from Kempen. Madam, go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Three questions from my part. First of all, on the European Commission who now has to review the draft decision. Do you believe they will approve it in one month?
Or do you think it will take longer? And if so, based on what? Second question, the domestic non workforce expense was up by EUR 6,000,000. You mentioned that it includes some negative one offs. Could quantify them and give a little bit more explanation then?
And then the last question is on the cost model. I'm not sure if I if I understood the answer correct that you provided. So I I think the cost model will be ready beginning 02/2020, but in the answer, I think you mentioned something about 02/2019. Could you maybe just, answer that question again? Thanks.
So this is Dirk. On the first question, a lot of documentation has been pre notified to the European Commission. So they got the full deck last Friday. They now have a month to see whether they approve it in Phase one or Phase two. It's very difficult for us to assess whether they will do so.
It is clear that the definition of the market as proposed by the PIPT, by the regulator is not in line with what we read as a point of view of the European Commission in their latest publications. Now that being said, of course, this is at the end, this is a decision they which is also a bit political, so very hard for us to see whether they will approve or not.
Okay. On your question on the domestic non workforce increasing by EUR 6,000,000, I won't give a detailed breakdown, but I will repeat what I said, which might help, which is that excluding these one offs, which are largely located in this EUR 6,000,000 increase of non workforce, we would have had decreased our global net OpEx for the quarter.
And is that just non workforce or including workforce and non workforce?
The total OpEx would have decreased and most of the one most of the one off are located in the non workforce cost. Level, of course. So perhaps for the the clarification of the cost model, Dominique speaking, I think we have put in in in our communicated it. We think it will be applied as soon as the 2020.
Of course, it will all depend how fast the BIPT, but our best estimation is that BIPT is working on it, that they will have some type of cost model by the 2019. And before the cost model will be put into efficiency in the markets, we will be in 2020.
Okay. Thanks. And maybe if I may ask one other question. So you answered the question on broadband only access, what the impact would be. But yeah.
Don't don't you fear that people would trade down? And so today, everyone is moving towards bundles. Don't you think that the market would move towards unbundling and that as a result of that, the size of the market would shrink?
Well, I don't think so. I think today, have both offer in the markets, and the market is very much a market which is segmented. So you have a lot of people, and we see that, that number of people is increasing every quarter that really want to know an offer with everything all in, with peace of mind, and then they are ready to pay for an offer with everything, with content, with Internet, with WiFi, with mobile access, and that's what we sell with Tutimus Bisolin. And those offers still get a lot of traction. And on the other side of the spectrum, you have people that are indeed more inclined to take no fringe offer.
And there, for instance, on the Scarlet to talk about the Proximus Group, we have two offer, one offer which is a triple play offer and an offer which is an Internet only offer. And we, of course, see some traction on the Internet only. But to be honest, it's way lower than the traction we see on the Quad Play. So I don't think there will be a huge trade down. These offer are already on the market today.
People are very much aware of it. And I think you will keep the segmentation as you see it today. You see
in other markets, by the way,
I mean, you took at any markets, even outside the telco, you have the same segmentation. So I don't think there is anything such peculiar to telco that everybody will trade down and take on the Internet, I think that will not happen. I've never seen that in any market I've worked in.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. So next question from Ulrich Hrathe from Jefferies. So please go ahead.
Actually, first one is on Slide 13, regarding the working capital. You are saying it's mainly a timing effect. Could you just clarify what mainly means? Is there sort of an underlying working capital inflation and that will stick in the year and what scale that might be? My second question is coming back on the regulation.
Not so much on Proximus, I'm wondering whether you are willing to comment what this likely will do to competition levels in the near term, the regulatory announcements there, in particular, obviously, the cable side. I was wondering what you think this does to competition. Third question is on Scarlet. You commented in your prepared remarks that Scarlet saw solid customer growth. Would you be able to give us some sense of what percentage of the customer intake was on Scarlet or any sort of rough idea what the scale of that solid growth might be?
And my last one is on the cost trends. I'm just wondering whether there's any reason to assume much better cost trends in the second quarter given that maybe some of these commercial investments are scaled down and the one offs out? Or is this Q1 situation something that sort of spills over into Q1, we're going to see sort of improvement in the third and fourth quarter? Thank you.
Okay. So on working cap, I think maybe first an explanation on these elements in the first quarter. Indeed, you saw that we had higher cash CapEx and working cap excluding the accounting growth CapEx, which was negative. Really, timing played in the same direction for all elements. We had good elements in Q1 last year in our receivable and collection, which did not repeat.
In the first quarter, we had building up of inventories ahead
of
the beginning of the year and we had as well, just to give you a sense, the end of the quarter, which was a Good Friday where we had two days of collection less compared to last year. So all these elements adding in the same direction explains this timing effect. I think what I can say is that we do not change the global yearly picture, which is that we aim to cover our dividend with the generation of free cash flow. And so this should really be regularized or sold out throughout the year. So Dominique, on the regulation, it's difficult to give a lot of comments on the competition.
I think what what we see on on the cable regulation is that I think the regulator took a kind of mild way where they keep, of course, the cable regulation, which is an important element, but I was more referring to pricing. I think before any cost model, the price the regulator has chosen to push is the price of €20, which is the current prices in the South and where it means a kind of €4 down on the price Orange pays in the north of the country. So it will not change fundamentally, I think, the competition settings on the short term. I think it will help Orange to have a bit more profits on their offer, but mainly in the north of the country, I think the main elements in terms of competitive settings on the cable opening will come based on the cost model if that triggers further changes. I think the change we see now, it will not affect competition in a major form.
I think the risk is, of course, what would come out of a potential cost model within one, one point five years.
On Scarlet, this is Guillaume speaking. What is important to have in mind that our strategy is to grow both our Skalid customer base and both our Proximus customer base. And this is what happened in Q1. We grew net additions both our Proximus customer base and both our Skalid customer base. We are not giving the details of that growth, but this is what happened in Q1, and this is also what happened in the previous quarters.
Okay. On cost, I think what matters most is that we stick to our ambition to deliver on our EUR 150,000,000 net OpEx reduction at the 2019. And for the year, a portion of this would be achieved. We do not intend to go into further details as to giving quarterly guidance on our objective.
Great. Thank you very much.
Okay. Next question from Ruben Devos from KBC Securities. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon. I've got three questions basically. The first one is on fiber. So it's been a while since you first unveiled plans for fiber for Belgium.
I was wondering whether you could provide an update on the fiber to home or business rollout and also whether you've seen good traction in the markets for those households and enterprises. The second one is regarding the end market review. So the press release yesterday stated that you're quite satisfied with the reciprocal access between cable and copper fiber. Could you give an indication of the areas where today there's no copper or fiber coverage? And, yeah, what's the opportunity, let's say, for for those households and enterprises that you previously could not target?
The last question is, yeah, on price adjustments. So if I'm not mistaken, you've made some price adjustments in Q1 on some of the older products, basically in line with inflation. Although net adds were fairly similar to the quality run rate throughout 2017, Churn levels have somewhat increased. So would you say that part of churn was also driven by rate adjustments? Or is it a lot of the competition in the market which has influenced that?
And then lastly, could you provide some color on the competition in the SOAR and SME segment, if possible? Thank you.
Okay. So on fiber, so we've announced this indeed at the 2016. Now as you know, it takes time to deploy. So we are now on the seventh city in terms of deployments and we are progressing according to plan on our home passed, our homes terminated, our homes activated. And I think it's a bit too early to give you more details in terms of the numbers, but we are, I think, sticking to our ambition in terms of deployment and go to market and sales.
With respect to your second question, this is Heath speaking. So in fact, the indication, it's not where there is no copper coverage, but where it will take where it would not be economically viable to use those copper regions towards a certain minimum hygienic speed. So this is typically the very rural areas where we still are running our copper plant on ADSL. And so that is mainly what is covered there. So then we're talking in the range of about 10 to 15% of
Sorry. I think I missed your comment. 10 to 15% on?
Population, so 10 to 13% of population coverage, yes.
All right. Okay. Thank you.
On price adjustments, it is true that we did a price increase as of the January 1. I will not directly link the fact that auction increases both from mobile and fixed to this price increase. I think it's a combination of a lot of factors, including a more competitive market. On the SME segment, as for the residential market, there is also an increase of competition in that segment. However, we see a very, very strong resilience in that market, thanks to the very strong brand position and of Proximus for the small and medium enterprise.
All right. Thank you.
Next question from Paul Sidd from Credit Suisse. Sir, please go ahead. Sir, please go ahead. Next question from Paul Simon from Credit Suisse. Sir, please go ahead.
Mr. Paul Sidney, your microphone is open. Paul Sidney hang up. So next question from Alexander Wossier from Exane. Sir, please go ahead.
Hello. Thanks for taking the question. I was just wondering if you think Orange late unlimited offer will force you at some point to increase the data buckets you're offering to your mobile customer? And second question on fiber. Do you think if cost plus model is indeed implemented and passed through the EC, would you revisit the case of co investment scheme with Orange Belgium to accelerate your overboot of cable?
Thanks.
First, on Orange, one general comment on the launch of Orange. The price point to of Orange for unlimited data is is a price point that is not impacting us that much. So just first comment. And second, I'm not going to disclose any engine in my portfolio today. So so I'm not going to comment on your second question.
Alright. Thank you. Okay.
So I mean, on fiber, I mean, the core investments for me, it's not related to a cost base model. I think it's relating to to finding two partners that are ready to really invest and share the risk and the return of that investment. So far, we have not found a partner to do that and certainly not Orange as Orange is often talking about co investments. But in every meeting we have had with them on the subject, they were not willing to co invest. They have said very clearly, didn't want to dig into the ground.
They didn't want to put any fiber in the ground. The only thing that they wanted to have is a kind of financial co investments, which is just a kind of guaranteeing them a capacity on our fiber for a very low price. So I think today, we are absolutely not against co investment per se, but it needs to be with the right conditions, with the same objective and with a partner that is really willing to share the risk and the opportunity of a co investment, which is absolutely not the case in any discussion we have had with Orange. I want to make that very clear because I'm getting a bit nervous about this co investment with Orange. They don't want to co invest with us.
They have never come with a real co investment. It's a financial co investment. I just want to make that clear that we talk here about the financial co investments and not about the co deployment of fiber.
That's very clear. Thank you very much. Next question from Stephane Geneau from Degroof Petercam. Please go ahead. Thank you. Stephane Geneau, Degroof,
Petercam. Two questions related to competition and churn. First in the consumer, we've seen churn levels slightly increasing further. Could you indicate us how you've seen this evolve throughout the quarter?
And heading into the second quarter and with the World Cup upcoming, you also are advertising quite a lot with the TV set subsidization. Could you say whether this is something that could impact Q2, particularly in terms of customer retention or acquisition costs? That's the first question. And the second question, in the business segment, levels continue actually to improve slightly quarter on quarter and year on year. Have you seen less competition in the mobile then?
Have you seen less competition in the Enterprise segment? Or is there other explanation for this? Thank you.
Okay. To come back on the churn level and the evolution of the churn, I would say, first, in Q1, there is a seasonal effect where churn levels are nearly higher than
the in the rest of
the year. So this is first. Second, it's a combination of a lot of factors. And as I said, increased competition pressure is part of the explanation. Third, if you look into Q2, the first, it was a little bit lighter in terms of competitive intensity.
And so we even if we have the World Cup, we have a lot of events to accompany in terms of offers, we are not forcing it's not forcing to increase our acquisition costs for the quarters. It's going to be in line with what we saw in Q1.
And then for your question on B2B and the churn levels in mobile, it is indeed so that we succeed in keeping the churn levels at a very reasonable level and even improve them slightly. The reason is not because competition is less. I think the reason is still what I mentioned earlier is because we differentiate and we try to differentiate as much as possible from competition through a series of elements like, of course, the network leadership, but also our business continuity and service levels, our mobile managed services where we do not only deliver, how do I say, connectivity, but also the whole management services around it, our coverage in the market and so further. So it's a lot of elements where we differentiate and which is clearly appreciated by the customers and which makes them stay with us.
Okay. Thank you. Next question from Stephane Beyazian from Raymond James. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you. Can you give a little more visibility on TeleSign, talking about the revenues there? What is the sort of organic revenue growth that you see? And how is the integration doing there? I couldn't find a lot of information, I have to say, this morning in the report.
Thank you.
Okay. This is Daniel again. On Telesign, you need to understand that now I mean, we are making it one business in the sense that they are generating, you know, messaging traffic from the two factor authentication, and these messages are routed across our network. So we cannot really, you know, split the two businesses in terms of, you know, where goes the profit because, I mean, they use a network for messaging termination, for voice termination as well, which is one of the strong rationale for the for the combination. What I can share is that, I mean, we've we've implemented this this cost synergy successfully, and that has contributed to growth and that they are on the sales side, they are nicely growing their business with their customers.
So there is a nice revenue growth, but we look at it at one business from a profitability standpoint.
Do do they continue to brand themselves as Telesign in The US when they are pitching to to clients?
Yes. Yes. And and and the intention is to keep doing so because, I mean, their their their main customer base are b to b to c digital platforms, right? And they have 500 customers, more than 90% West Coast based, and they've been the strong brand. I mean, it's a twelve year old company, while Bix has been a very strong brand in the telco space and there is no intention to change that.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. So next question from Nicolas Didio from Berenberg. Sir, go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I have two questions. First, it's to come back on the broadband only offers. I mean, I understand your plan A is that there won't be any change on the market linked to this.
The issue is I'd like to know your plan b because you are seeing Scarlet as that kind of offers, but I believe Scarlet is not sold in your stores. I believe Scarlet has little advertising budget. So basically, it's a product that is poorly advertised. So there is unlikely to get any metrics on the market to say that it's not working because people don't want it. It's because Telenet and you, you are not really selling it.
So I just wanted to know the plan B on this, if it happens that Oberle is more aggressive on that front. And the second question is just on the EBITDA growth in Q2. Can you remind us the impact of regulation from last year in terms of roaming? Because it started, if I remember, during June. So there might be already a bit of improved comparable basis for the EBITDA growth.
Thank you.
Morning, Nicolas. Guillaume speaking. Actually, I think we are not going to here to to to comment on plan a, plan b, plan c, plan d, or the plan that we are the marketing plan that we foresee. But what Dominique explained that we don't see as it is already a segmenting market, any impact of these kind of offers because it's already on the market and people that are looking for those offers can find the right solution for them. So as Dominique mentioned, we do not foresee a huge disruption coming from this kind of offers as considering that it's already available and already sold in a lot of channels, mainly digital and call centers today, but it's already sold and targeting a very specific segment of population of the Belgian market.
It's also available and Dominique also mentioned, it's also available on the Proximus brand. So you can also buy a single play offer in our shops.
Okay. So on your question on the roaming impact, the drop of the pricing impact of roaming would be after mid June. So because that's when we analyze the decision of the second wave of the pricing on roaming. So we still expect to have a significant pricing impact in Q2 versus Q2 last year. And on top of that, remember that we also have planned for some and we see this, some erosion of roaming options that our enterprise customers still have, where we see them being decreased quarter after quarter.
So we will see normal pricing impact as of Q3.
Thank you.
We no more questions for the moment. We have a new question from Mr. Paul Sidney from Credit Suisse. Sir, please Yes.
I've got three questions, please, and apologies if you've answered these questions. I've had a few problems connecting with the call today. Firstly, Proximus has clearly been more successful over the last six months defending its market share from the likes of Orange Belgium than the cable operators. I just wondered what were the reasons in your view that, that is? And I know you've mentioned Scarlet as a way to defend your market share.
But is there anything else that you're doing better than the cable operators or anything in terms of the dynamics in the market which are different? And then secondly, just on the regulation. It seems like the move of the regulator to go to sort of tiered wholesale pricing on the 110 and the 150 megabits per second speeds for fiber and cable is trying to strike a nice balance between competition and investment. And it seems a bit of a more dovish tone than that given in the middle of last year. I just wondered if you shared that view.
And then just lastly, pulling it all together, the Belgian market remains competitive, but headline prices remain relatively stable. I just wondered under the current regulatory and competitive environment, whether you think the more for more strategy can continue to work? Thank you.
So on the first question, I mean, is Proximus resilient? I think it's several things and there is never one element. I think we are very resilient in the enterprise market now for many quarters and that's what Bart is always putting forward is that it's not only about prices. It's also about services. It's about bundling solution.
It's about continuously investing in security, cloud, integration, applications, for the for the enterprise business. And I think they found in in finding Proximus a real partner for their digital transformation and not only a provider of connectivity. And I think that's the main reason why to the contrary of a of a lot of countries, we are still able to grow our enterprise business. If you look more at the at the consumer business, I think there the fact that we have a two brand strategy and we are the only one in the country to have a two brand strategy is clearly helping us because you are able to both have a value accretive strategy on the Proximus brand and driving their content, driving for play, driving up tiering of customer and really satisfying them with very rich offer. And you have at the other side of the spectrum, a Scarlet brand, which helps you to compete in the no frills segment for people that are not so much interested in a lot of service and a lot of content that just want a plain Internet or triple play product.
So I think that's from a portfolio point of view, the main reason. For the rest, I think we have been able to have very motivated and engaged employees that are serving our customers through shop, through call center, through through technical intervention every day. And I think that's also part of of success. It's having a company that is really willing to to win, to continue to to grow, and that's all part of our Fit for Growth strategy is making sure that decreasing in terms of revenue over profit is just not acceptable internally and everybody is fighting for it. So culture, people and the right set of offers, I think, is the main reason why we can be resilient in the market.
On your second question for the regulation, yes, think I share your view. I think today, the regulation does not also want to stop investment. I think the BIPT said it also in its market review that they have tried to find a balance between the market that they want to be more competitive, and that's why the regulation is there, but they also don't want to stop the incentive for companies to to invest. And I think in that sense, I think we are now at a place where, at least for Proximus, we are in a place where we can continue to invest. Our topology has been approved, and we have opened our network with different pricing.
I think for cable, it's the same. I mean, they have to open the cable, but with prices which are, I think, acceptable. So in that sense, that's, I think at least what the regulator has tried to do is finding a balance between more competition, more opening of the market, but still allowing further investments in network enhancing. And then your last question?
Yes. I was just really just wondering if the More for More strategy can continue to work in the Belgian market given the current regulatory and competitive environment in your view.
Well, I think the more for more can still work. I think what was probably more difficult is just raw price increases. But if you have new products, if you have additional services, if you have a broader offer, I think we can still, of course, build a more for more strategy. That's what you see also on the enterprise business. I mean, have a decline of your legacy product, but we are able to build more value through new products.
And I think that's the same as we are trying to do on the Proximus brand on the consumer side, where of course, there are some basic product that goes down in price or are less used, but you can replace them by a new proposition, being in content, being in security or in other areas where you can increase the value for the customers and therefore have a more for more strategy. So I don't think that the current regulatory environment would stop us from doing more for more strategy.
That's great. Thanks very much for your time.
We don't have any more questions for the moment. We have a new question from Emmanuel Carlier from Kempen. Sir, go ahead.
Yes. If I may, just one question. On broadband speeds, how quick can you offer more than 150 megabits per second to nationwide I would say? And related to that, when do you believe that consumers will be really willing to pay for that?
Deress Hirsch speaking maybe on broadband speed. So first of all, we have, of course, a double strategy there and there is at one end, there is the fiber rollout that we're doing. But that, of course, is a multiyear project. And then secondly, there are constantly still efforts to improve the performance that we have on our copper plant. The 150 megabits per second is not as such a target for us.
And what we want to do is that we deliver our customers with excellent speed that allow all the services current in an excellent way. So to give you an idea, we are in average already on our VDSL plant beyond the 70 megabits per second in average. More than 50% of our customers can get today already 100 megabits per second. And so there we will further let also our copper plant evolve aligned with the expectations that are out there.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. We don't have any more questions. So back to you for the conclusions.
Thank you. Well, least me just to say that if anybody would have had follow-up questions, you can obviously address them to the Investor Relations team. Thank you all for calling in and for the questions. Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.