Hello, welcome to the Proximus Q2 2023 conference call. Please note that this call is being recorded. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to your host, Nancy Goossens, Investor Relations Lead, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you, and thank you for joining us. We keep our usual format, so we start this webcast by an introduction by the CEO, Guillaume Boutin, using the presentation that we have published on the website this morning. After that, 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 Lotgering, and the CEO of BICS, Matteo Gatta. They will be taking your questions in a moment, but first, Guillaume will take you through the highlights of today. Guillaume, please go ahead.
Welcome to this webcast. Over the next 10-15 minutes, we'll follow this agenda. We start with some highlights for the quarter. The highlights of Q2. First of all, the second quarter marks a really strong commercial success. We are winning in a slow-growing market across all main products. Especially on mobile postpaid, closing an excellent quarter. Financially, we sustain our strong revenue growth for the group, up by 4%, with both our domestic and international segments contributing to this achievement. Similar to the previous quarter, we are still coping with inflationary impacts, leading to a decrease of 3.7% of the group EBITDA, in line with our expectations. We're now six months in our bold2025 strategy. We have achieved major steps forward for both our domestic and international segments.
Let me zoom in on this part. As you know, for our domestic segment, a key factor in our strategy is the rollout of Belgium's GB network. As you can see on that slide, on the quarterly updated chart, we have been further expanding our fiber works. Thanks to good progress, we have reached, in June, a critical footprint with one out of four premises in Belgium being passed with our fiber technology. The fiber machine is going full speed in no less than 115 Belgian cities and municipalities, bringing Belgian inhabitants the best technology available. To allow the fiber technology being made available across the country even faster, including the low-density zones, I remain convinced there is a need for an effective and rational fiber collaboration and co-investment framework. In June, nearly 1.5 million homes were passed with fiber.
On top of this, Fiberklaar and Unifiber have today a funnel of fiber in the street of over 300,000 homes, which will boost the fiber homes passed as soon as the pops are activated. Our network training rate is also nicely progressing, reaching 25% at the end of June. This proves the traction of fiber continues to be strong and the success of our product superiority strategy. In terms of active customers on fiber, we have been growing our base with 34,000 over the past three months, a year-on-year increase by nearly 50%. This brings the total now to 322,000 active customers. The success of fiber is also reflected in the migration rate, which has further improved to 70% 12 months after commercial launch. We continue to improve our fiber offer.
We once again have stamped our fiber mark on the Belgian market by making the 10 gigabit technology available in all fiber zones and by including it in our residential packs. Our three fiber offers on the market with speed tiering ensure also the further monetization of our investments. For our B2B unit, we continue to execute on a transformation to become the full service technology solution leaders in the Benelux. As we elaborated in our CMD, in our CMD, B2B is at a crossroad of two markets: the telco market on one side and the IT market on the other side. The boundaries between these two are increasingly blurring with trends such as softwarization. To fully embrace this development, we repositioned our enterprise brand with the launch of Proximus NXT.
It stands for us helping our enterprise customers to embrace the nextGen technologies, cybersecurity, cloud, advanced workplaces, AI, and the new ecosystem of partners that we continue to build. The biggest news of this quarter was related to international activities. Last week, Monday, we announced the agreement to acquire a majority stake in Route Mobile. As a reminder, the key drivers for this deal are the following: It will allow the Proximus Group to gain significant scale as Route Mobile and Telesign will be holding a solid top three position in the global CPaaS market. Route Mobile operates globally with a nice regional complementarity with Telesign, with Route Mobile having especially a strong position in its home market, India. This is combined with a strong complementarity in product offerings.
Thirdly, the potential revenue and cost synergies are super high, estimated to deliver at least EUR 90 million of annual EBITDA synergies, post-closing of the transaction. Combining the two entities will also allow us to improve the EBITDA margin to best-in-class peer level of 13%-15%. For more information, I invite you to have a look at a separate presentation published on the Proximus website. Having covered the strategic part, let's move to the financial and operational results of the second quarter. We'll start with our domestic segment. As you can see on the chart, we delivered a strong commercial momentum over the past three months across all our main product groups.
Looking at the first half of the year, it's clear that we are winning in the market, with over 50% of the organic residential growth in the postpaid and fixed internet markets. This demonstrates we can rapidly adapt to changes, with our new mobile postpaid portfolio launched in May, clearly not missing its effect. In addition, having reached now a critical fiber footprint, we successfully launched a broad advertising campaign, You Got the Fiber, which supported our internet customer growth, showcasing the unmatchable superiority of the fiber technology. Zooming in on our residential unit, the sustained good commercial performance, further supported by price indexations, resulted in another strong revenue quarter, with both total and services revenues up by 4.2%.
The residential customer services revenue benefited from a strong increase in ARPU, up year-on-year by 4.7%, reflecting the effect of price indexations and the ongoing move from customers to convergent offers. With fiber alongside our first-class mobile network, we enjoy product superiority in the market, which greatly supports our value management. Price indexations clearly support the ARPA growth, yet have only very limited on, limited impact on churn levels. The customer trends even improved, all translating to the revenue uplift by over 4% for the residential unit. Our business unit closed also a strong quarter, with revenue up +2.9%. We are particularly pleased with the business services revenue, which continued its positive trend in the second quarter, in line with our strategy. Revenue from products and especially IT equipment, posted a solid increase.
This, while we are gradually returning to business as usual situation for IT equipment installations. The positive trending of the business services revenue was the result of the continued growth in revenue from internet services, with a 6.6% increase in ARPU and a rather stable customer base. For the IT services, we also achieved a 6.6% growth compared to the previous year, resulting from growing revenue in cloud, security, smart mobility, and smart networks. This was partly offset by legacy fixed voice, for which the revenue still erodes, yet the decline is stabilizing. Finally, our wholesale unit, for which the year-on-year revenue declined by EUR 3 million, is the result of the ongoing interconnect headwinds, with however, no meaningful margin impact. Services revenue was up by 6.9%.
This brings me to the total domestic revenue, for which we achieved a 4.2% growth for Q2, with services revenue growing by 2.8% year-over-year. Turning down to the domestic OpEx, in line with our expectations, we still face significant inflationary costs, effects on wages, electricity, and other exposed cost lines. Moreover, the strong commercial momentum also drives some customer-related OpEx. Thanks to our ongoing cost efficiency program, we could in part offset this, overall resulting in our OpEx being up by 8.8% for Q2. This brings me to the total domestic EBITDA, which was down by -3.5%, with a higher cost in part offset by the increase in direct margin, in line with our expectations.
Turning to the international segments, for the second quarter, BICS posted revenues down by 1.1%, which reflects USD currency headwinds and the fact that BICS is returning to usual business trending post an excess of exceptional 2022. Nonetheless, BICS core services achieved robust revenue growth, up by 8.1%, driven by strong mobility volumes. I'm delighted to confirm the solid commercial momentum with Telesign, delivering robust sales bookings and continuing to post double-digit revenue growth. Moreover, the value of its customer base continues to progress with a net revenue retention rate at a very healthy 117%. Communication and digital identity services continue to grow, with a digital identity segment benefiting from the expansion of the Telesign customer base outside the United States. The EBITDA reflects Telesign's significant investments in the growth ambitions.
These have now reached the peak. The increase in operating costs is therefore expected to moderate going forward. This brings me to the group results. This slide sums it up for the second quarter, with a strong group revenue increase leading to a 2.1% growth in direct margin. The group EBITDA was down by -3.7%, with mainly the domestic segment impacted by the inflation-driven cost increase. This brings me to the. Sorry, I was a bit too fast. For the CapEx, we remain well on track for a full-year projection of around EUR 1.3 billion. Over the first half of 2023, we invested EUR 612 million.
As illustrated on the chart, the fiber-related investments accounted for 29% of the total, with our own fiber build coming down from its peak in 2022. CapEx needs to connect and activate our fiber customers on the other hand increased. Moreover, the mobile network consolidation led by MWingz is ongoing, with CapEx incurring following the pace of the mobile site consolidation. It brings me to the Free Cash Flow over the first half of the year, as shown on the graph, besides the EBITDA effects, the main driver of the lower Free Cash Flow is tax-related, partly offset by lower business working capital needs. Looking at the remaining part of the year, we expect the adjusted Free Cash Flow to return to positive grounds, supported by our underlying business trends and the sale of our headquarters.
The Free Cash Flow, sorry. The Free Cash Flow move, as well as the dividend payment in April, is reflected in our net financial position, all in all, in line with our projections for the year. To conclude, we are very pleased on where we stand six months in the year and reconfirm our guidance. Regarding the revenue growth for the domestic segment, we expect, however, to land in the upper ends of the given range. This mainly following higher than expected revenue from terminals and IT hardware. The other guidance metrics, as shown on the slide, remain unchanged. With this, I have covered my introduction, we can now turn to your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one now on your telephone keypad. To redraw your question, please press star two. The first question comes from the line of Nicolas Cote-Colisson, calling from HSBC. Please go ahead.
I've got 3 questions. First, Guillaume, you're calling for fiber collaboration and co-investment framework for the first time officially, I mean, in a press release. Now what are the next steps? Can you update us on the workflow with the BIPT, and what would, in an ideal world, for Proximus, the design of such a framework? Second, on BICS and Telesign, can you please tell us a bit more about the GDPR case? Because I can appreciate there's a lot of legal constraints on what you can say now, but there is this noyb complaint that could be or could have some serious consequences. Any information around that would be great. Very last one on Telesign. I'd like to better understand why the growth margin is still going down. What is happening in terms of product mix there?
I understand the company will transform dramatically with the, the Indian deal at some point, but I'm just curious to better understand the real value of your CPaaS business beyond the headline revenue, if it makes sense. Thank you.
I'll start on the, sorry. I'll start with, with, your question on fiber. I guess for me, it was important to say in the name of the industry, that an investment-friendly and collaborative framework has to be put in place. Again, here to, to go even further and to even more accelerate the fiber rollout for the country, as you know, this is in, in the interest of everyone, you know, citizen, operators, and also for the competitors of the country. That's why it's important for me to, to state that more officially in, in the name of the industry.
I think in terms of timeline of the current work that is being performed by BIPT, I think we, we expect them to complete their analysis by the end of the year, beginning of next year. To see then, you know, then, you know, to be able to then to start constructive discussion with them. Again, what is a good framework and an investment-friendly framework? I think we, we, we have probably to reflect on what are the areas where you need to, you know, compete on infrastructure, what are the areas where you need to co-invest or or to to co-build that fiber network.
As we know, if we want to go fast, and if we want to cover 100% of the, of the country, the, the technology, some, some form of collaboration, some form of co-investment will be needed. We, we are calling for that investment-friendly and collaborative approach for the rollout of that, you know, needed technology for the country. We, we will, I think this is next steps are, you know, that, that, you know, BIPT analysis to be, to be finalized. For us to also be proactive in terms of what would be the different scenarios where we can bring that framework or put in place that framework that is, as I said, needed to go fast and to cover 100% of the country.
On the second question on noyb, Mark, you want to take that one?
noyb. Yeah, Nicolas, on noyb, you know, clearly there's, you know, we're, we're under legal legal guidance on that. As, as we've kind of said to the market, you know, we're, we're cooperating with the, with, with the inquiries and, you know, at, at this point, we see, you know, no, you know, we believe that we have been compliant and we will, you know, continue to, you know, follow discourse with the, with the, with the appropriate bodies on that requirement. We do not see any any material risk to the business at that point, and therefore, you know, again, we have not made no provisions or anything in, in that sort from a financial perspective. That's about as much as we can say at this point.
Hopefully that helps you in some way. On the overall, on the overall Telesign question on margin, I think you got to look at it a little bit on, on it's, it's primarily CPaaS margin that is, is moving a little bit. There's some foreign exchange headwinds there. There's some mix of countries and mix of of customers that is playing a little bit on the CPaaS business. The direct, the Direct margin continues to be strong, and the mix of that business continues to, to move in the right direction. As Guillaume is saying, the, the bookings we are very, very pleased with in terms of that, CPaaS still is a, is a major part of the overall margin mix.
And again, we continue to, to see, the, the, the value of that business going forward. Clearly, with the Route Mobile acquisition, we see a, we see a very bright future of those two businesses together.
Okay, got it. Maybe just to follow up, I, I get your point about the revenue that it will eventually slow down and the revenue growth. How should we see for the next couple of quarters, the contribution in terms of direct margin from Telesign? Because, should we think about the stable margin, or should we think about the kind of a stable...? Yeah, sorry?
Nicolas, no, no. I mean, I look, I think, you know, we've got guidance out there on international Direct margin. As I said, I think, you know, we've come off of a, of, of a nice first half with the business. They continue to, to deliver as we want them to deliver. That momentum follows from a booking perspective, a net revenue retention, KPIs forward into, into the second half. So I think from a Telesign perspective, I think we're, we're, we're on course. I think BICS, again, you know, the summer is very important from mobility perspective. We'll have better visibility of that by the time we come out of, out of Q3, but certainly early July numbers are proving well.
At, at this point, you know, from an international perspective, that's the way we kind of want to look at it. You know, our guidance is where we think it should be, so.
Okay, very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of, David Vagman, calling from ING. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. First, a quick one on the, the strong commercial momentum in Q2, in particular in mobile. Could you explain us in more detail the dynamics, when you're looking at your own brands, and also in term of, of region, and how much of that momentum can you carry forward in Q3? Then on the fiber roll-out, it seems like the JVs, it started the roll-out in a much, much slower fashion than what they were supposed to do, when I'm, when I'm looking at the CMD targets.
Is this strictly for technical reasons, or is there a bit of a conscious choice, let's say, or decision from you and your JV partners to slow things in order to wait for the BIPT to take a decision, referring here to the regulatory framework? On this lower roll-out, any financial impact to expect? Let's say on termination, CapEx, or lower wholesale cost, slower commercial momentum. Finally, third question, on BICS and Telesign, it seems you've become so quite active in term of transaction, and I'm also referring to recent press report about a possible acquisition by BICS. Should we expect more deals going forward? A bit, let's say, bolt-on or frequent deals or some transformative one, some one more.
Do you see the need for more transaction? That's a bit my point here, for BICS and Telesign strategically. Could this then lead to the need for a possible change in capital structure at BICS, let's say, to finance this external growth? Thank you.
Hi, David. Jim from the residential segment. On your first question, I think indeed we are very happy with the excellent results that we had on mobile postpaid for the quarter and even on the full semester. When you look at it, I think at the end of the first quarter, we updated our Mobile Vikings portfolio. In July, we also launched our new Proximus portfolio, and we also upgraded the mobile specs in our convergent flex offers, which allowed us to to address the competitiveness issues that we had over the last months. You have clearly seen the result of that on our, on our numbers. Also, the joint offer market continues to perform very well.
I think on all the dynamics, we have the right offers in place. Now, what does that mean for the future? Of course, it's always difficult to predict how the future is gonna look like. We have, as of August, our back-to-school campaigns that are gonna start, but we are convinced that we have the right offers in the market to continue on the traction that we've been having over the last 2 quarters. Looking at the different brands, I'm really happy to see that the results of Q2 and S1 are driven by the three different brands in their respective segments.
At, at the end of the day, in telco, when you have more spectrum, better fixed technology, you win. That's, you know, all the good work of Jim, but also the fact that, you know, we, we now have a product security strategy that is starting to, to, to be, you know, visible by everyone, and that's also helping the, the, the, the commercial momentum. On fiber, on fiber, I think we, we are quite happy with the level of progress we, we have made in the, what we call fiber in the street on HPP, where we, we are delivering the plugs on according to plan. We are a little bit behind in terms of, you know, final customer connections, which is a delay, not because of technical reason, but more because it's not that easy to, to scale rapidly that last mile delivery of fiber connections.
It will be, we'll catch up over time. I don't see that as a true issue when you are in a 10-year, you know, investment program to have a few quarters of delay in the, in the last mile. I, I think, I think this is not something that is worrying me too much, and we will catch up over time.
On, on, o n the financial impact, I think, David, again, we, we, you know, in terms of where we are on the, on the, the fiber build, and rollout, I think we've, we put all the, the, the, the, the assumptions of the capital market state plan. As Guillaume says, we're, you know, we're maybe a quarter odd in terms of phasing, but there's nothing material. All the inflationary impacts are in. There, there, there's nothing, you know, significantly material in terms of change or financial impact of this at, at, at this point.
On your question, the M&A activity, I think, I think we, we are not commenting, you know, rumors on, on the market, obviously. As I said also previously, what was important for us was to gain scale at, at, at the CPaaS level. Because, you know, CPaaS, it's a scale business, global business. You need, you need to make sure that you have the, the, the right size in order to to cope in the with the, the leaders of the, of the market. Now, we, we will become, after the close of the deal, one of the leaders of the market, the focus is really to close that deal and to extract the growth and the, and the, and the synergies that are, you know, significant, in that, in that transaction.
That's, that's really the focus. I think, and I stated quite clearly also last time we discussed that, that, that Route Mobile Proximus transaction. Focus now is to close the transaction. Focus is to continue to win the market, to continue to have the very, very good commercial momentum in Belgium. Third priority is to be fully prepared for Digi when Digi will be arriving in the market probably next year. Of course, to make sure that we can have, you know, an investment-friendly framework for fiber for Belgium. I think this is, you know, my number 1 priority.
And, and, and the four items I just mentioned are the focus of the, of the company, as we speak.
Yes, thank you. A very quick follow-up on the, on the fiber rollout. Would it make sense to slow things a little bit in order just to wait what, what the regulator is up to? Basically maybe change course or change, you know, like, track. Do you have discussion with your partner about doing this, or you just, like, executing the plan and, yeah?
I think it's twofold. We are executing the plan, and, you know, I said it, you know, several times publicly, we are open to create that investment-friendly framework proactively so that we can have constructive discussions with all stakeholders. I think for that, we need some more, some, some more weeks, some more months, because all the conditions are not yet there, because all the deals are not closed at our partners. So we need to finalize all those elements before, you know, being able to start constructive discussion.
You know, I think there is alignment of interests on all fronts for the country, for our customers, for the competitors, of the industry, for all existing operators to create that investment-friendly framework that will make that investment that needs to be done a very good one for everyone. So that's where we are. Difficult for me to say more, but I think this is, as I said, the focus for me, for my team, for the next month.
Thanks. Thanks, Guillaume. Thanks, Mark.
The next question comes from the line of Roshan Ranjit, calling from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Oh, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for the questions. I've got 3, please. Focusing on the, on the business side, your growth rate slowed a touch this quarter. Can you run us through any of the trends driving that? I know some comments from your peers have suggested that they are pushing a bit harder in B2B, particularly on the large corporate side. Are you seeing a bit more pressure on that front? Second question is just to get an update on the asset sales, which you highlighted at the CMD. I think you guided to EUR 400 million over 3 years. We know the well-flagged HQ sale will impact Q4, I think just under EUR 150 million. Is there a change there?
There was obviously a, a story yesterday around data centers, so anything you could say there would be good, please. And finally, just on CapEx, and I appreciate there is volatility quarter to quarter, but when I look at the implied CapEx per home, this quarter, it's a significant decrease, and that's on the pure build rather than the, the connection cost, which I know you said is, is, stepping up. So are, are you seeing any kind of efficiencies here on, on the lower CapEx per home, which you can, apply, for, for the full year, and we could see some upside to, to that CapEx number? Thank you.
I will start with your first question, Roshan. It's Anne-Sophie Lotgering here from the business unit. I would say the most quick explanation I can give you on why the growth rate seems to be slowing down. That's mainly because the products are lower on a high comparable base. As you know, we had to catch up the supply chain issues a year ago, and that catch up was very, very active already back in the quarter, Q2 of last year. What we see now is that product delivery is actually normalizing, and therefore, that's the major reason why you see the slower growth rate quarter-over-quarter.
What I would like to emphasize, however, is that our services revenue, and more specifically our IT services revenue growth, is much higher than in previous quarters, driven by our strategic areas of growth, such as cloud, security, smart mobility, and smart networking. If you take our managed services, and more specifically, our recurring services on our strategic areas, we see that those are actually growing nicely quarter over quarter, whereby our products revenue, which is one short, is actually decreasing because of the volatility disappearing also slowly. I hope that answers your question.
Michelle, let me take the asset sale one, I'll touch on the CapEx one as well. On the asset sale, you're right. On Capital Markets Day, we talked about a EUR 400 million asset disposal. We continue to work on that across a range of what we term non-core assets. I think, you know, you know, data centers would be in that classification. But at this point, we have nothing to say further than that, you know, as you'd expect, given our announcement. We're working on various views across the business. In terms of the CapEx, again, I think we're always, we stand back, we're continually looking at operational efficiencies in our home pass build.
That's something, you know, we see quarter in, quarter out, clearly, you know, helping us mitigate the inflation as we've, we said before. In terms of the current quarter, you know, I think it's, it's more likely to be mix of delivery and range of the homes. I wouldn't read into anything on homes passed going forward. Cool, thanks.
Great. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Joshua Mills, calling from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Couple of questions from my side. One is just on the overall Belgian market. I think all three operators have now been commenting that you're seeing slowing overall growth and you're indicating that maybe focus is now more on price rather than volume. My question is, is there any reason why we're seeing overall market growth slow? Is it just that we're hitting saturation points, or is there any kind of macro factors to bear in mind there? I'd be interested to hear your view. Then the second question, thank you for the call last Monday, on Route Mobile, could you remind us of the timeline from here, the transaction?
I think on the call, when asked about any potential impacts on Free Cash Flow, EBITDA guidance that was laid out at the Capital Markets Day, you said you'd come back to us with more details. Are you able to provide any more detail now on how this might impact your group level financials and trajectory on Free Cash Flow? Then also, if that's not the case, when you expect to be giving the market an update. Thank you.
On, on the, on the Belgian market, you see, you, you still see, see growth on the market, but as you can see, you know, not affecting at all our ability to develop a customer base. If you look at the Proximus numbers only, you can see that they are, you know, progressing. It's of course, because we are winning shares on the market and, and, and, and, thanks to fiber and, and, and, and, you know, the quality of our network. We, we don't see a major shift in the trends, since last year.
I think the only thing that we, the true trend that we, that we see is on, on TV customers, where you see more cord cutters, and probably that TV customer reached a peak, and you have a, a more rapid decrease overall for the market in terms of cord cutting. Apart from that, I think there is the slight growth after the COVID boost continue on the Belgian market. I don't see that being, you know, fundamentally different from other European countries. At least this is not what I've, I, I've noticed. In that, you know, still growing, but, you know, at not at a, at a, at a high pace market.
We are, you know, we are, continuing to, to win market shares, which I think, it's encouraging for, for the return of the investments we are making in both mobile and, and, and fiber. I give the floor to, to Mark.
Joshua, thank you for the questions on Route Mobile. So on timeline, we're busy preparing the regulatory clearance files and the MTO. Regulatory clearance is likely to be the longer timeline in there. So, you know, we think somewhere around 6-9 months, and the MTO effectively kind of closes within that 6-9 months, but it's usually a 1 month process within that 6-9 months. So that really kind of gives you the guidance on timeline. Clearly, regulatory is key, and, you know, we're progressing fast on that. In terms of the FCF, EBITDA impact, I think, you know, unfortunately, at this point, I need to give you the answer I gave 10 days ago
I think the, the, the, the, you know, the plans of the two businesses are, are fairly public. I think you can use that as a good proxy, and, and, and, and, we've been, I think, very clear in terms of our estimated, synergies. I think that gives you a good proxy, and, and, you know, looking at deals like this, you can probably work out a timing in terms of where that comes through. I think that's where we are. We'll come back in terms of giving you more detail on that, on closing, of the, of the transaction. I hope that's okay. Yeah, it's very clear.
Maybe just on the, on the first question, yeah, and forgive my ignorance here, has there been any new or developing FWA products in the Belgian market which might explain why, maybe more for your competitors than yourself? There's been a bit of at least commentary slow down around broadband attacks or any other alt nets we may not be capturing in certain areas? Thanks.
Joshua, this is Jim from the residential segment. To Guillaume's point, if you look at the reports of the main competitors or the main telcos in Belgium, and you compare the results of S1 this year with the results of S1 last year, you will see indeed, that the growth in the Belgian market is not slowing down. I think the market is still growing. Of course, from a technological perspective, at a certain point in time, we will need to look at all the options, but there's no need for a new technology to drive growth in the market. The growth in the market is still there.
We see it in the postpaid market, we see it on the internet market, and indeed, to Guillaume's point, the only exception is on digital TV.
Very clear. Thanks.
The next question comes from the line of Martin Hammerschmidt, calling from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for taking my question. I also have a few, please. The first one is on, on capital allocation, and you alluded to earlier, in terms of your priorities, closing the deal, preparing for the new entrant, getting infrastructure deal or partnership framework done. If I think about sort of the last couple of transactions, what we've seen in the press yesterday, in terms of your priorities, it seems as if you are willing to allocate sort of more capital into, into BICS, into Telesign, and you mentioned the need for scale, as well. With the Route Mobile acquisition, you obviously gained some scale, some significant scale, but is that sort of enough? I mean, you say it's a fragmented market, with lots of small players, scale is important.
How should we think about sort of capital allocation towards sort of the international business? Could that have an impact, sort of on the dividend if there are sort of more deals coming through, over the next couple of years? That would be my first question. The second one is on EBITDA, EBITDA guidance. I mean, it seems the, the business is on track, according to plan that you set out initially. Now we've seen that, sort of the one salary increase is, that you, I think, envisaged in October. You don't envisage, envisage that to come through now. I think that's roughly sort of 0.5%, on the EBITDA. If all else equal, why sort of not upgrade the EBITDA guidance this quarter?
Is it just out of prudence, or what would, what could prevent an EBITDA guidance, given that you have sort of that little buffer of tightening up towards sort of away from the around 3%, maybe more towards 2%-3% range? Then the last question, if I may, is regarding the churn post the price increase. How sort of compares that to the price increase that you've seen in January? Do you see a higher churn rates in the month in July versus January? Basically just get us a sense of where churn is. Thank you.
On your first question, I think I've been quite clear on the priority for Proximus for the coming months. I, I won't, I won't repeat that. I, I think, I think in terms of gaining scale, and now we, we are the number three in the world in terms of volumes with the acquisition of Route Mobile. I think we have gained the scale we wanted to reach. No immediate need to continue scaling because we are, you know, in the top three in the world. With a very important specificity, we have the corridor to India, which is, as you know, 1.4 billion inhabitant market. I think, you know, organic growth in India can, is in front of us.
I think and the focus will, I repeat, will be to extract the synergies and to deliver the growth of the combined, new combined entity, Telesign and Route Mobile. I, I think this is really the opposite. I think we, we always stated that we wanted to be below a Net Debt to EBITDA ratio of 3 times. That's, you know, the boundary we have, we have set to ourselves. The Free Cash Flow generation of those international activities, where you have a very strong conversion in between EBITDA to cash, will help cover the dividend going forward.
That's the way I look at those businesses to help us being, you know, more, more confident to, and continue to invest in, in our domestic activities, in networks, and continue to, to grow rapidly, more rapidly than the, than, than the other periods of the industry, thanks to the growth opportunities of the international activities, while keeping our net debt to EBITDA ratio below a healthy three times. That's, that's how you can, you have to look at the moves that we have made last week.
Martin, on, on overall guidance, I think, you know, the first half of the year, certainly from top line perspective, we've been super pleased with, I think the commercial momentum is excellent. The, the return into, to revenue is good. I think the, the, the nuance on, on revenue, lifting revenue guidance, you know, is, is off the back of, you know, also strong products and terminals revenue, which, which, which doesn't provide a, a hell of a lot of margin. Look, I think we're gonna take Q3, see how the, the back-to-school campaigns land, how the pricing lands in Q3, we'll come back in Q3 in terms of, you know, the, the rest of the year outlook. But right now, as, as I said, we're, we're super confident at the top end of our revenue guidance.
We've confirmed all the other guidance metrics, and we'll see in due course.
Martin, on, on your last question, so Jim, from the residential segment. We haven't seen any different reactions to our price increases in July versus what we have done in January. I think also what is important in July, on top of the price indexation, we also improved the specs of our mobile offers for our existing customers and for our conversion customers and for the customers on fiber. Also there, by doing that, we made sure that the value for money perception kept was kept right. We didn't see a difference versus what we saw in January.
Thank you very much. That's really helpful. Thank you.
The next question comes from Nuno Vaz from Societe Generale. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I have 3, please, and I'll try and not touch on other topics that have been sort of discussed. First one would be on, we saw this quarter that Telenet had quite a bit of difficulties with the IT problems and that they postponed some of the marketing campaigns. I was wondering if this is something that has possibly been an extraordinary benefit for Proximus, and is something that if they postpone marketing campaigns to the second half of the year, might impact operational performance in the second half of the year? Second question, following the comments about co-investment and collaboration on fiber, I was wondering what's the status of this i4B EUR 4 billion joint venture that was aiming to cover the 70%-95% of Belgium?
It's specifically for low density areas where this market review also seems to be focusing on. If we could get an update on this joint venture and whether you would wait for the market review to go ahead or potentially start ahead as the other JVs have, and then wait for a potential collaboration from the other operators. Then final on CapEx, especially the EUR 1.3 billion guidance, which is sort of to be flat year-over-year. Year to date, it's already up, the CapEx is up EUR 55 million. One big point has been customer-related CapEx, especially related to fiber. You've said in the call that you plan to do a bigger push or sort of more marketing on fiber. Is this not going to increase the customer-related CapEx even further?
How do you expect to sort of neutralize this in a way that maintains, CapEx year-on-year flat by the end of the year? Thank you.
Nuno, Jim, from Residential for your first question. I, I think indeed, the, the fact that one of our competitors had some operational issues will have had an impact on the, on the performance of the different players in the market. I think at the same time, when, when you look at our results, we've been growing faster than any other operator in the Belgian market over the last six months on internet and on mobile. I'm convinced that it's more about our multi-brand strategy.
The fact that we have revamped our mobile offers, both at Proximus and at Mobile Vikings, and also with fiber, and the fact that since July, with our new Fiber Flex portfolio, we have claimed a clear internet product leadership on the Belgian market. I think these elements are gonna contribute most to our results. Of course, as always, results are a result of what is happening on the market as well. I'm convinced that it's more about our own execution than something else.
On the, on the, on the rural JV, I think, I think, it's, discussions are still, you know, going on. I think we, we want to make sure we, we, we, we select the, the right ecosystem of partners for that, for that initiative. So I think I, I cannot comment more on that. I think we still, you know, in discussions and we, we, we see when we can announce something, because again, we need to find the right set of partners because this is a very specific endeavor. Let's see how this evolves.
We are not, you know, in a hurry to close this kind of discussions for a lot of different reasons, but the main one being, we need to find the right set of partners around the table to before announcing anything more. On the guidance, Mark?
Yeah, no, no, on, on CapEx, I think, you know, we, we, we're super secure. We're gonna get to the EUR 1.3 billion number. I think any assured on that in terms of it, it really is kind of elements as customer fiber connections increase, we clearly passed a peak on our fiber homes passed on balance sheet. Equally, we're super focused on our development CapEx or kind of base business BAU CapEx, so you'll see that come, come off to compensate the customer CapEx. Yeah, we're on track to hit the number for the year.
Okay, that's clear. Thank you very much.
The last question comes from Nicolas Cote-Colisson from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah, no worries. It's gonna be a short one. The, 25% filling rate on your fiber network, can you just tell us what is the contributions of third parties here or partners that are taking your wholesale product?
For the moment, on the 25% filling rate is, you know, mostly, Proximus customers.
Okay. no-
No, I would say
No more.
Almost only Proximus customers.
Okay, cool. Thank you. That's it for me.
There are no further questions, I will hand it back to your host to conclude today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you all for joining this call. If you have any follow-up questions, you can reach out to Adrian or myself. I wish you all a very good weekend. Bye.
Thank you for joining today's call. Ladies and gentlemen, you might now disconnect.