Hello, and welcome to the Proximus Q4 2022 results call. Please note this call is being recorded, and 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 to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Nancy Goossens, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We will be following our usual agenda, starting this webcast with the introduction by the CEO, Guillaume Boutin, using the presentation which we published on the website this morning. After that, we will be turning to your questions. For the Q&A, we are joined here by a few members of the leadership squad. The CFO, Mark Reid, the residential segment lead, Jim Casteele, the business segment lead, Anne-Sophie Lotgering, the CTO, Geert Standaert, our Corporate Affairs Lead, Dirk Lybaert, and the CEO of BICS, Matteo Gatta. They will all be happily taking your questions after the introduction by Guillaume. Guillaume, please go ahead.
Thank you, Nancy. Ladies and gentlemen, also welcome from my side to this webcast covering the last quarter of 2022. Over the next 10 - 15 minutes, I will cover the subjects on the slide, and we start with some highlights for the quarter. Going from right to left, I'm very pleased having ended the last quarter of the year with group revenue growth of +8.1%, our best revenue growth ever. This achievement was supported by both our domestic and international segments. At the same time, we continued our efforts to control costs, hence succeeded in mitigating inflationary pressures and deliver 1.5% EBITDA growth for the group. Commercially, we kept a strong momentum with ongoing support from our convergent offers, and these through our different brands,
Regarding our fiber deployment, we have made great progress over the past three months, with nearly 160K new premises passed with fiber, a new record. All this proves our successful execution of our #inspire2022 strategy. With the closure of the year 2022, we are now embarking on a new three-year strategy, bold2025. As a last point, earlier this week, we had some exciting news on the ESG front. With ESG being an integral part of our strategy, I'm very proud that our initiatives have not gone unnoticed and Proximus is selected to become part of the new BEL ESG Index. This does not only show that we are among Belgium's leading companies in the ESG domain, but also earns us the confidence of investors through this new sustainability investment tool.
Turning back for a moment to the Q4 financial results, this slide sums it up for the fourth quarter. With a strong group revenue increase leading to a +3.8% growth in direct margin, supported by all three of our segments. As you can see, our group EBITDA was up by +1.4%, with especially domestic closing a strong quarter. Thanks to the execution of our #inspire2022 strategy, we achieved to comfortably meet all the guidance metrics that we had set for the year 2022, as you can see on the slide. Fiber remains a key component of our strategy. Compared to end September, fiber works have started in an additional 16 cities and municipalities, meaning today we have fiber works going on in 93 Belgian cities.
Together with our partners, the fiber machine is ready to add 10% of coverage annually for the next few years, with the aim to cover half of the country by end 2025. The fiber rollout is going very well, and in particular, over the last three months of 2022, we have achieved to pass a significant number of new homes and businesses with fiber, bringing us to nearly 1.3 million homes passed at year-end. With our enlarging footprint, we also see an increase in customer demand for fiber. We added 31,000 active fiber lines over the past quarter, bringing the total fiber base to 252,000. With these customers bringing typically higher ARPC and lower churn levels.
We continue to focus on improving customer satisfaction by means of superior connectivity with our 10 Gb per second fiber offer to become gradually available across our whole fiber footprint by summertime. Also by bringing offers that our customers are looking for, adapted to their needs. Overall, we have closed the year with a positive evolution in NPS. This in spite of customer sentiment overall being impacted by the high cost of living. Going a bit more in detail now for our Q4 results, starting with the domestic segment. Supported by our convergent offers, we grew our customer base further for internet and mobile postpaid. This in spite of the intensified competitive environment. While for TV, we managed to contain the net decrease.
In addition to fiber becoming more and more a compelling sales argument, our multi-brand approach also provides great support with targeted offers addressing all customer segments in the market. For our residential unit, the key revenue driver is its services revenue, which continued its growth trajectory, up by +2.6% for Q4. The total revenue was up 0.7% with a sequential slowdown resulting from terminals and other revenues. The residential customer services revenue benefited from a higher revenue per customer with the ARPC increasing year-over-year by 3.2%. Besides a positive impact from the price indexation earlier this year, the ARPC also benefits from the ongoing move from customers to convergence offers.
Our business unit closed a strong quarter with revenue up 4.1% with, again, a very good quarter for product revenues, thanks to a further catch-up in previously delayed customer installations due to the global supply chain issues. Essential, however, is that our B2B unit continues to manage well the balance between growing new services and the erosion in legacy voice. In Q4, the B2B unit achieved again good growth for fixed data services, mainly resulting from a higher internet ARPU. Reflecting the ongoing transformation in B2B, our high-value recurring IT services drove overall higher IT revenue, with especially good performance in security and cloud services. These growth areas could partly, but not fully, offset the ongoing decline in legacy voice.
Finally, our wholesale unit, for which the revenue from fixed and mobile wholesale services was up by +7.8%, offset by the interconnect headwinds with, however, no meaningful margin impact. This brings me to the total domestic revenue, for which we achieved a 2.1% growth for the fourth quarter. Turning now for a moment to the domestic operating expenses, which were up by 2.1% on an easier comparable base. Our cost efficiency programs continue to bring substantial cost benefits and hence enable us to offset part of the significant inflationary cost effects. Especially wages were affected by the five inflation-based salary indexations spread over 2022, only partially offset by managing a lower domestic headcount. The remainder of the cost increase mainly reflects customer-related OpEx and cost related to the ongoing company transformation.
This brings me to the total domestic EBITDA, which increased by 1.8% for the quarter, and as you can see on the chart, fully driven by the higher direct margin. Regarding our international segments, it's clear Telesign and BICS are on high growth tracks. The strong execution of their respective growth strategies and a growing presence in new markets are translating into record growth revenue rates and are contributing significantly to the direct margin growth of the group. BICS closed its highest ever revenue growth quarter, increasing by 20.4, memory cost items, but also by non-structural expenses. This aside, the EBITDA growth of BICS was actually quite similar to the previous two quarters. For Telesign, the fourth quarter results clearly reflect the success of the strategic course the company has taken to reinforce its position in the digital identity and communication market.
A record revenue growth was achieved over the last quarter of the year, some of that achieved business is not necessarily to be repeated. Thanks to strong direct margin, the continued material investments were fully offset, leading to Telesign's fourth quarter EBITDA being break even. This brings me to the group results. As illustrated on the slide, we delivered strong results over the past year, with all three segments growing revenue and direct margin, overall leading to 0.8% growth in group EBITDA. For CapEx, we ended the year in line with our projections, with a year-on-year increase largely resulting from fiber-related investments.
This brings me to the free cash flow over 2022. As shown on the graph, the two main driver of the lower free cash flow year-on-year remain the higher cash out for CapEx and business working capital and cash tax payments broadly offsetting each other as previously discussed. We continue to manage a sound financial position. We ended the year fully in line with our target ratio of around 1.6 x or 2.6 x under the S&P definition. About one month ago, we announced our new three-year strategy, bold2025. I will not make you through the details. We have published all CMD material on our website.
What is key to remember, though, is that with bold2025, we'll be successfully tackling the challenges of the coming years, including the changing competitive landscape and with the objective to grow our 2025 group EBITDA slightly above the 2022 level. Regarding our expectation for this year, we reconfirm the guidance for 2023 you see on the slide, no change to what we told you a month ago. To conclude, our board of directors approved a propose to the annual general shareholders meeting to return a growth dividend of EUR 1.2 per share over the result of 2022.
In line with our newly announced three-year dividend policy, over the 2023/2025 period, we maintain a very attractive shareholder return over the result of 2023, with the annual growth dividend kept at EUR 1.2 per share. With this, I've covered my introduction, we can turn now to your questions. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to redraw your question, please press star two. The first question comes from the line of David Vagman calling from ING. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. The first one is on the competitive environment in Wallonia. Also, we know of the deal, you know, the reciprocal deal between Telenet and Orange Belgium. In your 2025 outlook, how do you model the impact of the Telenet push in Wallonia in terms of full market share? They say they're aiming for a 10% market share in fixed over the medium term. That's my first question. Then, second question on fiber regulation. I'm coming back on the debate we had at the CMD on the regulatory framework for fiber.
In your own estimates of the economics of a fiber rollout, what is the percentage of the country for which you think or you estimate it makes more sense with one single wholesale player, so no competition? Do you think this could be then expanded to fiber cloud or your fiber footprint? Thank you.
On the competitive environment in Wallonia. It's important to say to you that, you know, all the market structure evolutions have been backed in our plan, and it was fully included in the number that we shared with you during the Capital Markets Day one month ago. Of course, I will not be too specific on how we see the success of Telenet or the absence of the success of Telenet in the Wallonia region. I would just give you some comments, general comments. First, you know, we respect all competitors, and especially Telenet, and we have full respect of their ability to execute strongly.
There is no underestimation of what they could be able to do. We will be prepared for that. Same way we're gonna be prepared to welcome Digi also when they arrive on the market next year. 2023 will be for us the year where we will make sure that we are fully ready to adapt to the market structure evolution that will be arriving in 2024. For that, we have a lot of assets to continue to be successful despite changes in the competitive environment. First, there is our multi-brand strategy. We have three strong brands, Mobile Vikings, Scarlet and Proximus.
All three brands today as we speak are brands that are thriving, gaining shares on their respective segments. It's always good to have good momentum when you are facing a new form of competition. That's one. Second, we have been now daring a strategy which is based on product superiority. In telecommunications industry, having the best product always leads to winning the market. You know, by 2024, we'll be in a situation where we're going to have more than 30% coverage with fiber, best network quality on our mobile product. That product superiority, in my view, is a key element to protect the value of our customers in the south, but also to gain and to continue to gain market shares in the north of the country.
Last, if I look at the south of the country, we used to have two competitors, one super aggressive, Orange, one less aggressive, VOO. If I look at 2024 or 2025, the number of competition is going to be the same. It's not like we are not used to have two strong competitors in front of us, and these have not prevented us to continue to protect our customer base the right way and to continue to increase the value of our customer base in the south of the country. Last element, for sure, you need to believe in the strength of fiber. Our competition, that new competition is going to be on coax. Am I afraid of coax competition? Not at all.
Fiber with upload speed that cannot be matched by the coax technology, with download speed that cannot be matched by coax technology. I think that the risk is whether or not to see existing coax customers of today changing providers and not, you know, affecting our ability to win back customer on the fiber network from competition. Net-net, you know, we'll be super prepared. Am I overly worried? Not at all, because of that product superiority and the fact that the competition will be on coax on one side, and we gonna be the only one for now on fiber and probably in Wallonia is going to be for a long period of time. This is where I am on the vision of the competition environment in the south of the country.
On your second question, it's difficult for me to speak for the regulator. Discussions are going to happen this year. We will raise our case. I think there is, as you know, and I stated that several times, there is no rationality to have competition with infrastructure for the entire footprint of the country. We have to create a framework that is investment friendly and also that allows us to continue to invest in the less-dense part of the country with a good return so that we can, you know, continue to support innovation for the country, that we continue to support the needs of our customers. Let's see how those discussions are going to land.
You know, we'll be super active to explain that we need the sound regulatory framework in order to encourage our fiber investments going forward.
Thanks. Thanks, Guillaume.
The next question comes from the line of Nicolas Cote-Colisson calling from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, I've got two questions. First one, it looks like you're still getting broadband shares where you have fiber, but what's your impression in area where there is no fiber? Are you able to stabilize or should I read from your previous comments that you lose a bit in Wallonia and gaining a bit in Flanders? My second question is that it's around the stage of development of the mobile network JV with Orange Belgium. Can you give us an update on the timing and the level of cash flow savings it may bring? Because the old plan has been somewhat delayed, so an update on that would be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. Nicolas, on your first question, I think I said I wanted to at least stabilize our customer base in the south of the country, not losing customers. This is not the plan. Increase our customer base in the north of the country, where I think we have a good opportunity to win customers the same way we are doing since a few quarters now, and increase our market shares, where fiber is available. On the second question, I will let Mark answer to that question.
Hey, Nicolas. The mobile network is rolling out. It's maybe from a volume perspective, slightly behind pace. Overall as we kind of talk through the Capital Markets Day, we're, you know, we're on track for the mobile coverage targets we set out there in achieving the coverage by 2025. In terms of overall cash flow savings, the overall the same period of time, we're in the same range. You know, there's not, there's a slight timing difference from what we said before.
You know, it's still in the same range of I think we said kind of, you know, low, mid, low to mid double-digit savings, which is spread over effectively 12 months longer. I think that's the way you should think about it.
Sorry, can you just repeat that? You said low to mid?
Yeah. Yeah, low to mid double-digit million savings is what we said originally. It's just slightly phased over a longer period of time.
Okay. Sorry to come back on the comments from Guillaume. I understand you want to at least stabilize in the south and increase in the north. What is the current status? Obviously, we don't have the market size and how it goes, quarter after quarter. Do you feel that you are stabilizing already your market share out where fiber is not deployed in the south?
No, at the moment we are, you know, we don't give the specific split, but we are growing the south, growing the north.
Okay. Obviously, that includes some, win back on fiber. I understand you can't, you can't share much more than that.
Thank you.
Obviously. Yeah. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Joshua Mills, calling from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks very much for the questions. There's two from me, please. The first would be maybe it would be great to get a bit of help on the building blocks of free cash flow next year. I know it's not something you guide on explicitly, but if I look at the slides in the presentation and think about the big, negative working capital, headwind we saw this year, should we expect some of that to unwind? Maybe just a bit of a steer there would be helpful. That's the first one.
Then secondly, perhaps if you could just give us a bit of an update on your latest thoughts and experience of the price increase which was announced for January, and how you saw the last couple of price increases in 2022 settle. I know you won't give an explicit answer to this, but do you see the potential to do another kind of rate change later in the year, or is it in 2022 a single price move should be the base case?
Let me take the free cash flow. I think the way you should think about it, I think, you know, during this year, we talked about the tax, the tax cash and the business working capital having some significant movements, but effectively offsetting each other. Those are primarily effects because of what they're cycling against from 2021. Those movements will not be of the same magnitude at all in 2023, and will rely back to a, what we'd say is a normal cash tax payment structure and a normal business working capital movement.
In terms of the general movement, I think, you know, if you look at our overall kind of EBITDA changes, that will give you a, you know, a good proxy for where free cash flow will net out. I would give you that as probably a good guidance for good direction for next year. On the pricing, Jim, you take it.
Joshua, on the price increase. We didn't see a big impact of the price increase we announced in January. It's a bit similar trends like we had also for the May price increase. We also, of course, make sure that before we do a price increase, we work on the satisfaction of our customers by doing some proactive NPS actions to anticipate on that. We are really again very happy with the way we are executing on that pricing increase, and we don't see an impact on churn.
I would say that may be what you do already saw in Q3, Q4 on TV is potentially a bit influenced by the price increase, but we don't see any acceleration in that domain. I would say that, this is going very, very well. On the question linked to, do we foresee an additional price increase? This, of course, depends on the evolution of the economical situation, which is still very unstable, so we don't really give comments on that. We take it as we see the financials or the economy moving forward.
Thanks. Maybe just one follow-up. I think the price increases announced in January are just applicable to the Proximus and the Scarlet brands. Have you done any price increases on Mobile Vikings as well, and is it something you'd consider?
Joshua, we also did a price increase on Mobile Vikings in December 1st, where we also there increased the prices, yes.
Got it. Thanks.
The next question comes from Martin Hammerschmidt calling from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my questions. I have three, please. The first one is on sort of B2B and the service revenues. We've seen the sort of continued decline this year, even if it's marginal. Given sort of the macroeconomic picture, at what point can we expect that you've managed to sort of grow the business services? Is it reasonable to sort of expect it to grow this year already, or to be sort of flat, or is that something that looks unlikely this year? The second one is on sort of the fiber rollout. We've seen sort of in the, in the press there has been some sort of labor rights issues.
Does that sort of hinder or slow down the fiber rollouts over the next sort of quarters, or don't you expect any disruption from there? The last one is on coming back to sort of the fiber gains on FTTH net add. Could you give us an understanding of, in the areas where you rolled out fiber, the mix of the gross adds just on fiber? How much of the gross adds on fiber are coming from sort of just new guys migrating your existing customers, and how much coming from competitors? Thank you.
Good afternoon, Martin. This is Anne-Sophie Lotgering from the B2B. I thought I would answer your first question. On our B2B services revenues overall, indeed, you see those declining. However, I'd like to point out that we actually see growth on our strategic areas of growth. That being, of course, our data business, but also, we see a very strong momentum on our mobile business, which are all both, you know, on the legacy side, so on the telco side. What we see is that it doesn't quite compensate the fixed voice decline, which as you know, is a trend that is happening in all of the different countries and in the industry.
What's very important as well for us to note is if you look at the services business overall and the IT services business, which we're growing, including in the recurring space, which is what we said we would set out in terms of our strategy to transform our business mix from majority telco to majority IT. We see some very positive trends in terms of being able to transform the mix of our business and being able to compensate as much as possible the fixed voice decline with the rest of the telco business, but also, most importantly, in the recurring high margin IT services.
Martin, with respect to the labor issues, may be important to say that in the meantime, social inspection has explicitly stated that the alleged illegal work that was referred to in the press could not be linked with Proximus, neither with its JVs. We have done, of course, some interaction with our subcos and the infractions.
Limited infections that we could find were in fact linked with what I would call improper use of check-in tool. In Belgium, it is as such, when you have a wharf that you need to register this and all people that work on that wharf, they as well need to register. We found, so far one case in Proximus, where indeed a number of people were not well registered. In any case, what's important is that we have worked with our partners to further strengthen the contract clauses. We will as well come up with a charter. A charter that will encompass new elements like strengthening, for example, a limitation on the number of sub-colleagues in their work organization.
Strengthening as well things around, controlling, those registrations and, controlling elements on, work conditions. You know that we do thousands of audits, on safety quality, so these will be, enlarged with, these elements. We will further work with, social inspection services, to ensure that we, use this momentum to further strengthen our governance. To be very clear, this has no impact on the pace, of the rollout, neither on, the costs, to rollout.
Martin, maybe on the on your last question linked to the commercial. As you know, during the Capital Market Day, we told that after 12 months of commercial availability of fiber, we see a two percent point market share increase in those areas. I can continue to confirm that that's what we see. Also after 12 months, we have been able to migrate 68% of our copper customers to fiber. These two data points, I think, can help you better understand how we are filling up the fiber network.
Okay. Thanks very much.
The next question comes from Yemi Falana, calling from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for taking my questions. A few from me. Firstly, fiber-driven share take continues to be a theme. What do you view as the runway that you have here? Is this an opportunity that begins to narrow on an 18-month view, for example, as competitive fiber build begins to proliferate? Secondly, clearly yourselves, you have a multi-brand strategy as well as some of your competitors, including some more price sensitive options. Could you provide some color on the activity that you're seeing on the value segment on both mobile and fixed in the north and south? And then maybe finally, how do you think about the long-term financing picture? Your leverage is relatively low in a sector context, but are you, for example, invested in improving credit rating agency ratings at the likes of S&P? Thank you.
On the fiber, I think we cannot be too precise on all. First thing, we shared a lot already during the Capital Market Day on our, you know, objective in terms of win backs, in terms of speed to migrate customers. We don't want to be, you know, more detailed. I think we shared already a lot in terms of commitments to feed the network, in terms of ARPU increase and in terms of also of win backs, coming from competition. Of course, the objective is to beat that. It's we want to overachieve those numbers. If we can overachieve those numbers, we will, of course.
What we can say that the momentum we see in all fiber and the boats where we have rolled out fiber is great. We don't see any element that would change our perspective on our ability to deliver what we told you one month ago in terms of ambition, in terms of finishing rate of the network and winning market shares where we have rolled out fiber. So far it's really delivering according to plan and the momentum where we have rolled out fiber is really there and it's visible, and we are working on it every day to make sure this is a continued success going forward.
On the multi-brand strategy, I think we have a multi-brand strategy which is way more mature compared to the other player of the market. Scarlet, Mobile Vikings, and Proximus are well-established brand today with significant customer numbers today and significant commercial activities today. If you look at the other B brands or C brands that you see existing on the market for other operators, they are not as strong as the one we have today. They are all super active. They are all gaining a lot of customers. They are all having a true existence on the market, a true reality in terms of impact for customers.
I don't know, I think we give more than that would be giving too much information to our competition. I would avoid doing that today. You know, this is not, this is really three brands with strong presence, strong activity, strong marketing as we speak on the Belgian soil.
On the leverage and financing long term, will Mark comment?
Yeah, yeah. Let me take that one. I think, I mean, maybe start with where we are today. I mean, we've probably had the strongest balance sheet of any telco in Europe in recent years. I think we start from a very strong position. We ended the year at 2.3 x EBITDA net debt. I think that's good. In terms of, you know, you see from presentation, we've got a weighted average coupon of 1.7 and seven years debt duration. We've got some refinancing coming up 2024, 2025, and those have all been interest rate hedged at pre-Ukraine war interest rates.
Overall, in terms of our, you know, our current situation, I think, we find ourselves in a very strong position. In terms of, and as we said at the Capital Markets Day, you know, the investment profile of the company over the next, you know, three, four years, will mean that leverage will rise. We said explicitly at the Capital Markets Day that we're comfortable in the kind of 2.5-3 range. Just recently, over the last weeks, we've had discussions with S&P and Moody's, they've reviewed their rating, and we feel comfortable with that rating outlook being stable across both the agencies. That's where we are.
We continue to feel in a strong balance sheet position. We also, maybe allude you back to the Capital Markets Day, we also have various balance sheet elements that we will continue to look at in terms of divestments to support our capital allocation strategy. That's kind of where we are on the debt front.
Thanks, guys. Incredibly helpful as always.
Next question comes from Nuno Vaz, calling from Societe Generale. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon.
Thank you for taking my question. Hope you can hear me. Firstly, just on the guidance, especially on domestic underlying revenue, I was sort of hoping today you might narrow the range a little bit, so you have the range from 1%-3%. I was trying to understand what's the different sort of underlying trends that drive the 1% versus the 3%, and why does that trend out to a -3% guidance on EBITDA? Is it just the fact that there's a lot of potential low margin products that might be coming in 2023? Just, I think a bit of breakdown on that would be useful. Then I'll just ask on the competitive environment, specifically on the two-play offers, so the broadband plus mobile offers.
You said before this is a key segment where you've seen more customers choose this type of product. You've launched the Flex Access offers. Just wondering what sort of the competitive environment? We know Orange is pretty strong here, so I think that would be interesting. A quick question on BICS, because we've seen revenues benefit from this COVID slash travel tailwind. When might we expect that to sort of trend down a little bit and start disappearing a little bit? Would that happen in 2023? A bit of color on that I think would be useful. Thank you.
Nuno, let me kick off with the revenue guidance. I think again, you know, when we talked about at Capital Markets Day, you know, the economic competitive environment, continues to be, you know, I wouldn't say uncertain, but there's still some volatility in it, right? I think again, compared to some others, we give some, you know, pretty explicit guidance. I think, you know, frankly, I think we've been very open about it. In terms of the component parts, I mean, it's, you know, what we normally talk about, right? We continue to see commercial momentum on the residential side supported by fiber, and our product superiority and our brand strategy, which we've discussed.
I think pricing, you know, we've, we announced in October, so that's clearly in the number in the residential side, but also to somewhat in the business telco side. Fixed voice continues. Fixed voice will continue to erode, and that will take the, that will continue to pose a headwind for the overall revenue. In terms of your, you know, is there a lot of low margin elements? Not... We don't see a whole lot of volatility in that in 2023. It's gonna be fairly stable on a year-over-year basis. Really, you know, it's the component parts of...
Sorry, then one other thing, the IT services revenue that Anne-Sophie talked about, again, we expect that to grow in 2023. Those are the major component parts. You know, I think we all, you know, it's early in the year, and as we get kind of more surety, we'll be sure to update you in terms of, you know, where in that range we think we're gonna come.
Nuno, maybe on the, on the competitive environment in double play, I think it's important to understand that the majority, and I would say even the big majority of the market is still in triple, quadruple play. But it's true that the double play market is the market that is growing, but it stays a relatively small part of the market in Belgium today. This is also typically where we execute on our multi-brand strategy because that double play space is especially where Mobile Vikings is very active with their internet and mobile solution. Of course, like you say, we are also present there with the Proximus brand, with our Flex Access.
This is positioned at a much higher value position than what we do with Mobile Vikings. I think we can cover with our multi-brand strategy also in that part of the market very well on the one hand with Mobile Vikings and then capturing value with the Proximus brands.
I think that's where we are in terms of competition. As I said, don't underestimate the importance of being very active in the triple play market because the majority of the customer base is still in that part of the market.
Matteo here. We of course don't guide on revenue, certainly don't guide on BICS specifically. Just wanna say that perhaps I can comment on that, on your question. The BICS supreme value measure of value is direct margin. However, revenue dynamics remains important for two reasons: because of our diversification in digital enterprise, and also to understand the health check of our tradings in the legacy market. Nonetheless, of course, we have seen that revenue uptake has been helped by COVID rebound, both in terms of mobility enablement as well as legacy voice. I'll let you yourself draw the consideration with respect to comparing, for instance, what happens last year in quarter one versus quarter one right now. Travel rebound continue as.
We expect that to, you know, at least, you know, at least to a little bit, of course not with the same impact, but to feed progressively. What is also important to know is that the diversification in digital enterprise also feed into the revenue element as well.
Okay. Thank you very much for your answers.
The next question comes from the line of Nicolas Cote-Colisson calling from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Sorry, just a couple of short questions. Maybe Guillaume, to follow up on your comments about sound regulatory framework. If you can precise what you would see as sound. Obviously, I think you can share that with us. If a consultation comes, anyway, we'll find out what you think should be the right way to structure the market. Maybe just to follow up questions on content. How important do you think content is for your commercial momentum and margin? Because I'm referring to your TV erosion and how we should take this trend that may well continue down. Thank you.
On the regulatory framework, as I said also previously, today, I think it's important that we create a regulatory framework that is investment friendly, that we support our ability to continue investing and make a return based on those investments in all parts of the country. Of course, what we need is visibility and a stable framework for the long term. That we can make sure that we, you know, can maximize our ability to invest, but also as I said, to make good return out of those investments. Visibility is key in that context.
Investment friendly, also, is key in that context. That's, I would say the two first main elements that I would mention today. Of course, you know, what could we expect? Probably a framework where you will have in some part of the country, needed competition on the infrastructure side. We need in dense areas, probably you're gonna have some part of the country with competition around infrastructure. Part of the country, obviously, probably we hope, will allow for co-investments or to have one network to deliver the service to customers around fiber. That's probably also something that we would love to see in that sound regulatory framework.
Of course, then the devil is in all the details around those three elements. We make sure that we can, you know, pass our messages again around ability to invest, investment friendliness, framework, level playing fields and making sure that we can continue to cover the country with the ambition we have to cover 95% of the country with a fiber rollout. That's a little bit what I can share with you, but indeed, you have to be a little bit patient.
All those discussions will happen this year and probably by the end of the year or beginning of next year, we're gonna have something coming out of those discussions and BIPT clarifying a little bit the framework for the fiber rollout in Belgium. Content is important of course for the multi-play strategy that we that we do have. There is very few competition in Belgium around exclusive content. That's also a good thing about the sort of the existing market. The Belgian Soccer League is today the rights of the Belgian Soccer League are today with [ESN], so it's available for all operators over the top. That's, you know, one element.
Then there is, you know, we do have the rights for the Champions League and Telenet and VOO, they do have the rights for the English Premier League. Those are the three most important premium sport rights for Belgium. Which is, you know, in some way quite different from a lot of other European countries where you have way more focus on our competition on acquiring premium sports rights. It's important, but it's not like we are in a situation where this is really a true extremely competitive environment for us. What we want to do though is to be the best aggregator of the market.
That's why our Android-based set-top box, which allow us to really integrate Netflix and others within the experience that we do provide to our customers natively, using the Android capabilities. It's a super important element because then you create really a nice environment to consume either Netflix or your favorite local broadcaster. As you may have noticed, we have also announced the ability to integrate Netflix swim lanes within the Proximus Pickx TV- interface and user experience, which is a way for us to really be the best aggregator on the market. When you start having this kind of experience on your TV screen, then you really understand the value of the aggregation that we do provide.
That's a little bit the comment I would make. All the rest is really around, you know, being relevant, so providing what our customers is asking you to provide. Today, they are still asking for aggregation for some part of the customer segments. Some are, you know, really not willing to have content provided by us, and those are the Mobile Vikings customers. For that, we have a specific offer to them without TV. As you know, the bottom, you know, the margin we do get or we do extract from TV is limited. It's a revenue discussion. It's not really an EBITDA discussion that impact of content.
You know, cash-wise, probably, in between a customer with content and in between a customer without content, there is not a lot of difference. Of course, revenue-wise, it's a different story. This is where we are. We will accompany the trend. We make sure that we win also the best customers from the competition, because what we want also that all the good TV customers that you see today at VOO and Telenet, they are joining the Proximus family. This is something that you start to see.
You're gonna see the decrease of our TV customers probably at a lower pace compared to the decrease of the TV customer from competition because we are winning shares in the TV segment because of our renewed value proposition on that front, but also the product superiority on the fiber. Progressively, probably, you're gonna see that happening. I don't know if I, Jim, you want to add more, but that's really where I am.
No, I think Guillaume, you mentioned all the points. I repeat, and I already said it before as well. Even though indeed we see the double play market, internet, mobile growing, the big majority. It's really the big majority of the market is still taking TV. Also for new customers coming to Proximus, even though we do see a decrease in the total number of customers, the inflow of customers is, to a big majority, is still taking also the TV offer. Important to keep that in mind.
Very good. Thank you.
There are no further questions, so I will hand you back to your host to conclude today's conference.
Great. Thank you all for joining us, and thank you for your questions. Should you have any follow-up question, you can reach out to the investor relations team. We will be happy to help you out. Wish you all a very lovely weekend. Bye-bye.
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