The Proximus conference call on the Q1 2022 results. For your information, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Nancy Goossens, Director, Investor Relations. Madam, please go ahead.
Thank you. Welcome everybody to our results presentation. I trust everybody has well received the earnings release, and as a reminder, you can find all of our material also back on the company website. As per usual, we will start with an introduction by the CEO, Guillaume Boutin, and after this, we will turn to your questions. For the Q&A session, we also have here the CFO, Mark Reid, Jim Casteele, the Residential Segment Lead, Anne-Sophie Lotgering, the Business Segment Lead, Dirk Lybaert, our Corporate Affairs Lead, 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.
Thank you, Nancy, and from my side as well, a warm welcome to our first quarter conference call. In the next few minutes, I will take you through a few elements, some of our key achievements, the progress made with respect to Inspire 2022 strategy, and of course, a quick overview of the first quarter performance. Let me start with some key achievements over the past month. Overall, I'm very pleased with where we stand at the end of Q1. First, we have again progressed well on some of key strategic tracks, such as our fiber deployment and also launching Proximus Ada, and I will get into that later on. Second, our commercial traction continues with very good operationals on multiple fronts, both on the domestic and international markets.
This war deeply touched all of us, and we decided to help where we could by launching a series of actions. For example, giving free calls and SMSs to and from Ukraine for customers and providing accommodation to Ukrainian families. The numerous solidarity actions across the world are heartwarming, and we as well will continue to play a role. Turning now to the first pillar of our strategy, building Belgium's gigabit networks. Over the past months, we have further pushed our fiber rollout and are now deploying fiber in 50 cities across the country. With this rhythm of rollout, we are well on track to meet our ambition to cover 22% of Belgium with fiber by end of this year, hence adding more than 500,000 fiber plugs in the year.
Our fiber technology reaches now 900,000 homes passed, so we are well on our way to reach the symbolic 1 million milestone by this summer. Our network filling rate is also progressing with 22% activated fiber homes as a share of the total number of homes ready for termination. The demand for fiber is indeed strong, and I'm convinced the momentum will even further increase in the quarters to come. Our residential and business units activated an additional 25,000 fiber lines over the first quarter of the year, bringing the total to 170,000 active fiber lines. Fiber is clearly bringing commercial benefits. From a customer acquisition perspective, the share of fiber acquisitions in the total has almost doubled.
At the same time, churn on fiber is lower versus the one we can see on copper, and the ARPC of a fiber customer provides a significant uplift versus copper. Providing a superior network experience is crucial for the success of a strategy, but keeping customers happy goes beyond that. We address the different customer needs through our different brands and adapt our offers to new demands. This is also a protection for us in case of a more difficult economic times for the country. Second, we are bringing relevant digital solutions, truly becoming the digital companion of our customers, being active in e-health, fintech, and mobility services. Third, we have taken many actions to improve customer experience with some very satisfactory results in terms of contact center volumes decrease and customer effort scores improvements.
All of this contributes to continued improvements in our NPS score on all segments. In the context of our digital transformation, we have reached a major milestone with the launch of Proximus Ada. Ada, which is a fully owned subsidiary, is our new center of excellence dedicated to artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. Its expertise will be leveraged to serve all entities of the Proximus group. As we announced mid-March, we also made very concrete progress in the creation of a digital campus for our employees. Our headquarters will be sold for over EUR 140 million, while we'll be leasing back less than half of the current office space, which is, of course, a better use of our capital. As for TeleSign, the momentum continues in the first quarter.
In a tough setting with markets affected by rising geopolitical tensions, TeleSign's listing process is following on course with targeted closure in the second quarter, and we remain fully committed to bringing TeleSign to the public market. Turning to our first quarter results, and starting with the domestic segment. You see, as illustrated on the chart, our main domestic customer base has continued their healthy growth, while changing customer needs continues to erode a fixed voice base. The strong performance is the results of a combination of increased growth gain driven by increased fiber penetration and lower churn. Allow me also to specify that no unusual promotional activities to be noted on our side this quarter. Our Flex offers continue to do well and remain an important driver to increase the conversion rate of our customer base.
As previously announced, our Flex offers will be subject to a price increase as of the first of May, helping to mitigate the inflationary environment that impacts our cost base. Thanks to a continued good commercial momentum for our residential unit, we achieved a strong revenue performance with the residential customer services revenue up by 2.2% year-over-year. Taking a closer look at the customer services revenue, the growth mainly comes from the convergence revenue, while Mobile Vikings contributes to the mobile-only revenue. Putting the revenue from Mobile Vikings aside, the residential customer services revenue was fairly stable compared to the first quarter of 2021. This is a sequential improvement from the slight decline in trends observed over the previous two quarters and is driven by a positive trend in the organic ARPC.
We continue to post revenue growth with especially a strong increase in wholesale mobile services, thanks to an increased number of MVNO customers. This was further supported by a positive year-on-year evolution in wholesale roaming revenue. This brings me to this chart showing the bridge for our total domestic revenue, with revenue excluding terminals growing over the first quarter by 2.2% year-over-year. As for our operating costs, the conditions, like for anyone else, are of course changing in the context of steep inflation rates. Nonetheless, we have been able to contain the net effect to rise by 2.4% or 1.5% on organic basis.
Thanks to our ongoing cost program, we achieved considerable cost efficiencies, which mitigated the effects of the inflationary cost increases, our transformation costs, and some higher OpEx related to customer connections linked to the good commercial momentum. Moving to the international segments and starting with TeleSign. TeleSign has closed a very good revenue quarter, reflecting continued growth in its communication business and especially a strong increase for digital identity. As such, showing strong progress on its journey to become a global leader in digital identity. Based on a strong sales pipeline, with sales bookings doubling year-over-year and the launch of several new products within the identity suite, the momentum is expected to continue and TeleSign to meet its previously disclosed targets for the full year of 2022.
Turning to BICS, which closed the quarter with a very strong performance, increasing its EBITDA by 18.6% compared to the same period of last year. BICS grew its revenue and margin in core services as a result of an incremental recovery in worldwide travel. Furthermore, BICS achieved significant progress in growth services thanks to a strong performance in cloud offers. Cloud usage increased year-over-year by nearly 20%, while revenue-generating cloud numbers almost doubled. This brings me to the group view. With this slide summing it all up, we have group EBITDA up by 0.4%, driven by our domestic and BICS segments. Telesign, as was previously announced, is strongly investing in its growth trajectory, which is also reflected in its EBITDA performance.
The CapEx for the first quarter totaled EUR 270 million, with increase for large part driven by our fiber program, which now represents one-third of the total CapEx. The first quarter free cash flow was impacted by the higher cash out for CapEx, including a significant carryover effect for the steep fiber investments done at year-end, as well as from higher business working capital needs, including some timing effects. Our financial position remains very sound, and we remain on track to maintain our full year net debt level around 1.6x . Note that we have also fully hedged our interest rate exposure through 2025. A few additional words on inflation. This is a major topic, and with this graph we give you a view of the estimated impact on EBITDA for this year.
As you can see, the wage indexation soars, an important cost increase and hence negative EBITDA effect, while energy costs are almost fully hedged for the year. Our announced price increases are expected to offset most of this, and our cost efficiency program will further mitigate the remaining effects. All this, the positives and the negatives, are included in our guidance given for the year. Which then brings me to my last slide. In conclusion, expectations, hence allowing us to reiterate our full-year guidance for 2022. With this, we can now turn to your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. First question is from Mr. Nicolas Cote-Colisson from HSBC. Sir, please go ahead.
Guillaume, you have a strong quarter. You have another price increase coming. What has pushed you and the board to keep the guidance unchanged? What are the moving parts that would add more pressure on the business? Also if you have seen a difference in momentum between the north and the south of the country. I may have a follow-up question after that. Thank you.
Hey, Nicolas, it's Mark Reid here. Thank you for the question. Let me touch on guidance. First of all, I think as Guillaume said, we're very pleased with Q1's performance. The commercial momentum was in line with what we were expecting. Mobile Vikings integration goes well. The volume management, the price rise in January has landed as we wish. Overall Q1 performance is good. In terms of the rest of the year, as you alluded to, we have a second price rise coming in May. All signals is that that will land well.
I think the market conditions for that to land well, but clearly we're very vigilant and focused on landing that price rise through the summer. That's one thing we're cautious about. We wanna make sure that the trading through the summer continues as we saw. Then clearly we also have the year to go also cycles against Mobile Vikings, where we had positive impact in Q1 with Mobile Vikings that starts to cycle against that in the latter part of the year. Overall, I think we're where we are, we're cautiously optimistic in terms of outlook on revenue guidance. We're confident on the EBITDA side.
I think, I'm sure we're gonna get some questions on the inflation side. I think you saw that we handled inflation well in Q1. We continue to be very focused on that as we trade through the rest of the year. At this point, as I said, cautiously optimistic on the top line and confident on the EBITDA at this point.
On the Flanders regional preferences of Proximus, so we don't disclose precise numbers. Two comments. The strong performance, commercial performance of the quarter is linked to lower churn, but also better growth gains. This is also important in a context where we have not launched unusual promotional activities. I think what you see now happening is really the traction of fiber. Y ou see more traction, commercial traction in the neighborhood where we have launched fiber. That's reality was what is happening.
Of course, it's spread all over the country, with probably more fiber being as we speak rolled out in Brussels, in the region of Brussels and in the north of the country.
Okay, thank you. Just a short follow-up. On price increases, it looks like you have opted for strict price adjustments rather than a kind of a more formal approach. How do you think the risk of such high rises too could backfire in the longer run? Because you talked about your NPS, which are pretty high and growing. Is there a risk, especially when more competition could come? If you can talk about also the current premium you can command in the market and how sustainable it could be. Thanks.
Nicolas, this is Jim Casteele, Consumer. I'm gonna take that question. Of course, we continue to improve the experience that our customers have on our products, and we don't always link this to price increase momentums, because we're convinced that it's important that over the whole year continue to focus on that customer experience. What we have done over the last months, for instance, is that we have boosted the upstream experience in both fiber and copper areas. We also boosted on Mobile Vikings, for instance, the mobile offer. For me, this is a continuous effort to make sure that the solutions answer the needs of the customer.
If we can do that, combined with making sure that in the touchpoint experiences and in the digital experiences, we also there continue to invest in that experience. All those elements together will drive NPS, and that will also then help us to keep the pricing power that we have today in the market.
I think in addition, on the fact that also other players in the market have also announced price increases, showing also the rationality of the market is also helping the industry mitigate the effect of the indexation of the cost. I think the bigger market is being the right way. I think we showed the lead in announcing and the full year results or willingness to update a little bit or to adapt our tariffs. This is aligned with, as Guillaume said, also improvements of the experience and of the quality of the services that we are rendering to our customers.
We want to be perceived as a premium operator. We want to deliver an undisputed product superiority on all fronts, on fiber, on in-home internet. We're launching next week WiFi 6 Mesh 2.0 products. We will also be launching as of the first of October our 10 Gbps fiber offer that will also be another proof that Proximus is really the best operator in terms of product experiences. T hat is super important in our strategy. At the same time, we are also a multi-brand strategy.
It's also helping mitigating the risk of economic conditions evolution and also value management in between the different brands. That also something that we master as Proximus, but of course we need to execute that correctly in Q2. That's why we, as Mark Reid said, we are cautiously optimistic on the revenue guidance.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Mr. David Vagman from ING. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. The first one is on the mobile spectrum auction. Can you update us on your thoughts regarding the new entrants and the auction? And is there any appetite of MWingz to implement some to offer some passive or active sharing with a potential new entrant? Or is it totally excluded from a technical strategic point of view? Second question on the fiber JVs. When do you see them reaching a kind of critical penetration level, I would say in terms of population coverage, so that they could attract an Orange Belgium type of access seeker? Or could you actually have a very localized local strategy? And then maybe last question, if I may.
On the current competitive environment, indeed post quite significant price increase by all players. How do you see this environment playing out, let's say, in the coming months in the rest of the year, in particular in Flanders? How do you see the momentum developing for your Flex offer, especially given that Telenet has now also adopted a more modular bundle? I'm referring to ONE and ONE Up. Thank you.
On the spectrum auction, I think now we have a little bit more clarity on the number of players. We're gonna have five bidders. We also know that the reserve spectrum has been bought by one player. I'm still convinced that the business case for a new entrant in mobile for a B2C play is quite difficult. Belgium is a converged market. You have strong competition in a lot of existing brands on the market, your low-cost brands, price seekers brand.
Not a lot of space to create a positive business case for a large B2C play on the Belgium market, given the nature of what we know about the applicants to the auction process. Investment needed to get to the minimal conditions of coverage are significant. That leads to your second part of the question. Do we have appetite for sharing? Of course, everything is possible.
MWingz or others are of course would of course examine conditions for the new entrant, but it's too soon to comment more precisely on that because the auction process is not yet over. That's something that of course is open to everyone. There are many ways for a new entrant to roll out a network. Partnering with MWingz is one option. There are other options available for a new entrant. All options are time-consuming, and all options are costly. We see where we land.
David, maybe to continue then on your question linked to the current commercial momentum. The way I see the market today, as Guillaume said, all players have increased their prices. I think that's good news in terms of rational markets. Flex continues to deliver well, as you can see in the results that we have both on internet, mobile, and digital TV. We still are convinced that with Flex we have the solution that answers the needs of the families, which is a core segment in the telco market. At the same time, we have our multi-brand strategy with Mobile Vikings and Scarlet, where we can then adapt to the specific needs of that segment.
We're convinced that Flex continues to perform well and will continue to perform well. The Telenet ONE offer is already in the market for one year, so my assumption there is that impact has leveled out in the market. We're looking confident to the next quarters.
And on then o f course, not to forget fiber, as you can see in the slides, is really supporting commercial momentum. As we start to deploy more and more fiber, the impact of that will of course continue to be visible in our results as well.
Thanks.
On your question on the fiber JVs and when they could attract Orange Belgium, I think this is a question for Orange Belgium because we are currently accelerating the fiber rollout. That generates a lot of commercial traction. It's not only for the fiber JVs. We, at Proximus also are rolling out an open network. We are also open to welcome other operators on all flavors of our network being owned by Proximus fully or being in partnership with our fiber partners. We are really rolling out that open network. For the moment, we are really the only one benefiting from the quality and the product superiority of that network.
We are open, of course, to welcome some others on that network. It's more a question for our competition, I would say.
Just a very quick follow-up on this last comment. You don't see a sort of geographical tipping point or population coverage tipping point at a moment at which you will be particularly, let's say, more interesting as a fiber network, be it Fiberklaar or Unifiber for the near future? Be it Orange or somebody else, I mean.
No, I think we know. What is important for us is that we today are the only one rolling out new technologies. We are, for the moment, gaining a lot of time advantage compared to any other types of technologies or any other type of players. I think we have gained three or four years of time advantage. As this is a race. As I said several times, the first operator that is planting a fiber flag in a given city is winning that market. We'll continue to accelerate, and that acceleration is, for me, a key element of that winning strategy that we are currently deploying. It will continue.
At some point others will join. Precise tipping point, I don't know. F or me, the priority today is to accelerate the rollout of the network Proximus owned, the one with our partners. That acceleration is not going to stop. To the contrary. We are very pleased with the momentum we are getting from that accelerated rollout of fiber.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Mr. Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the questions. Afternoon, everyone. I have two, please. Firstly, just on the fiber topic. If I look at your CapEx, I think I calculate around EUR 950 CapEx per line, implied by the homes passed this quarter. That compares to just over EUR 800, I think, this time last year. According to your schedule, I think you're still kind of rolling out in the dense areas. So can I just get an understanding what drives that increase on a CapEx per line? I understand there's kind of, I guess, volatility, but is there anything like delayed payments within there? Any color there would be super useful. Thank you.
Mark, you gave a very good comment around the inflationary impacts of the OpEx level. Inflation aside, I think you guys have previously said the cloudification costs should be increasing through this year as you build out your new systems. How do we then kinda reconcile that with the kind of accelerating EBITDA growth that we should expect to reach your full-year 2022 guidance? I guess there's an element of the Mobile Vikings synergies coming in. Is there any kind of phasing we should expect for the Mobile Vikings synergies through this year as well? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me, Roshan, thank you for the question. Let me take both. I think on the fiber build there, that we're in long-term contracts there, so we're not seeing any inflationary impacts at this point. As I said we continue to be very vigilant on that. That's on the fiber one. In terms of our overall kind of EBITDA guidance, I think the way you should kind of start to think about that really is we will continue to have, well, we'll start to have the Mobile Vikings synergies from April. We had a very successful migration of the customers through Q1.
As of Q2, we'll start to see those flow through into our overall EBITDA perspective. As of November and February, we have an April indexation and a June indexation coming that will clearly weigh on the second half. But as we kind of again alluded to, we continue to be very focused on the efficiency program and the timing and realizations of those. As I said at the start, we're confident to get to our guidance on EBITDA for the full year. Hopefully that helps.
Yeah. Great. That's useful. Thank you. Just going back to the CapEx point, you mentioned potentially varying geographies. Have we kind of moved-
We have the dense areas of the country. We are rolling out approximately 100,000 plugs a year. There is a limit to that because otherwise you're creating too many traffic jams in the city. That's the amount of plugs we do roll out per year in Brussels. The rest is the other cities, and we are rolling out in 50 cities. Some of them are less dense in terms of topology. Others are more condensed in terms of number of inhabitants. That's a little bit how you should see that. We are not only progressing in the city centers of Brussels.
Now we are everywhere now, not everywhere, but 50 cities, which is not a small number.
Yeah, there is a mix in between super dense and everything is dense, but there is super dense and a little bit less super dense. That might be an explanation for this small increase in terms of costs. There is nothing that is not on plan in terms of unit cost to roll out our fiber for the year or for the years to come.
Great. That's very clear. Thank you.
Clotilde? Hello, Clotilde? Okay.
Next question is from Mr. Martin Hammerschmidt from Citi. Please go ahead.
I think you mentioned, I mean, you mentioned in Q1 you had some CapEx spillover and, working capital timing effect. This CapEx to trend higher, do you think so the current 2022 free cash flow consensus of EUR 200 million is realistic, or is it a bit too ambitious? Thank you very much.
Martin, thank you. Let me take the first one in terms of the raw EBITDA guidance. I think it comes back to my point in terms of our efficiency 2025 program. I think we also said that at the time that we believe that we could keep in the envelope the indexations, and we continue to believe that is the case. T he program was well established prior to entering this kind of inflationary cycle. We're effectively prioritizing, and we've always got a little bit ability to flex for things such as the June indexation.
We feel very confident that we're gonna get to our EBITDA guidance on domestic. I think that's fine. In terms of the building blocks of the increasing domestic OpEx, I think, w e talked about the indexation is primarily the major one in terms of the effect in Q1. You had a November indexation and a February indexation. You clearly have some inorganic Mobile Vikings costs in there.
I think the way that we're thinking about it is good OpEx in terms of direct OpEx supporting the top line growth on the enterprise segment in terms of business services, and also customer OpEx in terms of fiber type installations. That's kind of gives you a flavor there. We also had to the previous question, some transformation costs on cloud and HCL. Again, there were single low-digit millions. Those effectively are being offset, the indexation and some of the growth costs being offset by these efficiency programs that we're very focused on.
As I said, as we entered the year, we were very conscious of the inflationary wave coming at us, and so we've been very diligent in moving on that. That's where we are on that. In terms of free cash flow, I think you see two elements impacting free cash flow. The CapEx, the cash CapEx is probably the first major one in Q1 that you clearly see. I think again, in Q4, we indicated that the phasing of the build of some of the fiber homes was specifically back-ended in Q4 2021. You see that cash CapEx being paid in Q1 2022, plus the increasing envelope of CapEx.
That's really what you've got in Q1. You also have some business working capital changes, which effectively is timing related versus Q1 2021 and will resolve. In terms of the full year, we continue to see the cash CapEx bear down on the free cash flow as we discussed in the Q4 earnings. We will have positive business working capital and tax timing of tax payments in the latter part of the year. We don't guide fully on free cash flow, but at this point, everything is on plan as far as we're concerned on free cash flow.
Thank you. That's helpful. Thanks.
Next question is from Mr. Emmanuel Carlier from Kempen. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Some of them have already been tackled a little bit, but maybe you can give a bit more color on some elements. The first one is on the price hikes we have seen everywhere. I'm just wondering how the government is reacting on that, because there's a big debate going on protecting the buying power of the people. Happy to hear the comments from the government on that. Secondly, what explains the good performance of Proximus versus Telenet in terms of commercial momentum, especially taking into account that you have raised prices earlier than Telenet? Is this mainly driven by the fiber roll-outs or other elements also having an impact? Lastly is on fiber.
I know that you have launched your fiber plans long time ago. The discussions with Telenet and Proximus are still ongoing. I'm just wondering, do you believe there could be a moment where all three players are, let's say, starting to cooperate and decide, "Okay, we will roll out in these areas, and Telenet and Proximus can roll out in these areas." In other words, cutting the risk of having a double fiber network in Flanders. Thank you.
On the price increase, absorb that, as I just said. On the commercial momentum, Jim, you want to take this one?
Yes, Emmanuel, on the commercial momentum. Indeed, we continue to see a very positive traction of the Flex offer that we launched two years ago. We're convinced that it's still answering the needs of our customers in the right way, being able to flexibly adapt the offer to the needs of the family. At the same time, as you have seen, fiber is indeed supporting the Flex solution. We've been able to boost the speeds of fiber to 1 Gb.
We've boosted on the one hand, the strong improvements on NPS that we've seen over the last years with a dedicated focus on customer experience, digital experience, product experience, combined with having the right solution with Flex to the family segments, combined with fiber rollout is explaining the good performance that we see so far. Of course, not to forget that we also have our multi-brand strategy with Scarlet also present in the fixed environment. For me, all these elements together explain why we see the traction that we have today on the market.
On your third question, I think we always stated that we wanted to cover 100% of the country at some point. With fiber. Also it's important for us to own that network because our DNA is also to own the network. I'm more and more convinced that owning networks is a key differentiator going forward, especially if you start talking about cybersecurity elements. Locally securing the network is going to be a key element of differentiation going forward. Between integrated telco operators, owning the network and owning the service is going to be a key element to win the market in the coming years.
That's why we want to own our destiny and we want to accelerate our own fiber rollout. That said, we have always stated that we wanted to be open and to be a rational builder of that network. If at some point others want to join our initiative, we always say that we were welcoming discussions on that front. I will just repeat what I've said already several times. We want to go fast. We want to maximize the coverage of the country as soon as possible. At the same time, we are open as a network providers and we will act rationally because this is where we are.
There are some red lines in what we want to be as an operator. We don't want to compromise our ability to go fast and to gain traction in the fiber rollout. Again, I repeat it, being open for constructive discussions if that can help us accelerate our strategy. That's the way I see it. As I said, we are for the moment the only one rolling out rapidly and massively as next-generation networks in the country. This is a time advantage, which is also very valuable for the company.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Mr. Joshua Mills from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Mine were actually just more related to the TeleSign SPAC and a couple of updates on the process. I think in the press release today, you talked about being very confident, you're fully committed to taking it public. Could you just remind us of what needs to happen on May 18th with the NAAC shareholders for that to happen? Given the recent performance of kind of listed peers such as Sinch, I guess there's some volatility in this kind of space. How do you think the process plays out from here? What do we need to see? And if for whatever reason SPAC were not to go ahead in its current planned form, what would your alternatives be? Thanks very much.
Josh, on the first question, it's fairly straightforward from here. I think the S-4 was effective two weeks ago. The proxy has been filed to NAAC shareholders. They will vote on the combination in that mid-May date. That's the first thing. They will elect to redeem their shares or not. That redemption will
We're on a cash condition of around $200 million that we've set for the minimum cash condition. We get redemptions that allow us to be above that, then the likelihood the deal will complete. That's effectively where we are. In terms of the performance versus peers, I think, look, the markets have been volatile. I think we're really concentrating on TeleSign. The asset we're as with the rest of the results this quarter, we're very pleased with how it's performed at the revenue direct margin level, at the underlying volumes, the mix of digital identity and CPaaS.
I think the team has progressed very well in terms of growing that business. As we've said, we're right on plan. That's where we are.
Great. Maybe just to follow up. Forgive my ignorance on this, but as I understand it, you'll have the committed component of the PIPE, which gets you more just over halfway to the $200 million. What percentage of shareholders do you need to vote in favor to get to the $200 million threshold? I suppose the question then is originally you wanted to launch this with more than $400 million on the balance sheet of cash to go out and do acquisitions. Has the strategy changed a bit, or do you think that in the near term that was a large amount of money you probably wouldn't have been able to spend straight away anyway. Yeah.
What percent of shareholders, and then how does the potentially lower cash amount on the balance sheet impact?
Yeah, no, a good question. It's a mid-70s level of redemptions we would need to get to the $200 million. Again look who knows at this point, where we'll end up. If we get more, and that would be fantastic. In terms of the overall plan, yes, the original SPAC had significantly more cash in trust. I think we did a very good job on raising the PIPE. If we end up at the minimum cash condition, I think it in the short to medium term has no material impact on TeleSign's strategy. That's where we are at this point.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Mr. Ruben Devos from KBC Securities. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Good afternoon. Thank you. Just one question really related to the fiber and the connection speed. I think it was a bit down this quarter versus the prior quarter of averaging about 7,300 per week. For this year, I believe you're targeting to pass 500,000 homes, including the contribution of the JVs. So the 95,000 in Q1 is a bit below, let's say, the run rate. Nevertheless, it's obviously quite a fast ramp. Could you maybe talk a bit about the operational execution of such a large project? And maybe that's a question for Geert. What may be some of the challenges to deploy fiber even faster beyond this year? Yeah.
It would be great actually if we could get a sense of what the overall capacity is out there, today in the Belgian market when dealing with subcontractors. Thank you very much.
On the speeds of rollout, just in terms of trenching, I think we shared that number. We did 4x the number of kilometers of trenching in Q1 compared to Q1 last year. It's not like we are slowing down the activities in that fiber rollout. We also have to have in mind that Q1 and Q3 are the lowest quarters in terms of delivery of products. Q3 because of the holiday period and Q1 because this is the beginning of the year and that's the way it is.
We are fully on track, even a little bit ahead of plan, I have to say, in terms of our ability to meet the 22% objective of footprint that we have for the year. Really, executing according to plan, even a little bit ahead of the plan for the moment. It's going very well. Do we have changes? Of course, it's not an easy thing to do that acceleration. I think we have proved quarter after quarter our ability to ramp up that fiber rollout since now two years.
We have now entered in a very trusted and good relationship with our construction partners. We have learned from past experiences and we have long-term commitment in terms of capacity with our construction partners, with whom we are interacting on a daily basis. This is one team. This is us and Proximus working together hand in hand to deliver this acceleration. Not worried about the capacity because we have long-term commitments. Not worried about the rhythm of the rollout because we are ahead of plan, we're gonna meet our objective for the year.
Of course, we are well-positioned to secure that needed capacity because, as I said, we are the only one rolling out the technology as we speak. Having long-term commitments, long-term visibility for our partners in those times is super important.
Okay. Thanks for those comments. Just do you have any sense of sort of what the overall capacity is out there today in the market? I'm asking because obviously you'll get to 22% this year. Next year, let's say, you will be moving towards 600,000. Others may be joining as of next year as well. So just thinking about your overall capacity. I think for instance, in the Netherlands, typically it's about 800,000 a year. I don't know how that is in Belgium, and whether that could lead to some shortages, let's say, as of next year.
Yeah. As I said, we have long-term commitments, and they know we have launched a lot of waves of fiber that are three years and three years in advance. That the way we are managing the rollout. A s far as Proximus is concerned, we have no worries about securing or executing on our acceleration plans, and we're gonna have the adequate capacity to do that.
All right. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. We have no other questions. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to remind you that if you wish to ask one, it's zero one on your telephone keypad. We have no other questions. Back to you for the conclusion.
Thank you. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you for your questions. Should you have any follow-up questions, as usual, you can reach out either to Eline or myself, and we will be happy to help you out. Wish you a very lovely weekend. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.