Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to the Proximus Q1 2021 conference call. For your information, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Nancy Goossens, Director of Group Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Welcome everybody. As usual, we will start by an introduction by the CEO, Guillaume Boutin. After this introduction, we will go to your questions. The participants on our side for the Q&A are Katleen Vandeweyer, the CFO ad interim, Jim Casteele, the chief of the consumer segment, Anne-Sophie Lotgering, the chief of the enterprise segment, the CTO Geert Standaert, the CEO of BICS, Matteo Gatta, they will all be very happy, no doubt, to take your questions in a moment, first, we will turn the word to Guillaume for his introduction. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Nancy. Good afternoon to you all, and good morning to those joining from the U.S. Welcome to our webcast on the first quarter results. Let me go through some of the key achievements over the first quarter of 2021. During the first quarter, Belgium set up its COVID-19 vaccination campaign. I'm very proud that Proximus is playing a crucial role in this by equipping the various vaccination centers in the country with telecom and IT infrastructure, as well as advanced IoT solutions to monitor the temperature of the vaccines. Commercially, we are keeping a strong momentum, proving that our continued efforts, especially around our brands, are paying off. Specifically, the consumer segment is showing solid continued growth with especially high traction for higher value offers.
On the enterprise segment, we are carefully managing the transformation, moderating the financial impact of legacy services decline, and gaining in more strategic areas. I will come back to this in a moment. In parallel, we continue the execution of our #inspire2022 strategy, aiming at structurally transforming Proximus towards sustainable growth. We are well underway with regards to our ambition to build the best gigabit network for Belgium, doubling our fiber roll-out speed in the first quarter. We have launched our 5G innovation platform to allow our B2B customers to explore the full potential of this technology. As for our ecosystem strategy, we already made significant progress. We launched a partnership with Signpost to enter the EdTech sector. We launched Ads & Data, an ecosystem aiming at creating scale for the advertising at local level.
Lastly, we soft launched Banx, our telco in banking offer, sold in selected Belfius channels. From a financial perspective, the COVID-19 crisis clearly still impacted our results negatively. We do see that the effect on the year-on-year variance is starting to moderate, a trend we expect to further improve over the next quarter. Overall, our first quarter results are on track with our expectations, hence, we can reiterate the guidance we set for 2021. Let's take a closer look at some of these realizations. Let's start with our operational trends. As you can see on the graphs, the start of the year was in line with previous quarters, showing continued operational success. Our growing customer base remains a key revenue driver, especially as we are focusing our efforts on high-value customers.
Besides growing our mobile and internet bases, we see continued growth of our TV base, adding 17,000 TV subscriptions over the first three months of the year. Our high-value customer growth is, of course, relying on a proven convergence track record. Specifically, our convergence customer base increased by 21,000 over the first three months of the year, meaning that we managed to grow this segment of customers characterized by higher-than-average RPC, a low churn, and a very promising NPS. As a result, our convergence revenue grew by 2.7% and resulted in an overall growing ARPC. This growth in convergence was again well supported by our Flex range. Over the first quarter, we attracted no less than 163 customers to one of the Flex offers. This was a mix of new customers and migration of existing customers from legacy offers.
Flex is really answering changing customer needs, and that is what is making its continued success. There is less and less appetite for a fixed voice line, which is reflected in the fixed line erosion that you can see on the graph. There is a growing appetite for multi-mobile and other value-added services. Lastly, you know that we pursue a strong gigabit connectivity strategy with fiber and 5G because it allows us to provide the best connectivity in Belgium. We already see very encouraging results of this strategy with growing appetite for our fiber offers. At the end of the first quarter, we had a total of 77,000 fiber customers within our consumer segment. We see that in the zones where we deploy fiber, the commercial drivers like churn rate reduction and ARPC uplift are well on track with the ambitions we have.
We expect, of course, the trend to accelerate rapidly as we progress on the coverage in the coming months and years. As I said before, we have been making good progress on our ambition to rapidly expand the reach of our fiber offer. Our weekly rollout increased to an average of 6,100 homes passed, which is more than doubling the pace of deployment since Q1 last year. We have been bringing fiber to an additional 73,000 homes and businesses over the first quarter of this year. In March, we passed 533,000 homes and businesses with fiber, meaning we are close to a coverage of 9% of all premises of the country. This is just a start. As we have announced, we will further increase our rollout speeds in the coming quarters. Following announcement to partner with EQT, a new company was created called Fiberklaar.
Fiberklaar plans to get started this year in about 10 Flemish cities and municipalities and has the ambition to pass at least 1.5 million homes in Flanders by 2028. As for the fiber partnership in Wallonia with Unifiber, we expect the clearance before the summer. Between our own rollout, Fiberklaar, and the JV yet to be launched in Wallonia, we are fully on track to realize our ambition to pass 4.2 million homes and businesses throughout Belgium by 2028. As for our enterprise segment, we announced last year a multi-year transformation. Our aim is to become the preferred partner for the digital transformation for enterprises, allowing us to return back to profitable growth for our B2B segment as of 2023. Last year, we elaborated on our plan to that end, and the execution is well on track, showing initial results.
First, we want to transition towards telco ICT convergent solutions with a specific focus on higher profitability customer segments. We also want to accelerate the growth on the profitable services that we currently sell on the back of our telco ICT products. Second, we'll take advantage and monetize our superior gigabit connectivity. We just talked about fiber, of course, but also 5G. For example, we have recently launched a dedicated 5G co-creation platform to support our professional customers in exploring the full potential of this technology through specific use cases. Our customers are already showing massive interest, resulting in a strong commercial pipeline and a lot of co-creation with our clients and partners. Thirdly, we have a lot of progress ahead to create the best user-centric digital experiences, combining significant interfaces, redesigned journeys, automation, and personalization.
The first results are really encouraging, as we have actually seen in the last month an increasing adoption of our self-service tools and digitalization of customer interactions. Let's take a look at the results of the first quarter more specifically now. From the first quarter results, it is clear that the Enterprise segment is holding up quite well, with the revenue decline mitigated to -1.2%, despite the challenging operating environment. We actually grew our core telecom customer basis for fixed and mobile. By balancing volume and pricing, we have mitigated the structural headwinds from our legacy services. We look at ICT, the story is a bit different. Over the past quarters, we faced some headwinds from COVID-19 on our ICT business, with some delayed or canceled ICT projects and constraints on delivery.
We see that COVID is also bringing structural opportunities in domains like virtual call centers, fixed to mobile traffic, cloud computing, security, and collaboration software. As a result, we expect a restoring and positive trend will come with companies that will increase their IT spend to support an accelerated digital transformation. This will create opportunities for consultative and managed services on top of the traditional telco and ICT products. Of course, the big question is timing. Some uncertainties remain, like impact of bankruptcies, of company risk, adverse behavior in coming months. As we explained, we are investing the right convergent telco ICT products and services, and we saw this quarter with a growing share of higher-value ICT. We are confident that we will provide the right solutions to capture the benefits of a restored growth when it materializes.
Moving now to the total domestic revenue for the first quarter, which was down by 1.7% with a comparable basis, still tough for this quarter. As you see on the chart, the first three buckets represent our core service revenue that we invoice to customers, both for our consumer and business segments. This includes mobile revenue, which was significantly impacted by lower roaming-out traffic as a result of the COVID-19-related travel decrease. If we take out the roaming-out revenue of telco and ICT service revenue would have been up by 0.3% YoY. Another important driver of the domestic revenue decline was interconnect revenue at low margin. This decline represents a rapid change of behaviors in the way people and businesses are communicating since COVID times. Finally, we had negative roaming-in impact for obvious reasons. This was for our domestic revenue.
If we now take a look at Telesign on the next slide. As we announced, we are now managing Telesign and BICS separately, given that the two assets require different growth strategies. Telesign sustained its very strong revenue performance with both programmable communication and digital identity services on the rise. We still assign revenue in US dollars. There are some forex effects that impacted the year-on-year variance. When we eliminate these effects by applying a constant currency, Telesign's revenue grew by almost 44% in the first quarter. Of course, it is essential to fuel this growth with the necessary investments. In line with our previous announcements, the company has been investing in attracting the right skills to strengthen, among others, the go-to-market and the R&D domains, which will in turn generate even more growth in a booming sector.
For the BICS segment, now excluding TeleSign, the sanitary crisis was still playing a significant role in this quarter, especially as we are comparing to a quarter which was virtually still unaffected by COVID. On top of that, the ongoing insourcing of services by MTN still had some additional negative impact, although the effect is gradually moderating. These two elements, which are of temporary nature, overshadowed the otherwise quite resilient business trends of BICS. Especially in the core and growth domains, BICS resisted in a competitive market. The revenue from growth services, which includes cloud communication and IoT, was up by almost 13% YoY. Its core services, representing revenue from messaging, mobility, and infrastructure, was up by 7.2% YoY. Our group EBITDA for the first quarter was EUR 446 million, a 3.9% decline from the year before. This largely reflects three main elements.
First of all, there is still a remaining impact of COVID-19 on our results. I talked about this before, and you see this especially reflected in the domestic and BICS direct margins. Secondly, the domestic expenses were higher, including some higher costs related to customer interactions costs and costs also linked to the good commercial momentum and fiber migrations. Thirdly, as we announced in framework of our guidance for this year, we have some higher costs related to our ongoing transformation plans for both our domestic operations and also, as I just explained, to boost the growth of Telesign. Over the first three months of this year, we invested a total of EUR 225 million with the timing of content contract renewals explaining why we were slightly below last year.
In line with our expectations and our rollout, the level of fiber investment increased and is now representing 28% of our total CapEx envelope. Also, in line with our strategy, we stepped up investments in the area of digitalization and IT transformation. At the same time, we are rationalizing on CapEx for less strategic areas to maintain the overall envelope and prioritize strategic investments. This brings me to the free cash flow for the first quarter of this year, with a total of EUR 143 million on normalized basis. The chart shows you the different moving parts. I'd like to highlight that this includes the equity injections in the company Fiberklaar for EUR 30 million. In conclusion, we are on track with the execution of our strategy, and our results so far are fully in line with our expectations. We therefore reiterate our guidance for the year.
With this, I've come to the end of my introduction. We can now go to your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have questions, you have to press zero one on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from Nicolas Cote-Colisson from HSBC. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello, everyone. Two questions, please. First is on CBU. Your core convergent ARPU is down, I would say sharply year-on-year. Is it just a function of bundle mix from 4P to 3P? If you could help us on getting the trends for the rest of the year, this would be very helpful given the price increases/roaming/change in the mix, not very clear where we should land eventually. My second question is about having maybe a bit more indications on labor costs evolution in the coming quarters. As you said, there will be a mix of salary rises and workforce attrition. If you can update us on the phasing between the rest of 2021 and 2022 to get to the group targets eventually. Thank you.
Good afternoon. This is Jim Casteele for Consumer. On the first question on the convergence ARPC. I think what is important first to note, of course, is that our overall ARPC continues to increase YoY by 0.4%. We continue to see a very nice growth of the convergent customer base, which is generating a higher average ARPC of EUR 94. This higher value mix within our customer base is driving the overall growth of ARPC. Now, on the specific drop of the 3P on the convergent ARPC, it's actually within the mix that we see that our convergent ARPC is evolving. We typically see that, and it's linked to the fixed voice erosion, that the bundles of internet fiber
Mobile are declining, and these are typically bundles with a bit of a higher ARPC than the average convergent ARPC. When you look at every specific ARPC within those different mixes, each of them is growing. It's really the mix that is impacting, and that mix is linked to the fixed voice erosion that we see in the market. I think what is important on our side is that we continue to look at the overall ARPC. We see a nice growth again this year versus Q1 last year. Maybe just to conclude, if you compare the growth in Q1 2020 with Q1 2021, the delta you see in that growth is completely linked to the My e-Press impact that is now fully embedded, of course, in the Q1 results of consumer.
Good afternoon, Nicolas. As to your question on the evolution of the labor cost, last year on the 1st of March, our FFP program, Fit for Purpose program, started off, we had a very important reduction in headcount. Of course, this quarter, we are still benefiting from two months of savings related to this FFP headcount reduction. Going forward, this advantage will disappear. As to the indexation, the last indexation of our labor cost was last year in April 2020. For this year, according to the latest provisions, we're not foreseeing any further indexation. According to the latest provisions, our next indexation is at the moment foreseen as of the 1st of January 2022.
Does it mean that in absolute numbers, the labor cost should be similar in the coming next quarters to the one we have in Q1?
Indeed.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Great afternoon. Thank you for the questions. Just three very quick ones from me, actually. On the B2B transformation, is it possible to just get a sense how far through, I guess, I do appreciate it's early in that stage, but how far through you are in the renegotiation and the repricing of the contracts, and maybe migration of the contracts, for your customers? Secondly, sticking with B2B, I think you mentioned upfront there was some contribution in ICT from some of the COVID centers, and providing data services for the immunization process. Is it possible to, again, quantify that, how much that was this quarter? Lastly, on the consumer side, just to confirm, the 73,000 fiber connections, that's all done via Proximus. I think you said that the approval process for Fiberklaar has been achieved.
Can we anticipate any contribution from the JV impacting the Q2 numbers, or would that come in the second half of the year? Thank you.
I'll take two and three, your number two and number three question. Sophie, we'll let you answer the first question. On your question around the contribution in terms of revenue for the implementation of the COVID vaccination centers. Honestly, this is not something that we want to disclose. The good thing is around the perception of the brand, and it's very good for perception to help also Belgium in that difficult times. We are not doing that for generation of revenues. This is more helping the country fighting against the pandemic than any other things. We believe this is quite important in those times. On number three, really rapidly, it's only the Proximus standalone fiber rollout that we see in that quarter, and it's going to be the same for the next quarter.
This ramp-up is really fully fueled by the own Proximus standalone fiber rollout. Sophie, if you can answer the first question.
Yes, of course. Thank you, Guillaume. To your first question, I think this was related to where we were in terms of our transformation and how far we were in terms of the repricing and renegotiations of contracts. As you said yourself, 2021 is the execution year of our transformation. As you can imagine, it's very important that we strike the right balance, managing on the one hand our customers moving towards next generation technologies such as SD-WAN or others, whilst still ensuring we're managing the value of our existing business as much as possible. As you could see in the numbers, old technology such as fixed voice is actually ramping up. I think that the Q1 numbers testify to this careful management.
To give you an illustrative example as to how we're managing this transformation, is we've identified and segmented our customers in cohorts to accelerate selectively the migration to new technologies, proactively accelerating this migration of the early adopters first, whilst making sure we also keep an eye on the future technologies of the market and ramp up as and when needed. I think you also heard from Guillaume in his introduction that our transformation is about ensuring the convergence of traditional telco with IT solutions and customer value propositions that are answering our customers' requirements, such as, for example, secure connectivity to the cloud, voice as part of the advanced workplace proposition, 5G IoT edge use cases, et cetera. The operating model that we've put in place in March of this year enables this approach. To your specific questions on the repricing and renegotiation of the contract.
As you know, those contracts have different year terms, and therefore it's very difficult to be able to talk generically about contracts who could be of a different year term and therefore would be renewed in different times. I can't really answer that question in detail, but hopefully I've given you the gist as to how we're managing our transformation today and moving forward.
Just to add to what Anne-Sophie is saying, so far, we still feel confident that the 2023 horizon to profitable growth for our B2B segment is still reachable.
Absolutely. We're committing to ensuring the commitment that we took at the Capital Markets Day to be back to growth in 2023. Indeed, Guillaume should have added it.
Okay. No, that's great. Thank you for that.
Thank you. Next question now from Neha Pant from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions, please. What is your view on returns on fiber, especially in Flanders, where you have a lower market share? Returns are based on utilization and hence depending on wholesale as well, and in this respect, Telenet doesn't seem keen to take wholesale from Proximus and also appear focused on keeping Orange Belgium as a wholesale partner. Do you see this as a risk in affecting returns? The second question is, you're building 2.2 million homes with own build, out of which 0.6 million is Brussels. That leaves you with 1.6 million homes to be built in the dense areas of Wallonia and Flanders.
Would you be open to using Telenet network on wholesale basis in Flanders in the dense areas and focus building more in Wallonia, where network competition may rise as VOO is acquired and restructured, which is expected in the near term? Thank you.
On the first question on the returns of fiber investment in Flanders, as we said several times, the return of investment is depending on a lot of different factors. As you know, the Proximus standard rollout will focus on the city centers and the dense areas, where we see a lot of opportunities to bring a fiber superiority compared to coax. The speed with which we are rolling out fiber is also shown in the numbers that we just shared for Q1, but is going to be on accelerated trends for the coming quarters. There is a product superiority and fiber will demonstrate that in Belgium as it has demonstrated that product superiority in other geographies. You can see that in customer traction, customer churn, NPS for existing customers on the fiber network of Proximus.
We are really confident that we will attract more customers and we will also increase the stickiness of the customer base and at the same time increase the value of every customer connection. That's for the city centers, dense areas. For the moment, we are really on track with that ambition. That's one. Second, indeed, we are rolling out an open network. It means that we are welcoming, which is new for us. We are welcoming any operators that would be willing to get access to fiber connectivity going forward. That's a new thing because we can do that with using fans in dense areas. We can also using the P2P architecture that we're going to be rolling out in the less dense areas with our JV partners.
Again, that will create some additional revenue opportunity to increase the return of the fiber investment of Proximus. Also, one thing which is really important to keep in mind, we are not protecting any wholesale fixed revenue on our copper network because our competition today is on coax. It means that compared to also other incumbent operators, we are in a much better shape to really get a strong return of the fiber investment on the long run because we have no protection of any existing fixed Internet wholesale revenue for the moment. That's second. As a combination of those two elements, I'm sure that if we maintain the speed to roll out the network, that first mover advantage on the long term will be a key success factor for us. Of course, we could have Obeid as a wholesale partner.
We could have also our friends from the cable at some point from some regions also welcome on our networks. We will see. It's too soon today to commit on that. There is a rationality to find a structure where we avoid to destroy value on the Belgium market, and that's really what we are aiming at.
Last point, we are not going to compete on price. We are not competing on price. We will compete on product superiority, because we want to behave rationally as an incumbent operator. I think the combination of this approach, the speed, the first-mover advantage, and the openness of the network will ensure that we're going to drive very nice return on our fiber investment. As far as your question around Wallonia, I think this is the same story. I think we will first roll out the network in dense areas, because this is where we do think this is easy for us to, first, to reach as many customers as possible and with a very nice return as well. We will focus the standalone Proximus roll-out in Brussels and city centers of Wallonia and Flanders.
For the less dense areas, we'll rely on the joint roll-out with our partners EQT in the north and Eurofiber and Ontara in the south.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from David Vagman from ING. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. First, on fiber and the activation rate of fiber clients in Q1. What is your view? Basically, how do you think you could accelerate in the coming quarters or in the coming years? Are there any changes needed? Still as a quick follow-up on this one, are you getting any closer to signing wholesale clients? Second question, on Mobile Vikings. Could you explain us what are the regulatory hurdles you face with this acquisition? Explain us basically why you think you have a very strong case with the antitrust authorities to get the deal approved. I have, of course, in mind the sale of Mobile Vikings by Telenet as a remedy to have its acquisition of BASE approved. Thank you.
Good afternoon, David. Jim Casteele. On your first question, first of all, I think from a consumer side, we are very happy with the acceleration of the network team in the deployment of fiber. Of course, as you know, there's a timing difference between the moment that we pass homes with fiber and then the moment that those areas are ready for commercial activity. When I look at both the fiber deployments we have done in 2018, 2019, 2020, and the way we have been activating those areas, also in Q1, we are on track with the plans that we have presented to you in January. We're really comfortable and really satisfied with the commercial performance that we have in line with the deployment rate that we are doing.
That means targeting the 50%-60% take-up rate.
You have to disconnect the calculation of active customers divided by homes passed because there's a timing delay between both. Of course, also in our commercial plans, we are not going to activate everybody in the first three months of a deployment, because we also from an operational perspective, we manage that part. As said, when I look at the plans that we have, and that are in the case for fiber, we're really happy with the performance that we see. It's aligned with the message that we gave in January, where we see in fiber areas double as much growth gains as we see on copper. We also continue to see the better churn in those fiber footprints also in Q1 this year versus what we announced in January.
Also on the ARPU uplift, we continue to see that 10% ARPU uplift also in Q1 like we announced also in January. For me, with the numbers that you see here, I understand that it can be a strange calculation to do. When you take into account the timing delay between activating customers on a fiber network and the deployment of the fiber network, we're really on track on that.
Okay, David. This is Geert speaking. With respect to your second question on wholesale, we definitely see very positive traction. In the past days, we've signed the 31st wholesale agreement for fibers. As Jim well explained, this is a fully open asset and we also are looking forward to further extend that also with different sized of partners as well. Overall, very positive traction. With respect to the speeds. First of all, the standalone, but also with Fiberklaar. In quarter four, you will see us starting deploying as well there through the Fiberklaar JV.
Thanks both.
On the Mobile Vikings acquisition, I would not comment because this is ongoing discussion with the competition authority. We are quite confident. There is no reason why we would change an opinion on the good chance we have to get a clearance. We should have some news to share on the file before summertime.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Emmanuel Carlier from Kempen. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon all. Two questions from my side. The first one is on the drop we have seen in customer relationships on the consumer side. I think you lost something like 25 or 27K customers, I think, which is the highest number in many quarters. Could you explain us a little bit more why that is and how you expect to reverse that trend? That's question one. The second one is with respect to the recent launch of ONE by Telenet. I would love to hear your thoughts on this product and how you believe it will impact the market and Proximus, particularly. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Emmanuel. On the first question, on the drop in customer relationships. This is inherently linked with the acceleration we have seen in Q1, on the convergent households, where we see really a consolidation of mobiles within the family. As you know, in the past, Proximus has a history of two companies coming together. We still had customers that had a postpaid account on a separate customer account, that is now as part of the Flex conversions, being brought together into the same customer account. I think you see an acceleration of that trend due to the success of Flex, where we see more and more mobiles within a family consolidating under one and the same household account. On the Yep. Go ahead. Okay, sorry. On the question of Telenet.
I would say that, if you look at our pricing strategy, we have quite a balanced strategy already today in the market. We have on the one hand, Flex, that is really oriented towards families, where we offer customers the possibility to really tailor their family needs with a Flex offer. We know from market services that customers are really looking for that. On the other hand, we have our Epic offer that is tailored to the needs of digital natives. With Scarlet, we can target the price seekers. When you look at Telenet's offer, their Telenet ONE is actually doing the same, but one and the same offer. It's not disrupting the pricing strategies that we have already today within our current portfolio when we address those three segments.
Thank you. Don't you fear that more customers than before will move towards Telenet because they offer higher speeds? Of course, you're also working on that with the fiber rollout, but that will take quite some years.
I think speed is one of the elements that comes into play. As you know, with Flex, we already have a very successful offer in the market already over the last year. I think if you look at the evolution of the Proximus net adds on internet over the last quarters, we have been really performing very well. Also on our copper footprint, where we have offers at 100 Mb. We really play on the different elements that drive the choice of a customer when he has to choose a package which is no longer a telecom package, but which is really a package that is relevant in the daily digital life. It's about entertainment, it's about digital press. We have a lot of other assets that we bundle in our Flex offer.
Of course, the good news is that then on top of that, in fiber, we can add additionally, also the speed element. This is what we then see in fiber, where we have an even better performance on acquisition than we have in copper. I don't really see this today impacting the market, because also that additional speed is only available on the high-end of the prices. For me, I see this really as a value move from Telenet, not one to be aggressive in the market.
Sorry. I was close to the mic. I fully agree with Jim's comment. If I can add one element, I think this is good for the market, that tiering based on technology is what we push for both Telenet and Proximus. This is really where I think the competition should focus. This is, I think, for me, a good sign that the market is really driving for good competition on the product, which is I think quite good to have. It's much better to have a competition on pricing, on the product quality and capabilities. There, again, I think this is not only around speed. You have to also consider that fiber is bringing much more than speed. Low latency, as you know, for gamers is quite important.
For those who know what is the difference in between a coax and a fiber network, they will know about the low latency capabilities of the fiber network. That will drive the word of mouth positively around the fiber rollout. This is one. You know that there is one gamer in every two home. That's really something important. One. Second, the stability of the network, which is good and way better on copper.
Fiber compared to coax. The third element, and it's really important in COVID times, upload capabilities. You know that when you have to spend 10 hours on Teams, on Zoom, and do video conferencing, the upload element is also quite important. This is going to be a technology marketing and perception battle. I'm convinced we have the better product. At the end of the day, it will make the difference.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Ulrich Rathe from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. I have two. First one is on the Flex proactive migration. I think you mentioned this also in the context of some RPC dilution. I was wondering what exactly does proactive migration mean? Do you send people offers and they take them up, or do you say, "Well, your contract on this tariff doesn't exist anymore. Now you're on this tariff. If you don't like it, you can quit." How exactly does this work? The second question is on Telesign. On your call from February, you sort of talked about Sinch and Twilio as comparable companies. You sort of guided us to look at the valuations of Sinch and Twilio. Could you maybe comment a bit, because you haven't in the past really highlighted Telesign in business profile very much in detail.
Could you comment a little bit what the differences of Telesign versus Sinch or Twilio might be? What might be unique about Telesign and different to these, what you called comparables, in February? Thank you very much.
Hi, Ulrich. Jim speaking. On the first question with respect to Flex migrations, I would say that it's a bit the same approach like Anne-Sophie explained on the enterprise segment. We do value-based migrations, where we look, of course, for opportunities within our current customer base to see where we can create additional value for the company. We focus also a lot on mobile consolidation within our households. I would say that when we look at other types of migrations, the legacy migrations of the real older packs is also something that we continuously look at because we know that it drives simplification. Thanks to that simplification, we can also have a positive impact on cost.
Those migrations are really a mix of commercial value-based migrations on the one hand, and then from a legacy portfolio management perspective to drive costs down from a simplification perspective.
To your question around Telesign, I would like to make a few comments. Telesign, they do operate in the digital identity market. That market is a EUR 35 billion market. In that market, we want to become a worldwide leader in connecting and protecting digital interactions between consumers and companies. It's important that I explain a little bit more. I think preventing fraud and securing digital interactions is not new, that's for sure, and was of critical importance long before 2020.
What we believe is that the digital transformation, also linked to the pandemic, with individuals turning to tech to facilitate everyday tasks that they might have doing before in person, means that the role of Telesign is going extremely central and more and more important. Just one striking example, cybercrime every year costs over EUR 6 trillion globally. Digital identity theft alone costs over EUR 56 billion. As more and more transactions happen online, I think the incentive from further cybercriminals is only getting bigger and bigger every day. Without solutions like Telesign, those kind of losses could continue to grow and to expand going forward. What do companies want today? They want to balance the need to reduce the fraud losses while continuing to deliver a great customer experience. Honestly, we are also confronting to that at Proximus.
It could be sometimes impossible problem to solve. Adding more security checks balances, that may reduce fraud losses. Those same security measures can also be annoying and cumbersome for customers. The role of Telesign is to help end that trade-off in between protection, fraud protection, and seamless use of services. That's why I'm really convinced that the value we bring to customer, even if it's somehow different from the people you mentioned, there is no reason why we should say that the value that we bring to customers would not be at par with the companies that you mentioned. We are right at that intersection in between communication and CPaaS and digital identity. That's really what is Telesign about. What is our secret sauce? What is the difference of Telesign?
I think we are really unique because we have insights of billions of phone numbers worldwide and associated communications metadata. That's the difference of Telesign. This data combines with our own expertise in terms of data science, creating of this AI-based, machine learning-based scoring platform. That's what is the secret sauce of Telesign and create that compelling solution that is growing at booming trends, as you can see in the result of last year and the result of Q1. That's really what Telesign is about. That's why I'm so convinced that we can really further accelerate and create a lot of value with that company.
That's very helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Ben Lyons from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. I have a few. The first is if you could just comment on the competitive environment at the moment in Belgium, and what your 5G pricing strategy will be now that we're seeing the entrance of speed tiering on the mobile side. Just to follow up on the Telesign question as well is, if you could give us any FX sensitivity and so the growth rate was impacted by currency, so that would be quite helpful. Lastly, on the working capital benefit, do you expect that to unwind over the rest of the year? Thank you.
Hi, Ben. Jim speaking. On the question linked to speed tiering. Today, I think like Guillaume says, it's good to see that other operators in Belgium are going to follow the same path. If you look today on the consumer side, the way we are monetizing 5G is only available on our high-end mobile plans. By doing so, we have today an implicit tiering on speed, as the 5G speeds are only available on the two most expensive mobile plans for the consumer, and all the other ones are on 4G. I would say that it's good to see that competition is also going to drive the market in the same direction, so we can indeed continue to build on 5G capabilities to create value through speed tiering.
On the Telesign growth rate, I think we have been very clear in the slides in the intro. On constant currency, the growth YoY is 45%. That the revenue growth of Telesign, excluding the impact of the currency affecting between dollars and euros. On the working cap, I will let.
The working capital effect of Q1 is indeed pure timing difference. For the rest of the year, we do expect that this benefit will unwind.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. We have one new question from Nicolas Cote-Colisson from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you. Two small one. The first one is maybe a small issue. I was wondering why such a fall in the advanced business services. If anything, this should be a buoyant segment. I'm a bit surprised. Sorry, another follow-up on Telesign. In the press release you talk about a significant customer repricing effect. Still you're growing the business double digits. Can you help reconcile this? What's the balance between price and volume to get to that 44% growth? Thank you.
First question, I think this is for Anne-Sophie.
Yes, it's for me indeed. I think your question, Nicolas, was related to the advanced business services. Well, as you know, this part of the business is actually very much impacted by COVID. This is why you see the decline in terms of revenue. More specifically, on certain elements that I will outline to you in a minute. The elements that are impacted by COVID are pretty much linked to the fact that if you look at the different business drivers, we see that the business drivers are very much impacted by the Sorry, my computer completely froze. I apologize. Sorry, I'm just trying to find.
I can take the Telesign question meanwhile.
Sure
Nicolas, so that Anne-Sophie can restart your computer.
Yeah.
Yeah. On the growth of Telesign, it's really volume-driven for the moment, but at the same time, what we are trying to do is more and more doing PoCs. Proof of concept on a lot of these digital identity use cases at customers. That's why we also have a small dilution of the direct margin because those PoCs did not yet deliver the value that they will deliver going forward. That's why, really, you see that evolution between revenue and direct margin. Really driven by volume, but we are really now accelerating the ramp-up of the pure digital identity use cases, that will be really the fuel of the growth for the coming quarters. It's going to be really seen as of next quarter, and the quarter that are going to be following this year, but also for the years to come.
Thank you, Guillaume, and apologies about this. My computer's still not rebooting, but I will search my brain to find the answer. As you know, via advanced business services, is really the smart mobility revenue is impacted with more specifically on the automotive and the parking revenue, because of course, they're highly exposed to COVID-19. The decline that you see is linked to that, the exposure for COVID-19 on the automotive and parking revenues.
That makes sense. Thank you so much.
Yep. Sorry about that.
Thank you. We have two other questions, one from Michael Bishop from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks. Thanks very much. I just wanted to follow up on this interesting Telesign discussion. I think you've been in the local press, obviously suggesting that the value of Telesign could be sort of unicorn-type valuation. At the same time, if you read the press release and also your comments, you've talked about the need to scale up, and therefore, I just really wanted to ask two things. Firstly, what do you think the reinvestment organically required is to really scale up and in particular go outside of the U.S.? Secondly, if you look at a business like Sinch, for the last five, 10 years, they've done a huge amount of bolt-on M&A in this space to basically build more global scale.
I appreciate you are slightly operating across different verticals, but, do you think you'll have to do quite a bit of bolt-on M&A at Telesign to drive similar scale, given this tends to be a global business where high volume, low cost of execution wins out? Then just secondly, following from the previous question, are you suggesting that growth can accelerate from here or whether there was some sort of one-time benefits to growth in the last couple of quarters from an increase in volumes? Thanks so much.
Lot of question, but, yeah, indeed. I think the focus that we have today with Joe Burton and the new management that we put in place, it's really to execute on the organic growth, because now we really want to take that unique positioning in the digital identity space. That's the first focus of the moment, really to make sure that we can deliver that promise on fraud management, fraud prevention and on the digital identity space. That will require some strong execution focus, and some investment in the product. That's why we say that if we manage to execute quite well on those product investments that are not massive product investments, so do not be scared. We are in a very nice situation because Telesign, despite the fast growth, is EBITDA positive.
They are generating EBITDA, which is quite unique for a company that is growing that fast. We can use a part of that to reinvest in the product and also in the go-to market. In the software industry, when you have a good product, you need good sales guys to deliver the promise to the customers. We need also to scale up the go-to market. If you manage to do that, indeed, there is an opportunity to further accelerate the growth of the digital identity part. Today there is a mix of messaging and digital identity revenues within Telesign, and we want really to scale up the digital identity part, so that we also can improve significantly the margin, the direct margin of the company. That's really the focus. If we can do that, everything would be then possible.
Thanks. Sorry, the second question was just, I guess, on the growth profile. If we think about the next year, could it accelerate because versus the 45% that you've flagged on an organic basis? Has it benefited from the higher volumes more recently that creates a tougher comp?
As I said, you're going to see an acceleration of the revenue trends on the digital identity segment. You have revenue growth, but with a better mix. That's really what is going to happen in the coming years, because the contribution of the digital identity part is going to be higher and higher going forward. That's really what will drive the value of the company.
Great. Thanks for the color. I appreciate it.
Thank you. Last question for the moment, registered is from Simon Coles from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks for taking the questions. It's just on the fiber injection. Obviously you had a start-up one for the Flanders JV, this quarter, and presumably there should be another one for the Wallonia JV at some point this year. I'm just wondering, is that enough to cover the JVs for, say, the next one or two years? I remember you saying before that the equity injection for the fiber JVs were back-end loaded, or should we consider it as sort of you need the smaller ones for the next couple of years, and then the bigger ones come in as the fiber rollouts really ramp up? Thank you.
Simon, right now we have done equity injections in Fiberklaar in Q1. Going forward, as soon as the JV with Eurofiber will be approved, we will of course as well have to make equity injections. Given the fact that the coverage of this JV will be smaller than the one of Fiberklaar, the size of the JV tickets in this JV will be proportionally smaller. Of course, like we said, the JVs, they will fund as well with debt. 70% of the cash need of those JVs will be funded with debt, and the rest will be funded with EBITA. Of course, the need for debt of those JVs, that will be depending on the further rollout of those JVs.
If we took, say, the EUR 30 million and gross that up for what EQT would put in and the debt that you'll generate, that would suggest that you could probably cover a couple of hundred thousand households. You're good in, say, the Flanders JV for the next couple of years, and then in 2023 or 2024, that's when the big injections start happening, or the bigger injections start happening?
There will be debt in the first instance, and the debt at the level of those JVs, that will be at their balance sheet, and so that will not be consolidated in our debt. Indeed, the next equity injection that will need to be done will be done once that new cohort will be completely rolled out by those JVs.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. We don't have any more questions registered at the moment, ladies and gentlemen. If you wish to ask a question, you have to press zero one on your telephone keypad, zero and one on your telephone keypad. Looks like we don't have any more questions. Back to you for the conclusion.
Thank you. Thank you all for your participation. I wish you a lovely weekend, and for any follow-ups, you can contact the Investor Relations team. Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes this conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.