Welcome to Deutsche Telekom's Fourth Quarter 2024 Conference Call. As you can see with me today, is our CEO Tim Höttges and our CFO Christian Illek. As usual, Tim will first go through his highlights of the year, followed by Christian, who will talk more about the quarterly performance and the group financials. After this, we have time for Q&A. Before I hand over to Tim, please pay attention to our usual disclaimer, which you find in the presentation. And please also note that this conference will be recorded and uploaded to the internet. And with that, it's my pleasure to hand over to Tim.
Yeah, thank you, Hannes, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results Call. Look, we can deeply go into the numbers, but let me say we are celebrating our 30th birthday at Deutsche Telekom. I know you're not very romantic, but for us, it's quite a journey of 30 years at Deutsche Telekom, and we had intense discussions this morning with the press around that one, and we're going to celebrate that throughout the year, and the good thing is that we are going to start, let's say, with a record year into this anniversary here, and in sum, you have seen the numbers. It was a very good overall track record throughout the businesses. It is the highest EBITDA, the highest free cash flow, and the highest adjusted earnings in our company's history, which we are able to present today.
We made great progress along the priorities we outlined at our October Capital Markets Day, being it on fiber, being it on the mobile technology leadership, being it on customer service and customer experience, and being it on artificial intelligence. But I can tell you one thing, you know, these are just in its infancy. You know, we are just beginning here, and I'm already pushing a lot so that we should accelerate on these topics. Our financial performance also in the fourth quarter was on track for the targets we outlined at the Capital Markets Day. On 29th of January, T-Mobile reported already their strong results and provided a very positive outlook for 2025. We are completing this picture today with our ex-U.S. and our group results, and we provide you with our guidance of the group as a whole.
Again, in 2024, our group developed quite nicely: 3.7% organic service revenue growth. We had 6% organic EBITDA growth, 19% growth on free cash flow, and 19% growth in adjusted earnings per share. So I think this is remarkable. And I know that if you compare us with the European industry, it's anyhow leading. During the year, we announced more than EUR 10 billion of M&A investments in the U.S., be it wireless, in advertising, or in fiber. It shows the attractiveness of the U.S. market at that point in time and even our willingness to grow beyond connectivity businesses here. And we are very happy where we are here. One month ago, our stake in T-Mobile US was back to 51.5%. Also, good news for you.
We took decisions to evolve our leadership team at the same time, and you have seen the notes while providing stability in our organization in this kind of uncertain times here, and I'm happy to tell you that I extended my contract until 2028. I hope you're happy about it, and Srini will now join T-Mobile US as the Chief Operating Officer. He will bring a lot of expertise in fiber, a lot of expertise in, you know, the relations between the mother house. And he will as well help us by realizing synergies within, you know, the group in an easier way, and as his successor, we have nominated Rodrigo Diehl as the new head of Germany. He's a quite international manager. He was born in Argentina. He grew up with McKinsey and with Millicom. He was head of Panama.
He was in our organization in the European organization heading the B2C marketing segment, and he was in Austria running the business over the last year, so quite an experienced guy who is now joining us here in the German environment. Overall, our Total Shareholder Return , and, you know, that was 38% last year, and our shares recently reached a new 24-year high of 35 EUR yesterday, so this is good news. I understand today, you know, we had some dropbacks on this one, and let's understand what the reason for that were, but in principle, we are very optimistic with regard to 2025 and with regard to the guidance and with regard to our Capital Markets Day commitment, so I'm not looking on a day. I'm looking on a long-term trajectory, and this trajectory is on the share price very, very good.
So again, this was another good year for Deutsche Telekom and its shareholders. And there's much more to come. And I will talk about my priorities in a second. As usual, let's take a closer look first on the organic figures on page five. And what you can see here are the elements of the segments. And obvious to see, all segments are growing. The organic group revenue grew by 3.7%. Excluding the U.S., the growth would have been 2.9%. Our core EBITDA grew by 6.5%. And excluding the U.S., it's a remarkable growth of 6%, which we were able to show here as well. T-Mobile grew its adjusted core EBITDA by 8.3%. Europe grew by 8.1%. Germany by 2.6%. And just, you know, our fastest growing segment. And you know that for me, there's always a ranking of everything I'm doing.
The best in class from a percentage perspective was T-Systems with a growth of 12.3% EBITDA growth. Now, we know that this is on a small basis, but nevertheless, it's another turnaround story within Deutsche Telekom, and I'm very happy with what this team has achieved, so well done to T-Systems. T-Systems may not be so important from the value contribution, but for us, they are very relevant when it comes to being a differentiated telco in the B2B space because we are running cloud, which is getting more and more relevant today and in the future, and we are running digital service or developing applications for our customers. Both are things other telcos don't have, so this is getting more and more relevant.
In both areas, we are applying a lot of AI, and we have a lot of AI expertise, which we can then as well use for the group. So the contribution of T-Systems is getting more and more important over the next years. Moving on to our networks. You know, this is my favorite topic. The last 12 months, we've passed 3.3 million additional European homes with fiber to the home. Now we reach over 20 million homes in our European footprint here. In Germany, we have achieved our targets of the 10 million households, including the joint ventures and our corporations. This despite all the headwinds the German fiber market was facing. So we keep on track. Our mobile networks as well remain leading across the footprint. Existing German network modernization program is well underway.
You saw that from Srini and up to the presentation about our leadership in the way we are using spectrum Project Nemo. In the U.S., our network leadership remains uncontested, and we are further extending our technology leadership here as well with the public beta launch of Direct to Cell satellite communications. Now, you would immediately ask, why don't you have a Starlink deal for Europe yet? Look, the answer is very simple because if you have 98% coverage of 5G services in Germany, you know, you don't have so much uncovered areas. We are going this area small for FMS solutions if needed while using satellites, but in the U.S., there are 400,000 square kilometers uncovered areas as a whole, and therefore, the satellite connectivity makes a lot of sense as an adjacent technology network of networks.
Remember, that was the term which I used, you know, a couple of years ago is coming live. Our customer growth is continuous, both in the U.S. and both in our European entities, all of them. You can see in page 34, by the way, the consistency of our customer growth over many, many years. So there's no reason that, you know, we see a slowdown or whatever. You know, you have always some seasonal effects or some competitive effects. But overall, our growth rate is quite intact. Our subscriber growth on postpaid is strong: 6 million postpaid net adds in the U.S. and 2 million in Europe. So another 8 million, you know, postpaid customers gained in 2024. The fourth quarter saw year-on-year improvements in churn.
That is remarkable that we are even further reducing our churn, both in Germany and in the U.S., to, I think, an all-time low in this area. In Germany, we consistently delivered near 300,000 new mobile net adds in the quarter, benefiting from our successful segmentation and our clear leadership. By the way, it's standing on three pillars. There's a B2B area. There is definitely our direct business, which we have, and then there's congstar as well. So we have different, you know, segments here, which we are working on, and this is always good, you know, that you have different legs. In the U.S., we issued the highest initial postpaid net adds guidance ever for this year. We benefit from our leadership, both in value and in quality, and we keep on running and continue this development.
TV net adds were as well in 2024, stronger than the year before. That was mainly driven by the German business. And here, that was the European Championship, which helped us. But please be aware, in this 437,000 net adds, there are 300,000 not included. This is over the top services that 300,000 customers downloaded our app and using our app on the different TV screens. Even this one is not included in the numbers which you see here. Broadband net adds were slower than last year. And I think this is a little bit, let's say, the black spot on our white shirt, as we say in German, you know, where I would say this could have been better. This is, you know, mainly driven by Germany. Fiber net adds not shown here, they accelerated. That's a good message.
And by the way, almost doubled compared to the previous year. But in the broadband net adds were slower. And we have to discuss that later on because this is definitely an area where we want to improve our delivery. Moving on to ESG for a sec. Look, despite strong growth in data usage and the demand in our services increased, we were able to reduce our energy consumption for the group by 2%. So assume that we have 30% more data usage in our networks. And at the same time, we are able to reduce the consumption of energy by 2%. That shows, you know, the efficiency ambitions or the activities which we are driving here. We reduced our CO2 emissions by a similar percentage. This is good. And if some of you, you know, might question, what the heck is Tim talking about? Nobody cares about ESG anymore.
I can tell you, we won't stop on this topic here because for us, that is more than just, you know, a kind of hygiene factor. For this is a commercial element because the moment where we can reduce our energy costs, the moment we are able, you know, to reduce or increase the efficiency of our architecture here, the moment this has a hard commercial impact. And therefore, there are more elements than being altruistic. This is really a big commitment towards the future and to our P&L at the same time. Our community contribution, by the way, amounted to EUR 1.1 billion last year. And there were 34 million beneficiaries, including 6.3 million students, which we connected as part of T-Mobile's education initiative. Another great program, the brand has to be an inclusive brand.
And this means we are covering from the super rich to the ones who cannot afford our service. Everybody, we embrace people into our brand, but we can declare that that's nice. And maybe people are believing us, but we have to live it. And you have to be committed to this and that's why these instruments are so important. Coming to the guidance, our 2025 guidance, the bottom line is that we delivered our EBITDA guidance and we outperformed our guidance for free cash flow and earnings per share in all categories for 2024. Note that our adjusted EPS of EUR 1.90 included EUR 0.07 of non-recurring earnings. The largest single item here was a 4% benefit from an improved tax outlook for our GD Towers joint venture. So this is included in the 1.90.
But even the 1.83, by the way, friends. The 1.83 is highly above our original guidance for 2024, which was 1.75. So, you know, outperforming on most of the KPIs which we guided last year. So we had this fantastic Capital Markets Day in October last year and got great feedback from you guys. Thank you for that. It's a big commitment for me and for all of us, you know, going forward. And I just wanted to share what we are doing right now and what are we working on in 2025, what is most important. By the way, there are a lot of other activities we are driving around our flywheel here, but just let me stress a few of them. So starting with fiber, look, our ambition is we will keep the pace of the fiber build-out in Germany and in Europe, 2.5 million alone in Germany.
And we want to even, you know, include our fiber joint ventures in the U.S. Hopefully, we are expecting, you know, that in the second quarter this year, we get the consolidation of our fiber investments after, you know, the approval of them. And then we have even, you know, commercial benefits from these activities as well. And then we will see what's happening here on the fiber and the convergent side. But this is a big commitment going forward. And for us, it's very important that we are stepping up on monetization. And we make good progress on this one. You saw that in the fourth quarter. The fiber take-up is severe. And Christian will talk about that in a second. But more to come in Germany. You know, we want to go beyond 20% this year on the utilization of our infrastructure, the extended infrastructure.
And in Europe, we are beyond 30%, by the way, 34%. So therefore, you know, there's more to come that we monetize fiber. Second topic on the mobile side, our network is clearly leading on both sides of the Atlantic. But we will not, won't, you know, rest on our laurels here. We want to extend our lead. In the U.S., with our customer-driven coverage build, interesting proposition. I love that. And by the way, we will steal with pride all the ideas from the U.S. into our entities here as well and develop them further. In Germany, we are improving our network leadership with our radical network modernization program, Nemo. So two really big initiatives. I'm not worried at all that we will not have another year where we will all, by the way, all network tests.
We are expanding our technology leadership with 5G Standalone in Germany and other markets in satellite connectivity in the U.S. and in Open RAN technologies. So these are just three examples of what we are trying to do. And at the same time, we are driving everything that we gain more ARPA growth out of this infrastructure because, you know, if you have a market-leading infrastructure, you know, you should be able to monetize that even beyond your competition. Then another third element, which is very important for us and should discuss that, is the momentum in our B2B area. We presented, you know, the different entities, Europe, Germany, T-Systems. And we have spoken about the ambitions here. We have laid the foundation on product side last year. And we see a positive momentum. By the way, mobile is super strong everywhere.
On the fixed line, we are making progress. Cybersecurity demand is high, double-digit growth. So there are a lot of, let's say, good developments which we see. But we stay hungry here. So let's see where we make progress this year. AI, very important for us. This is a centerpiece of our strategy, is a centerpiece of my belief. To be honest, you know, we had a much better start than most of the telcos. I know that because a lot of telcos are, you know, visiting us and want to understand, you know, how we are driving the 500 projects within our entity. I see unbelievable efficiency gains in the workflow optimization. I see them on the individual services. We see that already in the U.S. with the digital use from our customer side and the way how we are serving them in a better way.
I see them in the network autonomy. I see them as a cyber element. So there is so much, you know, which we can improve faster and more efficient with AI. This is just the beginning. I think we have to double down. I will push this organization this year much harder on AI and the implementation. And by the way, I'm flying out from here to Barcelona next week. We will talk about on the Mobile World Congress. We will mostly talk about, let's say, our AI initiatives and how we are improving and how we are using AI services, including our partners. Scale advantages is another big thing. Our leading size and portfolio gives us a unique opportunity among other players in these industries. You know, I always hear that from my competition here, Tim, the only reason why are you good is because you have the U.S.
I said, okay, you could have done the same, but you don't have a U.S., but the U.S. and our European entity gives us a super advantage to scale our businesses, and we have to prove that, and I want to show that to you, how we can do that, operating models in IT, in NT, in sourcing, so the element of transatlantic collaboration should be: do we want to bring to a next level, and by the way, that Srini is going there, that will help a lot, so the next topic is the leadership team and how we evolve this team, and as I said, you know, my contract extension hopefully provides stability in this world. It's good to have that in the new European Commission. It's good to have that with the new government in Germany coming in.
I think it's even good, you know, to have that in the U.S. because there are a lot of, let's say, uncertainties now in this environment. And it's as well, I think, good for the team here because the stable management is even, you know, stability in our strategy going forward with a clear focus. With Rodrigo, we found an excellent successor for Srini for Germany. We will bring him to you when he has to say something. And Srini is brilliant, highly appreciated in the U.S. team. They know what, you know, they get. And this will help us as well. So this is just the beginning. To be honest, I'm working a lot of, let's say, ideas around our leadership team on the second level about how we can reinnovate, how we can upskill these people, how we can get even more international in this regard.
So more to come throughout the year 2025. Our guidance for 2025, and I'm going to be quick, it's based on last year's average foreign exchange, which is, by the way, 1.08. That is our foreign exchange rate, which we take into consideration. And it is the same, it's the sum of the guidance of DT ex- U.S. and for T-Mobile US., adjusted by U.S. GAAP IFRS Bridge. And I heard that this morning was intensive discussion about this bridge, this IFRS Bridge and this billion which is in between that. T-Mobile issued its guidance on 29th of January, and we are using the midpoint, the midpoint of their guidance. This guidance is based on an IFRS Bridge of EUR 1 billion in 2025 and at a dollar exchange of 1.08. For the DT ex- U.S. business, we are guiding for 2025 an EBITDA of EUR 15 billion.
And we are guiding for 25 a free cash flow of EUR 3.6 billion, by the way, slightly increasing over the years. For the group, we are guiding around EUR 44.9 billion EBITDA and EUR 19.9 billion free cash flow. And for the earnings per share from EUR 1.90 coming to around $2, sorry, EUR 2 for the adjusted earnings per share. So another increase of 9% for 2025. Note please that we are no longer guiding the core adjusted EBITDA because the handset lease revenues in the U.S. have become immaterial. So that makes our KPIs more easier to understand. And with this, I hand it over to Christian, who would give you even more details on the 2024 numbers.
Thanks, Tim. And hello from my side. So as usual, as you know, we're going to start with T-Mobile US. We're staying on U.S. GAAP. What you see is that the service revenue has increased year over year to 5.5% growth and is very much driven by the postpaid service revenue growth, which you can see on the callout. That is obviously the foundation for a stunning 10.1% core EBITDA growth in the fourth quarter.
So a very, very strong financial performance. I'm taking a look at the commercial figures. You see that the postpaid net additions in the fourth quarter was 1.9 million. And if you add everything together over the course of the year 2024, it was more than 6 million of net adds, of which 50%, roughly 50% is postpaid phone net adds. And that momentum obviously led to a guidance of 5.5-6 million postpaid net additions in 2025, which is the highest ever guidance the U.S. team has given to the market.
What you can also see is that we have a very steady performance on high-speed internet with roughly 400 plus thousand net additions. So we have now a base of 6.4 million customers. And I think we're tracking well against the 7-8 million high-speed internet customers by the end of 2025. Moving to Germany, 33 quarters of consecutive EBITDA growth. Despite the fact that we have seen the wage increase beginning of the quarter, the Q4 EBITDA was growing by roughly 2.8%. And that gets us to a full year 2.6% growth. You remember we had in Q1 only a 1% EBITDA growth. Our guidance for 2025 is EUR 10.8 billion EBITDA, which is pretty much at the same growth rate as we have seen it in the fourth quarter.
We're pretty much in line with what we articulated in the October meeting here in Bonn at the CMD. Moving to what you see on the chart on revenues, obviously, is that organic revenues slightly decreased over the quarter. This is very much driven by lower handset revenues. The service revenue was slightly positive, as we can see on the next page, but it was still sequentially lower than we have seen this in the previous quarters. The reason being for this is that we actually had a higher expectation of IT revenues in the public sector in the fourth quarter, which didn't turn into business, which sequentially will move into largely the upcoming quarters, especially in Q1. Mobile service revenue, you see that we're growing pretty much at 2%, which is stable relative to the previous quarter.
And despite the fact that the mobile market is quite aggressive, price aggressive for quite some time, I think our performance has been very steady and we remain absolutely confident that we're going to meet our two to two and a half growth expectation on the long run. So let's move to the fixed line trends on the following pages. So what you can see on page 17 is that both broadband and wholesale access revenues grew in line with the previous quarter. Despite the steady growth in broadband revenues, our retail fixed revenues was obviously smaller in this given quarter. And I explained this by the dip in the IT revenue, especially in the public sector. So we expect a better performance in the upcoming quarter. And we expect that part of this business will eventually turn into business in this given quarter.
So if we basically exclude the dip in the IT revenues, I think then the growth rate would have been comparable to the previous quarters. So again, expect an improvement in Q1. Moving to the next page, you see some fixed line revenues. Our broadband and TV customer growth has slowed, especially broadband moved down to 16. Let's be clear, we're below our fair share, which is about 40%. And you know that our clear ambition is always to trend above our fair share of 40%. The sequential decline is obviously due to two impacts, which we're seeing right now. The market growth is not at the same level as it used to be a year ago. And we see that the Vodafone performance has actually increased.
And you've seen that in their numbers, which they have reported out to you a couple of weeks ago, where their line losses reduced from negative 33 to negative 7. So overall, we will obviously work on this performance to improve it again and especially to be at least on fair share in the upcoming quarters. What we also see is that the net adds on TV have come down because the rental privilege impact is kind of fading out. But overall, and Tim said it beforehand, we actually achieved 600,000 customers, roughly 50-50. One is access bound and the other one is obviously OTT led. So we will obviously try to maintain momentum here, but don't expect that 2024 will replicate in 2025. So on the broadband market, let's again step on this one. As we've seen that the market is obviously performing, is growing at a slower rate.
The importance of having richer mixes in our base is obviously an important thing. And I think what you see on the retail customers on the upper right-hand side is that we have increased our customer base, which is enjoying access lines of at least 100 megabits per second by 700,000 over the course of the year. It's now representing half of the base in our broadband customer base. So now moving to fiber, what you can see is we have a very strong performance on fiber. So first of all, we have achieved 2.5 million homes passed in 2024. Secondly, what you see is that the customer growth all up increased from 300,000 in 2023 to 470,000 in 2024, which is an increase of 50%. And the last quarter, we achieved another 100,000 or we gained another 134,000 customers in the given quarter.
You know that obviously fiber is ultimately important for us because the higher our fiber coverage is, the higher our fiber customer base will be, the better our broadband performance will be. So let's move over to the mobile commercials. And what you see on the mobile commercials, we achieved 260,000 branded net adds. And Tim basically explains coming from three sources, B2C, B2B, and congstar. This is slightly lower, obviously relative to the previous quarter, comparable slightly below the previous year. That slowdown is actually explainable by B2B. But it's nice to see that despite the very promotional market in Germany, our churn has come down from 0.9% to 0.8% on a monthly basis here in Germany. So obviously we're still benefiting from our strong brand, our network leadership, our effective segmentations, which we are applying, and obviously very much based on our attractive family plans.
Moving over to Europe, I think another excellent quarter wrapping up an excellent year. Our organic revenue was plus 4.3%. Organic EBITDA in the fourth quarter was 7.3%. Totally in the year, 8.1%. Stunning figures, and these figures are obviously based on the next page, on a very solid customer growth across all the different categories, be it mobile, broadband, FMC, and TV, and the good thing in Europe is it's based on a balance of volume growth and value growth. T-Systems on the next page, very solid quarter. I think you see a positive momentum on the order entry with close to 11% growth. Revenues were only up by 1%, but we had a very good performance on EBITDA, which was 29%, but you see it's very cyclical how the business develops.
I think the 12% growth rate, which Tim alluded to, is a better comparable to see that we're basically out of the negative territory in T-Systems and that we're moving in stable waters. That's pretty much with my operational review. Let's move to the group financials. You see some good growth across the P&L, but also across the cash flow statement. Adjusted EPS is up 30% this quarter or 19% over the course of the year. Tim explained in the adjusted EPS, there's EUR 0.07 of tailwind. EUR 0.04 are coming from a tax benefit, which we have in our tower business, which is a one-off. EUR 0.02 are coming from the pension fund gain due to interest rate changes. The last EUR 0.01 is coming from derivatives. The free cash flow is down over the quarter, but it's 19% up over the year.
So what you see on a Q4 versus Q4 comparison, that Q4 is not very representative for the year. Net debt increased on a yearly basis by EUR 5 billion, of which EUR 6.2 billion is purely driven by FX. So next chart are basically the bridges Q4 over Q4. As I mentioned, on free cash flow, this is not representing the full year. It's very much driven by a very low CapEx spend, which we had in the previous year in the U.S., and that drove down the higher spend on a year-on-year basis. Same holds true on the net profit development that was very much supported by one-offs, whether it's been the civil servant health insurance or the tax benefit, which we achieved on our tower business, which is not recurring. But overall, I think a very good growth of 19% over the course of the year.
Moving to page 25, you see that our net debt has increased by 6.8 billion, of which 4.7 billion is driven by Forex. The 8% increase on the dollar obviously hit us in the fourth quarter. The average dollar was only 1..08. So that is actually having a negative impact on the leverage all up. And you see that the leverage ex-lease has basically remained at the same level, which is 231. We have a slight improvement relative to 23 to 2.78. But let's be fair, we intend to be at a maximum of 2.75. So we have to work against this. I think that completes my review. And I hand it over to, I guess, Hannes, right? Or Tim?
No, correct. Thank you. So thank you, Christian. We start with the Q&A part. And if you like to ask a question via WebEx, please press the raise hand function.
If you require to cancel your question, press the raise hand function again. If you're calling on the telephone, press star three. If you want to cancel, press star three again. I, of course, will announce your name when it's your turn. As per our good practice, could you please restrict yourself to two questions? You obviously have to mute and unmute or first unmute and then mute yourself as appropriately. We start with Andrew at Goldman Sachs, please.
Yeah, thanks, Hannes. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you can hear me okay. I had two questions. The first one, I guess, fairly obviously is on German competition. You both said that the competitive environment in mobile is quite aggressive at the moment in Germany. That's something that your competitors have highlighted too.
So the question there is just, is the competition in mobile or fixed meaningfully worse than you expected when you set your midterm guide? And if so, how? And then the second question is just on satellites. Thanks for your comments, Tim, around that. I think you basically summarized that you don't see satellites as a massively important partner for Europe. Obviously, quite a lot of interest in the Super Bowl product launch in the U.S. So if not a partner, can satellites be a threat to your business in Europe? Any thoughts you could give us on how satellites fit into the telecom outlook in Europe would be great. Thank you.
Let me start first on the competitiveness and the situation. Look, since the Vodafone decision to take the 1&1 national roaming contract from Telefónica, we've seen a step up in the competitive intensity in our markets.
I was from the beginning clear that this is a bad deal and stupid, but anyhow, that is what's happening as a consequence. It was clear that this happens. This prompted a number of responses here from Telefónica Deutschland, both in the retail and, by the way, in the wholesale market. Vodafone has stepped up in their promotions at the beginning of the year. 1&1 then launched this split-tiered unlimited or so-called unlimited proposition, by the way. Look into the detail. It's a fake tariff. Telefónica Deutschland has recently added another aggressive promotion against that. These developments are showing that that is a self-triggered problem for this place. Now, our position is that we are not jumping into this battle here, that we are trying to stay out of it, remain focused on our leadership and our communications about the undisputed network leadership.
It's about customer service orientation. So we are trying to do everything to get out and to keep out of this competitiveness today. We have a segmented approach in our markets. We have congstar to react on the one side. And by the way, we have even sitting on one third of our base in the business area. And the business area is coming to us. And that is quality driven. So therefore, look, I'm concerned a bit about what's happening there. I will not lose market share. That's for sure. We are very clear on this one. Not acceptable for us. But we are not the ones who are triggering any kind of competitiveness here beyond what's happening there. Let's see whether it will come to benefits to one or the other. But we're trying to stay as much out of the situation as we can.
On the fixed, -- yeah, go ahead.
No, go ahead.
On fixed line, to be honest, if you look to today's results, if you see there is one element which we really are delivering on all the KPIs or beyond. There's not a single kind of things which you should be worried about. If you go through today's results, the only thing which I think was worrying is the slowdown of the broadband area in Germany. That is, for me, an area to focus on because I saw that talking about mixed results, okay, maybe it's a mixed result if only one parameter is not working. The rest is working. So I just want to draw your attention to this one. This is an area we have to look at. Now, what's happening in the German fixed line market, and I know that this is an area.
We have seen a fair amount of promotional activities in recent quarters. But most of them front book prices, they did not change. So therefore, it is in November, Vodafone returned to discounted one gig offers for its coax product. This is priced at EUR 45, initial on a five-month promotion. This compares to their historical EUR 40 price point. In terms of broader market trends, we are seeing some improvements in competitive performance in what remains a slowly growing market because that is, I think, the most important mark. The market was slower growing than we expected. And our slow performance in Q4 is explained by Vodafone's lower customer losses. So Vodafone has done a better job on retaining their customers. So we have gained less from them in that quarter. And Vodafone is spending a lot of money to get there.
So let's see how sustainable and how long they are able to fund this retention programs here. Then what we are trying to do is we are trying to improve from the volume side, especially on the fiber side. On the fiber side, the share of fiber has grown significantly, Andrew. You have seen that. We are now monetizing our fiber much better. This is, let's say, the number on the volume side we have to focus on. At the same time, we are driving ARPA, so upgrading customers in higher speed tariffs. By doing this, we generate more ARPA. You see, it's a mix of pictures: slower market, combination with Vodafone's retention, compensated by higher fiber growth on our side, and better ARPA. This was not showing the volume which we expected.
That is an area we will focus on. I will do everything that throughout this year we see already an improvement in their numbers because, for me, it's unacceptable that we are not having our 40% market share, which we have laid out as a guidance to all of you.
Andrew, to wrap it up, there is no need to change the guidance. Both on mobile as well as on broadband. We're staying at the 2-2.5% on mobile and the 3-4% on broadband. As you know, there was already a decrease relative to the previous guidance, which was 4% on broadband.
Thank you. On satellites?
Sorry, satellites. Look, on the satellite side, I said it already. In the U.S., you have 500,000 sq km uncovered territory.
So that there is a service where you can use your mobile phone for emergency calls or for messages makes total sense. In Europe or in Germany, we do not have this. We have 98% coverage of 5G services. So the likelihood that we have here uncovered territory where we have to build satellite communications is at least very limited. Now, you can argue that there are other markets, for instance, like Greece, where you have more uncovered territory on the islands. And this is true. And there are some offers from satellite offers. But in these areas, we are going for terrestrial coverage. So we are going for 5G in these areas. And when it comes to fixed line to secondary houses and second houses, we are going for FMS services.
It is a commercial question here on the European side, how much we are looking the partners are looking for in the direct-to-device or the direct-to-cell connectivity. We do not need it because the amount of traffic we can generate by that one is very limited. We cannot make big revenue commitments here to our Skylo partners. Nevertheless, we are launching in Europe a service which is in the end-to-end testing with Skylo, Qualcomm. This is a service on your mobile phone receiving text messages via a GEO satellite. This service was launched in a beta version on 26th of November last year. We will see how the take-up rates are as an adjacency, as a network of network services. This might be an opportunity to create a better image. I do not see that as a big commercial topic.
and the threat, limited threat?
No, I think it's a very limited threat, very limited threat.
Thank you.
So we had a review with one of the large consulting companies on satellite, especially on broadband substitution. And the best case indicated for a maximum market share in Europe, I'm just talking about Europe, of, let's say, in the vicinity of 5%. But that was very optimistic. So we don't see this as a big substitution threat here in the European segment.
That's then more fixed line and additional. [audio distortion]
Yes. So thanks, Andrew. And with that, we move on to David at Bank of America, who is, I think, connected via audio. So David, can we have your questions, please?
Yes, thank you very much. No video. I'm in the U.S., and my call with Hannes at 1:00 A.M. today was a delight.
So thank you for that. Yes, I guess a couple of questions. First of all, on the EPS guidance for the year, I just wanted to understand your assumptions underlying that. Perhaps is there some incremental allocation of capital that maybe we don't have in our consensus forecasts? What are the assumptions there? And then just secondly, Christian, if you could just give us the bridge assumptions for the IFRS EBITDA, just so that we can get that nice and clear in the model. Thank you.
On the EPS guidance is coming from the EBITDA. So we're guiding at a currency rate of 1.08. I think the consensus is guiding at 1.06. That would account for roughly EUR 500 million. And the second one is coming from the U.S. GAAP IFRS bridge.
First, I think I'm not sure whether this is public or not, but the U.S. has increased the number of employees which will be enjoying share-based compensation. They have included the frontline people into this, depending on their job grades. So our expectation is that the U.S. GAAP IFRS guidance will be in the vicinity of $1 billion. And that pretty much explains the difference because my understanding is in the consensus models and Hannes, you got to keep me honest on this one. I think you have a bridge of $500 million. But I think we have also a guidance in the appendix. You see the bridge, which is coming largely driven by share-based compensation and the derivatives. And I think in the last quarter, it was $961 million, is that right? Yeah. Sorry, for the year, it was $961 million, yes. So these are the two big differences.
And any assumptions [audio distortion]
One second, David.
Sorry, any assumptions on the unallocated capital at T-Mobile US or even Deutsche Telekom Group, any of that being put to work this year?
Nothing has changed. I think very consistent with what Peter said in the call. Obviously, we accounted for the debt of the EUR 10 billion acquisitions. But the EBITDA effect is not built into the model so far because we don't know when the deals will close. And we expect them to close latest by mid of the year. And then, obviously, we can give you a better guidance. But since we don't know when the deals are closing, the EBITDA impact, for example, is not being built in.
Okay, very clear. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. Thank you, David. And with that, we move on to Akhil at J.P. Morgan.
Yeah, Hi, good afternoon. I've got two questions as well, please.
Firstly, Tim, you commented in your introduction around the extension of your contract, but also the other sort of management changes you're thinking about or have done. And I guess one of those is Srini moving to the U.S. I guess this is the first time we've seen some from Europe going to the U.S. And I guess I'd love to understand how we should try and think about the rationale behind that. If we look at the press release, it talked about trying to work closer together. I don't know if there's something within that that we should be thinking through. And more broadly, is it something to do with his experience in fixed line? Could that be valuable in T-Mobile?
So just if you could maybe help us better understand the logic of him going to the U.S. and what you think that adds for DT and for T-Mobile. So that's the first question. And then the second question, just around numbers, is first, on the billion accounting bridge, can you give any comments going forward? It's been nudging up slowly over time. So I wondered, should we assume that continues to be true? And at the same time, GHS had a quite big step up in the loss there. So maybe you can comment on that too. Thanks a lot.
Yeah, Akhil, look, first, it's not the first one. Omar Tazi, who was our Chief Innovation Officer here at Deutsche Telekom, he's the head behind the development of all the digital service in the U.S., which we are discussing these days.
And he's, by the way, even the mastermind behind the app. So he's already in the SLT in the U.S.. And that was a very, I think, successful move for the T-Mobile US team. But you should ask even Mike and the team about that. Now, Srini is following in a very prominent role now. By the way, Srini is well known. And yesterday, we said goodbye to him. And wherever Srini was, and when he left our big kickoff meeting this year, there were minutes of standing ovations for him because he has found respect in every organization where he worked in Europe, in the headquarters or in Germany, and by the way, even in the board. So this is a clear hire from Mike. Mike wanted Srini.
He said that clearly because that he has more time and capacity for the strategic job he has to do in the U.S. Srini is taking over the operational role. It was his ask to have him. Nevertheless, where is the benefit of Srini? The benefit of Srini is this deep tech insight. For the digitization, he will be a game changer. He's one of these telco leaders who have a technical IT insight and background. Second, he will definitely work as a bridge. He did that already when we moved from Europe to Germany. We suddenly had a lot of, let's say, projects which fell into our hands. That is something which I'm expecting. I know with the U.S., it's not easy to create synergies in a 10,000 kilometer operation away from Europe here.
So that is something which we can facilitate easier. And nevertheless, Srini is coming with all the fiber know-how. And this is something on convergence that I like where he will have an impact and will be a new partner in the U.S. team. So this is a strong kind of showing how close T-Mobile US and Deutsche Telekom is and is going to be to realize synergies, to share thoughts, to develop the strategy going forward. This is more than just a people decision for me. It is even a strategic and symbolic partnership decision as well.
Okay, so on your question, Akhil, on the bridge, look, if you take a look to the elements of the bridge, obviously, the leasing revenues have become a non-event given the fact that there are hardly any handset leases in the U.S. anymore.
Obviously, what I can plan, which we don't plan, is what is going to happen to the derivatives in the U.S., especially to the energy RE PPA derivatives. And I think on the management-based compensation, we basically involve now almost everyone to benefit from this. So I don't think that we're going to see some negative surprises on this roughly EUR 1 billion. And on GHS, I think we had a couple of one-offs in the fourth quarter. One is very much related to the pension fund. We expect that we have to pay out higher pension.
And I think we took a prudent decision on this one. And therefore, there were some more, let's say, smaller provisions which we have taken to not be surprised in the coming year 2025. So all up, I would say, don't expect any negative surprise from GHS. I think our assumptions have been very prudent.
Great. Thanks, Christian. And so we move on to Ottavio at Bernstein, please.
Hi, good afternoon. A couple of questions from my side. The first is for Christian. It's actually the very last point you made on your presentation that you really want to go back to 2.75 gearing. Now, it looks that the U.S. dollar can remain strong. You also mentioned that you got the $10 billion plus of cash out for the acquisition to come throughout the years. It looks that T-Mobile will ramp up the buyback this year compared with last year. So these are all really headwinds towards your targets. So what's the flexibility to go back other than just the growth on EBITDA? Do you have any lever considering that all of this will push your debt higher? And the second one, it's on the fix.
Effectively, you said that the weakness we had in the last quarter was to do with phasing. And it's very likely that we'll see progressions in the first and second quarter. My understanding is that the election could have played a role because the budget or the state spending has been frozen up. And of course, now the government will take some time before being formed. And so therefore, when you reckon the visibility when you say that these revenues will come back, how confident you are that we'll come back in Q1 or we have to wait until Q2 or H2 this year? Thanks.
I think when it comes to our leverage ratio, obviously, this is not around 2.75. So the ambition is to get to 2.75.
On the other hand, Ottavio, if you just take the movement year on year on the net leverage, the currency impact relative vis-à-vis 2023 versus 2024 was 6 billion EUR in additional net debt because of the increased dollar. So if it would have been 2 cents below that, we would have been in that range of 2.75. So this, I'm not concerned about 2.78, but I don't want to lose this kind of ambition because if we're losing it, then you start having a discussion, okay, it's 2.78, why don't we have 2.8? Why don't we have 2.82? So this is why I'm staying pretty much stubborn on the 2.75. Obviously, what we could do is always to sell into a share buyback to reduce our net debt, which we don't do right now, as you know. So this is obviously the easiest lever.
And then we're going to see how the deals are going to play out. If one deal is not coming, just one deal, right? We don't consume $10 billion for M&A in the U.S., and then you're again in that corridor. So you see the moving parts in the net debt bridge. So I think the biggest one for me is obviously currency, which I can't predict. You know that in Q3, we were at EUR 264, right? And your expectation was going down. And then I was surprised by the movement of the dollar. We'll see how the dollar is moving. But I would give you a more, let's say, vague explaining, but I'm pretty stubborn on the EUR 2.75 because our absolute debt is fairly high and therefore should be taken into account as well.
So on the German fixed, look, we're playing back what we're hearing from the B2B segment, right? And the B2B segment is confident that at least part of the slip in Q4 will come back in Q1. And it's very much related to IT revenues. And if you compare what has happened to the public sector revenues relative to the private market, you see there's a difference in the momentum. So I'm relying on the feedback which we have gotten. And therefore, we expect a better movement on the fixed service revenues in Q1.
And Ottavio, when Christian says stubborn, this is a little bit of an understatement.
Okay, yes. So with that, we move on to our next audio participant, which is Robert, who is calling in from the United Kingdom. Robert.
Apologies, technical issues at this end.
My questions are, you're not participating in the T-Mobile buyback at present, so your stake is creeping up, as highlighted by Tim, and that's good news given the stock price. Is the idea that foreign-controlled companies in the U.S. might be disadvantaged from a tax perspective on your radar? Is that something you have contingency plans for or just not a thing to be worried about? And my second question is on the $0.04 gain in the EPS from GD Towers. What triggered that tax benefit, please? Is this a real cash tax saving in Germany or just accounting stuff? And is there any update on European Towers carve out, please? Thanks.
On the first one, I think there is an easy mitigation. You know that the U.S. administration is opposing Pillar One and Pillar Two taxation.
For this year in 2025, they have kind of a safe harbor. If we would extend the safe harbor, it wouldn't be threatened by having, for example, an increase of paying 30% taxes on dividend. We have been very clear to the European Commission that we would clearly advocate for an extension of the safe harbor, and then there shouldn't be a threat. At least this is the understanding of the tax community across the very large companies here in Germany because we discussed it last week. On the Pillar One, it's a tax optimization by moving the headquarters and the value add of the business into a different, let's say, city. That gives you on the business plan a relief on, what's the latent taxes, in total EUR 400 million. Obviously, our share is only 50%, so it's EUR 200 million deferred taxes, yeah, on deferred taxes.
And that explains the one-off which we gained in the evaluation. So it's accounting stuff in the evaluation of the GD Towers business plan.
You can see that Tim hasn't lost his CFO competency either. And with that, we move on to Polo at UBS.
Are you still there, Robert?
The question was answered, I thought. Okay. Yeah. But with that, hopefully it was. Robert, let me know if not. But with that, we move on to Polo at UBS.
Hi, thanks for taking the questions. I have two questions. The first one is on use of cash. So you're not participating in the T-Mobile US buyback, and your stake has risen to 51.5%. So can you talk through the rationale for not participating in the T-Mobile US buyback? At the CMD, you indicated you had EUR 15 billion of balance sheet headroom that you could either use to increase your stake in T-Mobile US or buy back DT stock. But given where the T-Mobile US share price is relative to the DT share price, where is your current thinking on how you're looking to deploy this EUR 15 billion of headroom medium term? And the second question is really just on the outcome of the German elections. Just given the outcome, what impact do you expect this to have on the German telecom sector and on DT? Thanks.
Polo, on your first question, the use of cash, I think we said we have two major purposes on how to use the excess cash. One is obviously buying back shares on the DT side. We have announced the share buyback program for 2025.
Therefore, the EUR 2 billion are standing and we're executing against this. So I would say the remainder, what's been left over, is being spent into an increase of T-Mobile US shares because we don't have any kind of competing investment ideas currently at the table. And as we said also at the Capital Markets Day, we will decide every other day if I'm getting into troubles. Coming back to Ottavio's question earlier on, we may be forced to sell into the share buyback in order to relieve our debt position. But right now, we don't feel forced to do so. So it's basically EUR 2 billion and the remainder is running into T-Mobile US. That may change over time, but right now, this is the current thinking.
Polo, with regard to German elections, following the elections on the weekend intensively, there was a moment where I was quite concerned, where the liberals were not in and one of the left parties were in the parliament and no clear majority anymore for the so-called great coalition between the Conservative Party and the SPD. Now, we have a situation where we have a two-party government in Germany. To be honest, we know the situation with great coalitions. And I have quite some experience in my 10 years here with this. I like it. I like it because it is good to have the two parties not in a kind of confrontational element, but in a kind of consensual situation.
It is much better to talk about ideas, about investments, about needs for the build-out with one party or with one government than representing the big parties here, than trying to do that with the opposition. So therefore, I like the combination. Second, everything what Merz, who is becoming probably our next chancellor here, has said, is pro-economy, is pro-industry, is pro-deburocratization. It is focusing on the unleashing of power of the companies for a better competition. So look, I take him by his word. I take him by his word. And this is definitely for our favor. So I'm optimistic about that. We have good understandings with all the people there. I think this is a good outcome for Deutsche Telekom.
Thank you.
Great. With that, we move on to Mathieu at Barclays, also per audio, please.
Yes. Hi, and thank you for the presentation. I had two questions.
The first one was on Europe. So if we look at 2024, obviously, you had a very good performance in a number of markets. I realized that there's been some moves in taxes in different countries. I'm thinking about Hungary between 2023 and 2024. I was wondering if there was anything to flag for 2025 in any of the major countries in terms of regulatory or tax changes, but also in terms of the competitive environment, if you could qualify some of the main markets. And then I had a second question. I wanted to go back to the question around satellites. And I completely agree that D2C and D2D is not a threat, nor that is Starlink or others on residential broadband in Europe. But it seems to me that in the U.S., it could be a much bigger threat, notably since T-Mobile is deploying FWA.
As you all know, Starlink has just announced that its new Gen 3 satellites will be 50 times more powerful than the previous one. So it seems that they could get a lot more than 5%. I don't know if you want to share any of your thoughts on that one. Thank you.
Mathieu, thank you for the question on Europe. I'm traveling the countries. I've been to Greece recently. Look, there are a lot of, let's say, smaller changes, but there's nothing which is to a bigger situation negatively impact our operations in looking forward in this year. Therefore, I would say the biggest focus lies on Greece with regard to the fiber build-out and the framework for that one and the way how we are able to expand the marketplace there. There are some RFQs going on in this market.
I cannot go into all the details here. So this is for us, you know, the expansion of our fiber build-out in the Greece environment. But Czech Republic is now very stable. The historical things are solved. So Hungary, you know that we had a very positive development there, mainly due to the withdrawal of the telco tax, which we have faced there. So no, I do not see any kind of big changes coming there, which will negatively impact our businesses. So we are quite optimistic that we can keep a high run rate in these markets going forward.
Let me add two things to this. One, obviously, we achieved the 1.8% EBITDA growth in 2024, which we don't expect in 2025. You know that our guidance is 4%-5%, and the price effects will moderate out, as Tim said.
The second one, there's still a benefit in Hungary in 2025, which is the so-called telecommunication windfall tax, which is basically being applied to the revenues. That will basically fade out over the course of the full year. I think the impact is roughly EUR 90 million, which we expect there.
Again, on the satellite side, look, by the way, I'm following this very intensively. To be honest, you know, having fiber at my house and having 5G even standalone in my house, I have now installed Starlink to just, you know, make the user experience around that services and trying to understand that. The data throughput, which is, by the way, growing on average between 30% and 50% on a yearly basis, it is, even with the new satellites, a physical limitation to substitute terrestrial service in the capitals. It's impossible.
Now, is this an area where you can substitute in the countryside low data throughput? Yes, you can. And by the way, it's a good service. I have at my house, for instance, you know, 70 megabits per second in a very stable way. So this is a good service. No question about that. And this is maybe even a competitive situation for the rural areas in Greece or in Croatia. And we know that. But in these areas, we are building 5G and we want to substitute with fixed wireless access rather than going into satellite. On top of that, we are working as well with satellite partners. But look, I think it is a little bit overplayed that Starlink is becoming, let's say, a global telco service. He needs local terrestrial partners.
If he wants to do this, he needs the capacity and then the same economies of scale or cost, which we have here today. Interesting. It's getting better. There's definitely markets where no coverage is available, where this is definitely a good alternative. But for our congested, high-intense data markets, it's an adjacency.
Thanks, Tim. With that, we move on to Steve at Redburn, who is joining us in video. But you have to unmute yourself, Steve.
Sorry. Good point, Hannes. Yeah, sorry about that. Happy birthday. And another senior moment of many. Yeah, a couple of questions. First, I want to come back to sort of German broadband and fiber. I guess there's lots of ways to dice and slice it. You've given us the FTTH numbers and you've given us the 100 megabit numbers.
But on your KPIs, you give a kind of collective VDSL and fiber number. And it looks like the trends are kind of weakening across the board there. Your retail fiber and adds slowed to 61,000 in the quarter versus 270,000 Q4 last year. Your wholesale fiber adds were just 33,000 in the fourth quarter, so we talked about the broadband. So is there a concern here? Are you kind of maxing out on the number of broadband subs you can get onto the collective VDSL and FTTH footprint in Germany now? Is that something we should be concerned about? Or is this just another part of a kind of abnormally competitive Q4 and you'd expect those numbers to bounce back in 2025 and beyond? And then just coming back to Europe and the previous question from Mathieu, I just wanted to dig a little bit deeper.
It looks like there's kind of three markets that are pulling their weight on an outsized basis for service. We talked about Hungary. There's also Austria and Czech. I think in the fourth quarter, Czech EBITDA grew by about 20%, despite the fact that service revenues didn't grow. So maybe some sort of color on that and what we should expect for 2025. And in Austria, it looks like you've been growing double digits. I think that's benefited from a wholesale reclassification on prepaid, but I'm not sure. Again, if you could sort of help us understand what's driving that and what we should look for in 2025, that would be great. And maybe one quick final one for Christian. Can you help us on the cash tax outlook for 2025? T-Mobile is obviously guided, but the cash tax is ex-T-Mobile would be great. Thanks a lot.
Steve, first answer. Look, when it comes to the broadband Net Adds in the fourth quarter, look, I was very clear already. We are not happy with that number. And so therefore, you know, this is not what we're expecting. And we have to improve that number throughout the year. And I mentioned as well, you know, the market share which we are aiming for.
There are reasons for the slowdown in last year. The overall market was quite mature. There was simply not much customer growth in the whole market. Second, we have seen reduced losses from Vodafone, high spending into their retention programs. And on top of that, we saw that the last quarter, the spending for some promotional expansion and even, you know, the homes connected from AltNets in the rural areas, you know, were intensifying. So this is something.
Nevertheless, what we're doing against it, first, you know, we are building fiber. And by the way, nobody builds fiber more than us in this market. The infrastructure share of building out fiber is higher in 2024 than it was the year before. And that means in the future, the potential to upsell and to gain customers, by the way, even in the upsell and gaining new customers is much more likely. So this is just, you know, a development which we have seen now in the fourth quarter. But I'm with our build-out more positive with regard to the future. And the take-up rates of fiber are very encouraging as well because they're almost doubled, you know, year over year. So look, I think we have now to watch out what's happening in the next quarters. We will not go into the crazy price moves here or whatever.
That is not the way how we are doing it. It's more about going about bandwidth and going about the quality here. I don't believe that Vodafone is able to build the same amount of fiber as we can do today in their footprint. And therefore, I'm very optimistic that we see improved numbers will come throughout the year. Does that answering your question?
Yeah, I was also noticing the wholesale fiber net adds are also quite weak in the quarter, just 30,000. So I guess there's a sort of concern that, you know, the fiber adds are coming from VDSL more than ADSL customers. And if I look at the sort of collective fiber market, VDSL plus fiber, that's not really growing or growing very slowly.
I take the point of FTTH, but the numbers you present, which are VDSL plus fiber, there's not a lot of growth in retail or wholesale this quarter. So I wish to speak to the wider markets quite early.
Look, we see a kind of 200,000-300,000 houses growth, 200,000-300,000 house growth in the German market on an annual basis. So this is coming on top of that. There are more single households here in Germany. Yes, there was a slowdown for the whole market. I mentioned that, which includes then both retail and wholesale. But let's see how this is, you know, improving throughout the year. That is speculation. We see growth coming.
Great. Thank you.
Just to clarify, are you talking about cash taxes ex-U.S. or U.S.? What was the...
Well, I mean, the U.S. is obviously guided to $600. So the group number, I can then back out.
So ex-U.S., ex-U.S. is roughly EUR 1.4, not in dollars, right? So now to the more difficult question. So I talked about the tailwind in Hungary, right, on the revenue tax. I think in Austria, we're benefiting from the CPI link and the pricing. So this is all linked together. I think this is an outturn on Czech. I have no clue. So we have to come back, to be honest.
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Czech is also influenced by one-offs.
In general, Steve, because I know you are particularly interested in the contribution from Hungary, I can assure you that in our plan between 2024 and 2027, which is sort of the only couple of markets they planned, but starting off by the end of last year, 2024, we are expecting Hungary to contribute, you know, much less of the growth than it has contributed in the recent years, and it's going to be substantially more balanced. Obviously, in 2025, you have the effect from the tax unwind, which is meaningful, but this is otherwise, I think the growth rests on many pillars. And with that, we move on to Josh, I guess, and thanks, Steve, at Exane by audio.
Thanks, Tim, and I hope you can hear me as well. So I have two questions on pricing strategy. I'll start with fixed and then go to mobile.
On the German broadband pricing strategy, if I look at your website today, you're charging about 5 EUR less a month for your entry-level fiber products than some of your DSL products. So my question is, what's the rationale behind that? Is there an advantage just to moving people to fiber now from a cost perspective, or is the plan that you use this to then upsell them to faster speeds in the future? And in the past, you've talked about higher investments in fiber maybe justifying price increases. From what you've said today about this 40% fair share level, it doesn't sound like we should anticipate any price increases in fixed, but perhaps if you could give us an update on your thoughts around how you could monetize those fiber investments would be helpful.
And then the second question on mobile, going back to Tim's initial comments about keeping out of the fray and using congstar as a tactical sub-brand, how should we square that with the 20% online mobile discounts we're seeing in your online portal at the moment? And is that a short-term thing? Is it a response to a particular promotion from competitors? Are you trying to test the market in a certain way? A bit more of an insight into why you're offering that 20% price promotion would be helpful. Thank you.
Look, I'm not aware about, let's say, this 20% discount on the mobile side, which you're referring to. That is maybe some technical things or some things, but it's not a strategy. Hannes, you want to say something?
It is a promotion where the team wants to test the sensitivity of the online channel, which otherwise they felt was actually disadvantaged in terms of the overall promotional spend and incentives previously. It was a bit of a rejig. I think it should not be seen as a strategic piece. It was a tactical experiment that we had planned. It's not a response to anything. I do not overrate this as a move. As I say, it's limited to a channel.
Again, we are not concerned about the development in our mobile side, not from the pricing, not from the volume side. This is not the area. I think with our superior network quality, we get a fair share in this market and we are on a good track here.
With regard to a fixed line, to be honest, the answer is yes and yes. What we're doing here is, you know, to upsell speed, which is, by the way, working nicely. Christian showed the numbers about upselling into higher bandwidth, which we have in our network to reduce churn and as well not being, you know, too vulnerable to maybe fiber rollouts, which are taking place in these fields. And the second area is about, yes, to attract people into fiber. That is definitely our strategy, which we are focusing on. And by the way, the reason that fiber is now on the left up and, you know, illustration of our slide has a reason because I said that's the most important KPI. And I want to even, you know, stress that throughout the future presentations here.
Great. Thank you. And with that, we move to Adam at HSBC.
Yes, thank you very much for taking my questions. The first one was actually a little bit of a follow-up on Josh's one. There's a lot of focus on the pricing environment in German mobile. Some of that's on discounts and promotions, but also there's the pricing of family plans where telekoms' EUR 10 SIM is very competitive. As you said, the volumes remain strong, but are you confident that that pricing structure is still creating value for DT in the market, or is it creating some pricing risk? I guess it's a bit of a question whether there's a tension between ARPU and ARPA in the market. And then the second question is on company culture. At the capital markets day, you said that radical transparency was the theme for 2024. So how far did you get with your plans there?
Is there a new theme for 2025 that you can share with us? Than ks.
So on a per SIM basis, on the mobile pricing, you're right, it's dilutive. But given the volume intake which we're having, you see in our mobile service revenue increase. So it is an ARPA increase. It is on a per SIM card. It's dilutive, but all up, it basically supports our ambition of 2%-2.5% and historically was higher.
With regard to company culture, look, I can easily say yes. To be honest, I'm thinking about a lot of things. We adjust our kickoff for the top leaders of the company, 1,000 people being here. And we were very transparent about what's going on. I'll give you an example. I believe that we have to work all harder. We have to be aware of that. Success is a big risk for us.
We have to get out of the comfort zone. That means including the home office and other things. So I expect from the team, especially in Germany, that they work more and harder. The second one is definitely the discussion around the global situation. It's not easier. It's very complex. And we need a moral compass. And we reiterated our topics. Look, guys, I don't want to go into all the discussion which you might have in mind with regard to DEI and with regard to the discussion around our democratic values, which are at risk these days.
I was very clear about our values and about how we position ourselves, that we're living in democracies, that we're always accepting policies, but that we have a moral compass and we have a culture which we have to take as a kind of lighthouse and which we're not questioning with regard to ESG, with regard to our social things, with regard to our inclusion, with regard to the respect of people in the organization outside. That was a very important thing for my people in the organization to hear that from us as its leadership team. We talked about the change in our business model, radical transparency, that it means that we will lose jobs in the classical work because the workflow automation will be changed by AI, and this will trigger a lot of changes within the organization.
We had Masa Son in our session talking about, let's say, our partnership, but even beyond what he thinks leaders in the future should use for and should learn in the way how they're thinking and how they get educated. So there are a lot of things happening these days. I'm working on the re-innovation of this team and trying to find new leaders. I believe strongly in tech leaders these days everywhere. That is a change in our industry because so much changes are taking place. And today, you know, having a very good, let's say, year-end result, even, you know, trying to keep honest to myself, if something is not working, look into the mirror. And if something is not working, sorry, if something's not working, look into the mirror.
If something is working, look out of the window and not the other way around because managers tend to be looking in the mirror if things are working well and saying, "How great was I?" And then rather, you know, questioning where the benefit is coming from. And that is related with bashing the U.S. for a lot of things these days. I'm against it. I think it's the weakness of Europe which we have to overcome. And it is as well, you know, about bashing the politics for everything which is not working. You always have to first start with your business. And then you can even ask for better improvements. So there are a lot of things going on here in our discussion with regard to transparency. It's not cozy. And to be honest, I believe even, you know, we have to work much harder.
I was very clear on this one. But is it already a theme? Is it already a very kind of consistent new narrative? To be honest, I'm thinking about it. Good impulse, you said. Give me that question again in the next quarter.
Okay, with that, Adam's question for the next quarter is set. And now we move on to the inaugural question from Carl at Citi.
Thank you very much, Hannes. I'm also a hopeless romantic, so happy anniversary. I've got two questions, please. Firstly, on the nature of the IT business phasing in Germany, I suppose, is it temporary or is it permanent? So by that, I mean, if it were temporary and you expect it to come back, you'd expect the trends to kind of go back to above what they had been as you get that recovery before normalizing towards the norm again.
Or is it a permanent shift whereby you'd expect it to come back over time kind of towards where it has been rather than get it benefiting from that recovery as well? And then secondly, I was wondering if you could comment a bit more on the civil servants' health insurance and the extent to which that has boosted the net income. So what's the scale of this on your balance sheet? How often does it get reviewed? And kind of how much is it normally the accrual running through your EBITDA every year? Thank you.
Okay, let me start with the first one. The answer, it's clearly temporary. And by the way, that has a lot to do in the fourth quarter. Think about the situation in the government. There were these big budget constraints, remember? Germany had no budget for the upcoming year. Second, the coalition broke.
There was no government, you know, in office. And no decisions were taken at that point in time. So we saw a clear slowdown. I expect that there will be even some overproportionate uptake coming now soon. Now, whether it's already in this first quarter or the second quarter, I'm not sure. But I know that there is a high, high, high demand for digital services on that front. So our internal expectations with regard to growth is definitely this was a one-timer and we saw an improvement coming soon.
We're just looking at the second answer to your question. I'm sorry, but I think, Carl, I have to come back to you. I don't have it in front of me. I don't have the documentation in front of me. Hannes, if you have the number, just let me know.
I mean, we have had. So in the GHS, we had an effect from increasing the expected future payments in the civil servant pension fund, which was actually a negative to adjusted net income. At the same time, we had an interest effect, valuation effect, which was favorable and was in the non-recurring part of the financial result, which, you know, Christian flagged when he went through the bridge. We had two effects that are offsetting, but one we showed as a non-recurring effect. That's the net effect. Actually, it was positive, but in the financial result. We can give you the more precise numbers. Yeah, I mean, the precise numbers we disclosed to some extent, but we have said the effect in the adjusted EBITDA was two-thirds of the miss versus the consensus in the Germany.
In terms of the impact on the financial results, we can look it up.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Okay, and then we move on to the last question for today, which will be from James at New Street, please.
Yes, good afternoon all, and thank you for taking the question. So apologies to end with probably the umpteenth question on German mobile. But I think, Christian, in your opening comments, you were quite careful to say that the 2-2.5% growth is obviously your long-term target that you set out in the CMD. You exit Q4 at 2.1%, so at the lower end of that range. Do you feel confident you can hit 2-2.5% for 2025 growth, or do we kind of dip below that range and you hope to come back into it in 2026 and 2027?
And then secondly, I think it's now four months or so since I last asked the MDU question. So here goes with another one, which is, I mean, obviously your FTTH penetration remains low on a reported basis. I think of issues around Level 4 wiring access. So could you give us an update on, if you can, on how many homes you've actually been able to get in and do the Level 4 wiring on? And specifically, you know, there have recent stories in the press that Altice is looking to sell out of OXG. What are you seeing on the ground from OXG at the moment? How often do you come up against them in your kind of contract negotiations with landlords? Have you actually seen much real building going on from them so far? Thank you.
So James, let me start with the first question. Sorry, I gave him the wrong direction. Look, we have no indication that we're not within the guidance of 2%-2.5% in 2025. So I have no indication that we're going to go below that and then we have kind of a hockey stick effect towards the outer years.
Look, on the OXG side, I can tell you the answer. We have seen these guys. By the way, we have intensively discussed as well with them, and we were not interested to work with them. So that is the reason that we haven't seen the potential of that company going forward. So I'm not at all surprised that Altice is leaving. That was, I think, you know, from the beginning, you know, clear that they are not going to be able to build the capacities. They had more an idea than, you know, a build force.
Yeah, so that's not a surprise. We had the offer on the table, but we decided not to pursue with Patrick Drahi at that point in time. Now, on top of that, we have seen that in negotiations with us as well with the landlords. Look, the complex situation with the MDUs, you know, and the landlords, it's not only the landlords. It's even the association of groups, you know, I don't know how the name of it is, you know,
[Foreign language]
The Owners Assembly Order
[crosstalk] Complex processes there. To be honest, I do not have the numbers on the MDUs here with me. I would say, you know, the progress we are making here is limited. We are making slow progress, but it's not a breakthrough yet.
Do you find there in areas where you're going up against where OXG says it's building that they are a credible threat?
Yes, we do. And by the way, I have asked here my office, you know, to give you the numbers here. So, Christian, [Foreign language] Yeah. So we have fiber permissions in Germany for 5.4 million households. That is what we have today. We have today connected 557,000 of them. So that is a tenth of this. But permissions we have are 5.4 million. We have wins in the different quarters of the year in the vicinity throughout last year, and I told only 24. This is in the vicinity of 120,000, 130,000, 180,000 last year. So around 200,000 wins in the MDU segment. The major areas have been Deutsche Multimedia Service GmbH. This is a company from Vonovia, ABG Frankfurt Holding, Antec, and some others.
So I can give you the names on this one, but these are the precise numbers.
That's much appreciated. Thank you very much.
Guys, I think that's it for today, or?
But we have got one question from Emmet, who was not able to ask while the audio was on. So he sent me an email. Maybe we can quickly look at that. So he says that big geopolitical changes in Europe since Trump was inaugurated. There's lots of talk about security and defense and data security falls into this. And you are in Europe and the U.S., and the hyperscalers are very dominant in the European cloud. Do you think changes in geopolitics could see B2B and B2C customers look differently at non-European companies? And would that create an opportunity for Deutsche Telekom in the cloud?
By the way, Emmet, I was expecting that question on data centers and the way going forward. Look, and I should mention that, you know, I was following very closely in personal contact with Masa Son on his target initiative and what he's doing there and the investments of up to $500 billion, which he's considering here, $100 billion from him. So that is definitely something which is a game changer. And I believe that data center infrastructure, plus let's say the stakes on it, they are one of the drivers of sovereignty of the future. So there's no doubt about that. And I think that was even made clear at Macron's Paris summit for AI, how important data center infrastructure is going to be and that we cannot hand it over to the hyperscalers or the U.S. hyperscalers alone.
The U.S. will definitely build their bets on the U.S. because where should they go? And by the way, they have very strong businesses there and they get strong commitments here from Oracle, from foreign investors like Masa Son , SoftBank, but even, you know, from the existing players. So they will benefit as well from governmental orders. So that is the difference here. And I hope, and by the way, if you would look up at LinkedIn, you would find my recommendation for the new government, the 10 points, how Germany should embrace the digital ecosystem in a better way and what are the topics they should address. You will find as well that the government should be an anchor tenant for European infrastructure. So I think it's very important that they are moving forward and considering cloud services here in Europe. I believe the cloud market will grow.
It's growing by 30% on an annual basis anyhow. AI will definitely drive cloud infrastructure use as well, and on top of that, the automation of a lot of services will drive capacities here as well. No doubt about that one. I told you about that with MagentaCloud and other activities we are driving some activity here, but it's just, you know, maybe a small portion of it. There will be definitely more cloud infrastructure being built in Europe to create sovereignty. To be honest, I don't know what our role might be in this. That is not only a question about, let's say, the demand. It's even a question about the possibility of energy prices or low energy prices, water treatments. It's as well even the utilization of this from the local tenants here, so let's see how this is evolving.
Our focus on CapEx today is very clear where we are investing the money. But I think there will be more sovereignty discussion driving local orders and local use of players just as a consequence out of this competitive situation between the different protagonists.
Thanks, Tim. And I still owe you the answer related to the effect in financial income related to the civil servant pension, health insurance, civil servant health insurance. And that effect was just over EUR 100 million for the full year. It was slightly negative in the fourth quarter. So that contributed to the non-recurring items in that magnitude. So that's now covering both effects that we had related to that line item. With that, we come to the end of our conference call today. We thank you for participating. And if you have any further questions, we kindly ask you to contact the IR department.
Looking forward to hear from you again soon and see you hopefully and without a goodbye for today.