[Foreign Language]
[Foreign Language]
I would like t o welcome you, the shareholders, shareholders' representatives, as well as representatives.
[Foreign Language]
On behalf of the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management, I am happy that despite the beautiful weather that so many of you have come. Please note, and this is relevant only to those of you listening to the German original, that I may use the masculine form only, of course. Any such use implicitly includes all genders.
[Foreign Language]
I look forward to welcoming you again this year in person here at the World Conference Center, Bonn with the exception of Ms. Seelemann- Wandtke. The Supervisory Board will attend this year's shareholders' meetings in full. The entire Board of Management is present. I would particularly like to welcome Mr. Rodrigo Diehl, who is attending the shareholders' meeting as a member of the Board of Management for the first time today. I will come back to this later.
[Foreign Language]
I would like to welcome the Notary Public, Dr. Christoph Neuhaus, who has been appointed to take the minutes of the shareholders' meeting.
[Foreign Language]
First, a few notes on the premises. The main room of today's meeting is this New York Hall, including the gallery, which is accessible to you from outside, where I see many of you. You can also follow the meeting in audio and video in the Nairobi Hall. Audio transmission is planned in the other areas of the venue. The attendance area includes all rooms that are open to you after you have passed through the registration, i.e., in addition to the rooms already mentioned, the outdoor area accessible to you from the indoor area, as well as all other ancillary rooms and areas accessible to you, including the foyer up to the exit or the speakers' registration.
The Speakers' Registration Counter is located here in the main hall, at the other end of this hall, on the right-hand side, as I see this.
We have also set up an information stand for you again. This is located in the foyer on the entrance level, and it's certainly worthwhile.
The shareholders and shareholders' representatives present are entered in the list of participants. This is kept electronically and is updated on an ongoing basis. It can be consulted at the terminal. These can be found in the main room to the right of the registration deck and in the Nairobi Hall. The convocation of the shareholders' meeting, together with the complete agenda and the management proposed resolutions on the announced agenda items, was published in due form and time in the Federal Gazette, Bundesanzeiger on the 4th of March 2025, and was also published throughout Europe on the same day. A printout of the announcements is available to the notary and can also be consulted at the registration deck. The Notary Public will enclose the printout of the minutes as an attachment.
You can also consult the documents relating to today's shareholders' meeting, which have been available on the company's website in addition to the invitation and the agenda. Since the convening notice was published at the registration desk, the counter motions and election proposals to be made accessible have been published on our company's website with all the necessary information. Copies of these can be found over there at the registration desk and at the information stand in the foyer on the entrance level. Motions for additions to the agenda pursuant to section 122(2) of the German Stock Corporation Act have not been received. Today's shareholders' meeting will be broadcast in full on the internet in audio and video and will also be recorded for documentation purposes. This opening, as well as Mr. Höttges' speech and any other remarks by Mr. Höttges, can be accessed later on the internet.
For the sake of order, I would like to point out that the Board of Management is supported by employees in the back office when recording the questions and preparing the answers. In order to ensure that the questions are recorded correctly, an audio recording is made, which is deleted afterwards. Please understand that it is not permitted to make your own video or audio recordings of the meeting. You have received an HV shareholder meeting card at the speakers' registration counters today. You will need your HV card to exercise your rights as a shareholder at today's meeting, in particular voting rights. On your HV card, you also find information on leaving the meeting before it ends, as well as information on how to grant a proxy and issue voting instructions. Please consult this information carefully.
Please present your HV card at the exit counter should you wish to leave the shareholders' meeting before it ends. We will conduct the debate on the items on the agenda in form for general debate. Any speaker may address any item on the agenda and ask questions. Shareholders who want to exercise their right to speak or ask questions need to register at the speakers' registration counter presenting their HV card. You will receive a registration form that you should fill in and return to one of the staff at the speakers' registration counter. I would like to ask those shareholders who intend to speak to submit their request to speak as early as possible as of now. I will explain the voting procedure in detail immediately before the votes.
As a precautionary measure, however, I would like to point out right now that votes can only be cast here in the main hall. As an acoustic signal to indicate the start and end of voting, we once again have the gong at our disposal, which I will now use for demonstration purposes. [Foreign Language]
Regarding the organizational remarks, we will now move on to the agenda. Agenda item 1 reads: Submissions to the shareholders' meeting pursuant to section 177, subsection 1, sentence 1 of the German Stock Corporation Act. The annual financial statements, the consolidated financial statements, the summarized management and group management report, and the report of the Supervisory Board are presented under this agenda item in particular. These and other documents related to today's shareholders' meeting are available on the company's website. You can also consult them at the registration desk. You will also find terminals in the foyer where you can consult the online version of the annual report, as well as the convocation notice and the agenda for today's shareholders' meeting in PDF format. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now give the floor to Mr. Höttges for his report on behalf of the Board of Management.
[Foreign Language]
A warm welcome to our shareholders' meeting 2025. When you look in the mirror every morning, you never seem to get older. You know, when you look at the pictures from the past, you do find that things have indeed changed. At this AGM, I would like to take you on a journey through time because Deutsche Telekom is celebrating an anniversary this year. We will turn 30 years old. I would like to take you on a quick journey to look at all the things that have changed. Let's start in 1995. Let's take a look at how Telekom was working back then. We were a registration entity, and that was from 8:00 A.M. to 12:00 noon. You had lunch break, and there was service from 1:00 P.M. to 2:30 P.M. By the way, we didn't have customers back then.
These were applicants. Any applicant who wanted to have a telephone line had to wait until about six to eight weeks before this line was actually connected. These were the forms that people had to use. Today we have apps such as My Magenta, etc. Everybody's got it on their smartphone. You can basically use Deutsche Telekom services 24/7. Today, Deutsche Telekom is the service market leader in your markets and in Germany far and away. We are winning all the accolades. However, over the next 30 years, there will be further new developments. Today we are using automated bots, avatars, to answer customers' questions. Last year, we received more than 6.5 million queries that were processed by so-called bots. 40% of all queries are solved by way of our automated service in the first go. Service has really fundamentally changed.
Of course, we have our infrastructure as a foundation for all that. This is the old FeTAp 150 telephone. I'm guessing you were able to find it in every living room in Germany back then. It wasn't really possible to hide from the other family members. Everybody was listening in when you were using this telephone. All these services went through this copper cable. Somebody came up with the idea to say, "Okay, why don't we also connect computers through this network?" These old routers came into play. You may remember it back then with 64 kilobytes per second. That was 30 years ago. Incidentally, if you wanted to send a song or something like that, it would take six minutes. The copper network was combined with vectoring technology. The internet came up, vectoring technology.
This is one of the Speedport routers that today offer up to 250 megabits per second in our infrastructure as transmission speed. To be quite honest with you, that's not even enough for us. That's why we are rolling out this fiber everywhere. By the way, by now, it even comes in Magenta underground. Through one of these fibers, we have 15,000 times the speed that we used to have in the old copper network. We're not standing still. This is the router of the future that we're working on at the moment that will not only be used to control your television sets in the future and other devices, but these routers will offer speeds of up to 50 gigabits per second. Compared to 1995, that will be 750,000 times faster.
Of course, there's the mobile network that has received a lot of accolades here. By the way, in 1995, a mobile phone looked like that. The pocket network, the pocket network, that's what it was called. It wouldn't really fit into any pocket, but that was the so-called infamous C network. People back then thought that mobile communications would only be used by a few people and that it wouldn't really become a widespread thing, which is why only 2,000 antennas were set up for the so-called C network. You know how things evolved then over the past 30 years. Today, Deutsche Telekom has 300 million mobile customers alone. We used to have 2,000 antennas, like I said, and today we have 160,000 antennas in place across the globe. Devices today are controlled via AI.
By the way, this telephone has 100,000 times the computing capacity of the Apollo rocket that flew to the moon. That is not the end of the story. We are connected, and we will be even more connected in the future. You know, you can measure your heartbeat, your heart frequency, whether you're upset or not, and all that information can then be transferred to the cloud, for instance. Or glasses. Some smart glasses are constantly connected to the 5G network, and these smart glasses are already used. They do not only come with a lot of technology, but you can also ask questions such as, "Who's the gentleman who's talking to me right now? What's that building? What sort of information do I need for this and that?" The information is then shown on a display. You can see it here behind me.
Artificial information in connection with our mobile networks, that'll, you know, bring us forward in the future. Everything that can be connected will be connected. We are building the network of the networks. We are installing satellite technology in our mobile network to make sure that wherever there is no mobile coverage, customers will still be reachable and will be able to send out an emergency call. We set up a strong partnership with Starlink in America to achieve that. In Europe, we are working on corresponding projects as well. This is something that we presented at the Mobile World Congress just recently.
This is the first flying mobile antenna because it comes with a 5G sensor, and you can use it, for instance, in a disaster area to make sure that people who are in an emergency are still able to communicate with the outside world. The network of the networks. This is the future of mobile communication. Let me talk about the next topic, which is the Telekom corporate culture and the Telekom brand. We are the world's most valuable telecommunications brand. Our customer service has received so many accolades. We've received, we are the number one both in Europe and in the States, but it wasn't always like that. In 1995, it was said that we were just a dusty state-owned company that was run by incompetent civil servants.
I did not think that was right, you know, to denigrate them in this way, because we learned a lot from the civil servants. Last but not least, the sense of duty, which we still have today. Back then, there were books about us. In 1995, the Telekom Hater. Books about Deutsche Telekom. That has definitely changed. We have turned into a lifestyle brand. This is what a Telekom employee looked like in 1995. Very smart, but great. This is our current fashion brand. If you're interested in our fashion brands, why do you not come and see us at our Telekom shop at headquarters? I am sure you will find something you like. Over the past 30 years, people in this company have driven the transformation, and we have developed a corporate culture that is one of a kind.
You might want to compare us to other companies. You won't find the same anywhere. One thing remained the same over the past 30 years, and that was our corporate culture and the way that we always want to prepare this company for the next change.
[Foreign Language]
I will come to your old, which is why I had to leave. Fun Fact . I was born one week after Deutsche Telekom. 30 years Telekom, that's 30 years myself. [Foreign Language] . Dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, customers. Back then, back then, everything was better, right? I hear this a lot. People say it a lot. Back, way back when, things might have been better for the competition, that's true. Deutsche Telekom is living proof to the contrary. Who would have thought that Germany would become Germany's most profitable company? We are just that. 2024 was a record year.
Revenue was almost EUR 116 billion, up 3.4%. Earnings from operations, EUR 43 billion. That was the highest level in our company's history, up 6%. The Europe segment was even up 8%. Free cash flow, EUR 19.2 billion, up 19%. And earnings per share, EUR 1.90, up 19%. We've never exceeded that. We've never paid out more. The same applies to the dividend. Our proposal today is EUR 0.90 per share for business year 2024. Our share price has also seen an excellent trajectory in 2024, reaching EUR 28.89 at the end of the year. We have done better than the DAX, Euro Stoxx, and telco stocks, and all other telecommunications companies in the world. We beat them. This results in a total return of around 38% for you for the last business year. I hope you're pleased about that.
We even think we're undervalued. We want to strengthen and boost confidence in our share even further. This year, buy back shares worth up to EUR 2 billion. That, of course, is an excellent idea at this juncture. Ladies and gentlemen, we could simply just say, "Everything's great," but we're not naive. We are living in turbulent times, politically and economically. That is just one more reason why it is good to be with Deutsche Telekom right now. We're not volatile. In fact, we're stable. We're not an uncertain factor. For many, we are a safe place to invest, a safe haven. We are the backbone of the digital society, and connection is our product. The last thing people want to do, that's the last thing people want to do without, even in challenging times.
We are strong on both sides of the Atlantic. We are not dependent on any one market. If things slow down somewhere, we are able to compensate for it somewhere else. We are a global company, but we produce locally. That is why we are less affected by tariffs. We have been investing more than the competition for years. That secures our cash flow going forward. That is why we are also a reliable employer for our 200,000 Deutsche Telekom employees worldwide. In spite of all of these things, ladies and gentlemen, more of the same cannot and will not be our motto. We need change. Kodak, BlackBerry, Air Berlin, these were once icons of their industry. Today, they are a stark reminder of what happens if you fail to keep reinventing yourself. That is why we do what we can.
We do not allow ourselves to be distracted by the negative mood, the negative atmosphere all around us. No, we stay focused on what lies ahead. At Deutsche Telekom, we say, "Put your blinkers on." Put those blinkers on, keep your eye on the goal, and you will reach it. In October, we outlined targets for the period through 2027 at our Capital Markets Day. We expressly confirmed them today. We believe and are confident that we can achieve even more, more with artificial intelligence. Throughout the company. By leveraging our global strength, we want the records of today to be the standard of tomorrow. We want to continue to grow. We want to grow by an average of 4% in terms of service revenue. With respect to earnings from operations, by an average of between 4-6%.
This year, we expect to turn in around EUR 44.9 billion. Free cash flow is expected to reach around EUR 21 billion by the end of 2027. This year, we've already achieved around EUR 19.9 billion in the forecast for 2025. We are striving for earnings per share of around EUR 2.50 by the end of 2027. This year, we expect it to be around EUR 2. Of this result, we believe that the dividend should be between 40%-60% of the earnings per share. What is really important is our indebtedness is in a healthy ratio to revenue. We have a very high and good rating. Thanks to this rating, we always have access to the capital market at good conditions. We want that to remain so in the future.
[Foreign Language] , Ladies and Gentlemen, Ulrich Lehner, our chairman for many years, just said it in the film clip. If you do the right thing, you can't help but being successful. Figures are just the what. The key factor is how you do it. With this in mind, I want to tell you about four principles that we follow and will be following in the coming years. First of all, we make the best network better every day. In 2024, we invested EUR 16 billion globally, primarily in 5G and optical fiber. The fixed network in Germany is where we come from. It should also, it is to be our future. We build more optical fiber than any other company in Germany. In 4,000 towns, cities, and municipalities, we are currently building more optical fiber.
Ten million customers can opt for this service here. Another 10 million can do so in Europe. We are also entering the fiber market in the United States. We have just bought the company Lumos. We are planning to buy Metronet. In both cases, together with investors, because that is good for our balance sheet and mitigates risk for our business in America. Our target in the US is to have 12-15 million fiber optic households by 2030. Let's have a glance at mobile communications. It's getting better and better as well. Our mobile communications are even excellent. That's not just me saying this. Independent tests say it too. In Germany, we already cover 98% of all households with 5G. We built out this network faster than we actually promised. This figure is 77% in the other European markets.
The same figure in the US is over 98% with 5G. In the US, no network registered as great a customer satisfaction as T-Mobile. A test institute rated it as the fastest network in the world. Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, Ladies and Gentlemen, in the area of regulation, there has also been a positive development. For the first time, frequencies for mobile have not been auctioned. They have been renewed. We are only paying a fee of $200 million instead of paying billions of euros for frequency. That is a genuine paradigm shift. We have been fighting hard for this for many years. After all, we prefer to reduce mobile coverage deficits instead of government budget deficits. It is important for the new government to make it easier to obtain permits for the build-out. The network build-out must be considered of overriding public interest.
This means that people who have voiced concerns should be allowed to express their concerns, but they shouldn't stop doers from doing. Let's take a look into the future. What will the network of the future look like? How can it become even better? We're building the first network that becomes smarter with age. A network that repairs itself and detects problems before customers even notice them. A network that works everywhere because everything works in unison. Optical fiber, mobile communications, satellites, a network of networks. Everything from data centers, from the cloud, managed using artificial intelligence. The network of the future is significantly more efficient. Above all, it's more personal. It's oriented closely to customers' needs and their experience. That brings me to my second point. The customer is always the best investment. The customer is always the best investment.
That applies to all markets. In 2024, we won countless prizes. For example, every prize in Germany for our customer service hotline. We solve cases during the first call, 74% of the time. That is another record statistic. At the same time, waiting times are even lower. On average, just over 90 seconds. Complaints are also down, down 28% year on year. You know, I really myself would not have thought it would be possible that we would have achieved this incredible result. Let's take a look forward. When it comes to service, we no longer compare ourselves to competitors operating in our industry. Internally, we measure ourselves with the most successful companies in the world in terms of customer satisfaction, like Amazon, Netflix, or Apple. To make this work, we need artificial intelligence. Let me give you two examples of what I mean.
First of all, the home network. Customers often get in touch with us because their router isn't working at home, or there's an error, or this no longer has to be the case, however, because we automatically detect faults and then automatically eliminate them before the customer even notices the fault and that a repair process has taken place. Secondly, customer service hotline. Our customer service team assists our customers and logs every call, what was discussed, what was agreed. Now we're using artificial intelligence as well. It takes care of the note-taking. The documentation afterwards is completely automated if the customer has provided their consent. That means we save time for what's really important for you, our customers. Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, ladies and gentlemen, the network and service are always the foundations of what we have to offer.
We need more to enthuse our customers. That leads me to our third principle. We always offer added extras. We want to reward loyal customers for being with us without any catches. No collecting miles, no bonus points. At Deutsche Telekom, most of our extras are free of charge. The best example of this is the Mein Magenta app. I hope you all have it on your terminal devices. Fifteen million people use it in Europe alone, and 30 million people in the US. In the app, you get additional data volume through your cell phone and discounts on purchases. You can buy concert tickets via the app before sales, before they even go on sale. There is also artificial intelligence at no cost if you want to try it out. The provider Perplexity has been built into the Mein Magenta app.
Incidentally, Perplexity is not a search engine. It is an answer engine. Perplexity provides answers to almost all questions. It also cites its sources. Of course, Perplexity is also built into the Deutsche Telekom cell phone, the so-called AI phone, which will automatically implement that if you want. After all, we want people to spend less time searching and more time finding. Second example, Magenta TV. We are the leading provider of internet TV. The European soccer championships gave us an additional boost. We showed all the games live. We gained 311,000 new customers in 2024 alone. Only in Germany, the market share has surged considerably. We now have around 9 million TV customers across Europe.
Magenta TV is a one-stop shop for everything: TV streaming providers such as RTL + or Netflix, with all the media libraries, with Magenta TV Plus on top, free of charge, with exclusive box sets from the other side of the Atlantic. TV shows produced in-house with celebrity chef Tim Raue, for instance. We are talking about growth beyond our core business. That is the next step. One of many examples is digital payment. Our colleagues in Greece have created payzy. Now we are launching it in other countries as well. Payzy is a digital wallet that allows you to pay using your cell phone. You are already familiar with this. They already exist, these apps. Ours is better. Many banks charge their customers for credit cards. Payzy users get money back, 1% of every purchase. That makes shopping even more fun.
[Foreign Language] , ladies and gentlemen, this brings me to my fourth principle. Because Deutsche Telekom would not be complete without its business customers. They account for around 20% of our revenue in the meantime, our business customers. Our maxim is this: We make companies stronger. T-Systems is particularly important here. I am happy we have T-Systems because digitalization is not a trend. It is an absolute necessity for our business and their competitiveness. Our industry is under massive pressure. Made in Germany and Made in Europe is showing some cracks. We want to help companies by offering digital solutions, better ones, to keep them competitive and make them more efficient in their work. The world is becoming less secure. We defend the systems of 600 companies against cyber attacks. Artificial intelligence is completely changing our industries. AI only works if it is fed with data.
We have the cloud infrastructure where this data is held. The data centers and demand is enormous. Earnings from operations at T-Systems was up in organic terms by 12.3% in 2024 to EUR 369 million. The buzzwords of the time are sovereignty, independence for Europe. What others have been talking about, we have been offering for 20 years now, the sovereign cloud. The data always remains in Europe. Operation of the technical solutions remains in Europe. We offer solutions from various providers, meaning our customers are not dependent on single large companies. That is also sovereignty. We provide the foundations for that at our company. We want to continue growing with T-Systems, both in existing and in new areas, such as national security. It would be helpful if the state, instead of just talking about it, specifically commissioned European companies as an anchor customer.
That would provide security with respect to investments and a boost for Europe as a center of business. Shareholders, we follow these principles and use them as a compass for change. We are changing. Because as I hope I've been able to convey this message, change over the course of the past 30 years has made Deutsche Telekom better. Change will also make us strong in the future. Change hurts. Because it's always unpleasant for every stakeholder. That's why it's so important to do the things that we really don't want to do. It's a bit like exercising. Sometimes you just have to make the effort. You feel so much better for it afterwards. Each change trains our muscles. With each change, we are able to remove the next obstacle from our path. You have to look upon Deutsche Telekom as a happy company.
I would like to thank all of the Deutsche Telekom employees and the management team and the supervisory board for helping shape this change. Thank you. [Foreign Language] for being willing and able to continue to reinvent yourself and Deutsche Telekom. That after 30 years. Our joint mission is to be successful in a sustainable manner for the long term. We intend to achieve this, every individual in the company, but always together. It's important that we have different people in the company, different skill sets, different backgrounds, different perspectives. That's why we treat each other with respect and integrity. These values are what have made us successful in the past 30 years. That's what will make us successful in the future as well. Laws change, ladies and gentlemen, markets change. Deutsche Telekom also changes. Our culture will remain.
Ladies and gentlemen, what applies to us as a company also goes for Europe and Germany. Europe needs success. Europe needs a will to perform. Cosiness is over. I believe we've become too comfortable. We thought that our business model would just keep on working. Many things are not working anymore. That is why we have to change. What we need is an industry of the future. That means first and foremost, data. Because it is needed to control robots. It is needed for smart production. It is needed to train artificial intelligence. We need to do that. We need chipsets and data centers. For all this, we need especially an enormous amount of inexpensive energy. Only that will allow reindustrialization of Germany and Europe. On top of all this, I believe that we need a state and government agencies that are similarly efficient.
I would like to expressly welcome the initiative of Thomas de Maizière, who is the chairman of our Telekom Foundation and other leading Democrats for an empowered state. A state that accelerates things instead of putting the brakes on it. And establish clear roles for the public authorities and where citizens are customers rather than applicants. Ladies and gentlemen, just complaining doesn't achieve anything. Pointing fingers at politicians or regulators urging is silver, but doing is gold. Just complaining is just wrong. That's why Deutsche Telekom is a company of doing. With our DT Capital Partners and T-Capital, we are targeting investment in young companies. EUR 5 billion as things stand. EUR 2 billion of this is going into a new risk capital fund. In AI with Perplexity or Eleven Labs. In robotics with Waabi or Dexory. In energy with Marvel Fusion and ACCURE.
Data centers with maincubes or Greenscale. We are just doing it. I pledge to you, that's just the beginning. Our investments in data centers will be ramped up. We will be joining forces with other investors to build the future in Germany and Europe as a center of business. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, you see, Deutsche Telekom is successful. We are making the best network even better. We are investing in our customers. We are always offering extras on top. We make other companies stronger. We are not resting on our laurels. We are always looking forward. We know that everything was not always better way back then. It certainly was not the case at Deutsche Telekom. We have made mistakes over the last 30 years. Some investors lost a lot of money. There was a spying scandal. Team Telekom got caught doping. There was poor service.
DSL lines that sometimes arrived after the engineer. Let's not forget that you sometimes have to fall down in order to get up stronger. Sometimes it's necessary to change direction if you want to become a leader. If you want to change the future, you can't be afraid of your past. True strength isn't about never making mistakes. It's about having a desire to change, while always ensuring a combination of a good gut feeling and a clear head. Precisely this is the true strength of a company that even after 30 years says, "Deutsche Telekom, ladies and gentlemen, the best is yet to come." At 30, we're only just getting started. Thank you. [Foreign Language]
I would like to thank the Board of Management and all employees of Deutsche Telekom for their excellent work. [Foreign Language] . In the past 30 years, as Mr. Höttges rightly said, there were ups and downs. That is life. As long as the trend is going in the right direction, you have to live with it. That is why I would like to thank explicitly the entire company for this excellent work and results. Please share this with all employees. [Foreign Language] . Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to give the floor to Dr. Illek to explain the 2024-2025 share buyback program.
Thank you, Dr. Appel. [Foreign Language]
Shareholders, in accordance with the provisions of Section 71, Subsection 3, Sentence 1 of the German Stock Corporation, I would like to briefly inform you about the 2024 and the 2025 share buyback programs. In the 2024 business year, Deutsche Telekom launched a share buyback program, which started on the 3rd of January 2024 and was completed on the 18th of December 2024. As part of this share buyback program, in the electronic trading of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, etc., a total of 81,268,383 of the company's own shares were repurchased. They account for a proportionate amount of the share capital of EUR 208,448,091.48, which corresponds to 1.63% of the share capital. The average purchase price per share in 2024 was EUR 24.29. Today, it's about EUR 31. The total amount repurchased under the 2024 share buyback program was EUR 1,973,823,349.
All Deutsche Telekom shares acquired as part of the 2024 share buyback program will be canceled this year. This is being done to reduce the dilutive effect of the capital increase of 2021. In the run-up to the capital markets day last October, we announced that we would also like to implement a share buyback program in 2025. This also has a volume of up to EUR 2 billion. The first tranche began on the 1st of January this year and ran until the 4th of April 2025. We acquired 40,155,589 shares in Xetra trading. They account for a proportionate amount of the share capital of EUR 36,238,88. This corresponds to 0.28% of the share capital. The average purchase price per share was EUR 32.44. The total amount of the buyback of the first tranche amounted to EUR 459,212,090. Shares are to be canceled for the most part.
To a lesser extent, however, they will also be used to serve remuneration programs for executives and employee participation programs. That was my overview on these share buyback programs.
Thank you, Mr. Illek. [Foreign Language] . In the interest of a speedy annual general meeting, I will keep my verbal report brief. The detailed written report of the Supervisory Board can be found in the annual report. The Supervisory Board has closely monitored the management of the business by the Board of Management over the past 35 years. This is reflected by 35 meetings in total, 6 plenary sessions, 1 strategy meeting, and 28 committee meetings. The attendance rate was very high, with 98%. Cooperation with the Board of Management has been very good and characterized by mutual trust.
The high number of meetings ensures that we are in close and regular contact with the Board of Management. The written and verbal reports of the Board of Management were the main basis for fulfilling the statutory supervisory duties. At its meetings, the Supervisory Board regularly discussed the company's current situation. The Board of Management fulfilled its duties to provide information in a comprehensive and timely manner. The reports met the specified requirements in terms of content and scope. Between meetings, the Board of Management also reported on individual matters in writing or in. In addition, I had regular meetings with the Board of Management, in particular with the Chairman of the Board of Management, Mr. Höttges, on the basis of our own analysis and the audit reports by the auditor.
The Supervisory Board has come to the conclusion that there are no reasons to doubt the appropriateness and effectiveness of the internal control system and the risk and opportunity management system set up by the Board of Management. We discussed with the Board of Management and thoroughly examined the transactions and measures that the Board of Management submitted to us for approval in accordance with the list of transactions requiring approval in the financial year of 2024. We approved each of the measures submitted to us. The auditor audited the annual financial statements and the consolidated financial statements, as well as the combined management and group management report, and issued an unqualified audit opinion in each case. The Board of Management and the external auditor explained the documentation relating to the financial statements in detail to both the audit and finance committee and the plenary session of the Supervisory Board.
The Supervisory Board examined the annual financial statements and the consolidated financial statements and approved them at its meeting on the 25th of February 2025. The annual financial statement has thus been adopted. Allow me to briefly mention the main topics of the Supervisory Board's work. Of course, I'm looking to the annual consolidated financial statement and the further development of Telekom's group strategy on its way to becoming a leading digital telco. The strategy was presented last autumn. Of course, the Supervisory Board discussed it very intensively before that and welcomed the strategy expertise into the business strategy and the development of the segments. There were also topics we dealt with, of course, the dividend policy and the share buyback programs about what Dr. Illek has just reported at Deutsche Telekom and also at T-Mobile US.
We obviously looked into the markets and the competition situation, the financial and debt situation, ESG, the sustainability-related areas of responsibility of the company, environment, E, social, and government. We have once again taken a close look at the topic of sustainability and will continue to do so. Budget and annual financial plan for 2025 and the medium-term planning for 2025 to 2028 was something we looked at. [Foreign Language] Gopalan for the Board of Management of Telekom AG. [Foreign Language] . As Chairman of the Board of Management, which we decided a couple of weeks ago, the termination of the member of Mr. Gopalan and the appointment of Mr. Diehl as his successor for Telekom Deutschland. I will come back to the personal matters of the Board of Management in a moment.
I come to the last topic. We discussed the remuneration of the Board of Management, adjustments to the remuneration system for the Board of Management. I will come back to this later in more detail. That is also a proposal to vote on today. Now, the company. The business year of 2024, as I said, was another strong and very successful year, despite all challenges from geopolitical tensions, higher energy prices, and high inflation. 3.4% year on year to EUR 150.8 billion, adjusted EBITDA grew by a strong 6.2% to EUR 43 billion. I would like to repeat this, as Mr. Höttges said, is the highest result in the DAX today, which is an outstanding success. Adjusted net income grew by 18.3% to EUR 9.4 billion. Mr. Höttges just presented it, and it enables us to pay out or propose a higher dividend.
The group is on a growth path and is leading in the industry. The operating business has developed well in all areas, as Mr. Höttges did not say it. I was impressed as today we have a market capitalization higher than all the other European telco companies that bought different 30 years ago and also 10 years ago. It shows the journey this company has gone. With its strategy of turning Deutsche Telekom into the leading digital telecommunication company and the leading digital telco, it is well prepared for the opportunities and challenges of the future. Mr. Höttges explains to us how important it is that a company is constantly changing. This company, you own a part of our share of it, is undergoing constant change, and they are doing an excellent job. This has laid a very solid foundation for further success.
The good business performance confirms the excellent work of the Board of Management. Once again, I would like to explicitly thank all employees for that. On the basis of the relatively shift in the 2024 business year, the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board proposed dividend according to the dividend policy, a payment of EUR 0.90 per share. Now, the task is to consistently pursue the strategy presented by Mr. Höttges. I am optimistic that the Board of Management and the employees will continue to demonstrate Deutsche Telekom's strength. I know the company well. I was really impressed to see in the past three years the high level of motivation of all employees in all countries. That makes the difference in the industry. Our competitors face enormous problems. We at Deutsche Telekom, we have employees who are highly motivated, and that makes the difference day after day.
Your shareholders can be very proud of that. Ladies and gentlemen, now personal matters of the Board of Management and Supervisory Board. As already reported, the last shareholders, Mr. Srini Gopalan, was reappointed to the Board of Management for the beginning of the last year. In January of this year, the Supervisory Board made a number of related personnel decisions. Firstly, the Supervisory Board terminated the ongoing appointment of Mr. Höttges and reappointed him prematurely for the period from the 1st of February 2025 to the end of 2028. The Supervisory Board, I as the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, welcome to this session very much. It is an excellent step for this company, and we are grateful to Mr. Höttges that he agreed to accept his reappointment. [Foreign Language] .
In the same meeting, the Supervisory Board approved the termination of the management of Mr. Gopalan. In March 2025, he took over the role of the Chief Operating Officer at T-Mobile US. Of course, we are happy that T-Mobile looked internationally and decided to appoint one of us as a Chief Operating Officer. In addition, the Supervisory Board appointed Mr. Höttges as a member of the Board of Management for three years from March 2025 and assigned him the segment Germany. With these personal decisions, the Supervisory Board is sending a signal of continuity and some pressure. Chair, Mr. Höttges has turned Telekom into the leading telco company in the world. I'm delighted that he has agreed to the Supervisory Board's request to continue. You said things before, you keep repeating to us, I'm sorry about that. Sometimes you read it because you have to read certain things.
I said it already, Mr. Höttges, how happy I am that you continue to be on board. I also said it about Mr. Gopalan, that we are happy that T-Mobile US wanted to have Mr. Gopalan. We were sad, but we were also happy to let him go because it is the most important shareholding. That is why we were happy to have somebody there who was really crested there and who will continue to strengthen the bridges between the two companies. With Mr. Diel, we have appointed an excellent manager who was in charge of Magenta business in Austria and stands for a juvenile success and customer focus. Mr. Diel, we are happy that you are now on board, and we are optimistic that you will continue with the segment Germany, continued to manage it successfully as before.
There were no personal changes among the employee representatives in the last business year. On the shareholder representative side, there were the following personal changes. Ms. Hessel resigned with effect from December 31, 2024. She was succeeded by Stefan Ramge, who was appointed to the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom by order of the Bundesgerichtshof at the beginning of January of this year for a limited period until the end of today's shareholders' meeting. We proposed to elect Mr. Ramge today. Mr. Hinrichs resigned in January 2024 with effect from today's shareholders' meeting. With the end of this shareholders' meeting, the terms of Dr. Jung will also end. The following new appointments are to be made to the Supervisory Board to be appointed to the Supervisory Board. Mr. Ramge, Mr. Hinrichs, Ms.
Knight, and the two candidates will introduce themselves in a moment. Mr. Ramge, who is already a member of the Supervisory Board, I will say a few words in a moment. First, I would like to thank the three members who left, Mr. Hößer, Mrs. Jung, and Mr. Hinrichs, who in their many years, Mrs. Hößer only in two or three years, but Mrs. Jung and Mr. Hinrichs for very long. Mr. Hinrichs has been always for 12 years on the Supervisory Board, and they have helped our company a lot. Mr. Hinrichs when in 2013 joined the Supervisory Board, Mr. Höttges was not yet CEO, I said it yesterday when we said farewell to him. He helped us to take a very important decision with the company to make Mr. Höttges the CEO of this company.
I only had the opportunity to extend his contract as the Chairman of the Supervisory Board. The wisdom of the Supervisory Board then to choose Mr. Höttges is now reflected in results today. The share price was just a bit above EUR 10. Mrs. Jung had very much that the Finance and Audit Committee, which I attend regularly because it's important as a Chairman, is doing an excellent job. The Supervisory Board is informed comprehensively by having a well-functioning audit and finance committee. Mrs. Jung made an important contribution. That is why I would like to thank the two, especially on behalf of the company's Supervisory Board. I hope you agree with me in thanking them. Now, the three proposals for Mrs. Rachel E mpy, Mrs. Natalie Knight, and Mr. Ramge to be appointed as representatives of shareholders to the Supervisory Board.
The three nominations are based on the corresponding recommendations by the Nomination Committee. They take into account the objectives reserved by the Supervisory Board for its composition, the profile of skills and expertise, and the diversity policy, which are published in the Declaration on Corporate Governance. I'm really happy that we have two women with a financial background here. It's not that easy. You find more and more that there are female members of Board of Management. I was particularly happy that we have two now who were CFOs in excellent companies and who are ready to stand up for election. I hope that you will follow our proposals, which are not only increased diversity in terms of gender, but we are also getting more international. Both ladies speak German fluently, even though it's not their mother tongue.
With this, you may give them a hand now if you know. Mrs. Empy is a former member of the Management Board of the Danish Management. She was born in Great Britain. She has a degree in mathematics. As a chemist, I must say, they are always more intelligent than chemists. I am happy that we were able to convince a very intelligent, very smart woman to stand for election. She is a chartered accountant. She has many years of management expertise in various companies in Germany and abroad, particularly in the telecommunication sector. She will now introduce herself to you in person. That is why I would like to ask her to introduce herself. Dr. Appel.
Thank you, Dr. Appels. Shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to introduce myself as a candidate for the election to be elected on the Supervisory Board.
I hope to gain your trust to be elected. Throughout my career, I gained international management and supervisory experience in many sectors, among others. Many years in the telco sector, which has prepared me well for the challenging work as a member of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom AG. Born in the U.K., I've been working and living since 2009 in Germany. I have both passports, a German and a British one. After my degree in mathematics at Oxford University, I got the qualification as a chartered accountant. My career in the telco industry covered leading positions such as VOC and Innovation Director at Telefónica Germany AG in between 2011 or after 2011 for a short time as the intermediate CEO of Telefonica. Under my leadership, Telefónica Germany went to the stock market or went public and became part of the Tec DAX.
In 2017, I moved to the healthcare industry to Fresenius, a DAX company where I as a Group CFO was responsible for Group Real Estate and IT before I decided in 2022 to start a career as a non-executive. Ever since, I've been a member of the ZF Friedrichshafen AG, a global technology company Supervisory Board, and of BMW, and also of the Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation, of the big shareholders of the Fresenius Group. In all my mandates, I'm a member of the audit committees. My international experience in various sectors in British and German corporate governance systems is added by nine years of members in audit committees and non-executive functions and functions similar to Supervisory Boards at global stock-listed companies. With your trust, I hope to use my skills and expertise for the success of Deutsche Telekom AG.
The telco industry is my passion and a large part of my professional life. I've worked in this industry. It would be a great honor to be elected into a leading company of this industry, Deutsche Telekom AG. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mrs. Empy. This brings us to the second. Von Knight [Foreign Language] . Used to be the CFO at Stellantis, [Foreign Language] .
[Foreign Language] .
Thank you very much. As the Chair of the Nomination Committee, you have the task of winning over the right members, just like the two ladies that we just had. Deutsche Telekom is a very appealing company, not just for management and its employees, but also for the potential candidates of the Supervisory Board. Which brings me to Mr. Ramge. Mr.
Ramge is already a member of the Supervisory Board. Let me just say a few words. He is Ministerial Director and Head of Department at the Federal Ministry of Finance and is currently already a court-appointed member of our Supervisory Board. He has a degree in Public Administration and is ideally suited for our Supervisory Board due to his relevant qualifications, many years of professional experience, and excellent knowledge of the industry. Mr. Ramge has held various important positions at the Federal Ministry of Finance since 2009 and has been responsible for the investments of the federal government and for the federal government's shareholdings for many years, and thus has a strong connection to the private sector. He has been a member of various Supervisory Boards for many years, including the Supervisory Boards of companies in the Deutsche Telekom Group. He knows our company very well.
You can find the candidates' CVs in the invitation to the AGM. The CVs have also been published in advance on the internet. Let me say once again that the three candidates are ideally qualified for our board with their respective expertise. This can also be seen in the qualification matrix, definitely meet all the requirements. You might want to check out our qualification matrix on the shareholders' meeting website. We hope that you will give your approval. This brings me to corporate governance. As you can see from the annual report, Deutsche Telekom has complied with the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code in 2024 since the last declaration was issued, initially without exception. At the end of January, the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board updated the declaration of conformity and, as a highly precautionary measure, declared a one-time deviation from recommendation before.
According to this recommendation, the reappointment of a member of the Board of Management before the end of one year, before the end of the appointment period, with a simultaneous termination of the current appointment should only take place under special circumstances. As reported, we do have special circumstances, but we just wanted to make sure that everything was in line with the rules. As reported, we reappointed Mr. Höttges prematurely at the beginning of January and at the same time terminated his then ongoing appointment. There were special circumstances for this approach. In particular, it was strategically necessary to ensure the necessary personnel continuity for the office of CEO in the interest of the company at an early stage. Let me repeat once again that this deviation was made as a precautionary measure to avoid any legal uncertainty.
We intend to comply with the recommendation before again in future appointments of members of the Board of Management. In the remainder of 2025, we will fully comply with the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code, which brings me to Board of Management compensation. The Supervisory Board is submitting to the AGM today under agenda item 12, adjustments to the remuneration system for the Board of Management for approval. The remuneration system approved by the AGM in 2022 remains largely unchanged in its structure and elements. We are only proposing a few adjustments. The adjustments are intended to ensure that the remuneration system continues to provide the right incentives for the actions of the members of the Board of Management and that the interests of the various stakeholder groups, i.e., you, the shareholders, employees, customers, society, are taken into account.
Detailed information on the remuneration system can be found in the documents for the AGM. In my speech today, I would like to explain the principles and the main adjustments to the remuneration system for the Board of Management. The Supervisory Board has been working on the remuneration system for about a year in depth. In addition, feedback from analysts and investors has been incorporated into the revision. The regulations are to apply retroactively as of the 1st of January 2025, subject to approval by the AGM.
In designing the remuneration system, the Supervisory Board has adhered to the following principles: conformity with legal requirements in Germany and the principles of good corporate governance, promoting the implementation of the long-term strategy for sustainable corporate development, determining appropriate remuneration levels in line with market standards, strong pay-for-performance alignment, and long-term orientation, alignment with shareholder interests, taking into account stakeholder interests, consistency with the remuneration system for senior executives in the group. The new system of remuneration is based on the maxim that members of the Board of Management only receive a high level of remuneration if Deutsche Telekom AG is financially successful, the shareholders receive a correspondingly high shareholder remuneration, and the ESG targets are successfully implemented. Compared to the current remuneration system, the future system will place a stronger focus on the risk-return profile.
In this context, a full cancellation option for the remuneration components will be introduced for both the long-term variable remuneration, LTI, and the share matching plan, SMP. This is based on the development of the total shareholder return, TSR. In addition, members of the Board of Management can participate in positive TSR developments through the share matching plan by higher matching ratios. This is intended to further align the interests of shareholders and the members of the Board of Management. There is a risk that such long-term incentives may become completely obsolete, and that's if there is a negative trend for the shareholders. If there is a positive development, then the Board of Management members can receive a much better remuneration. The multipliers can act as bonus or a penalty.
By linking financial targets with ESG and strategy targets through multiplication, we want to ensure that the Board of Management, first and foremost, work towards the financial targets of the group and the segments for which they are responsible. At the same time, they should only receive an attractive remuneration if Deutsche Telekom not only achieves financial success and a sustainable increase in shareholder return, but also successfully implements the ESG and strategic goals. This approach motivates the members of the Board of Management not only to strive for financial success, but also to act sustainably and strategically in line with the long-term corporate goals. The performance factor, which has sometimes been perceived as not clear in the past, will no longer be part of the compensation system.
With the exception of the strategic individual targets, the newly introduced multipliers are fully backed by quantifiable targets, and the achievement of these targets can be traced in the compensation report. This reduces the discretionary elements in the compensation system and increases transparency. The long-term environmental target parameters, which are derived from the sustainability strategy, are shifted from the short-term variable remuneration to the long-term. In this context, the performance-critical and measurable target parameters, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction, will in future be allocated to the short-term variable remuneration so that changes in customer and employee satisfaction are reflected more promptly in the remuneration of the Board. With the new structure, the Supervisory Board aims to ensure that success, pay-for-performance, responsibility, and a forward-looking approach are rewarded. Furthermore, the shareholding requirements for the Chairman of the Board of Management are to be extended.
In future, the equivalent of two years' basic annual remuneration instead of one year's basic annual remuneration, as previously, must be accounted for. A four-year accumulation period is to apply. Finally, we propose an increase of the maximum compensation for the Chairman of the Board of Management and the ordinary members of the board in order to remain competitive in the future with a view to national market standards and to be able to attract and retain qualified executives. For the current Chairman of the Board of Management, Mr. Höttges, an additional temporary increase in the maximum compensation is planned. This is to take account of the fact that Mr. Höttges was willing to extend his term of office prematurely for a further term in order to continue Deutsche Telekom's successful course.
The maximum compensation of the Chairman of the Board of Management is to be increased only temporarily for the current Chairman of the Board, Mr. Höttges, to the proposed amount of EUR 14 million. After the end of this term, the maximum remuneration of the Chairman is to be reduced again to EUR 11 million. That concludes my comments, and I would like to sum things up. Ladies and gentlemen, the Supervisory Board is closely monitoring the work of the Board of Management on the basis of legally compliant and effective corporate governance. Deutsche Telekom is strategically well aligned, operationally clearly on a growth path, and financially well positioned due to solid balance sheet figures and a strong free cash flow. This marks the end of my report. I will now also call up agenda items 2 to 12.
Please refer to the invitation to the AGM published in the Federal Gazette for the wording of these agenda items and the corresponding resolutions proposed by the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board. With regard to agenda item 2, I would also like to point out the following: as part of share matching plans, treasury shares, i.e., shares in the company, were transferred to planned participants in the current financial year. The company also repurchased treasury shares. As a result, the total number of shares entitled to dividends has decreased compared to the numbers stated in the invitation. The Board of Management and Supervisory Board have therefore adjusted their proposed resolution on agenda item 2, as announced in the invitation to the AGM for this case. The Board of Management and Supervisory Board then proposed that a resolution be passed.
The net retained profits of EUR 29,122,270,011.11 generated in 2024 will be appropriated as follows: distribution of a dividend of EUR 0.90 per dividend-bearing share totaling EUR 4,403,979,538.20, and carrying forward the remaining amount to the new account totaling EUR 24,865,951,472.91. You can view the amended proposal for the appropriation of profits on the company's website and at the registration desk. I am now announcing the current attendance for the AGM of Deutsche Telekom on the 9th of April in Bonn. At this AGM, we currently have 3,493,610,000 no-par dividend-bearing shares, which corresponds to EUR 8,943,643,691.04, or 70.06% of the capital, which is broken down in accordance with what the Chairman just said. The stock capital amounts to EUR 12 billion, the exact number is mentioned by the Chairman.
In addition, we received postal votes for around 19 million dividend-bearing shares, which will be taken into account for the final vote. This leads to the number of no-part dividend-bearing shares that I just mentioned, and this corresponds to a good 70% of the stock capital. Ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to the general debate, which I hereby open with a few organizational notes. As Chairman of the meeting, I am guided by the German Corporate Governance Code that an ordinary AGM should be concluded after 4 to 6 hours at the latest. With this in mind, I will ensure that today's AGM be conducted swiftly. In order to do justice to the interests of all shareholders present and in view of the requests to speak already received, I'm limiting the speaking and questioning time to 10 minutes per speaker from the outset, just like last year.
Previous experience here and at other AGMs has shown that 10 minutes is sufficient to adequately deal with even complex issues. You will be informed of the expiry of your speaking and question time by the notice on the lectern. If the progress of the rest of the meeting makes it necessary, I will further limit your speaking and questioning time. The Board of Management will respond to questions from a small number of speakers. I will answer questions directed to the Supervisory Board myself. The Board of Management has declared that unless it disagrees with my answers, it will adopt them as its own. In the interests of all shareholders and in order to keep the meeting focused, questions with the same content and questions from different shareholders that are closely related will only be answered once and summarized.
I would like to ask shareholders who have a concern in their capacity as a customer of this company not to raise it in the general debate, but to contact customer service representatives instead. Please go to the information desk in the foyer on the entrance level. In the interests of all shareholders, we will not answer questions that are not relevant to the agenda during the general debate. This brings me to the first couple of questions. Can I ask Hendrik Schmidt as the first speaker, followed by Linus Vogel and Hendrik Ponsen? First of all, we would like to give the floor to Hendrik Schmidt.
Thank you, Dr. Appels. Mr. Höttges, ladies and gentlemen of the Supervisory Board and Board of Management, shareholders, my name is Hendrik Schmidt.
I represent DWS, one of the biggest European fund organizations, and we have shared Telekom shares in our portfolio for them. I would congratulate you and begin by congratulating you for the last 30 exciting years and a sustainable success that you've had, and I hope you continue to be successful. Organic growth, as well as sales revenue and EBIT, have continued on an upward trend, and we're very pleased. The EUR 0.90 dividend is also a new record, which we also welcome. The share price has increased by 30%, and that is better than the DAX average. Whether it continues to be successful remains to be seen. An important event of Deutsche Telekom was the capital market last October, where you looked back at the attainment of targets and confirmed that guidance up to 2027, and you're on the right track.
You've reached sales revenue and cash flow targets, and only the indirect costs after leasing haven't been realized. That leads to the first question: why was that, and how can you improve that going forward?
The new targets for 2023 to 2027 are very promising: growth of service sales revenue by 4% on average per year and an EBITDA with 4-6%. That's slightly more ambitious than the period 2020 to 2024. Could you explain why you're setting more ambitious targets there and what the assumptions are underlying it? Capital expenditures compared to service expenditures are benchmarking the whole industry very high, and there is a high need for investment, but maybe you could comment on the main areas that you will be focusing your investment on or need to, and whether this structural ratio will remain at this high level.
In the German tech market, the competitive situation has become more intense. How do you assess this development, and what strategy will Telekom use to avoid loss of market share? How do you assess the latest renewal of the mobile network frequencies and also the issues relating to network coverage in rural areas and the fourth generation of mobile in Germany? Also, the expansion of the network is a company goal. How do you want to convince kind of reluctant households to switch over to fiber optic and what the cost will be of this? This brings me to Europe. The EU Commission for Competition, DG Competition, is also issuing new policy targets, and what will the implications be for Deutsche Telekom going forward?
What's the current situation regarding Huawei Tech, and what are the financial implications of this and policy towards Huawei and our German government now, which is forming? What could change for Deutsche Telekom because of the new government? Also, the Monopoly Commission has advocated reducing government expenses, and 100 million shares have been issued or in the hands of the government, but also they could reduce this, the stake of the government in Telekom in order to boost the financial latitude of the government. What could the implications be for the share price of Telekom, and what are you expecting with regard to a government sell-off of Telekom shares? Looking across the Atlantic, that brings me to T-Mobile US, and the takeover Sprint by T-Mobile US will hopefully bring about the synergies needed for customer growth.
Free cash flow can be boosted, but this is a recurring topic regarding the US subsidiary. At the end of November, it was in the headlines again because of hacker attacks, and apparently a Chinese cyber spying ring attacked the network there. T-Mobile Chief Security Officer Jeff Simon admitted that T-Mobile US was affected by this hacker cyber attack, but said that they did not achieve access to sensitive customer data. My question is, what other findings do you have? Have you received since this attack, since last November, and what measures have been taken to prevent these hacker cyber attacks? Do you expect consumer lawsuits in this connection, and will that have an impact on the balance sheet financial statements? Dr. Appels, I think that is a topic for the Supervisory Board too.
I would be interested in your comments on how you think we should confront this, and when can we expect further improvements and controls on this aspect? Hacker cyber attacks was a topic at the last annual meeting, and we asked you about this and the ratification of the company's data protection directive for the US, and you said, we asked why or if it would be ratified in the US, and you said that that was up to the US company whether they launched this and they could, and that it was not the policy of the company for them to opt for a stricter data privacy guideline when that was not in the interest of the company. Mr. Gopalan and Mr. Höttges, I would ask you to focus more attention on this risk going forward, and especially in this connection, hacker cyber attacks.
From our perspective, one of the biggest risks in the telecom branch, and your customers deserve this topic being addressed by the Board of Management, and compliance is a topic assigned to the finance department and personnel and law, and Ms. Nemat is in charge of technology. In our view, what you need is a central responsibility for the cyber risks as well, because the assignment of this important area has already been regarded as deficitary at Deutsche Telekom, and there have been calls for you and the management to critically look at it and implement solutions. Also, Deutsche Telekom has faced lawsuits in three cases, and it looks like you have not been able to assess these risks in connection with the lawsuits regarding cyber attacks. 23 million customers, 37 million customers were affected by this apparently, and this could lead to considerable damages for Deutsche Telekom.
That's my question: what magnitude do you expect these lawsuits to be? Also, political instances in the United States, political developments in the United States raise many questions. What could the current government in the US also change with regard to T-Mobile US? The announced connections, SiriLab, Metronet, and the other transactions are being finalized right now. What is the status of this, and what will be the future acquisitions policy of T-Mobile? Now I come back to Germany. Deutsche Telekom, or its subsidiaries, is involved in several antitrust proceedings. Since 2012, there have been 21 cases involving cable channels, and the plaintiffs are claiming EUR 1.5 billion in these claims. How do you assess these trial risks, and what is the status of them?
This brings me to corporate governance, and this will be a challenge really to address this topic in the remaining time, but I'll do my best. As in previous years, we criticize that the auditing committee continues to not be independent, and in previous years, we were not able to approve the work of the Supervisory Board because of this. The members of the auditing committee, we assume that Ms. Kohlmann and Mr. Streibig won't be standing for reelection there in the auditing committee, and that's why we expect an appropriate planning of successors for these seats in the coming years. Dr. Appel, you already stated that it should be easy to find replacements. Please explain to us the future composition of the auditing committee and what succession arrangements you're planning on making. The election of you, Mr.
Hinrichs, at the past annual meeting was, from our perspective, a good choice, and it was surprising somewhat for us, but of course, we acknowledge this, and we would like to welcome Dr. Jüngfer and congratulate you for your many years of loyal service to Deutsche Telekom, and thank you for it, and wish you all the best in the future. We would like to welcome the candidates for the election today, Ms. Rachel Empy and Natalie Knight. Thank you both of you for introducing yourselves here in person and also in the virtual realm. We will support these elections. The election of Mr. Ramge as the successor of Ms. Hessel, we were not able to support that, but the reason for this was because the shareholders' side in the committee is not independent enough, as we've already stated.
After the formation of the new government, the composition could be the same, but we would be pleased if you changed this. With a look at upcoming elections and four representatives of the shareholders, we think that you're intensively involved in the succession planning, and I would appreciate your comments on the nominating committee, who they will be nominating and what period of time will apply with a view to upcoming elections in the next year. This brings me to my final point: remuneration under item 12. You propose a revised remuneration system. I would like to just comment on two points. The launch of multipliers has been proposed instead of the additive linkage of targets for remuneration for pay systems.
That makes sense, and we know that you want to keep the staff of the company satisfied, but customer satisfaction is at least affected indirectly by this. We understand that energy consumption in the future has to be taken into account in the long-term target attainment, but the Supervisory Board wants to adjust the ambition planning, and we would like to have this spelled out in a little bit more detail. What do you expect this to end up looking like? Also, you mentioned that Deutsche Telekom is a very big company and even bigger than the three direct competitors in Europe, and that makes benchmarking difficult. From our shareholders' perspective, it would be useful to hear your comments on total shareholder returns and have this flow into the new pay scale system and the Stocks Europe 600 telecommunications as an index going forward.
It would be helpful for us to understand this if the Supervisory Board continues to insist on or continues to waive a benchmark system. Also, increasing it to EUR 14 million, Mr. Höttges, that makes sense, we think, but it sounds like it was necessary to do this. We do not hope that that was the case, and we will remind the Supervisory Board that they said that Mr. Höttges' salary was to decrease to EUR 11 million. With the exception of the approval of the work of the Supervisory Board, we will approve all the other items, and we wish the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management a lot of luck in the rest of this year and beyond it, and positive share price for shareholders. Please, it is in all of our interest that you stay as successful as you have been, and I thank you for listening.
[Foreign Language] . Thank you very much, Mr. Schmidt. This brings us to Mr. Linus Vogel, and after him, Mr. Hendrik Ponsen. That will conclude the first round, and we'll answer the questions. Mr. Vogel, p lease.
Thank you very much, Dr. Appel. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Linus Vogel. I represent Deka Investment, one of the biggest funds in Germany and subsidiary of the Deka Bank of Deutsche Sparkassen. We represent about 1% of voting rights today. Ladies and gentlemen, in an age of digital solutions, where digital solutions are gaining importance, it's all the more important that we meet personally and talk to each other. That's why we welcome the fact very much that Deutsche Telekom is also applying its high standards of customer orientation to the way this AGM is run. Direct contact boosts confidence and supports a living shareholder culture.
For this, the Management Board and the Supervisory Board really deserve our respect and our applause. Mr. Höttges, for you and your team, there is no reason, unlike many other DAX companies, to hide in a virtual space, because we shareholders have been really spoiled in the past few years. In 2024, the share had a plus of almost 38% and put everything else in the shade and clearly outperformed all competitors. If you want to know, Mr. Höttges, we are very happy with that. Telekom has really abandoned its negative image of the past and has established itself as a market leader that stands for innovation and high performance, and this deserves our recognition. Mr. Höttges, that's why we understand very well that the Supervisory Board has extended your contract to 2028, and we congratulate you on this.
We are convinced that you and all employees will lead Deutsche Telekom to great achievements in the future in order to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex environment. Ladies and gentlemen, let's now look at the challenges in the most important markets for Deutsche Telekom, Germany, and the US. First, a look at Germany. The weak competition in the past few years led to a very special situation. Deutsche Telekom managed to gain market share by investing heavily and getting under price pressure. The Vodafone decision and the one-on-one decision actually exacerbated the competition. We see the first dropping prices. In order to achieve growth in Germany, either you have to gain market share or you have to stabilize prices. How does Deutsche Telekom as a market leader find the right balance? What are the strategic targets behind your policy of remaining the market leader?
What does that mean for pricing? How would customers react to a price increase? What kind of price increase would customers accept? Now, the fiber optic development in Germany is relatively sluggish compared to other European countries. We want to know from the Telekom management whether the new proposed investment of the German government into the infrastructure, whether that will boost also the fiber optic plans of Telekom. Will Deutsche Telekom benefit from this or alternative companies? Should Deutsche Telekom not be even more determined in pushing the extension of fiber optics than in the past, given the new political environment? Now let's move on to the US, which is by far the largest and most important market for Deutsche Telekom. After the takeover of Sprint, T-Mobile US was in the unique situation of offering the best services and having the best network.
As a consequence, the business skyrocketed in the US. Now growth rates have come down a little bit, and now you want to focus also on extending the fiber optic network. This seems to make sense, but there is still some risk involved. We want to know from the Management Board what your specific plans are for extending the fiber optic network in the US and how much you want to invest in it and how you want to make sure that investments actually make sense, and how strongly do you want to scale the already existing partnerships. Ladies and gentlemen, after the US presidential elections, there are new prospects on both sides of the Atlantic, and they contain risks and opportunities. In Europe, we have the discussion on digital sovereignty. Now, this requires a massive investment in European computer centers and cloud services.
Deutsche Telekom already is financing a number of activities in this field, however, on a smaller scale than what is happening in the US. Now, we would like to know what the Telekom's perspective is on European data sovereignty and what role it wants to play in this context. Would it be thinkable and feasible to develop cloud centers, computer centers, and cloud services even more strongly if you could get a share from the proposed investment of the German government into military spending, for example, and infrastructure spending? Mr. Höttges, you demanded a DOGE for Europe, a government department on efficiency, boosting efficiency. Now, can you give us some more context on this statement and what you think is the right thing to do to deregulate and cut red tape? Now, investment of today is the economic success of tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen.
Now, for this principle, Deutsche Telekom actually used the metaphor of a flywheel. Investment into the network infrastructure actually triggers other effects, which again enable further investment. Courageous investment, however, needs to be covered by a healthy balance sheet. Let's admit that the Management Board actually took the right approach when it came to capital expenditure in the past, and we are confident that you will find the right mix between investment into your own business, rising dividends that we welcome very much, incidentally, and share buybacks. However, we would still insist that you keep your debt situation under control because that could lead to serious consequences. Climate change is progressing, and companies bear a huge responsibility. Also, many business models and processes are going to change.
As mentioned last year, we would welcome it if Deutsche Telekom actually adapted its sustainability strategy and would put its sustainability strategy to the vote at the AGM because such long-term and elementary targets actually require a vote of confidence from shareholders. What is keeping you from doing this? What is your perspective on the ambitious climate targets against the backdrop of the Trump administration's policies? As in the past few years, we are going to vote against the ratification of the actions of the Supervisory Board. The nomination committee is not independent enough, and the auditing committee also should play a special role given the specific effects from the business in the US. We are going to not ratify the actions of the Supervisory Board.
Also, we are also voting against the election of Stefan Ramge, who, as a representative of the German government, the federal government, is not independent. Since he has a seat on the nomination committee, this also means that this committee is not fully independent. As far as the other items on the agenda are concerned, we are going to follow the recommendations of the Board of Management. We wish you the best of success in implementing your ambitious strategy, and we're already looking forward to an in-person AGM next year. Thank you very much.
[Foreign Language] . Thank you very much, Mr. Vogel. This brings us now to Mr. Hendrik Pontzen from Union Invest, and after that, we will close the first round and answer your questions. For the second round, we would like to ask Ms. Benkendorf to stand by for her first question.
Thank you very much. My name is Hendrik Pontzen. I represent the portfolio management of Union Investment, especially sustainability and active shareholder input. We are a fund of the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken, one of the big shareholders of Deutsche Telekom, and I represent the interests of almost 6 million customers. Ladies and gentlemen, 2024 was a perfect year for Deutsche Telekom and its shareholders. With a sensational outperformance, Telekom actually put everybody else in the shade. Now, there is no one who hates Telekom now among its shareholders. Let's hope that Deutsche Telekom in 2025 will continue on this growth path. This brings me to my questions. Mr. Höttges, your contract has already been extended to 2028. What are your specific targets for this period? You told us that today's records are the new normal tomorrow, and we actually like that statement very much.
In the long run, how do you want to keep the growth rate in the US mobile market? What will you do if the trend towards more convergence between mobile services and fixed network services prevails? Will you have to take over players like Charter in the US in order to compete successfully against AT&T and Verizon in the US market? Ladies and gentlemen, as sustainable investors, we attach great importance to ESG and good governance. We are no longer talking that much about climate change, as the previous speaker said. However, this does not mean that this issue has been resolved in any way. Without cutting back emotions, climate change cannot be stopped. That is why we are very happy that Deutsche Telekom is a pioneer in fighting climate change and occupies a leading position among the German DAX companies.
I congratulate Deutsche Telekom on this performance. Now, talking about sustainability, you are doing a lot of things right, but your aspiration is to do good things even better. That brings me to other questions. Mr. Höttges, what action have you initiated in order to prevent further violation of privacy rights, especially by T-Mobile US? How do you make sure that the introduction of the new iPhone respects also privacy requirements and achieves positive effects for society? You also said that we always give you something on top, and we want to hold you to this. Let's move on to the remuneration system, Dr. Appel. Of course, if you do a good job, you should be paid well. Mr. Höttges did a good job, and so it's fair that he gets a decent pay. I think we agree on that.
However, the adaptation of the remuneration system opens up a number of questions because a system, of course, should not be tailored to just one individual case, but you need to establish rules that have general relevance and general application and provide orientation. Should it be a new rule that CEOs will only stay in their jobs if you pay them enough or if you forget about maximum pay guidelines? I mean, this should not happen, but this is what your new policy seems to imply. As you say, we want to make sure that the current CEO extends his current mandate under these circumstances. We always thought that our CEO stays with the company because he can fully identify with the company and has ambitious targets and not because of his salary package only.
The elephant in the room, that's not maximum remuneration, but the question about proper succession planning. How does the Supervisory Board make sure that there is a proper process in place for a successor to Mr. Höttges? Talk is silver, action is gold, as you say. Please inform us about the process you are planning for this. Now, as far as the agenda is concerned, we are going to vote against the ratification of the actions of the Supervisory Board because the chairman of the nomination committee is not independent. Ms. Kollmann, due to her long membership of the Supervisory Board, cannot be considered to be independent. This lack of independence needs to be criticized. The audit committee is not just any committee. It's just as important as the brakes on a car.
The inadequate independence of the audit committee is our reason for not supporting the ratification. We also reject your recommendation under item 8 of the agenda. As far as items 9 and 10 are concerned, here the buyback periods are too long, five years. That's why we're going to vote against. Under item 12, the remuneration system, for the reasons I cited, we cannot support this. We will support all the other items on the agenda. You said that this company only gets started at the age of 30, and we fully support you in that perspective.
[Foreign Language] Thank you, Mr. Pontzen. Which brings us to the first round of answer questions. Mr. Benkendorf of the DWS will be the next one to ask, and then Professor Strenger.
First, we will answer the questions to Mr. Höttges. Please, Mr. Höttges.
[Foreign Language] Mr. Schmidt asks a question on the cost of the fiber rollout. Compared to the original assumption, the framework conditions for the rollout have become more difficult. The same is true for all market players in Germany. Cost inflation in the fiber rollout amounted to more than 20%, which is clearly a challenge. We try to do something about it through cost efficiency measures and process optimization by alternative construction methods. Flat ditches, which are 30 centimeters deep instead of the 60 or 1 meter 20s, which are sometimes required in some municipalities. However, by the end of 2024, we achieved our targets, which we set at the Capital Markets Day of 2021, and we are making a lot of progress in reaching our goals this year.
We said that we wanted to have 10 million households connected, and we managed to do that despite the challenges, including our partnerships in the joint venture with Glasfaser Plus. All these households can now, we can now offer an FTTH connection to them. A lot of them use them. 1.5 million active users are already on this infrastructure. We expect that two-thirds of the unconnected German households are connected by us. The market share which we have in the copper infrastructure will also be the market share in the fiber market. We are currently building more at the moment than our competitors. We surpass them considerably. Through our strong balance and our key free cash flow, we are able to do that despite these difficult times. Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Vogel, you asked questions about the development of the competition in the mobile business.
The competition is very fierce, and the momentum has gained in recent months. Flat rates which are being offered. It is probably not the right answer to price increases. We focus on differentiation vis-à-vis the other telco providers. I am not saying this as a CEO of Deutsche Telekom, but against the backdrop of the customer polls we have for service, we have network leadership is an important value. It is not just providing people with mobile network in cities, but also in rural areas. If we have this, we will gain customers, and through this, we could gain market share despite this difficult situation. We will not take part, permanently take part in this price competition. We have the highest 5G coverage, 98%, and there is not a single test. We have plenty of tests carried out by magazines and companies.
We want all tests in Germany, and we will continue to use our multi-brand strategy to be successful, congstar, for example. We introduced family packages so that not just one uses the Telekom network, but also many other family members can use it. Our focus is at the moment on the discount markets and the prepaid markets, which we have in Germany. We want to motivate these customers to join our main brand, and that is important to raise sales and profit. The last quarters show that this is a successful approach. We were able to raise sales and also the number of customers in Germany, despite this market situation. I think with our strategy of more differentiation, we are on the right track. We are the clear market leader in Germany.
Our target, how to proceed in mobile, is what we presented at the Capital Markets Day. We expect that despite the environment, the service revenue will go up by 2-2.5% every year till 2027. Mr. Schmidt, you ask about 1&1, the fourth mobile telephony provider. Building up a fourth mobile network is not clear to us. That is why the company abided by any of the requirements set up by the regulatory body. It signed a big roaming deal with Vodafone. It is no longer necessary to build their own mobile network. They have access to their infrastructure. I am curious to see whether that network will be built in Germany until they will have built 36,000 sites. A lot of water will flow down the River Rhine.
Despite all the discrepancies with respect to the announcements, we take all competitors in Germany seriously. Because of our good position and of USP network, which is a clear USP, that is why we do not expect any major impact on our business. We will make sure that advantages are given to these competitors. The SMIT split of 5G spectrum, which is bound by certain requirements, that if necessary, we will also take legal steps to make sure that not individual network operators will have privileges. Now, another question on possible selling of shares by the federal government. The federal government has been for many years an anchor shareholder of Deutsche Telekom. We appreciate the collaboration a lot. I'm not just saying this because Mr.
Ram is sitting behind me, but I'm also saying this because for more than 14 years, I've been on the Board of Management at Deutsche Telekom, and we work on the basis of trust with, out any further influencing our entrepreneurial decisions, with the exception of having a post on Supervisory Board. We cannot, of course, tell you what the federal government will do with its Telekom shares, also with the backdrop of the new government and negotiations. At the moment, you should ask representatives of the federal government. Mr. Schmidt, you talked about the possible reduction of numbers of shares owned by the federal government as to what we know is. We are not aware of any intention to sell Telekom shares, neither by the federal government nor by KfW. That is why we will wait and see what the new government will do. Mr.
Schmidt, you asked a question on a future European regulation, which is exciting. For those interested, you should read the Draghi or Letta report and also the Mission report by Vice President Ribera. The political message of the Commission is clear. Through consolidation, they want to give the industry the opportunity, as for the hyperscale in America, to realize economies of scale, which is clearly reflected in these messages and statements. You know that we all, for almost a decade, we've been repeating this again and again, and now it has been taken up. Our industry is far too fragmented in Europe, and things are changing slowly. We equally support that we should end the restrictive framework conditions in our sector or in our industry. Here, the political situation has improved in Europe. It has not got worse, which is quite something.
Now the question is whether the intention to do that will be turned into practice. That is certainly the job of the new Commission. We will wait and see what they will do. I hope that the European internal market will be completed also in the telco sector, creating framework conditions which put us on an equal footing with America or other markets in the world. Mr. Schmidt, on mobile competition, generally, we welcome the decision of the Bundesnetzagentur with respect to the spectrum usage and also the extension. It is not that there was no new auction. However, please, you should also read the small print written by the Bundesnetzagentur. High requirements were 99.5% of coverage with 5G, so bandwidth of 300 megabit in all forests and everywhere, which requires, of course, a very high infrastructure building activity.
Sometimes this is just out of proportion. We are currently setting up a very clear rollout plan for our medium-term financial planning. We do not expect any differences compared to the existing investment planning. We wanted to have a universal coverage for Germany, almost universal coverage anyway. Beyond that, we cannot make any statement on that. Speedy approval of the planned law to rollout fiber, taking into consideration that telco infrastructure is considered to be an overriding public interest, would really help us to close possible gaps wherever they are, because then we would be able to build our antennas and sites faster, getting the necessary approvals. By the way, now we have an extension of five years, which we got, and we just negotiated for five years with the regulatory authorities, so much to the efficiency of our state. Mr.
Schmidt, you asked about the stage of the company transactions, the taking over of Lumos together with the finance investor EQT was now formally concluded and has been approved. The two other transactions, UScellular, a mobile provider in the US, and the purchase of Metronet, together with KKR, a financial investor, are still subject to regulatory scrutiny. We are optimistic that both transactions will be approved still this year. Okay, let me now continue. First question was, why did we not achieve our capital markets target to reduce indirect costs? The serious clearly the war in Ukraine, which led to a massive increase of energy prices, and also material costs, and also the collective bargaining agreements in Europe were significantly higher than we expected before the war in Ukraine. Despite this, the share of indirect costs in the service revenue went down by 5 percentage points.
That's also the new ratio. When we see if the cost share is going down continuously, whether we sales and we said this last year at the Capital Markets that we plan an average of 3%-5% average for the next five years. In order to, this gross cost of EUR 1.5 billion have to go down and to achieve the 3%-5% percentage points. The second question on service revenue and EBITDA target, service revenue of 4%, EBITDA target 4% to 2023 to 2027, it's more than presented on the Capital Markets there in 2021. It was less. How shall we achieve this? Let's start with the US. In the US, it shall be achieved through growing in terms of new customers in small markets and rural areas.
The Midwest, but the largest segment in the US, where we are below the index, and we are gaining constantly market share. The second area is B2B, in particular big customers, private and public sector. The third is fixed wireless access, so broadband connection at home on the basis of mobile telephony technology, where T-Mobile US is getting more than 400,000 new customers every year, and which brings revenue and EBITDA growth. As Mr. Höttges said, we have various fiber deals in our apartment. Lumos was closed. Metronet is still under approval, and that should get us a reach to 12-15 million customers in the next years. That is the main driver. In the European business, it is comparable. Here also, we want to achieve this through growing in mobile and fixed significantly, in particular in the field of fiber.
For example, 1 million new nets shall come in Germany. That is why we continuously invest in these areas. In mobile, we are quite successful through a multi-brand strategy to cover various customer segments. You have the first brand and several with Kongstad, for example, offering different packages. That is, Tim Höttges said, we are ready that the guidance we have given on the Capital Markets Day that we can achieve what we present as EBITDA growth will in addition also be driven by digitalization and the introduction of AI in our processes and will help us to achieve cutting costs amounting to EUR 1.5 billion. Now capital expenses compared to the service revenues. Mr. Schmidt, you rightly described this. We have our flywheel, and we believe that with strong infrastructure, we will have more or get more new customers compared to our competitors, enabling us to reinvest.
We expect that in the next years, about 20% of our service revenues will be invested or we'll have to invest in our network infrastructure to have fiber infrastructure networks that will be after 2030. The Europeans are a bit further advanced. That is a rebound while the capital spending and into network infrastructure will stay at the level we have at the moment.
Thank you. Before we continue with the answers, and there are still a lot of questions that I would like to ask that Frederik Benkendorf will prepare to ask this question. I can answer two questions of Mr. Schmidt. The first was what the Supervisory Board will do with respect to cybersecurity. This is a very important issue you're mentioning. Of course, the Supervisory Board is looking very intensively into this on a regular basis.
In particular, the Audit and Finance Committee looks at this on a quarterly basis. The Chief Information Security Officer is a regular guest. Actually, he's there every time to report on the risk situation, which is very important to be rest assured that it's addressed. There's no 100% protection against attack. That is why we do not only look into preventing attack, but also in what we do once there was an attack. We get very comprehensive reports by the Board of Management what the plans are without making this public. It's a very important question you phrased, and thank you for that. You can rest assured that we are looking into this intensively. You also asked a question about the Nomination Committee, about the future setup, which is a difficult question because it's linked to how long Mrs. Kollmann will be on board.
The Nomination Committee will be well equipped if the Chairman of the Supervisory Board and the Chairman of the Audit and Finance Committee and the representative of the larger shareholder will be on the Nomination Committee. Our intention is to maintain this to have these three representatives in the Nomination Committee. That is why it is closely linked. You know that I disagree with respect to the independence of Mrs. Kollmann. I have said this already in the last years. I am also a member of the, or I sat on the Audit and Finance Committee, and I see a very independent Chairman of the Audit and Finance Committee, even though she has been a member of the board for 12 years. That is why I am positive that we can carry out our supervisory duties. If you see the decision taken by the Nomination Committee, you see these excellent proposals.
That is why I'm sorry that you disagree. I think we have, with Mrs. Kollmann, an excellent individual on the committee and that we will keep the setup. The other questions you ask are still being prepared. I don't want to answer it, but then the back office will get annoyed. You criticized me last year that I answered questions which were not yet prepared. Now, Mr. Benkendorf, you can continue of the Deutsche Schutzgemeinschaft für Wertpapiere, and then Professor Christian Strenger, and then Mr. Peter Streicher.
[Foreign Language] , Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Beckendorf, and I am the Regional Director for North and Westphalia of the DSW Association. I am here on behalf of the private shareholders who have transferred their voting rights to DSW.
Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I would like to say that I am very pleased that this AGM again is held as a physical meeting. This is a token of the right corporate culture for a stock corporation. I think Deutsche Telekom is definitely a role model amongst the DAX companies in this regard. With regard to the prior fiscal year, we are also very satisfied with what was achieved. Deutsche Telekom achieved a record result in 2024. The adjusted EPS increased to EUR 1.90, and based on that, the dividend will be paid. Adjusted EPS was EUR 1.90, and there were one-time effects of EUR 0.07. Where did they come from? Of course, the shareholders appreciate a record dividend being paid of EUR 0.90 per share.
We would like to extend special thanks to all employees of Deutsche Telekom for the great result of 2024. We would like to ask the Board of Management to pass on our thank you to the employees. Let's talk about Germany. The goal was to roll out more than 10 million fiber connections by the end of the year. This target was achieved. However, there is still quite a big gap between homes passed and homes connected. At Telekom, the number was 15%, and competitors are estimated to be at 30% of homes connected. How do you intend to increase the number of homes connected to way over 20%? On the 24th of March, the Federal Network Agency issued a statement according to which frequencies can be used for another five years.
This came with certain requirements, which you refer to as being out of proportion. To meet your obligations by 2030, how much will you have to invest in the mobile network? What's your estimate here? Now let's take a look at the other side of the Atlantic. It is expected that over the next two to three years, we will see that the broadband market will be redistributed across more providers. T-Mobile is pursuing a strategy that focuses on fixed wireless access on the one hand, while at the same time investing in FTTH, fiber rollout in cooperation with private equity. How much capital will you need for the broadband rollout on the part of T-Mobile US by 2030? The new US administration under President Trump has put T-Mobile US and Deutsche Telekom under pressure. This is a new situation.
Various countries received letters that were sent out by US embassies, according to which the companies were requested to discontinue DEI programs, including companies in Germany. Did you receive such a letter, such a request? If so, are you going to weigh your targets differently in the future on both sides of the Atlantic? If there are new regulatory requirements in the US, what will likely be the impact on your company? Regulation and competition still play a major role for Deutsche Telekom in Europe as well. At this year's Mobile World Congress, you, Mr. Höttges, along with the other CEOs, once again complained about over-regulation of the European telecoms industry. You requested a paradigm shift. You were quoted as saying, "We need a DOGE for Europe." You were alluding to the new institution headed by Elon Musk in the US, the success of which is doubtful.
It's almost like the chainsaw of the Argentinian president. What are the specific expectations of the Board of Management regarding a Digital Networks Act that may possibly be adopted in 2025? There is a discussion about digital sovereignty of the EU. To what extent will Deutsche Telekom possibly benefit from a larger demand for European cloud solutions in the future? With that, I would like to talk about the agenda. The proposed dividend of EUR 0.90 per share under item two corresponds to a 17% increase over the past year. This means that finally, the Deutsche Telekom shareholders are benefiting from the money that comes from the other side of the Atlantic. The payout ratio of 47% is still close to the 50% demanded by DSW. We expressly welcome that. Under item seven, you proposed several candidates to be elected to the Supervisory Board.
We approved that. However, we would like to receive more details on the nomination procedure, and we would like that the Supervisory Board explain that. With how many candidates did the Supervisory Board talk, actually? What requirements had to be met in line with the German corporate governance code, bearing in mind the competence profile of the members of the Supervisory Board? Unfortunately, you did not make any changes to the way the candidates introduced themselves, and we requested already previously that this should be done. Under item eight, you make reference to future virtual AGMs. Please tell us whether this is on a provisional basis. Under what circumstances would you use such an authorization to hold virtual meetings in the future?
Under items nine and ten, you request another authorization for share buybacks, and you want approval of the current share buyback progress with a volume of EUR 2 billion. You said that the share price is, the share is still undervalued. When would a share buyback no longer make sense from your point of view, starting at what share price? Under item 12, you proposed a different remuneration system for the members of the Board of Management. We believe that the advanced share matching plan is not up to date. We believe it's anachronistic. Rather than simplifying the remuneration system, it actually makes it more complicated. Did the Supervisory Board review the abolition of the share matching plan? If not, why not?
Secondly, you said that the remuneration for the CEO will increase from EUR 9 million to EUR 11 million as part of a so-called Lex Hötges and then up to EUR 14 million. Now, that brings up a couple of questions. The remuneration should mostly be based on market standards and not on the person who is currently in charge. In 2024, the previous maximum remuneration was achieved for the first time. For the current year, the Supervisory Board already announced in its remuneration report that the remuneration will increase this year. Mr. Höttges, before I ask a couple of questions on your remuneration, let me say this: We are very pleased that you have extended your contract until the end of 2028. Considering the very successful development of the company and the very impressive performance of the share price after many unsuccessful years, in March, the share price stood at EUR 36.
Considering all that, we appreciate very much what you have achieved. Question: What is the target remuneration for the CEO for 2025, and what are the remuneration components that have been changed compared to the prior year? Why is it that the Supervisory Board deems it necessary to increase the remuneration of the CEO by more than 50%? Is this the price we have to pay for Mr. Höttges' contract to be extended? How is it possible that the chairman receives twice the remuneration that an ordinary board member receives? Is this in line with market standards? Our approval of this item on the agenda will depend on the answers we are getting from you. Mr. Höttges, at Deutsche Telekom's press conference on its financial statements, you compared yourself to Fidel Castro, saying that you would not stop talking but just exchange the audience.
What are the revolutionary ideas that you want to use to lead Deutsche Telekom to the future? In January, it was announced that you will extend your contract, and this will lead to a couple of other questions, and I would like to ask the Chairman to answer them. What are the effects of the extension of Mr. Höttges' contract regarding your succession planning? On the occasion of the premature extension of Mr. Höttges' mandate in 2022, it was stated that he would be able to cancel his contract with a six-week notice period until the end of 2024. Do you have a similar agreement in place for the current extension of his contract? Srini Gopalan, for a certain period of time, was deemed to be the crown prince, so to speak, and now he has moved to T-Mobile US.
However, there may be another perspective for him, because the current CEO of T-Mobile US, Mike Sievert, was also COO before. Ladies and gentlemen, let me come back to the current year. In 2025, revenue and service revenues are expected to increase. Adjusted EBITDA AL and adjusted free cash flow AL are expected to rise by 4.5% or 4%, respectively. You are expecting an adjusted EPS of around EUR 2, which means that next year we may already see the first dividend paid that starts with a 1 at the beginning. That, of course, is a nice outlook for the Telekom shareholders. To wind up my speech, I would like to once again congratulate all employees of Deutsche Telekom on the excellent job, and we wish you the best of success for 2025. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much.
That brings us to Professor Christian Strenger, followed by Peter Streicher, and afterwards we will be answ ering the questions raised so far. Mr. Strenger, you have the floor.
Ladies and gentlemen, members of the Board, the Supervisory Board, dear co-shareholders, I'm a private investor and professor of the Corporate Governance Institute of the Frankfurt School. We are working in the field of corporate governance. Corporate governance is about, you know, managing companies in a good way. Now, it is a sunny day today, and you need good reasons to attend an AGM instead, and thankfully, we do have good reasons to be here today. It has already been stated that shareholders can be very happy with what was achieved in 2024. The share price developed very nicely. A higher dividend is paid, so we've got more money left to go on vacation, and the prospects are good.
One topic that was not clearly mentioned by the previous speakers is this, and I think it's really important. Our CEO, Mr. Höttges, usually, you know, speaks his mind when it comes to economic policy. He did so today, and he also does that on other occasions, and I would like to encourage him to continue doing so, because what we are seeing in Berlin right now makes it quite doubtful whether the German government is really serious about cutting red tape and promoting growth. I would ask that Mr. Höttges continue to be blunt. I was thinking, actually, it would be good to delegate or send Mr. Höttges to Berlin for six weeks or so to tidy up there. That might be a good idea. I know we can't do without him here, on the one hand, at the same time.
If Berlin was willing to pay a high fee, we might be willing to do it anyway. Yeah, and the EUR 14 million and you see, other board members, other CEOs are paid much higher salaries. It just needs to be well-deserved, and the Supervisory Board needs to prove that. Dr. Appels, you said, okay, this is only going to be a temporary thing for Mr. Höttges, and once we have a new CEO, we will undo that. The new CEO may join in 2028, and it may not necessarily be a good way of attracting or encouraging a successor to Mr. Höttges to take over, if you pay him less. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Höttges already said that Deutsche Telekom is constantly receiving all sorts of accolades, including the so-called Public Trust Award for the fourth time, which is awarded for good ESG reporting.
Now, that's a good thing, but when you look at the small print, then there are still a couple of things that need tackling. I looked into the subject of whistleblowing and the whistleblower system. The whistleblower system has become a very important element. Deutsche Telekom has set up the Tell Me portal, and the US have something similar, our US business, but this is something that we ought to look into. The information is only fed through to in-house contacts, and I think it might be better to make it possible for any whistleblower information to be passed on to an external agency. Otherwise, people may still be hesitant to disclose inconvenient truths because they may be afraid that they may otherwise suffer negative consequences, that they will end up being the bogeyman.
It might make sense to think about setting up or working with an external agency for that. You included some detailed information about the Tell Me portal in the annual report, but the 200,000-odd employees only used that portal in about 20 cases, so that's not a whole lot, and I was thinking that it would maybe make more sense to make it possible for employees to report any incidents to an external agency. You might want to think about that, working with a truly external agency that employees can use for their whistleblower reports. Next question, which is related to what I said before. When can your employees expect to be able to pass on whistleblower information to an external agency? Now another topic, attrition. You have around 200,000 employees, and attrition stands at 13%. That's 26,000 employees. That's quite a lot.
After having listened to Mr. Höttges' presentation, you're getting the impression that everybody loves working for Telekom, but it makes me wonder, why is it then that 26,000 employees decided to leave anyway? I would also like to hear how does that compare to other companies. Yeah, we've heard a lot about the independence of the Supervisory Board members. I concur with that. It's really important that the independence of the members of the Supervisory Board be ascertained and that it is taken seriously. The members of the Supervisory Board often work for this committee for many years. They are renowned, and we just have to ensure that. Under item nine, buying own shares or treasury shares, that's all very well, but you demand about 10% more than the current share price, which is a lot, given the high level of liquidity.
Another 10% on top of the price may be less than ideal. Last but not least, ladies and gentlemen, the problem with DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Here I have a question to management. By management, I actually mean the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management. I would not say administration, because you are not just administering something here. You are managers. Question to Mr. Höttges, how can you strike the right balance here? Because on the one hand, I mean, we have completely different developments in Germany and in the US, right? You need to strike a balance here, which is extremely difficult. Just recently, that became aware when T-Mobile US had to give in to the Trump administration's demands to discontinue their DEI programs in order to get the go-ahead from the authorities for a merger.
There are other differences between Europe and the US. I mean, we're all terrified to read about Mr. Trump's statements and his plans. We hear about it every day. Yeah, how do you strike the right balance here? It's difficult, and I'm sure there is no such thing as a perfect answer. Maybe the best thing you can do is to keep things low-key, maybe, and not to speak your mind too much. I'd appreciate it if you could sort of point the way for us and give us some indication as to how you want to deal with the important topic, which is ESG and DEI in the future. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
[Foreign Language]
everybody is included in that from the top of the company to the bottom. Also, that's the case here at the buffets and the entryways of this event. I'm a private shareholder, and the recommendation by Hamburg Commissioner meant for. I agree with the dividend policy, and I will vote in favor of this resolution. I would like to comment on Professor Strenger's comments. He proposed that six months be allotted for things to be cleaned up in Berlin. In the political realm, I had the experience many years ago that after six months, Herr Höttges will return from Berlin in just as sorry a state as he goes there. I agree with Mr. Höttges that complaining all the time won't get you anywhere.
I do have a couple of small complaints to make. First of all, I think environmental protection is assigned too much attention, and it would be nice if we got a free public transportation ticket to come to this event, however. A small criticism, even smaller than the first one, is that you could order written reports, as you wrote in the invitation to this event, but it does not really help a whole lot for some people. It would be better if you have these written reports available here for us, and if one of the nice ladies attending this event could bring us even an envelope where we could request these documents to be sent to us. It has been noted as positive several times that an in-person event has been decided upon here in this case.
I want to note one aspect while I think that is important: not only respect for the shareholders, but also the share is an instrument which is absolutely essential for a lot of people to really be able to pay their cost of living, especially in retirement. The share is thus an instrument in really covering your capital needs. An understanding of this instrument as an instrument of capital, you know, it's subject to a lot of criticism. For example, people say that reform of the tax on dividends, which was introduced in 2009, has been incorrectly interpreted as a privilege being signed under old German law. People who are familiar with the legal situation will know that this reform was initiated by Peer Steinbrück, who was the Minister of Finance at the time.
He wanted to provide all shareholders, he wanted to subject all shareholders to higher taxation. You know, doing that to small people and billionaires who have millions of shares have to pay less on their taxes than small shareholders. That is not fair. Something Dr. Appels, I want to comment on, and I am a chemist and mathematician, and I am really glad that the sociologists, the lawyers, et cetera, have been left out of the picture in favor of chemists and mathematicians here. I worked in that field, and I was fortunate enough to hear a Minister of Finance who said the following about lawyers. He said he was a lawyer, and he was convinced of his knowledge and understanding. Of course, I am not going to divulge his name right now, but actually, his name was Dr. Hans-Jochen Vogel.
Now a question about the company itself. There are a lot of tech issues I could comment on and figures that have been cited here. I'd like to focus on a couple of soft factors here, social factors, although I expressly note that we should be thankful that Telekom, along with SAP and Siemens, are the three companies that have the largest capital base. Regarding my questions to the company, you talked about a stock buyback, and I recall a notice in the FAZ newspaper a few weeks ago that a certain buyback process is already taking place with Westkoff. Also, will there be any general impact on the White House in this regard? This was already addressed, and I want to put it in more specific terms.
Anyone who talks to cyber experts will tell you that the Third World War is already going on pretty much. How, to what extent are we affected by cyber attacks? The follow-up question to that is, how can we protect our customers who are also subject to these attacks? I'd like to have an answer to our defensive measures to ward off cyber attacks. In a presentation by Mr. Höttges in connection with the Beethoven Orchestra, Mr. Höttges said we support the Jazz Festival Beethoven competition. I would add that Telekom Baskets, you know, the basketball team, I would like to hear about the expenses in 2024 and the budget planning for 2025 for the basketball team and the Jazz Festival.
I would also use this opportunity to mention that I know you're a good pianist, and between Lang Lang and Igor Levit, maybe you're not in those ranks, but maybe you could play us a few chords like the Harlem Globetrotters melody, "Sweet Georgia Brown," or "When the Saints Go Marching," just for us shareholders. It's also been mentioned, and I think it's a great thing that Mr. Höttges' contract's been renewed. As an aged person, I think it's good to keep older workers at the company. I think it shouldn't only, this should only apply to the Board of Management, but just in general to all salary groups, all pay groups, and people with commercial and technical skill sets. Do you have any general plans in this regard?
Because it's really important, you know, to know how the company in the face of demographic change. It'd be nice to get some information on the overall strategy in this regard. I read the newspapers and have read that you have an employee wellness, health, and safety department at Telekom. I'd like to hear more about that, what they do, and how that syncs with the whole HR policy as an instrument. My last question, I know you can't give a perfect answer to this, but how long will our dividend be based or paid in line with Section 27 of the capital law? In Article 14 of the Constitution, you're obligated to do that. With that, we've met then this constitutional requirement.
Thank you, Mr. Streicher. We're going to answer these questions. Mr. Udo Ritter and Maximilian Eberleter pose their question.
First, let's get some answers.
Yeah, thank you. The frequency of cyber attacks is increasing on a massive scale. These cyber attacks are being fueled by new technologies, use of AI. They have become much more complex to defend against for us and for industry as a whole. We have a wide range of measures to minimize cyber risks and violations of data protection rules. We have a fantastic team working on that. They are working around the clock to see whether there are additional measures that need to be taken. If you think about it a second, I have the feeling that we're pretty well protected right now. Of course, we're extremely interesting for criminal organizations. We have a very robust governance model. It was asked whether the fact that this is assigned to the Board of Management is a problem or not.
I don't think so. We have all kinds of specialists here on this working in the different departments who are together on the Board of Management. We have group-wide guidelines, investment in additional persons, experts we've made, also reporting activities. We are thinking about issuing an additional report documenting everything for the public area. There is a big focus there just to answer that in all brevity. You asked about measures against hacker attacks, cyber attacks. Things like governance, guidelines, committees are one part of the equation. In the US, we've set up a new team with experts from external sources who are the head of it all. Deserves praise for what he's accomplished in the last few years after we had some pretty aggressive cyber attacks there. It's all subject to a local security program. We are always looking at the underlying conditions there.
Of course, T-Mobile US is subject to applicable law. That also applies to cyber attacks. In addition, T-Mobile US has a very strong cyber defense organization. I am chairman of the Supervisory Board. They are on the board of directors there. They have a member there on the board of directors to report on the current status and situation. November 24, there was a cyber attack you asked about, which was discussed in the media. The entire US telecommunications sector was affected by it. Under the notion of Salt Typhoon, under that rubric, Salt Typhoon, we initiated investigations. According to reports in the public sphere, these attacks were staged by a Chinese company promoted by the state that was associated with the state.
A lot of reports were made to the effect that cyber criminality has accelerated with very sensitive information on political individuals being listened in on, for example. That applies to all telecommunications companies, not just us. We can say that that's actually not the case with Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile US. We have identified cyber attacks that came from a fixed network provider that we were linked into. We were able to ward off this attack by taking appropriate defensive measures and stop the attack. This applies to calls, voicemails, and text messages. We separated, we cut off this connection, and we tried to find out where it came from. In this cyber case, we work very closely with the US authorities in exchanging information with them. I'm not able to comment any further on that due to security requirements.
You also talked about cyber attacks and consumer lawsuits in connection with these and whether we've been able to fight these off. There was a class action suit in connection with the cyber attack from 2024. A court settlement was achieved last year on this. The total amount was $350 million that we paid out. In the years 2022 and 2023, $150 million were paid for data security and related technologies. You can see we're also obligated to invest more into protection. The cyber attack in 2023 led to a class action suit against T-Mobile US. It will react to that, and that will involve some expenses for us as well. There are financial risks involved in this, but I'm not able to estimate these with any certainty right now.
Deutsche Telekom is not itself a defendant in any of these cases. This is a lawsuit that's taking place solely in the US. Regarding your question, Mr. Schmidt, about possible financial impact of consumer lawsuits in connection with the cyber attack in 2023, as already stated, I can't make any precise financial forecast. In the next business report, we'll be commenting on this. This brings us to the topic of acquisition plans in the US. The question from Mr. Pongs and Mr. Schmidt, what our plans are, what do we want to acquire, what do we want to divest. You know that we have very clear rules on this regard. That means we don't speculate about transactions like that in principle. I would ask for your understanding.
That's just the way it is, you know, because of the issue of competition and confidentiality and the strategy and tactics you adopt in transactions like that. We are well positioned. We do not make bad deals. That has always been our creed. So far, we have been successful with that. The results for 2023 and 2024 really back that up. In the capital market, our measures have been well received. In my presentation, I noted the partners we work with, KKR and others. The shareholders, especially of T-Mobile US, have reacted positively towards that. Coming back to Germany, Mr. Schmidt, you asked about the cable channel systems. In the procedure here, Vodafone has taken legal action along with GmbH in two cases. [Foreign Language]
were negotiated in 2003 in connection with the sale of the cable subsidiaries and negotiated in connection with the sale. For these, and documented in contracts and agreed upon. The Federal Court of Justice decided in December. German courts decided in 2021 in favor of Telekom Deutschland. That was a superior region. That was overturned by the superior regional court. They ordered that a new hearing take place. We believe that contractually agreed upon leases in it are not excessive. We are arguing that before the case pending before the superior regional court. It is hard to predict the outcome of this legal dispute right now. I hope I have been able to answer your questions with that. Mr. Schmidt and Beckendorf asked a question about the expansion of fiber optic in Germany.
I answered that EUR 2.5 billion is what we want to invest or offer to invest every year with 1.5 million connections. We have a very large number of active users. That saturation by the end of the year will be about 15% for the use of these systems. That's pretty low, right? You mustn't forget that we have a lot of customers that are very satisfied with vectoring solutions and existing internet technologies. These are also customers who at some point will move to the new tech. It's important that we are able to keep customers happy, whether it's in vectoring or fiber optic, and keep the customers too. Over the long term, of course, everybody will need huge bandwidths in households. Everybody is working on building out the infrastructure for this.
On the other side of supply side, we've been able to convince customers of we have in 2023, we hired 1,000 staff in Germany and boosted our connection rate year on year by 30%. We have people who really work to make sure that the fiber optic isn't just buried in the street out there, but the last few meters to the homes. Residential construction companies who have already received a permit for the use of more than 5 million households are building connections, rather than 90% for the connection of buildings and households. In an agreement with WW, we want to have fiber optics in their apartments. It's tough going. You have to do a lot of groundwork. You have to have meetings of condominium owners and things like that.
On the demand side, our new fiber optic portfolio will have greater initial usage. In 2024, we were able to expand our fiber optic clientele by more than 470,000. We are not only switching our clientele to fiber optic, but new people are signing contracts with us. We want to expand this in coming years. We are seeing that demand is there and that it is also picking up. We are expecting an additional rise in this figure in 2025. Here, I would say expectations management is warranted. The technology that we are rolling out is going to be in place for about 40 or 50 years. This brings me to the question by Mr. Schmidt on Huawei. The federal government and the three biggest network operators have agreed on a 5G. For how to deal with 5G components.
All components of Chinese manufacturers, Huawei, ZTE, and 5G network have to be replaced by components of Western manufacturers. Chinese components will no longer be allowed in these. By 2029, software for steering and configuration and transport of the antenna network have to be replaced by software of third-party providers in order to reduce possible risk from Chinese components. This is in harmony with our so-called common strategy that Deutsche Telekom is already implementing Open RAN. [Foreign Language] We view this agreement as an intelligent, efficient strategy to involve all the manufacturers involved in mobile communications to eliminate risks effectively and to keep the high network quality of the providers and ensure that it stays that way. Regarding the costs of this switchover, we're not able to make any reliable estimate right now.
It'll probably be in a low three-digit million realm. Mr. Schmidt, you also asked about our expectations towards the new federal government. How much time do you have? No jokes. We're in a constructive discussion with the government in Germany, but also in other countries as well. We'll only be able to give you a specific answer when a government program has been published and we can compare our targets, our goals with theirs. There's another question: what could happen under the current US government, the current US president? What could change for T-Mobile US and Deutsche Telekom? We've always acted responsibly in the US. T-Mobile is a US company with a clear American identity. T-Mobile, in the past few years, built the best network ever. We got this approved during the first Trump administration. You remember that discussion around Sprint and T-Mobile.
It was linked to the massive development of a 5G network. That was the precondition. We met all requirements or even outperformed these requirements. We actually walked the talk. Since the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile US, we have had phenomenal growth. Thirty million customers were added. In this period, we invested $55 billion, even without the radio spectrum that you also purchase in the US rather than leasing it as in Europe. We have turned out to be a very reliable partner in the US, which also the current US administration has recognized. We've had the question repeatedly on the DEI policies of the current US government and what our position is. Mr. Schindera also raised this issue. Let me make a somewhat general statement on this.
Let me tell you quite frankly that the current political situation is completely complex for everybody and for us especially. I cannot give you a black and white answer, like a digital answer to this. It's not easy for any of us in the company to find the right approach to this, especially if legal or whenever legal requirements change, whenever there's a conflict with partners, whenever they trigger dilemmas that also have a cultural dimension. We are confronting this challenge. We are having intense discussions. At the end of the day, we need to take decisions. We remain firmly attached to our values. We will always hold up our values. Our company's mission is to have Deutsche Telekom as a successful, sustainable business. That applies to all our markets in which we operate.
Our results clearly show that we are meeting these expectations in economic terms and in social terms. We are fully established as a company. You can see that with regard to the constant business success that we have achieved, but also, for example, the number of women in leadership positions. We keep our promises. Success is not an end in itself for us. It is based on a culture that rewards ambition, curiosity, diversity, respect, and integrity and takes these values seriously. Different perspectives, different backgrounds enrich our company and make us better as a team, as an employer, as a company that offers services and support to our customers. This is what makes us tick. This has been a guiding principle for us for 30 years, irrespective of changes in governments.
As an international company, we are negotiating an environment where there are lots of tensions in society and between political directions. We have legal frameworks like anti-discrimination regulations within Europe or in Germany. In the U.S., executive orders on DEI programs change our legal environment. Our subsidiary US T-Mobile acts independently, but always in compliance with U.S. regulations. We always respect the local legal framework. This goes without saying. At the same time, our basic values remain in place and guide us. Wherever there is conflict, we believe in dialogue and agreement. We are firmly convinced long-term company success requires values. Our brand claim, connecting our world, is not just empty rhetoric. This is our purpose. This drives us. We will only be fully satisfied if we get everybody on board. This applies to our customers. This applies to all our employees.
We are fully convinced that we can only achieve sustainable success with everybody on the team. This is our approach. This is our perspective. These decisions that we need to take are not easy. Sometimes it's simply too easy and too cheap to produce certain headlines that want to push us in one or the other direction. You can be assured that we will evaluate changes like the ones we are facing now with the necessary sense of perspective. Thank you very much for your clear words on this important issue. Mr. Schmidt, regarding the question by Mr. Beckendorff, where the $0.07 one-off effects come from the adjusted EPS. In this case, you have an EPS reduction because of the new valuation of deferred taxes, $0.04. We have a new valuation of reserves of the Nobis Sektkellerei which also had an effect, which we adjusted.
What we basically never do is that we plan our financial derivatives. If they have a positive effect, then they are adjusted downwards. If they have a negative effect, they would boost the sustainable EPS. Next question. Starting at which share price would we not buy back the T-share? Basic question, why are we doing this share buyback? First of all, we believe that it is undervalued. Brief explanation. We have a market capitalization of EUR 150 billion. If you subtract our T-Mobile share, it is EUR 130 billion. The rest of the company is only valued at EUR 20 billion. This is clearly under the valuation of all other European telecommunications companies. It is attractive for us to buy back these shares because they are not valued properly. Next topic is the dividend payout and the capital increase. At what point will we stop the share buyback?
I mean, this goes quarter by quarter. We can decide for each quarter when to stop that. Usually, we decide on a yearly basis whether to continue such a program or not. There is no midterm planning on share buybacks. These are the two answers to your questions. Mr. Schmidt, I have two more questions. Mr. Ramm will remain a member on the Supervisory Board after the new government takes office. Yes, he has a term of four years. I would wish that he would remain on the Supervisory Board. The new Minister of Finance, once he gets into office, of course, needs to be consulted. I do not want to speculate on this. If we can keep Mr. Ramm on the Supervisory Board, I would be happy.
I would also tell the Minister of Finance, I think the new people in the Ministry of Finance have quite a different set of challenges compared to who is on the supervisory board here or whether to replace somebody here. What are the plans and the projects of the supervisory board after the AGM? There are four seats that have to be filled again, including my own. I want to remain chair of that body because I enjoy my work very much. As far as the other seats are concerned, the ones who have been on the board for 12 years will most probably leave the body. I am sure that Mr. Wintels will keep his seat. The two open seats, we will address that very soon, also using external support in order to, first of all, compose a long list.
The nomination committee will cut it back to a short list. I am very confident that we will find, again, excellent candidates to fill those seats based on the experience of the previous years. What's always an issue is the big time difference between the United States and Europe. That very often leads to people turning down the offer of being on the supervisory board. Nine hours time difference, for example. Really attending the meetings is a big problem for many candidates, especially from the West Coast of the US. I've heard them say, the idea is great, but somehow it doesn't. I can fit it. I cannot fit it into my schedule. This doesn't mean that Ms. Hemp and Ms. Knight would not be perfect candidates.
It is a problem, the time difference, to have non-German members of the supervisory board, even if they love the prospect of being on the board. We will continue with our speakers list. Mr. Rütters is next. He represents Udo Kessin and Nina Rütter. After him, there is Maximilian Eberle, who will have the floor. Mr. Rütter first. Sehr geehrter Herr Dr. Appel, sehr geehrte Damen und Herren. Dr. Appel, ladies and gentlemen, members of the supervisory board and board of management, shar eholders.
My name is Rütter, and I represent my own shares and the shares of third parties. I have a small request, Ms. Nehle. As you answer the questions, make sure that you speak directly into your microphone, because otherwise we can't understand your answers properly. You're keeping your promise.
Deutsche Telekom is keeping its promise, not just as far as the financial results are concerned, but also in terms of the dividends that you've announced. Beyond that, what's really key to us is the format of this AGM. An in-person AGM is a very important factor in a living shareholder culture, because this is not just about answering questions. This is about a direct interaction, talking to each other, meeting each other to get a feel for the atmosphere, to see how you respond to the issues and to the questions that we raise. This gives me a very good feeling today and a very good feeling of having invested in this company. That's, I think, an important asset that you have. It doesn't just create confidence. You know what happened during COVID when shareholders were locked out of AGMs and all AGMs were virtual?
That means that the owners, shareholders, are locked out of the most important meeting of a stock-listed company. Of course, that cannot be continued. I mean, this does not apply to Deutsche Telekom, but to others. At TUI and Siemens, for example, some important shareholders no longer approved an extension of the right to hold AGMs virtually. I think proxies should support the view of all shareholders to make these in-person AGMs possible. Let me get back to the business of Deutsche Telekom. I think it is very good news that Mr. Höttges has extended his contract because he is, for many years, absolutely crucial for the positive development of our company. I explicitly welcome his new contract. As far as debt is concerned, some questions have been raised, and some of them are still open.
Deutsche Telekom now has a total debt of EUR 206 billion, and in the past year, it was EUR 199 billion. Midterm financial debt has risen to EUR 137 billion, and the rating is three times B plus. This is still investment grade, but we have to be cautious because cash flows are really crucial here. The cash flow is the important indicator for the debt level, but they are not set in stone. They can be downgraded, and this can have negative consequences when it comes to borrowing, which might be required, even more borrowing in the future. Now, I would be interested in your investment activities of the past year. Where in 2024 did you do most investment? How high was your capital expenditure in the US, especially fiber optics and 5G? If you could give us some figures, and also for Germany, fiber optics and 5G.
If there were other areas that required investment, major investment, it would be nice if you could mention these as well. What major investment have you planned for 2025? Very specifically, what kind of magnitude are you thinking about in 2025? In which regions? The split US, Germany, for example, what's going to happen there? In which segments of the company do you want to invest? Linked to that, the question, how do you want to fund this investment? Can you fund the investment from the free cash flow? It has an impact on free cash flow, of course. Do you have to do more borrowing, which means that you raise your debt level again? If you can give us some specifics on your financial planning for 2025.
Netto financial liabilities, that would be interesting to know for your planning until 2028, because in the past few years, there has been a trend. First of all, you tried when you sold cell towers to reduce your debt level, but now, due to the investment in fiber optics and 5G, this has been pushed up again. I would like to know what your required funding is until 2027. What are your targets for the business year 2025? Mr. Höttges already mentioned that the target €2 per share is above what the analysts actually predicted. What is your forecast for EBITDA and the free cash flow? The equity stake in T-Mobile US at the end of the year, it was 51.5%. I would like to know what you plan to do with this equity investment.
You want to acquire even more shares, or do you want to reduce that investment, that stake? Are you planning to keep this 51.5% stable? The shareholder structure was mentioned before. Here a question relating to the federal government and the KfW. In 2024, were there sales by the federal government and KfW, or any plans for that in 2025, so that any majority or minority interest may have changed? I mean, against the background of the federal government or the federal government's debt and any attempts to reduce the debt burden, the government's debt burden by selling off assets from Deutsche Post and Telekom and reduce the pressure on the federal budget. Share buyback, you're planning to buy back shares to the tune of EUR 2 billion. In what form are you going to buy back the shares?
In the past, you bought the shares through Xetra, so the regular trade. Now, if the federal government wants to sell some of its shares, for example, would you do it outside the stock exchange and at what price? Also in this context, and Mr. Höttges mentioned it, he still thinks the share is undervalued. If the book value is EUR 12.90 right now, why is it undervalued? Could you give us some criteria for that assessment that you find the share undervalued? The current share price is EUR 32. Could you also tell us about the criteria that you apply to buy back shares? At what time does it make sense to you to buy back shares? At favorable rates, at favorable prices, because it's not your money, it's our money that's involved in this. We want you to spend this money wisely.
If major shareholders want to sell off their shares, sometimes the company starts a share buyback program to make this possible to large shareholders. Did you have any talks to major shareholders before you took that decision in order to make it easier for them? These are basically my questions. Thank you very much to you, and looking forward to your answers.
[Foreign Language . Thank you, Mr. Rütter first. I wanted to thank you all that the great majority of all speakers have not spoken longer than 10 minutes. I think we would all be grateful if you spoke not longer than 10 minutes or even less. The next is Ms. Maximilian Eberle. [Foreign Language] .
I hope it's working. Excellent. My name is Maximilian Eberle.
I represent shareholders Oberösterreich for the HV Coverage 2019, 647, 32, 639. Und speziell, weil es ja heute auch das neue Vergütung geht. As we are talking about the new remuneration system, let me start with this. I think it would be great if as of 2028, you may boo me if you like, in terms of general fairness, no member of the Board of Management earned more than 20 times as the average Telekom employee in Germany, which includes bonuses or benefits such as pension schemes, shares, etc. [Foreign Language] , I would like to know, die Due Diligence Insurance for the members of the Board of Management are. If you don't answer this question, I don't care because I have my own thoughts. Of course, I would like to extend a big thank you to all employees.
I can't say thank you 244,000 times because then I would need more than 10 minutes, but I would like to know more about the split across the states and how many public servants you still have. As you mentioned sustainability, I would like to know how many savings you generated last year in the field of CO2 and how much CO2 you have saved, how much you have paid for electricity. Telekom is also generating electricity. I would like to know whether Telekom is already generating electricity. I would also like to learn more about pension provisions. I heard something about EUR 134 billion of debt, and I would also like to know what is the interest to be paid for that. You might be surprised, but anniversary of 25 years is okay, but I've never heard that you celebrate 30 years at a shareholders' meeting.
Or is the reason, and that is really a provocative question now, to get EUR 40 million as a gift for poor members of the Board of Management. I don't think it's funny. Ich hätte es jetzt auch gar nicht so schlecht gefunden, wenn nicht nur abstrakt gesprochen wird. I think it would have been good not just to talk in a very broad and abstract manner, but to talk about the actual substance of the management report. If all the members of the Board of Management had given their personal report on their fields of responsibility, please don't be offended, Mr. Höttges. You can split the report. I think that would be in the interest of all visitors, of the entire audience, if those who are in charge of a specific segment report on that, because it also goes along with accountability.
If you feel responsible for that, we can then see and hear one or the other personally and get an impression. Anteilseigner für den Aufsichtsrat. I really enjoyed the presentation of the new candidates for the new members of the supervisory board. I would also like to know how many trainees you have in Germany. You probably do not have the numbers for other countries, but first I would be interested in learning more about this. What do you plan to do till 2027 to raise energy efficiency? We as private investors have the problem at home that the CO2 levies on electricity were increased last year. I hope that Telekom, as a huge company consuming a lot of energy, has different options because energy is quite a cost factor.
We should not underestimate state subsidies, which you are allowed to use, one or the other cases, rightly so, because you are also very innovative. I would like to know what were the subsidies you received last year. Mr. Höttges said that mistakes were made in the past 30 years, but unfortunately, you did not give us any numbers. Divestment last year, so extraordinary impairments, I believe it is called. I would like to know whether the disputes with respect to former T-Mobile shareholders have been resolved successfully. It would be nice to mention the payments granted last year for that. Because of the not appropriate capital increase, there is also legal proceeding pending, and I would like to learn more about this. You talked about antitrust affairs.
I would like to get a rough estimate of the provisions in the context of costs for extrajudicial settlements. I would like to know how many people are working in the back office today to make sure that all legal requirements are met here. With this, I would like to thank you for having a shareholders' meeting in person and also for the beautiful design and atmosphere here. I would like to know how much you spent last year for the annual shareholders' meeting, but I think it's well spent money because it's always better to meet in person than just remotely. With this, we still hope that Deutsche Telekom will continue to pay respect to all employees worldwide of 2028, a fairer and more proper remuneration for members of the board of management.
To conclude, I would like to ask last year, how much have you spent for the corporate proposal scheme and how many costs you were able to save through that. [Foreign Language] Thank you very much for bearing with me, and I wish you [Foreign Language] . Government, which will hopefully take the interests of companies seriously and less bureaucracy, more trust. You know what you're doing. [Foreign Language] . Prepare for the future through more partnership and collaboration.
[Foreign Language] . Mr. Alexander Fühner, I'm sorry I didn't call you before that. That was a mistake, but he will be the next one. Alexander Kurt Valerius Fühner would be the next to ask the question. If not, we would then continue with answering your questions. As Mr.
Fühner apparently is not here, we would continue with Mrs. Lara Kranj, but first we will answer. I will start with Mr. Schmidt's question. You asked about the future setup. Mr. Schmidt is not here, I hear. It's okay. I can answer you. Mr. Schmidt asked the setup of the audit committee, what the future setup of the audit committee will be and what ideas there are for succession. We have the intention to appoint Mrs. MP as a member of the audit committee, and when Mrs. Kurt will leave in one year's time, we will think about her succession, but we will make sure that Mrs. MP will know the committee before she will assume the chairmanship. With Mrs. Knight, there will be a second person on the supervisory board with a strong financial background.
The question, what are the targets for the next LTI tranche? We do it for based on the intermediate plan for ROCE and B. Targets will be defined. In terms of environment, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions, we decided this year to define targets only for one year because in the long term, we want to switch to the commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 2030 and 2040 and to the targets. The problem is the basic is still changing a lot, and we do not want to interfere too often. We want to have very clear bases, and I hope that for the long-term incentive program, we can have intermediate targets.
The last question still open, why we do not have benchmarking total shareholder return, which is oriented to a competitor, but rather have no absolute one, which is a question that was discussed very lively on the supervisory board. It is a matter of philosophy. Do you want to remove the members of the board of management if they are better than all the others, even though a lot of money was left? Do you only want to pay it out if value was generated? We opted for the latter one. It is a philosophical question. What is correct? I am not saying that our approach is better than others. It is rather a question that we decide we have an absolute TSR, not a relative TSR, weighing all the arguments. The second reason was Deutsche Telekom has outperformed the market in the past five years.
That the others will continue to perform that badly on the market should be excluded. I do not want to punish the Board of Management that the others were so bad in the past years. When they will be better, these are the thoughts you have. It is a difficult question to answer. The third element was what is the right index? Here some investors want to have Europe, they want to have America, they want to have a mix, and that is what we said if we bring it together. We rather use the absolute. You can also do it differently, but we opted for this one. With this, Mr. Höttges, may you continue with answering the questions?
I was ordering magenta ties because there was a question whether there isn't any more beautiful tie than the one I'm wearing at the moment in magenta. That was a text message to our head of brand to do something for the shareholders and for us. Let's now talk about the question on upscaling the planned fiber joint venture in the US and special manufacturing, whether we plan further takeovers. I cannot talk about future M&A transactions. Currently, we are focused that the announced transactions will be concluded. You should know fiber is a very complicated product. You need to learn it first in America. We are a mobile-only player. We will focus on these transactions and on their integration: 12-15 new households first and beyond this transaction. I can't go into this. Smaller projects might be possible.
You talked about our plans of the fiber rollout and 50 million households in the US. I answered your question. T-Mobile US is a cooperation with Equity and KKR. These are two financial investors. In particular, the investment in infrastructure, we split the cost for that with them. That is why our risk profile is not that exposed. There was a question on the expansion of cloud services and data centers by Mr. Vogel and whether that is a strategic growth field for Deutsche Telekom. We see a high growth potential for our B2B system with T-Systems, and we see an option to differentiate here to get a USP vis-à-vis the hyperscalers of the US. Sovereign cloud is the catchword here. For 20 years, we've been active in the cloud market. We're not beginners. We know well what we are doing.
We have the largest data center in Germany, for example, in Biere, close to Magdeburg. When we see a growing demand for data storage, we are thinking about what and how to invest into data centers and data infrastructure here in Germany. What we need in particular to approvals, which is an ongoing issue, are energy prices. We need in Germany competitive energy prices. That is one of the most important things. The second thing is, if we want to build a sovereign cloud here, we need somebody to book it. If the federal government says sovereignty, but then stores all data and infrastructure from American hyperscalers, we can invest, but we do not have to invest here. That is why instead of the framework conditions, we also need anchor customers saying, yes, we want to change this here in Germany.
We do not only want to have German companies, but also German employees who have the necessary certification, have the security approval, etc. It's high on our agenda. With Magdeburg Windscale, with DT Capital Partners, we have already 260 gigawatt hours in operation. Mr. Vogel, on your question or my statement on the Mobile World Congress, on the Mobile World Congress, I said and I referred to what was written in the Draghi report. In the Draghi report, it said that at the moment we have 270 different regulatory authorities who are currently responsible for telecommunications. We have regulation at national level and European level. We have media law. We have a data regulator. We have regulators for anything we do. We have the respective authorities behind. They are highly motivated, well-trained people doing their jobs.
I asked Perplexity how many people work for them, and I stopped to count when I found 40,000 people working in the field of regulations in our industry. You cannot imagine how much bureaucracy and red tape we have in our company. That was the background against which I said we do not need to change laws. We also need to reduce the size of the administration of regulatory authorities. D.O.G.E. I never mentioned Musk or Trump, American administration, when it was said that I wanted to do as Musk. No, that is absolutely not true. The Department of Government Efficiency for European and German regulation would be really helpful for us and for our work and for the entrepreneurial success of this company. We do not only want to complain. We also want to make a positive contribution.
That's why we present a list of seven points. I don't want to repeat it. It was published. You can read it on my LinkedIn account. I also asked for it. We made proposals on the competitive policy or competition policy in Europe and how this capital-intensive industry can be revived to have more investment per capita as an industry, opportunities for consolidation. We also made a proposal on how to reduce red tape, in particular with respect to the licensing procedures and the fiber rollout is concerned. We also made a proposal how, as in other areas of the world, we could have a more efficient frequency policy, noise spectrum, for example, 6 gigahertz band for 5G and future 6G networks. We also made proposals on how to promote or improve the internal market for telecommunications. It's so very fragmented.
If there is a gap, a white space at the border, it is not the telco provider, it is the laws because we are not allowed to link our networks across borders. We made proposals for digital ecosystems to make sure that the return American companies earn on our networks, that they will have to pay a fee for that. We also made a proposal on how to have a technical sovereignty. If today 80% of all data of Europeans run on an American infrastructure and in American data centers, how to use cloud capacities or bring cloud capacities to Europe. We are, of course, ready or would be happy to bear our share for investment. You see, I am very passionate about that.
Your question on the climate targets, say on climate as the catchword here, it goes without saying that we act in a very responsible manner. For more than two decades, ecological and social responsibility has been an integral part of our corporate policy. We have a company strategy where it's laid down. We also presented our climate targets last year on the Capital Markets Day. We have committed ourselves to sustainable activities along the entire supply chain. A high level of transparency is necessary for that. We regularly report in external reports and capital markets events on the progress we are making in our climate strategy. The most important targets since 2021. By the way, since 2021, we're one of the few companies where climate targets have been part of our remuneration. We are paid accordingly.
That is why we said that CO2 emissions in scope one and two are already at zero. Scope three shall be brought down to zero. Here, of course, we depend on what our suppliers do and also what our customers do and how energy efficient they are, and if their energy consumption is energy neutral or CO2 neutral. We do not plan to present the entire climate strategy to vote on this at our shareholders' meeting. It is not a part of the German Stock Corporation law, nor is it demanded according to the German Corporate Governance Codes. Of course, we closely monitor the ongoing developments and think that we are addressing and promoting this. You also asked the question on a possible influence of the new American administration on our climate targets.
Man-made climate change and its repercussions are clearly recognized by all scientists worldwide. As a company, we are working on making our business resilient, taking business decisions based on facts. That is why we set scientifically based targets. They were set by science-based target initiatives and approved both for the group and also separately for T-Mobile US. The transition plan for the entire group to our climate targets for 2030 and 2040 were published in detail in our management report, which I recommend you to read. We are currently observing the political developments, are in close exchange with our colleagues. Framework conditions of the political and economic situation are challenging, are constantly changing, and the company always needs to adapt to this. Let me say one thing to wrap up. It's not a purpose in its own right. It's also an economic interest.
When we have very high energy costs and telecommunications as one of the largest energy consumers, that is why we need to use this resource as efficiently as possible. That is why we also have an economic target to bring CO2 emissions down. That is also good for our finances. Mr. Vogel, you asked about possible positive effects for the fiber rollout through the planned infrastructure package of the future federal government. The change of the basic law made it possible to have a special budget, additional budget till 2036. How it will be used will be defined by federal law later. We expect that also the expansion of the digital infrastructure will continue to be in the focus of this package. We want to use this money as responsibly as possible. How much it will be, we do not know yet.
Against this backdrop, let's wait and see. Return on investment, you said that we shouldn't tie everything with the same brush. Not more than EUR 1 billion per year for fiber. We think that makes sense because if you're flooding the market with money for fiber projects, it means that everybody, you know, needs the civil engineering companies, which means that they would increase their prices, which in turn means that we would have to invest far more money to have the lines installed. I don't think that additional subsidies are always the right solution here. Flooding the market with such subsidies, which is why our recommendation, in fact, is to limit the subsidies for the fiber rollout to EUR 1 billion. Mr. Vogel, you said that within the next five years, Germany should become a digitally sovereign country and that this is an important goal.
I think that Deutsche Telekom can and will assume an important role in this context, and we are working on it in many fields. I already mentioned it. First of all, the network infrastructure. Secondly, data centers. Thirdly, AI, then quantum computing and quantum networks, then cybersecurity, digitalization of administration, and digital education. These are things where we want to make a contribution and can make a contribution. We believe that relevant investments here can help Germany move forward. Mr. Vogel, you asked about the speed at which the fiber network will be rolled out. Let me tell you, our goal is and continues to be the clear number one in Germany, market leader. With this in mind, we will do our utmost to make sure that we are and remain the number one. We are rolling out the network everywhere simultaneously in rural areas, in cities.
If necessary, we overbuild our competitors' infrastructure if they do not give us access. In 2022, we connected twice as many households to fiber as all of our competitors combined. More than 10 million households. You have heard it before. In 2024, we connected 2.5 million new households, and we want to continue rolling out at this speed. This is the target. By 2030, we want to be able to guarantee a 100% coverage of fiber lines. I think Tim already said enough about the fiber rollout, but Mr. Vogel asked how can we ascertain that the investments will pay off. At Capital Markets Day, it was said that every investment is calculated individually. We
are calculating with a target return of around 20%. The moment we start implementing it, we compare our assumptions to the actual situation to find out whether we can actually achieve this 20% return.
Maybe not all of the speakers need 10 minutes for their stake. Mr. Fühner is the next speaker, please. Is he here? Yes, he is.
[Foreign Language] . My name is Alexander Fühler. [Foreign Language] . I've always been a shareholder of Deutsche Telekom right from the start. The reason I would like to speak to you today is that I wonder why there isn't a printed version of the annual report of the Deutsche Telekom Foundation. I wasn't able to find it. That makes me wonder because after all, the Telekom Foundation is an important part of Deutsche Telekom. Possibly the Telekom Foundation also receives subsidies. It made me wonder why I wasn't able to find any written information about the Telekom Foundation at this AGM. Could you please tell me why that is so?
Let me answer this straight away. Can I ask an employee, first of all, to help you leave the stage? I would ask that you give us your contact details, and then we will send you a report of the Telekom Foundation. Yeah. Okay, I have requested that, and now you promised me that you will send me this report by postal mail. I would like to thank you for that in advance. Can I ask that this report be made available to whom it may concern at the next AGM? I have another question. What are Deutsche Telekom's plans for China? Anything in particular? Or are you not interested in the Chinese market at all? It would be nice if you could respond to that. Thanks for listening. I hope that my co-shareholders are also interested in having my questions answered.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Fühner. Thanks for pointing that out. I will make sure that at the next AGM, the report of the Telekom Foundation be made available here at the AGM. They do an excellent job in the field of education. Yeah, it will probably be most helpful to actually have a couple of printed copies at hand here. Which brings us to Lara Kralisch, followed by Hannah Obser. First of all, Mrs. Kralisch, please. [Foreign Language]
Ladies and gentlemen, members of the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board, my name is Lara Kralisch, and I am here on behalf of the Association of Critical Shareholders . I am here today to make an urgent appeal to Deutsche Telekom and in particular to the Board of Management.
On behalf of the Association of Critical Shareholders, we demand that the Board of Management and the CEO not be granted discharge. The reason is quite clear. The Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom fails to meet its responsibility and produces negative effects on the company's reputation in Barcelona. What you said, Mr. Höttges, was quite scandalous. You were saying in public that Europe needs a Doge institution. Thank you for referring to that at this AGM, but we criticize the rhetoric, and we criticize that you indicated that you support an institution such as Doge, even though you already referred to it. Let me talk about it anyway. Doge is the so-called Department of Inefficiency, which is managed by tech billionaire Elon Musk. This plays a major role in the reshuffling of the US administration. Doge abolished the Authority for International Development Aid.
It gained access to the US Finance Ministry, and it led to the dismissal of thousands of employees of various ministries. Now, when you look at the money allegedly saved by Elon Musk, you will find that it is much less than what is stated. Initially, he boasted that $55 billion be saved. Independent analysts, however, found out that the actual money saved amounted to around $2 billion. In addition, the mass redundancies initiated by Doge, for instance, or including air traffic controllers, have serious consequences. Europe certainly does not need a Doge. A couple of weeks ago, I came across an article in Handelsblatt. It said that the Telekom boss demands cutting red tape following the example of Elon Musk. It was also stated in the report that Tim Höttges was lamenting regulation in Europe, indicating that Europe should take similar measures as the ones taken by Elon Musk.
Now, that makes me wonder, how is it possible that a company such as Deutsche Telekom supports these sorts of measures? We do know that the Department of Government Efficiency, run by Elon Musk, is responsible for some very problematic, even dangerous measures. Against this backdrop, it is very unsettling that Mr. Höttges should present such an institution as a role model for Europe. Mr. Höttges' statement, "What Europe needs is a Doge," is not just irresponsible, but it also brings up the question of why such an authority that produces such disastrous consequences in the US is praised as a role model in Europe. If you are saying Doge is a good idea, what would cutting red tape look like for you? Do you have any plans for it? Can we see them? Can you outline them for us?
These statements do not only bring up questions regarding the CEO's competence, but also regarding the responsibility of all board members. Anyone supporting such dangerous and problematic ideas damages Deutsche Telekom's reputation. Question to you, Dr. Appel, how can you possibly support such a CEO who puts the company's reputation at risk by making such statements? After all, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board has to make sure that the CEO not only meets his economic obligations, but also his societal obligations. The Supervisory Board has to ascertain that the company is managed in an ethically acceptable way, while at the same time supporting the interests of all shareholders, which in turn also means that scandalous statements such as the ones from Mr. Höttges in Barcelona should have consequences.
With this in mind, I would like to ask you what specific steps you intend to take in order to prevent such statements from being made again in the future. We are here today to make it clear that as a human rights organization, we cannot possibly accept the statements made. The Supervisory Board should distance itself from Mr. Höttges and make it clear that they do not support it. I think Deutsche Telekom needs to go back to a responsible course that is preparing the company for the future. Last question to the Supervisory Board. How do you intend to restore the trust on the part of shareholders and the general public in Deutsche Telekom without opposing the statements made by Mr. Höttges? I don't think we should grant this charge to the Board of Management and Mr.
Höttges, as long as it has not been recognized that this was a major error which needs to be corrected. The Supervisory Board now needs to take action. This is in the vested interest of the shareholders, and it is also in the interest of responsible company management. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mrs. Kralisch. Now, I appreciate that the last two speakers only needed about five minutes for their statements. The next speaker is Hannah Obser, followed by Markus Dufner. First of all, Ms. Hannah Obser. [Foreign Language]
Dear members of the Board of Management, we are facing a turning point in society and in industry. I would like to talk about a topic which is well known, but very important anyway. It's about DEI, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion.
These are the values which Deutsche Telekom often refers to in order to present itself in a particular light. However, these are not just empty shells. These terms should be the foundation on which your corporate culture is based. In your current annual report, you proudly disclosed that the ratio of women in managerial positions stands at 28% and keeps on growing. The share of people with disabilities is 5.8%. You have around 200,000 employees worldwide, 10,000, and these people are working hard in order to make you one of the world's most profitable and successful telecoms companies. The question is, what happens if political pressure collides with economic interests? That became quite clear when you look at the recent developments in the US.
The US subsidiary, T-Mobile US, recently took a decision which is not just problematic for the company itself, but also for you, and will have far-reaching consequences. According to reports, T-Mobile US have decided to discontinue most of their DEI activities in order to get the go-ahead for the merger with the optical fiber company Lumos. That merger had to be approved by the FCC, and the authority made it quite clear that T-Mobile US had to discontinue its DEI activities in order to get the go-ahead. The landing page was even taken off during the negotiations on the merger. This is a point where I would like to stop for a moment and ask, what does it mean if a global company that officially fosters diversity gives up working in these fields for the sake of an economic goal?
What are the long-term consequences for the credibility and the values of Deutsche Telekom as a whole? How can you, as Deutsche Telekom, that publicly promotes diversity, support that T-Mobile US stopped its DEI activities? What does this step mean for your commitment worldwide, and how do you intend to handle the demands of policymakers who say that this should be undone? T-Mobile is not the only case that is unsettling. It is also the political context within which such a decision was made. Under the Trump administration, the United States has turned out to be very aggressive towards any companies pursuing DEI programs. Right from the start, Trump took measures to cut back on DEI-related activities in public authorities, and DEI offices were shut down.
This policy is regarded to be a step back and a step towards an autocratic society where social justice and equal opportunities are no longer relevant. While the U.S. administration continues to pursue its policy, we should ask ourselves how we can continue to stick by our values, even though they may not always be in line with other countries' regulations. I think it is important to bear this in mind. Deutsche Telekom sometimes distances itself from the activities of its T-Mobile US subsidiary. Ten years ago, there were reports about anti-union activities and anti-human rights activities by T-Mobile US. Information was fed through to the Deutsche Telekom headquarters in Germany, and headquarters reacted by saying that maybe T-Mobile US made some mistakes, but not so the parent company.
It is an illusion, however, that we can really distinguish between what the parent company is doing and what its US subsidiary is doing by just referring to different legal requirements. That, in fact, gives the impression that equal opportunities are only important as long as it's profitable. As long as the company is making enough money, everything seems acceptable. Let me ask you, Mr. Höttges and Dr. Appel, as you are in charge of this company that publicly supports equity and equal opportunities, how do you intend to deal with the pressure coming from the United States? Are you really willing to put the trust of your employees and customers at stake? What do you hope to achieve also in terms of money? How much money would that be? Would you have lost that money if T-Mobile US had continued with its DEI activities?
How can you justify these activities bearing in mind, you know, other countries that also support DEI? DEI has a deeper ethical meaning, and a lot of companies are under pressure, not just in the US. Deutsche Telekom as well needs to ask itself whether it's going to stick to its gun or whether it'll just adapt to the wind of change for the sake of short-term profit. The Deutsche Telekom values, which are always based on DEI, as the company says, should not just apply whenever it's convenient. They should also apply whenever the pressure from outside is mounting. The question is not just what Deutsche Telekom is doing in the US. The question is, what is the company's basic attitude towards political conditions in certain countries? It's important that a corporation as large as Deutsche Telekom takes on responsibility.
The question is, who is willing to stand in for equal opportunities and societal progress in difficult times when the going gets tough, rather than just focusing on financial profits? I would like to conclude my presentation with a clear statement. Diversity is not just a luxury item that you may choose to support here and there. You always need to support it and, to put it more mildly, it is also an indispensable part of a company that wants to be a leading company, not just now, but also in the future. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ms. Opzer. This is Herr Markus Dufner. [Foreign Language] members of the Supervisory Board and Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom AG, and shareholders. My name is Markus Dufner. I'm the managing director of the Umbrella Association of Critical Shareholders. Die Stimmrechte for more than 100,000 shares. Mr. Höttges, you have received a lot of praise for your services today, and rightly so. Unfortunately, like my two colleagues here, I have to, yeah, sour it by putting a little vinegar in it. Compliance, lobbyism, security problems, and compliance with the due diligence, supply chain law, and climate protection are issues which I must address.
The Umbrella Association has already commented on items three and four of the agenda, and the reason why we can't approve the word of the Supervisory Board and Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom have already been addressed by my colleagues. Right at the outset, Mr.
Höttges, I would like to say that we think it's [Foreign Language]
[Foreign Language] In the year 2024, did German providers use these components from China and on what scale? How about in the years 2020 to 2023? Was that also the case? Joint research by a state broadcasting company found, and another party found, that lobbying by Huawei has delayed the exclusion of Chinese suppliers from the German market in spite of security misgivings about this. Meetings at the ministerial level and state secretaries' levels took place. There were meetings with the Digital Ministry, Finance Ministry, Ministry of Economics, all the way up to the Chancellery. On the lobbying side, the top management, the CEOs were involved.
That applies to Huawei, but also Telekom. Minister Höttges has commented a lot on the topic of Huawei. Because of the 30% ownership of Telekom by the German government, that eased their access to the highest political levels. This meeting took place between Huawei top managers and Deutsche Telekom and the high-ranking officials in the Federal Chancellery. What did you talk about at that meeting? Volker Wissing was also there. Publicly as well, network operators are very restrained in their criticism of Huawei. During the build-out of 5G, they talked more about costs. There was a threat of legal action against the federal government as when an exclusion of Huawei and another Chinese provider was discussed. In Germany alone, only Germany hesitated. You said, Mr. Höttges, if Huawei was prohibited, that German companies could have difficulty selling their products in China.
That was very calculating. It is interesting that Telekom in the US also is building out the network there, but without using components from Chinese manufacturers in it that have already been excluded from that market. The Green Bundestag delegate referred to a veritable security risk. The consequences of this security gap are basically borne by all of us. The whole telecommunications branch is very keen on praising the unregulated US. They say that we make 65% of our sales in the US because it is not as regulated as in Europe. In the discussions with other CEOs of telecommunications companies in Europe, you have said that we have a clean house and a dirty road. Could you comment on that? What do you mean by that? What is this dirty road you are talking about? Who is part of it?
The Association for Broadband Communication, BREKO, criticized the elimination of bureaucracy called on by Mr. Höttges to reduce regulation. He said he considered this highly dangerous because innovation is inextricably associated with competition. BREKO is not one of the big third German network operators, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, and Telefonica. Mr. Höttges, can you somehow counter these criticisms? Climate protection, the last topic. Thousands of companies worldwide are shelving their plans in the climate initiative. You at Deutsche Telekom as well. The SBTi is under massive criticism right now. A lot of scientists regard CO2 compensation as greenwashing because it's hard to measure its impact and its reliability is highly controversial. Studies show that climate protection measures have been overestimated for many years. That was in an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Mr. Höttges, [Foreign Language] .
Can you comment on the science target initiative, the Association of DECOT Investment, at this shareholders' meeting? Such climate resolutions are possible, namely in Britain. Why not in Germany? Your position on the Due Diligence Supply Chain Act and the EU Directive on Company Sustainability and Due Diligence, what is your position on this? Let me focus on two points. German companies have not been able to implement the agreement on human rights. You need to have a clear legal framework and legal security. There has not been exactly a constructive discussion on the Supply Chain Act and Due Diligence. What is your position? Do you affirm that you want to stick to the EU requirements in connection with the Green Deal? Are you calling for a better implementation?
Are you calling for the elimination of the EU Directive and the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act? Don't you think it's a disadvantage for the company not to provide more attention to human rights in this Supply Chain Due Diligence Act Directive and German Act if liability is supposed to be completely eliminated and also allegiance to the climate change plan? Companies that don't really seriously work on human rights and green factors, environmental factors, what do you expect the impact will be on a company like Deutsche Telekom? Also, reporting obligations. How many violations took place in 2024 at Deutsche Telekom? Please name the main violations and how many of these have you stopped? Regarding complaints, you talked about your whistleblowing system in general terms. What violations have been reported and how many of these cases have you been able to clear up?
Finally, in the implementation of the Due Diligence Supply Chain Act, the company seems to be creating bureaucracy here and red tape unnecessarily in the form of questionnaires for direct suppliers instead of evaluating these risks in the supply chain itself. Do you send these questionnaires to direct suppliers? How is this compatible with the risk-based approach? I'm looking forward to the answers to my questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Dufner. To conclude this round of questions, I would like Dr. Höttges, the next good ladies to step up to the podium. Dr. Barbara Grimberg.
[Foreign Language] , ladies and gentlemen, my name is Barbara Grimberg. I studied economics and also have a PhD in it.
I attended various shareholders' meetings, and I was somewhat surprised that it's my turn already because when I registered 15 minutes ago, I was told that there were 22 people on the list of speakers. I thought I would have plenty of time until, say, 5:00 P.M. On the one hand, you praise your corporate culture and your understanding and your responsibility. I think that that is really misleading. You know, among other things, when Mr. Höttges receives a salary of more than EUR 10 million, in the past, it's raised from EUR 11 million to EUR 14 million. That's a huge increase. When I look at the critical situation of the German economy and the collective agreements and negotiation agreements and disagreements between Verdi and steel workers over the last few months, where they demanded 8% because of inflation from the labor side.
I think it's very irresponsible to try to obtain a salary increase like this and conclude an employment agreement like this. You have to admit that a bus driver in a public transportation bus earns about EUR 3,500 a month gross, or a locomotive engineer gets about EUR 4,000. They have to work; both of these people have to work in machinery or vehicles worth either thousands of euros or a locomotive worth even more. The question is then, what about the responsibility of these people for road traffic, for example? In a way, that's a greater degree of responsibility than you have because you have an A&O insurance policy. Your monthly salary is EUR 1 million. When I split that up, divide that by 4,000, that's 250 jobs a month or 2,000 salaries per month, that's tasteless.
It is arrogant to just be self-serving. It is the opposite of what you preach. Since 2002, I have complained many times that when profits are attained from core activities of the company, this should be split up into four parts: one-fourth for the shareholders because they provided the money, one-fourth of the profits should then go to the employees, but at all levels because they have all worked well. Maybe some a little more than others, but in all job salary categories, and the rest for repairs and investment, or also savings for a rainy day, just like we have right now in Germany. The fact that you are now hiring women is nice, but I think it is also really outrageous that there is only one video presentation of them. I think that is, like I said, outrageous. Family reasons were cited. Why?
Does her child have a birthday party or something like that? That's not really enough. You know, people are not exactly making a huge commitment for you there. I know a lot of people have applied for positions with you, but I've never heard anything positive about it. Only the excuse that, oh, they don't fit into our job profile and things like that. It is emphasized by the one woman where she worked in all kinds of places. She worked at Stellantis, BMW, Mercedes, and also other companies and in the IT area. With AI, I'm familiar with that too, with AI from the area of architecture, BIM and Co. and the construction sector. Your internal interest of 20%, I would criticize that too. Which company uses 20% as a measurement for returns on internal investment? 5-10% is the usual factor that's applied.
When we talk about your salary, once again, in relation to what you said regarding the equity ratio and liquidity and credit conditions, which you want to improve, you should not demand this salary increase either. I read your 350-page management report, but what's lacking is figures on salaries, neither on the ones that are already being paid or have been paid or pension schemes. There is only one reference to a remuneration report. Why aren't these pay amounts stated in this management report? These are important details. I think this is scandalous. Furthermore, from 2017 to the 31st of December 2024, there was a low-priced telephone tariff from fixed network to fixed network and fixed net to mobile. That was 0900, 0941, 0960, and so forth. Why doesn't that exist anymore?
Is this an administrative order by the government, or did you give this up because the competition was using it? Also, CO2 certificates. I'd be interested in knowing how many CO2 certificates have been assigned to or allotted to Deutsche Telekom. How many have you bought? How many have you sold and at what price? What effects in a negative way do you expect from the Trump policy and his tariffs? Furthermore, I'd be interested in hearing, in connection with the build-out of fiber optics, how many kilometers or in meters, I don't care, you have built, how many new customers have concluded user agreements, and how much additional revenue this has produced. Do you have any estimates there?
It has been mentioned several times by yourself and the previous speakers that this Capital Markets Day, why were there not any announcements before that for the shareholders and an invitation for shareholders to come to Capital Markets Day? In connection with your highly touted responsibility and your nomination committee and the new elections, if we look at what the management report says on page 15, continuing training for the supervisory board, individual responsibility, it is not even really well organized. How many members of the supervisory board have made use of this and how many hours? It also states that Deutsche Telekom offers information events and workshops. The topics are listed off there. I would like to hear the amount of hours and participants in these so that the new members of the supervisory board can be entrusted with the domains that they are responsible in.
Have they worked for a long time with you or competitors or in other areas? Maybe you could think about inviting them. These workshops are used to provide continuing training because apparently supervisory board members are dentists and they need more training. Also, offers for shares. What effects will this have on the share price if there is a buyback? Are you doing this only to increase the share price? That will have that impact. These rising share prices will mean that you receive higher bonuses because they're pegged together. When you rebuy these shares at a certain rate, but then there is a decline in the share price, how does that affect the balance sheet? Is there a comparison between the purchase and the sales price? How does this affect the shares held by employees of Deutsche Telekom?
AI, AI, and I know this from training courses and continuing education, eats up a lot more electricity than other things. You write in your management report about T-Labs and what site research centers and units are using this. How great was the broadband needed by the particular unit? What type of services were used by customers with their own computer centers? How much do you offer for that? The automatic ticket handling, what role does that play? What do you do with the cell phones that you take back? Do you rebuild them or do you use them for cannibalization from other parts or things like that or recycling? You talk about due diligence requirements, but I do not recognize these at all in my area. I have been applying for a position with you since 2001.
If you did adhere to due diligence, you would invite me to an interview. Then you could help work on your equal treatment and equal opportunity claims. Also, electricity use for the company buildings and air conditioning and evaporation. Where does the water come for this? On page 220, you write that capacity utilization of servers is to be improved. How many servers do you have and what are their capacities and how many hours do they operate and how great is the greatest operative capacity and the least? I know that my time's up, but I'm going to continue talking. You really need to understand that a lot of the shareholders here can think critically and they really aren't going to be. You can't just fop us off with answers like you're giving here.
We want to, for example, with the use of electricity, you say Deutsche Telekom uses 100% green energy. That's just a lie. In the US and Greece and Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia, we are present there. What are their electrical sources there? Some of them have a lot of nuclear power and that the Germans also use. The old Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Poland have brown coal power plants, anthracite coal, and Macedonia, and Bosnia also have nuclear power plants, et cetera, et cetera. The US with its gas-fired plants and oil-fired plants, how can you state something like this in a business report and then assert that you work professionally? I would ask you to wrap things up because you have gone way past your allotted time.
Yes, in connection with the matching system for your shares, you buy two shares and in two years you get one for free. Does that apply to all employees? This is an employee share plan, or does this only apply in the area of the top management? On page 237, you write about a stake in Crown Castle Mast business with dual lessors. Is there an analog approval right there, just like in the area of residential construction? Does it apply to sub-tenants? On page 307, in what countries do you now pay the global minimum tax? It's an OECD requirement that you announced you would be doing for the first time or have to pay it for the first time in Germany in 2024. How many satellites do you have a stake in? Do you have your own?
The salary system, you know, I'll touch on this again because you weren't listening before. I believe that on the basis of social insurance thresholds, your pension plan should provide for a basis and an agreement should serve as the basis for an agreement, and then all kinds of other benefits and provisions or reserves will be eliminated later so that a pay agreement can be made. I don't care if it's a million a month or even two million as, of course, annual salary. There has to be a difference between the educational training and the rest. You have a success-pegged pay scale. I would ask you to stop now. You've spoken longer than any other preceding speaker and way past the allotted time. Yeah. That a success-pegged salary should only apply if you really achieve successes.
I think above and beyond this, you should really think about this, especially one million in. For target attainment is commensurate with 16,000 for a person who earned 60,000 years and has just begun in the profession. I think you should really be transparent about this, about your whole salary scale and benefits. Thank you for the extra time. Other people have not spoken so long. Also the report that Mr. Funer referred to, I would like to get my hands on that. Please think about the truth.
Thank you very much, Dr. Grimberg. We are now moving on to answering the questions. Afterwards, Klaus Löhmer, Johannes Wicht, please stand by for the next round. Let me start answering the questions. One question from Mr. Pontzen. Adaptation of the remuneration system raises some questions.
We haven't adapted the remuneration system just for one individual case, but have defined some general principles. We have a very clear system with clear rules where it's clearly defined the remuneration of the CEO. We have a special situation that Mr. Höttges has been extremely successful in his job. Of course, we wanted to offer him something in this situation where the question was whether he would extend his contract. We decided to take this approach. I mean, of course, you're free to criticize this, but we believe that we took the right decision. The system also provides for lower maximum salary. I think we've found a good compromise, a balance between the interests of the company and the interests of Mr. Höttges. What is the current situation of succession planning for Mr. Höttges? Next question by Mr. Pontzen.
Of course, in due time, we will start the process, look at internal and external candidates, and will then take a decision. This is still too early because we've just extended his contract to 2028. For this reason, we don't see any need to go around looking for a possible successor in the market. This would just lead to instability. Next question. How does the supervisory board make sure that this stage is set for a successful future beyond Mr. Höttges' era? The executive committee of the supervisory board is looking at this issue. I regularly talk to the members of the management board at several levels of management. We have just had an internal promotion to the management board, and this is all part and parcel of careful succession planning.
We are doing this in a small group in the Presidential Committee or Executive Committee of the Supervisory Board. This is just a very common practice, and we've always done this, and we will keep doing this. Mr. Beckendorf's question next. How many candidates have you had talks in terms of filling the Supervisory Board positions? We always have a shortlist, and we talk to people on the shortlist. We don't talk about this in public, how many people we talk to, but we always have talks with more than just one person whenever we have a free seat. Next question. Under what conditions are you going to make use of the possibility to hold virtual AGMs? We believe that it's important to have in-person AGMs, but we have to take care that if something unexpected happens, like COVID, we have the necessary legal framework to hold virtual AGMs.
We now have the legal right to hold hybrid or virtual AGMs in the next two years, but we have not made use of this now. We have the firm position that next year we will have another in-person AGM. The
Supervisory Board examined the abolition of the share matching program. Have you reviewed this?
Yes, of course we have. First of all, you always have a certain history, and you always want to have continuity. Of course, you also need to change certain things, but I'm not a big fan of revolutions and putting everything upside down because it leads to a lot of friction. We also have to think of our executives, our leaders. We'd rather have an evolution in the company. In the case of Telekom, share matching is a successful program because the members of the management board are highly invested in the future of the company. You all know the figures. This is not the first year. We believe that this tool has worked very well. That's why we kept it. We discussed it very intensively, and after the discussion, we decided to continue it.
It has become rare in the landscape, if you will, in business. That does not mean that we should get rid of it. You have to look at it and see whether it was successful. This is what we did. What is the target remuneration of the CEO and the board for 2025? What adaptations have you made or will you make? We will report on this next year. First of all, the AGM has to approve the new remuneration system, which also includes all the parts of the remuneration of the CEO. There have been moderate adaptations. We will report on any other impact of the new remuneration system, the maximum salary of the CEO, which might be twice as high as that of a regular member of the management board. How can you justify that?
I mean, we've looked at peer companies, and we opted for the current ratio because we think it's absolutely in line with what is paid in other companies. Do you think that the raise that the new system makes possible of 50% of the maximum remuneration? Why is that a good thing? Why is that fair? Given the enormous business success of Telekom, I think the maximum remuneration—and we're talking about a maximum remuneration only in cases where Mr. Höttges has generated enormous value for you and the company—then if this maximum remuneration is paid, then this would be in line with the enormous success of the business. What is the impact of the extension of Mr. Höttges' contract in terms of succession planning? I think I already answered that question. Of course, we will keep looking at talented people, at potential leaders.
The question actually is not relevant right now because we've just extended his contract. Of course, we're keeping this question on our minds. Does the CEO have a special right of terminating his contract? No. Under his current contract, he has no special right to terminate it. I'll hand over to Mr. Höttges. Mr. Beckendorf, we don't expect any spillover effects from the US regulatory requirements to German or European regulations. You asked the question about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I actually talked at length about this, and I'd like to refer you to my statement there as far as DEI policy is concerned and our perspective on this. Various subsidiaries in Europe have received letters from US authorities, especially companies providing services for US embassies. In these letters, these companies were invited to make sure that they don't violate any US regulations.
We have made sure our response to this was that, of course, US regulations must not be in conflict with any European and German regulations in this field. The next question about the EU Commission. The EU Commission has confirmed its intention in the last quarter to present a legislation on networks. We believe that the EU Commission will submit a white paper on this. The reports by Mr. Letta and Mr. Reich emphasized the need for new regulation in telecommunications in order to enable more investment and innovation. You can see the US is a good example. We had four players. Now there are only three players. We invest more, and prices did not go up, but the competitiveness of all these players has increased. That is why we are talking about the platform economy.
We believe that these proposals will be taken into account in future legislation from the EU. Currently, the commissioners are reviewing this. The comparison to Fidel Castro was a joke, and you should see it this way. This was just about lengthy questions and lengthy answers. I mean, I was almost counter-revolutionary because this today was my shortest AGM speech ever. Thanks for your question anyway. What is revolutionary at Deutsche Telekom? The IP changeover was revolutionary. Every household felt the impact. Without this changeover, we would not have been able to do this highly developed network, and all these services that we now offer would not have been possible. Also, the control through central clouds or our network companies would not be possible. All these remote functions, umbrella services, our T-Systems head actually started this. This was revolutionary.
Establishment of DTCP-Capital Partners, a capital venture fund that has a high double-digit return, so produces enough substantial earnings. This is what we are doing. The extension fiber and partners in the U.K. and in the Netherlands. We tried this in those countries before we did it in Germany with Deutsche Glasfaser, for example. The merger of Sprint and T-Mobile US was a revolution in the US. Currently, the biggest revolution that's happening in our company—and this is just the tip of the iceberg; we are only getting started—is the use of AI in all areas, in all segments: network architecture, customer service, administration. Also, as we are answering your questions, I would be happy if we had more AI in the background: the self-healing networks, the software generation, just to give you an example. In terms of software, we are four times faster than in the past.
We have savings of up to 70% when it comes to programming. This is the revolution that's underway right now. Global size is another revolution. In the past, we managed to get a huge strategic advantage by our international setup. The economies of scale that we have by developing software only once and then scaling it up, smaller companies cannot do that. That is giving us an enormous competitive advantage. Of course, we want to use this competitive advantage in order to be able to invest even more to boost our strength even further. Your question: Am I Ludwig Erhard or Fidel Castro? I believe in Ludwig Erhard. I think it would be wrong for politicians to plan the economy.
If you're a veteran in this industry like myself, you will know that we have been talking about infrastructure and things like deregulation for many decades. Now we're talking about fiber optics network and regulation on this. I don't think it makes any sense to go back to the old monopoly situation because infrastructure competition has been a blessing for this industry and for this company. To force somehow the phase-out of copper cables also doesn't make sense. Everybody has their own technology. They have to see how they handle it. Everybody takes their own decisions on investment. Anybody can install fiber optic cables in Germany. Everybody has to decide for themselves when to change over to new technologies. That's my idea of a market economy and a free enterprise. We shouldn't have too much regulation.
We should have, on the contrary, more dynamics and more competition. These are some classical issues that we've been talking about for a long time. Fulfilling our obligation in terms of supply, these supply requirements, we are meeting the requirements. 99.5%, which is demanded, I think this is disproportionate because in the most sensitive areas like nature preserves almost, we have to make sure that there is mobile connection. Yes, I'm willing to do that and set up a cell tower, but maybe LTE supply or other technologies could be used there. We still think that this development is possible, but we should not be confronted with such a requirement and then told, "But you're not supposed to build this in a nature preserve." If there's such a requirement, then the government or politicians have to support us in terms of legislation.
I mean, there's a lot of disagreement on this issue. Now, this brings me to Mr. Vogel's question. You asked about IT data sovereignty. T-Systems, as an example, has been supplying cloud data infrastructure for many years, the so-called classifieds like banks and also the public sector. Of course, they need to keep their data in sovereign infrastructures. We've been doing this for a long time before moving into these turbulent political times. Now, the sovereign cloud market, does Deutsche Telekom have a comprehensive portfolio to offer here? Yes, we have. And it's scalable. We can become bigger. The European sovereign cloud, the Open Telecom Cloud, multi-cloud vendors. We offer this along with big hyperscalers. You can purchase any cloud that is available in the world market. That's part of sovereignty.
Apart from this, we are offering other alternatives: private cloud, FSI, it's called FSI, and specific solutions in the healthcare sector as far as storing healthcare data is concerned. Here we offer specialized solutions, OSC, we call this OSC. We are in an excellent position for digitalization to build up a cloud solution for Europe. I hope that in the next years we have beautiful stories to tell. Mr. Pontzen, you asked about the growth plans in the US and to give you a few concrete numbers. Growth of service revenues about 5% per year. We are optimistic that we can grow by 5%, have a strong growth, even though we're earning EUR 75 billion-EUR 76 billion. EBITDA growth, 7% growth per year is our target. We are earning $39 billion in the US.
Free cash flow growth of about 8% per year to $18 billion or $19 billion in the US. We also want to continue to invest at a high level. We expect $9 billion-$10 billion of investment into the infrastructure per year for our American market. The growth areas in the US are currently very much to gain market share in areas which were not covered by us, smaller markets and rural areas. We are always a market leader in the big cities in America and also the B2B business is still intact, but we used to be a pure B2C brand and we are now moving into the B2B market. Here we are underrepresented and here the best 5G network is very popular. We are constantly gaining market share. There is another area we are growing, it's the so-called fixed wireless access.
It's simply 5G in a router for your home use for the classic fixed network, which we have in America, in particular in rural areas. Cable infrastructure is very bad and broadband width is very low. Customers prefer the high-speed internet of Deutsche Telekom, 5G router at home. We believe that 12 million customers by 2028 alone in this business in the US, that is what we want to achieve. At the end of 2024, T-Mobile US had already 6.5 million customers in this high-speed internet product. We are not in the beginning. Here we are pretty established. T-Mobile has two joint mergers with financial investors, as we talked about today, Lumos and Metronet, 12-15 million customers shall be added through optical fiber, pure optical fiber without copper and cable. We call it a clean infrastructure.
That is what we're working on and that is why we are optimistic that we can grow in the US. Mr. Ponsen, your question on convergency products in America, good question. We don't see any sign that a fixed mobile package would be necessary to remain competitive. Mobile business alone is successful as a stand alone. There is no nationwide fixed network or cable provider like what we know in Europe, which are far smaller. We compete already in a convergent world of different infrastructures, but in America, customers differentiate either cable or optical fiber or the mobile product. Also, Mr. Ponsen asked the question about my personal targets for the next years. [Foreign Language] . I refer to my growth, 4% growth in service revenue, 4-6% EBITDA growth, EUR 21 billion free cash flow.
We want that dividends continue to rise. These are the financial targets which we set ourselves. Of course, the key job is growth. How can we continue to be successful through growth? How can we do this efficiently, have a global size? How can we use state-of-the-art technology, AI, to improve our service? Also culturally, we are working on our T-style, as we call it, the way in which we identify with our company and how we can raise our motivation. I will also make my contribution that you will see here a good successor. I see, I think we should make the entire management team younger. This is, of course, also my task to prepare the next generation. Mr. Ponsen, your question on data protection in the U.S. Several measures make sure that all subsidiaries meet the high standards of Deutsche Telekom.
As I said, that is group-wide guidelines, clear governance model, regular monitoring, reporting activities. Plus, we have our own board in the US looking into it. We have made a lot of progress in America, what you can also see in the reports with respect to cybersecurity. Here we have invested much more. As I told you, we have a group-wide know-how exchange of our so-called CISOs. These are the security directors in our company to defend cyber ethics and to minimize the risk of damage to our supply chains. We are aware of the fact that this risk has increased exponentially. Nobody can give you 100% security or guarantee, nevertheless, it's a big thing we are looking into. T-Mobile US has also set up a so-called trust center, which reports transparently on certifications, monitoring reports, and classifications.
We are now also certified in the US, which was also a consequence of what we've seen in the past in SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS. These are important certifications which now have implemented at T-Mobile US. We have a cybersecurity rating by external sources, by ImmuniWeb and by BitSight. We scored 760 points of possible 820 points. These are perfect, but it's not bad. We have a clear A, which is the best mark in America by another institute. I think we shouldn't rest on this, but you see that we are making sure that America is getting better in terms of cybersecurity, and we see very encouraging signs. Mr. Ponsen, your author of the possibilities in the context of the AI phone and what the risks are, Mrs. Nemat presented at the Mobile World Congress.
Now we have it also in a second version, and we are working on the function. Of course, GDPR or laws will be respected. As I said, this is natural. It goes without saying, not worth really mentioning. We will also commit ourselves to ethical guidelines for AI, that we have responsible development use of AI and that we will not allow its use unlimitedly. Nevertheless, there is the AI Act. That is a clear guardrail for us. We, of course, meet all legal requirements that are necessary. Ladies and gentlemen, before Mr. Illek, we continue with answering the questions. I want to note, we have now spent almost five and a half hours in this meeting.
As there are still many questions pending, I will just now reduce the speaking time to five minutes per speaker to make sure that we can close the meeting in an appropriate time frame. If necessary, I will further reduce the speaking time. Secondly, to make sure that we have a smooth proceeding here, I will also close the list of speakers in 20 minutes at 3:45 P.M. If you still want to make a contribution, ask the question, please go to the speakers with the station counter by a quarter to four. After that, you cannot register any longer, which is important. Before Mr. Lömer and Mr. Wicht will continue, Mr. Illek will answer his questions.
I will be happy to do that. Let's first start with the net financial debt, why they went up in 2024 and what the development was the past.
Debt went up by $5 billion. You see this in the business report on page 77, $6 billion come only because of currency effects, a strong dollar. In the future, the absolute debt will not go that way. We have a rising EBITDA. We try the proportionate debt shall be kept at less than 2.75. Why is that the case? This is driven mainly by the US. You know that we still have two pending deals, Metronet and US Cellular. It has to do with the dividends payment in the US, up to $50 billion announced till the end of 2027. That is why we have a potential buffer of $20 billion, so that the absolute debt is not going down, but the ratio remains constant at about 2.75. What are the main investments for 2024?
In the US, it was $8.27 billion. We said in future we want to have $9-10 billion. In ex-US, it was $7.7 billion, and that will move towards $8 billion. Now, two questions by Mr. Streicher. He asked about the share buyback in the US. The total payout in the US for the total dividend payment was in total $14 billion and the split of $4.1 billion to dividends paid out and $9.9 billion to share buyback. T-Mobile US always gives information on the development of the share buybacks, and the next publication will be on the 24th of April. The dividend is paid out on a quarterly basis. As we hold more than 50%, we get more than 50% of this. That is why we are independent of the share price development.
You also asked the question how much the dividend is still being paid off the tax account. It's not that easy because it depends on the domestic development of EBIT and how much payment we get from foreign subsidiaries or whether the legal changes or if there's any reorganization in the group. I can't give you a fixed or clear number. We will still pay out for a couple of years off this tax account.
Next, we come to the next out of session. First, Mr. Klaus Lömer. We have now limited the speaking time to five minutes.
Klaus Lömer, [Foreign Language] to five points, I would like to make. [Foreign Language] .
First, could you imagine an expansion of expanding in the mega cities in Asia, in particular to China, under the brand of T-Mobile? My second question is, I think that a lot of former fixed sites are very damaged. Network sites are very damaged. I hope that you are aware of that. Possible solution might be smart e-mobility charging stations of Telekom. The third thing is Magenta TV 2.0. I think customers could be better informed. Fourth, Marvel Fusion, could you please give us more details on that? Fifth, I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to get a copy of the financial statements by post. Can I ask another question on sports? Deutsche Telekom sponsored the Team Telekom and added Tour de France team.
I must admit, the Tour de France is not without risk, but could you think of sponsoring it again a bit?
Thank you, Mr. Lömer. Very focused questions, which is really very helpful. That is why we can ask Mr. Johannes Wicht to continue. After that, Mr. Gerhard Bachmann.
[Foreign Language] , members of the Deutsche Telekom Board of Management, dear shareholders. Now, I would like to come up with an interesting proposal, and I come from Bamberg. Since 2022, around 10,000 previous exchanges were switched off because the technology was outdated and they are no longer used. Now, these properties are usually massive buildings about the size of a single-family home. In all of these old exchange buildings, there is electricity, bathrooms, parking spaces, etc. In Bavaria, there are around 3,000 of these exchange buildings, and they are in a sorry state.
Every expert would recommend that these buildings be kept in shape. Every house owner knows that if you don't keep the house in shape, sooner or later it will have a detrimental effect. Which is why I sent several messages to Labor Director Mrs. Bohle, suggesting that these buildings used for the old Deutsche Telekom exchanges be used, you know, for housing purposes, for families, for instance, and others. Unfortunately, to no avail. A lot of companies already offer affordable housing to their executives and others. We, however, don't need luxury apartments, just affordable housing space. Last year, around 1,800 junior staff started their training at Telekom. Considering the high rents at the moment, unfortunately, they will have to pay a lot of the money they earn on housing. All over Germany, we are short of several hundreds of thousands of apartments.
Therefore, making such an investment on the part of the company would also help ease the pressure on the national housing market. In addition, the Federal Construction Ministry grants subsidies to the tune of EUR 500 million for anyone making affordable housing available to young employees and their families. This is certainly something that the group should use for its employees. Thank you for listening.
Thank you very much, Mr. Wicht. The next speaker is Mr. Bachmann, followed by Reinhard Martius. Mr. Bachmann, the floor is yours.
[Foreign Language] Gerhard Bachmann. Good afternoon, my name is Gerhard Bachmann. Let me get started in a moment. Mr. Höttges, between 2022 and 2024, the business volume of the company was between EUR 110 billion-EUR 115 billion. That was an increase of around 1.3%.
Inflation, according to the annual report, was around 17% during that period, which means that your business actually was reduced, adjusted for inflation. This year, you achieved a maximum profit. How did you make that possible? With what tricks or measures? The fiber rollout, Deutsche Glasfaser, keeps on sending me letters. I have brought some here. Every two to four weeks, I get another letter, so they are very keen. When will Deutsche Telekom finally do something similar to advertise its activities? Is there still a major demand for private fiber lines or for business purposes? Can you give us an idea of the overall demand, and can you break it down by age groups? The market situation, what is the targeted fixed network market share for your fiber network? What fixed network market share do you want to maintain with your copper network?
What are your market targets here in the medium and in the long term, respectively? Next question, commercial expenses and advertising. Please give us specific amounts of print media for direct marketing, TV commercials, sponsoring, and sponsoring of sports clubs in the period 2022 to 2024. How much did you donate? How much did you donate to political parties? Which parties? What amounts between 2022 and 2024? The next point is building and equipment. How many buildings do you own, and what was the share of the equipment you own in 2022 to 2024? Are you going to keep ownership of these premises, or do you intend to rent premises instead? What are you going to do with buildings that are no longer needed? Risks in connection with the power grid. Is Deutsche Telekom continuing to expand its backup to prepare itself for possible blackouts?
What measures are taken to do that? Next question, between 2022 and 2024, what was the value of the assets in this field, you know, backup equipment for possible blackouts? Now, Elon Musk is sending thousands of satellites to space. Question, will it still be necessary then to actually set up more mobile towers? A question about BlackRock. What stake does BlackRock hold in Deutsche Telekom in Germany and in the US and Sprint? I think you made it quite clear that you did not mean to promote DOGE in your statement in Barcelona in connection with Elon Musk. Yes, it seems like a good idea to criticize bureaucracy in Germany. Red tape in Germany has really increased considerably over the past 10 years from 3.5 million to 5 million. I mean, and that the overall costs are EUR 100 billion.
Red tape leads to an incredible increase of costs elsewhere. It was once said that the Germans are basically eating their prosperity for breakfast. They're eating it up. I mean, when you talk about cutting red tape, it shouldn't just be lip service. Why don't you get your colleagues on board as well to exert some pressure and to really demand that red tape be scaled down, not just during an election campaign? This is something where, you know, we really need to take action. Mr. Søren Wendler, you know him, right? He's the managing director. He used to actually work for Deutsche Telekom, and he said that the fiber rollout needs to be promoted by stakeholders on a large footing. Otherwise, we will get stuck in the jungle, which is red tape. We are struggling with red tape, and that actually hampers economic development.
Thank you for listening, and I look forward to the answers to my questions.
Thank you very much, Mr. Bachmann. Mr. Martius is the next speaker, followed by Jan Prehoda. First of all, Reinhard Martius.
My name is Reinhard Martius, and I've been a shareholder since 1996. So is my wife, and so are my children. I will be brief, Dr. Appels. I think that it is somehow unfortunate how you are managing the company. It looks some sort of tradition that Telekom's indirect shareholders, namely the fund companies, they benefit. They are put at a disadvantage because they were the first to be given the floor. The first speaker, in fact, took more than 30 minutes, and he's still here. Personally, I didn't think that was a good thing to do, and then you did it three more times.
Now, I registered at 9:41 A.M. It's the first time that I'm attending a shareholders' meeting, so I know a lot about AGMs in general. My father was the chair of the Protective Association of Small Investors for 14 years. I used to work in the finance department myself, and I do think that there is room for improvement here. The way you manage this meeting is less than ideal, but I nonetheless like the company itself. The first thing that I would like to talk about is this: giving the employees their share of assets. When I joined, employees got a certain share of the company's success, about EUR 350. Then it went up to around EUR 1,400, and I think that was a very good idea, and it's exceptional. I think it's a shame that others do not join in.
I would suggest a 20% discount, use it, and you can use it in connection with your buyback program. Other companies are much more successful in that. Policymakers are talking about a possible increase to EUR 5,000, and I would like to request that your assistants here, who are wearing magenta shirts, are given one Telekom stock for free after today's event, but straight away, because we need shareholders, and I think you will agree that we need to continue promoting that. I think it's excellent how many people are attending this shareholders' meeting. Nonetheless, I find it quite annoying because I also hold shares in Interactive Brokers, one of the largest brokers' associations, and I come from a family where the interests of shareholders always came first. My father was an entrepreneur, but I can't commission an association such as DSW or something.
I can only vote myself, and I don't like that. I mean, you are a role model in the capital market, and you have some influence that you could exert here, and I think it would be good if you could pull your weight. The little things in life are not bad. The settlement tax isn't bad for someone who's got a good education, but when I go from Staufen close to Freiburg to Bonn, you could at least cover the costs of the parking garage here, because when I pay for it, it's not tax deductible. You could cover the costs of public transport for those who come here using public transport. I prefer reading a printed version of the annual report.
There is Heidelberger Druck, which is a print shop, and the stock is about the same, you know, as the stock price is completely down. I mean, ESG is a good thing, but in some areas, it doesn't make sense at all. I would like you to look at that in a more differentiated fashion. When I look at the attendance register, then I have a feeling that you could do more for your shareholders. I mean, there are very few here who hold a lot of shares. It would be nice if you talked about a dividend in kind, just like the company Sixt or the Kalida Group. Think about it. I am a Telekom customer and a shareholder, and I have been for ages. Meaning, you got me hooked once, and since then, I've probably given you hundreds of thousands of EUR over time.
Don't you think it would make sense for you to honor that in some sort of way? You are dealing with huge amounts of cash, and the new federal chancellor Merz is taking measures that remind me of a law that reaches back to 1952. Then former Chancellor Merkel changed it, and I'm afraid that this law will still be applied given today's situation. When there was the last monetary reform, everybody was just talking about real estate, but I think it is also important to talk about stock and a reduction of the stock's nominal value. Maybe this is a bit tricky for the back office, so it would be nice if you could answer my question within four weeks. What would this look like for Deutsche Telekom?
I can predict that the last Ausgleichsgesetz, meaning the law on equalization of burdens, will be applied, and there is another law which means that anyone who took out a loan from a bank automatically becomes a shareholder. I would very much prefer them to become a team member here, to have Telekom stock. This would help you to considerably decrease your cost of capital, and if you do that for three years or so, then your rating will improve.
I would ask that you wind up your statements. I already considered the time that you spent lamenting the way I am chairing this meeting, and you are behind schedule. Yes, but you did not comply with the sequence, and if necessary, I will file a formal objection, which probably is not what you want. Thank you very much.
Now, let's continue with Mr. Prehoda.
Now, it is a quarter to four, and as announced, I hereby close the speakers' list, and we will not accept any further requests to speak.
Board members, members of the Supervisory Board, dear shareholders. I am representing my clients from the Czech Republic. My client commissioned me to ask a couple of questions. It is about T-Mobile Czech Republic and an amount of CZK 1.3 billion. This is an amount which was rejected by the liquidator, and the liquidator then sued for the amount of CZK 1.2 billion in the local currency. As T-Mobile is on the creditors' committee, CZK 1 billion could be imposed as sanctions on T-Mobile in the Czech Republic. The possible loss of T-Mobile Czech Republic amounts to around EUR 212 million, which equals around 50% of the total profit of T-Mobile Czech Republic in 2024.
Can I ask that the Supervisory Board comment on that? After all, this is something that affects Deutsche Telekom's good reputation. The insolvency of Mamut has been a major issue in the Czech Republic, and the J&T Bank and UniCredit and T-Mobile Czech Republic are involved in this.
Thank you very much, Mr. Prehoda. Now, we are going to answer the questions, after which time Wolfgang Kehren will speak to us, followed by Sven Höling. Mr. Höttges will start answering the questions.
[Foreign Language] Out-of-Paper-Expenditures in 2024? For the suggestion system, EUR 48 million. You asked about the intentions of Deutsche Telekom in China. In our positioning in the Western world, the US and Europe were quite satisfied, actually, and we're very successful there too, and we have no intentions to make a commitment in China.
In spite of this, we have to keep an eye on technological developments in China. It is a very steep upwards curve and very innovative. We also make sure that we keep abreast of developments, that we have a lively exchange with Chinese companies about what's happening in our area. If you want to be a leading digital telco, you have to see what tech is developing in what regions of the world. We do not have any significant operative business there in the Chinese market, though. Mr. Khodol, you asked about the development of the shares in TMUS. We have a share of about 52%. We have more than 50%, and so enhanced control. We do not have any target level above 50% as part of our capital allocation policy. We want to maintain flexibility.
A share buyback program by the Americans, whether we would take part in that or not, and return liquidity to Europe, something like that, we decide that on a quarterly basis. It is reported on this on the capital market day, by the way. Were there any sales of federal property or KfW? Yes, in June, the combined share of the federal government and KfW, and that reduced their share. This was done by a placement that took place in June, and since then, no more sales by the federal government and KfW are known. Mr. Streicher, you asked how we were affected, have been affected by cyberattacks. I have already commented on that several times and how we can protect our customers. Like almost every company that uses digital services, we are subject to cyberattacks at any and all times, and we confront these with wide-ranging security measures.
We have 800 staff working in Telekom's security department. That's one of the biggest security teams in Europe, and they protect all customers, private and business customers, but also our infrastructure. In 2024, we opened a new cyber defense system in Bonn. It's one of the most sophisticated and modern of its type, and we work very closely with security agencies of the government. I won't disclose any possible attack vectors of attackers. How we can protect customers, there's detailed information on that at telekom.de. We have over 600 business customers who make use of this service right now. In January, for instance, we were the first company in the sector in the mobile area to offer a new product for business customers where security comes from the network itself. The customers don't have to install an app or any other hardware.
It comes from the infrastructure and protects the respective data. Mr. Streicher, you asked about our commitment at the Bonn site. Here in Bonn, Telekom spends a lot of money for over 13,000 staff members here. That's kind of a marketing banner right here. We spend money to promote youth, young people, a festival for Bonn. We go to the downtown Bonn, and when we come back to headquarters, we also sponsor Telekom Baskets, a basketball team. We wanted to get out of that because we thought other companies should support them too. We have continued to support Telekom Baskets because the public interest in it is so large that after the Champions League victory, we said, "Okay, we'll continue to support them in the coming year." We sponsor Telekom Baskets with a high single-digit million amount.
Also, another thing very close to our heart is promotion of music, and I'm personally interested in that. It's also an area of social commitment that we really want to encourage, nurture, and support. The Beethoven Festival, for example, we're one of the four main sponsors there, and we receive something in return too. We're able to show our logo, and we also support the jazz festival here that's very popular. One of my favorite cultural commitments is the Telekom Beethoven Competition, which takes place every two years. World-class, young world-class pianists compete in this, and this year it's going to take place as well. If you're interested, anybody here in the auditorium is interested, just get in touch with me, and I'll make sure we can get you tickets for that. Mr.
Streicher, you asked about how knowledge and experience can be secured during times of changing democracies. That's a huge program. I can't go into every detail on this, but one key element is the mentoring program where experienced staff members pass on their knowledge and experience to younger colleagues. In addition to our focus on documentation, we're also increasingly banking on artificial intelligence and a knowledge database that is supported by artificial intelligence. It's called Ask T, and I could try it out here. In fact, the entire knowledge available in Telekom's intranet can be accessed, just like ChatGPT and Perplexity. This information can be called up and then made available to our employees. That's up and running, and it's being refined all the time. Also, we promote an open company culture. We want to deliberately promote different age groups, levels of experience, and bring them together with each other.
I am very proud of the initiatives that our organizations do on their own volition. We had a big AI event recently where a wide range of projects, they are just sprouting like mushrooms out of the ground and presented their own initiatives there. It is important that you not only just give to people, it is important that they give something back. Well-being, health, and safety, you mentioned that. It is a great term, but it does not have anything to do with wellness. I can assure you we do not have any wellness program. We meet our statutory requirements in the area of occupational health and safety for our employees. In our segments, this task is tackled with our company health management officer for safety, company safety. In this connection, we offer fitness courses and also fitness studios, which our employees can make use of at all our sites.
I wish more people would make use of this possibility, and I don't even care if people do it during working time because we support that very actively. Also, the health insurance schemes support this as well because they have a keen interest in employees being really healthy and a high level of fitness. Mr. Stringer, you asked about so-called fluctuation at our company or attrition. We have 26,000 employees worldwide who have left the company last year, you said. Most of these are in the United States and the service centers. It's very normal that people working at a service center stay for a couple of years. Maybe they're financing their studies at university or things like that. It's completely normal for there to be a very high rate of fluctuation and attrition there.
In Germany, if you look at the figures by people just giving notice on their own and leaving the company, at present, at Telekom, is 3.2%. That was 4,392 employees last year. Compared to other companies, these figures are very low. That's a fluctuation rate where you can say, "Hey, it's good to have a certain fluctuation to bring in fresh ideas, cool breeze into the company." When we do let employees go, though, we do it in a socially cushioned way. Also, we're being hit by the demographic hammer. There's a lot of people who, after many years of really working hard at Telekom, are going into retirement. That's also part of this fluctuation. Nothing alarming about these figures, actually. They are very low. Mr. Stringer, you asked about an external agency for whistleblowers to contact. It's a good point.
It's important for us, first of all, to meet rules and requirements and the benchmarks out there. We know that company success is based on accountability, integrity, and personal experience. That's why it's very important for people to have channels where they can report irregularities in connection with compliance issues. That's why we have the opportunity called TellMe. It's a portal for whistleblowers and employees, but also outside people to report non-compliance with internal rules or laws and regulations. You can always contact external agencies as well. The German legal system, for example, the judicial system, and there are external offices and agencies out there. We have to also make sure that people aren't confused because there are so many channels to use. You asked about the A, diversity, equity, and inclusion. I've reported at length on this already.
I would refer back to my statements there. I think I've answered all the other questions. Mr. Abele, you asked about the percentage of employees broken down by country and the number of civil servants. At the end of 2024, Deutsche Telekom had 198,200 employees. I thought that was the civil servants. No, I'm just kidding. They're called FTEs, full-time equivalents. That's the number of our staff in 33 countries. Five countries with the most employees are Germany, 74,000, the US, 64,000, Hungary, 11,114, Greece, 9,896, and Slovakia with 7,722. Of these, 24,000, 13% of all these, 13%, 9,680, were employed in Germany. A significant portion of them in the past and today account for the company's success. Mr. Abele, you asked about CO2 emissions and how much energy we produce ourselves.
Scope one and two of the company emissions there: 258 kilotons of CO2 in 2023, and that was reduced to 253 kilotons in 2024. The portion of electricity we produce ourselves went from 0.05% to 0.07%. It rose. Mr. Abelo asked about the number of trainees in Germany. In 2024, we had a total of 5,161 trainees and dual students in Germany. Probably 5,500 trainees and dual students in 2025 and 2026. Deutsche Telekom is one of the biggest training companies. It is one of the companies training the most people in Germany. You asked about the status of the brochure liability exposure. Deutsche Telekom, that was in the Federal Supreme Court in Germany, and they sent the case back to the Superior Regional Court, and it is forecasted to last five years.
The individual lawsuits by 16,000 shareholders, it's estimated that that will take five years to resolve that too. Deutsche Telekom has decided voluntarily and without recognizing the legitimacy of these claims to offer a settlement because the overall majority of these shareholders have already accepted that. We assume that the complexity and end has been put to this very complex proceedings. You asked about plans to boost energy efficiency. I must say one thing. First of all, you know we have more and more mobile, so we need more mobile centers, and we're outsourcing our energy to do that. We need more and more tech. Every year, we're using more and more electrical power while others are saving it. Nevertheless, the operation of our infrastructure has remained stable in terms of use of power. That accounts for our greatest needs for energy.
In the US and Europe, we have our own fixed and mobile networks and operate them. We are working on increasing capacity on an ongoing basis to improve the speed of data, and that increases the need for electrical power. In spite of significantly rising data volumes, we want to stabilize our energy use and increase our energy efficiency in our innovation projects. We are developing new strategies to simplify the transport and use and optimize the consumption of energy. We are modernizing our network infrastructure as well because there is an energy savings function to be found there and investing in innovative new technologies. That was a little technical, but just imagine that our mobile antennas only switch on when customers use them, and then they switch off when customers leave their area. If there are few customers in the network, then we only need part of the frequency bands.
This active switching means that we consume much less energy or will need much less energy in our mobile antenna masts in the future. This will help us boost efficiency and optimize the supply of electricity to our mobile systems. Here's a question for Mr. Rutte asking about the distribution of investment in fiber optics, 5G in the US and Europe. We had EUR 5 billion investments, EUR 6.3 billion in mobile radio, EUR 1.32 billion in IT, and nothing in fiber optics. This is through a joint venture, which has not been approved yet in 2025. In Germany, we have a total emissions volume, 5.8 million, EUR 2.5 billion is invested in fiber optics. What investments are planned for 2025? A question for Mr. Luter. Especially, what is the distribution there between the US and Germany? We have an expansion of CapEx by EUR 16-17 billion in 2025.
In the U.S., $8.2 billion will be increased to $9 billion. In Germany, we have not published the figures, but it is roughly EUR 7.7 billion, which will rise to EUR 8 billion over the course of the year. The question was, how will investments be invested, and can they be financed from cash flow, from the operative cash flow completely? We do not want to take out new loans for this. In 2025, we have planned to increase our free cash flow to EUR 19.2 billion. You can see, we are not financing this through bank loans. What targets have we made for 2025? The target is EUR 2 for the adjusted EBITDA and a guidance for net EBITDA of EUR 43 billion and free cash flow of EUR 19.2 billion from the U.S. business, a significant portion of that as well.
Another question I asked was the standard used in stock buybacks, share buybacks. Like I said, the same applies to Deutsche Telekom. We think we're undervalued, minus the value, not including the value of the US business. We think that it makes sense to invest in Deutsche Telekom shares. The secondary effects are that through the buyback of the shares, we reduce the dividend, but that improves our position with SoftBank. We decide once a quarter what the mean point for the buyback is, and we can decide whether it's worth it for us or not. As I said, the program is always rolled out for one year, and whether we continue with that remains to be seen.
With regard to share buyback, in what form will this be done, and why don't you buy in KfW or at the federal government or trade directly with the shareholders? We're not allowed to, and we're not allowed to go through KfW trading. We have to do it in the market because all shareholders are treated equally. That were my comments on it. I also have a question for Mr. Appel. The question was, how much did you spend on last year's AGM? In 2024, it was roughly EUR 4.8 million. You asked how many people work for organizing the AGM, including back office. Thirty-three people are working in the back office today. You asked a provocative question. Thirty years of Deutsche Telekom, are you using this to justify the maximum cap of our CEO salary?
Now, these two things have nothing to do with each other. We're paying CEO salaries that are completely in line with the industry, and we're just happy that we can celebrate our 30th anniversary this year. Question by Mr. Fühner: Why is the management report of the Telekom Foundation not available on the web page? It's only available starting on June 2, so it's not completed yet. It's not ready yet. We will make it available to you once it's ready.
Let's move back to our round of questions. Mr. Masi Yakobi first, then Mr. Kehren, and then Mr. Högling. Mr. Yakobi first, please.
[Foreign Language] , good afternoon, shareholders, members of the board, Mr. Högl, my name is Masi Yakobi. I represent a small shareholder. I'm here today because I want to point out some problems in digitalization.
I'm in charge of a startup company in robotics and artificial intelligence based in Cologne. We develop autonomous camera and studio systems. We are a spinoff of the University of Aachen. I have an AI-controlled building, which also contains the studio of our company. I built this years ago, and I'm still waiting for my fiber optics connection. As you can imagine, fast internet connection due to the high data rate is essential for us. I have a private and professional contract with Deutsche Telekom. When nothing happened, I also concluded a contract with NetCologne, which, however, failed because the place where I live is supposedly covered by Deutsche Telekom. Now, we are a startup that has already filed for six patents, but we cannot really do our business because the fiber optics network has not been developed.
We've already lost a lot of customers because we cannot achieve our targets in this situation. I hope that this is just an individual case and that you will be able to help me here because I was always told that my problem will be solved in the future and that something went wrong and that it will be corrected. I was kept waiting for another couple of months. My company is based in Frechen outside Cologne, and all the neighboring companies are already connected to the fiber optics network of Deutsche Telekom. My question: Are you aware of similar problems? If yes, how do you want to address them and correct them? Secondly, how important do you feel are these startups like ours, and what kind of support can you offer startups in Germany?
Finally, do you think that high-tech startups in Germany, given the problems with our infrastructure, are even internationally competitive? I hope that you can help us in some way, and thank you for your attention.
Thank you very much, Mr. Yakobi. The next speaker is Wolfgang Kehren, and then Sven Högling, and then Mr. Eberhard Eichmann.
[Foreign Language] all shareholders who are still with us, Mr. Högl, first of all, thank you very much about what you said on the telecom baskets. This saves me a lot of time. On a different issue, you said if we want to make any progress with 5G, you would have to have the chance to set up cell towers in nature preserves. You can already do that. I am one of those who would be there or who have to write approvals for such projects.
It is possible for you and your competitors, but maybe you have a bias, and maybe you're not that familiar with the environmental cause here. We have no problem with the fact that there is a cell tower, but if you want to build the cell tower, you have to have access roads, and that is a very sensitive thing. You have to do an environmental impact study, and all of this would not be necessary if you actually got involved with nature protection in general and nature conservation. It is possible, of course, it requires a lot of effort, and it can be simplified. One question on Kongster. Can you tell us what your plans are with the Congstar GmbH? It's kind of a Twitter. It is a driver of innovation.
5G International works well with them, but it's never really clear whether this is a core brand of the group or not and whether you're fully behind it.
Thank you very much, Mr. Kehren, Sven Högling next, and then we've got two more speakers in this round of questions. [Foreign Language]
Good afternoon, Mr. Högl. [Foreign Language] . And Doctor, I don't remember your name. I want to keep it brief. Is there a notary public with us? Because I have a question for a notary public. First of all, I want to share something with you, and then I have a request. For the request, I will give you something. I have changed this company, I think. This is what I want to tell you. I have actually completely changed the world. You know, last year I wore a Columbia picture T-shirt.
Today I'm the Amazon lion, and they will also give me a new Amazon T-shirt shortly, and I'm very proud of it. I was going to wear a Batman T-shirt because Batman died, but I think this fits my jacket very nicely, so that's why I put this on. Mr. Högl, I gave you something. I gave everybody something here. I pulled the plug. You know, retired people can pull the plug. I pulled the plug on the ZDF TV network and closed down the TV network and turned it into a streaming platform. You are on TV, but TV network can only broadcast on a streaming platform, and I have changed your media offering. This is really great. I am also here for a different reason. I only have like three minutes left because, I mean, I came here from 100 km away.
Also, I want to protect the climate. I also want to stick by the rules. First of all, I think you need to congratulate me because I changed all of you. On June 14th, I will give you something. I will fill your Magenta Box. A lady who talked here, she was right. Yes. I read a lot about the Magenta Box. They do not like you, really. There is a trick that you can use to regain the support of your fans. It is about a movie, Pretty Woman. You offered this movie in your media library as a director's cut, 125 minutes, but the movie is only 114 minutes long, and people are very disappointed about this. Cheating. You have to make up to this. I also talked to Warner Bros. TV because they cooperate with you.
They should get the original speakers back into the studio and do the dubbing in now, or if they do not do this themselves, they could use AI to imitate the voices of Julia Roberts, for example. That closes that chapter. Item three, I have to speed up a little bit. You have got the German Parliament in Berlin, and maybe the new Chancellor, Mr. Merz, actually wants new legislation on pensions. Mr. Högl, what are you going to do if you will not get your retirement benefits from the pension system, but a kind of a children's allowance? Because we have heard that the pension system is broke and they need to tap into childcare benefits in order to finance all of this. I have a different request. I have 57 seconds left. I hope you will give me another two minutes.
I'm now giving you a mission from the NDR network. It's about the NDR network. I don't know how they thought about this, but they want you to shut down a radio station, and I would like to ask the notary public to confirm this. September 9th, I think, would be a wonderful date because there's a band going to Bremen, and on September 9th, they are going to shut down Techno. There will be a band called Meute. They are giving a concert there, and the radio station will be shut down. Your app is great. I'm allowed to give you licenses now. For Twitch, you will get a license from me in order to turn Sunshine Radio into Sunshine TV. Just one more statement, and then I'm done. On June 14th, I will appear in the show of Johannes B. Kerner, and please tune in.
I want to fill your media library because, I mean, all the people coming up here should do the same, but they're not doing it, and I will tell them how to do it. Since at Kaufland you sell, you know, smartphones, cards, and everything at the Kaufland department store, and this was shown on RTL Television, I wanted to ask you, could you actually give me the permission to fill your media library? Just one more sentence, and then I'm done because I can already see the lamp going on here. Just one more thing. I came from a long distance here. Just wanted to thank you. Thank you for the guided tour of the TV tower.
I was told that I would be able to visit the Bremen TV tower again, and if that is possible, that would be great because, you know, you shut down the cable television, and I'm done in a minute. Mr. Kauwert, just one more thing. Please, please. That's the last sentence. I got a tablet from you. I'm happy with it, with a photo of you, and thank you very much for that. Now I would like to tell you who destroyed it. I signed up for a streaming service, and it was actually Clara who destroyed it. It's now cracked, and I want to give it back to you because you can reuse it. I don't want to throw it out, and I hope I did the right thing. I really hope that I did the right thing.
I'd really like to ask you to shut down these radio stations. I will fill your media library and give you the licenses that you need.
[Foreign Language] , for your statements. I'll just have my glass of water, and then I'll be gone. Mr. Ebert-Erich Eichmann is the next speaker. [Foreign Language] Mr. Eichmann, the floor is yours.
[ Foreign Language] . My name is Eberhard Eichmann. I come from Hamburg. [Foreign Language] . Young is particularly important here. It's not just that it's the 30th anniversary of Deutsche Telekom. It's also my 30th shareholders' meeting. 29 ordinary meetings. [Foreign Language] . 29 ordinary and one extraordinary shareholders' meetings I attended.
When Telekom Deutschland was founded, that was the reason why the meeting took place in Hanover. It is the 30th shareholders' meeting since you went public. Okay. If I look at the 9th of April. Today, 85 years ago, Hitler's troops invaded Scandinavia. It is a special occasion. [Foreign Language] . When you watch the news, it reminds you that 100 years ago, the same things have happened. Trumpism, Putinism. [Foreign Language] . We do not know what's going to happen in the US, what's going to continue there. Donald Trump wants to reduce the average temperature in the US by having Canada join the United States, and then the average temperature will go down in his reign. If Greenland is added, it goes even further.
Now there is Monopoly Meter with Facebook, WhatsApp. My idea is whether it will become relative or not. I do not know. Maybe we could offer something like Facebook or WhatsApp. We do not know what is coming. They say it is end-to-end encryption, but the NSA in the U.S. can access all these data, and they can force these companies to hand over these data, which is only possible in Germany if you have a court order. Maybe that is possible if you offer similar services here. I have got another point. We have seen it for decades, except communication of our competitors and let them use our networks at lower prices than our costs. Then it was ended, and I heard that this is coming back, so that competitors can use our network, and we incur losses. Also Dr. Sommer, Dr. Ricke, Dr. Obermann, and Mr.
Högl had to deal with this, and now it's coming up again. I wanted to ask you, is that really true? Or was it a misunderstanding? What is the situation? Before the five minutes are over, I will leave. Thank you.
[Foreign Language] . Thank you, Mr. Eichmann. Now the last of this round is Mr. Daniel Michael Wörner.
[Foreign Language] I'm very positive with respect to Telekom as a customer. [Foreign Language] . What I find difficult is the AI, which is being presented in a very positive way today. [Foreign Language] .
I wanted to say Telekom represents a culture, not just with respect to corporate culture, but also with respect to our human culture. Digitalization is a change or means a change similar to the industrialization, and we know what it has done to the environment. Now we see what digitalization is doing to our minds. I would like to ask with respect to AI, which mechanisms do you plan to install to make sure that the technology will not become independent and act independently, to make sure that no chain processes can develop, which cannot be stopped or changed from the outside? I wanted to know when I talk to a member of the service staff of Deutsche Telekom, is it guaranteed that I know whether I talk to AI or to a human being?
It is a bit like civil servant bashing, just to undermine it a little. I actually prefer to write with a civil servant in a bad mood, then kind AI voice. That is my question. The second point is, Mr. Höttges, I would like to address you personally as a human being, not as CEO. I know it is a question for someone who is very optimistic, which I believe you are. I think I might imagine how you will react, but let us wait and see. The limits of growth. What about Telekom's growth, which is based on more and more data in ever shorter periods of time? The lives of all of us are becoming ever more digital. You always have to be online. It is communication of things which are up to 80% obsolete.
Do you think that in the near or the middle future there will be a saturation of digital saturation? That people do no longer want to have just more and more speed or more and more, I just want to be kept in peace. That is also what we see as mobile phones are being prohibited at schools. Isn't this damaging to your business? Is Telekom, as you have a responsibility for our culture, social media sharing, anti-democratic content, or the darknet, for example? You say as far as the content is concerned, you are not involved, but you just provide the infrastructure. What sehen Sie da Ihre Verantwortlichkeit? Your responsibility, what are the options of Telekom to get access? My last question is the energy hunger of AI and all these cloud applications.
You answer this to a degree that you focus on energy savings, etc. Which brings me to my last question. If AI will take over more and more processes, how can we make sure that in there might be major blackouts? We might forgive you what you said, because a former finance minister and a former chairman of a 4% party was also so stupid to demand more Musk and Milei? Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Mr. Werner. Now we will continue with answering the questions. Mr. Ralf Schirmer and then Michael Salten will be the next speakers. We will have the last round of questions. Maybe first the questions by Lara Kralisch, the supervisor of Mrs. Kralisch. You asked a couple of questions referring to Tim Höttges' statement at the Mobile World Congress.
Even though the questions are quite similar, I will answer them individually. I ask for the first round, you want to make sure that this will not be repeated. I think Mr. Höttges made it very clear in his statement what the circumstances of his statement at the Mobile World Congress was and what he meant. That is why we do not think that any further measure is necessary. You also, Mrs. Kralisch, you ask how we can support a CEO who by statements he made in the Mobile World Congress, which were not well thought through, risking the trust into the company. I think Mr. Höttges explained clearly the circumstances, and as it was interpreted differently by the press, nevertheless, it is true what Mr. Höttges said.
As a matter of fact, I'm saying that as Chairman of the Supervisory Board, we have a massive bureaucracy problem in Germany, which needs to be tackled. That is what Mr. Högl made very clear. That is why there are no further consequences on that. You also asked, Ms. Kralisch, how the confidence of shareholders at the World Congress can be reestablished into Deutsche Telekom, if we do not address this mistake, as you said. You are referring to the MWC. Mr. Högl has the absolute confidence and trust of the Supervisory Board. I also see this here also represented by the shareholders present here. That is, I think, why this question does not have to be answered. You also ask why is this request, which has such repercussions in the US, why do you praise the model of Europe?
How shall the reduction be reduced? Can we see these plans? Could you explain this? I have answered this again and again, and I repeat myself. Mr. Högl with his extensive statement made this clear. That is why I think we have answered your question. With this to Mr. Högl for the further questions.
Thank you, Mr. Appel, also for your clear words. I believe on the one hand, we members of the Board of Management and executive should get involved in political discussions and express our opinion. It always bears the risk that your statements are shortened or deluded. I think we have a responsibility to take our stance. If there are misunderstandings, you can certainly clarify it in dialectic dialogue. Let me come to answering your questions. I said we are a clear house in a dirty road.
I said it in English when it sounds much better. We are in a clean house in a dirty street. It referred to the fact that at the moment in Europe, about 70 groups are trying to do business in the telco industry. 65% of all telecommunications companies are not earning their capital costs, which means that when they invest one euro at the end of the day, they earn less than one euro. This is not healthy in the long term because companies do no longer have money to invest. As this investment is not sufficient to compete with China or the US on global markets and to be competitive. That is why my appeal was we need better framework conditions. We need ways to consolidate here in Europe. Telekom was a clear exemption. Why?
Because Telekom is the only company which has increased its value, clearly increased its value. We have the same value as all the other European telco companies together. The reason is that we have the right capital allocation strategy, that we took the right steps in America because we left markets where we cannot make any money. As we have tidied up our portfolio, we are now rewarded by the shareholders who buy to us. If you look at this, you can see we are a clear house in a dirty street because the European telco industry is suffering. It still is, even though Deutsche Telekom is doing well. There are a lot of reasons, such as strong regulation, the framework conditions, no consult options to consolidate, lack of size because of the fragmentation we see.
We have been calling for orienting ourselves at other markets, doing a better job, such as the US or also Asian markets, that we as Europeans look at this as an example. Instead of believing the more competition we have, the more networks we are building, the better supply will be, which is unfortunately not true. We are seeing it. Mr. Duffner, you also about the intention of the federal government to reduce the share of Huawei in 5G networks. We as the other big mobile providers have an agreement with the federal government in which we committed ourselves to use security-relevant and critical elements of our networks, no components of Chinese suppliers.
In addition, we also commit ourselves that the function of network management, which allows a configurative interference in the 5G network through our own or exchanges through our own development, the antenna network, according to the contract of government, can still contain Huawei components. It is not necessary to take it out. We do not need to take out these parts of these functional elements. This is legally binding. As a matter of fact, we abide by this agreement. The antenna, which you see on the roof, might come from a Chinese provider because the entire software and where of the antenna information turns into an information is not operated by a Chinese software, Chinese components. You also asked about this security perception with respect to Chinese parts in 5G networks. We take the security risk very seriously. We look at all security alerts and look into them.
It's not that any of these providers could access our infrastructure. It's simply not possible if they do software updates or others. It's done by our people. We test it first and then it's uploaded. In ITK, it's not for the entire network, only for individual components. With the agreement which we have with the federal government against the backdrop of the security concerns, we see that the protection of our infrastructure is sufficient. Mr., your question in the context of the question of limiting the use of Chinese mobile provider, you asked about talks to the federal minister, Robert Habeck, and the digital minister, Volker Bissing. You also asked how many meetings we had. I can't tell you. I think we have a two-digit number.
I spent a lot of time with ministers and other politicians to address our concerns because the security architecture is of high political interest. The negotiations were done with the Ministry of the Interior. Here, the ministers, Habeck or Bissing, were not directly involved here. It is a matter of the Ministry of the Interior. Mr. Duffner, you also asked how we want to prove the accusations of BREKO wrong, that with the excuse of reducing bureaucracies, we wanted to get rid of unpleasant competition. It is the association of our competitors who joined for this. What is the objective of the association of our competitors against us? They want to get our market share. They want to get our customers. They want to do everything they can to make sure that we will lose. That is their clear mission.
That is at BREKO, I'm accused of unbelievable things. You know, I love competition. I do not understand what these accusations are about. I rather believe these are rather excuses. We do not need more bureaucracy. We need more competition. That is what I'm calling for. Mr. Duffner asked about the agreements with the federal government on Huawei. I think I already commented on that at length. There was also a question whether we also discussed this with Mrs. Merkel at all, possibly on the phone. In other words, no reason to discuss this topic with Mrs. Merkel or to even meet up with her to do so. Mr.
Duffner, you asked about a statement I made at a BDI conference on the possible repercussions of a ban on Chinese mobile communications equipment in other industries and what T-Mobile US can do without Huawei. At the BDI conference, I talked about dependencies on several industries. I said if one supplier is banned in one industry, this may possibly have consequences for other industries as well. Why does T-Mobile US not need Huawei? This is to do with the way the network was set up there. We used the 2G antennas from Nokia Ericsson. Based on that, we then developed 3G, 4G, and 5G capacities. 3G by now has been switched off. The spectrum is used for 4G and 5G. You asked about the Science Based Targets initiative. Let me tell you why we deliberately decided in favor of a climate group under this definition.
It's a renowned organization with renowned members, including WWF or CDP. The targets are defined on the basis of science. It strives for a net zero emissions goal and a maximum temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is in line with the climate protection accord. In March of 2023, we replaced our climate goals with even more ambitious goals to be achieved by 2030. We believe we did the right thing. We had that confirmed by the science-based climate initiative. By 2040, at least 90% of the emissions compared to 2020 have to be reduced. We want to reduce emissions while at the same time making our infrastructure more efficient. For technical reasons, it is not possible to avoid emissions altogether. A minor amount of a maximum of 10% will have to be neutralized. This is also prescribed by the science-based targets.
We are neutralizing the remaining emissions based on high-quality standards, the so-called Oxford criteria. In so doing, we are investing in so-called removal projects, which means that existing CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere for the long run. That is the difference between extraction and compensation. If we did without neutralization, it would not be good for the climate. Therefore, we still stick by our decision in connection with our goals here. We are also working on a review of criteria. This review will only be completed next year at the earliest. Mr. Duffner, you asked about possible complaints about our whistleblower system in 2024. In 2024, we received more than 2,000 tips through the whistleblower portal. This referred to things like fraud, embezzlement, asset management, harassment, discrimination. We followed up on all hints.
Wherever it turned out that there was a breach of compliance, relevant measures were taken, including warnings and even dismissals. Nineteen of the tips given in 2024 are still under review. Mr. Duffner, in connection with the German Supply Chain Act, you asked about possible breaches. Based on our global procurement activities, in particular, we can always be exposed to certain risks in connection with countries or suppliers. We put certain processes in place that help us to mitigate risks in connection with breaches of human rights or others, and to detect such risks early on and to initiate mitigation measures. For our top suppliers, we conducted a lot of audits in 2024, 150 audits, 62 of which with direct suppliers.
These were in part surveys, but also so-called local social audits, which means that we showed up at the production sites all over the globe, either with previous announcement or not. In 2024, the audits revealed 700 cases that required further inspection. Relevant measures were initiated. Last year, 147 problems were solved. The results of the supply chain audits are also documented and included in our risk analysis. We reported on the risks in our report on compliance with the Supply Chain Act. This report is available on our website for inspection for everyone. Mr. Duffner, you asked about the implementation of the Supply Chain Act and the related bureaucracy and how we make sure that we can meet all the requirements and whether we are sending out surveys to the suppliers. Are we outsourcing these surveys or are we sending them ourselves? I already commented on it.
We do that ourselves, sometimes also in cooperation with consultants. The question was, Mr. Höttges, what's your position on the Supply Chain Act and its requirements, the obligations? What's your position on that? I think that I have already answered this question. I also talked about the Green Deal. We try to ensure a transparent reporting on all our activities that are deemed to guarantee sustainability. We try to really make transparent what we are doing in this field. We expressly welcome the Omnibus Initiative of the European Commission, which relates to EU taxonomy and the CSRD, amongst others. This will lead to a simplification of reporting. We support this process. We also support a review of the various processes. What we need is more transparency. It's important that we report on the right things and document the right things without producing an overkill here.
You know, it is not the quantity of information that counts, but its relevance. Mrs. Grimberg, you asked where does the water come from that we use to cool our data centers. Thank you for pointing that out. Because when it comes to data centers, everybody just thinks we need electricity. Yeah, but we also need a whole lot of water to cool the data centers. For this cooling, we usually just use normal tap water. Water treatment and approval processes here are very important. Not only do you need an adequate piece of property for a data center, but also approval to use all that water and electricity. You asked about the services that we are offering to customers who own data centers. There are complete package solutions, operation of hardware, software, managed services, security in data centers.
These are just a couple of examples. We offer all sorts of services to data center operators that are connected to the local infrastructure. We even build the infrastructure required for this. You said you would like to get some explanation on automatic ticket handling. This means that complaints from customers are automatically processed. AI models can precisely filter out problems from the information we are getting. We are using AI to support the creation of tickets and to solve the problems. This leads to a considerable increase in efficiency. This may sound a little academic, but it works very well in practice. For instance, there may be, you know, a mass failure. In the past, it took us a long time to actually analyze it. Now, such a mass breakdown is analyzed very quickly. The responsible engineers are informed immediately.
Therefore, the engineers can respond much faster with the help of AI. You asked a question about power consumption of T-Systems. T-Systems uses 300 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year. There are different systems. The electricity consumption of cooling systems is not disclosed separately. To measure the efficiency of our data centers, we measure a certain KPI, which is called PUE, Power Usage Effectiveness. This KPI is based on the air conditioning, but also lighting, etc. That is then benchmarked against the actual power consumption. At the end of last year, it was 1.47 across all data centers we operate. We continuously work to improve that factor. There is still a lot to do. Mrs. Grimberg, you asked about the reuse of mobile phones that have been given back. Good point. Such phones are often refurbished and relaunched on the market.
On the other hand, there may be devices that cannot be reused, which is when they are sent to specialists who know how to recycle them. They are recycled. They are not just going to the landfill. They're not dug in somewhere. If you can't refurbish them, then they are recycled. That's around 20% of the devices that end up being recycled. Think about it. How many electric devices you may still have at home, why don't you bring them back to us? We make sure that they will be recycled. You can basically hand them in at any Telekom shop. There was another question about AI technologies. AI technologies need to use up a lot of resources. That's true, which is why they need to be developed and used in a sustainable way. We do a lot to ensure that.
It is also in our vested economic interest to improve our footprint here, which is why we are talking about the green AI principles. Needless to say, that is just a technical term. Mrs. Grimberg was right in pointing that out. It follows a certain logic and certain rules designed to ensure that we are using AI as efficiently as possible. The recent developments show that AI models can make you much more efficient, and you can achieve much better results with them. Ultimately, artificial intelligence should help us to use our IT in line with the actual requirements. We are using AI models with fewer iterations. We want to program things based on simple solutions more efficiently. Mrs. Grimberg, there's another question from you.
I think you asked for information about salaries and pensions for members of the Board of Management, the Supervisory Board, and why this is not reported in the annual report. Since 2021, listed companies are obliged to issue a separate remuneration report that includes information on the remuneration paid to all members of the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management. This is based on Section 162 of the Stock Corporation Act. We comply with that. That is why, since 2021, we have published our remuneration reports on our websites. In a newsletter, we informed the shareholders about the AGM in 2024. Everybody was able to attend. We were one of the few DAX companies to hold an information event that also, you know, informed small investors. It was not necessary for them to listen to the Board of Management all day long.
They could get the most important information from me in a nutshell in a separate session. We will make sure that this information will also be made available to you in the future. Maybe you will come to see me at one of the evening sessions where I can inform you about Deutsche Telekom's targets. We always do a live stream at our events, also at our press conferences on our financial statements, you know, the quarterly results. At these events, you can always ask questions to Dr. Illek or myself. Mrs. Grimberg, you asked about cost-efficient prefixes for calls in the fixed network. With the introduction of flat rates, prefixes of other operators have lost in significance.
Since 2020, we are no longer obliged to offer this sort of thing, which is why things like pre-selection or call-by-call were discontinued as of the end of December 2024. We also announced that in good time. You see, this is to do with how the market has developed. There is no demand for this sort of service. It's become outdated, which is why we decided to discontinue this service. You asked about how many kilometers of fiber have been rolled out and the additional proceeds from fiber to the home lines. In 2024, we laid around 60,000 km of fiber cables. The number of net adds was 470,000. The additional monthly proceeds for every additional fiber customer is around EUR 5 per month. There were questions on T-Labs and the R&D department of Deutsche Telekom, which is based in Berlin.
They are working on groundbreaking trends and making sure that we are technology leaders. Co-creation is at the core of our mission there. We are working together with academic institutions. In addition, we are running a so-called incubation program with startups, developers, and strategic partners. At the moment, we are focusing on future network technologies, network security, so-called digital twins, and current technology research, which may become relevant for us. For instance, research into future networks. This also includes the use of quantum technology and quantum networks that are required for high transmission speeds. As far as network security and digital twins are concerned, we are talking about the development of innovative methods to ensure security, stability, and efficiency in our networks. Thank you very much. Question for Mr. Ebeller. How much it is and covers the Board of Management members, Supervisory Board members.
The maximum is EUR 364 million. How many subsidies and grants have we received from the government in last year? Most of them are in connection with the build-out of fiber optics. We had about EUR 470 million in subsidies received for fiber optic build-out in 2024. That is the fourth year with over EUR 400 million per year. Pension and interest expenses as of the end of last year were EUR 10.3 billion, and EUR 2.3 billion in interest. As of the end of the year, we were at EUR 6.6 billion. I think there was a question about the IPO behoben. Yeah, we have resolved these claims in connection with going public with a share. Yes, 96% have been resolved. Also, a provision for litigation in 2024. We do not have any now. This brings me to a question of Mr. Gronitz on CO2 certificates.
The group indeed buys 100% green energy, first of all, from direct supply agreements and long-term purchase agreements. We do this through certificates of origin. We spent EUR 6 million for certificates in Europe outside of Germany and renewable energy for the NatCos outside of Germany. 66% is from certificates, 16% power purchase agreements, and long-term supply agreements for electrical power. The rest comes from renewable electricity. Yeah. You asked about where we're affected in the US by terminal devices and to the extent to which these will be compatible. Yeah, there were quite a few questions there. I'm glad I have a back office because I didn't know how to answer this question. How many servers do we have? It's like a German IQ show. 3,950 servers are at T-Systems. The electrical capacity of all these 60,700 servers includes networks and storage.
We use 300 gigawatt-hours per year completely from renewable energy. Average capacity utilization is between 70-80%. Detailed information on energy supply is also published in the CR report at telekom.com. Mrs. Grimberg, you asked about our stakeholders and satellites. We do not have own satellites anymore. We do not have a stake in any satellites either. We have to make use of partnership models here. We integrate services like this. You asked about the right of approval for subleasing in residential construction. You asked about countries in which global minimum taxes are paid. We do not have any say in subleasing. [Foreign Language]
In our case, that's EUR 350,000. [Foreign Language] . Asked about 100% energy in the countries of Eastern Europe. You mentioned that gas-fired and coal-fired power plants are used a lot. I said already that we're working in the next few years in scope 3 in the direction of only using green energy for our needs. [Foreign Language] . We will build out and we're pleased about that. In the coming years, [Foreign Language] . Large number of them will be supplied directly with fiber optic technology. [Foreign Language] . Optimizing the company's network with FTTH for business-to-business products.
Lidl is one of the first big customers of Telekom that has decided in favor of this Gigabit era and positioned itself there. You can imagine that at grocery stores, supermarkets, they send huge amounts of data around. That is why this infrastructure is very useful for them. Before we come to the next speaker, there was a question on how many hours the Supervisory Board members used for training and continuing training. We do this under our own responsibility, these measures that. It is logical because a lot of us are on several supervisory boards. We do not have any information on the type of continuing education or the hours we attend. Nevertheless, we do offer workshops and information events in 2024, especially on ESG requirements, compliance, sustainability reporting. As far as I know, all the supervisory board in this event lasts several hours.
Also, visits to different sites and looking at product innovations and things like that. These kinds of things are offered to the Supervisory Board members. So much for our answers.
That brings us now to Mr. Ralf Schirmacher. Sehr geehrte Aktionäre, shareholders, Board of Management, Supervisory Board. Before I start with my questions, I would like to first of all praise Mr. Höttges for the realization that in Germany and Europe, we need something like a Ministry of Efficiency comparable to DOGE in the U.S. was a good proposal, I thought. With a government share of more than 50% and increasingly with a government deficit, even though almost EUR 1 billion has been received in taxes, almost 10 times tax revenue in the year 2000, you and your predecessors have been able to modernize a former state-owned company and make it profitable. My name is Ralf Schirmacher.
I'm a business advisor from Frankfurt. I represent some smaller holdings and larger holdings that do not want to be named as a result of business obligations with Deutsche Telekom. First of all, I would like to analyze the past a little bit. At last year's general meeting, numerous NGOs and foundations were on a list, with almost all of them engaged in the fight against right-wing organizations. The Amadeu Antonio Foundation was one of them. The question is, A, which foundations and NGOs were supported by Deutsche Telekom with what amounts in 2024? How great will these donations be in 2025? B, are you aware in any way that this support may be used against customers in Germany and Europe and that they have a negative effect on the end customer business in Germany?
For example, an elimination of 25% of sales volume would erode profits on the operative business to zero. This brings me to current topics. Growth of Deutsche Telekom is driven mostly by the US market, a market that has specifics. Smaller markets here where really we do not have these kinds of growth impulses. Is this increasing dependency on just a few foreign countries seen as a risk by the company? What measures have been taken to counter these risks? What would happen if the weak margin business in Germany tips into the red? Innovations are in the pipeline at Deutsche Telekom to prevent a creeping loss of profits. Will a deficitary German business perhaps have to be sold or divested? Does it make sense to use the company named Deutsche Telekom in the US?
Employees of Deutsche Telekom have told me that at the company, there is a so-called gender manual, which has been issued in the version 2.0. I don't understand, in such a tolerant working environment as a Telekom, why a manual like this has been issued. Is it supposed to re-ideologize the employees? Is there a binding conduct code at the company? If not, then what is such a manual intended for? Do you use this manual as a guidance in the US as well? My last question, which is of interest as a result, such personal influence attempts of employees is not in the interest of the US government. It leads not only to labor law implications, but a significant share of its business takes place in the US off Deutsche Telekom.
Because we're here in a confidential setting, I would like to say that such a publication is not in our interests. None of us will hopefully publish something like this. Last but not least, I'd like to draw your attention to the indebtedness of Deutsche Telekom because of geopolitical turbulence right now. This could translate into risks. What do you think Deutsche Telekom AG, do you think it'll be able to reduce the debt levels over the coming years? B, if the level of remuneration for the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board, shouldn't it be pegged to debt levels? Thank you for listening.
Thank you, Mr. Schirmacher. Next is Mr. Michael Salten [Foreign Language]
Höttges, thank you for the figures you presented here. I'd like to thank you. [Foreign Language] . I think the other shareholders see it the same way as I do. I have a pen here, and I said I complained that there wasn't a pen available for me up here, and now it's here. That's great. It would be nice if I had a piece of paper, but I'll be pleased. The bread buns were so small up there that I'm used to a more generous breakfast. Lunch was cold. [Foreign Language] Chicken was gone pretty fast. [Foreign Language] . The cake in the afternoon. [Foreign Language] .
Last year, you can take a, it was all the cake you can eat. That together with an increase in the number of Supervisory Board and Management Board members, something is not right in this equation. I just wanted to mention that. That is all up to you, Dr. Appels. I think that the whole procedure with a 10-minute speaking time at Siemens AG, with Mr. Snabe, who was the Supervisory Board Chairman, was first 15 minutes. They reduced it to 10 minutes. They only reduced it at 3:00 P.M. in the afternoon, but by 5 minutes. Telekom is not a small company. A lot of shareholders would have liked to have spoken out, I think. Regarding electrical power, this is already discussed with regard to the price of electricity. I am with an academic, a Swiss academic from Konstanz.
He said in Germany, it's not either/or, but not both. With regard to renewable energy, not everything is going optimally here. If you want to use green energy, either/or, he said both kinds of energy or all kinds of different energy sources would make sense. They have 10-12 grams more. They really do not think about climate in Thailand, in Malaysia. It is 10 degrees hotter there. They do not even talk about things like this. Electrical power prices are very high in Germany. How do you want to reduce these prices? The second question is, Ms. Merkel and Steinbrück, Mr. Steinmeier was the foreign minister way back when. If they had included Ukraine and NATO way back then, and when Mr. Kühn says he did not know about all that, that is not true.
Earlier, a Republican candidate for presidency, John McCabe, said, we're going to pay a heavy price, a significant price for this. Now we are paying really high taxes to finance the Ukraine side of the work. The political arena and the chaos, that's an American investor, I think, and EQT, that's a Swedish investing company. I've found that three productive companies in Germany, OHB in Bremen, they make satellites, actually, and rockets, and a company making renewable energies in Hamburg, and a company group here. Taken over by American companies, and that'll affect their listings. How come we don't finance things like this ourselves? Telekom did that years ago, increasing its capital, and we're not doing that anymore either. Why is that? The main Austrian company said, hey, and Mr. Donnier said, it's impossible.
Is it because of the German regulatory agency that we don't increase our capital? When I think back on the textbooks at the university, you had the so-called Opération Blanche , and that doesn't take place any longer in Germany, even though that used to be taught at universities. That is sad. I have a question about Perplexity. For those who don't know it, it's a company that's only, it's very recently founded and two or three years old. It looks like they're going to be bigger than Google, and that's their goal. It's amazing, their growth trajectory, and I congratulate you for doing this business with them. My question, it's great that you're investing EUR 5 billion in new technologies. How about quantum technology? You mentioned this in passing. How about in Germany? Ten years ago, Germany was leading in this technology, a professor in Munich.
How about now, are we still leading the path? Because the Americans, I think, have already ramped up production of the first generation of these models. I wish you luck. And Deutsche Telekom as well going forward.
Thank you, Mr. Salton. That brings us to Mr[Foreign Language] Joseph Winzbeck. Then the last speaker is Mr. Joseph Steurer.
[Foreign Language] My name is Benedikt Winzbeck. My name is Benedikt Winzbeck, 29 years old, Telekom shareholder. First of all, I wanted to give credit to you for the great development, but we heard a lot about this. This has been a good investment also over the long run, I think. I talked to many other young shareholders, and Deutsche Telekom is getting more and more popular.
It was almost unimaginable, like 10 years ago, when the company was considered to be very stuffy and old-fashioned. Now, what has happened? I think Mr. Höttges has been really instrumental in this, in really turning this company around. Also, what you do with social media and with podcasts, I think this appeals especially to young people. I think it's great that more and more young people buy shares, become shareholders. That's all a good development. Your transparency really inspires a lot of confidence. I have two brief questions. In your presentation, you mentioned your cooperation with Starlink. I think this is a risk for Telekom's core business, both mobile services and fixed network services. What's your perspective on this?
Because you're now making a major investment into fiber optics and Starlink, due to the satellites, no investment is necessary for anything that is buried in the ground. Secondly, Comfort Charge, the charging service provided by Telekom. Are you planning to develop this further? There is a very tough competition in this market. I, as a user, have tried to charge my vehicle there. This is very expensive because competitors, EON, they generate their own power, of course, and Telekom has to purchase the power for the charging infrastructure. The question is whether this is a forward-looking project or whether this business will be outsourced or discontinued. That's it.
Thank you very much, Mr. Winzbeck. To wrap up our rounds of questions, Mr. Steurer. Joseph Steurer, are you in the room? I do not see him.
We will just continue, first of all, with answering the questions, and then we'll check again whether Mr. Steurer is still among us. [Foreign Language] chasing the land, these specialized companies will implement the projects. They have the necessary expertise to implement this successfully. I think this is an important topic, but it's not our core competence to develop land, and we'll leave it at that. Now, we see a very high demand for fiber optics. Mr. Bachmann asked that we are very successful in pre-marketing, and this is reflected in our growth. I pointed out that we have 274,000 fiber optics customers.
The question relates only to private users, but also when it comes to our corporate customers, we have a similar development. I mentioned the major order we got from Lidl. For 2027, we want to change over 1 million customers to the FTTH network. We expect a clear rise in demand in the next few years. It is just like with highways, because if you do not build sufficient highways, you will end up in a traffic jam. The utilization of the current fiber optics network is still very low, but this is going to change completely. This will also improve the sales situation very much. Infrastructure comes first, and then marketing comes after that. In order to get the payback for our investment, of course, we must have much higher usage rates and much higher numbers of customers.
When are things starting to move at Deutsche Telekom with fiber optics? You can argue how efficient the others are, the competitors, like Deutsche Glasfaser. It is a very agile and active competitor. They operate in areas where we have very insufficient data supply, but they are quite competitive. I mean, we want to cover really large areas, large regions, but we cannot be everywhere at the same time. We are looking at where we can further develop the network. In some areas, it is local governments that are in charge of developing the network. In those regions, we want to lease the existing network from the local governments. Everybody can then lease or purchase a fiber optics product from us. Deutsche Glasfaser is not making its network available to us as of today. We do not have a cooperation agreement.
They're refusing to do that. In the areas where they operate, they build a duplicate, basically a duplicate network, or we build our own network because we don't want to lose our customers to them. That's what competition is all about. You cannot win it all, but I hear what you say. We are going to keep investing in this. In the areas where we have low bandwidth, of course, our priority is to use fiber optics because this makes it more likely for customers to make the switch to fiber optics. We don't want to lose those customers. You asked about the advertising budget in 2024-2025. We define advertising as classical costs for the Telekom brand, such as TV commercials, radio commercials, newspaper ads, online media ads. We are doing this according to the Brutton Nielsen logic.
The spend in 2024 was EUR 389 million, and EUR 360 million for 2023. If you look at the impact of this advertising, as far as our advertising and PR is concerned, we are very successful because this is not about placing an ad somewhere, but getting the necessary attention. You also asked emergency power supply. We are taking various actions to safeguard emergency power supply in our networks. We have battery buffers. We have fixed and mobile replacement systems. We use photovoltaics and fuel cells. As far as very critical components in our network are concerned, we have a three-fold redundancy. Also, power supply from various sources. Our concept is based on the objective that the very critical and key infrastructure is sufficiently protected with sufficient redundancy.
There are also legal regulations, and in many cases, we not only comply with these regulations, but do more than is legally required. There is a question about whether the T-Systems brand name is going to be expanded in countries like India and China. The answer is no. We are not planning any expansion into these markets right now. We want to stay focused on the markets where we are, and we would rather invest our money here rather than spreading our budgets throughout the world. In India, we do have large sites where we mostly develop software for our customers. This is absolutely necessary in our day and age because costs for software development are simply more affordable. You are asking about further details about our interesting stake in Marvel Fusion. Deutsche Telekom is one of several companies that invest strategically into technologies provided by Marvel Fusion.
The target of the company is the development of a laser-based fusion technology, nuclear fusion technology. This would solve all the energy problems on our planet. Once this is working, it would be a safe and secure and clean, unlimited source of energy. Somebody was very committed to this project. We are one of the investors injecting a sum of more than EUR 60 million to make sure that by 2027, we will get approval of technology from this project. This is a highly important project that could be very beneficial for mankind, humankind. Mr. Lömer, you asked about the sponsoring budget for the Tour de France. Our sponsoring strategy is very broad-based. Football comes first, but we also sponsor other sports. Just think of the Special Olympics.
Without our sponsoring, Special Olympics would not be where it is today, especially for people with a disability. This is a really important sporting event. We're also involved in esports. Esports have gained in importance. We have an equity stake in one of the most successful esports companies, EKS Sports Gaming. To return to cycling is not being discussed right now, but you're really touching a chord here because cycling has really become a mass sport, has become much more popular again. I think our sponsoring people should take another look at this. Lemma also asked about the use of public fixed network sites like old phone booths as parts of a charging infrastructure. We are pursuing our strategy, quick charging at public buildings where an electric vehicle can be fully charged in 10 minutes, vehicles with a range of more than 100 kilometers.
Unfortunately, revamping the old sites for charging vehicles is not possible. These multifunctional units that you all know, lining the streets, are not suitable because you do not have the necessary power there that you need. At those sites, this would require a major investment to really convert these places to charging points. If we want to make sure that our customers are better informed about Magenta 2.0, that was your question. Of course, we can do more. There are various ways in which we have informed our customers about the options here. First of all, the customers get step-by-step guidance on the new options that they have. Secondly, on the starting page, the customer gets hints and tips on what the platform has to offer. Thirdly, of course, we also provide support videos, Telekom Hilft. We have service advisors. We have people in our shops.
You can ask Perplexity on how to use this offer. I mean, we are already doing a lot. Of course, we could do more, and we also want to grow our TV business, but I will take your idea along. Now, I would like to ask again whether Josef Steurer is here because he was on the speaker's list, and he has not appeared so far. It does not seem to be here. Let's just keep going. Mr. Lachmann, you are interested in the value of the emergency power infrastructure. In 2024, it was EUR 106 million. Infrastructure market share, the next question. I mean, we are using about 40% for our own customers, and 30% of the infrastructure is used by vendors like Vodafone and 1&1, and is just leased. I mean, we are still legally required to open up our infrastructure to others.
Our own market share is 40, and the infrastructure share is 30% that we lease to others. This is also the market share that we want to achieve for fiber optics. The question about the growth of our business volume and the person asking the question suspects that we used a trick to achieve this. I mean, we're business managers, and we control the growth of our company based on our service revenue. I don't think that you can get a handle on this by just looking at the cost. You need to grow. You always have to grow. With the market share that we have, also with new products, you have to introduce new products in the market. We have been more successful than our competitors in the past. 3.6% and 3.7% in 2024 in service revenue adjusted for foreign currency.
This is real growth in the group. The negative impact of inflation, we've been able to handle this with our effective cost management. The operating income was boosted by 4% in 2022 and 6% in 2023, also adjusted for foreign exchange effects. Mr. Bachmann, you asked about cell towers, and are they still relevant given the rising number of satellites? Yes. Clear answer is yes. Cell towers remain important because they make available a capacity of bandwidth that satellites are not able to provide. A cell tower provides coverage of a large area. The smaller the cell towers, the closer the customers have to. I was just told that Mr. Steurer actually waives his right to speak. That means that everybody on the speaker's list has had a chance to ask their question.
Let me point out that after the end of the general debate, we will move on to the votes. With the votes, you no longer have the chance to use proxy votes or issue instructions or change any instructions that you have issued already. On this note, I think we can continue to answer the questions. Mr. Madsen asked about the Lastenausgleichsgesetz. We are not reducing the nominal value. You also asked our statement on the insolvency of Mammut. In March 2023, our equity stake in the Czech company was informed about a case of fraud, which could potentially lead to lots of losses. Our Czech subsidiary actually filed criminal charges because there was a suspicion that this was a case of serious fraud. We are providing the best possible support to the police in its investigation.
Since this came to light, we have taken the necessary precautions in the company. Unfortunately, I cannot disclose more information on this pending legal case. Mr. Marsch, your question about fiber optics development in Frechen, let me give you the following answer. When you talk about the regional authorities and your idea that we should talk to the relevant authorities again in your region, I found this very helpful. I think it was very plausible what you said. Sometimes I'm worried that people think that Telekom always wants to have its way and is just focused on our own interests. Very often, we have to connect the cell towers to fiber optics, and that's always really an interference with the natural landscape.
There has to be a careful review before we do that, and that makes the whole process very lengthy and time-consuming. With regard to Frechen, about 3,500 households in Frechen can already receive FTTH from Deutsche Telekom. Unfortunately, I do not have your exact address to review or to check whether it is available where you live. It does happen again and again that we do not get a permit for in-house cables in certain housing units. Maybe that is an explanation why your neighbors have this connection and you do not have this connection yet, but we would have to clarify this. Our customer service colleagues are absolutely happy to look into your case. We have a joint interest here. Every customer who uses our network, I mean, is very welcome. Of course, we want to give you the best possible support.
Of course, things go wrong sometimes, or sometimes owners refuse to have certain cables laid. You asked about our perspective on Congstar. Telekom is Bayern Munich and Congstar is St. Pauli. These are two different brands, like these are two different clubs. Now, for customers who don't want our services because they find us too expensive or too conservative, we wanted to have an alternative in-house, basically. This is what Congstar is all about. They cover really everything. In 2004, I was there when Congstar was set up, and 20 years later, we managed the breakthrough of EUR 1 billion contribution to our revenue. As a young, creative company, very attractive value for money. The brand doesn't offer premium services. It's not at the same high level as Magenta, but for us, it is a kind of a trial company. It's like a lab, a trial lab.
Many Kongster customers, after a certain while, actually come to the parent brand. This is what we want. We are very proud of the breakthrough of the EUR 1 billion contribution to profit. It is a wonderful alternative to our core brand customers. Mr. Eichmann asked about the transmission of data through Telekom's network, whether there is anything new to report. There is no new action from the German telecommunications agency. Our lines are still used, and the lines are provided free of charge to the large internet companies. I mean, this is very annoying. Billions of profits are made by the big internet companies. Data traffic growth is between 30%-50% for these huge carriers. We get a lot of spam through these networks.
Due to the original agreements that are not really being addressed, these services are being made available to these huge internet companies free of charge. I think this is very annoying, and it is something that is unacceptable. I have been appealing for many years that there should be a fair share, burden sharing, that these companies should really pay also for the development of our infrastructure. Governments shy away from really confronting the major internet companies. The internet companies themselves, of course, are not keen on sharing their profits with us. We do not have our own social network like Facebook. Maybe it was a mistake at Telekom that 20 years ago we did not build up our own Meta, Instagram. For messenger services with RCS, the rich communication services, we have an alternative.
Rich communication services can be used on modern mobile devices in the text app through which you can send or receive text messages. There is an option, but it is not a classic social media platform or community. I have to make sure that your well-being is not compromised. That is why Mr. Illek will step in.
Mr. Bembach, what is the sense of the share buyback programs and what is their effect and how are they put on the balance sheet? The buyback program is a form of payout to shareholders, which is particularly common in the US. It makes sense if you believe that your own share is undervalued. I talked about the European part of our business. In 2024, we had a modest buyback. We bought only 1.6% of our share capital.
The effect was that we had to pay out less dividend and that the remaining shares have a higher proportion of profit per share. How do we put it on the balance sheet? As the signed capital and the profit provisions are being reduced and after canceling these shares, share price changes have no longer affected. Second question on share matching shares. I will focus on what applies to all employees. The Shares 2Y ou program, which we introduced in 2021. Here, employees can invest in two shares and get paid out one after four years. In 2024, this program was expanded also for employees in Europe. In total, 14 countries. We limited to EUR 1,000 when we introduced this in 2021 because that was what you could make tax-free. We have 36,000 who participated only in Germany, more than 40% of all employees.
I link this to the question of Mr. Martius, who also asked a question on this. We will look whether the 14.40, the investment threshold, makes sense, but we also can extend this for employees. Now, what is the price of the shares given to the employees? In the share matching plan, the shares are given to employees depending on the share invest. If you use this of the buyback program, the costs are public. The shares that are given out are given to the employee at the price on that day. Questions on party donations. How many party donations we have made? None. Ownership of buildings, 70% of our buildings is owned by us. This refers to the size and not the value. We are continuously reducing our owned property and also rented space because we need less and less space.
If you're interested, anytime, BlackRock shares, BlackRock holds about 5% of Deutsche Telekom and 3.4% of T-Mobile US. Sprint is no longer existing, so they no longer have Sprint shares. What do you do with the free space in your real estate? Everything that is free and can be marketed, we either try to sell or to let out. It depends on the situation of the building. There are some buildings which are difficult to sell or rent out. There is then a space which is still part of our real estate stock. These were my questions.
Mr. Höttges. Mr. Höttges, you asked whether you learn if staff of the service is AI or human beings. Yes, we do this. This is part of our guidance. We define this for the use of AI. Mr.
Wenners, how do we make sure that AI will not act independently? How can we control the technology? For us, AI is a neutral tool which we use without ignoring the risks, especially when it comes to generic AI. We want to make sure that risks in using AI are minimized and that we defined our own self-binding guidelines, which you can access on the internet. Here, we describe how we want to use AI, as Deutsche Telekom, and how we want to develop our product and services. Among that is that always people are responsible. We do not delegate it to machines. It's always a person using a tool to improve his or her work, and they bear the responsibility for that. For all our solutions, we have defined who is in charge for which AI system and for which AI function.
We are always able to stop our AI systems or switch them off at any time. We also have clear guidelines which information may be used in the large language models. We need to do this in a dynamic process because the AI is taking over more and more tasks. Here, we need to adapt. As always, there is the danger of misuse, but benefits are clearly larger. You ask what are the limits of digital growth. I understand you, but on the other hand, if you look at the growth of the annual data traffic in our networks, we do not feel it at all. Quite to the contrary, the data use and use of digital media of all people continues to grow immensely. Nevertheless, we are committed to responsible use of these media.
You might recall we had a campaign when we said, "Now switch off your mobile phones." When it's Christmas or the family is sitting around the dinner table, we are committed also to detox and started communication to promote the responsible use of digital media, which is certainly important. We shouldn't overwhelm ourselves. In our company, we have meetings without any mobile phones to make sure that people are not in two or three when in parallel. How do we eliminate the risks coming along with the increasing use of AI for our electricity networks? I can't tell you exactly because I'm not in charge of electricity supply in Germany. If systems work completely autonomously and can take decisions, then you need security functions, and unwanted decisions have to be prevented.
That is why we take it very seriously what the system is doing and what it can trigger. A system which might switch off an electricity grid has to be automatically excluded. It is our responsibility to make sure that we use only systems and have the four eyes principle. We had a discussion if we get a message from the network before it replaces, there is always a human interface in between who. It is not about the system, "I want to do this or that." The person has to say, "Yes, then do it or not." We need this human interface to make sure that the community cannot do anything without any supervision. The same applies to the electricity sector to make sure that grids or networks can be switched off. Mr.
Bohle, you talked about the use of mobile phones by children and young people and how Deutsche Telekom sees its responsibility. We polarize with our campaigns, be it about fake news or currently our campaign. If you have not seen this, watch Wonderland on the global warming discussion. We have the detox discussion in Germany. We took this up and, you know, we receive a lot of criticism when we get involved politically. Some people say, "It's your responsibility," and others say, "It's your idiot." It is a fine line for the image of this company. Honestly, we embrace this. That is why we also assume the responsibility for young people, especially when it comes to using smartphones. We call it digital literacy. We have training seminars, and we are supporting young people and children and parents as well.
We have a kids' watch program, and we have the so-called school mode, which we offer on mobile phones for children, which are limited functionalities. It is a very complex topic, but we'll keep you posted. I personally believe sometimes it's great to simply turn it off. That brings me to a question which Mr. Schirmacher asked me. You asked Mr. Schirmacher whether the remuneration of the Board of Management as a supervisor should be linked to the debt level of the company. In the new remuneration system, we use traditional performance indicators, which in the past have been positively perceived by investors and proxy advisors. It was not linking it to the debt level. Nevertheless, also in the past, the company made the debt level relevant for remuneration. We think due to the current economic and financial situation, it's not as important as other KPIs.
That is why we haven't done it. It might change in the future if necessary, but at the moment, we believe that other indicators are more important and also more important to incentivize the Board of Management. Mr. Illek, I think there is still a question for you to be answered. There's a question from Mr. Schirmacher .
How will Deutsche Telekom reduce the level of debt year on year and also annual interest? Our KPI is not the absolute debt, but the ratio. So it's net debt divided by the EBITDA. Here, we want to have a ratio of less than 2.75. This is sustainable and viable, especially against the backdrop of our cash flow. All three ratings gave us a triple B plus and a positive outlook. At the moment, there's no need to change this or to reduce that absolutely to zero.
If you look at how much free cash flow we generate, we might reduce our debt quite quickly if necessary. You might trade it, especially the remuneration of shareholders. We do not want to do this because we do not see the need. We are feeling quite comfortable with this policy of less than 2.75. There are a few questions being processed as it is in the system. We will wait for that. Even though people are working under pressure, I would like to ask you for your patience. We will suspend the meeting until we have the answers, but it will last only a couple of minutes because I can see in the system that only very few questions have not yet been answered, and we expect them anytime soon. Please bear with me for a few minutes. [Foreign Language]
Dr. Illek, why don't you start? [Foreign Language] .
Question from Mr. Schirmacher. What would happen if the German business with the strong volumes but small margins became loss-making? Mr. Schirmacher, in 2024, we generated revenues to the tune of EUR 25 billion and a great deal of EBITDA. Our business in Germany is profitable and not loss-making. There is no indication that this is set to change. Quite the contrary. We informed that every year we want to increase earnings by 2-3%. That is in line with the guidance that we gave to the capital markets in October. We stick to it, as Tim Höttges confirmed this morning. Therefore, do we?
Yes, we intend to increase the profitability of our Germany business, and we do not expect it to be loss-making. Capital increase. Why is it that we are not funding the fiber rollout ourselves? We are doing this in several joint ventures based on an asset-light model, which means it is not shown in accounting. We believe that this helps us to accelerate the fiber rollout because we are working with investors. You also buy in the US, we also buy certain capacities because T-Mobile US obviously is a mobile communications company. Basically, we kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, we have the infrastructure we need for the fiber rollout. Secondly, we have investors such as KGR as co-investors who help us do that. The same holds true for Glasfaser Plus in Germany.
You ask why we're not doing a capital increase. Is that to do with BaFin, the Financial Supervisory Authority? No, there may actually be a capital increase. We would not rule that out. In 2021, we had a capital increase of 4.5% as part of a stock swap that was 425 million shares. Right now, there is no need to do a capital increase. [Foreign Language] .
I have a couple of questions here from Mr. Schirmacher. In 2024, the US share of adjusted earnings was 66%, and the share of the adjusted operated earnings just under 60%. In 2024, all segments of Deutsche Telekom contributed to the company's growth. In the US, we still see a great deal of growth potential based on the development of new markets, as I already pointed out.
With this in mind, we are glad that the US business accounts for such a large share of our business. This is part of a very successful portfolio strategy that we have enhanced quite consistently through the years. We are glad to have a footprint in the US market, which, by the way, is the world's most profitable telecommunications market. You asked about our transgender approach. No, it is not about re-educating people, as you put it, far less as part of an ideological approach. It is just an information offer. We are getting a lot of questions from the company on this topic. We answered these questions by way of this manual. Nothing more and nothing less. It is just an information offer to Deutsche Telekom employees and not to T-Mobile US employees.
What are the risks to our business in foreign markets, and how do we manage them? If you're in business, there are always risks. There are different risks in the various markets where we have a footprint. However, we do not specifically look into country-related risks. We always and holistically look at risks in all countries based on the various business cases. We analyze how these risks may impact our planning and our financial goals. We determine deviations, and we develop scenarios that define how we will respond if a risk materializes. Usually, we do not just have one plan B, but several plans B. That depends on the extent to which a problem may impact our business. We are then in a position to react swiftly, which, of course, is part of our day-to-day management as a corporation.
Every Tuesday, for instance, we have a 10-hour meeting where we talk about just these topics, and where colleagues inform each other about the things that are changing in the various business areas. Yeah, we introduce the relevant steps to counteract any negative trends. Mr. Schirmacher, another question. You asked about expenses for donations and sponsoring. The total amount is EUR 300 million. That was the number for the overall group in 2024. In 2023, it was also EUR 300 million. For 2025, there are no exact plans yet. It depends, of course, on what is really needed. Donations are calculated, adjusted for donations from the Telekom Foundation. Sponsoring activities of Deutsche Telekom focus on the areas of sports and music. I already gave you some detailed information about that based on the example of Bonn.
Deutsche Telekom is not donating any money to political parties or organizations affiliated with political parties. This would also be forbidden in line with the Political Parties Act. We always and carefully examine whether we are donating for the right purposes. Whenever people are in need, whenever there's an emergency or a disaster, we react by making donations, either financially or in kind. In fact, this is what we stand for as a brand. We support society as a whole. We don't just want to support parts of society. We want to support society overall. This means that we have to get involved. A question on comfort charge and the rollout and outsourcing. Mr. Winsbeck brought up that question. First of all, the electrification of our fleet and increasing the number of charging stations is part of our strategy.
lion's share of this expansion happens on the basis of charging at work at Telekom sites. We also promote the setting up of charging stations at our employees' homes so that they can use them to charge their electric business cars. In addition, I mean, we always check whether it's possible to expand this comfort charge further in Germany. There are a lot of charging stations in Germany, but ultimately, I mean, you always have to make sure that you invest the money in the right thing. EUR 16 billion is a lot of money, but it's not enough. That's why we don't have one specific priority, as we do for the fiber rollout. As far as this comfort charge is concerned, we basically want to use all our sites here to keep on increasing the number of charging stations. A question by Mr. Winsbeck on Starlink.
There's a nice saying in the U.S., "If you can't fight the dragon, ride the dragon." Yes, Starlink obviously, you know, they want to do far more than what they're currently announcing. I mean, they say they only want to provide 1%-2% of the population with satellites and 98% with mobile coverage. I don't believe that. I believe that X and Starlink have much bigger plans for the future. Once they have enough spectrum, and once they have sent 30,000 or 40,000 satellites into space, the market will be much bigger. This may account for 20-25% of the overall market. This will not just cannibalize mobile communications, but also, you know, apartments in holiday resorts, for instance, that only have a fixed network telephone with a bad connection today.
They can use it to reach price-sensitive customers who say they only need connection several months a year. For them, this will be an option, and Starlink will continue to offer such services. Let me also tell you, I mean, what's the alternative? We can continue rolling out the network. That's what we do. We can offer high-speed internet and fixed mobile substitution, meaning we offer mobile communications wherever there isn't a proper fixed network connection. We do that as well. Wherever there are major areas without coverage, like in America, we are working with satellite operators. The best satellite operator by far for commercial applications is Starlink because they already have the infrastructure up there in the sky. That's why it's good for us as Telekom to work with the strongest partner.
That's the explanation of why we are working with Starlink in the US. In Europe, it's not all that necessary because here we have better coverage. Here the use case for satellites is not quite as big as in the United States.
Thank you very much, Mr. Höttges. As far as I can tell, all questions have been answered. Is it fair to assume that all questions have been answered? If you think that a question asked today has not been answered, please let the staff at the speaker's registration counter know immediately which question it is. If the question has not yet been answered, we will answer it with support from the back office. [Foreign Language] Unfortunately, it looks as if you misunderstood one question, and then obviously your answer wasn't correct either.
Let me get back to that. After World War II, we had a law in place on how to offset certain financial burdens, and there was a new currency. The government was bust. This law, Olaf Scholz, was then changed under Mrs. Merkel and Olaf Scholz, the former German chancellors. As a result, from the 1st of January 2024, this law was still applied. The designated new chancellor, somehow deviously, if I may say so, released the so-called debt brake in this country. This means that we are getting more and more into trouble because we're piling up too much debt in Germany and in the EU. After World War II, there was a reduction in nominal value. I'm not saying that this is what we like to see. I'm just saying that today we have no par value shares.
I think it's important to know what's going to happen. Let me just give you an example. Let's say there are 1,000 shares. In the past, the 1,000 shares were turned into 600 shares.
At any rate, you seem to reply to my question without really answering it. That law is in place. There is the law on restructuring and processing. You said that you piled up debt of around EUR 200 billion, you said? [Foreign Language] . It's still a lot anyway. That's why it is a major advantage for us if, you know, all the money saved is the overnight money, the call money, for instance, and all the other money saved is converted in such a way that our number one seller, Mr.
Höttges, you know, can present it to investors at Capital Markets Day as a means to bring down the cost of capital. That's what I meant.
Okay, let me just tell you what it is. I've never even dealt with this question, nor has the Board of Management or the Supervisory Board, which is why I cannot answer this question right now. I would propose that we look into this question, even though we have understood it now. If you allow, we will contact you personally. You might want to leave your business card here, and then we'll get in touch with you. I hope that you will agree. This is my honest answer. You know, I don't want to answer the question off the cuff.
Okay, may I ask once again?
[Foreign Language] We believe, with the Supervisory Board and Board of Management, that all questions have been answered. Is that the case? Okay, [Foreign Language] All right, so let's state this for the record, that Mr. Bachmann waives his right to still wait for another question to be answered. I'm not aware of any further requests for the floor. No new questions, please. Just a question that may not have been answered. Which one is it? Why don't you stand up and tell us? The interpreters can't hear what's being said because no microphone is being used.
[Foreign Language]
The answer to this question. [Foreign Language] . You know things that I'm not aware of, so maybe we've been [Foreign Language] similar to other questions that we haven't analyzed.
That's why I really don't have any answer to it, because we haven't been able to analyze that. [Foreign Language] I think that's a socially relevant question you've asked, but I don't think it's part of the agenda here today. [Foreign Language] . And we didn't discuss the pension system, where you rightly noted that it needs reform.
I would like to close this session after this question is withdrawn. I would note that all the questions have been answered. I would like to close the general debate. I would like to thank all the speakers for their contributions and the Board of Management for answering the questions. [Foreign Language] . Ladies and gentlemen, we will come to the vote shortly in accordance with Section 17(2) of the Articles of Association.
[Foreign Language] . Responsibility as Chairman of the annual general meeting to determine the type and order of voting. Voting takes place via mobile recording devices as an electronic collection box. Votes are allocated to the chairs by scanning the QR code on your AGM card. The votes recorded using the mobile recording devices are transferred to a computerized system for counting after the poll closes. The transfer and the subsequent count are monitored by a notary. The addition method is used to determine the result of the vote. The votes in favor and against are counted separately and added together to determine the number of votes cast. Abstentions are not counted. In order to ensure notarial supervision, you can only cast your votes here in the main room, i.e., which is to say in this New York room, including the gallery accessible to you.
If you would like to take part in the voting, please come to the main room now and have your AGM card ready. For the sake of order, I would like to point out that votes cast by the company's proxies and votes cast by intermediaries, proxy advisors, and shareholders' associations who make use of the virtual voting card service differ from the above. They are carried out by the present proxy holders or the present representative of their respective intermediary, proxy advisor, or the respective shareholders' association by signing the votes previously deposited electronically. The votes in question are then also entered into the computerized vote counting system. Shareholders have also made use of the postal voting option. These votes are also already stored electronically and are taken into account by the computerized system when the votes are counted.
I will now announce the current attendance once again before the vote. [Foreign Language] 9. April 2024. Chairman is now reading out the attendance figures for the meeting. [Foreign Language] To read out the number of shares represented by the people attending the meeting today. 4,986,458,596 [Foreign Language] Votes cast by mail [Foreign Language] The different numbers that will be taken into account later. 162,612 [Foreign Language] . He's talking about the nominal shares present now or represented by mail. [Foreign Language]
This brings us now to the voting on the agenda, individual agenda items. The Resolution Number Two on the agenda is ready for voting. I would ask you to cast your votes on the following agenda items. [Foreign Language] . Deviations from the proposed resolution contained in the invitation to the annual general meeting result from the change in the number of shares entitled to dividends. [Foreign Language] is already announced the dividend to be distributed in accordance with the proposed resolution. [Foreign Language] . Resolutions proposed by the management on agenda items 3 to 12 will be put to the vote with the wording as set out in the invitation to today's annual general meeting. [Foreign Language] .
With regard to agenda items 3 and 4, I would like to. [Foreign Language] . Section 136 of the German Stock Corporation Act. For the sake of order, I would also like to note with regard to agenda item 5 that anyone who wishes to reject only one or two of the delegate appointments proposed on the subitems must vote against the entire proposed resolution under agenda item 5. If the draft resolution is rejected by a majority, I will conduct a separate vote on subitems A, B, and C. With regard to agenda item 7, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that you can decide on the election of each candidate separately in this resolution by means of an individual vote. The resolutions on agenda items 2 to 12 require a simple majority of the valid votes cast.
In addition to the simple majority of valid votes cast, the respective resolution on agenda items 9 and 10 requires a majority of at least three quarters of the share capital represented when the resolution is passed. The resolution on agenda item 8 also requires a simple majority of the share capital represented when the resolution is passed. If you wish to vote in favor of or against one or more of the resolutions proposed by the administration on agenda items, [Foreign Language] . Present yourself in the main room, which is to say here in the New York room, including the gallery accessible to you, and have your AGM card ready. The votes are summarized. This means that the votes are cast separately for each of the items put to the vote, but in a collective process using the mobile voting system.
You decide independently of each other to what extent you participate in the vote, how much you cast in your vote, and whether you vote yes or no or abstain. Once the vote has been open, give a clear show of hands to the employees who are authorized to receive your votes. An employee will then come to you. First, present your AGM card so that the QR code on it can be scanned. You then inform the employee for each of the resolution proposals of the administration to receive the items to be voted on, whether you wish to support the respective resolution proposal of the administration to receive the resolution proposal of the administration. That is, vote no. If you wish to abstain from voting on individual agenda items relating to the resolutions proposed by the administration, tell us no.
Check the reconciliation request displayed on the mobile voting device. Confirm to the employee that your voting request is displayed correctly. After this confirmation, the employee casts the vote. If you wish to abstain from voting on all items on the agenda relating to the administration proposal of the administration, you do not need to inform our employees of your wish to vote. Our staff will be happy to answer any questions you may have about the procedure. I would now ask our staff standing back to take the votes here in the main room. The vote is now open. [Foreign Language]
Have all shareholders who wish to vote yes or no to one or more of the resolutions proposed by the management on agenda items 2 to 12 cast their votes? Are there still votes to be cast? Please give a clear show of hands if this is the case. [Foreign Language] . I therefore note that all votes on agenda items 2 to 12 have been cast. I hereby close the vote. [Foreign Language] . I will announce the results of the vote as soon as they are available. We are now going to have a quick break, and I will be back before long. Thank you. [Foreign Language]
[Foreign Language] I have the results of the vote. The annual general meeting adopted all of the resolutions proposed by the management on agenda items 2 to 12 with the required majority. The detailed voting results are immediately displayed on the screen for each resolution. All interested shareholders can also obtain these at the registration desk or view them afterwards on the company's website.
If you agree, I will therefore limit my comments on the resolution to the fact that the required majority was achieved for each resolution proposed by management. [Foreign Language] . Here are the results of the vote of the AGM. [Foreign Language] Ladies and gentlemen, I will first call the results of the votes on the resolutions 2 to 12. Die AGM von 3,493,800. Took a decision [Foreign Language] more than 3 billion non-par share values 397 [Foreign Language]
Including mailed-in votes, 4.41% of the in 4,986,478,566 shares divided share capital and took the following resolution with 99.7% of the valid votes cast also on agenda point one two on the appropriation of the company profit and the payout of a dividend of $0.90 adopted the resolution. The proposal adjusted to the number of dividend-entitled shares by the Board of Management and Supervisory Board for agenda item 2 corresponds to what I informed you of before the discussion immediately after calling agenda items 2 to 12 and which is available here on site.
[Foreign Language] adopted the resolution bei 99.66% has ratified the actions of the board von Item 4 the ratification of the action of the supervisory board [Foreign Language] Resolution has been adopted with a majority of 93.88%. On behalf of the Supervisory Board and the Management Board, I'd like to thank you for the confidence you've shown us and want to thank you for the ratification of the actions. On Item 5, on the appointment of the auditors Deloitte GmbH, Munich, for the business year 2025, [Foreign Language] .
Adopted the resolution [Foreign Language] . On Item 6 also [Foreign Language] simple majority of the AGM [Foreign Language] 2025 appointed Deloitte as auditors. [Foreign Language] The legislator should require an audit of the sustainability reporting of the company [Foreign Language] and an 89% majority on the election of Mr. Ramge. Mr. Ramge has been elected into the supervisory board on the election of Rachel Empey, 99.7% of the votes [Foreign Language] . With this majority, Ms. Rachel Empey has been elected to the supervisory board von 99.9% der abgegebenen gültigen Stimmen on the election of Natalie Knight the AGM has elected Ms.
Knight to be a member of the supervisory board with a majority of 99.79%.
I'd like to thank you for your confidence [Foreign Language] on Item 8 of the agenda von 99.9% [Foreign Language] . So with this simple majority the AGM has adopted the resolution on the amendment to Section 14 of the Articles of Incorporation. [Foreign Language] on Item 9 of the agenda the AGM with a majority of 96%, so by achieving a simple majority, has adopted the resolution
[Foreign Language] on granting of an authorization to acquire and use own shares with the option to exclude subscription rights and any right to tender shares as well as the cancellation of the existing authorization [Foreign Language] 10 on Item 10 the AGM with a majority of 96.99%, so by achieving a simple majority [Foreign Language] adopted the resolution on the granting of an authorization to use equity derivatives to acquire own shares with the option to include any right to tender shares as well as the cancellation of the existing authorization
[Foreign Language] 11 of the agenda the AGM with a majority of 95.99%, so by achieving a simple majority, adopted the resolution on the approval of the remuneration support 2024. Item 12 on the agenda with a majority of 95.8%, so by achieving a simple majority, the AGM adopted the adapted remuneration system for board of management members which will take effect on January 1, 2025. So the proposed resolutions have been adopted Item 2 to 12, so [Foreign Language] . So the other resolutions then have become irrelevant.
This brings us to the end of our agenda. On behalf of the Supervisory Board and the Management Board, I'd like to thank you for attending this year's AGM [Foreign Language] I'd like to thank all the staff members who have been involved in preparing and organizing this AGM and have contributed to the proper running of this AGM. [Foreign Language] like to point out that the next ordinary AGM of Deutsche Telekom AG will happen on April 1, 2026, on April Fool's Day, and we invite all shareholders to this meeting. Have a safe trip back home, looking forward to next year's AGM, and I hereby close this year's AGM.